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complicated arrangement to most parties. It was so
that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire their house.
Before Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's
house and cellar in Park Lane, that lady had had
for a butler a Mr. Raggles, who was born on the family
estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was a younger
son of a gardener there. By good conduct, a handsome
person and calves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose
from the knife-board to the footboard of the carriage;
from the footboard to the butler's pantry. When he had
been a certain number of years at the head of Miss
Crawley's establishment, where he had had good wages,
fat perquisites, and plenty of opportunities of saving, he
announced that he was about to contract a matrimonial
alliance with a late cook of Miss Crawley's, who had
subsisted in an honourable manner by the exercise of a
mangle, and the keeping of a small greengrocer's shop in
the neighbourhood. The truth is, that the ceremony had
been clandestinely performed some years back; although
the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was first brought to
Miss Crawley by a little boy and girl of seven and eight
years of age, whose continual presence in the kitchen
had attracted the attention of Miss Briggs.
Mr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the
superintendence of the small shop and the greens. He
added milk and cream, eggs and country-fed pork to his
stores, contenting himself whilst other retired butlers
were vending spirits in public houses, by dealing in the
simplest country produce. And having a good connection
amongst the butlers in the neighbourhood, and a
snug back parlour where he and Mrs. Raggles received
them, his milk, cream, and eggs got to be adopted by
many of the fraternity, and his profits increased every
year. Year after year he quietly and modestly amassed
money, and when at length that snug and complete bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street, May Fair, lately
the residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace,
gone abroad, with its rich and appropriate furniture by
the first makers, was brought to the hammer, who should
go in and purchase the lease and furniture of the house
but Charles Raggles? A part of the money he borrowed, it
is true, and at rather a high interest, from a brother
butler, but the chief part he paid down, and it was with
no small pride that Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in
a bed of carved mahogany, with silk curtains, with a
prodigious cheval glass opposite to her, and a wardrobe
which would contain her, and Raggles, and all the family.
Of course, they did not intend to occupy permanently
an apartment so splendid. It was in order to let the house
again that Raggles purchased it. As soon as a tenant
was found, he subsided into the greengrocer's shop once
more; but a happy thing it was for him to walk out of
that tenement and into Curzon Street, and there survey
his house--his own house--with geraniums in the
window and a carved bronze knocker. The footman
occasionally lounging at the area railing, treated him with
respect; the cook took her green stuff at his house and
called him Mr. Landlord, and there was not one thing
the tenants did, or one dish which they had for dinner,
that Raggles might not know of, if he liked.
He was a good man; good and happy. The house
brought him in so handsome a yearly income that he was
determined to send his children to good schools, and
accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was sent to
boarding at Dr. Swishtail's, Sugar-cane Lodge, and
little Matilda to Miss Peckover's, Laurentinum House,
Clapham.
Raggles loved and adored the Crawley family as the
author of all his prosperity in life. He had a silhouette of
his mistress in his back shop, and a drawing of the
Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done by that spinster
herself in India ink--and the only addition he made to
the decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print
of Queen's Crawley in Hampshire, the seat of Sir Walpole
Crawley, Baronet, who was represented in a gilded car
drawn by six white horses, and passing by a lake
covered with swans, and barges containing ladies in hoops,
and musicians with flags and penwigs. Indeed Raggles
thought there was no such palace in all the world, and
no such august family.
As luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street
was to let when Rawdon and his wife returned to London.
The Colonel knew it and its owner quite well; the latter's
connection with the Crawley family had been kept up
constantly, for Raggles helped Mr. Bowls whenever Miss
Crawley received friends. And the old man not only let
his house to the Colonel but officiated as his butler
whenever he had company; Mrs. Raggles operating in the
kitchen below and sending up dinners of which old Miss
Crawley herself might have approved. This was the way,
then, Crawley got his house for nothing; for though
Raggles had to pay taxes and rates, and the interest of the
mortgage to the brother butler; and the insurance of his
life; and the charges for his children at school; and the
value of the meat and drink which his own family--and
for a time that of Colonel Crawley too--consumed; and
though the poor wretch was utterly ruined by the
transaction, his children being flung on the streets, and himself
driven into the Fleet Prison: yet somebody must pay even
for gentlemen who live for nothing a year--and so it was
this unlucky Raggles was made the representative of
Colonel Crawley's defective capital.
I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and
to ruin by great practitioners in Crawlers way?--how
many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen,
condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched
little sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read
that a noble nobleman has left for the Continent, or that
another noble nobleman has an execution in his house
--and that one or other owes six or seven millions, the
defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim in
the vastness of his ruin. But who pities a poor barber who
can't get his money for powdering the footmen's heads;
or a poor carpenter who has ruined himself by fixing up
ornaments and pavilions for my lady's dejeuner; or the
poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes, and
who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the
liveries ready, which my lord has done him the honour
to bespeak? When the great house tumbles down, these
miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed: as they say in
the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself,
he sends plenty of other souls thither.
Rawdon and his wife generously gave their patronage
to all such of Miss Crawley's tradesmen and purveyors
as chose to serve them. Some were willing,enough,
especially the poor ones. It was wonderful to see the
pertinacity with which the washerwoman from Tooting
brought the cart every Saturday, and her bills week after week.
Mr. Raggles himself had to supply the greengroceries. The
bill for servants' porter at the Fortune of War public
house is a curiosity in the chronicles of beer. Every
servant also was owed the greater part of his wages, and
thus kept up perforce an interest in the house. Nobody in
fact was paid. Not the blacksmith who opened the lock;
nor the glazier who mended the pane; nor the jobber who
let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it; nor the
butcher who provided the leg of mutton; nor the coals
which roasted it; nor the cook who basted it; nor the
servants who ate it: and this I am given to understand is not
unfrequently the way in which people live elegantly on
nothing a year.
In a little town such things cannot be done without
remark. We know there the quantity of milk our
neighbour takes and espy the joint or the fowls which are
going in for his dinner. So, probably, 200 and 202 in Curzon
Street might know what was going on in the house
between them, the servants communicating through the
area-railings; but Crawley and his wife and his friends
did not know 200 and 202. When you came to 201 there
was a hearty welcome, a kind smile, a good dinner, and
a jolly shake of the hand from the host and hostess there,
just for all the world as if they had been undisputed
masters of three or four thousand a year--and so they were,
not in money, but in produce and labour--if they did
not pay for the mutton, they had it: if they did not give
bullion in exchange for their wine, how should we know?
Never was better claret at any man's table than at honest
Rawdon's; dinners more gay and neatly served. His
drawing-rooms were the prettiest, little, modest salons
conceivable: they were decorated with the greatest taste,
and a thousand knick-knacks from Paris, by Rebecca:
and when she sat at her piano trilling songs with a
lightsome heart, the stranger voted himself in a little
paradise of domestic comfort and agreed that, if the
husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming, and the
dinners the pleasantest in the world.
Rebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily
the vogue in London among a certain class. You saw
demure chariots at her door, out of which stepped very
great people. You beheld her carriage in the park,
surrounded by dandies of note. The little box in the third
tier of the opera was crowded with heads constantly
changing; but it must be confessed that the ladies held
aloof from her, and that their doors were shut to our
little adventurer.
With regard to the world of female fashion and its
customs, the present writer of course can only speak at
second hand. A man can no more penetrate or under-
stand those mysteries than he can know what the ladies
talk about when they go upstairs after dinner. It is only
by inquiry and perseverance that one sometimes gets
hints of those secrets; and by a similar diligence every
person who treads the Pall Mall pavement and frequents
the clubs of this metropolis knows, either through his
own experience or through some acquaintance with whom
he plays at billiards or shares the joint, something about
the genteel world of London, and how, as there are men
(such as Rawdon Crawley, whose position we mentioned
before) who cut a good figure to the eyes of the ignorant
world and to the apprentices in the park, who behold
them consorting with the most notorious dandies there,
so there are ladies, who may be called men's women,
being welcomed entirely by all the gentlemen and cut
or slighted by all their wives. Mrs. Firebrace is of this sort;
the lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you see
every day in Hyde Park, surrounded by the greatest and
most famous dandies of this empire. Mrs. Rockwood is
another, whose parties are announced laboriously in the
fashionable newspapers and with whom you see that all
sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and
many more might be mentioned had they to do with the
history at present in hand. But while simple folks who
are out of the world, or country people with a taste for
the genteel, behold these ladies in their seeming glory in
public places, or envy them from afar off, persons who
are better instructed could inform them that these envied
ladies have no more chance of establishing themselves
in "society," than the benighted squire's wife in
Somersetshire who reads of their doings in the Morning Post.
Men living about London are aware of these awful truths.
You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming rank and
wealth are excluded from this "society." The frantic
efforts which they make to enter this circle, the meannesses
to which they submit, the insults which they undergo,
are matters of wonder to those who take human or
womankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under
difficulties would be a fine theme for any very great
person who had the wit, the leisure, and the knowledge of
the English language necessary for the compiling of
such a history.
Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley
had known abroad not only declined to visit her when
she came to this side of the Channel, but cut her severely
when they met in public places. It was curious to see how
the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether
a pleasant study to Rebecca. When Lady Bareacres met
her in the waiting-room at the opera, she gathered her
daughters about her as if they would be contaminated
by a touch of Becky, and retreating a step or two, placed
herself in front of them, and stared at her little enemy.
To stare Becky out of countenance required a severer
glance than even the frigid old Bareacres could shoot out
of her dismal eyes. When Lady de la Mole, who had ridden
a score of times by Becky's side at Brussels, met Mrs.
Crawley's open carriage in Hyde Park, her Ladyship was
quite blind, and could not in the least recognize her
former friend. Even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the banker's wife,
cut her at church. Becky went regularly to church now; it
was edifying to see her enter there with Rawdon by her
side, carrying a couple of large gilt prayer-books, and
afterwards going through the ceremony with the gravest
resignation.
Rawdon at first felt very acutely the slights which were
passed upon his wife, and was inclined to be gloomy and
savage. He talked of calling out the husbands or brothers
of every one of the insolent women who did not pay a
proper respect to his wife; and it was only by the strongest commands and entreaties on her part that he was
brought into keeping a decent behaviour. "You can't
shoot me into society," she said good-naturedly. "Remember,
my dear, that I was but a governess, and you, you
poor silly old man, have the worst reputation for debt, and
dice, and all sorts of wickedness. We shall get quite as
many friends as we want by and by, and in the meanwhile
you must be a good boy and obey your schoolmistress in
everything she tells you to do. When we heard that your
aunt had left almost everything to Pitt and his wife, do
you remember what a rage you were in? You would
have told all Paris, if I had not made you keep your
temper, and where would you have been now?--in
prison at Ste. Pelagie for debt, and not established in
London in a handsome house, with every comfort about
you--you were in such a fury you were ready to murder
your brother, you wicked Cain you, and what good
would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in the
world won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much
better that we should be friends with your brother's
family than enemies, as those foolish Butes are. When
your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be a pleasant house
for you and me to pass the winter in. If we are ruined,
you can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can
be a governess to Lady Jane's children. Ruined!
fiddlede-dee! I will get you a good place before that; or Pitt
and his little boy will die, and we will be Sir Rawdon and my
lady. While there is life, there is hope, my dear, and I
intend to make a man of you yet. Who sold your horses for
you? Who paid your debts for you?" Rawdon was obliged
to confess that he owed all these benefits to his wife, and
to trust himself to her guidance for the future.
Indeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that
money for which all her relatives had been fighting so
eagerly was finally left to Pitt, Bute Crawley, who found
that only five thousand pounds had been left to him
instead of the twenty upon which he calculated, was in
such a fury at his disappointment that he vented it in
savage abuse upon his nephew; and the quarrel always
rankling between them ended in an utter breach of
intercourse. Rawdon Crawley's conduct, on the other hand,
who got but a hundred pounds, was such as to astonish
his brother and delight his sister-in-law, who was
disposed to look kindly upon all the members of her
husband's family. He wrote to his brother a very frank, manly,
good-humoured letter from Paris. He was aware, he said,
that by his own marriage he had forfeited his aunt's
favour; and though he did not disguise his disappointment
that she should have been so entirely relentless towards
him, he was glad that the money was still kept in their
branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother
on his good fortune. He sent his affectionate remembrances
to his sister, and hoped to have her good-will for
Mrs. Rawdon; and the letter concluded with a postscript
to Pitt in the latter lady's own handwriting. She, too,
begged to join in her husband's congratulations. She should
ever remember Mr. Crawley's kindness to her in early
days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress of
his little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the
tenderest interest. She wished him every happiness in his
married life, and, asking his permission to offer her
remembrances to Lady Jane (of whose goodness all the
world informed her), she hoped that one day she might
be allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt,
and begged to bespeak for him their good-will and
protection.
Pitt Crawley received this communication very
graciously--more graciously than Miss Crawley had received
some of Rebecca's previous compositions in Rawdon's
handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was so charmed
with the letter that she expected her husband would
instantly divide his aunt's legacy into two equal portions
and send off one-half to his brother at Paris.
To her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to
accommodate his brother with a cheque for thirty
thousand pounds. But he made Rawdon a handsome offer
of his hand whenever the latter should come to England
and choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for
her good opinion of himself and Lady Jane, he graciously
pronounced his willingness to take any opportunity to
serve her little boy.
Thus an almost reconciliation was brought about
between the brothers. When Rebecca came to town Pitt
and his wife were not in London. Many a time she drove
by the old door in Park Lane to see whether they had
taken possession of Miss Crawley's house there. But the
new family did not make its appearance; it was only
through Raggles that she heard of their movements--how
Miss Crawley's domestics had been dismissed with decent
gratuities, and how Mr. Pitt had only once made his
appearance in London, when he stopped for a few days
at the house, did business with his lawyers there, and sold
off all Miss Crawley's French novels to a bookseller out
of Bond Street. Becky had reasons of her own which
caused her to long for the arrival of her new relation.
"When Lady Jane comes," thought she, "she shall be my
sponsor in London society; and as for the women! bah!
the women will ask me when they find the men want to
see me."
An article as necessary to a lady in this position as her
brougham or her bouquet is her companion. I have
always admired the way in which the tender creatures, who
cannot exist without sympathy, hire an exceedingly plain
friend of their own sex from whom they are almost
inseparable. The sight of that inevitable woman in her
faded gown seated behind her dear friend in the opera-
box, or occupying the back seat of the barouche, is
always a wholesome and moral one to me, as jolly a
reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in
the repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic
memorial of Vanity Fair. What? even battered, brazen,
beautiful, conscienceless, heartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose
father died of her shame: even lovely, daring Mrs.
Mantrap, who will ride at any fence which any man in
England will take, and who drives her greys in the
park, while her mother keeps a huckster's stall in Bath
still--even those who are so bold, one might fancy
they could face anything dare not face the world without
a female friend. They must have somebody to cling to, the
affectionate creatures! And you will hardly see them in
any public place without a shabby companion in a dyed
silk, sitting somewhere in the shade close behind them.
"Rawdon," said Becky, very late one night, as a party
of gentlemen were seated round her crackling drawing-
room fire (for the men came to her house to finish the
night; and she had ice and coffee for them, the best in
London): "I must have a sheep-dog."
"A what?" said Rawdon, looking up from an ecarte
table.
"A sheep-dog!" said young Lord Southdown. "My dear
Mrs. Crawley, what a fancy! Why not have a Danish
dog? I know of one as big as a camel-leopard, by Jove.
It would almost pull your brougham. Or a Persian
greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug
that would go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes?
There's a man at Bayswater got one with such a nose that
you might--I mark the king and play--that you might
hang your hat on it."
"I mark the trick," Rawdon gravely said. He attended
to his game commonly and didn't much meddle with
the conversation, except when it was about horses and
betting.
"What CAN you want with a shepherd's dog?" the lively
little Southdown continued.
"I mean a MORAL shepherd's dog," said Becky, laughing
and looking up at Lord Steyne.
"What the devil's that?" said his Lordship.
"A dog to keep the wolves off me," Rebecca continued.
"A companion."
"Dear little innocent lamb, you want one," said the
marquis; and his jaw thrust out, and he began to grin
hideously, his little eyes leering towards Rebecca.
The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire
sipping coffee. The fire crackled and blazed pleasantly
There was a score of candles sparkling round the mantel
piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of gilt and bronze and
porcelain. They lighted up Rebecca's figure to admiration,
as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy
flowers. She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as
a rose; her dazzling white arms and shoulders were half-
covered with a thin hazy scarf through which they
sparkled; her hair hung in curls round her neck; one of her
little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp folds of the
silk: the prettiest little foot in the prettiest little sandal
in the finest silk stocking in the world.
The candles lighted up Lord Steyne's shining bald head,
which was fringed with red hair. He had thick bushy
eyebrows, with little twinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded
by a thousand wrinkles. His jaw was underhung, and
when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded
themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin.
He had been dining with royal personages, and wore
his garter and ribbon. A short man was his Lordship,
broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness
of his foot and ankle, and always caressing his garter-
knee.
"And so the shepherd is not enough," said he, "to
defend his lambkin?"
"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going
to his clubs," answered Becky, laughing.
" 'Gad, what a debauched Corydon!" said my lord--
"what a mouth for a pipe!"
"I take your three to two," here said Rawdon, at the
card-table.
"Hark at Meliboeus," snarled the noble marquis; "he's
pastorally occupied too: he's shearing a Southdown.
What an innocent mutton, hey? Damme, what a snowy
fleece!"
Rebecca's eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour.
"My lord," she said, "you are a knight of the Order."
He had the collar round his neck, indeed--a gift of the
restored princes of Spain.
Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his
daring and his success at play. He had sat up two days
and two nights with Mr. Fox at hazard. He had won
money of the most august personages of the realm: he
had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-
table; but he did not like an allusion to those bygone
fredaines. Rebecca saw the scowl gathering over his heavy
brow.
She rose up from her sofa and went and took his coffee
cup out of his hand with a little curtsey. "Yes," she said,
"I must get a watchdog. But he won't bark at YOU.
And, going into the other drawing-room, she sat down to
the piano and began to sing little French songs in such a
charming, thrilling voice that the mollified nobleman
speedily followed her into that chamber, and might be seen
nodding his head and bowing time over her.
Rawdon and his friend meanwhile played ecarte until
they had enough. The Colonel won; but, say that he won
ever so much and often, nights like these, which occurred
many times in the week--his wife having all the talk and
all the admiration, and he sitting silent without the circle,
not comprehending a word of the jokes, the allusions, the
mystical language within--must have been rather
wearisome to the ex-dragoon.
"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used
to say to him by way of a good day when they met; and
indeed that was now his avocation in life. He was
Colonel Crawley no more. He was Mrs. Crawley's husband.
About the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all
this while, it is because he is hidden upstairs in a garret
somewhere, or has crawled below into the kitchen for
companionship. His mother scarcely ever took notice of
him. He passed the days with his French bonne as long
as that domestic remained in Mr. Crawley's family, and
when the Frenchwoman went away, the little fellow,
howling in the loneliness of the night, had compassion taken
on him by a housemaid, who took him out of his solitary
nursery into her bed in the garret hard by and comforted
him.
Rebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were
in the drawing-room taking tea after the opera, when this
shouting was heard overhead. "It's my cherub crying for
his nurse," she said. She did not offer to move to go and
see the child. "Don't agitate your feelings by going to look
for him," said Lord Steyne sardonically. "Bah!" replied
the other, with a sort of blush, "he'll cry himself to sleep";
and they fell to talking about the opera.
Rawdon had stolen off though, to look after his son
and heir; and came back to the company when he found
that honest Dolly was consoling the child. The Colonel's
dressing-room was in those upper regions. He used to see
the boy there in private. They had interviews together
every morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor sitting on a
box by his father's side and watching the operation with
never-ceasing pleasure. He and the sire were great friends.
The father would bring him sweetmeats from the dessert
and hide them in a certain old epaulet box, where the
child went to seek them, and laughed with joy on
discovering the treasure; laughed, but not too loud: for mamma
was below asleep and must not be disturbed. She did not
go to rest till very late and seldom rose till after noon.
Rawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and
crammed his nursery with toys. Its walls were covered with
pictures pasted up by the father's own hand and purchased
by him for ready money. When he was off duty with
Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here, passing
hours with the boy; who rode on his chest, who pulled his
great mustachios as if they were driving-reins, and spent
days with him in indefatigable gambols. The room was
a low room, and once, when the child was not five years
old, his father, who was tossing him wildly up in his
arms, hit the poor little chap's skull so violently against
the ceiling that he almost dropped the child, so terrified
was he at the disaster.
Rawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous
howl--the severity of the blow indeed authorized that
indulgence; but just as he was going to begin, the father
interposed.
"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma," he
cried. And the child, looking in a very hard and piteous
way at his father, bit his lips, clenched his hands, and
didn't cry a bit. Rawdon told that story at the clubs, at
the mess, to everybody in town. "By Gad, sir," he
explained to the public in general, "what a good plucked one
that boy of mine is--what a trump he is! I half-sent his
head through the ceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for
fear of disturbing his mother."
Sometimes--once or twice in a week--that lady visited
the upper regions in which the child lived. She came like
a vivified figure out of the Magasin des Modes--blandly
smiling in the most beautiful new clothes and little gloves
and boots. Wonderful scarfs, laces, and jewels glittered
about her. She had always a new bonnet on, and flowers
bloomed perpetually in it, or else magnificent curling
ostrich feathers, soft and snowy as camellias. She nodded
twice or thrice patronizingly to the little boy, who looked
up from his dinner or from the pictures of soldiers he was
painting. When she left the room, an odour of rose, or
some other magical fragrance, lingered about the nursery.
She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to his
father--to all the world: to be worshipped and admired
at a distance. To drive with that lady in the carriage was
an awful rite: he sat up in the back seat and did not dare
to speak: he gazed with all his eyes at the beautifully
dressed Princess opposite to him. Gentlemen on splendid
prancing horses came up and smiled and talked with her.
How her eyes beamed upon all of them! Her hand used
to quiver and wave gracefully as they passed. When
he went out with her he had his new red dress on. His old
brown holland was good enough when he stayed at home.
Sometimes, when she was away, and Dolly his maid was
making his bed, he came into his mother's room. It was as
the abode of a fairy to him--a mystic chamber of
splendour and delights. There in the wardrobe hung those
wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted. There
was the jewel-case, silver-clasped, and the wondrous
bronze hand on the dressing-table, glistening all over
with a hundred rings. There was the cheval-glass, that
miracle of art, in which he could just see his own
wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly
distorted, and as if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting
the pillows of the bed. Oh, thou poor lonely little
benighted boy! Mother is the name for God in the lips and
hearts of little children; and here was one who was
worshipping a stone!
Now Rawdon Crawley, rascal as the Colonel was, had
certain manly tendencies of affection in his heart and
could love a child and a woman still. For Rawdon minor
he had a great secret tenderness then, which did not
escape Rebecca, though she did not talk about it to her
husband. It did not annoy her: she was too good-
natured. It only increased her scorn for him. He felt
somehow ashamed of this paternal softness and hid it
from his wife--only indulging in it when alone with the
boy.
He used to take him out of mornings when they would
go to the stables together and to the park. Little Lord
Southdown, the best-natured of men, who would make
you a present of the hat from his head, and whose main
occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that he might
give them away afterwards, bought the little chap a
pony not much bigger than a large rat, the donor said,
and on this little black Shetland pygmy young Rawdon's
great father was pleased to mount the boy, and to walk
by his side in the park. It pleased him to see his old
quarters, and his old fellow-guardsmen at Knightsbridge:
he had begun to think of his bachelorhood with
something like regret. The old troopers were glad to recognize
their ancient officer and dandle the little colonel.
Colonel Crawley found dining at mess and with his
brother-officers very pleasant. "Hang it, I ain't clever
enough for her--I know it. She won't miss me," he used to
say: and he was right, his wife did not miss him.
Rebecca was fond of her husband. She was always
perfectly good-humoured and kind to him. She did not
even show her scorn much for him; perhaps she liked
him the better for being a fool. He was her upper servant
and maitre d'hotel. He went on her errands; obeyed
her orders without question; drove in the carriage in the
ring with her without repining; took her to the opera-box,
solaced himself at his club during the performance, and
came punctually back to fetch her when due. He would
have liked her to be a little fonder of the boy, but even
to that he reconciled himself. "Hang it, you know she's so
clever," he said, "and I'm not literary and that, you
know." For, as we have said before, it requires no great
wisdom to be able to win at cards and billiards, and
Rawdon made no pretensions to any other sort of skill.
When the companion came, his domestic duties became
very light. His wife encouraged him to dine
abroad: she would let him off duty at the opera. "Don't
stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear,"
she would say. "Some men are coming who will only bore
you. I would not ask them, but you know it's for your
good, and now I have a sheep-dog, I need not be afraid
to be alone."
"A sheep-dog--a companion! Becky Sharp with a
companion! Isn't it good fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to
herself. The notion tickled hugely her sense of humour.
One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little
son, and the pony were taking their accustomed walk in
the park, they passed by an old acquaintance of the
Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who was in
conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held
a boy in his arms about the age of little Rawdon. This
other youngster had seized hold of the Waterloo medal
which the Corporal wore, and was examining it with
delight.
"Good morning, your Honour," said Clink, in reply to
the "How do, Clink?" of the Colonel. "This ere young
gentleman is about the little Colonel's age, sir,"
continued the corporal.
"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old
gentleman, who carried the boy. "Wasn't he, Georgy?"
"Yes," said Georgy. He and the little chap on the pony
were looking at each other with all their might--solemnly
scanning each other as children do.
"In a line regiment," Clink said with a patronizing air.
"He was a Captain in the --th regiment," said the old
gentleman rather pompously. "Captain George Osborne,
sir--perhaps you knew him. He died the death of a
hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant."
Colonel Crawley blushed quite red. "I knew him very
well, sir," he said, "and his wife, his dear little wife,
sir--how is she?"
"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman,
putting down the boy and taking out a card with great
solemnity, which he handed to the Colonel. On it
written--
"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and
Anti-Cinder Coal Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames
Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages, Fulham Road West."
Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland
pony.
"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor
from the saddle.
"Yes," said Georgy. The Colonel, who had been
looking at him with some interest, took up the child
and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor.
"Take hold of him, Georgy," he said--"take my little
boy round the waist--his name is Rawdon." And both the
children began to laugh.
"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's
day, sir," said the good-natured Corporal; and the
Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr. Sedley with his umbrella,
walked by the side of the children.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
A Family in a Very Small Way
We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from
Knightsbridge towards Fulham, and will stop and make
inquiries at that village regarding some friends whom we
have left there. How is Mrs. Amelia after the storm of
Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has come of
Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about
her premises? And is there any news of the Collector
of Boggley Wollah? The facts concerning the latter are
briefly these:
Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India
not long after his escape from Brussels. Either his
furlough was up, or he dreaded to meet any witnesses of his
Waterloo flight. However it might be, he went back to his
duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken
up his residence at St. Helena, where Jos saw the ex-
Emperor. To hear Mr. Sedley talk on board ship you
would have supposed that it was not the first time he and
the Corsican had met, and that the civilian had bearded
the French General at Mount St. John. He had a
thousand anecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the
position of every regiment and the loss which each
had incurred. He did not deny that he had been
concerned in those victories--that he had been with the
army and carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington.
And he described what the Duke did and said on
every conceivable moment of the day of Waterloo, with
such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments
and proceedings that it was clear he must have been by
the conqueror's side throughout the day; though, as a
non-combatant, his name was not mentioned in the
public documents relative to the battle. Perhaps he actually
worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged
with the army; certain it is that he made a prodigious
sensation for some time at Calcutta, and was called
Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his subsequent stay in
Bengal.
The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those
unlucky horses were paid without question by him and
his agents. He never was heard to allude to the bargain,
and nobody knows for a certainty what became
of the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his
Belgian servant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one
which Jos rode, at Valenciennes sometime during the
autumn of 1815.
Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred
and twenty pounds yearly to his parents at Fulham. It
was the chief support of the old couple; for Mr. Sedley's
speculations in life subsequent to his bankruptcy did not
by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's
fortune. He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant,
a commission lottery agent, &c., &c. He sent round
prospectuses to his friends whenever he took a new trade,
and ordered a new brass plate for the door, and talked
pompously about making his fortune still. But Fortune
never came back to the feeble and stricken old man. One
by one his friends dropped off, and were weary of
buying dear coals and bad wine from him; and there
was only his wife in all the world who fancied, when he
tottered off to the City of a morning, that he was still
doing any business there. At evening he crawled slowly
back; and he used to go of nights to a little club at a
tavern, where he disposed of the finances of the nation.
It was wonderful to hear him talk about millions, and
agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was
doing, and Baring Brothers. He talked of such vast sums
that the gentlemen of the club (the apothecary, the
undertaker, the great carpenter and builder, the parish clerk,
who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp, our
old acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman. "I was
better off once, sir," he did not fail to tell everybody who
"used the room." "My son, sir, is at this minute chief
magistrate of Ramgunge in the Presidency of Bengal, and
touching his four thousand rupees per mensem. My
daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked. I might
draw upon my son, the first magistrate, sir, for two
thousand pounds to-morrow, and Alexander would cash my
bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir. But the Sedleys
were always a proud family." You and I, my dear
reader, may drop into this condition one day: for have
not many of our friends attained it? Our luck may fail:
our powers forsake us: our place on the boards be taken
by better and younger mimes--the chance of life roll
away and leave us shattered and stranded. Then men
will walk across the road when they meet you--or, worse
still, hold you out a couple of fingers and patronize you
in a pitying way--then you will know, as soon as your
back is turned, that your friend begins with a "Poor
devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances
that chap has thrown away!" Well, well--a carriage and
three thousand a year is not the summit of the reward
nor the end of God's judgment of men. If quacks prosper
as often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed and
knaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill
luck and prosperity for all the world like the ablest and
most honest amongst us--I say, brother, the gifts and
pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be held of any great
account, and that it is probable . . . but we are
wandering out of the domain of the story.
Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would
have exerted it after her husband's ruin and, occupying
a large house, would have taken in boarders. The broken
Sedley would have acted well as the boarding-house
landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the titular lord
and master: the carver, house-steward, and humble
husband of the occupier of the dingy throne. I have seen
men of good brains and breeding, and of good hopes and
vigour once, who feasted squires and kept hunters in
their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for
rancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their
dreary tables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit
enough to bustle about for "a few select inmates to join
a cheerful musical family," such as one reads of in the
Times. She was content to lie on the shore where
fortune had stranded her--and you could see that the
career of this old couple was over.
I don't think they were unhappy. Perhaps they were
a little prouder in their downfall than in their prosperity.
Mrs. Sedley was always a great person for her landlady,
Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed many hours
with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The
Irish maid Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her
sauciness, her idleness, her reckless prodigality of kitchen
candles, her consumption of tea and sugar, and so forth
occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as the
doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and
the coachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a
housekeeper with a regiment of female domestics--her former
household, about which the good lady talked a hundred
times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley
had all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend.
She knew how each tenant of the cottages paid or
owed his little rent. She stepped aside when Mrs.
Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious family. She
flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's
lady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse
chaise. She had colloquies with the greengrocer about
the pennorth of turnips which Mr. Sedley loved; she kept
an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; and
made visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of
oxen very likely with less ado than was made about
Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton: and she counted the
potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days, dressed
in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's
Sermons in the evening.
On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays
from taking such a pleasure, it was old Sedley's
delight to take out his little grandson Georgy to the
neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see the soldiers
or to feed the ducks. Georgy loved the redcoats, and his
grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous
soldier, and introduced him to many sergeants and others
with Waterloo medals on their breasts, to whom the
old grandfather pompously presented the child as the
son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously
on the glorious eighteenth. He has been known to treat
some of these non-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of
porter, and, indeed, in their first Sunday walks was
disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorging the boy with
apples and parliament, to the detriment of his health--
until Amelia declared that George should never go out
with his grandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly,
and on his honour, not to give the child any cakes,
lollipops, or stall produce whatever.
Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort
of coolness about this boy, and a secret jealousy--for
one evening in George's very early days, Amelia, who
had been seated at work in their little parlour scarcely
remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran
upstairs instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the
child, who had been asleep until that moment--and
there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of surreptitiously
administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant. Amelia, the
gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she
found this meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled
and trembled all over with anger. Her cheeks, ordinarily
pale, now flushed up, until they were as red as they used
to be when she was a child of twelve years old. She
seized the baby out of her mother's arms and then
grasped at the bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her,
furious, and holding the guilty tea-spoon.
Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place.
"I will NOT have baby poisoned, Mamma," cried Emmy,
rocking the infant about violently with both her arms
round him and turning with flashing eyes at her mother.
"Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language
to me?"
"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr.
Pestler sends for hi n. He told me that Daffy's Elixir was
poison."
"Very good: you think I'm a murderess then," replied
Mrs. Sedley. "This is the language you use to your mother.
I have met with misfortunes: I have sunk low in life: I
have kept my carriage, and now walk on foot: but I did
not know I was a murderess before, and thank you for the
NEWS."
"Mamma," said the poor girl, who was always ready for
tears--"you shouldn't be hard upon me. I--I didn't mean
--I mean, I did not wish to say you would to any
wrong to this dear child, only--"
"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in
which case I had better go to the Old Bailey. Though I
didn't poison YOU, when you were a child, but gave you
the best of education and the most expensive masters
money could procure. Yes; I've nursed five children and
buried three; and the one I loved the best of all, and
tended through croup, and teething, and measles, and
hooping-cough, and brought up with foreign masters,
regardless of expense, and with accomplishments at Minerva
that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire their house.
Before Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's
house and cellar in Park Lane, that lady had had
for a butler a Mr. Raggles, who was born on the family
estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was a younger
son of a gardener there. By good conduct, a handsome
person and calves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose
from the knife-board to the footboard of the carriage;
from the footboard to the butler's pantry. When he had
been a certain number of years at the head of Miss
Crawley's establishment, where he had had good wages,
fat perquisites, and plenty of opportunities of saving, he
announced that he was about to contract a matrimonial
alliance with a late cook of Miss Crawley's, who had
subsisted in an honourable manner by the exercise of a
mangle, and the keeping of a small greengrocer's shop in
the neighbourhood. The truth is, that the ceremony had
been clandestinely performed some years back; although
the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was first brought to
Miss Crawley by a little boy and girl of seven and eight
years of age, whose continual presence in the kitchen
had attracted the attention of Miss Briggs.
Mr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the
superintendence of the small shop and the greens. He
added milk and cream, eggs and country-fed pork to his
stores, contenting himself whilst other retired butlers
were vending spirits in public houses, by dealing in the
simplest country produce. And having a good connection
amongst the butlers in the neighbourhood, and a
snug back parlour where he and Mrs. Raggles received
them, his milk, cream, and eggs got to be adopted by
many of the fraternity, and his profits increased every
year. Year after year he quietly and modestly amassed
money, and when at length that snug and complete bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street, May Fair, lately
the residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace,
gone abroad, with its rich and appropriate furniture by
the first makers, was brought to the hammer, who should
go in and purchase the lease and furniture of the house
but Charles Raggles? A part of the money he borrowed, it
is true, and at rather a high interest, from a brother
butler, but the chief part he paid down, and it was with
no small pride that Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in
a bed of carved mahogany, with silk curtains, with a
prodigious cheval glass opposite to her, and a wardrobe
which would contain her, and Raggles, and all the family.
Of course, they did not intend to occupy permanently
an apartment so splendid. It was in order to let the house
again that Raggles purchased it. As soon as a tenant
was found, he subsided into the greengrocer's shop once
more; but a happy thing it was for him to walk out of
that tenement and into Curzon Street, and there survey
his house--his own house--with geraniums in the
window and a carved bronze knocker. The footman
occasionally lounging at the area railing, treated him with
respect; the cook took her green stuff at his house and
called him Mr. Landlord, and there was not one thing
the tenants did, or one dish which they had for dinner,
that Raggles might not know of, if he liked.
He was a good man; good and happy. The house
brought him in so handsome a yearly income that he was
determined to send his children to good schools, and
accordingly, regardless of expense, Charles was sent to
boarding at Dr. Swishtail's, Sugar-cane Lodge, and
little Matilda to Miss Peckover's, Laurentinum House,
Clapham.
Raggles loved and adored the Crawley family as the
author of all his prosperity in life. He had a silhouette of
his mistress in his back shop, and a drawing of the
Porter's Lodge at Queen's Crawley, done by that spinster
herself in India ink--and the only addition he made to
the decorations of the Curzon Street House was a print
of Queen's Crawley in Hampshire, the seat of Sir Walpole
Crawley, Baronet, who was represented in a gilded car
drawn by six white horses, and passing by a lake
covered with swans, and barges containing ladies in hoops,
and musicians with flags and penwigs. Indeed Raggles
thought there was no such palace in all the world, and
no such august family.
As luck would have it, Raggles' house in Curzon Street
was to let when Rawdon and his wife returned to London.
The Colonel knew it and its owner quite well; the latter's
connection with the Crawley family had been kept up
constantly, for Raggles helped Mr. Bowls whenever Miss
Crawley received friends. And the old man not only let
his house to the Colonel but officiated as his butler
whenever he had company; Mrs. Raggles operating in the
kitchen below and sending up dinners of which old Miss
Crawley herself might have approved. This was the way,
then, Crawley got his house for nothing; for though
Raggles had to pay taxes and rates, and the interest of the
mortgage to the brother butler; and the insurance of his
life; and the charges for his children at school; and the
value of the meat and drink which his own family--and
for a time that of Colonel Crawley too--consumed; and
though the poor wretch was utterly ruined by the
transaction, his children being flung on the streets, and himself
driven into the Fleet Prison: yet somebody must pay even
for gentlemen who live for nothing a year--and so it was
this unlucky Raggles was made the representative of
Colonel Crawley's defective capital.
I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and
to ruin by great practitioners in Crawlers way?--how
many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen,
condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched
little sums and cheat for a few shillings? When we read
that a noble nobleman has left for the Continent, or that
another noble nobleman has an execution in his house
--and that one or other owes six or seven millions, the
defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim in
the vastness of his ruin. But who pities a poor barber who
can't get his money for powdering the footmen's heads;
or a poor carpenter who has ruined himself by fixing up
ornaments and pavilions for my lady's dejeuner; or the
poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes, and
who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the
liveries ready, which my lord has done him the honour
to bespeak? When the great house tumbles down, these
miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed: as they say in
the old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself,
he sends plenty of other souls thither.
Rawdon and his wife generously gave their patronage
to all such of Miss Crawley's tradesmen and purveyors
as chose to serve them. Some were willing,enough,
especially the poor ones. It was wonderful to see the
pertinacity with which the washerwoman from Tooting
brought the cart every Saturday, and her bills week after week.
Mr. Raggles himself had to supply the greengroceries. The
bill for servants' porter at the Fortune of War public
house is a curiosity in the chronicles of beer. Every
servant also was owed the greater part of his wages, and
thus kept up perforce an interest in the house. Nobody in
fact was paid. Not the blacksmith who opened the lock;
nor the glazier who mended the pane; nor the jobber who
let the carriage; nor the groom who drove it; nor the
butcher who provided the leg of mutton; nor the coals
which roasted it; nor the cook who basted it; nor the
servants who ate it: and this I am given to understand is not
unfrequently the way in which people live elegantly on
nothing a year.
In a little town such things cannot be done without
remark. We know there the quantity of milk our
neighbour takes and espy the joint or the fowls which are
going in for his dinner. So, probably, 200 and 202 in Curzon
Street might know what was going on in the house
between them, the servants communicating through the
area-railings; but Crawley and his wife and his friends
did not know 200 and 202. When you came to 201 there
was a hearty welcome, a kind smile, a good dinner, and
a jolly shake of the hand from the host and hostess there,
just for all the world as if they had been undisputed
masters of three or four thousand a year--and so they were,
not in money, but in produce and labour--if they did
not pay for the mutton, they had it: if they did not give
bullion in exchange for their wine, how should we know?
Never was better claret at any man's table than at honest
Rawdon's; dinners more gay and neatly served. His
drawing-rooms were the prettiest, little, modest salons
conceivable: they were decorated with the greatest taste,
and a thousand knick-knacks from Paris, by Rebecca:
and when she sat at her piano trilling songs with a
lightsome heart, the stranger voted himself in a little
paradise of domestic comfort and agreed that, if the
husband was rather stupid, the wife was charming, and the
dinners the pleasantest in the world.
Rebecca's wit, cleverness, and flippancy made her speedily
the vogue in London among a certain class. You saw
demure chariots at her door, out of which stepped very
great people. You beheld her carriage in the park,
surrounded by dandies of note. The little box in the third
tier of the opera was crowded with heads constantly
changing; but it must be confessed that the ladies held
aloof from her, and that their doors were shut to our
little adventurer.
With regard to the world of female fashion and its
customs, the present writer of course can only speak at
second hand. A man can no more penetrate or under-
stand those mysteries than he can know what the ladies
talk about when they go upstairs after dinner. It is only
by inquiry and perseverance that one sometimes gets
hints of those secrets; and by a similar diligence every
person who treads the Pall Mall pavement and frequents
the clubs of this metropolis knows, either through his
own experience or through some acquaintance with whom
he plays at billiards or shares the joint, something about
the genteel world of London, and how, as there are men
(such as Rawdon Crawley, whose position we mentioned
before) who cut a good figure to the eyes of the ignorant
world and to the apprentices in the park, who behold
them consorting with the most notorious dandies there,
so there are ladies, who may be called men's women,
being welcomed entirely by all the gentlemen and cut
or slighted by all their wives. Mrs. Firebrace is of this sort;
the lady with the beautiful fair ringlets whom you see
every day in Hyde Park, surrounded by the greatest and
most famous dandies of this empire. Mrs. Rockwood is
another, whose parties are announced laboriously in the
fashionable newspapers and with whom you see that all
sorts of ambassadors and great noblemen dine; and
many more might be mentioned had they to do with the
history at present in hand. But while simple folks who
are out of the world, or country people with a taste for
the genteel, behold these ladies in their seeming glory in
public places, or envy them from afar off, persons who
are better instructed could inform them that these envied
ladies have no more chance of establishing themselves
in "society," than the benighted squire's wife in
Somersetshire who reads of their doings in the Morning Post.
Men living about London are aware of these awful truths.
You hear how pitilessly many ladies of seeming rank and
wealth are excluded from this "society." The frantic
efforts which they make to enter this circle, the meannesses
to which they submit, the insults which they undergo,
are matters of wonder to those who take human or
womankind for a study; and the pursuit of fashion under
difficulties would be a fine theme for any very great
person who had the wit, the leisure, and the knowledge of
the English language necessary for the compiling of
such a history.
Now the few female acquaintances whom Mrs. Crawley
had known abroad not only declined to visit her when
she came to this side of the Channel, but cut her severely
when they met in public places. It was curious to see how
the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether
a pleasant study to Rebecca. When Lady Bareacres met
her in the waiting-room at the opera, she gathered her
daughters about her as if they would be contaminated
by a touch of Becky, and retreating a step or two, placed
herself in front of them, and stared at her little enemy.
To stare Becky out of countenance required a severer
glance than even the frigid old Bareacres could shoot out
of her dismal eyes. When Lady de la Mole, who had ridden
a score of times by Becky's side at Brussels, met Mrs.
Crawley's open carriage in Hyde Park, her Ladyship was
quite blind, and could not in the least recognize her
former friend. Even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the banker's wife,
cut her at church. Becky went regularly to church now; it
was edifying to see her enter there with Rawdon by her
side, carrying a couple of large gilt prayer-books, and
afterwards going through the ceremony with the gravest
resignation.
Rawdon at first felt very acutely the slights which were
passed upon his wife, and was inclined to be gloomy and
savage. He talked of calling out the husbands or brothers
of every one of the insolent women who did not pay a
proper respect to his wife; and it was only by the strongest commands and entreaties on her part that he was
brought into keeping a decent behaviour. "You can't
shoot me into society," she said good-naturedly. "Remember,
my dear, that I was but a governess, and you, you
poor silly old man, have the worst reputation for debt, and
dice, and all sorts of wickedness. We shall get quite as
many friends as we want by and by, and in the meanwhile
you must be a good boy and obey your schoolmistress in
everything she tells you to do. When we heard that your
aunt had left almost everything to Pitt and his wife, do
you remember what a rage you were in? You would
have told all Paris, if I had not made you keep your
temper, and where would you have been now?--in
prison at Ste. Pelagie for debt, and not established in
London in a handsome house, with every comfort about
you--you were in such a fury you were ready to murder
your brother, you wicked Cain you, and what good
would have come of remaining angry? All the rage in the
world won't get us your aunt's money; and it is much
better that we should be friends with your brother's
family than enemies, as those foolish Butes are. When
your father dies, Queen's Crawley will be a pleasant house
for you and me to pass the winter in. If we are ruined,
you can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can
be a governess to Lady Jane's children. Ruined!
fiddlede-dee! I will get you a good place before that; or Pitt
and his little boy will die, and we will be Sir Rawdon and my
lady. While there is life, there is hope, my dear, and I
intend to make a man of you yet. Who sold your horses for
you? Who paid your debts for you?" Rawdon was obliged
to confess that he owed all these benefits to his wife, and
to trust himself to her guidance for the future.
Indeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that
money for which all her relatives had been fighting so
eagerly was finally left to Pitt, Bute Crawley, who found
that only five thousand pounds had been left to him
instead of the twenty upon which he calculated, was in
such a fury at his disappointment that he vented it in
savage abuse upon his nephew; and the quarrel always
rankling between them ended in an utter breach of
intercourse. Rawdon Crawley's conduct, on the other hand,
who got but a hundred pounds, was such as to astonish
his brother and delight his sister-in-law, who was
disposed to look kindly upon all the members of her
husband's family. He wrote to his brother a very frank, manly,
good-humoured letter from Paris. He was aware, he said,
that by his own marriage he had forfeited his aunt's
favour; and though he did not disguise his disappointment
that she should have been so entirely relentless towards
him, he was glad that the money was still kept in their
branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother
on his good fortune. He sent his affectionate remembrances
to his sister, and hoped to have her good-will for
Mrs. Rawdon; and the letter concluded with a postscript
to Pitt in the latter lady's own handwriting. She, too,
begged to join in her husband's congratulations. She should
ever remember Mr. Crawley's kindness to her in early
days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress of
his little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the
tenderest interest. She wished him every happiness in his
married life, and, asking his permission to offer her
remembrances to Lady Jane (of whose goodness all the
world informed her), she hoped that one day she might
be allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt,
and begged to bespeak for him their good-will and
protection.
Pitt Crawley received this communication very
graciously--more graciously than Miss Crawley had received
some of Rebecca's previous compositions in Rawdon's
handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was so charmed
with the letter that she expected her husband would
instantly divide his aunt's legacy into two equal portions
and send off one-half to his brother at Paris.
To her Ladyship's surprise, however, Pitt declined to
accommodate his brother with a cheque for thirty
thousand pounds. But he made Rawdon a handsome offer
of his hand whenever the latter should come to England
and choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for
her good opinion of himself and Lady Jane, he graciously
pronounced his willingness to take any opportunity to
serve her little boy.
Thus an almost reconciliation was brought about
between the brothers. When Rebecca came to town Pitt
and his wife were not in London. Many a time she drove
by the old door in Park Lane to see whether they had
taken possession of Miss Crawley's house there. But the
new family did not make its appearance; it was only
through Raggles that she heard of their movements--how
Miss Crawley's domestics had been dismissed with decent
gratuities, and how Mr. Pitt had only once made his
appearance in London, when he stopped for a few days
at the house, did business with his lawyers there, and sold
off all Miss Crawley's French novels to a bookseller out
of Bond Street. Becky had reasons of her own which
caused her to long for the arrival of her new relation.
"When Lady Jane comes," thought she, "she shall be my
sponsor in London society; and as for the women! bah!
the women will ask me when they find the men want to
see me."
An article as necessary to a lady in this position as her
brougham or her bouquet is her companion. I have
always admired the way in which the tender creatures, who
cannot exist without sympathy, hire an exceedingly plain
friend of their own sex from whom they are almost
inseparable. The sight of that inevitable woman in her
faded gown seated behind her dear friend in the opera-
box, or occupying the back seat of the barouche, is
always a wholesome and moral one to me, as jolly a
reminder as that of the Death's-head which figured in
the repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic
memorial of Vanity Fair. What? even battered, brazen,
beautiful, conscienceless, heartless, Mrs. Firebrace, whose
father died of her shame: even lovely, daring Mrs.
Mantrap, who will ride at any fence which any man in
England will take, and who drives her greys in the
park, while her mother keeps a huckster's stall in Bath
still--even those who are so bold, one might fancy
they could face anything dare not face the world without
a female friend. They must have somebody to cling to, the
affectionate creatures! And you will hardly see them in
any public place without a shabby companion in a dyed
silk, sitting somewhere in the shade close behind them.
"Rawdon," said Becky, very late one night, as a party
of gentlemen were seated round her crackling drawing-
room fire (for the men came to her house to finish the
night; and she had ice and coffee for them, the best in
London): "I must have a sheep-dog."
"A what?" said Rawdon, looking up from an ecarte
table.
"A sheep-dog!" said young Lord Southdown. "My dear
Mrs. Crawley, what a fancy! Why not have a Danish
dog? I know of one as big as a camel-leopard, by Jove.
It would almost pull your brougham. Or a Persian
greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug
that would go into one of Lord Steyne's snuff-boxes?
There's a man at Bayswater got one with such a nose that
you might--I mark the king and play--that you might
hang your hat on it."
"I mark the trick," Rawdon gravely said. He attended
to his game commonly and didn't much meddle with
the conversation, except when it was about horses and
betting.
"What CAN you want with a shepherd's dog?" the lively
little Southdown continued.
"I mean a MORAL shepherd's dog," said Becky, laughing
and looking up at Lord Steyne.
"What the devil's that?" said his Lordship.
"A dog to keep the wolves off me," Rebecca continued.
"A companion."
"Dear little innocent lamb, you want one," said the
marquis; and his jaw thrust out, and he began to grin
hideously, his little eyes leering towards Rebecca.
The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire
sipping coffee. The fire crackled and blazed pleasantly
There was a score of candles sparkling round the mantel
piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of gilt and bronze and
porcelain. They lighted up Rebecca's figure to admiration,
as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy
flowers. She was in a pink dress that looked as fresh as
a rose; her dazzling white arms and shoulders were half-
covered with a thin hazy scarf through which they
sparkled; her hair hung in curls round her neck; one of her
little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp folds of the
silk: the prettiest little foot in the prettiest little sandal
in the finest silk stocking in the world.
The candles lighted up Lord Steyne's shining bald head,
which was fringed with red hair. He had thick bushy
eyebrows, with little twinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded
by a thousand wrinkles. His jaw was underhung, and
when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded
themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin.
He had been dining with royal personages, and wore
his garter and ribbon. A short man was his Lordship,
broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness
of his foot and ankle, and always caressing his garter-
knee.
"And so the shepherd is not enough," said he, "to
defend his lambkin?"
"The shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going
to his clubs," answered Becky, laughing.
" 'Gad, what a debauched Corydon!" said my lord--
"what a mouth for a pipe!"
"I take your three to two," here said Rawdon, at the
card-table.
"Hark at Meliboeus," snarled the noble marquis; "he's
pastorally occupied too: he's shearing a Southdown.
What an innocent mutton, hey? Damme, what a snowy
fleece!"
Rebecca's eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour.
"My lord," she said, "you are a knight of the Order."
He had the collar round his neck, indeed--a gift of the
restored princes of Spain.
Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his
daring and his success at play. He had sat up two days
and two nights with Mr. Fox at hazard. He had won
money of the most august personages of the realm: he
had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-
table; but he did not like an allusion to those bygone
fredaines. Rebecca saw the scowl gathering over his heavy
brow.
She rose up from her sofa and went and took his coffee
cup out of his hand with a little curtsey. "Yes," she said,
"I must get a watchdog. But he won't bark at YOU.
And, going into the other drawing-room, she sat down to
the piano and began to sing little French songs in such a
charming, thrilling voice that the mollified nobleman
speedily followed her into that chamber, and might be seen
nodding his head and bowing time over her.
Rawdon and his friend meanwhile played ecarte until
they had enough. The Colonel won; but, say that he won
ever so much and often, nights like these, which occurred
many times in the week--his wife having all the talk and
all the admiration, and he sitting silent without the circle,
not comprehending a word of the jokes, the allusions, the
mystical language within--must have been rather
wearisome to the ex-dragoon.
"How is Mrs. Crawley's husband?" Lord Steyne used
to say to him by way of a good day when they met; and
indeed that was now his avocation in life. He was
Colonel Crawley no more. He was Mrs. Crawley's husband.
About the little Rawdon, if nothing has been said all
this while, it is because he is hidden upstairs in a garret
somewhere, or has crawled below into the kitchen for
companionship. His mother scarcely ever took notice of
him. He passed the days with his French bonne as long
as that domestic remained in Mr. Crawley's family, and
when the Frenchwoman went away, the little fellow,
howling in the loneliness of the night, had compassion taken
on him by a housemaid, who took him out of his solitary
nursery into her bed in the garret hard by and comforted
him.
Rebecca, my Lord Steyne, and one or two more were
in the drawing-room taking tea after the opera, when this
shouting was heard overhead. "It's my cherub crying for
his nurse," she said. She did not offer to move to go and
see the child. "Don't agitate your feelings by going to look
for him," said Lord Steyne sardonically. "Bah!" replied
the other, with a sort of blush, "he'll cry himself to sleep";
and they fell to talking about the opera.
Rawdon had stolen off though, to look after his son
and heir; and came back to the company when he found
that honest Dolly was consoling the child. The Colonel's
dressing-room was in those upper regions. He used to see
the boy there in private. They had interviews together
every morning when he shaved; Rawdon minor sitting on a
box by his father's side and watching the operation with
never-ceasing pleasure. He and the sire were great friends.
The father would bring him sweetmeats from the dessert
and hide them in a certain old epaulet box, where the
child went to seek them, and laughed with joy on
discovering the treasure; laughed, but not too loud: for mamma
was below asleep and must not be disturbed. She did not
go to rest till very late and seldom rose till after noon.
Rawdon bought the boy plenty of picture-books and
crammed his nursery with toys. Its walls were covered with
pictures pasted up by the father's own hand and purchased
by him for ready money. When he was off duty with
Mrs. Rawdon in the park, he would sit up here, passing
hours with the boy; who rode on his chest, who pulled his
great mustachios as if they were driving-reins, and spent
days with him in indefatigable gambols. The room was
a low room, and once, when the child was not five years
old, his father, who was tossing him wildly up in his
arms, hit the poor little chap's skull so violently against
the ceiling that he almost dropped the child, so terrified
was he at the disaster.
Rawdon minor had made up his face for a tremendous
howl--the severity of the blow indeed authorized that
indulgence; but just as he was going to begin, the father
interposed.
"For God's sake, Rawdy, don't wake Mamma," he
cried. And the child, looking in a very hard and piteous
way at his father, bit his lips, clenched his hands, and
didn't cry a bit. Rawdon told that story at the clubs, at
the mess, to everybody in town. "By Gad, sir," he
explained to the public in general, "what a good plucked one
that boy of mine is--what a trump he is! I half-sent his
head through the ceiling, by Gad, and he wouldn't cry for
fear of disturbing his mother."
Sometimes--once or twice in a week--that lady visited
the upper regions in which the child lived. She came like
a vivified figure out of the Magasin des Modes--blandly
smiling in the most beautiful new clothes and little gloves
and boots. Wonderful scarfs, laces, and jewels glittered
about her. She had always a new bonnet on, and flowers
bloomed perpetually in it, or else magnificent curling
ostrich feathers, soft and snowy as camellias. She nodded
twice or thrice patronizingly to the little boy, who looked
up from his dinner or from the pictures of soldiers he was
painting. When she left the room, an odour of rose, or
some other magical fragrance, lingered about the nursery.
She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to his
father--to all the world: to be worshipped and admired
at a distance. To drive with that lady in the carriage was
an awful rite: he sat up in the back seat and did not dare
to speak: he gazed with all his eyes at the beautifully
dressed Princess opposite to him. Gentlemen on splendid
prancing horses came up and smiled and talked with her.
How her eyes beamed upon all of them! Her hand used
to quiver and wave gracefully as they passed. When
he went out with her he had his new red dress on. His old
brown holland was good enough when he stayed at home.
Sometimes, when she was away, and Dolly his maid was
making his bed, he came into his mother's room. It was as
the abode of a fairy to him--a mystic chamber of
splendour and delights. There in the wardrobe hung those
wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted. There
was the jewel-case, silver-clasped, and the wondrous
bronze hand on the dressing-table, glistening all over
with a hundred rings. There was the cheval-glass, that
miracle of art, in which he could just see his own
wondering head and the reflection of Dolly (queerly
distorted, and as if up in the ceiling), plumping and patting
the pillows of the bed. Oh, thou poor lonely little
benighted boy! Mother is the name for God in the lips and
hearts of little children; and here was one who was
worshipping a stone!
Now Rawdon Crawley, rascal as the Colonel was, had
certain manly tendencies of affection in his heart and
could love a child and a woman still. For Rawdon minor
he had a great secret tenderness then, which did not
escape Rebecca, though she did not talk about it to her
husband. It did not annoy her: she was too good-
natured. It only increased her scorn for him. He felt
somehow ashamed of this paternal softness and hid it
from his wife--only indulging in it when alone with the
boy.
He used to take him out of mornings when they would
go to the stables together and to the park. Little Lord
Southdown, the best-natured of men, who would make
you a present of the hat from his head, and whose main
occupation in life was to buy knick-knacks that he might
give them away afterwards, bought the little chap a
pony not much bigger than a large rat, the donor said,
and on this little black Shetland pygmy young Rawdon's
great father was pleased to mount the boy, and to walk
by his side in the park. It pleased him to see his old
quarters, and his old fellow-guardsmen at Knightsbridge:
he had begun to think of his bachelorhood with
something like regret. The old troopers were glad to recognize
their ancient officer and dandle the little colonel.
Colonel Crawley found dining at mess and with his
brother-officers very pleasant. "Hang it, I ain't clever
enough for her--I know it. She won't miss me," he used to
say: and he was right, his wife did not miss him.
Rebecca was fond of her husband. She was always
perfectly good-humoured and kind to him. She did not
even show her scorn much for him; perhaps she liked
him the better for being a fool. He was her upper servant
and maitre d'hotel. He went on her errands; obeyed
her orders without question; drove in the carriage in the
ring with her without repining; took her to the opera-box,
solaced himself at his club during the performance, and
came punctually back to fetch her when due. He would
have liked her to be a little fonder of the boy, but even
to that he reconciled himself. "Hang it, you know she's so
clever," he said, "and I'm not literary and that, you
know." For, as we have said before, it requires no great
wisdom to be able to win at cards and billiards, and
Rawdon made no pretensions to any other sort of skill.
When the companion came, his domestic duties became
very light. His wife encouraged him to dine
abroad: she would let him off duty at the opera. "Don't
stay and stupefy yourself at home to-night, my dear,"
she would say. "Some men are coming who will only bore
you. I would not ask them, but you know it's for your
good, and now I have a sheep-dog, I need not be afraid
to be alone."
"A sheep-dog--a companion! Becky Sharp with a
companion! Isn't it good fun?" thought Mrs. Crawley to
herself. The notion tickled hugely her sense of humour.
One Sunday morning, as Rawdon Crawley, his little
son, and the pony were taking their accustomed walk in
the park, they passed by an old acquaintance of the
Colonel's, Corporal Clink, of the regiment, who was in
conversation with a friend, an old gentleman, who held
a boy in his arms about the age of little Rawdon. This
other youngster had seized hold of the Waterloo medal
which the Corporal wore, and was examining it with
delight.
"Good morning, your Honour," said Clink, in reply to
the "How do, Clink?" of the Colonel. "This ere young
gentleman is about the little Colonel's age, sir,"
continued the corporal.
"His father was a Waterloo man, too," said the old
gentleman, who carried the boy. "Wasn't he, Georgy?"
"Yes," said Georgy. He and the little chap on the pony
were looking at each other with all their might--solemnly
scanning each other as children do.
"In a line regiment," Clink said with a patronizing air.
"He was a Captain in the --th regiment," said the old
gentleman rather pompously. "Captain George Osborne,
sir--perhaps you knew him. He died the death of a
hero, sir, fighting against the Corsican tyrant."
Colonel Crawley blushed quite red. "I knew him very
well, sir," he said, "and his wife, his dear little wife,
sir--how is she?"
"She is my daughter, sir," said the old gentleman,
putting down the boy and taking out a card with great
solemnity, which he handed to the Colonel. On it
written--
"Mr. Sedley, Sole Agent for the Black Diamond and
Anti-Cinder Coal Association, Bunker's Wharf, Thames
Street, and Anna-Maria Cottages, Fulham Road West."
Little Georgy went up and looked at the Shetland
pony.
"Should you like to have a ride?" said Rawdon minor
from the saddle.
"Yes," said Georgy. The Colonel, who had been
looking at him with some interest, took up the child
and put him on the pony behind Rawdon minor.
"Take hold of him, Georgy," he said--"take my little
boy round the waist--his name is Rawdon." And both the
children began to laugh.
"You won't see a prettier pair I think, THIS summer's
day, sir," said the good-natured Corporal; and the
Colonel, the Corporal, and old Mr. Sedley with his umbrella,
walked by the side of the children.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
A Family in a Very Small Way
We must suppose little George Osborne has ridden from
Knightsbridge towards Fulham, and will stop and make
inquiries at that village regarding some friends whom we
have left there. How is Mrs. Amelia after the storm of
Waterloo? Is she living and thriving? What has come of
Major Dobbin, whose cab was always hankering about
her premises? And is there any news of the Collector
of Boggley Wollah? The facts concerning the latter are
briefly these:
Our worthy fat friend Joseph Sedley returned to India
not long after his escape from Brussels. Either his
furlough was up, or he dreaded to meet any witnesses of his
Waterloo flight. However it might be, he went back to his
duties in Bengal very soon after Napoleon had taken
up his residence at St. Helena, where Jos saw the ex-
Emperor. To hear Mr. Sedley talk on board ship you
would have supposed that it was not the first time he and
the Corsican had met, and that the civilian had bearded
the French General at Mount St. John. He had a
thousand anecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the
position of every regiment and the loss which each
had incurred. He did not deny that he had been
concerned in those victories--that he had been with the
army and carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington.
And he described what the Duke did and said on
every conceivable moment of the day of Waterloo, with
such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments
and proceedings that it was clear he must have been by
the conqueror's side throughout the day; though, as a
non-combatant, his name was not mentioned in the
public documents relative to the battle. Perhaps he actually
worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged
with the army; certain it is that he made a prodigious
sensation for some time at Calcutta, and was called
Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his subsequent stay in
Bengal.
The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those
unlucky horses were paid without question by him and
his agents. He never was heard to allude to the bargain,
and nobody knows for a certainty what became
of the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his
Belgian servant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one
which Jos rode, at Valenciennes sometime during the
autumn of 1815.
Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred
and twenty pounds yearly to his parents at Fulham. It
was the chief support of the old couple; for Mr. Sedley's
speculations in life subsequent to his bankruptcy did not
by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's
fortune. He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant,
a commission lottery agent, &c., &c. He sent round
prospectuses to his friends whenever he took a new trade,
and ordered a new brass plate for the door, and talked
pompously about making his fortune still. But Fortune
never came back to the feeble and stricken old man. One
by one his friends dropped off, and were weary of
buying dear coals and bad wine from him; and there
was only his wife in all the world who fancied, when he
tottered off to the City of a morning, that he was still
doing any business there. At evening he crawled slowly
back; and he used to go of nights to a little club at a
tavern, where he disposed of the finances of the nation.
It was wonderful to hear him talk about millions, and
agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was
doing, and Baring Brothers. He talked of such vast sums
that the gentlemen of the club (the apothecary, the
undertaker, the great carpenter and builder, the parish clerk,
who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp, our
old acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman. "I was
better off once, sir," he did not fail to tell everybody who
"used the room." "My son, sir, is at this minute chief
magistrate of Ramgunge in the Presidency of Bengal, and
touching his four thousand rupees per mensem. My
daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked. I might
draw upon my son, the first magistrate, sir, for two
thousand pounds to-morrow, and Alexander would cash my
bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir. But the Sedleys
were always a proud family." You and I, my dear
reader, may drop into this condition one day: for have
not many of our friends attained it? Our luck may fail:
our powers forsake us: our place on the boards be taken
by better and younger mimes--the chance of life roll
away and leave us shattered and stranded. Then men
will walk across the road when they meet you--or, worse
still, hold you out a couple of fingers and patronize you
in a pitying way--then you will know, as soon as your
back is turned, that your friend begins with a "Poor
devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances
that chap has thrown away!" Well, well--a carriage and
three thousand a year is not the summit of the reward
nor the end of God's judgment of men. If quacks prosper
as often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed and
knaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill
luck and prosperity for all the world like the ablest and
most honest amongst us--I say, brother, the gifts and
pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be held of any great
account, and that it is probable . . . but we are
wandering out of the domain of the story.
Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would
have exerted it after her husband's ruin and, occupying
a large house, would have taken in boarders. The broken
Sedley would have acted well as the boarding-house
landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the titular lord
and master: the carver, house-steward, and humble
husband of the occupier of the dingy throne. I have seen
men of good brains and breeding, and of good hopes and
vigour once, who feasted squires and kept hunters in
their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for
rancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their
dreary tables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit
enough to bustle about for "a few select inmates to join
a cheerful musical family," such as one reads of in the
Times. She was content to lie on the shore where
fortune had stranded her--and you could see that the
career of this old couple was over.
I don't think they were unhappy. Perhaps they were
a little prouder in their downfall than in their prosperity.
Mrs. Sedley was always a great person for her landlady,
Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed many hours
with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The
Irish maid Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her
sauciness, her idleness, her reckless prodigality of kitchen
candles, her consumption of tea and sugar, and so forth
occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as the
doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and
the coachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a
housekeeper with a regiment of female domestics--her former
household, about which the good lady talked a hundred
times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley
had all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend.
She knew how each tenant of the cottages paid or
owed his little rent. She stepped aside when Mrs.
Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious family. She
flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's
lady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse
chaise. She had colloquies with the greengrocer about
the pennorth of turnips which Mr. Sedley loved; she kept
an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; and
made visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of
oxen very likely with less ado than was made about
Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton: and she counted the
potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days, dressed
in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's
Sermons in the evening.
On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays
from taking such a pleasure, it was old Sedley's
delight to take out his little grandson Georgy to the
neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see the soldiers
or to feed the ducks. Georgy loved the redcoats, and his
grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous
soldier, and introduced him to many sergeants and others
with Waterloo medals on their breasts, to whom the
old grandfather pompously presented the child as the
son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously
on the glorious eighteenth. He has been known to treat
some of these non-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of
porter, and, indeed, in their first Sunday walks was
disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorging the boy with
apples and parliament, to the detriment of his health--
until Amelia declared that George should never go out
with his grandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly,
and on his honour, not to give the child any cakes,
lollipops, or stall produce whatever.
Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort
of coolness about this boy, and a secret jealousy--for
one evening in George's very early days, Amelia, who
had been seated at work in their little parlour scarcely
remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran
upstairs instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the
child, who had been asleep until that moment--and
there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of surreptitiously
administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant. Amelia, the
gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she
found this meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled
and trembled all over with anger. Her cheeks, ordinarily
pale, now flushed up, until they were as red as they used
to be when she was a child of twelve years old. She
seized the baby out of her mother's arms and then
grasped at the bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her,
furious, and holding the guilty tea-spoon.
Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place.
"I will NOT have baby poisoned, Mamma," cried Emmy,
rocking the infant about violently with both her arms
round him and turning with flashing eyes at her mother.
"Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language
to me?"
"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr.
Pestler sends for hi n. He told me that Daffy's Elixir was
poison."
"Very good: you think I'm a murderess then," replied
Mrs. Sedley. "This is the language you use to your mother.
I have met with misfortunes: I have sunk low in life: I
have kept my carriage, and now walk on foot: but I did
not know I was a murderess before, and thank you for the
NEWS."
"Mamma," said the poor girl, who was always ready for
tears--"you shouldn't be hard upon me. I--I didn't mean
--I mean, I did not wish to say you would to any
wrong to this dear child, only--"
"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in
which case I had better go to the Old Bailey. Though I
didn't poison YOU, when you were a child, but gave you
the best of education and the most expensive masters
money could procure. Yes; I've nursed five children and
buried three; and the one I loved the best of all, and
tended through croup, and teething, and measles, and
hooping-cough, and brought up with foreign masters,
regardless of expense, and with accomplishments at Minerva