The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1852-05-11
Life of Thackcray,

Everybody knows Thackeray, and noboydy
knows anything about him. We are therefore
clad to help ourselves and our readers to a
little knowledge of him, derived from a Ger
man authority He was born in Calcutta in
the year 1911, and is now consequently Al
years old His father was high official of the
East India Company, which secured him the
eniree of the best society, and large income.
Our author was born gentleman" He went
to school in neutrality-suspicious. all the ty-
ranny Of n brutal master, and the misery Of that
system of tagging, legazed bullying of the
lite boys by the larger, which is so repulsive
to every noble and decent feeling, and which
the Engishmen so stoutly defend, as process
which stakes the starch out of pride" but
which is altogether too unreasonable not to lose
temper about in discussing ThackerTy has re
venged himself upon this inhuman and disgust
ing system in his Christmas story of "Dr. Birch
and his Young Friends" and he has general
fling at boarding schools in the opening of
"Vanity Fair" in which he exhorts the reader
to trust the promise of school prospectus no
more than he does the praises of an epitaph.
He left school for the University at Cambridgc
where he studied with Kinglake, the author of
Eothen-Eliot Warburton, who wrote "The
Crescent and the Cross" and was lost with the
Amazon, and Richard Monckton Mines, we'll
known London lMerateur, poet, and biogra-
pher of Keats, and an ornamental liberal men,
Der of Parliament.
Meanwhile the elder Thackeray died and the fu-
ture historian of Vanity Fair, launched himself
into its midst with an annual income of about
thousand pounds. He lived according to his
whims, drew sharp and clever carcatures,
smoked, lounged, feasted upon books of every
kind, and opened the oyster of the world at
leisure. His mother, woman OF great beauty
and full of talent and tenderness, whose men,
DRY is so fIiaIly embamed in the character of the
mother of Vrthur Pendennis, married again,
about this time, and the young man, always the
object of the proudest maternal love, came into
possession of his paternal Inheritance. lie
Immediately returned from the continent where
he had been staying little time, and took up
his residence in the temple. Nascent Jurists
and budding bnrristers at law, who have CON-
pleted full course at Cambridge rockford,
enjoy the privilege Of paying high prices for
comfortable quarters In the temple, and OF eat
ing splendid dinners in its ancient dining room
Here Thackeray entered himself as a student of
Jurisprudence, and in the character of Warning
ton in "Pendennis" he has deve red the career
of the students, and the varied o Of the tenn
pie, in some of the best passa IS he has ever
written Henry Taylor, the dramatist, author of
Philip Van Artevelde, is among the residents of
the temple, and is mentioned by the German
commentator as the original of a character in
Thackerays Romance. We are at loss to de-
termine which, for if Warrington be 20 intended
he seems to us to lose the point. Warrington
is man of power without career-Taylor a
nun of talent, who has certainly achieved
reputation quite equal to his just claims. How
ever, the temple not only furnished our author
characters, but also the necessity of drawing
them; for while there. and when scarcely more
than % years old, the young man had fooled
away his property and was poor The days of
smoking, loungng, and !oaiing, were evidently
ending and he betook himself to Paris, conceiv-
ing from his facility in sketching that he was