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Dickens Versus Thackeray: The Garrick Club Affair
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
It may seem surprising that there is reason today to reexamine a more or less public episode in the lives of two major English writers of the last century. For nearly seventy years there has existed among biographers of Dickens what might almost be termed an official version of the so-called Garrick Club affair, that provided by Edmund Yates in his Recollections and Experiences of 1884. Because of the absence of an authoritative Thackerayan biographical tradition, there has been no full statement of Thackeray's side of the case. Thackeray's biographers have tended to rely instead on Yates's testimony not merely for much of the detail but even for the structure of their narratives of this incident in his life. Some of them have supplemented Recollections and Experiences with John Cordy Jeaffreson's Book of Recollections (1894) and more recently with the late Walter Dexter's edition of Dickens' Letters (1938) and with my edition of Thackeray's Letters and Private Papers (1945-46), but by relying primarily on Yates instead of thinking the problem through for themselves, they have arrived at much the same story as that provided by Dickens' biographers. Malcolm Elwin's Thackeray: a Personality (1932) constitutes an honorable exception to this generalization, but Elwin did not attempt a comprehensive treatment of the Garrick Club affair, nor did he have access to much significant manuscript material which has come to light since he wrote.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
1 See The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray (Cambridge, Mass., 1945-46), iv, 133-134. Subsequent references are to this edition.
2 Recollections and Experiences (London, 1884), i, 278-279.
3 A passage omitted from Trollope's Autobiography by his son, but rescued by Wilfred Partington in “Dickens, Thackeray and Yates,” Sat. Rev., clv (11 March 1933), 234-235.
4 See Thomas Seccombe's account of Yates in the DNB.
5 Book of Recollections (London, 1894), i, 263, 289.
6 Sir Frank Marzials, who completed Herman Merivale's Life of W. M. Thackeray in 1891 and was thus the first biographer of Thackeray to discuss the Garrick Club affair after Yates's book appeared, accepted Recollections and Experiences as the whole truth. Jeaffreson was consequently able to quote effectively from one of Thackeray's acknowledged champions in his Book of Recollections (i, 269-271), and this combination of testimony proved very influential.
7 Dr. John Brown, the friend of both Dickens and Thackeray, was the first to apply this famous line to their relationship (Alexander Peddie, Recollections of Dr. John Brown, London, 1894, p. 177).
8 Dickens' relations with Ellen Ternan are authoritatively described by Ada Nisbet, Dickens and Ellen Ternan (Berkeley, 1952).
9 Letters, ed. Walter Dexter (London, 1938), iii, 26. Subsequent references are to this edition.
10 A slightly different version of these events is given by William E. Buckler, “Once a Week under Samuel Lucas, 1859-65,” PMLA, lxvii (Dec. 1952), 924.
11 Henry Silver's MS. Diary, owned by the proprietors of Punch, under 19 Jan. 1859.
12 Thackeray, Letters, iv, 86; Annual Register, 1859.
13 Letters, iv, 86-87. Thackeray at this time wrote to another acquaintance to whom he had spoken of Miss Ternan, conveying Dickens' denial of the story linking him with her (Letters, iv, 83-84).
14 Henry Silver records some interesting comments on Dickens' behavior at this time: “M[ark] L[emon] thinks the applause when he acted turned Dickens' head & caused his bad conduct to his wife—Professor Owen foretold a catastrophe ‘Dickens has grown so arrogant‘” (MS. Diary, under 11 April 1866).
15 Thomas Wright, in The Life of Charles Dickens (London, 1935), pp. 282-283, asserts that Yates was one of the few friends of Dickens who knew the details of the Ternan affair.
16 Illustrated Times, vi, 415. There is a similar article in Town Talk on 19 June (i, 76).
17 See, e.g., Recollections and Experiences, i, 280.
18 “Literary Talk,” i, 64; reproduced in facsimile in Thackeray, Letters, iv, after p. 90.
19 Recollections and Experiences, ii, 13.
20 This change of feeling seems to have occurred by the end of the century. See Justin McCarthy, Portraits of the Sixties (London, 1903), pp. 43-46.
21 Reflections on the Revolution in France (London, 1790), p. 113.
22 Quoted in a MS. letter from the Rev. R. H. D. Barham to Charles P. Johnson, 10 July 1885, owned by Dr. Eric Millar.
23 On 15 June 1858, e.g., Thackeray sent the following note (the original of which is owned by Mr. Robert H. Taylor) to Charles Dickens Jr.: “My dear Charles Dickens. Mrs Procter and Adelaide are coming to dine with me at Greenwich on Sunday (Trafalgar 6:30) and I have asked one or two more. Is your mother in town, and would she care to come and meet old friends, who will be very happy indeed to see her? & you of course. The girls send their very best regards to her, and I am hers and Yours sincerely W M Thackeray.”
24 Thackeray, Letters, iv, 91-92.
25 A fragment of gossip at the Punch table on 29 Oct. 1862 is perhaps pertinent here: “S[hirley] B[rooks] defends Y[ates] Says he was merely acting for Dickens—Who never spoke well of Thackeray or anybody else: wh M[ark] L[emon] confirms” (MS. Silver Diary).
26 Francis Espinasse, Literary Recollections (London, 1893), p. 118.
27 Book of Recollections, i, 313-314.
28 Thackeray, Letters, iv, 95-96.
29 Ibid., iv, 97.
30 See Chap. 35. The best comment on this development is perhaps George Augustus Sala's in Twice Round the Clock (London, 1859), pp. 310-311: “The great Mr. Polyphemus, the novelist, is bidden to the Duke of Sennacherib's, and as he rolls to Sennacherib House in his brougham, meditates satiric onslaughts on ‘Tom Garbage’ and ‘Young Grubstreet’— those Tom Thumb foes of his—in the next number of the ‘Pennsylvanians’.” To “those Tom Thumb foes of his” Sala attaches the note: “‘He made the giants first, and then he killed them!‘—Fielding's Tom Thumb.”
31 Recollections and Experiences, ii, 28.
32 The details of this legal battle, which it would be tedious to trace, are summed up by the exasperated Yates in Recollections and Experiences, ii, 28-30.
33 See Chap. 43.
34 (London, 1859), pp. 52, 56.
35 In a MS. letter of 9 July 1858 owned by Mrs. Richard Fuller.
36 MS. letter in the Pierpont Morgan Library.
37 MS. letter of 12-15 Dec. 1858 in the Pierpont Morgan Library.
38 An inference from an entry in Henry Silver's Diary, 1 Oct. 1862: “P[ercival] L[eigh] suggests Lord Dundreary as the Hon. Cadogan, who got £2400 from Veilland the contractor: but Th[ackera]y says you asked me to spare Dickens, now spare Cad. sings a good song.”
39 Mr. Thackeray, Mr. Yates, and the Garrick Club (London, 1859), p. 13.
40 Recollections and Experiences, ii, 36. A piquant view of the situation at this point is provided in a MS. letter of early December from Thackeray's daughter Anne to Amy Crowe, an intimate friend of the family. This letter is owned by Mrs. Fuller: “About the Garrick; its only ½ as exciting as it used to be. Papa's getting disgusted. Every body's been bullying him about his susceptibility Mr. Dickens finding he wd. have to be put up in the witness box wrote to Papa to say that could not the lamentable affair be arranged That Mr. Yates having rendered him a manly service in a matter of wh. he had cognizance he had &ct. Cant you fancy him & his gusto over Manly service. (It was going off from the smoking room at the G to tell all the stories Papa was telling of Mr. Dickens) I am getting confused & indignant Papa says the story is that Charley met his Father & Miss whatever the actress' name out walking on Hampstead Heath. But I dont believe a word of the scandal— After all the stories told of us we can afford to disbelieve it of other people. Mr. Fladgate always carries all the printed papers about in his pocket so as to have 'em constantly handy—He is quite affected abt it. I am 60 years of age. I shall see it thro this crisis he says & then retire from the Committee.” The words “manly service” perhaps caught Anne Thackeray's attention because they echo the unfortunate phrase about “the manly consideration towards Mrs. Dickens which I owe to my wife” that Dickens had used in his notorious “violated letter” to Arthur Smith of 25 May 1858. See Letters, iii, 22.
41 They are so identified in Thackeray's MS. letter of 12-15 Dec. 1858 to John Blackwood.
42 Under 19 Jan. 1859.
43 MS. Diary, 20 Nov. 1861.
44 Silver MS. Diary.
45 Transcript of a MS. letter of mid-Dec. 1858-16 July 1859 provided by Mrs. Fuller.
46 Glances Back through Seventy Years (London, 1893), ii, 14-15.
47 There are innocuous references to Thackeray on 12 March, 2 April, 16 April, and 14 May. The impartial notice of Mr. Thackeray, Mr. Yates, and the Garrick Club in the issue of 12 March is clearly not by Yates.
48 Recollections and Experiences, ii, 30-31.
49 Quoted in Thackeray, Letters, iv, 131.
50 See Dickens, Letters, iii, 94.
51 Mr. Thackeray, Mr. Yates, and the Garrick Club (London, 1859), pp. 12, 14, 15.