Critics, it appears to me, do not know what an intellectual boa-constrictor he is.

The devotion of Charlotte Brontë to Thackeray, or rather to Thackeray’s genius, is a pleasant episode in literary history.  In 1848 he sent Miss Brontë, as we have seen, a copy of Vanity Fair.  In 1852 he sent her a copy of Esmond, with the more cordial inscription which came of friendship.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS    ‘Haworth, October 28th, 1847.

‘Dear Sir,—Your last letter was very pleasant to me to read, and is very cheering to reflect on.  I feel honoured in being approved by Mr. Thackeray, because I approve Mr. Thackeray.  This may sound presumptuous perhaps, but I mean that I have long recognised in his writings genuine talent, such as I admired, such as I wondered at and delighted in.  No author seems to distinguish so exquisitely as he does dross from ore, the real from the counterfeit.  I believed too he had deep and true feelings under his seeming sternness.  Now I am sure he has.  One good word from such a man is worth pages of praise from ordinary judges.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘December 11th, 1847.

There are moments when I can hardly credit that anything I have done should be found worthy to give even transitory pleasure to such men as Mr. Thackeray, Sir John Herschel, Mr. Fonblanque, Leigh Hunt, and Mr. Lewes—that my humble efforts should have had such a result is a noble reward.

‘I was glad and proud to get the bank bill Mr. Smith sent me yesterday, but I hardly ever felt delight equal to that which cheered me when I received your letter containing an extract from a note by Mr. Thackeray, in which he expressed himself gratified with the perusal of Jane Eyre.  Mr. Thackeray is a keen ruthless satirist.  I had never perused his writings but with blended feelings of admiration and indignation.  Critics, it appears to me, do not know what an intellectual boa-constrictor he is.  They call him “humorous,” “brilliant”—his is a most scalping humour, a most deadly brilliancy: he does not play with his prey, he coils round it and crushes it in his rings.  He seems terribly in earnest in his war against the falsehood and follies of “the world.”  I often wonder what that “world” thinks of him.  I should think the faults of such a man would be distrust of anything good in human nature—galling suspicion of bad motives lurking behind good actions.  Are these his failings?

They are, at any rate, the failings of his written sentiments, for he cannot find in his heart to represent either man or woman as at once good and wise.  Does he not too much confound benevolence with weakness and wisdom with mere craft?

‘But I must not intrude on your time by too long a letter.—Believe me, yours respectfully,

‘C. Bell.

gutenberg.org/files/

Stay at home artist/he-will-not-separate-us:

My Bronte novel is roaring along so I can barely keep up.  I have some scenes I  should have typed into the computer already, I'm behind in my transcribing.

 I write in long hand and then type the scenes in... Pad and pens are everywhere because I don't know when or where some of the novel will beam in . If I don't get it down right off, I can forget a good deal. ....and if I don't transcribe in a timely fashion , I find it hard to read my  own writing ! 

I put a topic heading  on each scene so I will know what it is about when I read it later....I seem to jump around time line wise... but the fact I'm doing  a historical novel makes  the writing a novel  possible I think . Because I don't have to figure out a plot or what happens next...that's already been done by the real people I'm writing about .... The other thing that makes it possible is my librarian  / writer husband will look it over and proof read it when it's finished lol 

There's alot of crying and laughing as I write and there still is a  ton to do when  I weave these scenes together into  their proper  time sequence. Meticulous work

Charlotte's letters will be an essential  aid. A big thank you to Margaret Smith,  the letter's editor. Her foot notes are a joy and allow the reader to understand CB's great letters more

Also a must is Juliet Baker's " The Brontes "  and so many other books, a Bronte novel should have  a bibliography  as much as a regular Bronte biography  !
 
and let me just say writing this is soooo much FUN 

Arthur’s pocket watch

Bronte Parsonage Museum

From the Treasure Trove: Arthur’s pocket watch. This watch is inscribed inside the cover, ‘Presented to the Revd. A. B. Nicholls by the teachers scholars and congregation of St Michael’s Haworth Yorkshire May 25th 1853’. Nicholls left Haworth for a short time after Charlotte rejected his proposal of marriage.

Reputation and legacy Thackeray (Part IV)

Thackaray

During the Victorian era, Thackeray was ranked second only to Charles Dickens, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair. In that novel he was able to satirise whole swaths of humanity while retaining a light touch. It also features his most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp. As a result, unlike Thackeray's other novels, it remains popular with the general reading public; it is a standard fixture in university courses and has been repeatedly adapted for movies and television.

 

In Thackeray's own day, some commentators, such as Anthony Trollope, ranked his History of Henry Esmond  (wiki/The_History_of_Henry_Esmond) as his greatest work, perhaps because it expressed Victorian values of duty and earnestness, as did some of his other later novels. It is perhaps for this reason that they have not survived as well as Vanity Fair, which satirises those values.
Thackeray saw himself as writing in the realistic tradition and distinguished himself from the exaggerations and sentimentality of Dickens. Some later commentators

have accepted this self-evaluation and seen him as a realist, but others note his inclination to use eighteenth-century narrative techniques, such as digressions and talking to the reader, and argue that through them he frequently disrupts the illusion of reality. The school of Henry James, with its emphasis on maintaining that illusion, marked a break with Thackeray's techniques.

Thackeray's former home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent is now a fine dining restaurant named after the author. thackerays-restaurant
2 Palace Green, a house built for Thackeray in the 1860s, is currently the permanent residence of the Israeli Embassy to the United Kingdom.^[11] A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque was unveiled in 1887 to commemorate Thackeray at Palace Green.^[12]