Transcribed from the 1885 Cupples, Upham and Co. edition byDavid Price,
THACKERAY’S LONDON.
A DESCRIPTION OF HIS HAUNTSAND
THE SCENES OF HIS NOVELS.
BY
WILLIAM H. RIDEING.
LONDON
J. W. JARVIS & SON,
28, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND,W.C.
BOSTON,U.S.
CUPPLES, UPHAM AND CO.
1885.
p. iiCopyright, 1885. Washington, D. C.
By WilliamHenry Rideing.
LONDON:
S. AND J.BRAWN, PRINTERS, 13, GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INNFIELDS
p. iiiTheportrait is engraved from the large etching by G. B. Smith in “ENGLISHETCHINGS,” by kind permission of the proprietor.
We also have to acknowledge, with thanks, permission fromMessrs. Smith, Elder & Co., to introduce the variousexcerpts from Thackeray’s Works found in the followingpages.
THE PUBLISHERS.
p. 1I.
Thackeray does not give the same opportunities for theidentification of his scenes as Dickens. The elaborationwith which the latter localizes his characters, and thedescriptive minutiæ with which he makes their haunts noless memorable than themselves, are not to be found in the worksof the author of Vanity Fair. No faculty wasstronger in Dickens, or of more service to him, than his power ofword-painting. He reproduces the objects p. 2by which thepersons he describes are surrounded with a fidelity which wouldbe tedious, if it were not relieved by the humor which humanizesbricks, and imparts a grotesque sort of sensibility to articlesof furniture; and it is not easy to think of any of his leadingcharacters without being reminded of the neighborhoods in whichthey played their parts.
Thackeray, on the contrary, is not topographical. Thebriefest mention of a street suffices with him, and it is thecharacter, not the locality, which has permanence in thereader’s mind. Every feature of Becky Sharp isremembered with a vividness which disassociates her with fiction;but the situation of the little house in which the unfortunateRawdon finally discovers her duplicity, in the famous scene withthe Marquis of Steyne, escapes the memory. When the book isno longer fresh to him, p. 3the reader may recollect that afterher marriage she went to live in Mayfair, and may p