Kept (52 page)

Mr. Egan’s
Life in London
:
Life in London, or The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn Esq. and Corinthian Tom
by Pierce Egan the Elder (1772–1849), first published in monthly numbers in 1820 with illustrations by George and Robert Cruikshank, and an invaluable sourcebook for the opinions, habits and slang of the Regency-era man-about-town.

“snide”:
Counterfeit coin.

A wonderful houseboat that Mr. Dickens had put into one of his novels:
The Peggotys in
David Copperfield
(1851) inhabit a converted boat on Yarmouth beach.

“Titmarsh”:
One of various pseudonyms used by Thackeray in the early stages of his career. Others included “C. J. Yellowplush,” “George Savage Fitzboodle” and “The Fat Contributor.”

XI. ISABEL

“Hannay”:
Presumably James Hannay (1827–1873), man of letters and author of
Brief Memoir: Studies on Thackeray
(1869). Thackeray’s daughter Anny maintained that a similar incident gave her father a model for his drawings of Arthur Pendennis. See Lilian F. Shankman, Abigail Burnham Bloom and John Maynard, eds.,
Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters
(Columbus, OH, 1994), p. 131.

“Mr. Smith that was Papa’s publisher”:
George Smith (1824–1901), head of the firm of Smith, Elder from 1846, founder of the
Cornhill Magazine
(1860) and the
Pall Mall Gazette
(1865), and sponsor of the
Dictionary of National Biography
(63 vols., 1885–1900).

“How much Papa disliked Mr. Jerrold”:
Douglas Jerrold (1803–1857), all-purpose early Victorian literary man, famous for the prickliness of his temperament. Thackeray once referred to him as a “savage little Robespierre.”

“Sir Charles Lyell”:
Professor of Geology at King’s College London from 1832 and author of
Principles of Geology
(1830–1833). The latter’s effect on nineteenth-century intellectual life is comparable with Darwin’s
Origin of Species
.

“his friend Mr. Lewes”:
G[eorge] H[enry] Lewes (1817–1878), literary journalist, biographer (in particular his
Life and Works of Goethe
, 1855) and from 1854 the consort of George Eliot.

“Sir Henry Cole”:
Designer, writer and civil servant, Henry Cole (1808–1882) was director of the South Kensington Museum (1853–1873), which subsequently became the Victoria and Albert Museum.

“over the door hung Daniel O’Connell”:
Daniel O’Connell, “the Liberator” (1775–1847), Irish nationalist leader and successively MP for County Clare, Dublin and Cork. In 1844 he, his son and five of his prominent supporters were briefly imprisoned for conspiracy to raise sedition.

“Mrs. Brookfield”:
Jane Octavia Brookfield (1821–1896), wife of the Reverend W. H. Brookfield, chiefly remembered for her long and almost certainly platonic association with W. M. Thackeray; in later life she was a novelist.

XIV. THE DEAN AND HIS DAUGHTER

Ritualism, Puseyism and the Oxford movement:
An attempt to revive the High Church traditions of the seventeenth century, which took literary form in the series
Tracts for the Times
launched by John Keble, John Henry Newman and R. H. Froude in 1833. Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882), Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford and a contributor to the series, became the movement’s leader in 1841. Distrusted by many Anglicans for its apparent sympathy to Roman Catholicism, the Oxford movement’s unity was called into serious question by Newman’s decision to convert to the Catholic Church in 1845.

XV. DOWNRIVER

“Mr. Smiles”:
Samuel Smiles (1812–1904), secretary of the South-Eastern Railway, 1854–1866, and celebrated for his best-selling
Self-Help
(1859). This series of minibiographies of great men formed the cornerstone of Victorian notions of self-improvement.

XVI. “THE BLACK DOG KNOWS MY NAME”

black dogs everywhere in Norfolk:
For an account of “Black Shuck” and the other demon dogs of East Anglian legend, see Peter Jeffery,
East Anglian Ghosts, Legends and Lore
(Gillingham, 1988), pp. 6–21.

XVII. MR. RICHARD FARRIER

Taglioni:
Maria Taglioni (1804–1884), Italian ballerina who achieved great success with her creation of
La Sylphide
in 1832. Later, as the Comtesse de Voisins, she taught deportment to the children of the Royal Family.

Mr. Cook:
Thomas Cook (1808–1892), who popularised the idea of
conducted holiday excursions and founded the travel agency that bears his name. His railway tour of Europe was inaugurated in 1856.

XVIII. SUB ROSA

“
Maria Monk
”:
A sensational (and best-selling) piece of anti-Catholic propaganda, first published anonymously in 1836. Presented as the authentic confession of a nun abused by lecherous priests in Canada, it was in fact the work of an impostor, assisted in her composition by the English Presbyterian minister the Reverend George Bourne (1780–1845).

XX. ROMAN À CLEF

Bell’s Life
:
An immensely popular Victorian sporting periodical.

“Garryowen”:
A stirring march which began life as a late-eighteenth-century Irish drinking song. Extremely popular in the British army, it became the regimental march of the Eighteenth Foot, the Royal Irish Regiment and was much sung in the Crimea.

XXII. AN AFTERNOON IN ELY

“sent a copy of
Mrs. Caudle
”:
Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures
, a comic serial by Douglas Jerrold (see notes to chapter XI), featuring Job Caudle, a good-natured merchant who is nagged unceasingly by his termagant wife, was first published in volume form in 1845.

Sir William Smith’s
Dictionary
:
A Dictionary of the Bible
(1860–1863) by Sir William Smith (1813–1893).

Mrs. Brookfield’s new novel:
Possibly
Only George
, published in 1866.

XXIII. A NIGHT’S WORK

Cornhill
:
The most successful monthly periodical of the mid-Victorian age, launched by George Smith in January 1860 with Thackeray as its founding editor.

Fraser’s
:
Founded by James Fraser in 1830, with William Maginn as its first editor,
Fraser’s Magazine
was initially known for its riotous High Tory bohemianism. Notable “Fraserians” included Thackeray, Carlyle and James Hogg. In later years, under the editorship of G. W. Nickisson, it became a more conventional chronicle of Victorian life.

“as sober as Father Mathew”:
The Irish priest Theobald Mathew (1790–1856), crusader for total abstinence, who having campaigned successfully in his native land, arrived in London in 1843. Jane Carlyle,
who attended one of his gatherings, described it as “the only religious meeting [she had] ever seen in Cockneyland which had not plenty of scoffers at its heels.”

XXIV. CAPTAIN M
C
TURK MAKES PROGRESS

what ravens fed him:
See note for p. 75.

XXX. SOME DESTINIES

one of Mr. Leighton’s Attic paintings:
Frederick Leighton (1830–1896), celebrated Victorian classical artist, president of the Royal Academy, 1878, raised to the peerage shortly before his death.