SCRAPS OF THACKERAY.*

Mn. SPIELMANN while investigating the history of Punch came upon an editor's day-book of the years 1843 to 1848 in which all items were entered against the author's name, and was thus enabled to fix precisely the contributions which came from Thackeray's pen in the period during which he was contributing on an average a column and a half per week. From the autumn of 1848 onwards Mr. Spielmann is only guided by internal evidence in his attributions of author- ship, so that about a third of his bibliography has no absolute value. It is, nevertheless, of high interest for all lovers of Thackeray and of Punch,—and that is a pretty large

circle. The book is charmingly printed, and adorned with plentiful illustrations,—a few of them Leech's. A record was kept of the Punch weekly dinners, showing to which of the staff was due the suggestion for the week's cartoon. Thackeray's invention was seldom fertile in subjects for the cartoonist in the period for which Mr. Spielmann answers ; Mark Lemon suggested five-and-thirty of the pictures, Thackeray only four. These are reproduced in the book, and of the ideas, three are commonplace enough. But the fourth, "The Mrs. Candle of the House of Lords "—where Brougham's acrimonious features framed in a nightcap look shrewishly from a pillow beside the woolsack, on which Lord Lyndhurst doggedly attemptw to slumber—is surely one of the funniest things that even Leech ever drew ; and the fun was very characteristic, not only of Leech, but of Thackeray. Dignity had a poor chance with Mr. Titmarsh ; there was no one who believed more profoundly that "la gravite est nn mystere du corps, invents pour cacher les defauts de l'esprit "; and when external pomp and circumstance was added to grave preten-

sions, it gave him positive delight to strip off the trappings. It is curious to note just at this moment that there was a time when Punch was excluded from France, because it bad

caricatured the Sovereign. But the Sovereign was not a lady, and the worst that Thackeray did was to portray Louis Philippe as a beggar, hat in hand—or rather in both hands, for it was a hat of portentous capacity—with the legend " Pauvre Malhenreux" across his breast. An article accom- panied the cut, headed " A Case of Real Distress," which, of course, satirised the King's perpetual demands for members of his family.

It is very odd, but Thackeray, in spite of his love for the French language and for the prettiness and gaiety of French character, had to the full an Englishman's dislike and dis- trust of France and the French. " Plus co, change, plus c'est la meme chose." France under Louis Philippe found Englishmen just as intolerable, and was herself jest as intolerable to Englishmen as in the present year of grace. The Prince de Joinville, despatched in the ' Belle Ponle '

• The Hitherto Unidentified Contributions of W. M. Thackeray to " Punch." With a Complete and Authoritative Bibliography from 1843 to 1848. By M. H. Spleimann. With numerous Illustrations and Esplanatory Notes. London: Harper and Brothers. [70.11d.1

to fetch back Napoleon's remains from St. Helena, was entertained with all his staff in the handsomest way that could be compassed. Shortly afterwards the Prince, who had not long before been the Queen's guest in England, published a pamphlet on the state of the French Navy, which breathed the most violent hatred of England, and explained the ease with which English towns might be attacked and looted by a

sudden invasion:—

" Brave Prince," cries Thackeray," bold seaman ! good French- man ! You can't see your neighbour comfortable but you long to cut his throat. Prudent statesman—you are at peace : but you must speculate upon war ; it is the formal condition of the country you •represent ; the refined, the liberal, the honest and unsuspicious. the great and peaceful French nation. You want a steam marine for your country, because with it the most audacious aggressive war is permitted. You don't want brilliant successes ' any more ; your chivalrous spirit suggests more agreeable con- quests. With a steam navy,' say you, 'nothing will prevent us from inflicting upon the enemy's coasts losses and sufferings hitherto unknown to them.'"

A week or two later be returns to the same theme in a capital set of verses entitled " The Dream of Joinville " :— " Stealthily we speed along,

I and my black steamers ; None can see the colours three Painted on her streamers. Not a star in the sky

Black and dull and silent, Stealthily we creep along Towards the wieke I island.

Swiftly down the Thames we go,

All pursuit outstripping, Blowing every village up, Burning all the shipping; Fancy Ramsgate in a blaze, Margate Pier a dropping, Woolwich burnt and red-hot shot Plunging into Wapping."

The opening is really excellent, with its air of dark Adelphian mystery, and the story of the sack is all as good as the.one verse we have quoted ; it ends, of course, with a heroic hand- to-hand encounter, in which Joinville, having overthrown the Prince Albert at the gate of Buckingham Palace, sees—just

before he wakens—the Queen upon her knees, and- " The little Princes kneeling round In their night chemises."

The Prince Consort figures pretty largely in this reprint of chastened raillery ; though his chief offences seem to have been that he spoke English with a German accent, and— quite unknowingly, as it should seem from Mr. Spielmann's comment—hurt Etty's feelings over a matter of some mural decorations for the Octagon Room in the now forgotten "New Summer Temple." Daniel O'Connell was another favourite target, but one for whom the satirist kept a kindly feeling, and there is an open letter from Mr. Punch addressed to him in prison extremely characteristic of Thackeray's whole attitude towards Ireland :—

" DEAR SILVY O'PEtmco,—One of my young chaps had got ready a caricature of you with about three hundredweight of chains on your old legs and shoulders and you in a prison-dress. But when he heard you were really locked up he said he would not for'the money's sake (though I pay him well for it) publish his paltry picture, or do anything just now that would give you pain. Neither shall I crow over you because it has come to this, and because having played at bowls you have at last got the rubbers. If you did not organise a conspiracy and meditate a separation of this fair Empire—if you did not create rage and hatred in the bosoms of your countrymen against us English —if you did not do, in a word, all that the jury found you guilty of doing—I am a Dutchman ! But• if ever a man had an excuse for saying hard things you had it ; if ever a people had a cause to be angry it is yours ; if ever the winning party could afford to be generous, I think we might now; for we have won the rubber, and of what consequence is the stake to us ? Though we may lock you up ; yet it goes against our feelings somehow to think that THE GREATEST MAN IN THE EMPIRE (for after all have you not done more for your nation than any man since Washington ever did ?) should be put in a Penitentiary ever so comfortable in a road ever so circular."

That is precisely the point of view of the sentimental English Liberal which always soothes himself, and never quites soothes those with whom he sympathises because they are punished for attaining or attempting to attain an end which after the trouble is over he professes to approve. It did not hinder Thackeray from attacking with even greater vehemence the Young Ireland party when they split off from

O'Connell's following ; but it induced him after he had done his best against them to contract a warm friendship with one of their leaders, now Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. We have dwelt rather upon the political aspect of these fugitive pieces since that is a part of Thackeray's mind which is not so fully developed in his signed writings; but everywhere there is the familiar wit and whimsical invention for which we love his lighter pieces (for instance, in a skit upon the Mexican War he relates the adventures of the Legion of St. Nicholas on the slopes of Pickapockatickl,—a really delightful perversion); though the Thackeray of the skits and verses and caricatures is a very different person from the author of Vanity Fair. Thackeray in his journalist days wrote what was little better than the wittiest journalism, and there are those who think it hard upon his memory to perpetuate what was designed to be ephemeral; but be never wrote anything that he had cause to blush for, and this charming volume, which contains two hundred and seventy-five pages of Thank eray new to nearly all of us, is a book for which there is fair reason to be grateful. Thackeray's real lovers will prefer to re-read Esmond, The Newconies, or The Roundabout Papers ; but those who do not care enough for literature to be con- tented with the old dishes will turn gladly to these uncon- sidered crumbs and spillage of that noble banquet. It is not everybody in literature that can eat his cake and have it to eat again.