ABSTRACT
In England, Richmond Thackeray stayed partly with his grand-uncle Moore at the Manor House at Hadley, near Chipping Barnet, and partly at Chiswick with an aunt, Mrs. Ritchie, from whose house, on February 12, 1818, he wrote his first recorded letter to his Mama,’ and to Captain Carmichael Smyth, her second husband. Thackeray and his step-father became excellent friends; and so admirable a man was the Major that those who knew him insist that the finest of all English gentlemen —that preux chevalier Colonel Newcome—was drawn from him. Thackeray loved his mother deeply, and was as proud of her as she, in the time to come, was of him. In his letters are frequent affectionate references to her, and his only amusing complaint was that,’ in her imperial manner,’ she would always endeavour to make his friends understand that her son was the divinest creature in the world’.
