years later moved to her Chelsea home, where she
died; but her day was over many years before she came here. Joseph
Addison lodged in the square for a time, four or five years before his
marriage with the Countess of Warwick. At No. 41 Sir Edward Burne-Jones
lived for three years, subsequently removing to West Kensington, but the
association which has most glorified the square is its proximity to
Young Street, so long the home of Thackeray. He came to No. 16, then 13,
in 1846, aged only thirty-five, but with the romance of his life behind
him. A tablet marks the window in which he used to work. Six years
previously his wife, whom he had tenderly loved, had developed
melancholia, and, soon becoming a confirmed invalid, had had to be
placed permanently under medical care. Their married life had been very
short, only four or five years, but Thackeray had three little daughters
to remind him of it. He had passed through many vicissitudes, from the
comparatively opulent days of youth and the University to the time when
he had lost all his patrimony and been forced to support himself
precariously by pen and pencil. Yearly he had become better known, and
by the time he came to Young Street he was sufficiently removed from
money troubles to be without that worst form of worry, anxiety for the
future. He had contributed to the _Times_, _Frazer's Magazine_, and
_Punch_. It is rather odd to read that at the time when _Punch_ was
started one of Thackeray's friends was rather sorry that he should
become a contributor, fearing that it would lower his status in the
literary world! It was in _Punch_, nevertheless, that his first real
triumph was won. The "Snob Papers" attracted universal attention, and
were still running when he moved to Young Street. Here he began more
serious work, and scarcely a year later "Vanity Fair" was brought out in
numbers, according to the fashion made popular by Dickens. It did not
prove an instantaneous success, but by the time it had run its course
its author's position was assured. In spite of the sorrow that
overshadowed his domestic life--and he had by this time for many years
given up any hope of communicating with his wife--the time he spent in
this house cannot have been unhappy. He had congenial work, many
friends, among whom were numbered his fellow contributor Leech, also G.
F. Watts, Herman Merivale, the Theodore Martins, Monckton Milnes,
Kinglake, and others. He had also his daughters, and he was