FullReads

When Esmond first made its appearance in October 1852, it was not without distinguished and even formidable competitors. Bleak House had reached its eighth number; and Bulwer was running My Novel in Blackwood. In Fraser, Kingsley was bringing out Hypatia; and Whyte Melville was preluding with Digby Grand. Charlotte Bronte must have been getting ready Villette for the press; and Tennyson–undeterred by the fact that his hero had already been “dirged” by the indefatigable Tupper–was busy with his Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.[5] The critics of the time were possibly embarrassed with this wealth of talent, for they were not, at the outset, immoderately enthusiastic over the new arrival. The Athenaeum was by no means laudatory. Esmond “harped upon the same string”; “wanted vital heat”; “touched no fresh fount of thought”; “introduced no novel forms of life”; and so forth. But the Spectator, in a charming greeting from George Brimley (since included in his Essays ), placed the book, as a work of art, even above Vanity Fair and Pendennis; the “serious and orthodox” Examiner, then under John Forster, was politely judicial; the Daily News friendly; and the Morning Advertiser enraptured. The book, this last declared, was the “beau-ideal of historical romance.” On December 4 a second edition was announced. Then, on the 22nd, came the Times. Whether the Times remembered and resented a certain delightfully contemptuous “Essay on Thunder and Small Beer,” with which Thackeray retorted to its notice of The Kickkburys on the Rhine (a thing hard to believe!) or whether it did not,–its report of Esmond was distinctly hostile. In three columns, it commended little but the character of Marlborough, and the writer’s “incomparably easy and unforced style.” Thackeray thought that it had “absolutely stopped” the sale. But this seems inconsistent with the fact that the publisher sent him a supplementary cheque for L250 on account of Esmond’s success.

[Notes:

3: One is reminded of the accounts of Scott’s “copy.” “Page after page the writing runs on exactly as you read it in print”–says Mr. Mowbray Morris. “I was looking not long ago at the manuscript of Kenilworth in the British Museum, and examined the end with particular care, thinking that the wonderful scene of Amy Robsart’s death must surely have cost him some labour. They were the cleanest pages in the volume: I do not think there was a sentence altered or added in the whole chapter” (Lecture at Eton, Macmillan’s Magazine (1889), lx. pp. 158-9).

4: “The sentences”–Mr. Crowe told a member of the Athenaeum, when speaking of his task–“came out glibly as he [Thackeray] paced the room.” This is the more singular when contrasted with the slow elaboration of the Balzac and Flaubert school. No doubt Thackeray must often have arranged in his mind precisely much that he meant to say. Such seems indeed to have been his habit. The late Mr. Lockcer-Lampson informed the writer of this paper that once, when he met the author of Esmond in the Green Park, Thackeray gently begged to be allowed to walk alone, as he had some verses In his head which he was finishing. They were those which afterwards appeared in the Cornhill for January 1867, under the title of Mrs. Katherine’s Lantern.

5: The Duke died 14th Sept. 1852.]

Another reason which may have tended to slacken–not to stop–the sale, is also suggested by the author himself. This was the growing popularity of My Novel and Villette. And Miss Bronte’s book calls to mind the fact that she was among the earliest readers of Esmond, the first two volumes of which were sent to her in manuscript by George Smith, She read it, she tells him, with “as much ire and sorrow as gratitude and admiration,” marvelling at its mastery of reconstruction,–hating its satire,–its injustice to women. How could Lady Castlewood peep through a keyhole, listen at a door, and be jealous of a boy and a milkmaid! There was too much political and religious intrigue–she thought. Nevertheless she said (this was in February 1852, speaking of vol. i.) the author might “yet make it the best he had ever written.” In March she had seen the second volume. The character of Marlborough (here she anticipated the Times ) was a “masterly piece of writing.” But there was “too little story.” The final volume, by her own request, she received in print. It possessed, in her opinion, the “most sparkle, impetus, and interest.” “I hold,” she wrote to Mr. Smith, “that a work of fiction ought to be a work of creation: that the real should be sparingly introduced in pages dedicated to the ideal ” In a later letter she gives high praise to the complex conception of Beatrix, traversing incidentally the absurd accusation of one of the papers that she resembled. Blanche Amory [the Athenaeum and Examiner, it may be noted, regarded her as “another Becky”]. “To me,” Miss Bronte exclaims, “they are about as identical as a weasel and a royal tigress of Bengal; both the latter are quadrupeds, both the former women.” These frank comments of a fervent but thoroughly honest admirer, are of genuine interest. When the book was published, Thackeray himself sent her a copy with his “grateful regards,” and it must have been of this that she wrote to Mr. Smith on November 3,–“Colonel Henry Esmond is just arrived. He looks very antique and distinguished in his Queen Anne’s garb; the periwig, sword, lace, and ruffles are very well represented by the old Spectator type.”[6]