Novel: The Virginians

Overview
The Virginians (1858–59), subtitled A Tale of the Last Century, follows the fortunes of George and Henry “Harry” Warrington, twin grandsons of Colonel Henry Esmond from Thackeray’s earlier novel The History of Henry Esmond. Born into the planter aristocracy at Castlewood in colonial Virginia, the brothers are raised under the formidable eye of their widowed mother, Madam Esmond Warrington, and taught codes of honor, loyalty, and rank that will be tested as they move between the New World and the Old during the French and Indian War and the years leading toward the American Revolution.

Plot
The story opens in the 1750s with the twins’ affectionate rivalry and their mother’s partiality for the presumed elder, George, heir to the family estate. Early brushes with war and the rumor-fraught news from General Braddock’s disastrous campaign foreshadow the brothers’ divergent paths. A change in fortune and a quibble over precedence unsettle the household, and the ambitious Madam Esmond presses family claims in England, drawing her sons across the Atlantic to meet their Castlewood kin and to sample London society.

In England, the brothers come under the sway of their great-aunt, Beatrix Esmond, now the worldly Baroness Bernstein, whose charm, cynicism, and knowledge of the town open doors while imperiling their innocence. George, the introspective and scrupulous twin, is entangled by an imprudent attachment to the older Lady Maria, a sentimental trap that threatens his honor and prospects. Harry, impulsive and gallant, stumbles into duels and debts typical of young gentlemen on the town. Their scrapes attract both scandal and sympathy, and introduce them to Colonel Lambert, a plain, principled officer, and to his household, where the daughters Theo and Hetty offer a domestic ideal that contrasts sharply with London’s glitter.

Honor, litigation, and maternal ambition weave a net around the Warringtons. A duel and a lawsuit strain family alliances; George attempts to right his missteps by soldiering, while Harry, more naturally martial, oscillates between duty and pleasure. Their military service during the Seven Years’ War connects the colonial and metropolitan strands of the narrative, bringing the brothers back to America and the question of where their true allegiance lies. As the 1770s approach, political tempers rise. The Warringtons find themselves divided in sympathy, English friends on one side, Virginian neighbors on the other, but united in fraternal loyalty that survives the tumults.

Characters and relationships
Madam Esmond, proud, Tory, and sharp-tongued, is both the architect of the boys’ advancement and the source of their trials, her worship of rank and primogeniture clashing with their developing consciences. Baroness Bernstein, Thackeray’s Beatrix grown old, acts as ironic patron and cautionary figure, her wit masking loneliness. Colonel Lambert’s Whig sobriety provides moral ballast; amid his family’s kindness George discovers his proper match in Theo, while Harry’s restless heart is steadied by Hetty. Through these unions, Thackeray sketches a humane alternative to the brittle calculations of court and club.

Themes and setting
Thackeray uses the transatlantic canvas to examine honor, inheritance, and identity. Primogeniture, dueling, and gentility are both satirized and tested in action; the colonies are shown as at once derivative of English manners and incubators of a different civic spirit. The novel’s shifting scenes, plantation parlors, London drawing rooms, barracks, and battlefields, expose the follies of fashion, the hazards of gambling and vanity, and the stubborn decency that can survive them. The impending Revolution lends retrospective irony: characters who worship imperial splendor must reckon with its limits, while colonial characters discover a moral independence before a political one.

Tone and structure
Told with Thackeray’s wry, intrusive narration and a gentle preference for domestic virtue over worldly glory, The Virginians braids comedy of manners with historical chronicle. Its close, in marriages that reconcile Old World polish with New World plainness and in a mellowed peace with Madam Esmond, affirms fraternity and conscience over pedigree, leaving the Warringtons poised between two nations yet secure in a shared moral home.