unwell and desirous to see me; and shall probably not return to London until the beginning of August: If your meetings are still going on there, and I can be of any use in speaking I shall be glad to do my best in the service of the A. R. A. "I would even come back for the meeting of Wednesday week (I am free on the SE Line so that the expense wd be very trifling to me) should you think my presence desirable. One literary man will probably be enough, and you have a most accomplished & certain orator in my friend Mr. Dickens. Whereas, from the very little practice I have had, I am just as likely to fail as not." If you think, however, that two of us might be likely to 'draw a house' I am at your service. Unless you want me, or if I shall do as well on a latter day, I had rather of course spare myself the time and travel. "Believe me very faithfully yours "W. M. Thackeray. "My address at Paris is chez Mme Ritchie, 36 Rue Godot-Mauroy. "P.S. You need not write. I shall see whether you want me by the advertisement of the names of Speakers in the Times." Thackeray came to this country a second time in October, 1855. As on his previous visit, he arrived in Boston, where he was most cordially welcomed, and his lectures on "Town Life and Manners in the Reigns. of the Georges" were well received, as they were also in New York early in November. In answer to his friend William B. Reed of Philadelphia, who asked him his opinion of this country, Thackeray replied: "You know what a virtue-proud people we English are. We think we have got it all ourselves. Now that which impresses me here is that I find homes as pure as ours, firesides like ours, domestic virtues as gentle: the English language, though its accent be a little different, with its homelike melody, and the Common Prayer Book in your families. I am more struck by pleasant resemblances than by anything else." On the day of his departure from America, which was sudden, he sent the following note to Mr. Reed: "MY DEAR REED, -When you get this, remum-mum-ember me to kick-kickkind ffu-fffu-ffriends . . . a sudden resolution-to-mum-mum-morrow . . . in the Bu-bu-baltic. Good-by, my dear kind friend, and all kind friends in Philadelphia. I did n't think of going away when I left home this morning; but it's the best way. I think it is best to send back 25 per cent. to poor Hazard. Will you kindly give him the enclosed; and depend on it, I shall go and see Mrs Booth when I go to London, and tell her all about you! My heart is uncommonly heavy and I am yours gratefully and affectionately. "W. M. T." In an undated letter relating to the death of G. A. à Becket, who died in August, 1856, written to F. M. Evans from Aix-la-Chapelle, Thackeray says: "I have only just read of our dear good à Becket's death, and think how I saw him only six weeks since, with his children about him. Whose turn is next? God help us. Whoever heard him say an unkind word? Can't we as his old comrades, do something to show his poor widow and family our sense of his worth? It is through my connection with Punch that I owe the good chances which have of late befallen me, and have had so many a kind offer of help in my own days of trouble that I would thankfully aid a friend whom death has called away." The merry, unsigned note which follows (shown on page 336, in facsimile) is addressed to an unknown lady, as it bears no name: "The day after the [ball] "P.S. Somebody had told the girls that they might ask & I told them they had taken a liberty. "When the girls told me that they had written to you to ask whether they might bring partners-their father's usually benevolent countenance looked as black as thunder. "After the ball this morning Minny says 'Well, Papa, I think it was very impudent of us to think of asking to bring partners to such a ball. Why, it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.' "And I was pretty well for the 1st time this ever so long and thought of going. Lucky I did n't. Had refused Sheriff's dinner on plea of being too unwell to dine out. "I am glad it was such a success and will sign my name some other day as that of your most humble servant." In an earlier letter to Mrs. Brookfield, while "Vanity Fair" was in course of publication in monthly numbers, Thackeray wrote, "You know you are only a piece of Amelia, my mother is another half, my poor little wife y est pour beaucoup.” Being in London and free from any engagement for the favorable morning of July 18, 1906, the ninety-fifth anniversary of Thackeray's birth, I drove out to Kensal Green with a friend to see his grave, as well as that of his American admirer, John Lothrop Motley, which is not far distant. They are among an army of more than one hundred thousand who have been buried in the famous cemetery during the last seven decades. It is about two miles beyond Paddington on the road to Harrow. "At Paddington," wrote Leigh Hunt in 1843, "begins the ground of my affections, continuing thro mead and green lane till it reaches Hampstead." It was thought that Thackeray would be buried in Westminster Abbey, but some obstacles stood in the way, as they also did to his being placed by the side of Goldsmith in the Temple churchyard; and so a grave was selected for him in Kensal Green. An ivy-covered, recumbent granite stone bears the simple record: "William Makepeace Thackeray, born July 18, 1811: died December 24, 1863." Of all his intimate friends and contemporaries included in the throng of some fifteen hundred at the cemetery on that mild and springlike morning, it is believed that Sir Theodore Martin was the last survivor. Carlyle was too ill to be present at the burial of his friend. 1 Willis P. Hazard, a young bookseller under whose auspices Thackeray repeated in Philadelphia his lectures on the Georges, which were not a success; in fact he lost money by the speculation. |