Vanity Fair
Ladies, are you aware that the great Pitt lived in Baker Street? What
would not your grandmothers have given to be asked to Lady Hester's
parties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it--moi qui vous
parle, I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead. As we sat
soberly drinking claret there with men of to-day, the spirits of the
departed came in and took their places round the darksome board. The
pilot who weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritual
port; the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a heeltap.
Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly manner, and would not be
behindhand when the noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from under
bushy eyebrows, winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce's
eyes went up to the ceiling, so that he did not seem to know how his
glass went up full to his mouth and came down empty; up to the ceiling
which was above us only yesterday, and which the great of the past days
have all looked at. They let the house as a furnished lodging now.
Yes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and lies asleep in the
wilderness. Eothen saw her there--not in Baker Street, but in the other
solitude.
It is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little of
it? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it
is transitory, dislikes roast beef? That is a vanity, but may every man
who reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life, I beg:
aye, though my readers were five hundred thousand. Sit down, gentlemen,
and fall to, with a good hearty appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy,
the horse-radish as you like it--don't spare it. Another glass of
wine, Jones, my boy--a little bit of the Sunday side. Yes, let us eat
our fill of the vain thing and be thankful therefor. And let us make
the best of Becky's aristocratic pleasures likewise--for these too,
like all other mortal delights, were but transitory.
The upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was that His Highness the Prince
of Peterwaradin took occasion to renew his acquaintance with Colonel
Crawley, when they met on the next day at the Club, and to compliment
Mrs. Crawley in the Ring of Hyde Park with a profound salute of the
hat. She and her husband were invited immediately to one of the
Prince's small parties at Levant House, then occupied by His Highness
during the temporary absence from England of its noble proprietor. She
sang after dinner to a very little comite. The Marquis of Steyne was
present, paternally superintending the progress of his pupil.
At Levant House Becky met one of the finest gentlemen and greatest
ministers that Europe has produced--the Duc de la Jabotiere, then
Ambassador from the Most Christian King, and subsequently Minister to
that monarch. I declare I swell with pride as these august names are
transcribed by my pen, and I think in what brilliant company my dear
Becky is moving. She became a constant guest at the French Embassy,
where no party was considered to be complete without the presence of
the charming Madame Ravdonn Cravley. Messieurs de Truffigny (of the
Perigord family) and Champignac, both attaches of the Embassy, were
straightway smitten by the charms of the fair Colonel's wife, and both
declared, according to the wont of their nation (for who ever yet met a
Frenchman, come out of England, that has not left half a dozen families
miserable, and brought away as many hearts in his pocket-book?), both,
I say, declared that they were au mieux with the charming Madame
Ravdonn.
But I doubt the correctness of the assertion. Champignac was very fond
of ecarte, and made many parties with the Colonel of evenings, while
Becky was singing to Lord Steyne in the other room; and as for
Truffigny, it is a well-known fact that he dared not go to the
Travellers', where he owed money to the waiters, and if he had not had
the Embassy as a dining-place, the worthy young gentleman must have
starved. I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either of
these young men as a person on whom she would bestow her special
regard. They ran of her messages, purchased her gloves and flowers,
went in debt for opera-boxes for her, and made themselves amiable in a
thousand ways. And they talked English with adorable simplicity, and
to the constant amusement of Becky and my Lord Steyne, she would mimic
one or other to his face, and compliment him on his advance in the
English language with a gravity which never failed to tickle the
Marquis, her sardonic old patron. Truffigny gave Briggs a shawl by way
of winning over Becky's confidante, and asked her to take charge of a
letter which the simple spinster handed over in public to the person to
whom it was addressed, and the composition of which amused everybody
who read it greatly. Lord Steyne read it, everybody but honest Rawdon,
to whom it was not necessary to tell everything that passed in the
little house in May Fair.
Here, before long, Becky received not only "the best" foreigners (as
the phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some of
the best English people too. I don't mean the most virtuous, or indeed
the least virtuous, or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or the richest,
or the best born, but "the best,"--in a word, people about whom there
is no question--such as the great Lady Fitz-Willis, that Patron Saint
of Almack's, the great Lady Slowbore, the great Lady Grizzel Macbeth
(she was Lady G. Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey of Glowry), and the
like. When the Countess of Fitz-Willis (her Ladyship is of the
Kingstreet family, see Debrett and Burke) takes up a person, he or she
is safe. There is no question about them any more. Not that my Lady
Fitz-Willis is any better than anybody else, being, on the contrary, a
faded person, fifty-seven years of age, and neither handsome, nor
wealthy, nor entertaining; but it is agreed on all sides that she is of
the "best people." Those who go to her are of the best: and from an
old grudge probably to Lady Steyne (for whose coronet her ladyship,
then the youthful Georgina Frederica, daughter of the Prince of Wales's
favourite, the Earl of Portansherry, had once tried), this great and
famous leader of the fashion chose to acknowledge Mrs. Rawdon Crawley;
made her a most marked curtsey at the assembly over which she presided;
and not only encouraged her son, St. Kitts (his lordship got his place
through Lord Steyne's interest), to frequent Mrs. Crawley's house, but
asked her to her own mansion and spoke to her twice in the most public
and condescending manner during dinner. The important fact was known
all over London that night. People who had been crying fie about Mrs.
Crawley were silent. Wenham, the wit and lawyer, Lord Steyne's
right-hand man, went about everywhere praising her: some who had
hesitated, came forward at once and welcomed her; little Tom Toady, who
had warned Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman, now
besought to be introduced to her. In a word, she was admitted to be
among the "best" people. Ah, my beloved readers and brethren, do not
envy poor Becky prematurely--glory like this is said to be fugitive.
It is currently reported that even in the very inmost circles, they are
no happier than the poor wanderers outside the zone; and Becky, who
penetrated into the very centre of fashion and saw the great George IV
face to face, has owned since that there too was Vanity.
We must be brief in descanting upon this part of her career. As I
cannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a shrewd
idea that it is a humbug, so an uninitiated man cannot take upon
himself to portray the great world accurately, and had best keep his
opinions to himself, whatever they are.
Becky has often spoken in subsequent years of this season of her life,
when she moved among the very greatest circles of the London fashion.
Her success excited, elated, and then bored her. At first no
occupation was more pleasant than to invent and procure (the latter a
work of no small trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in a person of Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley's very narrow means)--to procure, we say, the prettiest
new dresses and ornaments; to drive to fine dinner parties, where she
was welcomed by great people; and from the fine dinner parties to fine
assemblies, whither the same people came with whom she had been dining,
whom she had met the night before, and would see on the morrow--the
young men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted, with the neatest
glossy boots and white gloves--the elders portly, brass-buttoned,
noble-looking, polite, and prosy--the young ladies blonde, timid, and
in pink--the mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in
diamonds. They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in the
novels. They talked about each others' houses, and characters, and
families--just as the Joneses do about the Smiths. Becky's former
acquaintances hated and envied her; the poor woman herself was yawning
in spirit. "I wish I were out of it," she said to herself. "I would
rather be a parson's wife and teach a Sunday school than this; or a
sergeant's lady and ride in the regimental waggon; or, oh, how much
gayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers and dance before a
booth at a fair."
"You would do it very well," said Lord Steyne, laughing. She used to
tell the great man her ennuis and perplexities in her artless way--they
amused him.
"Rawdon would make a very good Ecuyer--Master of the Ceremonies--what
do you call him--the man in the large boots and the uniform, who goes
round the ring cracking the whip? He is large, heavy, and of a military
figure. I recollect," Becky continued pensively, "my father took me to
see a show at Brookgreen Fair when I was a child, and when we came
home, I made myself a pair of stilts and danced in the studio to the
wonder of all the pupils."
"I should have liked to see it," said Lord Steyne.
"I should like to do it now," Becky continued. "How Lady Blinkey would
open her eyes, and Lady Grizzel Macbeth would stare! Hush! silence!
there is Pasta beginning to sing." Becky always made a point of being
conspicuously polite to the professional ladies and gentlemen who
attended at these aristocratic parties--of following them into the
corners where they sat in silence, and shaking hands with them, and
smiling in the view of all persons. She was an artist herself, as she
said very truly; there was a frankness and humility in the manner in
which she acknowledged her origin, which provoked, or disarmed, or
amused lookers-on, as the case might be. "How cool that woman is," said
one; "what airs of independence she assumes, where she ought to sit
still and be thankful if anybody speaks to her!" "What an honest and
good-natured soul she is!" said another. "What an artful little minx"
said a third. They were all right very likely, but Becky went her own
way, and so fascinated the professional personages that they would
leave off their sore throats in order to sing at her parties and give
her lessons for nothing.
Yes, she gave parties in the little house in Curzon Street. Many
scores of carriages, with blazing lamps, blocked up the street, to the
disgust of No. 100, who could not rest for the thunder of the knocking,
and of 102, who could not sleep for envy. The gigantic footmen who
accompanied the vehicles were too big to be contained in Becky's little
hall, and were billeted off in the neighbouring public-houses, whence,
when they were wanted, call-boys summoned them from their beer. Scores
of the great dandies of London squeezed and trod on each other on the
little stairs, laughing to find themselves there; and many spotless and
severe ladies of ton were seated in the little drawing-room, listening