The Somerset reporter., 1889-12-05
Thackeray's r Father.

There is picture we used to look at as
children in the nursery at home and
which my own children look at now. a. it
hangs upon the wall. 1t is wster-color
sketch, delicately pencilcd aud tinted,
done in India some three quarters Of a
century ago by Chimney, Il well-known
artist of those days who went TO Calcut-
Ia and depicted the people there with
charming skill.
This picture represents u family group
father, mother, infant child sub
ject which has been popular with paint
ers ever since they first began their craft
Long before Rapbael's wondrous art was
known, this particular composition was
fayorite with artists and spectators. As
think it will ever be, from generation,
while mothers continue to clasp their
little ones in their arms This special
group of Thackerays is almost the only
glimpse we have of my fathers earliest
childhood, but it gives vivid passing
impression of his first home, which lasted
for SO short a time. My long, lean,
young grandfather sits at such ease as
people allowed themselves in those classic
days, propped in II stiff chair, in tight
white ducks and pumps, and with kind,
grave face. He was Mr.. Richmond
Thackeray, of the Bengal Civil Service,
the then revenue collector of the district
called 1.-THE twentyfour Perganas.' My
grandmother, a beautiful yorng woman
OF some two and twenty summers, stands
draped in white, with a certain nynph-
like-aspect, and beside her, perched upon
half dozen big piled books, with his
arms round his mothers neck, Is her lit
tie son, William Makepeace Thackeray, a
ronnd-eyed boy of three years old, dress
ed in white muslin frock. He has curly
dark hair an innocent face almost the same
indeed after lifetime; neither long
yerrs of work and trouble, nor pain, nor
clnil winters of anxiety ever dimmed its
cl' II simplicity. though his spectacles
mJy have sometimes come between his
ey' and those who did not know him
very we'll.
lie used to take his spectacles off when
he looked at this old water-coor. at is
pretty drawing" he used to say; but If
his father. in the picture, could have ris-
en- from the chair he would have been
about nine feet high, according to the
length of the legs there depicted Ny
own father used to tell us he could just
remember our grandfather, very tall,
thin man, rising out of bath. He could
also remember the crocodiles floating on
the Gauges, and that was almost all he
ever described of India, though in his later
writings there are many allusious To East
Indian life. In 1.-THE Tremendous Adj
ventures of Major Gahagan," for instance
there is enough meaning and intention in
the names and Hindustanee to show that
he still retained something of his carly
Impressions.
year after the sketch in question was
painted, the peaceful home in India was
broken up forever. The poor young coll
ector of the twenty four Perganas died o
a fever on board a ship, where he bad
been carried from the shore for fresher
air; this was about 1916, when my father
was five years old.
Richmond Thackeray was himself little
over thirty when he died. His young
widow remained in India with her mother
and married second time. Two years
after her first husbands DEATH. her little
son came back to England with cousin
of the same age, both returning under
the care of an Indian civilian, Mr.. James
McNabb, who had promised to befriend
the children on the journey home, and of
whose Kindness we were often told in our
childhood - 81 NichDIaS