Mr. Thackeray, Mr. Yates and the Garrick Club: The Correspondence and Facts

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private circulation, 1859 - 15 pages
 

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Page 1 - ... is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched — but his appearance is invariably that of the cool, suave, well-bred gentleman, who, whatever may be rankling within, suffers no surface display of his emotion. "HIS SUCCESS, " Commencing with ' Vanity Fair,' culminated with his 'Lectures on the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century,' which were attended by all the court and fashion of London.
Page 3 - ; and I don't remember that out of that Club I have ever exchanged six words with you. Allow me to inform you that the talk which you have heard there is not intended for newspaper remark; and to beg — as I have a right to do — that you will refrain from printing comments upon my private conversations; that you will forego discussions, however blundering, upon my private affairs; and that you will henceforth please to consider any question of my personal truth and sincerity as quite out of the...
Page 12 - Can any conference be held between me, as representing Mr. Yates, and an appointed friend of yours, as representing you, with the hope and purpose of some quiet accommodation of this deplorable matter, which will satisfy the feelings of all concerned ? It is right that, in putting this to you, I should tell you that Mr.
Page 2 - Lectures on the Humourists' . . . which were attended by all the court and fashion of London. The prices were extravagant, the lecturer's adulation of birth and position was extravagant, the success was extravagant. No one succeeds better than Mr. Thackeray in cutting his coat according to his cloth. Here he flattered the aristocracy ; but when he crossed the Atlantic George \Vashington became the idol of his worship, the ' Four Georges ' the objects of his bitterest attacks.
Page 12 - I have written to Mr. Dickens to say, that since the commencement of this business, I have placed myself entirely in the hands of the committee of the Garrick, and am still as ever prepared to abide by any decision at which they may arrive on the subject. I conceive I cannot, if I would, make the dispute once more personal, or remove it out of the court to which I submitted it for arbitration. " If you can devise any peaceful means for ending it, no one will be better pleased than " Your obliged...
Page 11 - My dear Thackeray, — Without a word of prelude, I wish this note to revert to a subject on which I said six words to you at the Athenaeum when I last saw you. " Coming home from my country work, I find Mr. Edwin James's opinion taken on this painful question of the Garrick and Mr. Edmund Yates. I find it strong on the illegality of the Garrick proceeding. Not to complicate this note, or give it a formal appearance, I forbear...
Page 6 - That the practice of publishing such articles, being reflections by one member of the Club against any other, will be fatal to the comfort of the Club, and is intolerable in a society of gentlemen.
Page 12 - You say that Mr. Edwin James is strongly of opinion that the conduct of the club is illegal. On this point I can give no sort of judgment : nor can I conceive that the club will be frightened, by the opinion of any lawyer, out of their own sense of the justice and honor which ought to obtain among gentlemen...
Page 2 - These last-named lectures have been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they are most excellent. Our own opinion is, that his success is on the wane ; his writings never were understood or appreciated even by the middle classes ; the aristocracy have been alienated by his American onslaught on their body, and the educated and refined are not sufficiently numerous to constitute an audience ; moreover, there is a want of heart in all he writes, which is not to be balanced by the...

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