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Chapter 2 ("The Literary Tradesman") Part 6, of the author's Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray, which University Press of Virginia published in 1992. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
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[Decorated initial by W. M. Thackeray for Vanity Fair]
ith Barry Lyndon in progress, "The History of the Next French Revolution" completed, and a multitude of short magazine articles keeping him from trouble with the bankers, Thackeray was still far from any peak in his career. To his mother he wrote, "It seems to me there is no time for anything here - The day occupied with nothings that must be done - and a fresh labor for almost every day - This is not very conducive to fame, nor to money somehow though it ought to be, and there's no reason why with regular labor I shouldn't make 1200 - BUT somehow it doesn't go beyond 65 or 70 a month - and in that occasional failures" (Letters 2: 170). Ten days later he still felt that "there's no use in writing about my professional business wh. is very incessant though paltry - I don't do above 20£ a month for the Chronicle instead of 40 - but it is my own fault - the fact is I can't write the politics and the literary part is badly paid" (Letters 2: 172).
Consequently, it should strike one with no surprise that Thackeray continued to be willing to try anything that came along. Between interviews and visits to locate a place in England to which he could bring and settle his wife, he agreed to write a biography of Talleyrand. Perhaps [59/60] having forgotten the lesson of the contract for The Irish Sketch-Book in 1840, Thackeray wrote Chapman and Hall on 16 July 1844: "I will engage to write the volume 'the life of Talleyrand, and to have the MS. in your hands by the 1 December - health permitting. and will sign an agreement to that effect if you will have the goodness to prepare one" (Letters 2: 174). The contract, if there was one, is lost, but two weeks later he was rushing off to London from Liège where he had been spending time with his family to find books he needed in his Talleyrand research (Letters 2: 175)
Then on 20 August he had an offer he couldn't refuse - free passage to the Middle East, "I thought the chance so great that Ive accepted," he explained to his mother; "I'm to write a book for 200£ for C&H. [Chapman and Hall] on the East first, or that Cockney part wh. I shall see - then to do Talleyrand" (Letters 2: 176-77). The next day he boarded ship in Southampton, devoting himself to continuing Barry Lyndon for Fraser's, sending periodic travel accounts to Punch from "Our Fat Contributor," and writing the Cockney's Eastern book for Chapman and Hall.
Over two months later, his tour ended at Matta on 28 October, but his return to England was delayed by quarantine and a sojourn in Rome where a mix-up at "the dd dd-dd-ddd-ddd post office" kept him from his mail and his money for, he claimed, thirty-five days (Letters 2: 185-86). By 10 January 1845 he wrote Chapman and Hall to say the book "is all but done," and he promised to "go tooth and nail at Talleyrand directly I reach England" (Letters 2: 185). However, by the end of March, "Talleyrand is put off sine die" - never to be heard of again - and the "Eastern book just going into hand" (Letters 2: 190)- At the same time he hinted at a project, possibly Vanity Fair, "wh. is projected and of prodigious importance, This is a scheme by wh I expect to make a great deal of money it is to be called - but never mind what until it is ready" (Letters 2: 190). A month later he wrote George William Nickisson, at Fraser's, "between ourselves I believe I am in a career of most wonderful money getting" (Letters 2: 191). It is generally supposed that "the commencement of a novel" which Thackeray had earlier sent to Henry Colburn at the New Monthly Magazine and then retrieved from William Harrison Ainsworth who replaced Colburn as editor was an early draft of Vanity Fair. But it would be eight more months before the beginning of that novel was first set in type and eight more after that before it began publication.
In the meantime, A Legend of the Rhine, written as "The Childe of Godesburg" in early 1844, finally saw the light in George Cruikshank's Table Book (June - December 1845). Mrs. Perkins's Ball, begun at least as early as November 1844, projected for Christmas 1845 and nearly [60/61] finished, was eventually delayed till December 1846 (though its imprint says 1847). And in July 1845 the Eastern book still needed work ("I want to fill two blanks in my chapter" [Letters 2: 199]). The delays may account in part for Thackeray's request to Bradbury and Evans on 9 July: "May I ask you for 100? - my funds are getting very low, and I should be very glad of a supply" (Bodleian). It is probable that Bradbury and Evans owed him some of that already and soon would owe the rest, judging from the number of Thackeray's contributions to Punch in that year: eighty-four of which eleven appeared in July. That compares with fifty-four contributions in 1844 and seventy-two in 1846 [cf. Spielman]. However, on the very same day he sent Chapman and Hall £55 they had lent him previously, at the same time trying to sort out the terms of agreement for publishing what he still referred to as "the Eastern Book": "I have been thinking over the bargain regarding the Eastern Book, and think you are rather hard upon me. The trip was a very expensive one. I was offered my own terms elsewhere and I assure you undertook the book for you with the full conviction that it would be paid at the price of the other volume on wh. I am engaged for you - viz two hundred guineas. I shall rely on your justice confidently however" (Letters 2: 201). It is understandable that there was no firm agreement to turn to, since whatever passed between author and publisher on 19 August 1844, when Thackeray decided to go to Egypt, must have taken place hastily.
It is worth digressing to follow the fortunes of Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo and the continued negotiations between Thackeray and Chapman and Hall; for in the next surviving reference to it, Thackeray equated the original agreement for the book with the agreement for The Irish Sketch-Book: "I ... am glad to hear that at last I am to have the fortune of a second edition. Our bargain for the first edition was made upon the notion that it was a half guinea book on the same terms as the Irish book - I certainly ought to have my share of the 1400 odd shillings wh. the book has brought in and suggest accordingly that division." But a look back through surviving letters shows that Thackeray skipped over the intervening negotiations for the biography of Talleyrand and that that was the book agreed upon with reference to the Irish book. Thackeray, in the rush of embarking for the Orient, had understood that Chapman and Hall would take the Eastern book on the same terms as Talleyrand. Now, in the latter half of 1846, operating on that understanding, he couched his [61/62] demand for fair treatment in the self-deprecatory language so characteristic of his relations with publishers. "But I was always a bad hand at accounts," he continued, "and put myself honestly into your hands as men of business to deal fairly with me." He did not stop there: "We will ask Forster tomorrow whether or no I am right in my claim to the 1400 sixpences" (Letters 2: 258-59). The Talleyrand book was not finished, and there is no record of Thackeray's income from the Eastern book.
In August 1845, because of remonstrances by his mother, he "cancelled" the chapter on Jerusalem, which he found very difficult to replace, partly for lack of time, partly for trying to tread lightly between a heterodoxy that might offend the public and a hypocrisy that would offend himself. Work on it dragged through the autumn and into December - mostly neglected while he wrote for Punch (Jeames's Diary began appearing in November), but on 22 December he sent in the dedication and preface, and Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo finally appeared in February 1846.
Another small episode, beginning a new stage in Thackeray's relations with his publishers, occurred at this time. Thomas Fraser, foreign correspondent in Paris for the Morning Chronicle, wrote asking him to act as go-between for another author and the firm of Chapman and Hall. From this time on, such letters became frequent. In those days before literary agents, well-known authors were constantly being asked by unknown authors to act as agents. In the same letter in which Thackeray fulfilled this task to Hall, he submitted an article on behalf of Mrs. Colmache, which he seems finally to have succeeded in placing with Ainsworth's New Monthly Magazine (Letters 2: 219, 230, 232). Like other informal agents he was frequently unsuccessful; he explained to one friend that not only could he not help with the Morning Chronicle but was himself not helped there by a letter of reference from Arthur Buller (Letters 2: 252). Over the years Thackeray did what he could as literary agent, though he sometimes refused for lack of time or for lack of belief in the marketability of the writings sent to him. He expressed himself perhaps most frankly to his mother, who sometime in 1847 sent him one of her own compositions to place:
I will send your wonderful story to Chapman & to Smith & Elder who will send it back again. It may be from an angels pen and I doubt if you will get a publisher to bring it out except at the author's charges. As for getting money by it it is a vain hope - and to suppose it will succeed because it will do people good - is as green almost as my horse-dealings. [62/63]
The publishers don't care a straw for a friend of mine, but for what will put money in their pockets - and consider, will your tale cover an outlay of 60 or 70£ and give them a return for their risk and trouble? say 100£ of a half crown book sold at 1/6d to the trade, costing 6d let us say to produce. they would require to sell 2000 to pay £100 - & how many books do you think sell 2000? not one in as many 100.
[Letters 2: 330]
American interest in Thackeray's work continued to grow. In addition to its London appearance in two genuine editions in 1846, the Eastern book was pirated by Wiley and Putman in Philadelphia. The same year saw another of his books issued in America with no economic benefit to the author: Jeames's Diary was lifted from Punch by William Taylor and Company of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. At home Mrs. Perkins's Ball, dated 1847, actually appeared in time for the 1846 Christmas trade, published by Chapman and Hall. Unlike the other books, however, Mrs. Perkins's was "a great success - the greatest I have had." On 23 December he reported that it was selling "very fast near 1500 are gone out of 2000 already - and this is a great success for the likes of me" (Letters 2: 258). At the end of May the next year, finding himself pressed for money to pay for railway shares gone sour, he wrote Chapman a plea for cash he hoped was resulting front the second edition of Mrs. Perkins's Ball.
In 1846 Thackeray was quite busy contributing on a regular basis to Punch (seventy-two articles) and to the Morning Chronicle (eighteen articles). He had time for only five Fraser's pieces that year. The most memorable work of the year was "The Snobs of England" in Punch, a series which "hit the public," not only as a social satire but as a popular success.
His projections for 1846 had been "so good, that I calculate on laying by at least 500 next year. I am engaged to write a monthly story at 60£ a number [Vanity Fair] - I have besides 70£ between Punch & the Chronicle: though I don't calculate on the latter beyond the year as I am a very weak & poor politician only good for outside articles and occasional jeux-d'esprit - The 400 may subside possibly into 2 or 300 but you see there will be enough and to spare." [Letter to his stepfather, Letters 2: 225]. His resignation from the Morning Chronicle in February, before anything he may have written for it that year was [63/64] published, was short-lived and may have been, like his striking for wages against Fraser's in 1837, part of a negotiation. From March through October his work appeared in the Morning Chronicle regularly. Or his brief resignation may have been connected with the proposed commencement of Vanity Fair on the first of May. However, work on that great book could not have occupied much of his time since he clearly had not progressed beyond the five chapters that Bradbury and Evans set in type in April. And, in any case, the serial publication of the novel was delayed until January 1847.
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Last modified: 4 April 2001