A DESCRIPTION OF THACKERAY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—My father, Matthew James Higgins, a well-known contributor to the Times in mid-Victorian days, under the nom de plume of Jacob Omnitun, was one of Thackeray's greatest friends, and to him he dedicated The Adventures of Philip. In a Memoir of Matthew James Higgins, published by Sir William Stirling Maxwell in 1875, he tells the following story :--
" With Thackeray, likewise a tall man, he (my father) went to see a show giant. At the door, Thackeray pointed to his companion and whispered to the door-keeper, ` We are in the profession,' and so obtained free admission. ` But,' as Thackeray used to end the story, ` we were not mean and paid our shillings as we came out.' "
Now, my father was 6 ft. 8 ins., and my vague recollection of Thackeray, whom I often saw as a very small boy, is that he must have been somewhere about 6 ft. 4 ins.
The late Lady Ritchie (Annie Thackeray) in the Blackstick Papers No. 10, published in the Cornhill Magazine in January, 1905, wrote as follows :—
" Carlyle once called my father a Cornish giant and Mr. Higgins he dubbed a E:upeptic giant."
How Trollope came to refer to the former as a "little man '2
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