ABSTRACT
One of the many popular entertainments laid on by the Pumpernickel court will have serious consequences for members of the English party visiting Germany. Thackeray now takes his readers into a different Germany from any seen so far in his writings. The long locks and braided coat indicate 'altdeutsche Tracht', a hair-style and mode of dressing deemed to point to the golden age of German culture in the time of Durer and much affected by German students during and after the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon. The German booth in Vanity Fair was stocked by many writers beside Thackeray in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, though none offered wares as attractive as his. The German atmosphere is made ever more dense by the number of German words introduced into the students' conversation. This chapter shows the full extent of the illumination provided by what Thackeray called 'the author's own candles'.
