ABSTRACT
William Makepeace Thackeray stayed at Cambridge for two years, and then came down without taking his degree. This, however, was not because, like Pendennis, be was ‘plucked,’ but because, going up in February instead of October, he had either to meet men who had three months’ advantage of him at the May examination, or to wait for a whole year until the next examinations. As with the three famous Cambridge poets, Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, Alma Mater was able to confer no scholastic title or distinction on the future novelist. But another great benefit was derived from Thackeray’s stay at Cambridge, for (as Mr. Richmond Ritchie has pointed out) ‘Cambridge fixed his social status. Though afterwards he was to consort with Bohemians and other strange acquaintances into which a man is forced by adversity, he was never a Bohemian, and always faithful to the traditions of the class in which he was born and bred'.
