the publishers of the magazine: "About two months before the opening day, I wrote to him suggesting that he should accept from me a series of four short stories on which I was engaged. I got back a long letter, in which he said nothing about my short stories, but asking whether I could go to work at once and let him have a long novel so that it might begin with the first number. . . . I was astonished that work should be required in such haste, knowing that much preparation had been made, and that the service of almost any English novelist might have been obtained if asked for in due time. It was my readiness that was needed, rather than any other gift! The riddle was read to me after a time. Thackeray had himself intended to begin with one of his own great novels, but had put it off till it was too late. Lovel the Widower was commenced at the same time with my own story, but Lovel the Widower was not substantial enough to appear as the principal joint at the banquet. Though your guests will undoubtedly dine off the little delicacies you provide for them, there must be a heavy saddle of mutton among the viands prepared. I was the saddle of mutton, Thackeray having omitted to get his joint down to the fire in time enough. My fitness lay in my capacity for quick roasting." The only hint we have as to the origin of the tale is that contained in a reminiscence of the novelist by Bayard Taylor. "In 1856 he told me that he had written a play which the managers had ignominiously rejected. I thought I could write for the stage,' said he, but it seems I can't. I have a mind to have the piece privately performed here at home. I'll take the big footman's part.' This plan, however, was given up, and the material of the play was afterward used, I believe, in Lovel the Widower." It is not at all unlikely that Thackeray, driven into a corner when the new magazine was inexorable, looked through his papers and made shift hastily to transform the abandoned play into a short novel. Whether or no the character of Mr. Batchelor with his experiences was now introduced into the story, the author could hardly have penned this record of an unsuccessful editor without drawing some comparison between his present position as the editor of Cornhill and that youthful incursion into literature when he undertook to conduct The National Standard and found it a bog in which he sank his money. The first number of this paper appeared January 5, 1833, when Thackeray was twenty-two years old, and it lasted a year. It bore the ponderous title, The National Standard and Journal of Literature, Science, Music, Theatricals, and the Fine Arts. Thackeray bought into the paper, and began his editorial charge with the eighteenth number, that for May 4, 1833, and contributed reviews, letters, criticism, and verse. His connection with it does not seem to have extended beyond the end of August, and some of his contributions are preserved in the present edition of his writings. BOSTON, April, 1889. As the Manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards, and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing, and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (other quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place, certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and |