Gedenkschriften van den heer Yellowplush: Voorheen bediende in vele aanzienlijke huizen

About this book

"Gedenkschriften van den heer Yellowplush" by William Makepeace Thackeray is a collection of satirical tales written in the mid-19th century. Narrated by the footman Charles Yellowplush, it lampoons English social pretensions and fashionable vice through his breezy “memoirs” of serving various masters. Expect comic set pieces, class-skewering humor, and episodic encounters with figures like the suave gambler Mr. Deuceace and the secretive Mr. Altamont.

The opening of the collection begins with a translator’s foreword noting that these slangy pieces were once misattributed to Dickens, before affirming Thackeray’s authorship and their comic intent. The first tale, about Miss Shum’s husband, introduces Yellowplush’s rough upbringing, his rise to livery, and his service to Mr. Altamont, a lodger in the chaotic Shum household where gentle Mary Shum is bullied by a domineering mother and mean stepsisters. Altamont courts Mary (helped by Yellowplush’s theater-and-umbrella ruse), weathers a family confrontation, marries her, and sets up house; but meddling in‑laws sow jealous suspicions about his secret daytime work. After clues (including an old Queen Anne coin) and a dramatic fainting scene near the Bank, the truth surfaces: Altamont has been the street sweeper between the Bank and Cornhill; he sells his “place” and furniture, plans to live abroad, and Yellowplush departs his service. The next tale then starts as Yellowplush becomes valet to Algernon Percy Deuceace, a polished aristocratic gambler in the Temple, who targets a naïve, moneyed Oxford youth named Dawkins while outmaneuvering a rival sharper, Blewitt—engineering acquaintance with a staged breakfast mishap and a gift pâté “from Prince Talleyrand” that wins him an invitation.