M CHAPTER X THE REFORM CLUB R. THEODORE TAYLOR'S delightful volume, "Thackeray the Humourist and the Man of Let ters," published in 1864 - a year after the great novelist's death - gives Thackeray's clubs as the Reform, the Athenæum, and the Garrick, adding that the afternoons of the last week of his life were almost entirely passed at the Reform, and that during all of that time he had never been more genial or in such apparently happy moods. Many of his brother members have, since his death, recalled to each other one of the tenderest passages among his early sketches "Brown the younger at a Club"-in which the old uncle, while showing his nephew the various rooms of the club, is represented as recalling memories of men — whose names now appeared at the end of the club list under the dismal category of "Members Deceased," in which (added Thackeray), "You and I shall rank some day." Mr. Taylor quotes also from Mr. Shirley Brooks, in his account of the last occasion on which the latter saw Mr. Thackeray at the Garrick Club, only eight days before his death. "On that evening, he enjoyed himself much, in his own quiet way, and contributed genially to the enjoy ment of those who were something less quiet; and, a question arising about a subscription in aid of a disabled artist, he instantly offered to increase, if necessary, a sum he had previously promised. The writer's very last recollection of the 'cynic,' therefore, is in connexion with an unasked act of Christian kindness. On the following Monday he attended the funeral of a lady who was interred in Kensal Green Cemetery. On the Tuesday evening he came to his favourite club - the Garrick and asked a seat at the table of two friends, who, of course, welcomed him as all welcomed Thackeray. It will not be deemed too minute a record by any of the hundreds who personally loved him to note where he sat for the last time in that club. There is in the dining-room on the first floor a nook near the reading room. The principal picture hanging in that nook, and fronting you as you approach it, is the celebrated one from "The Clandestine Marriage,' with Lord Ogleby, Canton, and Brush. Opposite to that Thackeray took his seat and dined with his friends. He was afterward in the smoking room, a place in which he delighted. The Garrick Club will remove in a few months, and all these details will be nothing to its new members, but much to many of its old ones. His place there will know him and them no more. On the Wednesday he was out several times, and was seen in Palace Gardens 'reading a book.' Before the dawn on Thursday, he was where there is no night." Dickens had a still later glimpse of him at the Athenæum. "I saw him ." he says, "shortly before Christmas at the Athenæum, when he told me that he had been in bed three days, that after those attacks he was troubled with |