We know exceedingly little of the genesis and progress of Esmond. “It did not seem to be a part of our lives as Pendennis was,” says Lady Ritchie, though she wrote part of it to dictation. She “only heard Esmond spoken of very rarely”. Perhaps its state was not the less gracious. The Milton girls found Paradise Lost a very considerable part of their lives—and were not the happier.
But its parallels are respectable. The greatest things have a way of coming “all so still” into the world. We wrangle—that is, those of us who are not content simply not to know—about the composition of Homer, the purpose of the Divina Commedia, the probable plan of the Canterbury Tales, the Ur-Hamlet. Nobody put preliminary advertisements in the papers, you see, about these things: there was a discreditable neglect of the first requirements of the public. So it is with Esmond. There is, I thought, a reference to it in the Brookfield letters; but in several searches I cannot find it. To his mother he speaks of the book as “grand and melancholy”, and to Lady Stanley as of “cut-throat melancholy”. It is said to have been sold for a thousand pounds—the same sum that Master Shallow lent Falstaff on probably inferior security. Those who knew thought well of it—which is not wholly surprising.
It is still, perhaps, in possession of a success rather of esteem than of affection. A company of young men and maidens to whom it was not long ago submitted pronounced it (with one or two exceptions) inferior as a work of humour. The hitting of little Harry in the eye with a potato was, they admitted, humorous, but hardly anything else. As representing another generation and another point of view, the faithful Dr. John Brown did not wholly like it—Esmond’s marriage with Rachel, after his love for Beatrix, being apparently “the fly in the ointment” to him. Even the author could only plead “there’s a deal of pains in it that goes for nothing”, as he says in one of his rare published references to the subject: but he was wrong. Undoubtedly the mere taking of pains will not do; but that is when they are taken in not the right manner, by not the right person, on not the right subject. Here everything was right, and accordingly it “went for” everything. A greater novel than Esmond I do not know; and I do not know many greater books. It may be “melancholy”, and none the worse for that: it is “grand”.
For though there may not be much humour of the potato-throwing sort in Esmond, it will, perhaps, be found that in no book of Thackeray’s, or of any one else’s, is that deeper and higher humour which takes all life for its province—which is the humour of humanity—more absolutely pervading. And it may be found likewise, at least by some, that in no book is there to be found such a constant intertwist of the passion which, in all humanity’s higher representatives, goes with humour hand in hand—a loving yet a mutually critical pair. Of the extraordinarily difficult form of autobiography I do not know such another masterly presentment; nor is it very difficult to recognize the means by which this mastery is attained, though Heaven knows it is not easy to understand the skill with which they are applied. The success is, in fact, the result of that curious “doubleness”—amounting, in fact, here to something like _triplicity_—which distinguishes Thackeray’s attitude and handling. Thus Henry Esmond, who is on the whole, I should say, the most like him of all his characters (though of course “romanced” a little), is himself and “the other fellow”, and also, as it were, human criticism of both. At times we have a tolerably unsophisticated account of his actions, or it may be even his thoughts; at another his thoughts and actions as they present themselves, or might present themselves, to another mind: and yet at other times a reasoned view of them, as it were that of an impartial historian. The mixed form of narrative and mono-drama lends itself to this as nothing else could: and so does the author’s well-known, much discussed, and sometimes heartily abused habit of parabasis or soliloquy to the audience. Of this nothing has yet been directly said, and anything that is said would have to be repeated as to every novel: so that we may as well keep it for the last or a late example, The Virginians or Philip. But its efficacy in this peculiar kind of double or treble handling is almost indisputable, even by those who may dispute its legitimacy as a constantly applied method.
One result, however, it has, as regards the hero-spokesman, which is curious. I believe thoroughly in Henry Esmond—he is to me one of the most real of illustrious Henrys as well of Thackeray’s characters—but his reality is of a rather different kind from that of most of his fellows. It is somewhat more abstract, more typical, more generalized than the reality of English heroes usually is. He is not in the least shadowy or allegoric: but still he is somehow “Esmondity” as well as Esmond—_the_ melancholy rather than a melancholy, clearsighted, aloofminded man. His heart and his head act to each other as their governing powers, passion and humour, have been sketched as acting above. He is a man never likely to be very successful, famous, or fortunate in the world; not what is generally called a happy man; yet enjoying constant glows and glimmers of a cloudy happiness which he would hardly exchange for any other light. The late Professor Masson—himself no posture-monger or man of megrims, but one of genial temper and steady sense—described Thackeray as “a man apart”; and so is the Marquis of Esmond. Yet Thackeray was a very real man; and so is the Marquis too.
No. 36 Onslow Square, Brompton, Where Thackeray Lived From 1853 to 1862.
The element of abstraction disappears, or rather retires into the background, when we pass to Beatrix. She also has the Ewigweibliche in her—as much of it as any, or almost any, of Shakespeare’s women, and therefore more than anybody else’s. But she is very much more than a type—she is Beatrix Esmond in flesh and blood, and damask and diamond, born “for the destruction of mankind” and fortunately for the delight of them, or some of them, as well. Beatrix is beyond eulogy. “Cease! cease to sing her praise!” is really the only motto, though perhaps something more may be said when we come to the terrible pendant which only Thackeray has had the courage and the skill to draw, with truth and without a disgusting result. If she had died when Esmond closes I doubt whether, in the Wood of Fair Ladies, even Cleopatra would have dared to summon her to her side, lest the comparison should not be favourable enough to herself, and the throne have to be shared.
But, as usual with Thackeray, you must not look to the hero and heroine too exclusively, even when there is such a heroine as this. For is there not here another heroine—cause of the dubieties of the Doctor Fidelis as above cited? As to that it may perhaps be pointed out to the extreme sentimentalists that, after all, Harry had been in love with the mother, as well as with the daughter, all along. If they consider this an aggravation, it cannot be helped: but, except from the extreme point of view of Miss Marianne Dashwood in her earlier stage, it ought rather to be considered a palliative. And if they say further that the thing is made worse still by the fact that Harry was himself Rachel’s second love, and that she did not exactly wait to be a widow before she fell in love with him—why, there is, again, nothing for it but to confess that it is very shocking—and excessively human. Indeed, the fact is that Rachel is as human as Beatrix, though in a different way. You may not only love her less, but—in a different sense of contrast from that of the Roman poet—_like_ her a little less. But you cannot, if you have any knowledge of human nature, call her unnatural. And really I do not know that the third lady of the family, Isabel Marchioness of Esmond, though there is less written about her, is not as real and almost as wonderful as the other two. She is not so fairly treated, however, poor thing! for we have her Bernstein period without her Beatrix one.
As for my Lords Castlewood—Thomas, and Francis _père et fils_—their creator has not taken so much trouble with them; but they are never “out”. The least of a piece, I think, is Rachel’s too fortunate or too unfortunate husband. The people who regard Ibsen’s great triumph in the Doll’s House as consisting in the conduct of the husband as to the incriminating documents, ought to admire Thackeray’s management of the temporary loss of Rachel’s beauty. They are certainly both touches of the baser side of human nature ingeniously worked in. But the question is, What, in this wonderful book, is not ingeniously worked in—character or incident, description or speech?
If the champions of “Unity” were wise, they would take Esmond as a battle-horse, for it is certain that, great as are its parts, the whole is greater than almost any one of them—which is certainly not the case with Pendennis. And it is further certain that, of these parts, the personages of the hero and the heroine stand out commandingly, which is certainly not the case with Pendennis, again. The unity, however, is of a peculiar kind: and differs from the ordinary non-classical “Unity of Interest” which Thackeray almost invariably exhibits. It is rather a Unity of Temper, which is also present (as the all-pervading motto Vanitas Vanitatum almost necessitates) in all the books, but here reaches a transcendence not elsewhere attained. The brooding spirit of Ecclesiastes here covers, as it were, with the shadow of one of its wings the joys and sorrows, the failures and successes of a private family and their friends, with the other the fates of England and Europe; the fortunes of Marlborough and of Swift on their way from dictatorship, in each case, to dotage and death; the big wars and the notable literary triumphs as well as the hopeless passions or acquiescent losses. It is thus an instance—and the greatest—of that revival of the historical novel which was taking place, and in which the novel of Scott(1)—simpler, though not so very simple as is sometimes thought—is being dashed with a far heavier dose of the novel-element as opposed to the romance, yet without abandonment of the romance-quality proper. Of these novel-romance scenes, as they may be called, the famous mock-duel at the end is of course the greatest. But that where the Duke of Hamilton has to acknowledge the Marquis of Esmond, and where Beatrix gives the kiss of Beatrix, is almost as great: and there are many others. It is possible that this very transcendence accounts to some extent for the somewhat lukewarm admiration which it has received. The usual devotee of the novel of analysis dislikes the historic, and has taught himself to consider it childish; the common lover of romance (not the better kind) feels himself hampered by the character-study, as Émile de Girardin’s subscribers felt themselves hampered by Gautier’s style. All the happier those who can make the best of both dispensations!
