The Book of Snobs

This was not true, but her family wanted a
better marriage for her than with Carmichael-Smyth, a
military man. The truth was unexpectedly revealed in 1812,
when Richmond Thackeray unwittingly invited to dinner the
supposedly dead Carmichael-Smyth. Richmond Thackeray,
born at South Mimms, went to India at the age of sixteen to
assume his duties as writer. By 1804 he had fathered a
daughter by a native mistress, the mother and daughter
being named in his will. Such liaisons being common among
gentlemen of the East India Company, it formed no bar to his
courting and marrying Anne Becher. After Richmond's death,
Henry Carmichael-Smyth married Anne in 1818 and they
returned to England the next year. William had been sent to
England earlier, at the age of five, with a short stopover at
St. Helena where the imprisoned Napoleon was pointed out
to him. He was educated at schools in Southampton and
Chiswick and then at Charterhouse School, where he was a
close friend of John Leech. He disliked Charterhouse,
parodying it in his later fiction as "Slaughterhouse." Illness in
his last year there (during which he reportedly grew to his
full height of 6'3") postponed his matriculation at Trinity
College, Cambridge, until February 1829. Never too keen on
academic studies, he left the University in 1830. He travelled
for some time on the continent, visiting Paris and Weimar,
where he met Goethe. He returned to England and began to....