He is immediately there, an actor in the
show, alive and expressive, but he is alone; none of the others so
emerges, even Becky is only a luminous spot in the dimness. As for the
relation of the three, Steyne, Becky, and her husband, which is on the
point of becoming so important, there is nothing to be seen of it.
Right and left in the novels of Thackeray one may gather instances of
the same kind--the piercing and momentary shaft of direct vision, the
big scene approached and then refused. It is easy to find another in
Vanity Fair. Who but Thackeray could have borne to use the famous
matter of the Waterloo ball, a wonderful gift for a novelist to find
in his path, only to waste it, to dissipate its effect, to get no real
contribution from it after all? In the queer, haphazard, polyglot
interlude that precedes it Thackeray is, of course, entirely at home;
there it is a question of the picture-making he delights in, the large
impression of things in general, the evocation of daily life; Brussels
in its talkative suspense, waiting for the sound of the guns, feeding
on rumour, comes crowding into the chapter. And then the great
occasion that should have crowned it, into which the story naturally
and logically passes--for again the scene is not a decorative patch,
the story needs it--the Waterloo ball is nothing, leaves no image,
constitutes no effect whatever; the reader, looking back on the book,
might be quite uncertain whether he had been there or not.
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