The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

Abstract

Having notably articulated his awareness of human behavior as performance in The Snobs of England, Vanity Fair, and Pendennis—indeed, even before completing the latter novel—Thackeray decided to emerge as an overt public performer by becoming a lecturer. Even before delivering his six lectures on twelve English humorists of the eighteenth century in London between 29 May and 3 July 1851, however, he had privately expressed his acute and uncomfortable awareness of “how orators become humbugs and … absorbed in that selfish pursuit and turning of periods” (Letters, II, 766). In fact, he even characterized his lecturing self as “Equilibrist and Tightrope dance[r]” (Letters, II, 775). Lecturing subsequently in England, Scotland, and finally the United States during the next two years only increased his uneasy sense of performance, until he finally revolted at what he called “the quackery” (Letters, III, 193) of constantly repeating the same words in the same way, accompanied by an uncontrollable and unsettling resurgence of the same emotions, and returned—indeed, fled—home.