Next morning, after this talk at the
Garrick, the elderly damsel of all work announced to me, as I was taking
breakfast at my lodgings, that Mr. _Sackville_ had called to see me, and
was then waiting below. Very soon I heard a heavy tread on the stairs,
and then entered a tall, white-haired stranger, who held out his hand,
bowed profoundly, and with a most comical expression announced himself
as Mr. Sackville. Recognizing at once the face from published portraits,
I knew that my visitor was none other than Thackeray himself, who,
having heard the servant give the wrong name, determined to assume it on
this occasion. For years afterwards, when he would drop in unexpectedly,
both at home and abroad, he delighted to call himself Mr. Sackville,
until a certain Milesian waiter at the Tremont House addressed him as
Mr. Thack_uary_, when he adopted that name in preference to the other.
Questions are frequently asked as to the habits of thought and
composition of authors one has happened to know, as if an author's
friends were commonly invited to observe the growth of works he was by
and by to launch from the press. It is not customary for the doors of
the writer's work-shop to be thrown open, and for this reason it is all
the more interesting to notice, when it is possible, how an essay, a
history, a novel, or a poem is conceived, grows up, and is corrected for
publication.
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