Реферат: Уильям Теккерей: биография

Реферат: Уильям Теккерей: биография

Birth

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, on July 18, 1811,

into a wealthy English merchant family. His father, Richmond Thackeray, an

officer in the East India Company, died in 1815, and the following year

William was sent to England to live with his aunt at Chiswick. After his

father’s death, William’s mother married an engineering officer named Major

Carmichael Symth. She had been in love with him before she married Richmond

Thackeray. Solace In Patterns William showed his talent for drawing at a very

early age. He would draw caricatures of his relatives and send them to his

mother through letters. Even at school, he used to draw pictures of his

friends and teachers and his friends preserved those pictures all through

their lives. Though his caricatures of his teachers got him into trouble

sometime, he enjoyed his popularity in school due to his art. Otherwise,

William was not much physically active as a boy due to his shortsightedness.

Furthermore, he found solace in drawing, as he said later,' They are a great

relief to my mind.'

Education

William was given the 'education of a gentleman', at private boarding

schools. He was sent to the Charterhouse School, where he was enrolled as a

day-scholar. He led a rather lonely and miserable existence as a child. He

wrote regularly to his mother and stepfather. In one of his letters, he

wrote: "There are 370 in the school; I wish there were 369". This subtle

post-script showed how utterly out of place he felt at the institution. The

caning and other abuses he suffered at school became the basis for

recollection in his essays, such as The Roundabout Papers, as well as

episodes in his novels Vanity Fair and The Newcomes.

In 1820, William’s mother and stepfather Major Carmichael Symth joined him at

Chiswick. The reunion of mother and child was very emotional. He got along

well with Major Symth as well, he also addressed him 'father' later on. They

met many times after that as he used to spend holidays with them. Thackeray

based the character of Colonel Newcome on this respectable, unworldly

gentleman. William later recalled the dry lessons in the classical languages

that he was forced to learn and the debilitating effect it had on what he

felt about classical literature. He developed a life-long dislike for

classical literature. He relied on literary escapades on popular fictions of

the day like Scott’s Heart of Midlothian or Pierce Egan’s Life in London.

William was never an outstanding student but while at school he developed two

habits that were to stay with him lifelong: sketching and reading novels. He

also started working as an amateur theatre artist.

When he graduated from the Charterhouse school, he needed additional tutoring

to prepare for Cambridge. He got this tutoring from Major Symth. He made many

good acquaintances at Cambridge including Edward FitzGerald. Cambridge was

full of distraction for the young man. Rowing was an official sport which the

students enjoyed a lot but drinking and occasional illicit visits to London

was also added to their list of recreation. William started his adventure in

journalism at Cambridge. He started to enjoy writing as much as drawing.

From 1828 to 1830 he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. His tutor then

was William Whewell (a philosopher of natural science), but Thackeray saw

little of the don and spent his time at wine parties. Neither at Charterhouse

nor at Cambridge did he distinguish himself as a scholar. In

1830, Thackeray left Cambridge without a degree. During 1831-33 he studied

law at the Middle Temple, London. He attempted to develop his literary and

artistic talents, first as the editor of a short–lived journal and

subsequently as an art student in Paris. None of these worked out since he

kept oscillating between various occupations that were temporary in nature.

The trouble with Thackeray was that he could never settle for one

thing. One day he would translate Horace; the next day he would draw funny

sketches; the day after that, he would write satirical verses.

After having left the university, he toured the continent, visited museums,

theaters and libraries. He also wrote poems, which penned his profound

observation upon the vanity and pity of life.

Stepping Into World

He moved to Weimer, Germany, then the intellectual capital of Europe. He

learned German and read Goethe. Personal life of Goethe was making waves in

the German society at that time. He had the opportunity to meet the aged poet

once. Though nothing significant occurred at the meeting, as Goethe was

almost a national monument and Thackeray an upcoming journalist. Though he

did not achieve anything great during his nine month stay in Germany, his

sketchbook gained a lot many pages of excellent portraits, landscapes and

caricatures. This stay gained for him a command of the language, a knowledge

of German romantic literature and an increasing skepticism about religious

doctrine. The time he spent at Weimar is reflected in the Pumpernickel

chapters of Vanity Fair.

On his return from Germany, Thackeray lived the life of a young indulgent

man, gambling, drinking in taverns, and enjoying the company of women. He

considered painting as a profession and his artistic gifts can be seen in his

letters and his early writings, which are energetically illustrated. On his

return, he had to pursue his law study, however reluctantly. Pulling on his

study, he took utmost advantage of London life, moving freely between high

society balls and parties, and low class taverns and gambling houses. In

fact, gambling and theatre became his full time occupation during that time.

On coming of age in 1832, Thackeray inherited Ј 20,000 from his father.

However, he soon lost his fortune through gambling, unlucky speculations and

reading investments. Most of it was lost due to the failure of an Indian bank

where he had invested a lot of money.

In 1832, Thackeray met William Maginn. Maginn was an editor and heinfluenced

Thackeray's professional life. Thackeray got the break into the world of

London journalism through him. He also invested part of his patrimony in a

weekly paper, The National Standard, which he took over as editor and

proprietor in 1833. He used to write most of the articles himself. He was

very hopeful of the success of his newspaper, but his wait for about a year

never yielded any result. The paper was unsuccessful and went under quickly,

but it gave Thackeray his first taste of the world of London journalism. It

was an event that Thackeray once again found use for in his novel The

Newcomes. He was seriously in trouble, as he had to earn his living.

Thackeray resolved to study art when he found that he could earn a living by

using his artistic talents. In 1834 he went to Paris for this purpose. Life

in Paris was neither easy. He could barely support himself there with his

limited income form occasional journalism. But Paris brought him a dream

realized - to find someone to love. He had met many a girls and women in his

life and had fallen in and out of their love quite many times by now. Even

his sketchbook was filled with imaginary characters like Mr and Mrs Thack

and their trail of many children.

Marriage

He met Isabella Shawe, a timid, simple and artless girl. He fell outrightly

in love with Isabella. She was just 17 and was totally under control of her

mother. He was immediately ready for marriage, but Mrs Shawe did not permit.

Isabella herself could not make any decision. Similarly, his parents were

also much reluctant for the union. His stepfather wanted him to establish

himself first, for that Thackeray was made the Paris correspondent for a

newspaper The Constitutional and Public Register at Ј400 per year. Backed by

the income and through his steady persistence, the marriage did take place

finally on August 20, 1836. After trying out briefly the bohemian life of an

artist in Paris, and failure of his newspaper, he returned to London in 1837

and started his career as a journalist. He worked for periodicals like

Fraser’s Magazine and The Morning Chronicle, but his most successful

association was with Punch.

Thackeray worked as a freelance journalist for about 10 years, publishing

literary criticism, art criticism, articles, and fiction, either anonymously

or under a number of comic pseudonyms. Often he used absurd pen names such as

George Savage Fitzboodle, Michael Angelo Tit Marsh, Theophile Wagstaff and C

J Yellowplush, Esq. William and Isabella Thackeray’s first child, Anne

Isabella, was born on June 9, 1837. Her birth was followed by the collapse of

The Constitution of which William was the Paris correspondent. Thackeray

began writing as many articles as humanly possible and sent them to any

newspaper that would print them. This was a precarious sort of existence,

which would continue for most of the rest of his life. He was fortunate

enough to get two popular series going on in two different publications.

During this time, Thackeray also produced his first books, Collections of

Essays and Observations published as travel books. This combination of hack

writing and frequent travel took Thackeray away from home and kept him from

his wife’s growing depression.

Troubled Times

Thackeray and Isabella Shawe had a happy life during their first years of

marriage. But as financial demands forced Thackeray into more and more work,

Isabella became isolated and lonely. The happy years of marriage was eclipsed

by the tragic death of their second daughter Jane, born in July 1838. She

died of respiratory illness in March the following year. Harriet Marian,

their third daughter was born in 1840. It was at this time that Isabella fell

victim to mental illness . After a few months she started displaying suicidal

tendencies and as it was difficult to control her, she was placed in a

private institution. Doctors told Thackeray that all she needed was a change

of air. She was taken to her mother in Ireland, where she attempted to drown

herself in the ocean. Thackeray began a series of futile searches for her

cure. He took Isabella to various spas and sanatoriums, at one point himself

undergoing a 'water cure' with her, since she wouldn’t go at it alone. He

continued to hope for some time that she would make a full recovery. He was

forced to send his children to France to his mother. For the next several

years he shuttled back and forth between London and Paris - from the

journalism that supported himself and his debt-laden family, to his parents

and children in Paris, and to his wife in French asylums. Thackeray entrusted

Isabella to the care of a friendly family, and threw himself into the

maelstrom of club-life for which he had but little taste. He said, "My

social activity is but a lifelong effort at forgetting.

Responsibilities

Thackeray’s children returned to England in 1846. He gradually began paying

father.

He started the serial publication of his novel Vanity Fair in 1847. It

brought Thackeray both fame and prosperity. From then on he was an

established author on the English literary scene. Dickens was then at the

height of his fame, and, though the two men appreciated each other’s work,

their admirers were fond of debating their comparative merits.

The Brookfields

During these years of success, Thackeray lived the life of a bachelor in

London. He spent much time with his friends, attending the social functions

of a fashionable society. He became the constant attendant upon Jane

Brookfield, the wife of an old friend from Cambridge.

Thackeray and the Brookfields were involved in an increasingly tense

emotional triangle. His first trip to America in 1852 provided the time and

distance for Thackeray to try and extricate himself from the tangle. Henry

Brookfield’s coldness and desire to dominate his wife, her resistance and the

need for someone to turn to, and Thackeray’s loneliness combined to create a

complicated affair. Brookfield alternately ignored or forbade his wife’s warm

communications with the successful novelist. Jane Brookfield returned

Thackeray’s ardent expressions of friendship and lamented her husband’s

inability to understand her. Thackeray, for his part, professed for Jane a

devotion that was pure and he also remained a

companion of her husband. He nonetheless felt betrayed by Jane’s tendency to

cool down the correspondence when Brookfield complained. Thackeray eventually

caused a dramatic break in the triangle by berating Brookfield for his

neglectful treatment of Jane. After Thackeray heard of Jane’s pregnancy,

during his second trip to America, he decided never to return to her.

Trip To America

Thackeray tried to find consolation through travel and, lecturing in the

United States. He thus followed in Dickens’ footsteps. These lectures were

profitable for Thackeray and also provided influential insight on novelists

like Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne.

Dickens had offended the Americans and did not write a profitable account of

his journey. Thackeray, on the other hand, saw America through friendly eyes.

In one of his letters to his mother, Thackeray wrote that he did not

recognize blacks as equals (though he condemned slavery on moral grounds). He

chose to believe that the whipping of slaves in America was rare and that

families were not normally separated on the auction block. This was because

he was apprehensive about criticism from his hosts that the living conditions

for English workers were worse than those for slaves in America.

Thackeray made enduring friendships during his lecture trips to the United

States. The most significant of these was the one with the Baxter family of

New York. The eldest daughter, Sally Baxter, enchanted the novelist and she

became the model for Ethel Newcome, the protagonist of his novel. She was

vibrant, intelligent, beautiful and young. He visited her again on his second

tour of the States by which time she was married to a South Carolina

gentleman.

Through all this, he was continually ill with recurrent kidney infections

caused by a bout of syphilis in his youth. In spite of his failing health,

Thackeray still managed to have an impressive house built and settled

generous dowries on his daughters. After the second profitable lecturing tour

on The Four Georges (that is, the Hanoverian kings of the 18th and early 19th

centuries), Thackeray stood for parliament elections as an independent

candidate. His sense of humor perhaps prevented him from trying too hard for

appealing his constituents. When Lord Monck, presiding at one of his

rallies, said "May the better man win", Thackeray retorted with a smile, "I

hope not !" He knew that the rival candidate, Edward Cardwell would make a

much better statesman. Thackeray believed that his advocacy of entertainment

on the Sabbath was crucial in his defeat.

Controversy With Charles Dickens

Of the several literary quarrels in which Thackeray got involved during his

life, the ‘Garrick Club affair’ is best remembered. Charles Dickens had

always been one of Thackeray’s earliest and best friends. But a quarrel had

arisen and for several years the two men were not on talking terms. Thackeray

had taken offense at some personal remarks in a column by Edmund Yates and

demanded an apology, eventually taking the affair to the Garrick Club

committee. Dickens was already upset with Thackeray for an indiscreet remark

about his affair with Ellen Ternan and so he championed Yates. Dickens helped

Yates to draft letters both to Thackeray, and in his defense, to the club’s

committee. Despite Dickens’ intervention, Yates eventually lost the vote of

the club’s members, but the quarrel was stretched out through journal

articles and pamphlets. Thackeray told Charles Kingsley, "What pains me most

is that Dickens should have been his advisor; and next that I should have had

to lay a heavy hand on a young man who, I take it, has been cruelly punished

by the issue of the affair, and I believe is hardly aware of the nature of

his own offence, and doesn’t even now understand that a gentleman should

resent the monstrous insult which he volunteered."

This quarrel was resolved only in Thackeray’s last months when one evening

the two met on the stairs of the Athenaeum, a London club. Thackeray

impulsively held out his hand to Dickens. The latter returned the greeting,

and the old quarrel was patched up.

Later Years

It was as if Thackeray had an intuition that he must make haste to hail and

farewell to his old friend. It was only a few nights later – December 23,

1863 – that he went to sleep for the last time. He was found dead on the

morning of Christmas Eve. The master had called the roll; and Thackeray, like

the beloved Colonel Newcome in one of his novels, responded gently, "Adsum –

I am here." Towards the end of his life, Thackeray was proud that through his

writings, he had regained the patrimony lost to bank failures and gambling.

He passed on to his daughters an inheritance sufficient for their support and

also a grand house in Kensington.

He was buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery on December 30. An estimated 2000

mourners came to pay tribute, among them was Charles Dickens. After his

death, a commemorative bust was placed in Westminster Abbey.