"
One day he wanted a little service done for a friend, and I remember his
very quizzical expression, as he said, "Please say the favor asked will
greatly oblige a man of the name of Thackeray, whose only recommendation
is, that he has seen Napoleon and Goethe, and is the owner of Schiller's
sword."
I think he told me he and Tennyson were at one time intimate; but I
distinctly remember a description he gave me of having heard the poet,
when a young man, storming about in the first rapture of composing his
poem of "Ulysses." One line of it Tennyson greatly revelled in,--
"And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."
"He went through the streets," said Thackeray, "screaming about his
great Achilles, whom we knew," as if we had all made the acquaintance of
that gentleman, and were very proud of it.
One of the most comical and interesting occasions I remember, in
connection with Thackeray, was going with him to a grand concert given
fifteen or twenty years ago by Madame Sontag. We sat near an entrance
door in the hall, and every one who came in, male and female, Thackeray
pretended to know, and gave each one a name and brief chronicle, as the
presence flitted by. It was in Boston, and as he had been in town only a
day or two, and knew only half a dozen people in it, the biographies
were most amusing.
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