A large portion of the public, and especially that smaller section of the community, the readers of books, will not easily forget the shock, as universal as it was unexpected, which was produced at Christmas, 1863, by the almost incredible intelligence of the death of William Makepeace Thackeray. The mournful news was repeated at many a Christmas table, that he, who had led the simple Colonel Newcome to his solemn and touching end, would write no more. The circumstance was so startling from the suddenness of the great loss which society at large had sustained, that it was some time before people could realise the dismal truth of the report.
It will be easily understood, without elaborating on so saddening a theme, with how much keener a blow this heavy bereavement must have struck the surviving relatives of the great novelist. It does not come within our province to speak of the paralysing effect of such emotion; it is sufficient to recall that Thackeray's death, with its viii overwhelming sorrow, left, in the hour of their trial, his two young daughters deprived of the fatherly active mind which had previously shielded from them the graver responsibilities of life, with the additional anxiety of being forced to act in their own interests at the very time such exertions were peculiarly distracting.
It may be remembered that the author of 'Vanity Fair' had but recently erected, from his own designs, the costly and handsome mansion in which he anticipated passing the mellower years of his life; a dwelling in every respect suited to the high standing of its owner, and, as has been said by a brother writer, 'worthy of one who really represented literature in the great world, and who, planting himself on his books, yet sustained the character of his profession with all the dignity of a gentleman.'...
