Chapter Five

Abstract

Thackeray’s next autobiographical narrator, George Savage Fitz-Boodle, appears with varying degrees of prominence in the miscellaneous series of papers published under his name in Fraser’s Magazine from June 1842 to November 1843. A portly bachelor and clubman, apparently in his forties, he mingles cosmopolitanism with more than a few touches of extravagance, beginning with his claim to be one of the leading whist players in all of Europe, and a man who has “been in every capital, and can order a dinner in every language in Europe” (25: 707). Anticipating the narrator of Pendennis, he finds literary persons to be generally dull and ignorant instead of being amusing and well-informed. Although disdaining books and celebrating worldly experience, he nevertheless not only knows about Ulysses, whom he cites as a model (though later alleging a dislike of classical allusion [25: 712]), but also evidently knows Horace’s characterization of Ulysses in The Art of Poetry as someone who has seen the manners and men of many cities. His own intentions, he explains in his preface, are to furnish the reader with “amusing and well-informed” (25: 707) “views upon men and things,” personal “histories” with which he has become acquainted, autobiographical narratives, “essays, and what not” (25: 708).