Vanity Fair
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 to the
lot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir Pitt's affections was
not very great. Her roses faded out of her cheeks, and the pretty
freshness left her figure after the birth of a couple of children, and
she became a mere machine in her husband's house of no more use than
the late Lady Crawley's grand piano. Being a light-complexioned woman,
she wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, in
preference, in draggled sea-green, or slatternly sky-blue. She worked
that worsted day and night, or other pieces like it. She had
counterpanes in the course of a few years to all the beds in Crawley.
She had a small flower-garden, for which she had rather an affection;
but beyond this no other like or disliking. When her husband was rude
to her she was apathetic: whenever he struck her she cried. She had
not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slipshod
and in curl-papers all day. O Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! This might
have been, but for you, a cheery lass--Peter Butt and Rose a happy man
and wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty family; and an honest portion
of pleasures, cares, hopes and struggles--but a title and a coach and
four are toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair: and if Harry
the Eighth or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do you
suppose he could not get the prettiest girl that shall be presented
this season?
The languid dulness of their mamma did not, as it may be supposed,
awaken much affection in her little daughters, but they were very happy
in the servants' hall and in the stables; and the Scotch gardener
having luckily a good wife and some good children, they got a little
wholesome society and instruction in his lodge, which was the only
education bestowed upon them until Miss Sharp came.
Her engagement was owing to the remonstrances of Mr. Pitt Crawley, the
only friend or protector Lady Crawley ever had, and the only person,
besides her children, for whom she entertained a little feeble
attachment. Mr. Pitt took after the noble Binkies, from whom he was
descended, and was a very polite and proper gentleman. When he grew to
man's estate, and came back from Christchurch, he began to reform the
slackened discipline of the hall, in spite of his father, who stood in
awe of him. He was a man of such rigid refinement, that he would have
starved rather than have dined without a white neckcloth. Once, when
just from college, and when Horrocks the butler brought him a letter
without placing it previously on a tray, he gave that domestic a look,
and administered to him a speech so cutting, that Horrocks ever after
trembled before him; the whole household bowed to him: Lady Crawley's
curl-papers came off earlier when he was at home: Sir Pitt's muddy
gaiters disappeared; and if that incorrigible old man still adhered to
other old habits, he never fuddled himself with rum-and-water in his
son's presence, and only talked to his servants in a very reserved and