it is impossible to do the two towns together; and from this I go to Richmond and Charlestown, not to New-Orleans, which is too far; and I hope you will make out your visit to Washington, and that we shall make out a meeting more satisfactory than that dinner at New-York, which did not come off. The combination failed which I wanted to bring about. Have you heard Miss Furness of Philadelphia sing? She is the best ballad-singer I ever heard. And will you please remember me to Mrs. Reed and your brother, and Wharton, and Lewis and his pretty young daughter; and believe me ever faithfully yours, dear Reed,

"W. M. THACKERAY."

The "famous autograph" was, if my memory does not mislead me, a letter of Washington, for which he had expressed a wish, and which I gladly gave him; and the plan of coming to America, as will be seen, though at first rejected, seems to have taken root in his mind.

Thackeray left us in the winter of 1853, and in the summer of the year was on the Continent with his daughters. In the last chapter of "The Newcomes," published in 1855, he says: "Two years ago, walking with my children in some pleasant fields near to Berne, in Switzerland, I strayed from them into a little wood; and coming out of it presently told them how the story had been revealed to me somehow, which for three-and-twenty months the reader has been pleased to follow." It was on this Swiss tour that he wrote me the following characteristic letter, filled with kindly recollections of convivial hours in Philadelphia, of headaches which he had contributed to administer, and of friends whose society he cherished. On the back of this note is a pen-and-ink caricature of which he was not conscious when he began to write. It is what he alludes to as "the rubbishing picture which I didn't see." The sketch is very spirited, and, as a friend to whom I have shown it reminds me, evidently is the original of one of the illustrations of his grotesque fairy tale of "The Rose and the Ring," written, so he told a member of my family years afterwards, while he was watching and nursing his children, who were ill during this vacation ramble.

"NEUFCHATEL, SWITZERLAND, July 21, 1853. "MY DEAR REED: Though I am rather slow in paying the tailor, I always pay him and as with tailors, so with men; I

pay my debts to my friends, only at rather a long day. Thank you for writing to me so kindly, you who have so much to do. I have only begun to work ten days since, and now in consequence have a little leisure. Before, since my return from the West, it was flying from London to Paris, and vice versa, dinners right and left, parties every night. If I had been in Philadelphia, I could scarcely have been more feasted. Oh, you unhappy Reed! I see you (after that little supper with McMichael) on Sunday, at your own table, when we had that good Sherry-Madeira, turning aside from the wine-cup with your pale face! That cup has gone down this well so often, [meaning my own private cavity,] that I wonder the cup isn't broken, and the well as well as it is.

"Three weeks of London were more than enough for me, and I feel as if I had had enough of it and pleasure. Then I remained a month with my parents; then I brought my girls on a little pleasuring tour, and it has really been a pleasuring tour. We spent ten days at Baden, when I set intrepidly to work again; and have been five days in Switzerland now; not bent on going up mountains, but on taking things easily. How beautiful it is! How pleasant! How great and affable, too, the landscape is! It's delightful to be in the midst of such scenes—the ideas get generous reflections from them. I don't mean to say my thoughts grow mountainous and enormous like the Alpine chain yonder; but, in fine, it is good to be in the presence of this noble nature. It is keeping good company; keeping away mean thoughts. I see in the papers now and again accounts of fine parties in London. Bon Dieu! is it possible any one ever wanted to go to fine London parties, and are there now. people sweating in Mayfair routs? The European continent swarms with your people. They are not all as polished as Chesterfield. I wish some of them spoke French a little better. I saw five of them at supper at Basle the other night with their knives down their throats. It was awful! My daughter saw it, and I was obliged to say, 'My dear, your greatgreat-grandmother, one of the finest ladies of the old school I ever saw, always applied cold steel to her wittles. It's no crime to eat with a knife,' which is all very well : but I wish five of 'em at a time wouldn't. "Will you please beg McMichael, when

Mrs. Glynn, the English tragic actress, comes to read Shakspeare in your city, to call on her, do the act of kindness to her, and help her with his valuable editorial aid? I wish we were to have another night soon, and that I was going this very evening to set you up with a headache to-morrow morning. By Jove! how kind you all were to me! How I like people, and want to see 'em again! You are more tender-hearted, romantic, sentimental, than we are. I keep on telling this to our fine people here, and have so belabored your Here the paper was turned and revealed the sketch. At the top is written: "Pardon this rubbishing picture; but I didn't see, and can't afford to write page 3 over again."] country with praise in private that I sometimes think I go too far. I keep back some of the truth, but the great point to try and dig into the ears of the great stupid virtue-proud English public is, that there are folks as good as they in America. That's where Mrs. Stowe's book has done harm, by inflaming us with an idea of our own superior virtue in freeing our blacks, whereas you keep yours. Comparisons are always odorous, Mrs. Malaprop says.

"I am about a new story, but don't know as yet if it will be any good. It seems to me I am too old for story-telling; but I want money, and shall get 20,000 dollars for this, of which (D.V.) I'll keep fifteen. I wish this rubbish (the sketch) were away; I might put written rubbish in its stead. Not that I have any thing to say, but that I always remember you and yours, and honest Mac, and Wharton, and Lewis, and kind fellows who have been kind to me, and I hope will be kind to me again.-Good-by, my dear Reed, and believe me ever sincerely yours,

W. M. THACKERAY."

The next year, 1854, was a year of sorrow to me and mine. But for the sympathy which, in that overpowering grief, I had from my friend, I should not allude to it. My only surviving brother, Mr. Henry Reed, in company with his wife's sister, visited Europe, saw, and were kindly treated by Mr. Thackeray; and on their return voyage, on the 24th September, perished in the shipwreck of the Arctic. Thackeray had known my brother in this country, and duly estimated what I may be pardoned for describing as his gentle virtues and refined and scholar-like tastes. He measured, too, the anguish which, even

at this lapse of time-row nearly ten years-freshens when I think of it, and which then bowed a whole family to the earth. It was in reply to my letter announcing that all hope of rescue or escape was over, and that "a vast and wandering grave was theirs," that in November he wrote to me the following. It is an interesting letter, too, in this that it mentions what may not be known on the other side of the Atlantic-that he had had some transient diplomatic visions.

"ONSLOW SQUARE, BROMPTON, November 8. "MY DEAR REED: I received your melancholy letter this morning. It gives me an opportunity of writing about a subject on which, of course, I felt very strongly for you and for your poor brother's family. I have kept back writing, knowing the powerlessness of consolation, and having I don't know what vague hopes that your brother and Miss Bronson might have been spared. That ghastly struggle over, who would pity any man that departs? It is the survivors one commiserates of such a good, pious, tender-hearted man as he seemed whom God Almighty has just called back to Himself. He seemed to me to have all the sweet domestic virtues which make the pang of parting only the more cruel to those who are left behind. But that loss, what a gain to him! A just man summoned by God--for what purpose can he go but to to meet the divine love and goodness? I never think about deploring such; and as you and I send for our children, meaning them only love and kindness, how much more Pater Noster? So we say, and weep the beloved ones whom we lose all the same with the natural selfish sorrow; as you, I daresay, will have a heavy heart when your daughter marries and leaves you. You will lose her, though her new home is ever so happy. I remember quite well my visit to your brother-the pictures in his room, which made me see which way his thoughts lay; his sweet, gentle, melancholy, pious manner. That day I saw him here in Dover Street, I don't know whether I told them, but I felt at the time that to hear their very accents affected me somehow. They were just enough American to be national; and where shall I ever hear voices in the world that have spoken more kindly to me? It was like being in your grave, calm, kind old Philadelphia over again; and behold!

now they are to be heard no more. I' only saw your brother once in London. When he first called I was abroad ill, and went to see him immediately I got your letter, which he brought and kept back, I think. We talked about the tour which he had been making, and about churches in this country-which I knew interested him—and Canterbury especially, where he had been at the opening of a missionary college. He was going to Scotland, I think, and to leave London instantly, for he and Miss B. refused hospitality, etc.; and we talked about the memoir of Hester Reed which I had found, I didn't know how, on my study-table, and about the people whom he had met at Lord Mahon's-and I believe I said I should like to be going with him in the Arctic. And we parted with a great deal of kindness, please God, and friendly talk of a future meeting. May it happen one day! for I feel sure he was a just man. I wanted to get a copy of " Esmond" to send by him, (the first edition, which is the good one;) but I did not know where to light on one, having none myself, and a month since bought a couple of copies at a circulating library for 7s. 6d. apiece.

"I am to-day just out of bed after another, about the dozenth, severe fit of spasms, which I have this year. My book would have been written but for them, and the lectures begun, with which I hope to make a few thousand more dollars for those young ladies. But who knows whether I shall be well enough to deliver them, or what is in store for next year? The secretaryship of our legation at Washington was vacant the other day, and I instantly asked for it; but in the very kindest letter Lord Clarendon showed how the petition was impossible. First, the place was given away; next, it would not be fair to appoint out of the service. But the first was an excellent reason, not a doubt of it. So if ever I come, as I hope and trust to do this time next year, it must be at my own cost, and not the Queen's. Good-by, my dear Reed, and believe that I have the utmost sympathy in your misfortune, and am most sincerely

"With the grateful regards of W. M. THACKERAY.

LONDON, October, 1855."

And is now among the most cherished volumes in our library.

In the winter of 1855, Mr. Thackeray made his second and last visit to this country, and gave us the first fruits of his new lecture experiment, "The Georges." I met him in New-York and heard his "George IV."-to my mind the least agreeable of the course-delivered before a literary society in Brooklyn. He thence came to Philadelphia, and renewed his old intimacies and associations. His friends were glad to see him, and he them. The impression we all had was that two years had oldened him more than they should have done; but there was no change in other respects. "The Georges" were, if possible, a greater success than "The Humorists;" though I confess I had, and have, a lurking preference for the genial communion with Steele and Fielding, (his great favorites,) and Swift and Sterne, (his aversions,) to the dissection of the tainted remains of the Hanoverian Kings. there was in one of these lectures a passage familiar to every listener and every hearer which I reproduce here, not merely from an association presently to be referred to, but because it seems to me in transcribing it that I have the dead again before me, and hear a sweet voice in the very printed words:

But

"What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Disposer of life, death, happiness, victory. O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue. O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together, as we stand by this royal corpse and call a truce to battle? Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest: dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne; buffeted by rude hands; with his children in revolt; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little!'

'Vex not his ghost!-Oh let him pass-He hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer!!

Hush! strife and quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march! Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!"

Was it this, or was it the other passage about the Princess Amelia and the old King praying for returning reason, which Thackeray referred to in the following note, written to me from Baltimore, in answer to one sending an adverse criticism in a small newspaper of Philadelphia ?

"BALTIMORE, January 16, 1856. "MY DEAR REED: Your letter of the 9th, with one from Boston of the 8th, was given to me last night when I came home. In what possible snow-drift have they been lying torpid? One hundred thanks for your goodness in the lecture, and all other matters; and if I can find the face to read those printed lectures over again, I'll remember your good advice. That splendid crowd on the last lecture night I knew would make our critical friend angry. I have not seen the last article, of course, and don't intend to look for it. And as I was reading the George III. lecture here on Monday night, could not help asking myself, 'What can the man mean by saying that I am uncharitable, unkindly-that I sneer at virtue?' and so forth. My own conscience being pretty clear, I can receive the Bulletin's displeasure with calmness-remembering how I used to lay about me in my own youthful days, and how I generally took a good tall mark to hit at. "Wicked weather, and an opera company which performed on the two first lecture nights here, made the audiences rather thin; but they fetched up at the third lecture, and to-night is the last; after which I go to Richmond, then to go further south, from Charleston to Havana and New Orleans; perhaps to turn back and try westward, where I know there is a great crop of dollars to be reaped. But to be snow-bound in my infirm condition! I might never get out of the snow alive.

I go to Washington to-morrow for a night. I was there and dined with Crampton on Saturday. He was in good force and spirits, and I saw no signs of packingup or portmanteaus in the hall.

"I send my best regards to Mrs. Reed

and your sister-in-law, and Lewis and his kind folks, and to Mac's whisky-punch, which gave me no headache: I'm very sorry it treated you so unkindly. Always yours, dear Reed.

"W. M. THACKERAY."

The allusion in this letter to the printed lectures recalls a little incident which was

on

very illustrative of his generous temper, and is not unlike the pill-box with the guineas," which I have seen lately in some literary notices. It was this: On his return the south and west, a number of his friends to Philadelphia, in the spring of 1856, from -I as much as any one-urged him, unwisely as it turned out, to repeat his lectures "The Humorists." He was very loath to do it, but finally yielded, being, I doubt not, somewhat influenced by the pecuniary inducements accidentally held out to him. A young bookseller of this city offered him a round sum-not very large, but, under the circumstances, quite liberal-for the course, which he accepted. The experiment was a failure. It was late in the season, with long days and shortening nights, and the course was a stale one, and the lectures had been printed, and the audiences were thin, and the bargain was disastrous, not to him, but to the young gentleman who had ventured it. We were all disappointed and mortified; but Thackeray took it good-humoredly: the only thing that seemed to disturb him being his sympathy with the man of business. "I don't mind the empty benches, but I can not bear to see that sad, pale-faced young man as I come out, who is losing money on my account." This he used to say at my house when he came home to a frugal and not very cheerful supper after the lectures. Still the bargain had been fairly made, and was honorably complied with: and the money was paid and remitted, through my agency, to him at New York. I received no acknowledgment of the remittance, and recollect well that I felt not a little annoyed at this; the more so, when, on picking up a newspaper, I learned that Thackeray had sailed for home. The day after he had gone, when there could be no refusal, I received a certificate of deposit on his New York bankers for an amount quite sufficient to meet any loss incurred, as he thought, on his behalf. I give the accompanying note, merely suppressing the name of the gentleman in question. There

are some little things in this note-its blanks and dates-to which a fac-simile alone would do justice: April 24.

"MY DEAR REED: When you get this, remummum-ember me to kickkick-kind ffu-fffu-ffriends a sudden resolution — to mummum-morrow

in the Bu-bu-baltic. Good-by, my dear kind friend, and all kind friends in Philadelphia. I didn't think of going away when I left home this morning; but it's the best way.

"I think it is best to send back 25 per cent to poor Will you kindly give him the inclosed; and depend on it I shall go and see Mrs. Best when I go to London, and tell her all about you. My heart is uncommonly heavy: and I am yours gratefully and affectionately.

"W. M. T."

And thus, with an act and words of kindness, he left America never to return.

It was during this visit to the United States that, as he told me, the idea of his American novel," The Virginians,"was conceived; and I have reason to think that some of the details in the story were due as well to Mr. Prescott's "Crossed Swords" as to conversations with me at a time when my mind was full of historical associations and suggestions, and when to think of my country's story was matter of pride and pleasure. In the letter of November, 1854, on my brother's death, Mr. Thackeray speaks of "The Memoirs of Hester Reed," which he had found on his study-table. This was a little volume, privately printed a few years before, containing the biography of my paternal grandmother, Esther de Berdt, a young English girl, who had made the acquaintance of her American lover when, in the colony times, he was a student in the Temple. They married-came to this country: he became a soldier of the Revolution, and she, sharing her husband's feelings and opinions and trials, died, still a young woman, in the middle of the war. As I have said, Esther Reed was my father's mother. Mr. Thackeray seemed pleased with the genuineness of the little book, and talked often of it. The names "Hetty" and "Theodosia," (the latter, I believe, in his family also,) which appear in "The Virginians," are to be found in my homely narrative of revolutionary times. One other suggestion I trace in "The Virginians." I recollect in one of our rambles

telling him of a book which he did not seem to know and I can hardly say that it is to my credit that I did-" The Memoirs of the Duke de Lauzun." We spoke of the dispute as to its genuineness, (its authenticity as a record of the intrigues of a courtier of Louis XV. there was no reason to doubt,) and I called his attention to the fact, very creditable to my countrywomen of ancient days, that while Lauzun's life, not only in France, where it was natural enough, but in England, was a continuity of atrocious licentiousness, with his victims, names revealed as only a Frenchman of that day was capable of doing, the moment he lands in America, accompanying Rochambeau's army to Rhode Island, the wicked spirit seems rebuked by the purity and simplicity of American women; and though he mentions the names of several ladies whom he met, there is not a word of indecorum or whispered thought of impurity. This idea the reader will find stated in "The Virginians" thus:

"There lived during the last century a certain French duke and marquis who distinguished himself in Europe, and America likewise, and has obliged posterity by leaving behind him a choice volume of memoirs, which the gentle reader is specially warned not to consult. Having performed the part of Don Juan in his own country, in ours, and in other parts of Europe, he has kindly noted down the names of many court beauties who fell victims to his powers of fascination; and very pleasing, no doubt, it must be for the grandsons and descendants of the fashionable persons among whom our brilliant nobleman moved, to find the names of their ancestresses adorning M. le Duc's sprightly pages, and their frailties recorded by the candid writer who caused them. In the course of the peregrinations of this nobleman he visited North America, and, as had been his custom in Europe, proceeded straightway to fall in love. And curious it is to contrast the elegant refinements of European society-where, according to Monseigneur, he had but to lay siege to a woman in order to vanquish her-with the simple lives and habits of the colonial folks, amongst whom the European enslaver of hearts did not, it appears, make a single conquest. Had he done so, he would as certainly have narrated his victories in Pennsylvania and New England as he described his successes in this and his own