Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1905 — Thackeray's Odd Ways. [ARTICLE]

Thackeray's Odd Ways.

“He wrote a very small, neat hand and used slips of note paper,” said the late John Hollingshead of London concerning Thackeray. “These he would often gather up and put in his coat pocket, leaving his secretary at work, and stroll down to the Athenaeum club. Here, if he could get a comfortable table and was not waylaid by any gossip, to whom he was always ready to give an attentive ear, he would pull out his slips and carry his story a few steps farther. In an hour or two he would again collect the scattered papers and go on to the Garrick club, where, if not interrupted, he would resume his writing. This habit of composing in public frightened many of the old club fogies, who thought they were being caricatured for posterity, and no doubt helped to get him blackballed at the Travelers’.”