poliphilo

Add Thackeray's The Story of Mary Ancel to the list of stories in my ghost story book that aren't ghost stories at all. What can Herbert Van Thal have been thinking of? Mary Ancel is a neat little story, with a vein of sardonic black humour running through it, but there's not even a hint of a ghost.

It's set in the time of the French Revolution. A nice girl gets blackmailed into marriage by an absolute swine and turns the tables by appealing to the justice of revolutionary paragon Saint-Just- who may have been a ruthless fanatic but was also incorruptible and fair. The best character is an executioner who spends his leisure hours weeping over the Sorrows of Young Werther. It's fun, it's likable, it's clever.

I've never given Thackeray much attention. I read Barry Lyndon around the time the movie came out- because I love Stanley Kubrick- but that's about it. As I remember Barry Lyndon is also fun, likable and clever- the book I mean- because I don't remember it being the magisterial, melancholy thing that the movie is.

When I was a kid Thackeray and Dickens were considered to be on a level pegging: our two great Victorian novelists. Since then Thackeray's stock has fallen and fallen and nowadays only Vanity Fair gets any love. My friend Stephen recommended I read The History of Henry Esmond but I never took him up on it.

Maybe now's the time. I like going to the aid of a neglected author- even though sometimes they kick you in the teeth.

Shall I order up a copy of Henry Esmond?

Well, why not!