Vanity Fair
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,