The novelist William Makepeace Thackeray died on 23 Dec.
1863. The Times, reporting on the burial which took place on 30 December,
observed that, "for one so distinguished, it has been suggested that
Westminster Abbey is the only fit resting place". But Thackeray had wished
to be buried in the simplest manner at Kensal Green. An initiative to have a
marble bust placed in the Abbey was reported to have been launched by early
February (Birmingham Daily Post , 8 Feb. 1864), and Anthony Trollope ended a
laudatory article on Thackeray in Cornhill Magazine (Feb. 1864, p.137). by
stating that the Kensal Green burial had suited the sadness of the moment,"but as weeks pass by us, they who love literature will desire
to see some preparation for placing a memento of him in that shrine in which we
keep the monuments of our great men". He concluded,"it is to be
regarded as a thing of course, that there should be a bust of Thackeray in
Westminster Abbey".
By mid-July a committee had been formed under the secretaryship of Shirley
Brooks, which, as the Manchester Times reported (16 July 1864) numbered "some
of the best-known names in literature and art". A list of its members was
published in the Morning Post of the same day. There were Thackeray's fellow
novelists, Dickens and Trollope, the actor William Macready, Paxton the
architect of the Crystal Palace. Sculpture was represented by J.H. Foley,
Alexander Munro, Joseph Durham and Marochetti, painting by Holman Hunt,
Maclise, Elmore and Eastlake. There might have been some concern about the
ecclesiastical authorities possible objection to Thackeray's moral standing,
but the new Dean of Westminster, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, who gave his consent
to the placing of the bust, was, as one reporter pointed out, "a different
kind of man from the Oxford don who imagined that Vanity Fair was something in
the style of Bunyan" (Manchester Times, 16 July 1864). Only in December,
however, was it announced that the bust was" being executed by the great
author's friend, Baron Marochetti" (The Era, 4 Dec. 1864). In other
newspaper reports, it was stated that the sum required for the memorial would
be about £600, a third of which, "according to rules of long standing",
would go in fees to the Chapter House of the Abbey.
Despite being a close friend of the author, Marochetti seems to have availed
himself of other records of Thackeray's appearance. On 5 Jan. 1865, he wrote to
Colnaghis asking them to send him copies of their prints after two portrait
drawings of him by Samuel Laurence (National Art Library, MSL/1903, 9000/109).
Shortly after the announcement of the choice of artist, the Saturday Review's
art critic, Francis Turner Palgrave suggested that Marochetti was the wrong man
for the job. Although Palgrave was himself of Jewish origin, he believed that
only an Englishman could adequately reproduce such English features as those of
Thackeray. He accused the artist of overcharging for the bust. Once the Abbey's
levy of £200 had been subtracted, £400 would be left for Marochetti, well over the standard rate
of £100 guineas, which English sculptors were in the habit of charging for
their busts. Palgrave reminded his readers of the furore over the payment of
government money to Marochetti for the Scutari Memorial, and of his demanding
more for his forthcoming statue of Lord Clyde than John Henry Foley had for his
equestrian statue of Lord Hardinge, which we do not think the most zealous of
his friends could expect the Baron to surpass. The critic had also heard
rumours that Marochetti was to do very well for himself in his role as founder
of Landseer's Lions for Nelson's Column. (Saturday Review, vol.19, no.481, 14
Jan. 1865, pp.50-51, "A Cheap Duke and an Expensive Baron") Though it
was not in the habit of defending Marochetti, the Pall Mall Gazette on this
occasion took up the cudgels on his behalf, on the grounds that the sculptor
was operating in a free market. It suggested that the subscribers had gone to
him for the bust "because they thought the Baron was likely to turn out a
better bust of their friend than any other sculptor". It seemed to the
Gazette's reporter "hard to blame an artist for asking and readily
obtaining large prices for his works". Furthermore the charge was "particularly
ungracious when made against a foreigner". (Pall Mall Gazette, 17 June
1865, p.1245)
The unveiling took place on 21 Nov. 1865, in the presence of the Dean,
Thackeray's two daughters, Marochetti and Mr Shirley Brooks, secretary to the
fund. Consistent with its earlier defence of the sculptor, the Pall Mall
Gazette (no.247, 22 Nov. 1865, p.1121), reporting the event, described the bust
as "a fine work", and interestingly pointed out that it was "slightly
toned". Subsequent responses were less positive. The Manchester Times (9
Dec. 1865) admitted it was a likeness, but qualified this by describing it as "blunt
featured and coarse; failing to express the fine characteristics of Thackeray's
visage by means of subtle execution or learned finish". Two years later, a
reporter for Trewman's Exeter Flying Post (30 Oct. 1867) affirmed that "not
one of Thackeray's dear friends like the head of him as executed by Baron
Marochetti".
After the unveiling, Francis Turner Palgrave returned to the charge, claiming
that the memorial to Thackeray fully justified his worst fears, as expressed in
his previous article. He provided an extended expose of what he though to be
Marochetti's weak points as a sculptor, as demonstrated in his Thackeray bust.
Seldom, in fact, can a single bust have attracted such a lengthy excoriation
during the nineteenth century, as Palgrave meted out to Marochetti's Thackeray.
The sculptor, he claimed, had caught only the superficial and obvious features
of the author's appearance. "Thackeray is not here in the intellectual
modelling of the forehead, or the keen insight of the eye; the mouth wants the
graciousness of the smile, and the quality of mobility in which one saw his
satire". The bust conveyed " a kind of art of which Marochetti's
always reminds us". Palgrave recognised a certain level of skill in the
bust. It was not "a complete failure such as most of the busts, for
example by Messrs Noble, Theed, Wood and Adams, or even Marochetti's own
life-size statues appear to us", but despite its "superficial air of
finish", it lacked truth to nature. Palgrave found that criticisms made by
Gustave Planche of Marochetti's work twenty years before, were as valid now as
they had been back then, and he characterised Marochetti's art as "effectist",
a quality it shared with that of another Italian sculptor working in London at
this time, Raffaele Monti, all of which indicated the depths to which Italian
art had sunk since the days of Michelangelo. The critic went on to criticize
the inharmonious juxtaposition of Marochetti's classical plinth and the bronze
bracket by Sir George Gilbert Scott, which "though presumably intended for
Gothic, is so undetermined in character that we hardly like to pronounce it
such" ( Saturday Review, vol.20, no.529, 16 Dec. 1865, pp.758-759. This is
partially reproduced in F.T. Palgrave, Essays on Art, London 1866, pp.303-305)
The critical opprobrium surrounding Marochetti's work in his last years,
together with the further decline of his reputation after his death, may
account for a particularly reprehensible act of vandalism performed on the bust
at the behest of Thackeray's daughter, Anne Thackeray Ritchie. This incident is
recounted with an admirable sense of irony at her aunt's expense by Mary
MacCarthey in her book A Nineteenth Century Childhood (London 1924). Because
for years she had felt that the side-whiskers on the bust were too long, Anne
Thackeray Ritchie persuaded the Dean of Westminster to allow the sculptor
Edward Onslow Ford to have his praticien subject the bust to a
sculptural hair-cut. Ford did the old lady's bidding, according to her niece,
with considerable annoyance, not wishing to tamper with another artist's work.
The charm of Anne Thackeray Ritchie, and the forcefulness of her character
prevailed over his scruples. Mary MacCarthy does not explain how the Dean was
cajoled into allowing this. Happily the plaster model for the bust still
exists, recording its original appearance. This once formed part of the loan
made by Marochetti's widow to the Victoria and Albert, then the South
Kensington, Museum. In 2001 it was returned to the sculptor's descendants,
along with the model for Marochetti's bust of Sir Anthony Panizzi.
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