17 (p. 223) The Annual Register and Hume and Smollett: “Hume and Smollett” refers to the History of England (1754-1762) begun by David Hume and completed by Tobias Smollett, a standard reference set; the Annual Register and Gentleman‘s Magazine were summaries of noteworthy events dating back to the mid-eighteenth century, while “Blair‘s Sermons” refers to a standard work of religious consolation by the eighteenth-century Scottish clergyman Hugh Blair.
18 (p. 279) A certain ball... is historical. The ball on June 15, 1815, was held by Charlotte, the duchess of Richmond, and there already existed a tradition of literary representations of the event: It is mentioned in Charles Lever‘s Charles O‘Malley (1841) and in canto 3 of Lord Byron‘s Childe Harold (1816).
19 (p. 315) when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden: The pivot of the Battle of Waterloo, the fighting on June 18, 1815, lasted from noon to 8:00 P.M., and left 22,000 Allied and 40,000 French soldiers dead. The late arrival of Prussian troops to relieve British battalions sealed the French defeat.
20 (p. 362) No. 201, Curzon Street, May Fair: Squarely in the middle of the fashionable West End district of Mayfair, Becky and Rawdon‘s house is a direct contrast to dreary, if respectable, Russell Square. Curzon Street had earlier been the home of the noted eighteenth-century dandy Beau Brummell, and the connotations of Mayfair (named for the May Fair held on the site until the mid-eighteenth century) are appropriate to Becky‘s version of Vanity Fair.
21 (p. 368) The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee: Controversy persists as to whether Steyne was modeled on a real-life figure, but the consensus seems to be that Thackeray was thinking of a Marquis of Hertford, either the second Marquis (1743-1822), whose dissolute life was well known, or the third (1777-1842), who resembles the illustration on page 000. The illustration was curiously missing from the novel‘s second edition, leading some commentators to surmise that it was suppressed because of the resemblance.
22 (pp. 397-398) these andfour others formed the representative body which returned the two members for Queen‘s Crawley: A classic example of a “rotten borough,” a parliamentary district elected by a tiny, or nonex istent, body of voters, Queen‘s Crawley has six voters for two seats. The system was not long to continue; the Reform Bill of 1832 abolished such boroughs and redistributed some seats from the over-represented south of Britain to the increasingly populous and industrialized north.
23 (p. 442) You want to be member for the county, where ... you can command anything: Becky here alludes to the pre-1832 electoral system. As member for the county, Pitt would be elected by an actual body of voters, rather than his “rotten” seat for the borough; a county seat would bring with it legitimacy, and it would survive the onslaught of electoral reform.
24 (p. 458) The Marchioness of Steyne was of the renowned and ancient family of the Caerlyons.... this trembling, silent, superstitious, unhappy lady: The Marchioness of Steyne‘s ancestry is a virtual tour through English history from the pre-Christian era (thus the names Pendragon, Arthur, Uther, Caradoc) through the Reformation and Civil Wars, at which point her family stood by the deposed Stuarts and their Catholicism. The references to eighteenth-century wits and celebrities (Fox, Morris, Sheridan, Walpole) emphasize her age. Her peculiar sadness is thus a personal matter and a historical one: Her family is on the losing side of British history.
25 (p. 470) making profound bows out of the August Presence: The sarcasm of the passage is heavy: The dissolute George IV, who reigned from 1820 to 1830 and who as prince regent gave a debauched character to the end of his father‘s reign, was to Thackeray (and most Victorian readers) a sign of a happily vanished era of moral turpitude. That we do not see the encounter between Becky and her sovereign suggests that such a meeting may have been less than innocent.
26 (p. 511) the Whitefriars: One of Thackeray‘s many thinly veiled portraits of his own public-school alma mater, Charterhouse. That school, like “Whitefriars,” was situated near the Smithfield meat market, was once a Cistercian or “Carthusian” monastery, and was appropriated by Henry VIII for other uses. Thackeray‘s reminiscences of Charterhouse are uniformly bleak, centering on the brutality of public-school discipline.
27 (p. 549) Georgy Osborne: The chapter‘s initial vignette pictures little George as George IV, in his coronation robes, an appropriately sardonic comment on little George‘s self-importance.
28 (p. 589) Assaye Terrace: The list of place names is largely fictional, and refers to major events or figures in the British colonial experience in India. The Earl of Moira, the Earl of Minto, and Sir Warren Hastings were all governors-general of India; Lord Clive was a governor of Bengal ; Sir David Ochterlony was a British general in Nepal; and Plassy and Assaye were famous British military victories. Fitzroy Square, however, is the real-life neighborhood described.
29 (p. 614) the little comfortable ducal town of Pumpernickel: Pumpernickel is a thinly veiled fictionalizing of Weimar, where a young Thackeray spent time in 1830 and 1831, and where he met the elderly Goethe. It is not a coincidence that vanity Fair‘s visitors to Pumpernickel arrive at almost precisely the same period. As with Thackeray‘s reminiscences of Weimar, the attitude toward Pumpernickel is both nostalgically fond and somewhat humorous; its miniature quality is emphasized throughout.
30 (p. 629) A vagabond Chapter: The chapter‘s initial vignette shows Becky dressed as Napoleon, gazing at England from the French side of the Channel. The Napoleonic posture would have been familiar from Benjamin Robert Haydon‘s well-known series “Napoleon Musing at St. Helena” (1831).
31 (p. 675) old oak to which you cling!: This farewell image is a complexly ambivalent one, which brings together a long allegorical tradition of “the elm and the vine” as a sign of marital union with the more botan ically sinister coupling of oak and ivy; ivy, as Thackeray‘s readers were likely to know, strangles the trees on which it grows.
32 (p. 679) Messrs. Burke, Thurtell & Hayes, of Thavies Inn: A series of deliberately suggestive references. William Burke (1792-1829) was a famous Edinburgh body-snatcher; John Thurtell (1794-1824) was a well-known murderer; and Catherine Hayes (1690-1726), renowned husband-killer, was the subject of Thackeray‘s satirical novel Catherine (1839). Along with the illustration on page 678, we receive some fairly broad hints as to Becky‘s complicity in Jos Sedley‘s death.
AN INSPIRATION FOR VANITY FAIR
For the title of his foremost satire of society and manners, William Makepeace Thackeray borrowed from another writer, John Bunyan. In Bunyan‘s allegory The Pilgrim‘s Progress (Part I published in 1678; Part II in 1684), Vanity Fair was an ancient carnival on the outskirts of a town called Vanity. Permanently situated in the path that leads toward Heaven, Vanity Fair tries to lure men away from their proper spiritual goal and has done so since the beginning of time.
The Vanity Fair episode in Bunyan‘s book—its full title is The Pilgrim‘s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come: Delivered Under the Similitude of a Dream Wherein Is Discovered, the Manner of His Setting Out, His Dangerous Journey; and Safe Arrival at the Desired Countrey—
was meant to reflect the superficiality of Restoration society. Until well into the nineteenth century, The Pilgrim‘s Progress was second only to the Bible in popularity; in citing his influences, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “I must name the Pilgrim‘s Progress, a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.”
The following excerpt from The Pilgrim‘s Progress describes the Vanity Fair:
Then I saw in my dream, that when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity; and at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair: it is kept all the year long. It beareth the name of Vanity Fair because the town where it is kept is lighter than vanity; and, also because all that is there sold, or that cometh thither, is vanity. As is the saying of the wise, All that cometh is vanity.
This fair is no new-erected business, but a thing of ancient standin
g; I will show you the original of it.
Almost five thousand years agone, there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two honest persons are: and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions, perceiving by the path that the pilgrims made, that their way to the city lay through this town of Vanity, they contrived here to set up a fair; a fair wherein, should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all the year long: therefore at this fair are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not.
And, moreover, at this fair there is at all times to be seen jug glings, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind.
Here are to be seen, too, and that for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false swearers, and that of a blood-red colour.
And as in other fairs of less moment, there are the several rows and streets, under their proper names, where such and such wares are vended; so here likewise you have the proper places, rows, streets, (viz. countries and kingdoms), where the wares of this fair are soon est to be found. Here is the Britain Row, the French Row, the Italian Row, the Spanish Row, the German Row, where several sorts of vanities are to be sold. But, as in other fairs, some one commodity is as the chief of all the fair, so the ware of Rome and her merchandise is greatly promoted in this fair; only our English nation, with some others, have taken a dislike thereat.
Now, as I said, the way to the Celestial City lies just through this town where this lusty fair is kept; and he that will go to the city, and yet not go through this town, must needs go out of the world. The Prince of princes himself, when here, went through this town to his own country, and that upon a fair day too; yea, and as I think, it was Beelzebub, the chief lord of this fair, that invited him to buy of his vanities; yea, would have made him lord of the fair, would he but have done him reverence as he went through the town. Yea, because he was such a person of honour, Beelzebub had him from street to street, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a little time, that he might, if possible, allure the Blessed One to cheapen and buy some of his vanities; but he had no mind to the merchandise, and therefore left the town, without laying out so much as one farthing upon these vanities. This fair, therefore, is an ancient thing, of long standing, and a very great fair.
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work‘s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter William Makepeace Thackeray‘s Vanity Fair through a variety of voices and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
You mention Thackeray, and the last number of “Vanity Fair.” The more I read of Thackeray‘s works—the more certain I am that he stands alone; alone in his sagacity, alone in his truth, alone in his feeling (his feeling, though he makes no noise about it, is about the most genuine that ever lived in a printed page) alone in his power, alone in his simplicity, alone in his self-control. Thackeray is a Titan.
—from a letter to W. S. Williams (March 29,1848)
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
There is no use denying the matter or blinking it now. I am become a sort of great man in my way—all but at the top of the tree: indeed there if the truth were known and having a great fight up there with Dickens.
—from a letter to Mrs. Brookfield (July 24,1849)
CHARLES DICKENS
We had our differences of opinion. I thought that he too much feigned a want of earnestness, and that he made a pretence of undervaluing his art, which was not good for the art that he held in trust. But, when we fell upon these topics, it was never very gravely, and I have a lively image of him in my mind, twisting both his hands in his hair, and stamping about, laughing, to make an end of the discussion.
—on Thackeray, from Cornhill Magazine (February 1864)
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
It is almost impossible, indeed, to avoid some sort of parallel à la Plutarch between Thackeray and Dickens. We do not intend to make out which is the greater, for they may be equally great, though utterly unlike, but merely to touch on a few striking points. Thackeray, in his more elaborate works, always paints character, and Dickens single peculiarities. Thackeray‘s personages are all men, those of Dickens personified oddities. The one is an artist, the other a caricaturist; the one pathetic, the other sentimental. Nothing is more instructive than the difference between the illustrations of their respective works. Thackeray‘s figures are such as we meet about the streets, while the artists who draw for Dickens invariably fall into the exceptionally grotesque. Thackeray‘s style is perfect, that of Dickens often painfully mannered. —from The North American Review (April 1864)
EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE
Vanity Fair, though it does not include the whole extent of Thackeray‘s genius, is the most vigorous exhibition of its leading characteristics. In freshness of feeling, elasticity of movement, and unity of aim, it is favorably distinguished from its successors, which too often give the impression of being composed of successive accumulations of incidents and persons, that drift into the story on no principle of artistic selection and combination. The style, while it has the raciness of individual peculiarity and the careless case of familiar gossip, is as clear, pure, and flexible as if its sentences had been subjected to repeated revision, and every pebble which obstructed its lucid and limpid flow had been laboriously removed. The characterization is almost perfect of its kind. Becky Sharp, the Marquis of Steyne, Sir Pitt Crawley and the whole Crawley family, Amelia, the Osbornes, Major Dobbin, not to mention others, are as well known to most cultivated people as their most intimate acquaintances in the vanity Fair of the actual world. It has always seemed to us that Mr. Osborne, the father of George, a representation of the most hateful phase of English character, is one of the most vividly true and life-like of all the delineations in the book, and more of a typical personage than even Becky or the Marquis of Steyne. Thackeray‘s theory of characterization proceeds generally on the assumption that the acts of men and women are directed not by principle, but by instincts, selfish or amiable—that toleration of human weakness is possible only by lowering the standard of human capacity and obligation—and that the preliminary condition of an accurate knowledge of human character is distrust of ideals and repudiation of patterns. This view is narrow, and by no means covers all the facts of history and human life, but what relative truth it has is splendidly illustrated in Vanity Fair. There is not a person in the book who excites the reader‘s respect, and not one who fails to excite his interest. The morbid quickness of the author‘s perceptions of the selfish element, even in his few amiable characters, is a constant source of surprise. The novel not only has no hero, but implies the non-existence of heroism. Yet the fascination of the book is indisputable, and it is due to a variety of causes besides its mere exhibition of the worldly side of life. Among these, the perfect intellectual honesty of the writer, the sad or satirical sincerity with which he gives in his evidence against human nature, is the most prominent. With all his lightness of manner, he is essentially a witness under oath, and testifies only to what he is confident he knows. Perhaps this quality, rare not only in novel writing, but in all writing, would not compensate for the limitation of his perceptions and the repulsiveness of much that he perceives, were it not for the peculiar charm of his representation. It is here that the individuality of the man appears, and it presents a combination of sentiments and powers more original perhaps than the matter o
f his works. Take from Vanity Fair that special element of interest which comes from Thackeray‘s own nature, and it would lose the greater portion of its fascination. It is not so much what is done, as the way in which it is done, that surprises and delights; and the manner is always inimitable, even when the matter is common.—from The Atlantic Monthly (May 1865)
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
I do not hesitate to name Thackeray the first [English novelist of the day]. His knowledge of human nature was supreme, and his characters stand out as human beings, with a force and a truth which has not, I think, been within the reach of any other English novelist of any period.
—from his Autobiography (1883)
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Thackeray finds that God has made no allowance for the poor thing in his universe,—more‘s the pity, he thinks, but ‘tis not for us to be wiser; we must renounce ideals and accept London.
—from English Traits (1884)
ANDREW LANG
You, above all others, were and remain without a rival in your many-sided excellence, and praise of you strikes at none of those who have survived your day. The increase of time only mellows your renown, and each year that passes and brings you no successor does but sharpen the keenness of our sense of loss. In what other novelist, since Scott was worn down by the burden of a forlorn endeavour, and died for honour‘s sake, has the world found so many of the fairest gifts combined? If we may not call you a poet (for the rival even of Prior in light verse did not seek that crown), who that was less than a poet ever saw life with a glance so keen as yours, so steady, and so sane? Your pathos was never cheap, your laughter never forced; your sigh was never the pulpit trick of the preacher. Your funny people—your Costigans and Fokers—were not mere characters of trick and catch-word, were not empty comic masks. Behind each the human heart was beating; and ever and again we were allowed to see the features of the man.—to W. M. Thackeray, from Letters to Dead Authors (1886)
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