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S this year marks the centenary of the birth of William Makepeace Thackeray (he was born at Calcutta, July 18, 1811, his father being in the civil service of the East India Company), special interest attaches to memorabilia of the distinguished novelist. The undying legion of his admirers has eagerly sought and treasured whatever it could discover of Thackeray's personality, and most of this has been published; but it was the writer's good fortune to find in the extensive collection of Major Lambert of Philadelphia, two illustrated letters and two sketches from his pen that I think have never been made public. They portray him, whom Carlyle acidly characterized as "a half-monstrous Cornish giant," in his gentlest, most considerate, and merriest moods.

After the appearance of "The Yellowplush Papers" (first published in Philadelphia in 1838, and the earliest book of Thackeray's to appear on either side of the Atlantic), "From Cornhill to Grand Cairo," and some minor volumes, Thackeray gave to the world, in January, 1847, the first monthly part of "Vanity Fair," and before that work was completed he had won an unquestioned position as a

novelist of distinction, in fact, completing with Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens the triumvirate of leading British novelists of the nineteenth century.

The letter which follows (given in part in facsimile on page 335) was written to a brother of Bulwer the novelist, well known to the citizens of this country as the negotiator, in 1850, with Senator John M. Clayton of Delaware, Secretary of State, of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which guaranteed the neutrality and encouragement of lines of interoceanic travel across the Isthmus of Panama. He was appointed British minister to the United States in April, 1849, remaining in Washington three years. During that time his secretary was his nephew, Lord Lytton, afterward Viceroy of India, and known in literature as "Owen Meredith."

"Kensington, Friday 1848 "DEAR SIR HENRY BULWER:

"I am very sorry indeed that I am engaged on Sunday; and wanted to make a bold proposal to you last night relative to a dinner which comes off here to-day and of which Dorsay has been good enough to say he will partake, but just as I was com

1 This publication is made with permission of Lady Ritchie and of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., the London publishers of Thackeray's Works.

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"I intend to send a copy of 'Vanity Fair' to a gentleman whom I have been admiring and making fun of all my life.1

"Faithfully dear Sir Henry Bulwer, "W. M. Thackeray."

impending journey to America. The letter is in part as follows:

"My time is drawing near for the ingens sequor: I have taken places for self and Crowe Jr. by the Canada which departs on the 30th of this month, a SaturThackeray came to the United States day, and all you who pray for travellers

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for the first time in 1852 to deliver a series of lectures, "The English Humourists." In a letter, dated October 6 of that year, he wrote to his much attached friend, Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, the author of "Rab and His Friends" of the 1 The gentleman here referred to was Sir Henry's brother, Lord Lytton, whom earlier in life Thackeray

by land and sea (if you do pray in your Scotch church) are entreated to offer up supplications for me. I don't like going at all, have dismal presentiments sometimes, but the right thing is to go; and the pleasant one will be to come back again

immortalized as SAWEDWARDGEORGEARLITNBULWIG!

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United States. After a rough voyage, the steamer reached Boston on Friday, November 10, and six days later Thackeray arrived at the Clarendon Hotel, on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Eighteenth Street, New York, replaced in 1910 by a lofty office building. An eager audience of about twelve hundred filled every seat in Dr. Bellows's church on Broadway, below Prince Street, when Thackeray gave his first lecture on the English humorists, his subject being Swift.

Five years later Thackeray met his old friend James E. Freeman, an American artist whom he had known in Rome, and said to him:

"Since I saw you last I have been lecturing in your vast and wonderful country, and my visits were well repaid. I was delighted with both nature and man in America, and I gained the first money that I have ever been able to put aside for the future. But I very much fear I shall not be able to repeat my visits with equal success, inasmuch as in one of my lectures I spoke of your immortal Washington

of Arthur Hallam, who inspired Tennyson's "In Memoriam." For many years Thackeray was Mrs. Brookfield's constant correspondent when absent from London. She died very suddenly of heart failure in 1901, and to the last was fond of speaking of "dear Thackeray," who sent her many letters written in the United States. Her only daughter married the elder bro

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Owned by the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia THACKERAY READING ONE OF HIS LECTURES, "THE FOUR GEORGES." SKETCHED BY HIMSELF

as Mr. Washington. Do you believe your countrymen will ever forgive me?"

Among women, Mrs. Jane Octavia Brookfield was Thackeray's dearest friend. She was the wife of the Rev. William Henry Brookfield, a Cambridge classmate and lifelong friend, and is believed to have suggested the character of Lady Castlewood in "Henry Esmond," who has been described as "perhaps the finest picture of splendid, lustrous physical beauty ever given to the world." Mrs. Brookfield, a portrait of whom accompanies this article, was a famous beauty and a cousin

ther of Sir Richmond Thackeray Ritchie, husband of Lady Ritchie. In his first letter from the Clarendon to Mrs. Brookfield, the delighted novelist, with slight exaggeration, stated that he was receiving for his lectures "almost a pound a minute!"

From Buffalo, on December 29, 1852, Thackeray wrote to his mother, Mrs. Carmichael Smyth:

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"If my health holds out I must go on money-grubbing for some months to come. They have paid me nearly 1600£ in 2 months of wh. I have spent 200 in travellingit is awfully dear work-next month will be another profitable month-afterwards in the South not so much profit but more pleasure for February & March-afterwards profit again & afterwards-Oh ye Gods, won't I be glad to come back leaving 500£ a year behind me [invested] in this country! Then grim death will not look so grim. Then the girls will have something to live upon or to bestow upon the objects of their young affectionsthen, when the house is paid for, we may live and take things easily-then, when I have written 2 more novels, for wh. I shall get 5000£ apiece-why then, at 50, I shall be as I was at 21. You will be only a young person of 69 then, and will

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