The Paris Sketch Book is a collection of witty pieces written for various journals that shows Thackeray’s insight into both English and French character. His ability to perceive each culture with the eyes of both gives his artistic renderings a depth and stereophonic reverberation that a wholly outside observer, or even a wholly inside observer, would lack. The emphasis, as the title suggests, is on the French character, but to better delineate the French character by contrast, several strokes of the English character are shown. At times, the contrast shades into similarity. I do not mean to suggest by this overall observation that the pieces follow a set formula. One is a straightforward artistic criticism of paintings, another a recounting of a legal case, another a history of caricatures and lithography in France.
His wit is sharp, and at times skewering. Most memorable is his description of the work of iconic Georges Sand. His re-telling of the plot of Spiridion is akin to the simple boy’s cry of, “The Emperor has no clothes!” Even more cruelly (but how funny!), he makes the case that Louis XIV’s royal bearing was only clothes, with the man merely a hanger for the illusion they create. But who is more the fool—the foppish king, or those who see divinity in his accoutrements? It helps, when reading the Sketch Book, to have at least a rudimentary grasp of the history of France from Louis XIV through Napoleon III.