Vanity Fair
to the professional singers, who were singing according to their wont,
and as if they wished to blow the windows down. And the day after,
there appeared among the fashionable reunions in the Morning Post a
paragraph to the following effect:
"Yesterday, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley entertained a select party at
dinner at their house in May Fair. Their Excellencies the Prince and
Princess of Peterwaradin, H. E. Papoosh Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador
(attended by Kibob Bey, dragoman of the mission), the Marquess of
Steyne, Earl of Southdown, Sir Pitt and Lady Jane Crawley, Mr. Wagg,
&c. After dinner Mrs. Crawley had an assembly which was attended by
the Duchess (Dowager) of Stilton, Duc de la Gruyere, Marchioness of
Cheshire, Marchese Alessandro Strachino, Comte de Brie, Baron
Schapzuger, Chevalier Tosti, Countess of Slingstone, and Lady F.
Macadam, Major-General and Lady G. Macbeth, and (2) Miss Macbeths;
Viscount Paddington, Sir Horace Fogey, Hon. Sands Bedwin, Bobachy
Bahawder," and an &c., which the reader may fill at his pleasure
through a dozen close lines of small type.
And in her commerce with the great our dear friend showed the same
frankness which distinguished her transactions with the lowly in
station. On one occasion, when out at a very fine house, Rebecca was
(perhaps rather ostentatiously) holding a conversation in the French
language with a celebrated tenor singer of that nation, while the Lady
Grizzel Macbeth looked over her shoulder scowling at the pair.
"How very well you speak French," Lady Grizzel said, who herself spoke
the tongue in an Edinburgh accent most remarkable to hear.
"I ought to know it," Becky modestly said, casting down her eyes. "I
taught it in a school, and my mother was a Frenchwoman."
Lady Grizzel was won by her humility and was mollified towards the
little woman. She deplored the fatal levelling tendencies of the age,
which admitted persons of all classes into the society of their
superiors, but her ladyship owned that this one at least was well
behaved and never forgot her place in life. She was a very good woman:
good to the poor; stupid, blameless, unsuspicious. It is not her
ladyship's fault that she fancies herself better than you and me. The
skirts of her ancestors' garments have been kissed for centuries; it is
a thousand years, they say, since the tartans of the head of the family
were embraced by the defunct Duncan's lords and councillors, when the
great ancestor of the House became King of Scotland.
Lady Steyne, after the music scene, succumbed before Becky, and perhaps
was not disinclined to her. The younger ladies of the house of Gaunt
were also compelled into submission. Once or twice they set people at
her, but they failed. The brilliant Lady Stunnington tried a passage
of arms with her, but was routed with great slaughter by the intrepid
little Becky. When attacked sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a
demure ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous. She said the
wickedest things with the most simple unaffected air when in this mood,
and would take care artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that
all the world should know that she had made them.
Mr. Wagg, the celebrated wit, and a led captain and trencher-man of my
Lord Steyne, was caused by the ladies to charge her; and the worthy
fellow, leering at his patronesses and giving them a wink, as much as
to say, "Now look out for sport," one evening began an assault upon
Becky, who was unsuspiciously eating her dinner. The little woman,
attacked on a sudden, but never without arms, lighted up in an instant,
parried and riposted with a home-thrust, which made Wagg's face tingle
with shame; then she returned to her soup with the most perfect calm
and a quiet smile on her face. Wagg's great patron, who gave him
dinners and lent him a little money sometimes, and whose election,
newspaper, and other jobs Wagg did, gave the luckless fellow such a
savage glance with the eyes as almost made him sink under the table and
burst into tears. He looked piteously at my lord, who never spoke to
him during dinner, and at the ladies, who disowned him. At last Becky
herself took compassion upon him and tried to engage him in talk. He
was not asked to dinner again for six weeks; and Fiche, my lord's
confidential man, to whom Wagg naturally paid a good deal of court, was
instructed to tell him that if he ever dared to say a rude thing to
Mrs. Crawley again, or make her the butt of his stupid jokes, Milor
would put every one of his notes of hand into his lawyer's hands and
sell him up without mercy. Wagg wept before Fiche and implored his
dear friend to intercede for him. He wrote a poem in favour of Mrs. R.
C., which appeared in the very next number of the Harum-scarum
Magazine, which he conducted. He implored her good-will at parties
where he met her. He cringed and coaxed Rawdon at the club. He was
allowed to come back to Gaunt House after a while. Becky was always
good to him, always amused, never angry.
His lordship's vizier and chief confidential servant (with a seat in
parliament and at the dinner table), Mr. Wenham, was much more prudent
in his behaviour and opinions than Mr. Wagg. However much he might be
disposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a staunch old
True Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-merchant in the north of
England), this aide-de-camp of the Marquis never showed any sort of
hostility to the new favourite, but pursued her with stealthy
kindnesses and a sly and deferential politeness which somehow made
Becky more uneasy than other people's overt hostilities.
How the Crawleys got the money which was spent upon the entertainments
with which they treated the polite world was a mystery which gave rise
to some conversation at the time, and probably added zest to these
little festivities. Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gave
his brother a handsome allowance; if he did, Becky's power over the
Baronet must have been extraordinary indeed, and his character greatly
changed in his advanced age. Other parties hinted that it was Becky's
habit to levy contributions on all her husband's friends: going to this
one in tears with an account that there was an execution in the house;
falling on her knees to that one and declaring that the whole family
must go to gaol or commit suicide unless such and such a bill could be
paid. Lord Southdown, it was said, had been induced to give many
hundreds through these pathetic representations. Young Feltham, of the
--th Dragoons (and son of the firm of Tiler and Feltham, hatters and
army accoutrement makers), and whom the Crawleys introduced into
fashionable life, was also cited as one of Becky's victims in the
pecuniary way. People declared that she got money from various simply
disposed persons, under pretence of getting them confidential
appointments under Government. Who knows what stories were or were not
told of our dear and innocent friend? Certain it is that if she had had
all the money which she was said to have begged or borrowed or stolen,
she might have capitalized and been honest for life, whereas,--but this
is advancing matters.
The truth is, that by economy and good management--by a sparing use of
ready money and by paying scarcely anybody--people can manage, for a
time at least, to make a great show with very little means: and it is
our belief that Becky's much-talked-of parties, which were not, after
all was said, very numerous, cost this lady very little more than the
wax candles which lighted the walls. Stillbrook and Queen's Crawley
supplied her with game and fruit in abundance. Lord Steyne's cellars
were at her disposal, and that excellent nobleman's famous cooks
presided over her little kitchen, or sent by my lord's order the rarest
delicacies from their own. I protest it is quite shameful in the world
to abuse a simple creature, as people of her time abuse Becky, and I
warn the public against believing one-tenth of the stories against her.
If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and
cannot pay--if we are to be peering into everybody's private life,
speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of
their expenditure--why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable
dwelling Vanity Fair would be! Every man's hand would be against his
neighbour in this case, my dear sir, and the benefits of civilization
would be done away with. We should be quarrelling, abusing, avoiding
one another. Our houses would become caverns, and we should go in rags
because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't be
given any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt. Wine,
wax-lights, comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs,
Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid
high-stepping carriage horses--all the delights of life, I say,--would
go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles and
avoid those whom they dislike and abuse. Whereas, by a little charity
and mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough: we
may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal
unhanged--but do we wish to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands when
we meet. If his cook is good we forgive him and go and dine with him,
and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus trade
flourishes--civilization advances; peace is kept; new dresses are
wanted for new assemblies every week; and the last year's vintage of
Lafitte will remunerate the honest proprietor who reared it.
At the time whereof we are writing, though the Great George was on the
throne and ladies wore gigots and large combs like tortoise-shell
shovels in their hair, instead of the simple sleeves and lovely wreaths
which are actually in fashion, the manners of the very polite world
were not, I take it, essentially different from those of the present
day: and their amusements pretty similar. To us, from the outside,
gazing over the policeman's shoulders at the bewildering beauties as
they pass into Court or ball, they may seem beings of unearthly
splendour and in the enjoyment of an exquisite happiness by us
unattainable. It is to console some of these dissatisfied beings that
we are narrating our dear Becky's struggles, and triumphs, and
disappointments, of all of which, indeed, as is the case with all
persons of merit, she had her share.
At this time the amiable amusement of acting charades had come among us
from France, and was considerably in vogue in this country, enabling
the many ladies amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, and
the fewer number who had cleverness to exhibit their wit. My Lord
Steyne was incited by Becky, who perhaps believed herself endowed with
both the above qualifications, to give an entertainment at Gaunt House,
which should include some of these little dramas--and we must take
leave to introduce the reader to this brilliant reunion, and, with a
melancholy welcome too, for it will be among the very last of the
fashionable entertainments to which it will be our fortune to conduct
him.
A portion of that splendid room, the picture gallery of Gaunt House,
was arranged as the charade theatre. It had been so used when George
III was king; and a picture of the Marquis of Gaunt is still extant,
with his hair in powder and a pink ribbon, in a Roman shape, as it was
called, enacting the part of Cato in Mr. Addison's tragedy of that
name, performed before their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, the
Bishop of Osnaburgh, and Prince William Henry, then children like the
actor. One or two of the old properties were drawn out of the garrets,
where they had lain ever since, and furbished up anew for the present
festivities.