The real falsehood--if there be a falsehood--of Thackeray’s view of the world was, in fact, the very opposite of that cynicism and worldliness once attributed to him. In so far as he did misrepresent life, it was rather in the direction of showing too much bold disdain of Vanity Fair and too much absolute faith in the saints, his unworldly women and his easily swindled gentlemen. He permitted this pietism of his to blind him to the vivid atrocities of the character of Helen Pendennis, supposing that her having lived all her life in a country homestead was some kind of preventive against cruelty and paganism and heathen pride. Thackeray is, if anything, too much on the side of the angels. He was a monk who rushed out of his monastery to cry out against a gaudy masquerade that was roaring around it, and ever since his monk’s frock has been mistaken for one of the masquerade dresses and applauded as the best joke in the whole fancy dress ball. There are, of course, exceptions, or what may appear to be exceptions, to such a generalisation. So deep and genuine was Thackeray’s insight into the normal human spirit that he detected this element of idealism where it might least be expected. The [Illustration: W. M. THACKERAY From a portrait painted by Frank Stone in 1836, in the possession of Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, and reproduced by kind permission of the owner] [Illustration: NO. 18, ALBION STREET, HYDE PARK The residence of Thackeray’s mother, where the novelist lived for a time on his return from Paris in 1837]