Customer Reviews

Newcomes, The (Everyman's Library (Paper))

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Thackeray's The Newcomes is a substantial novel, ostensibly a biography of the arriviste Newcome family "written by" Arthur Pendennis, another Thackeray character involved in this as well as other Thackeray works, and acting as something of a Greek chorus as the action develops. It is grand in scope, long as anything you are likely to pick up, at turns slow, suspenseful, touching, a period piece, personal, witty, a mirror on society, a travelogue, heartbreaking...but almost always deeply rewarding.

The Newcomes was serialized over a period of two years, and it shows. Characters are established and then abandoned; some return 500 pages later, others never do. One woman is killed off on one page, and is alive again later. There are some ideas developed that are dropped or seemingly saved for later, a later which never comes as the story takes a different direction. The author acknowledges as much in a two page coda to the final chapter.

The main themes of the work, however, are there throughout. In rigidly class-obsessed England there are ways to move up if one has money. New-money wants to be noble. The nobility allows itself to be courted and flattered. Those not rich have, in some ways, more options for self-expression through work and socially than those who are bound by societal expectations. Thackeray gives us characters from every station in life, many of them looking at their particular status in very different ways.

New money families invent myths of their past glory to cover their insecurities, tracing family histories fabulously back to the Conquest. The most upright people of character make gross mistakes in judgement, bringing grief to many innocents. Debutantes revel in making their splash in society, only finally coming to realize the emptiness at its heart. Some of the heirs of good and not-to-good men struggle with their identities and future roles in life; others plunge into their assigned roles at once and in full. Money and position do not necessarily lead to happiness or contentment; some of the perpetually financially under water are among the most jolly, hearty and loyal. The role of religion is important; but some of the religious are humbugs. Battleaxes dominate some households, beating the weakened into submission by temper and anger; cruel husbands in loveless marriages abuse their wives emotionally and physically, and abandon their heirs. Some families are bound by respect and love, others torn apart by fear, mistrust, and greed. Some lovers find one another young, and are happy together; other lovers are separated for a half century by decisions made for practical, financial reasons.

Does the trade make the man? What is character about? Is marriage about love? Or about building alliances between families (and nations) for the betterment of each? Can it be both? What is one's duty to one's family and one's elders? And on and on.

The Newcomes is not as biting or satirical as was Vanity Fair, these days the only Thackeray occasionally read. But the author's gentle (but persistent) criticism of Victorian society is there throughout: its pretensions, its hypocricies, its worldliness. It's not all negative: there is a great deal of culture, of learning, of genuine friendship, and industry and opportunity. Most people are forces, in general, for good. Thackeray can make his various points, raise his innumerable questions, without becoming sarcastic or grating...and all the while, inviting us to spend quite a number of hours with a cast of deeply human characters in a sweeping story that is well worth the investment of time it requires.

"The Newcomes" is a novel of W.M. Thackeray's that isn't "Vanity Fair". This is important to point out because that novel has come to represent the entirety of his body of work to modern audiences, and while it might be his best novel and deservedly his best known, he wrote other books. "The Newcomes" is a engrossing, entertaining read, having all the virtues of a good Victorian novel and one crucial flaw that perhaps explains why it isn't more popular: at over 1,000 pages, it's a very long novel, what Henry James would call a "loose, baggy monster." I would hesitate to say it's over-long, because I enjoyed my immersion into this beautifully crafted work, but I have to admit that the first 200+ pages were difficult and slow going. The language takes a while to get used to, as you can imagine with any novel written in the 1800s, but the bigger obstacle was the amount of exposition that had to be gotten through; it isn't until about 250 pages in that all the set-up is done with and we get to the heart of the matter. Do not bother picking this novel up if you are not a patient reader, unwilling to wait for his or her reward.

Thackeray had great success with "Vanity Fair" -- it made him an overnight success. By "The Newcomes", he had mellowed some and instead of biting satire, he brings a nuanced understanding of humanity. The great subject of this novel is the Victorian marriage market, where girls and young women are brought out to great fanfare into the world and pressured to marry not for love but for rank, money and prestige. The main character is Colonel Newcome, a man of simple but pure morals and manner, some money, a little prestige, but not a great man according to the standards of the wider world. His fondest wish is to see his beloved only son, Clive, marry his cousin, the lovely and rather feisty Ethel Newcome. Only Ethel's father is a wealthy baronet, and Ethel's beauty and wit rank her as one of the great beauties of fashionable London. She is taken under the wing of her grandmother, the old Lady Kew, who makes it her goal in life to see Ethel married off to the richest and highest ranking noble she can catch.

What place does love have in a marriage arranged by societal values and parental approval? How truly important is it? There are a number of marriages in the book besides Ethel's that allows Thackeray to carry out his point of how important it is to marry for love and compatibility; we get couples that exhibit perfect connubial bliss and couples that inflict much pain and misery upon each. Don't worry, connubial bliss gets short shrift (happiness is rarely interesting from a dramatic standpoint) while there are many pages devoted to the unhappy marriages, making for emotionally exhausting and dramatic stuff. There is melodrama and tears, tragedies and scandal and lots of juicy stuff, but it's balanced with gentle satire and much careful examination of the human character. And pathos; you can't have a Victorian novel with pathos, of course.

Tonally, the novel veers wildly all over the map, but somehow it works because the plot itself is so varied and vast, encompassing many different kinds of stories and a big cast of characters. What ties it all together is Thackeray's understanding of human nature, how he sees both the best and worst of humanity in every action and relationship. The most noble, virtuous character, Col. Newcome, makes some pretty vital mistakes, misjudges people and occasionally displays less than perfect Christian forgiveness and charity. Every character is flawed and even the worst of them, and there is one perfect villain, deserves our pity if not sympathy. For such a sprawling work -- which sometimes feels like it's trying to capture every interesting part of Victorian life in its pages -- what shines through the brightest is the charity and grace with which it judges the human heart and all its variable desires.