Страница:
that his master was ill in bed, and had just had the doctor
with him. He must come to-morrow, she thought, but she
never had the courage to speak a word on the subject
to Rebecca; nor did that young woman herself allude
to it in any way during the whole evening after the night
at Vauxhall.
The next day, however, as the two young ladies sate on
the sofa, pretending to work, or to write letters, or to
read novels, Sambo came into the room with his usual
engaging grin, with a packet under his arm, and a note
on a tray. "Note from Mr. Jos, Miss," says Sambo.
How Amelia trembled as she opened it!
So it ran:
Dear Amelia,--I send you the "Orphan of the Forest."
I was too ill to come yesterday. I leave town to-day
for Cheltenham. Pray excuse me, if you can, to the
amiable Miss Sharp, for my conduct at Vauxhall, and
entreat her to pardon and forget every word I may have
uttered when excited by that fatal supper. As soon as
I have recovered, for my health is very much shaken, I
shall go to Scotland for some months, and am
Truly yours,
Jos Sedley
It was the death-warrant. All was over. Amelia did
not dare to look at Rebecca's pale face and burning eyes,
but she dropt the letter into her friend's lap; and got up,
and went upstairs to her room, and cried her little heart
out.
Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, there sought her presently
with consolation, on whose shoulder Amelia wept
confidentially, and relieved herself a good deal. "Don't take
on, Miss. I didn't like to tell you. But none of us in the
house have liked her except at fust. I sor her with my
own eyes reading your Ma's letters. Pinner says she's
always about your trinket-box and drawers, and
everybody's drawers, and she's sure she's put your white
ribbing into her box."
"I gave it her, I gave it her," Amelia said.
But this did not alter Mrs. Blenkinsop's opinion of Miss
Sharp. "I don't trust them governesses, Pinner," she
remarked to the maid. "They give themselves the hairs and
hupstarts of ladies, and their wages is no better than
you nor me."
It now became clear to every soul in the house, except
poor Amelia, that Rebecca should take her departure,
and high and low (always with the one exception) agreed
that that event should take place as speedily as possible.
Our good child ransacked all her drawers, cupboards,
reticules, and gimcrack boxes--passed in review all her
gowns, fichus, tags, bobbins, laces, silk stockings, and
fallals--selecting this thing and that and the other, to
make a little heap for Rebecca. And going to her Papa,
that generous British merchant, who had promised to
give her as many guineas as she was years old--she
begged the old gentleman to give the money to dear
Rebecca, who must want it, while she lacked for nothing.
She even made George Osborne contribute, and
nothing loth (for he was as free-handed a young fellow
as any in the army), he went to Bond Street, and bought
the best hat and spenser that money could buy.
"That's George's present to you, Rebecca, dear," said
Amelia, quite proud of the bandbox conveying these
gifts. "What a taste he has! There's nobody like him."
"Nobody," Rebecca answered. "How thankful I am to
him!" She was thinking in her heart, "It was George
Osborne who prevented my marriage."--And she loved
George Osborne accordingly.
She made her preparations for departure with great
equanimity; and accepted all the kind little Amelia's
presents, after just the proper degree of hesitation and
reluctance. She vowed eternal gratitude to Mrs. Sedley,
of course; but did not intrude herself upon that good
lady too much, who was embarrassed, and evidently
wishing to avoid her. She kissed Mr. Sedley's hand, when
he presented her with the purse; and asked permission to
consider him for the future as her kind, kind friend and
protector. Her behaviour was so affecting that he was
going to write her a cheque for twenty pounds more;
but he restrained his feelings: the carriage was in waiting
to take him to dinner, so he tripped away with a "God
bless you, my dear, always come here when you come to
town, you know.--Drive to the Mansion House, James."
Finally came the parting with Miss Amelia, over which
picture I intend to throw a veil. But after a scene in
which one person was in earnest and the other a perfect
performer--after the tenderest caresses, the most pathetic
tears, the smelling-bottle, and some of the very best
feelings of the heart, had been called into requisition--
Rebecca and Amelia parted, the former vowing to love
her friend for ever and ever and ever.
CHAPTER VII
Crawley of Queen's Crawley
Among the most respected of the names beginning in C
which the Court-Guide contained, in the year 18--, was
that of Crawley, Sir Pitt, Baronet, Great Gaunt Street,
and Queen's Crawley, Hants. This honourable name had
figured constantly also in the Parliamentary list for many
years, in conjunction with that of a number of other
worthy gentlemen who sat in turns for the borough.
It is related, with regard to the borough of Queen's
Crawley, that Queen Elizabeth in one of her progresses,
stopping at Crawley to breakfast, was so delighted with
some remarkably fine Hampshire beer which was then
presented to her by the Crawley of the day (a handsome
gentleman with a trim beard and a good leg), that she
forthwith erected Crawley into a borough to send two
members to Parliament; and the place, from the day of
that illustrious visit, took the name of Queen's Crawley,
which it holds up to the present moment. And though, by
the lapse of time, and those mutations which age produces
in empires, cities, and boroughs, Queen's Crawley was no
longer so populous a place as it had been in Queen Bess's
time--nay, was come down to that condition of borough
which used to be denominated rotten--yet, as Sir Pitt
Crawley would say with perfect justice in his elegant
way, "Rotten! be hanged--it produces me a good fifteen
hundred a year."
Sir Pitt Crawley (named after the great Commoner)
was the son of Walpole Crawley, first Baronet, of the
Tape and Sealing-Wax Office in the reign of George II.,
when he was impeached for peculation, as were a great
number of other honest gentlemen of those days; and
Walpole Crawley was, as need scarcely be said, son of
John Churchill Crawley, named after the celebrated
military commander of the reign of Queen Anne. The family
tree (which hangs up at Queen's Crawley) furthermore
mentions Charles Stuart, afterwards called Barebones
Crawley, son of the Crawley of James the First's time;
and finally, Queen Elizabeth's Crawley, who is represented
as the foreground of the picture in his forked beard and
armour. Out of his waistcoat, as usual, grows a tree, on
the main branches of which the above illustrious names
are inscribed. Close by the name of Sir Pitt Crawley,
Baronet (the subject of the present memoir), are written
that of his brother, the Reverend Bute Crawley (the great
Commoner was in disgrace when the reverend gentleman
was born), rector of Crawley-cum-Snailby, and of various
other male and female members of the Crawley family.
Sir Pitt was first married to Grizzel, sixth daughter of
Mungo Binkie, Lord Binkie, and cousin, in consequence,
of Mr. Dundas. She brought him two sons: Pitt, named
not so much after his father as after the heaven-born
minister; and Rawdon Crawley, from the Prince of
Wales's friend, whom his Majesty George IV forgot so
completely. Many years after her ladyship's demise, Sir
Pitt led to the altar Rosa, daughter of Mr. G. Dawson,
of Mudbury, by whom he had two daughters, for whose
benefit Miss Rebecca Sharp was now engaged as
governess. It will be seen that the young lady was come into a
family of very genteel connexions, and was about to move
in a much more distinguished circle than that humble one
which she had just quitted in Russell Square.
She had received her orders to join her pupils, in a
note which was written upon an old envelope, and which
contained the following words:
Sir Pitt Crawley begs Miss Sharp and baggidge may be
hear on Tuesday, as I leaf for Queen's Crawley to-morrow
morning ERLY.
Great Gaunt Street.
Rebecca had never seen a Baronet, as far as she knew,
and as soon as she had taken leave of Amelia, and
counted the guineas which good-natured Mr. Sedley had
put into a purse for her, and as soon as she had done
wiping her eyes with her handkerchief (which operation
she concluded the very moment the carriage had turned
the corner of the street), she began to depict in her own
mind what a Baronet must be. "I wonder, does he wear
a star?" thought she, "or is it only lords that wear stars?
But he will be very handsomely dressed in a court suit,
with ruffles, and his hair a little powdered, like Mr.
Wroughton at Covent Garden. I suppose he will be
awfully proud, and that I shall be treated most
contemptuously. Still I must bear my hard lot as well
as I can--at least, I shall be amongst GENTLEFOLKS, and
not with vulgar city people": and she fell to thinking of
her Russell Square friends with that very same philosophical
bitterness with which, in a certain apologue, the fox is
represented as speaking of the grapes.
Having passed through Gaunt Square into Great Gaunt
Street, the carriage at length stopped at a tall gloomy
house between two other tall gloomy houses, each with a
hatchment over the middle drawing-room window; as is
the custom of houses in Great Gaunt Street, in which
gloomy locality death seems to reign perpetual. The
shutters of the first-floor windows of Sir Pitt's mansion
were closed--those of the dining-room were partially open,
and the blinds neatly covered up in old newspapers.
John, the groom, who had driven the carriage alone,
did not care to descend to ring the bell; and so prayed a
passing milk-boy to perform that office for him. When the
bell was rung, a head appeared between the interstices of
the dining-room shutters, and the door was opened by a
man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty old coat,
a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bristly neck, a
shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey
eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the grin
"This Sir Pitt Crawley's?" says John, from the box.
"Ees," says the man at the door, with a nod.
"Hand down these 'ere trunks then," said John.
"Hand 'n down yourself," said the porter.
"Don't you see I can't leave my hosses? Come, bear a
hand, my fine feller, and Miss will give you some beer,"
said John, with a horse-laugh, for he was no longer
respectful to Miss Sharp, as her connexion with the family
was broken off, and as she had given nothing to the
servants on coming away.
The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his
breeches pockets, advanced on this summons, and
throwing Miss Sharp's trunk over his shoulder, carried it into
the house.
"Take this basket and shawl, if you please, and open
the door," said Miss Sharp, and descended from the
carriage in much indignation. "I shall write to Mr. Sedley
and inform him of your conduct," said she to the groom.
"Don't," replied that functionary. "I hope you've forgot
nothink? Miss 'Melia's gownds--have you got them--as
the lady's maid was to have 'ad? I hope they'll fit you.
Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no good out of 'ER,"
continued John, pointing with his thumb towards Miss Sharp:
"a bad lot, I tell you, a bad lot," and so saying, Mr.
Sedley's groom drove away. The truth is, he was attached
to the lady's maid in question, and indignant that she
should have been robbed of her perquisites.
On entering the dining-room, by the orders of the
individual in gaiters, Rebecca found that apartment not
more cheerful than such rooms usually are, when genteel
families are out of town. The faithful chambers seem, as
it were, to mourn the absence of their masters. The turkey
carpet has rolled itself up, and retired sulkily under the
sideboard: the pictures have hidden their faces behind old
sheets of brown paper: the ceiling lamp is muffled up in a
dismal sack of brown holland: the window-curtains have
disappeared under all sorts of shabby envelopes: the
marble bust of Sir Walpole Crawley is looking from its
black corner at the bare boards and the oiled fire-irons,
and the empty card-racks over the mantelpiece: the
cellaret has lurked away behind the carpet: the chairs are
turned up heads and tails along the walls: and in the
dark corner opposite the statue, is an old-fashioned
crabbed knife-box, locked and sitting on a dumb waiter.
Two kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an
attenuated old poker and tongs were, however, gathered
round the fire-place, as was a saucepan over a feeble
sputtering fire. There was a bit of cheese and bread, and
a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black porter
in a pint-pot.
"Had your dinner, I suppose? It is not too warm for
you? Like a drop of beer?"
"Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?" said Miss Sharp
majestically.
"He, he! I'm Sir Pitt Crawley. Reklect you owe me a
pint for bringing down your luggage. He, he! Ask
Tinker if I aynt. Mrs. Tinker, Miss Sharp; Miss
Governess, Mrs. Charwoman. Ho, ho!"
The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment
made her appearance with a pipe and a paper of tobacco,
for which she had been despatched a minute before
Miss Sharp's arrival; and she handed the articles over to
Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire.
"Where's the farden?" said he. "I gave you three
halfpence. Where's the change, old Tinker?"
"There!" replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin;
it's only baronets as cares about farthings."
"A farthing a day is seven shillings a year," answered
the M.P.; "seven shillings a year is the interest of seven
guineas. Take care of your farthings, old Tinker, and your
guineas will come quite nat'ral."
"You may be sure it's Sir Pitt Crawley, young woman,"
said Mrs. Tinker, surlily; "because he looks to his
farthings. You'll know him better afore long."
"And like me none the worse, Miss Sharp," said the
old gentleman, with an air almost of politeness. "I must
be just before I'm generous."
"He never gave away a farthing in his life," growled
Tinker.
"Never, and never will: it's against my principle. Go
and get another chair from the kitchen, Tinker, if you
want to sit down; and then we'll have a bit of supper."
Presently the baronet plunged a fork into the saucepan
on the fire, and withdrew from the pot a piece of tripe
and an onion, which he divided into pretty equal
portions, and of which he partook with Mrs. Tinker. "You
see, Miss Sharp, when I'm not here Tinker's on board
wages: when I'm in town she dines with the family.
Haw! haw! I'm glad Miss Sharp's not hungry, ain't you,
Tink?" And they fell to upon their frugal supper.
After supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his
pipe; and when it became quite dark, he lighted the
rushlight in the tin candlestick, and producing from an
interminable pocket a huge mass of papers, began reading
them, and putting them in order.
"I'm here on law business, my dear, and that's how it
happens that I shall have the pleasure of such a pretty
travelling companion to-morrow."
"He's always at law business," said Mrs. Tinker,
taking up the pot of porter.
"Drink and drink about," said the Baronet. "Yes; my
dear, Tinker is quite right: I've lost and won more
lawsuits than any man in England. Look here at Crawley,
Bart. v. Snaffle. I'll throw him over, or my name's not
Pitt Crawley. Podder and another versus Crawley, Bart.
Overseers of Snaily parish against Crawley, Bart. They
can't prove it's common: I'll defy 'em; the land's mine.
It no more belongs to the parish than it does to you or
Tinker here. I'll beat 'em, if it cost me a thousand guineas.
Look over the papers; you may if you like, my dear.
Do you write a good hand? I'll make you useful when
we're at Queen's Crawley, depend on it, Miss Sharp.
Now the dowager's dead I want some one."
"She was as bad as he," said Tinker. "She took the
law of every one of her tradesmen; and turned away
forty-eight footmen in four year."
"She was close--very close," said the Baronet, simply;
"but she was a valyble woman to me, and saved me a
steward."--And in this confidential strain, and much to
the amusement of the new-comer, the conversation
continued for a considerable time. Whatever Sir Pitt
Crawley's qualities might be, good or bad, he did not make
the least disguise of them. He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in the coarsest and vulgarest Hampshire accent; sometimes adopting the tone of a man of the world. And so,
with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five in the
morning, he bade her good night. "You'll sleep with Tinker
to-night," he said; "it's a big bed, and there's room for two.
Lady Crawley died in it. Good night."
Sir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn
Tinker, rushlight in hand, led the way up the great
bleak stone stairs, past the great dreary drawing-room
doors, with the handles muffled up in paper, into the
great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept her
last. The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy,
you might have fancied, not only that Lady Crawley died
in the room, but that her ghost inhabited it. Rebecca
sprang about the apartment, however, with the greatest
liveliness, and had peeped into the huge wardrobes, and
the closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers
which were locked, and examined the dreary pictures
and toilette appointments, while the old charwoman
was saying her prayers. "I shouldn't like to sleep in this
yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss," said the old
woman. "There's room for us and a half-dozen of ghosts
in it," says Rebecca. "Tell me all about Lady Crawley
and Sir Pitt Crawley, and everybody, my DEAR Mrs.
Tinker."
But old Tinker was not to be pumped by this little
cross-questioner; and signifying to her that bed was a
place for sleeping, not conversation, set up in her corner
of the bed such a snore as only the nose of innocence
can produce. Rebecca lay awake for a long, long time,
thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which
she was going, and of her chances of success there. The
rushlight flickered in the basin. The mantelpiece cast up
a great black shadow, over half of a mouldy old sampler,
which her defunct ladyship had worked, no doubt, and
over two little family pictures of young lads, one in a
college gown, and the other in a red jacket like a soldier.
When she went to sleep, Rebecca chose that one to
dream about.
At four o'clock, on such a roseate summer's morning
as even made Great Gaunt Street look cheerful, the
faithful Tinker, having wakened her bedfellow, and bid her
prepare for departure, unbarred and unbolted the great
hall door (the clanging and clapping whereof startled
the sleeping echoes in the street), and taking her way
into Oxford Street, summoned a coach from a stand
there. It is needless to particularize the number of the
vehicle, or to state that the driver was stationed thus
early in the neighbourhood of Swallow Street, in hopes
that some young buck, reeling homeward from the tavern,
might need the aid of his vehicle, and pay him with
the generosity of intoxication.
It is likewise needless to say that the driver, if he had
any such hopes as those.above stated, was grossly
disappointed; and that the worthy Baronet whom he drove
to the City did not give him one single penny more than
his fare. It was in vain that Jehu appealed and stormed;
that he flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter
at the 'Necks, and swore he would take the law of his
fare.
"You'd better not," said one of the ostlers; "it's Sir
Pitt Crawley."
"So it is, Joe," cried the Baronet, approvingly; "and
I'd like to see the man can do me."
"So should oi," said Joe, grinning sulkily, and
mounting the Baronet's baggage on the roof of the coach.
"Keep the box for me, Leader," exclaims the Member
of Parliament to the coachman; who replied, "Yes,
Sir Pitt," with a touch of his hat, and rage in his soul
(for he had promised the box to a young gentleman
from Cambridge, who would have given a crown to a
certainty), and Miss Sharp was accommodated with a
back seat inside the carriage, which might be said to be
carrying her into the wide world.
How the young man from Cambridge sulkily put his
five great-coats in front; but was reconciled when little
Miss Sharp was made to quit the carriage, and mount
up beside him--when he covered her up in one of his
Benjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured--how
the asthmatic gentleman, the prim lady, who declared
upon her sacred honour she had never travelled in a
public carriage before (there is always such a lady in a
coach--Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?),
and the fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their
places inside--how the porter asked them all for money,
and got sixpence from the gentleman and five greasy
halfpence from the fat widow--and how the carriage
at length drove away--now threading the dark lanes of
Aldersgate, anon clattering by the Blue Cupola of St.
Paul's, jingling rapidly by the strangers' entry of Fleet-
Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now departed
to the world of shadows--how they passed the White
Bear in Piccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the
market-gardens of Knightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen,
Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--need not be told here.
But the writer of these pages, who has pursued in former
days, and in the same bright weather, the same remarkable
journey, cannot but think of it with a sweet and
tender regret. Where is the road now, and its merry
incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or Greenwich for
the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder where
are they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead?
and the waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited,
and the cold rounds of beef inside, and the stunted ostler,
with his blue nose and clinking pail, where is he, and
where is his generation? To those great geniuses now in
petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved reader's
children, these men and things will be as much legend
and history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack
Sheppard. For them stage-coaches will have become romances
--a team of four bays as fabulous as Bucephalus or Black
Bess. Ah, how their coats shone, as the stable-men pulled
their clothes off, and away they went--ah, how their
tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end
they demurely walked away into the inn-yard. Alas! we
shall never hear the horn sing at midnight, or see the
pike-gates fly open any more. Whither, however, is the
light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying us? Let us be
set down at Queen's Crawley without further divagation,
and see how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there.
CHAPTER VIII
Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley,
Russell Square, London.
(Free.--Pitt Crawley.)
MY DEAREST, SWEETEST AMELIA,
With what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the
pen to write to my dearest friend! Oh, what a change
between to-day and yesterday! Now I am friendless and
alone; yesterday I was at home, in the sweet company
of a sister, whom I shall ever, ever cherish!
I will not tell you in what tears and sadness I passed
the fatal night in which I separated from you. YOU went
on Tuesday to joy and happiness, with your mother and
YOUR DEVOTED YOUNG SOLDIER by your side; and I thought
of you all night, dancing at the Perkins's, the prettiest,
I am sure, of all the young ladies at the Ball. I was
brought by the groom in the old carriage to Sir Pitt
Crawley's town house, where, after John the groom had
behaved most rudely and insolently to me (alas! 'twas
safe to insult poverty and misfortune!), I was given over
to Sir P.'s care, and made to pass the night in an old
gloomy bed, and by the side of a horrid gloomy old
charwoman, who keeps the house. I did not sleep one
single wink the whole night.
Sir Pitt is not what we silly girls, when we used to
read Cecilia at Chiswick, imagined a baronet must have
been. Anything, indeed, less like Lord Orville cannot be
imagined. Fancy an old, stumpy, short, vulgar, and very
dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters, who
smokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper
in a saucepan. He speaks with a country accent, and
swore a great deal at the old charwoman, at the hackney
coachman who drove us to the inn where the coach went
from, and on which I made the journey OUTSIDE FOR THE
GREATER PART OF THE WAY.
I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and
having arrived at the inn, was at first placed inside the
coach. But, when we got to a place called Leakington,
where the rain began to fall very heavily--will you
believe it?--I was forced to come outside; for Sir Pitt is a
proprietor of the coach, and as a passenger came at
Mudbury, who wanted an inside place, I was obliged to
go outside in the rain, where, however, a young
gentleman from Cambridge College sheltered me very
kindly in one of his several great coats.
This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir
Pitt very well, and laughed at him a great deal. They
both agreed in calling him an old screw; which means a
very stingy, avaricious person. He never gives any money
to anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate); and
the young gentleman made me remark that we drove
very slow for the last two stages on the road, because
Sir Pitt was on the box, and because he is proprietor
of the horses for this part of the journey. "But won't I
flog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons?"
said the young Cantab. "And sarve 'em right, Master
Jack," said the guard. When I comprehended the
meaning of this phrase, and that Master Jack intended to
drive the rest of the way, and revenge himself on Sir
Pitt's horses, of course I laughed too.
A carriage and four splendid horses, covered with
armorial bearings, however, awaited us at Mudbury,
four miles from Queen's Crawley, and we made our
entrance to the baronet's park in state. There is a fine
avenue of a mile long leading to the house, and the woman
at the lodge-gate (over the pillars of which are a serpent
and a dove, the supporters of the Crawley arms), made
us a number of curtsies as she flung open the old iron
carved doors, which are something like those at odious
Chiswick.
"There's an avenue," said Sir Pitt, "a mile long.
There's six thousand pound of timber in them there
trees. Do you call that nothing?" He pronounced avenue
--EVENUE, and nothing--NOTHINK, so droll; and he had
a Mr. Hodson, his hind from Mudbury, into the carriage
with him, and they talked about distraining, and selling
up, and draining and subsoiling, and a great deal about
tenants and farming--much more than I could
understand. Sam Miles had been caught poaching, and Peter
Bailey had gone to the workhouse at last. "Serve him
right," said Sir Pitt; "him and his family has been
cheating me on that farm these hundred and fifty years."
Some old tenant, I suppose, who could not pay his rent.
Sir Pitt might have said "he and his family," to be sure;
but rich baronets do not need to be careful about
grammar, as poor governesses must be.
As we passed, I remarked a beautiful church-spire
rising above some old elms in the park; and before them,
in the midst of a lawn, and some outhouses, an old red
house with tall chimneys covered with ivy, and the
windows shining in the sun. "Is that your church, sir?"
I said.
"Yes, hang it," (said Sir Pitt, only he used, dear, A MUCH
WICKEDER WORD); "how's Buty, Hodson? Buty's my
brother Bute, my dear--my brother the parson. Buty and
the Beast I call him, ha, ha!"
Hodson laughed too, and then looking more grave
and nodding his head, said, "I'm afraid he's better, Sir
Pitt. He was out on his pony yesterday, looking at our
corn."
"Looking after his tithes, hang'un (only he used the
same wicked word). Will brandy and water never kill
him? He's as tough as old whatdyecallum--old
Methusalem."
Mr. Hodson laughed again. "The young men is home
from college. They've whopped John Scroggins till he's
well nigh dead."
"Whop my second keeper!" roared out Sir Pitt.
"He was on the parson's ground, sir," replied Mr.
Hodson; and Sir Pitt in a fury swore that if he ever caught
'em poaching on his ground, he'd transport 'em, by the
lord he would. However, he said, "I've sold the
presentation of the living, Hodson; none of that breed
shall get it, I war'nt"; and Mr. Hodson said he was quite right:
and I have no doubt from this that the two brothers are
at variance--as brothers often are, and sisters too. Don't
you remember the two Miss Scratchleys at Chiswick,
how they used always to fight and quarrel--and Mary
Box, how she was always thumping Louisa?
Presently, seeing two little boys gathering sticks in the
wood, Mr. Hodson jumped out of the carriage, at Sir
Pitt's order, and rushed upon them with his whip. "Pitch
into 'em, Hodson," roared the baronet; "flog their little
souls out, and bring 'em up to the house, the vagabonds;
I'll commit 'em as sure as my name's Pitt." And presently
we heard Mr. Hodson's whip cracking on the
shoulders of the poor little blubbering wretches, and
Sir Pitt, seeing that the malefactors were in custody,
drove on to the hall.
All the servants were ready to meet us, and
. . .
Here, my dear, I was interrupted last night by a
dreadful thumping at my door: and who do you think it
was? Sir Pitt Crawley in his night-cap and dressing-
gown, such a figure! As I shrank away from such a
visitor, he came forward and seized my candle. "No
candles after eleven o'clock, Miss Becky," said he. "Go to
bed in the dark, you pretty little hussy" (that is what
he called me), "and unless you wish me to come for the
candle every night, mind and be in bed at eleven." And
with this, he and Mr. Horrocks the butler went off
laughing. You may be sure I shall not encourage any more
of their visits. They let loose two immense bloodhounds
at night, which all last night were yelling and howling
at the moon. "I call the dog Gorer," said Sir Pitt; "he's
killed a man that dog has, and is master of a bull, and
the mother I used to call Flora; but now I calls her
Aroarer, for she's too old to bite. Haw, haw!"
Before the house of Queen's Crawley, which is an
odious old-fashioned red brick mansion, with tall
chimneys and gables of the style of Queen Bess, there is a
terrace flanked by the family dove and serpent, and on
which the great hall-door opens. And oh, my dear, the
great hall I am sure is as big and as glum as the great
hall in the dear castle of Udolpho. It has a large
fireplace, in which we might put half Miss Pinkerton's
school, and the grate is big enough to roast an ox at the
very least. Round the room hang I don't know how
many generations of Crawleys, some with beards and
ruffs, some with huge wigs and toes turned out, some
dressed in long straight stays and gowns that look as
stiff as towers, and some with long ringlets, and oh, my
dear! scarcely any stays at all. At one end of the hall is
the great staircase all in black oak, as dismal as may be,
and on either side are tall doors with stags' heads.over
them, leading to the billiard-room and the library, and
the great yellow saloon and the morning-rooms. I think
there are at least twenty bedrooms on the first floor; one
of them has the bed in which Queen Elizabeth slept;
and I have been taken by my new pupils through all
these fine apartments this morning. They are not
rendered less gloomy, I promise you, by having the shutters
always shut; and there is scarce one of the apartments,
but when the light was let into it, I expected to
see a ghost in the room. We have a schoolroom on the
second floor, with my bedroom leading into it on one
side, and that of the young ladies on the other. Then
there are Mr. Pitt's apartments--Mr. Crawley, he is
called--the eldest son, and Mr. Rawdon Crawley's rooms
--he is an officer like SOMEBODY, and away with his
regiment. There is no want of room I assure you. You
might lodge all the people in Russell Square in the
house, I think, and have space to spare.
Half an hour after our arrival, the great dinner-bell
was rung, and I came down with my two pupils (they
are very thin insignificant little chits of ten and eight
years old). I came down in your dear muslin gown
(about which that odious Mrs. Pinner was so rude,
because you gave it me); for I am to be treated as one of
the family, except on company days, when the young
ladies and I are to dine upstairs.
Well, the great dinner-bell rang, and we all assembled
in the little drawing-room where my Lady Crawley
sits. She is the second Lady Crawley, and mother of the
young ladies. She was an ironmonger's daughter, and
her marriage was thought a great match. She looks as
if she had been handsome once, and her eyes are always
weeping for the loss of her beauty. She is pale and
meagre and high-shouldered, and has not a word to say
for herself, evidently. Her stepson Mr. Crawley, was
likewise in the room. He was in full dress, as pompous
as an undertaker. He is pale, thin, ugly, silent; he has
thin legs, no chest, hay-coloured whiskers, and straw-
coloured hair. He is the very picture of his sainted
mother over the mantelpiece--Griselda of the noble
house of Binkie.
"This is the new governess, Mr. Crawley," said Lady
Crawley, coming forward and taking my hand. "Miss
Sharp."
"0!" said Mr. Crawley, and pushed his head once
forward and began again to read a great pamphlet
with which he was busy.
"I hope you will be kind to my girls," said Lady
Crawley, with her pink eyes always full of tears.
"Law, Ma, of course she will," said the eldest: and I
saw at a glance that I need not be afraid of THAT woman.
"My lady is served," says the butler in black, in an
immense white shirt-frill, that looked as if it had been
one of the Queen Elizabeth's ruffs depicted in the hall;
and so, taking Mr. Crawley's arm, she led the way to the
dining-room, whither I followed with my little pupils in
each hand.
Sir Pitt was already in the room with a silver jug. He
had just been to the cellar, and was in full dress too;
that is, he had taken his gaiters off, and showed his little
dumpy legs in black worsted stockings. The sideboard
was covered with glistening old plate--old cups, both
gold and silver; old salvers and cruet-stands, like
Rundell and Bridge's shop. Everything on the table was in
silver too, and two footmen, with red hair and canary-
coloured liveries, stood on either side of the sideboard.
Mr. Crawley said a long grace, and Sir Pitt said amen,
and the great silver dish-covers were removed.
"What have we for dinner, Betsy?' said the Baronet.
"Mutton broth, I believe, Sir Pitt," answered Lady
Crawley.
"Mouton aux navets," added the butler gravely
(pronounce, if you please, moutongonavvy); "and the
soup is potage de mouton a l'Ecossaise. The side-dishes
contain pommes de terre au naturel, and choufleur a l'eau."
"Mutton's mutton," said the Baronet, "and a devilish
good thing. What SHIP was it, Horrocks, and when did
you kill?"
"One of the black-faced Scotch, Sir Pitt: we killed on Thursday.
"Who took any?"
"Steel, of Mudbury, took the saddle and two legs, Sir
Pitt; but he says the last was too young and confounded
woolly, Sir Pitt."
"Will you take some potage, Miss ah--Miss Blunt?
said Mr. Crawley.
"Capital Scotch broth, my dear," said Sir Pitt, "though
they call it by a French name."
"I believe it is the custom, sir, in decent society," said
Mr. Crawley, haughtily, "to call the dish as I have called
it"; and it was served to us on silver soup plates by the
footmen in the canary coats, with the mouton aux
navets. Then "ale and water" were brought, and served
to us young ladies in wine-glasses. I am not a judge of
ale, but I can say with a clear conscience I prefer water.
While we were enjoying our repast, Sir Pitt took
occasion to ask what had become of the shoulders of
the mutton.
"I believe they were eaten in the servants' hall," said
my lady, humbly.
"They was, my lady," said Horrocks, "and precious
little else we get there neither."
Sir Pitt burst into a horse-laugh, and continued his
conversation with Mr. Horrocks. "That there little black
pig of the Kent sow's breed must be uncommon fat
now."
"It's not quite busting, Sir Pitt," said the butler with
the gravest air, at which Sir Pitt, and with him the young
ladies, this time, began to laugh violently.
"Miss Crawley, Miss Rose Crawley," said Mr. Crawley,
"your laughter strikes me as being exceedingly out
of place."
"Never mind, my lord," said the Baronet, "we'll try
the porker on Saturday. Kill un on Saturday morning,
John Horrocks. Miss Sharp adores pork, don't you, Miss
Sharp?"
And I think this is all the conversation that I remember
at dinner. When the repast was concluded a jug of
hot water was placed before Sir Pitt, with a case-bottle
containing, I believe, rum. Mr. Horrocks served myself
and my pupils with three little glasses of wine, and a
bumper was poured out for my lady. When we retired,
she took from her work-drawer an enormous interminable
piece of knitting; the young ladies began to play at
cribbage with a dirty pack of cards. We had but one
candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silver
candlestick, and after a very few questions from my lady,
I had my choice of amusement between a volume of
sermons, and a pamphlet on the corn-laws, which Mr.
Crawley had been reading before dinner.
So we sat for an hour until steps were heard.
"Put away the cards, girls," cried my lady, in a great
tremor; "put down Mr. Crawley's books, Miss Sharp";
and these orders had been scarcely obeyed, when Mr.
Crawley entered the room.
"We will resume yesterday's discourse, young ladies,"
said he, "and you shall each read a page by turns; so
that Miss a--Miss Short may have an opportunity of
hearing you"; and the poor girls began to spell a long
dismal sermon delivered at Bethesda Chapel, Liverpool,
on behalf of the mission for the Chickasaw Indians.
Was it not a charming evening?
At ten the servants were told to call Sir Pitt and the
household to prayers. Sir Pitt came in first, very much
flushed, and rather unsteady in his gait; and after him
the butler, the canaries, Mr. Crawley's man, three other
men, smelling very much of the stable, and four women,
one of whom, I remarked, was very much overdressed,
and who flung me a look of great scorn as she plumped
down on her knees.
After Mr. Crawley had done haranguing and
expounding, we received our candles, and then we
went to bed; and then I was disturbed in my writing, as
I have described to my dearest sweetest Amelia.
Good night. A thousand, thousand, thousand kisses!
Saturday.--This morning, at five, I heard the
shrieking of the little black pig. Rose and Violet introduced
me to it yesterday; and to the stables, and to the kennel,
and to the gardener, who was picking fruit to send to
market, and from whom they begged hard a bunch of
hot-house grapes; but he said that Sir Pitt had numbered
every "Man Jack" of them, and it would be as much as
his place was worth to give any away. The darling girls
caught a colt in a paddock, and asked me if I would
ride, and began to ride themselves, when the groom,
coming with horrid oaths, drove them away.
Lady Crawley is always knitting the worsted. Sir Pitt
is always tipsy, every night; and, I believe, sits with
Horrocks, the butler. Mr. Crawley always reads sermons
in the evening, and in the morning is locked up in his
study, or else rides to Mudbury, on county business,
or to Squashmore, where he preaches, on Wednesdays
and Fridays, to the tenants there.
A hundred thousand grateful loves to your dear papa
and mamma. Is your poor brother recovered of his rack-
punch? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How men should beware of
wicked punch!
Ever and ever thine own
REBECCA
Everything considered, I think it is quite as well for
our dear Amelia Sedley, in Russell Square, that Miss
Sharp and she are parted. Rebecca is a droll funny
creature, to be sure; and those descriptions of the poor lady
weeping for the loss of her beauty, and the gentleman
"with hay-coloured whiskers and straw-coloured hair,"
are very smart, doubtless, and show a great knowledge
of the world. That she might, when on her knees, have
been thinking of something better than Miss Horrocks's
ribbons, has possibly struck both of us. But my kind
reader will please to remember that this history has
"Vanity Fair" for a title, and that Vanity Fair is a
very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of
humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. And while the
moralist, who is holding forth on the cover ( an accurate
portrait of your humble servant), professes to wear
neither gown nor bands, but only the very same long-
eared livery in which his congregation is arrayed: yet,
look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one
knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel
hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out
in the course of such an undertaking.
I have heard a brother of the story-telling trade, at
Naples, preaching to a pack of good-for-nothing honest
lazy fellows by the sea-shore, work himself up into such a
rage and passion with some of the villains whose wicked
deeds he was describing and inventing, that the audience
could not resist it; and they and the poet together would
burst out into a roar of oaths and execrations against
the fictitious monster of the tale, so that the hat went
round, and the bajocchi tumbled into it, in the midst of
a perfect storm of sympathy.
At the little Paris theatres, on the other hand, you will
not only hear the people yelling out "Ah gredin! Ah
monstre:" and cursing the tyrant of the play from the
boxes; but the actors themselves positively refuse to play
the wicked parts, such as those of infames Anglais,
brutal Cossacks, and what not, and prefer to appear
at a smaller salary, in their real characters as loyal
Frenchmen. I set the two stories one against the other,
so that you may see that it is not from mere mercenary
motives that the present performer is desirous to show
up and trounce his villains; but because he has a sincere
hatred of them, which he cannot keep down, and which
must find a vent in suitable abuse and bad language.
I warn my "kyind friends," then, that I am going to
tell a story of harrowing villainy and complicated--but,
as I trust, intensely interesting--crime. My rascals are
no milk-and-water rascals, I promise you. When we come
to the proper places we won't spare fine language--No,
no! But when we are going over the quiet country we
must perforce be calm. A tempest in a slop-basin is
absurd. We will reserve that sort of thing for the mighty
ocean and the lonely midnight. The present Chapter is
very mild. Others--But we will not anticipate THOSE.
And, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask
leave, as a man and a brother, not only to introduce
them, but occasionally to step down from the platform,
and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to
love them and shake them by the hand: if they are silly,
to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve:
if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the
strongest terms which politeness admits of.
Otherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering
at the practice of devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so
ridiculous; that it was I who laughed good-humouredly
at the reeling old Silenus of a baronet--whereas the
laughter comes from one who has no reverence except
for prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success.
Such people there are living and flourishing in the world
--Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them,
dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and
very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was
to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that
Laughter was made.
CHAPTER IX
Family Portraits
Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is
called low life. His first marriage with the daughter of
the noble Binkie had been made under the auspices of
his parents; and as he often told Lady Crawley in her
lifetime she was such a confounded quarrelsome high-bred
jade that when she died he was hanged if he would ever take
another of her sort, at her ladyship's demise he kept his
promise, and selected for a second wife Miss Rose Dawson,
daughter of Mr. John Thomas Dawson, ironmonger, of Mudbury.
What a happy woman was Rose to be my Lady Crawley!
Let us set down the items of her happiness. In the
first place, she gave up Peter Butt, a young man who
kept company with her, and in consequence of his
disappointment in love, took to smuggling, poaching, and a
thousand other bad courses. Then she quarrelled, as in
duty bound, with all the friends and intimates of her youth,
who, of course, could not be received by my Lady at
Queen's Crawley--nor did she find in her new rank and
abode any persons who were willing to welcome her.
Who ever did? Sir Huddleston Fuddleston had three
daughters who all hoped to be Lady Crawley. Sir Giles
Wapshot's family were insulted that one of the Wapshot
girls had not the preference in the marriage, and the
remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their
comrade's misalliance. Never mind the commoners, whom
we will leave to grumble anonymously.
Sir Pitt did not care, as he said, a brass farden for
any one of them. He had his pretty Rose, and what
more need a man require than to please himself? So he
used to get drunk every night: to beat his pretty Rose
sometimes: to leave her in Hampshire when he went to
London for the parliamentary session, without a single
friend in the wide world. Even Mrs. Bute Crawley, the
Rector's wife, refused to visit her, as she said she would
never give the pas to a tradesman's daughter.
As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted
Lady Crawley were those of pink cheeks and a white
skin, and as she had no sort of character, nor talents,
nor opinions, nor occupations, nor amusements, nor that
vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often falls
with him. He must come to-morrow, she thought, but she
never had the courage to speak a word on the subject
to Rebecca; nor did that young woman herself allude
to it in any way during the whole evening after the night
at Vauxhall.
The next day, however, as the two young ladies sate on
the sofa, pretending to work, or to write letters, or to
read novels, Sambo came into the room with his usual
engaging grin, with a packet under his arm, and a note
on a tray. "Note from Mr. Jos, Miss," says Sambo.
How Amelia trembled as she opened it!
So it ran:
Dear Amelia,--I send you the "Orphan of the Forest."
I was too ill to come yesterday. I leave town to-day
for Cheltenham. Pray excuse me, if you can, to the
amiable Miss Sharp, for my conduct at Vauxhall, and
entreat her to pardon and forget every word I may have
uttered when excited by that fatal supper. As soon as
I have recovered, for my health is very much shaken, I
shall go to Scotland for some months, and am
Truly yours,
Jos Sedley
It was the death-warrant. All was over. Amelia did
not dare to look at Rebecca's pale face and burning eyes,
but she dropt the letter into her friend's lap; and got up,
and went upstairs to her room, and cried her little heart
out.
Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, there sought her presently
with consolation, on whose shoulder Amelia wept
confidentially, and relieved herself a good deal. "Don't take
on, Miss. I didn't like to tell you. But none of us in the
house have liked her except at fust. I sor her with my
own eyes reading your Ma's letters. Pinner says she's
always about your trinket-box and drawers, and
everybody's drawers, and she's sure she's put your white
ribbing into her box."
"I gave it her, I gave it her," Amelia said.
But this did not alter Mrs. Blenkinsop's opinion of Miss
Sharp. "I don't trust them governesses, Pinner," she
remarked to the maid. "They give themselves the hairs and
hupstarts of ladies, and their wages is no better than
you nor me."
It now became clear to every soul in the house, except
poor Amelia, that Rebecca should take her departure,
and high and low (always with the one exception) agreed
that that event should take place as speedily as possible.
Our good child ransacked all her drawers, cupboards,
reticules, and gimcrack boxes--passed in review all her
gowns, fichus, tags, bobbins, laces, silk stockings, and
fallals--selecting this thing and that and the other, to
make a little heap for Rebecca. And going to her Papa,
that generous British merchant, who had promised to
give her as many guineas as she was years old--she
begged the old gentleman to give the money to dear
Rebecca, who must want it, while she lacked for nothing.
She even made George Osborne contribute, and
nothing loth (for he was as free-handed a young fellow
as any in the army), he went to Bond Street, and bought
the best hat and spenser that money could buy.
"That's George's present to you, Rebecca, dear," said
Amelia, quite proud of the bandbox conveying these
gifts. "What a taste he has! There's nobody like him."
"Nobody," Rebecca answered. "How thankful I am to
him!" She was thinking in her heart, "It was George
Osborne who prevented my marriage."--And she loved
George Osborne accordingly.
She made her preparations for departure with great
equanimity; and accepted all the kind little Amelia's
presents, after just the proper degree of hesitation and
reluctance. She vowed eternal gratitude to Mrs. Sedley,
of course; but did not intrude herself upon that good
lady too much, who was embarrassed, and evidently
wishing to avoid her. She kissed Mr. Sedley's hand, when
he presented her with the purse; and asked permission to
consider him for the future as her kind, kind friend and
protector. Her behaviour was so affecting that he was
going to write her a cheque for twenty pounds more;
but he restrained his feelings: the carriage was in waiting
to take him to dinner, so he tripped away with a "God
bless you, my dear, always come here when you come to
town, you know.--Drive to the Mansion House, James."
Finally came the parting with Miss Amelia, over which
picture I intend to throw a veil. But after a scene in
which one person was in earnest and the other a perfect
performer--after the tenderest caresses, the most pathetic
tears, the smelling-bottle, and some of the very best
feelings of the heart, had been called into requisition--
Rebecca and Amelia parted, the former vowing to love
her friend for ever and ever and ever.
CHAPTER VII
Crawley of Queen's Crawley
Among the most respected of the names beginning in C
which the Court-Guide contained, in the year 18--, was
that of Crawley, Sir Pitt, Baronet, Great Gaunt Street,
and Queen's Crawley, Hants. This honourable name had
figured constantly also in the Parliamentary list for many
years, in conjunction with that of a number of other
worthy gentlemen who sat in turns for the borough.
It is related, with regard to the borough of Queen's
Crawley, that Queen Elizabeth in one of her progresses,
stopping at Crawley to breakfast, was so delighted with
some remarkably fine Hampshire beer which was then
presented to her by the Crawley of the day (a handsome
gentleman with a trim beard and a good leg), that she
forthwith erected Crawley into a borough to send two
members to Parliament; and the place, from the day of
that illustrious visit, took the name of Queen's Crawley,
which it holds up to the present moment. And though, by
the lapse of time, and those mutations which age produces
in empires, cities, and boroughs, Queen's Crawley was no
longer so populous a place as it had been in Queen Bess's
time--nay, was come down to that condition of borough
which used to be denominated rotten--yet, as Sir Pitt
Crawley would say with perfect justice in his elegant
way, "Rotten! be hanged--it produces me a good fifteen
hundred a year."
Sir Pitt Crawley (named after the great Commoner)
was the son of Walpole Crawley, first Baronet, of the
Tape and Sealing-Wax Office in the reign of George II.,
when he was impeached for peculation, as were a great
number of other honest gentlemen of those days; and
Walpole Crawley was, as need scarcely be said, son of
John Churchill Crawley, named after the celebrated
military commander of the reign of Queen Anne. The family
tree (which hangs up at Queen's Crawley) furthermore
mentions Charles Stuart, afterwards called Barebones
Crawley, son of the Crawley of James the First's time;
and finally, Queen Elizabeth's Crawley, who is represented
as the foreground of the picture in his forked beard and
armour. Out of his waistcoat, as usual, grows a tree, on
the main branches of which the above illustrious names
are inscribed. Close by the name of Sir Pitt Crawley,
Baronet (the subject of the present memoir), are written
that of his brother, the Reverend Bute Crawley (the great
Commoner was in disgrace when the reverend gentleman
was born), rector of Crawley-cum-Snailby, and of various
other male and female members of the Crawley family.
Sir Pitt was first married to Grizzel, sixth daughter of
Mungo Binkie, Lord Binkie, and cousin, in consequence,
of Mr. Dundas. She brought him two sons: Pitt, named
not so much after his father as after the heaven-born
minister; and Rawdon Crawley, from the Prince of
Wales's friend, whom his Majesty George IV forgot so
completely. Many years after her ladyship's demise, Sir
Pitt led to the altar Rosa, daughter of Mr. G. Dawson,
of Mudbury, by whom he had two daughters, for whose
benefit Miss Rebecca Sharp was now engaged as
governess. It will be seen that the young lady was come into a
family of very genteel connexions, and was about to move
in a much more distinguished circle than that humble one
which she had just quitted in Russell Square.
She had received her orders to join her pupils, in a
note which was written upon an old envelope, and which
contained the following words:
Sir Pitt Crawley begs Miss Sharp and baggidge may be
hear on Tuesday, as I leaf for Queen's Crawley to-morrow
morning ERLY.
Great Gaunt Street.
Rebecca had never seen a Baronet, as far as she knew,
and as soon as she had taken leave of Amelia, and
counted the guineas which good-natured Mr. Sedley had
put into a purse for her, and as soon as she had done
wiping her eyes with her handkerchief (which operation
she concluded the very moment the carriage had turned
the corner of the street), she began to depict in her own
mind what a Baronet must be. "I wonder, does he wear
a star?" thought she, "or is it only lords that wear stars?
But he will be very handsomely dressed in a court suit,
with ruffles, and his hair a little powdered, like Mr.
Wroughton at Covent Garden. I suppose he will be
awfully proud, and that I shall be treated most
contemptuously. Still I must bear my hard lot as well
as I can--at least, I shall be amongst GENTLEFOLKS, and
not with vulgar city people": and she fell to thinking of
her Russell Square friends with that very same philosophical
bitterness with which, in a certain apologue, the fox is
represented as speaking of the grapes.
Having passed through Gaunt Square into Great Gaunt
Street, the carriage at length stopped at a tall gloomy
house between two other tall gloomy houses, each with a
hatchment over the middle drawing-room window; as is
the custom of houses in Great Gaunt Street, in which
gloomy locality death seems to reign perpetual. The
shutters of the first-floor windows of Sir Pitt's mansion
were closed--those of the dining-room were partially open,
and the blinds neatly covered up in old newspapers.
John, the groom, who had driven the carriage alone,
did not care to descend to ring the bell; and so prayed a
passing milk-boy to perform that office for him. When the
bell was rung, a head appeared between the interstices of
the dining-room shutters, and the door was opened by a
man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty old coat,
a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bristly neck, a
shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey
eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the grin
"This Sir Pitt Crawley's?" says John, from the box.
"Ees," says the man at the door, with a nod.
"Hand down these 'ere trunks then," said John.
"Hand 'n down yourself," said the porter.
"Don't you see I can't leave my hosses? Come, bear a
hand, my fine feller, and Miss will give you some beer,"
said John, with a horse-laugh, for he was no longer
respectful to Miss Sharp, as her connexion with the family
was broken off, and as she had given nothing to the
servants on coming away.
The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his
breeches pockets, advanced on this summons, and
throwing Miss Sharp's trunk over his shoulder, carried it into
the house.
"Take this basket and shawl, if you please, and open
the door," said Miss Sharp, and descended from the
carriage in much indignation. "I shall write to Mr. Sedley
and inform him of your conduct," said she to the groom.
"Don't," replied that functionary. "I hope you've forgot
nothink? Miss 'Melia's gownds--have you got them--as
the lady's maid was to have 'ad? I hope they'll fit you.
Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no good out of 'ER,"
continued John, pointing with his thumb towards Miss Sharp:
"a bad lot, I tell you, a bad lot," and so saying, Mr.
Sedley's groom drove away. The truth is, he was attached
to the lady's maid in question, and indignant that she
should have been robbed of her perquisites.
On entering the dining-room, by the orders of the
individual in gaiters, Rebecca found that apartment not
more cheerful than such rooms usually are, when genteel
families are out of town. The faithful chambers seem, as
it were, to mourn the absence of their masters. The turkey
carpet has rolled itself up, and retired sulkily under the
sideboard: the pictures have hidden their faces behind old
sheets of brown paper: the ceiling lamp is muffled up in a
dismal sack of brown holland: the window-curtains have
disappeared under all sorts of shabby envelopes: the
marble bust of Sir Walpole Crawley is looking from its
black corner at the bare boards and the oiled fire-irons,
and the empty card-racks over the mantelpiece: the
cellaret has lurked away behind the carpet: the chairs are
turned up heads and tails along the walls: and in the
dark corner opposite the statue, is an old-fashioned
crabbed knife-box, locked and sitting on a dumb waiter.
Two kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an
attenuated old poker and tongs were, however, gathered
round the fire-place, as was a saucepan over a feeble
sputtering fire. There was a bit of cheese and bread, and
a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black porter
in a pint-pot.
"Had your dinner, I suppose? It is not too warm for
you? Like a drop of beer?"
"Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?" said Miss Sharp
majestically.
"He, he! I'm Sir Pitt Crawley. Reklect you owe me a
pint for bringing down your luggage. He, he! Ask
Tinker if I aynt. Mrs. Tinker, Miss Sharp; Miss
Governess, Mrs. Charwoman. Ho, ho!"
The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment
made her appearance with a pipe and a paper of tobacco,
for which she had been despatched a minute before
Miss Sharp's arrival; and she handed the articles over to
Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire.
"Where's the farden?" said he. "I gave you three
halfpence. Where's the change, old Tinker?"
"There!" replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin;
it's only baronets as cares about farthings."
"A farthing a day is seven shillings a year," answered
the M.P.; "seven shillings a year is the interest of seven
guineas. Take care of your farthings, old Tinker, and your
guineas will come quite nat'ral."
"You may be sure it's Sir Pitt Crawley, young woman,"
said Mrs. Tinker, surlily; "because he looks to his
farthings. You'll know him better afore long."
"And like me none the worse, Miss Sharp," said the
old gentleman, with an air almost of politeness. "I must
be just before I'm generous."
"He never gave away a farthing in his life," growled
Tinker.
"Never, and never will: it's against my principle. Go
and get another chair from the kitchen, Tinker, if you
want to sit down; and then we'll have a bit of supper."
Presently the baronet plunged a fork into the saucepan
on the fire, and withdrew from the pot a piece of tripe
and an onion, which he divided into pretty equal
portions, and of which he partook with Mrs. Tinker. "You
see, Miss Sharp, when I'm not here Tinker's on board
wages: when I'm in town she dines with the family.
Haw! haw! I'm glad Miss Sharp's not hungry, ain't you,
Tink?" And they fell to upon their frugal supper.
After supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his
pipe; and when it became quite dark, he lighted the
rushlight in the tin candlestick, and producing from an
interminable pocket a huge mass of papers, began reading
them, and putting them in order.
"I'm here on law business, my dear, and that's how it
happens that I shall have the pleasure of such a pretty
travelling companion to-morrow."
"He's always at law business," said Mrs. Tinker,
taking up the pot of porter.
"Drink and drink about," said the Baronet. "Yes; my
dear, Tinker is quite right: I've lost and won more
lawsuits than any man in England. Look here at Crawley,
Bart. v. Snaffle. I'll throw him over, or my name's not
Pitt Crawley. Podder and another versus Crawley, Bart.
Overseers of Snaily parish against Crawley, Bart. They
can't prove it's common: I'll defy 'em; the land's mine.
It no more belongs to the parish than it does to you or
Tinker here. I'll beat 'em, if it cost me a thousand guineas.
Look over the papers; you may if you like, my dear.
Do you write a good hand? I'll make you useful when
we're at Queen's Crawley, depend on it, Miss Sharp.
Now the dowager's dead I want some one."
"She was as bad as he," said Tinker. "She took the
law of every one of her tradesmen; and turned away
forty-eight footmen in four year."
"She was close--very close," said the Baronet, simply;
"but she was a valyble woman to me, and saved me a
steward."--And in this confidential strain, and much to
the amusement of the new-comer, the conversation
continued for a considerable time. Whatever Sir Pitt
Crawley's qualities might be, good or bad, he did not make
the least disguise of them. He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in the coarsest and vulgarest Hampshire accent; sometimes adopting the tone of a man of the world. And so,
with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five in the
morning, he bade her good night. "You'll sleep with Tinker
to-night," he said; "it's a big bed, and there's room for two.
Lady Crawley died in it. Good night."
Sir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn
Tinker, rushlight in hand, led the way up the great
bleak stone stairs, past the great dreary drawing-room
doors, with the handles muffled up in paper, into the
great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept her
last. The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy,
you might have fancied, not only that Lady Crawley died
in the room, but that her ghost inhabited it. Rebecca
sprang about the apartment, however, with the greatest
liveliness, and had peeped into the huge wardrobes, and
the closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers
which were locked, and examined the dreary pictures
and toilette appointments, while the old charwoman
was saying her prayers. "I shouldn't like to sleep in this
yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss," said the old
woman. "There's room for us and a half-dozen of ghosts
in it," says Rebecca. "Tell me all about Lady Crawley
and Sir Pitt Crawley, and everybody, my DEAR Mrs.
Tinker."
But old Tinker was not to be pumped by this little
cross-questioner; and signifying to her that bed was a
place for sleeping, not conversation, set up in her corner
of the bed such a snore as only the nose of innocence
can produce. Rebecca lay awake for a long, long time,
thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which
she was going, and of her chances of success there. The
rushlight flickered in the basin. The mantelpiece cast up
a great black shadow, over half of a mouldy old sampler,
which her defunct ladyship had worked, no doubt, and
over two little family pictures of young lads, one in a
college gown, and the other in a red jacket like a soldier.
When she went to sleep, Rebecca chose that one to
dream about.
At four o'clock, on such a roseate summer's morning
as even made Great Gaunt Street look cheerful, the
faithful Tinker, having wakened her bedfellow, and bid her
prepare for departure, unbarred and unbolted the great
hall door (the clanging and clapping whereof startled
the sleeping echoes in the street), and taking her way
into Oxford Street, summoned a coach from a stand
there. It is needless to particularize the number of the
vehicle, or to state that the driver was stationed thus
early in the neighbourhood of Swallow Street, in hopes
that some young buck, reeling homeward from the tavern,
might need the aid of his vehicle, and pay him with
the generosity of intoxication.
It is likewise needless to say that the driver, if he had
any such hopes as those.above stated, was grossly
disappointed; and that the worthy Baronet whom he drove
to the City did not give him one single penny more than
his fare. It was in vain that Jehu appealed and stormed;
that he flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter
at the 'Necks, and swore he would take the law of his
fare.
"You'd better not," said one of the ostlers; "it's Sir
Pitt Crawley."
"So it is, Joe," cried the Baronet, approvingly; "and
I'd like to see the man can do me."
"So should oi," said Joe, grinning sulkily, and
mounting the Baronet's baggage on the roof of the coach.
"Keep the box for me, Leader," exclaims the Member
of Parliament to the coachman; who replied, "Yes,
Sir Pitt," with a touch of his hat, and rage in his soul
(for he had promised the box to a young gentleman
from Cambridge, who would have given a crown to a
certainty), and Miss Sharp was accommodated with a
back seat inside the carriage, which might be said to be
carrying her into the wide world.
How the young man from Cambridge sulkily put his
five great-coats in front; but was reconciled when little
Miss Sharp was made to quit the carriage, and mount
up beside him--when he covered her up in one of his
Benjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured--how
the asthmatic gentleman, the prim lady, who declared
upon her sacred honour she had never travelled in a
public carriage before (there is always such a lady in a
coach--Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?),
and the fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their
places inside--how the porter asked them all for money,
and got sixpence from the gentleman and five greasy
halfpence from the fat widow--and how the carriage
at length drove away--now threading the dark lanes of
Aldersgate, anon clattering by the Blue Cupola of St.
Paul's, jingling rapidly by the strangers' entry of Fleet-
Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now departed
to the world of shadows--how they passed the White
Bear in Piccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the
market-gardens of Knightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen,
Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--need not be told here.
But the writer of these pages, who has pursued in former
days, and in the same bright weather, the same remarkable
journey, cannot but think of it with a sweet and
tender regret. Where is the road now, and its merry
incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or Greenwich for
the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder where
are they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead?
and the waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited,
and the cold rounds of beef inside, and the stunted ostler,
with his blue nose and clinking pail, where is he, and
where is his generation? To those great geniuses now in
petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved reader's
children, these men and things will be as much legend
and history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack
Sheppard. For them stage-coaches will have become romances
--a team of four bays as fabulous as Bucephalus or Black
Bess. Ah, how their coats shone, as the stable-men pulled
their clothes off, and away they went--ah, how their
tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end
they demurely walked away into the inn-yard. Alas! we
shall never hear the horn sing at midnight, or see the
pike-gates fly open any more. Whither, however, is the
light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying us? Let us be
set down at Queen's Crawley without further divagation,
and see how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there.
CHAPTER VIII
Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley,
Russell Square, London.
(Free.--Pitt Crawley.)
MY DEAREST, SWEETEST AMELIA,
With what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the
pen to write to my dearest friend! Oh, what a change
between to-day and yesterday! Now I am friendless and
alone; yesterday I was at home, in the sweet company
of a sister, whom I shall ever, ever cherish!
I will not tell you in what tears and sadness I passed
the fatal night in which I separated from you. YOU went
on Tuesday to joy and happiness, with your mother and
YOUR DEVOTED YOUNG SOLDIER by your side; and I thought
of you all night, dancing at the Perkins's, the prettiest,
I am sure, of all the young ladies at the Ball. I was
brought by the groom in the old carriage to Sir Pitt
Crawley's town house, where, after John the groom had
behaved most rudely and insolently to me (alas! 'twas
safe to insult poverty and misfortune!), I was given over
to Sir P.'s care, and made to pass the night in an old
gloomy bed, and by the side of a horrid gloomy old
charwoman, who keeps the house. I did not sleep one
single wink the whole night.
Sir Pitt is not what we silly girls, when we used to
read Cecilia at Chiswick, imagined a baronet must have
been. Anything, indeed, less like Lord Orville cannot be
imagined. Fancy an old, stumpy, short, vulgar, and very
dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters, who
smokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper
in a saucepan. He speaks with a country accent, and
swore a great deal at the old charwoman, at the hackney
coachman who drove us to the inn where the coach went
from, and on which I made the journey OUTSIDE FOR THE
GREATER PART OF THE WAY.
I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and
having arrived at the inn, was at first placed inside the
coach. But, when we got to a place called Leakington,
where the rain began to fall very heavily--will you
believe it?--I was forced to come outside; for Sir Pitt is a
proprietor of the coach, and as a passenger came at
Mudbury, who wanted an inside place, I was obliged to
go outside in the rain, where, however, a young
gentleman from Cambridge College sheltered me very
kindly in one of his several great coats.
This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir
Pitt very well, and laughed at him a great deal. They
both agreed in calling him an old screw; which means a
very stingy, avaricious person. He never gives any money
to anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate); and
the young gentleman made me remark that we drove
very slow for the last two stages on the road, because
Sir Pitt was on the box, and because he is proprietor
of the horses for this part of the journey. "But won't I
flog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons?"
said the young Cantab. "And sarve 'em right, Master
Jack," said the guard. When I comprehended the
meaning of this phrase, and that Master Jack intended to
drive the rest of the way, and revenge himself on Sir
Pitt's horses, of course I laughed too.
A carriage and four splendid horses, covered with
armorial bearings, however, awaited us at Mudbury,
four miles from Queen's Crawley, and we made our
entrance to the baronet's park in state. There is a fine
avenue of a mile long leading to the house, and the woman
at the lodge-gate (over the pillars of which are a serpent
and a dove, the supporters of the Crawley arms), made
us a number of curtsies as she flung open the old iron
carved doors, which are something like those at odious
Chiswick.
"There's an avenue," said Sir Pitt, "a mile long.
There's six thousand pound of timber in them there
trees. Do you call that nothing?" He pronounced avenue
--EVENUE, and nothing--NOTHINK, so droll; and he had
a Mr. Hodson, his hind from Mudbury, into the carriage
with him, and they talked about distraining, and selling
up, and draining and subsoiling, and a great deal about
tenants and farming--much more than I could
understand. Sam Miles had been caught poaching, and Peter
Bailey had gone to the workhouse at last. "Serve him
right," said Sir Pitt; "him and his family has been
cheating me on that farm these hundred and fifty years."
Some old tenant, I suppose, who could not pay his rent.
Sir Pitt might have said "he and his family," to be sure;
but rich baronets do not need to be careful about
grammar, as poor governesses must be.
As we passed, I remarked a beautiful church-spire
rising above some old elms in the park; and before them,
in the midst of a lawn, and some outhouses, an old red
house with tall chimneys covered with ivy, and the
windows shining in the sun. "Is that your church, sir?"
I said.
"Yes, hang it," (said Sir Pitt, only he used, dear, A MUCH
WICKEDER WORD); "how's Buty, Hodson? Buty's my
brother Bute, my dear--my brother the parson. Buty and
the Beast I call him, ha, ha!"
Hodson laughed too, and then looking more grave
and nodding his head, said, "I'm afraid he's better, Sir
Pitt. He was out on his pony yesterday, looking at our
corn."
"Looking after his tithes, hang'un (only he used the
same wicked word). Will brandy and water never kill
him? He's as tough as old whatdyecallum--old
Methusalem."
Mr. Hodson laughed again. "The young men is home
from college. They've whopped John Scroggins till he's
well nigh dead."
"Whop my second keeper!" roared out Sir Pitt.
"He was on the parson's ground, sir," replied Mr.
Hodson; and Sir Pitt in a fury swore that if he ever caught
'em poaching on his ground, he'd transport 'em, by the
lord he would. However, he said, "I've sold the
presentation of the living, Hodson; none of that breed
shall get it, I war'nt"; and Mr. Hodson said he was quite right:
and I have no doubt from this that the two brothers are
at variance--as brothers often are, and sisters too. Don't
you remember the two Miss Scratchleys at Chiswick,
how they used always to fight and quarrel--and Mary
Box, how she was always thumping Louisa?
Presently, seeing two little boys gathering sticks in the
wood, Mr. Hodson jumped out of the carriage, at Sir
Pitt's order, and rushed upon them with his whip. "Pitch
into 'em, Hodson," roared the baronet; "flog their little
souls out, and bring 'em up to the house, the vagabonds;
I'll commit 'em as sure as my name's Pitt." And presently
we heard Mr. Hodson's whip cracking on the
shoulders of the poor little blubbering wretches, and
Sir Pitt, seeing that the malefactors were in custody,
drove on to the hall.
All the servants were ready to meet us, and
. . .
Here, my dear, I was interrupted last night by a
dreadful thumping at my door: and who do you think it
was? Sir Pitt Crawley in his night-cap and dressing-
gown, such a figure! As I shrank away from such a
visitor, he came forward and seized my candle. "No
candles after eleven o'clock, Miss Becky," said he. "Go to
bed in the dark, you pretty little hussy" (that is what
he called me), "and unless you wish me to come for the
candle every night, mind and be in bed at eleven." And
with this, he and Mr. Horrocks the butler went off
laughing. You may be sure I shall not encourage any more
of their visits. They let loose two immense bloodhounds
at night, which all last night were yelling and howling
at the moon. "I call the dog Gorer," said Sir Pitt; "he's
killed a man that dog has, and is master of a bull, and
the mother I used to call Flora; but now I calls her
Aroarer, for she's too old to bite. Haw, haw!"
Before the house of Queen's Crawley, which is an
odious old-fashioned red brick mansion, with tall
chimneys and gables of the style of Queen Bess, there is a
terrace flanked by the family dove and serpent, and on
which the great hall-door opens. And oh, my dear, the
great hall I am sure is as big and as glum as the great
hall in the dear castle of Udolpho. It has a large
fireplace, in which we might put half Miss Pinkerton's
school, and the grate is big enough to roast an ox at the
very least. Round the room hang I don't know how
many generations of Crawleys, some with beards and
ruffs, some with huge wigs and toes turned out, some
dressed in long straight stays and gowns that look as
stiff as towers, and some with long ringlets, and oh, my
dear! scarcely any stays at all. At one end of the hall is
the great staircase all in black oak, as dismal as may be,
and on either side are tall doors with stags' heads.over
them, leading to the billiard-room and the library, and
the great yellow saloon and the morning-rooms. I think
there are at least twenty bedrooms on the first floor; one
of them has the bed in which Queen Elizabeth slept;
and I have been taken by my new pupils through all
these fine apartments this morning. They are not
rendered less gloomy, I promise you, by having the shutters
always shut; and there is scarce one of the apartments,
but when the light was let into it, I expected to
see a ghost in the room. We have a schoolroom on the
second floor, with my bedroom leading into it on one
side, and that of the young ladies on the other. Then
there are Mr. Pitt's apartments--Mr. Crawley, he is
called--the eldest son, and Mr. Rawdon Crawley's rooms
--he is an officer like SOMEBODY, and away with his
regiment. There is no want of room I assure you. You
might lodge all the people in Russell Square in the
house, I think, and have space to spare.
Half an hour after our arrival, the great dinner-bell
was rung, and I came down with my two pupils (they
are very thin insignificant little chits of ten and eight
years old). I came down in your dear muslin gown
(about which that odious Mrs. Pinner was so rude,
because you gave it me); for I am to be treated as one of
the family, except on company days, when the young
ladies and I are to dine upstairs.
Well, the great dinner-bell rang, and we all assembled
in the little drawing-room where my Lady Crawley
sits. She is the second Lady Crawley, and mother of the
young ladies. She was an ironmonger's daughter, and
her marriage was thought a great match. She looks as
if she had been handsome once, and her eyes are always
weeping for the loss of her beauty. She is pale and
meagre and high-shouldered, and has not a word to say
for herself, evidently. Her stepson Mr. Crawley, was
likewise in the room. He was in full dress, as pompous
as an undertaker. He is pale, thin, ugly, silent; he has
thin legs, no chest, hay-coloured whiskers, and straw-
coloured hair. He is the very picture of his sainted
mother over the mantelpiece--Griselda of the noble
house of Binkie.
"This is the new governess, Mr. Crawley," said Lady
Crawley, coming forward and taking my hand. "Miss
Sharp."
"0!" said Mr. Crawley, and pushed his head once
forward and began again to read a great pamphlet
with which he was busy.
"I hope you will be kind to my girls," said Lady
Crawley, with her pink eyes always full of tears.
"Law, Ma, of course she will," said the eldest: and I
saw at a glance that I need not be afraid of THAT woman.
"My lady is served," says the butler in black, in an
immense white shirt-frill, that looked as if it had been
one of the Queen Elizabeth's ruffs depicted in the hall;
and so, taking Mr. Crawley's arm, she led the way to the
dining-room, whither I followed with my little pupils in
each hand.
Sir Pitt was already in the room with a silver jug. He
had just been to the cellar, and was in full dress too;
that is, he had taken his gaiters off, and showed his little
dumpy legs in black worsted stockings. The sideboard
was covered with glistening old plate--old cups, both
gold and silver; old salvers and cruet-stands, like
Rundell and Bridge's shop. Everything on the table was in
silver too, and two footmen, with red hair and canary-
coloured liveries, stood on either side of the sideboard.
Mr. Crawley said a long grace, and Sir Pitt said amen,
and the great silver dish-covers were removed.
"What have we for dinner, Betsy?' said the Baronet.
"Mutton broth, I believe, Sir Pitt," answered Lady
Crawley.
"Mouton aux navets," added the butler gravely
(pronounce, if you please, moutongonavvy); "and the
soup is potage de mouton a l'Ecossaise. The side-dishes
contain pommes de terre au naturel, and choufleur a l'eau."
"Mutton's mutton," said the Baronet, "and a devilish
good thing. What SHIP was it, Horrocks, and when did
you kill?"
"One of the black-faced Scotch, Sir Pitt: we killed on Thursday.
"Who took any?"
"Steel, of Mudbury, took the saddle and two legs, Sir
Pitt; but he says the last was too young and confounded
woolly, Sir Pitt."
"Will you take some potage, Miss ah--Miss Blunt?
said Mr. Crawley.
"Capital Scotch broth, my dear," said Sir Pitt, "though
they call it by a French name."
"I believe it is the custom, sir, in decent society," said
Mr. Crawley, haughtily, "to call the dish as I have called
it"; and it was served to us on silver soup plates by the
footmen in the canary coats, with the mouton aux
navets. Then "ale and water" were brought, and served
to us young ladies in wine-glasses. I am not a judge of
ale, but I can say with a clear conscience I prefer water.
While we were enjoying our repast, Sir Pitt took
occasion to ask what had become of the shoulders of
the mutton.
"I believe they were eaten in the servants' hall," said
my lady, humbly.
"They was, my lady," said Horrocks, "and precious
little else we get there neither."
Sir Pitt burst into a horse-laugh, and continued his
conversation with Mr. Horrocks. "That there little black
pig of the Kent sow's breed must be uncommon fat
now."
"It's not quite busting, Sir Pitt," said the butler with
the gravest air, at which Sir Pitt, and with him the young
ladies, this time, began to laugh violently.
"Miss Crawley, Miss Rose Crawley," said Mr. Crawley,
"your laughter strikes me as being exceedingly out
of place."
"Never mind, my lord," said the Baronet, "we'll try
the porker on Saturday. Kill un on Saturday morning,
John Horrocks. Miss Sharp adores pork, don't you, Miss
Sharp?"
And I think this is all the conversation that I remember
at dinner. When the repast was concluded a jug of
hot water was placed before Sir Pitt, with a case-bottle
containing, I believe, rum. Mr. Horrocks served myself
and my pupils with three little glasses of wine, and a
bumper was poured out for my lady. When we retired,
she took from her work-drawer an enormous interminable
piece of knitting; the young ladies began to play at
cribbage with a dirty pack of cards. We had but one
candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silver
candlestick, and after a very few questions from my lady,
I had my choice of amusement between a volume of
sermons, and a pamphlet on the corn-laws, which Mr.
Crawley had been reading before dinner.
So we sat for an hour until steps were heard.
"Put away the cards, girls," cried my lady, in a great
tremor; "put down Mr. Crawley's books, Miss Sharp";
and these orders had been scarcely obeyed, when Mr.
Crawley entered the room.
"We will resume yesterday's discourse, young ladies,"
said he, "and you shall each read a page by turns; so
that Miss a--Miss Short may have an opportunity of
hearing you"; and the poor girls began to spell a long
dismal sermon delivered at Bethesda Chapel, Liverpool,
on behalf of the mission for the Chickasaw Indians.
Was it not a charming evening?
At ten the servants were told to call Sir Pitt and the
household to prayers. Sir Pitt came in first, very much
flushed, and rather unsteady in his gait; and after him
the butler, the canaries, Mr. Crawley's man, three other
men, smelling very much of the stable, and four women,
one of whom, I remarked, was very much overdressed,
and who flung me a look of great scorn as she plumped
down on her knees.
After Mr. Crawley had done haranguing and
expounding, we received our candles, and then we
went to bed; and then I was disturbed in my writing, as
I have described to my dearest sweetest Amelia.
Good night. A thousand, thousand, thousand kisses!
Saturday.--This morning, at five, I heard the
shrieking of the little black pig. Rose and Violet introduced
me to it yesterday; and to the stables, and to the kennel,
and to the gardener, who was picking fruit to send to
market, and from whom they begged hard a bunch of
hot-house grapes; but he said that Sir Pitt had numbered
every "Man Jack" of them, and it would be as much as
his place was worth to give any away. The darling girls
caught a colt in a paddock, and asked me if I would
ride, and began to ride themselves, when the groom,
coming with horrid oaths, drove them away.
Lady Crawley is always knitting the worsted. Sir Pitt
is always tipsy, every night; and, I believe, sits with
Horrocks, the butler. Mr. Crawley always reads sermons
in the evening, and in the morning is locked up in his
study, or else rides to Mudbury, on county business,
or to Squashmore, where he preaches, on Wednesdays
and Fridays, to the tenants there.
A hundred thousand grateful loves to your dear papa
and mamma. Is your poor brother recovered of his rack-
punch? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How men should beware of
wicked punch!
Ever and ever thine own
REBECCA
Everything considered, I think it is quite as well for
our dear Amelia Sedley, in Russell Square, that Miss
Sharp and she are parted. Rebecca is a droll funny
creature, to be sure; and those descriptions of the poor lady
weeping for the loss of her beauty, and the gentleman
"with hay-coloured whiskers and straw-coloured hair,"
are very smart, doubtless, and show a great knowledge
of the world. That she might, when on her knees, have
been thinking of something better than Miss Horrocks's
ribbons, has possibly struck both of us. But my kind
reader will please to remember that this history has
"Vanity Fair" for a title, and that Vanity Fair is a
very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of
humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. And while the
moralist, who is holding forth on the cover ( an accurate
portrait of your humble servant), professes to wear
neither gown nor bands, but only the very same long-
eared livery in which his congregation is arrayed: yet,
look you, one is bound to speak the truth as far as one
knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells or a shovel
hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out
in the course of such an undertaking.
I have heard a brother of the story-telling trade, at
Naples, preaching to a pack of good-for-nothing honest
lazy fellows by the sea-shore, work himself up into such a
rage and passion with some of the villains whose wicked
deeds he was describing and inventing, that the audience
could not resist it; and they and the poet together would
burst out into a roar of oaths and execrations against
the fictitious monster of the tale, so that the hat went
round, and the bajocchi tumbled into it, in the midst of
a perfect storm of sympathy.
At the little Paris theatres, on the other hand, you will
not only hear the people yelling out "Ah gredin! Ah
monstre:" and cursing the tyrant of the play from the
boxes; but the actors themselves positively refuse to play
the wicked parts, such as those of infames Anglais,
brutal Cossacks, and what not, and prefer to appear
at a smaller salary, in their real characters as loyal
Frenchmen. I set the two stories one against the other,
so that you may see that it is not from mere mercenary
motives that the present performer is desirous to show
up and trounce his villains; but because he has a sincere
hatred of them, which he cannot keep down, and which
must find a vent in suitable abuse and bad language.
I warn my "kyind friends," then, that I am going to
tell a story of harrowing villainy and complicated--but,
as I trust, intensely interesting--crime. My rascals are
no milk-and-water rascals, I promise you. When we come
to the proper places we won't spare fine language--No,
no! But when we are going over the quiet country we
must perforce be calm. A tempest in a slop-basin is
absurd. We will reserve that sort of thing for the mighty
ocean and the lonely midnight. The present Chapter is
very mild. Others--But we will not anticipate THOSE.
And, as we bring our characters forward, I will ask
leave, as a man and a brother, not only to introduce
them, but occasionally to step down from the platform,
and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to
love them and shake them by the hand: if they are silly,
to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve:
if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the
strongest terms which politeness admits of.
Otherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering
at the practice of devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so
ridiculous; that it was I who laughed good-humouredly
at the reeling old Silenus of a baronet--whereas the
laughter comes from one who has no reverence except
for prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success.
Such people there are living and flourishing in the world
--Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them,
dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and
very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was
to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that
Laughter was made.
CHAPTER IX
Family Portraits
Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is
called low life. His first marriage with the daughter of
the noble Binkie had been made under the auspices of
his parents; and as he often told Lady Crawley in her
lifetime she was such a confounded quarrelsome high-bred
jade that when she died he was hanged if he would ever take
another of her sort, at her ladyship's demise he kept his
promise, and selected for a second wife Miss Rose Dawson,
daughter of Mr. John Thomas Dawson, ironmonger, of Mudbury.
What a happy woman was Rose to be my Lady Crawley!
Let us set down the items of her happiness. In the
first place, she gave up Peter Butt, a young man who
kept company with her, and in consequence of his
disappointment in love, took to smuggling, poaching, and a
thousand other bad courses. Then she quarrelled, as in
duty bound, with all the friends and intimates of her youth,
who, of course, could not be received by my Lady at
Queen's Crawley--nor did she find in her new rank and
abode any persons who were willing to welcome her.
Who ever did? Sir Huddleston Fuddleston had three
daughters who all hoped to be Lady Crawley. Sir Giles
Wapshot's family were insulted that one of the Wapshot
girls had not the preference in the marriage, and the
remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their
comrade's misalliance. Never mind the commoners, whom
we will leave to grumble anonymously.
Sir Pitt did not care, as he said, a brass farden for
any one of them. He had his pretty Rose, and what
more need a man require than to please himself? So he
used to get drunk every night: to beat his pretty Rose
sometimes: to leave her in Hampshire when he went to
London for the parliamentary session, without a single
friend in the wide world. Even Mrs. Bute Crawley, the
Rector's wife, refused to visit her, as she said she would
never give the pas to a tradesman's daughter.
As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted
Lady Crawley were those of pink cheeks and a white
skin, and as she had no sort of character, nor talents,
nor opinions, nor occupations, nor amusements, nor that
vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often falls