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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The first chapter of Henry Esmond opens with the meeting of young Henry and Rachel Esmond, Viscountess Castlewood, and their complex relations provide the major thematic integration of the novel. For most readers, however, the love interest centers in Henry's chronic courtship of Beatrix, Rachel's daughter. In modern criticism of the novel, allusions to the love of Henry and Rachel are usually perfunctory, often indicating little more than that, after the decline and fall of Beatrix, they were wed—a union which distressed many Victorian critics because of its disquieting implications of incest. For a century there has been no widespread perception of Thackeray's intentions regarding this pervasive love theme.
1 For a brief survey of pertinent criticism, see my “ ‘Unsavoury Plot’ of Henry Esmond,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vi (Sept. 1951), 121-130.
2 Gordon N. Ray, Introd. to Henry Esmond, Modern Library Coll. Ed. (New York, 1950); J. Y. T. Greig, Thackeray: A Reconsideration (London, 1950), Chap. xiv; Lionel Stevenson, The Showman of Vanity Fair (New York, 1947), p. 246, and Introd. to Henry Esmond, Harper's Modern Classics (New York, 1950); and Lambert Ennis, Thackeray: The Sentimental Cynic (Evanston, 111., 1950), pp. 176-183. See also Malcolm Elwin, Thackeray (London, 1935), pp. 209-211; H. N. Wethered, On the Art of Thackeray (London, 1938), p. 114; John W. Dodds, Thackeray: A Critical Portrait (New York, 1941), Chap. viii; Howard O. Brogan, “Rachel Esmond and the Dilemma of the Victorian Ideal of Womanhood,” ELH, xiii (Sept. 1946), 223-232; and Lady Ritchie's Introd. to the Centenary Biographical Edition of Esmond (London, 1911). See The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1945-46), for Thackeray's remarks about Esmond, esp., passim, ii, 708-815; iii, 15-47, 181-390; iv, 125, 429-437. Letters dealing with Thackeray and Jane Brookfield are found in ii, 802 ff.; iii; and iv, esp. 418 ff.
5 Letters, iii, 135. The review is reprinted in George Brimley, Essays, ed. W. G. Clark (London, 1882), pp. 226-235.
4 Letters, iii, 175. The Times review is reprinted in Littell's Living Age, xxxvi (Jan.-Mar. 1853), 277-280. Thackeray later wrote, not accurately, that “the sale [of Esmond] was absolutely stopped by a Times article” (Letters, iv, 125). Forster's unsigned review (identified by Ray) appeared in the Examiner, 13 Nov. 1852, pp. 723-726, but Thackeray said he did not read it (see Letters, iii, 135, 155, 175, 250). Forster, though generally hostile, was surprisingly accurate in recognizing the main outline of Rachel's attachment to Henry; but he could not be induced “to accept or tolerate such a set of incidents as these.”
5 Introd. to Henry Esmond, p. xi.
6 George Saintsbury, A Consideration of Thackeray (London, 1931), p. 196.
7 The Art of the Novel (New York, 1934), pp. 114-115. Brimley, Trollope, E.A. Baker, Dodds, Brogan, and Ray are among the other critics who have noted these preparations by Thackeray.
8 Citations from Esmond are from the Harper's Modern Classics edition, ed. Stevenson.
9 ELB, xiii, 230.
10 ELH, xiii, 229, 231.
11 Thackeray, pp. 170-171.
12 Trollope states in his Thackeray (New York, 1879), p. 128, that here Rachel “herself does not know that her own heart is seeking his with all a woman's love”—but that, of course, is exactly what she does know. And Brogan's belief that Rachel “gives him up to Beatrix without a struggle” at Walcote (ELH, xiii, 230) does not take into account the reasons for the apparent relinquishment, involving struggle enough, or the continuation of the struggle during the remainder of the story. Some readers (like the reviewer in the Times) have been annoyed by Rachel's “hypocrisy” later on, as she appears to advance Henry's suit with Beatrix while wanting him herself; but they have failed to understand the nature of her “sin” and her attempts to expiate it.
13 Thackeray, p. 170.
14 As Edgar puts it, “Having damaged her beauty to achieve her husband's complete alienation, the author has to mend it again like Amelia's broken nose in Fielding's story” (The Art of the Novel, p. 115).
15 As it did to the reviewer in the Athenaeum: “The finale ... is painfully disappointing. The reader who has been hoping throughout that Beatrix would at last flower into virtue for Esmond's reward, is shocked to find her finally flung away like a withered weed, and Esmond's affections abruptly transferred from the daughter to the mother” (6 Nov. 1852, p. 1199).
16 Thackeray, p. 170. Dodds's perceptive essay is one of the few analyzing in detail the technical problems in Esmond.
17 Early Victorian Novelists (London, 1934), p. 96.
18 ELH, xiii, 224, 231.
19 Haste may help account for the ending: the publisher's deadline was long past, and Thackeray grew increasingly impatient to finish his book. (See Letters, iii, 15-47; and Stevenson, The Showman of Vanity Fair, pp. 246-254.) Stevenson thinks that the prospect of Thackeray's American tour, which “took positive form” during the last weeks of composition, influenced “the unexpected removal of his hero and heroine to Virginia” (p. 254), though that possibility had been foreshadowed when Henry first proposed to Rachel (ii, vi) and later when he addressed his “grandson” who lives by the “Rappahannoc” (iii, v).