a loving and
sympathetic father, realizing that children need brightness in their
lives as well as mere care, and taking his little family about whenever
he could to parties and shows; and he had a growing reputation in the
literary world. "Pendennis" was published in 1848, and before it had
finished running Thackeray suffered from a severe illness, that left its
mark on all his succeeding life.

It was after this that Miss Bronte came to dine with him in Young
Street. She had admired "Vanity Fair" immensely, and was ready to offer
hero-worship; but the sensitive, dull little governess did not reveal in
society the fire that had made her books live, and we are told that
Thackeray, although her host, found the dinner so dull that he slipped
away to his club before she left. He had now a good income from his
books, and added to it by lecturing. "Esmond" appeared in 1852, and the
references to my Lady Castlewood's house in Kensington Square and the
Greyhound tavern (the name of the inn opposite to Thackeray's own house)
will be remembered by everyone. The novelist visited America shortly
after, and then went with his children to Switzerland, and it was in
Switzerland that the idea for "The Newcomes" came to him. Young Street
can only claim a part of that book, for in 1853 he moved to Onslow
Square, and the last number of "The Newcomes" did not appear until 1855.
However, this was not his last connection with this part of Kensington,
for in 1861 he built himself a house in Palace Green, but he only
occupied it for two years, when his death occurred at the early age of
fifty-two.

The houses in Kensington Court, near by, are elaborately decorated with
ornamental terra-cotta mouldings. They stand just about the place where
once was Kensington House, which had something of a history. It was for
a while the residence of the Duchess of Portsmouth (Louise de
Querouaille), and later was the school of Dr. Elphinstone, referred to
in Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and supposed, on the very slightest
grounds, to have been the original of one of Smollett's brutal
schoolmasters in "Roderick Random"; though the driest of pedagogues,
Elphinstone was the reverse of brutal. The house was subsequently a
Roman Catholic seminary, and then a boarding-house, where Mrs. Inchbald
lodged, and in which she died in 1821.

Close by was another old house, made notorious by its owner's
miserliness; this man, Sir Thomas Colby, died intestate, and his