g not only
to the Staff, but to the Table. The contribution was a "Singular Letter
from the Regent of Spain;" and with it Thackeray took his place at the
Dinner as an excellent substitute for Albert Smith. That writer, who had
found his successor "a very jolly fellow with no High Art about him,"
and a charming companion at "the Cider Cellars," a month later
disappeared for ever from _Punch_ as a contributor, refiguring only in
its pages from time to time as an object of attack.

Thackeray's work on _Punch_ covered every corner of _Punch's_ field.
Burlesques of history and parodies of literature, ballads and songs,
stories and jokes, papers and paragraphs, pleasantry and pathos,
criticisms and conundrums, travels in the East and raillery in the
West, political skits and social satire--from a column to a single
line--such was the sum of Thackeray's contribution to _Punch_. Less
prolific than either Jerrold or Gilbert a Beckett, he produced,
nevertheless, an enormous amount of "copy" that was always readable,
even when it was not his best. He wrote from Paris to his friend, Mrs.
Brookfield (September 2nd, 1849): "I won't give you an historical
disquisition in the Titmarsh manner upon this, but reserve it for
_Punch_--for whom, on Thursday [I have written] an article that I think
is quite unexampled for dulness, even in that Journal, and that beats
the dullest Jerrold. What a jaunty, offhand, satiric rogue I am, to be
sure--and a gay young dog!" But he did not think his work half so
uninteresting as he pretended; he even regarded with satisfaction that
which he produced when greatly out of the vein. "It is but a hasty
letter I send you, my dear lady," he wrote to the same correspondent, in
1850, "but my hand is weary with writing 'Pendennis'--and my head
boiling up with some nonsense that I must do after dinner for _Punch_.
Isn't it strange that, in the midst of all the selfishness, that of
doing one's business is the strongest of all. What funny songs I've
written when fit to hang myself!"

His first contributions to _Punch_, after those already mentioned, were
"Mr. Spec's Remonstrance," Volume IV., p. 70 (omitting "Assumption of
Aristocracy," which has hitherto been credited to him, but was really
sent in by Gilbert a Beckett), "Singular Letter from the Regent of
Spain," with the three amusing cuts of sailors who, having found a
bottle at sea, speculate as to its contents as they open it--"Sherry,
perhaps," "Rum, I hope