Vanity Fair
becoming dresses and brilliant ball triumphs will go very little way to
console faded beauties. Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of
existence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant
divisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very
small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view,
about which all of us must some day or other be speculating. O brother
wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of
grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear
friends and companions, is my amiable object--to walk with you through
the Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should
all come home after the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be
perfectly miserable in private.
"If that poor man of mine had a head on his shoulders," Mrs. Bute
Crawley thought to herself, "how useful he might be, under present
circumstances, to this unhappy old lady! He might make her repent of
her shocking free-thinking ways; he might urge her to do her duty, and
cast off that odious reprobate who has disgraced himself and his
family; and he might induce her to do justice to my dear girls and the
two boys, who require and deserve, I am sure, every assistance which
their relatives can give them."
And, as the hatred of vice is always a progress towards virtue, Mrs.
Bute Crawley endeavoured to instil her sister-in-law a proper
abhorrence for all Rawdon Crawley's manifold sins: of which his uncle's
wife brought forward such a catalogue as indeed would have served to
condemn a whole regiment of young officers. If a man has committed
wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his
errors out to the world than his own relations; so Mrs. Bute showed a
perfect family interest and knowledge of Rawdon's history. She had all
the particulars of that ugly quarrel with Captain Marker, in which
Rawdon, wrong from the beginning, ended in shooting the Captain. She
knew how the unhappy Lord Dovedale, whose mamma had taken a house at
Oxford, so that he might be educated there, and who had never touched a
card in his life till he came to London, was perverted by Rawdon at the
Cocoa-Tree, made helplessly tipsy by this abominable seducer and
perverter of youth, and fleeced of four thousand pounds. She described
with the most vivid minuteness the agonies of the country families whom
he had ruined--the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour and
poverty--the daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition. She knew
the poor tradesmen who were bankrupt by his extravagance--the mean
shifts and rogueries with which he had ministered to it--the astounding
falsehoods by which he had imposed upon the most generous of aunts, and
the ingratitude and ridicule by which he had repaid her sacrifices.
She imparted these stories gradually to Miss Crawley; gave her the
whole benefit of them; felt it to be her bounden duty as a Christian
woman and mother of a family to do so; had not the smallest remorse or
compunction for the victim whom her tongue was immolating; nay, very
likely thought her act was quite meritorious, and plumed herself upon
her resolute manner of performing it. Yes, if a man's character is to
be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the
business. And one is bound to own, regarding this unfortunate wretch
of a Rawdon Crawley, that the mere truth was enough to condemn him, and
that all inventions of scandal were quite superfluous pains on his
friends' parts.
Rebecca, too, being now a relative, came in for the fullest share of
Mrs. Bute's kind inquiries. This indefatigable pursuer of truth
(having given strict orders that the door was to be denied to all
emissaries or letters from Rawdon), took Miss Crawley's carriage, and
drove to her old friend Miss Pinkerton, at Minerva House, Chiswick
Mall, to whom she announced the dreadful intelligence of Captain
Rawdon's seduction by Miss Sharp, and from whom she got sundry strange
particulars regarding the ex-governess's birth and early history. The
friend of the Lexicographer had plenty of information to give. Miss
Jemima was made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts and letters.
This one was from a spunging-house: that entreated an advance: another
was full of gratitude for Rebecca's reception by the ladies of
Chiswick: and the last document from the unlucky artist's pen was that
in which, from his dying bed, he recommended his orphan child to Miss
Pinkerton's protection. There were juvenile letters and petitions from
Rebecca, too, in the collection, imploring aid for her father or
declaring her own gratitude. Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no
better satires than letters. Take a bundle of your dear friend's of
ten years back--your dear friend whom you hate now. Look at a file of
your sister's! how you clung to each other till you quarrelled about
the twenty-pound legacy! Get down the round-hand scrawls of your son
who has half broken your heart with selfish undutifulness since; or a
parcel of your own, breathing endless ardour and love eternal, which
were sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob--your
mistress for whom you now care no more than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows,
love, promises, confidences, gratitude, how queerly they read after a
while! There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction
of every written document (except receipted tradesmen's bills) after a
certain brief and proper interval. Those quacks and misanthropes who
advertise indelible Japan ink should be made to perish along with their
wicked discoveries. The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that
faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank,
so that you might write on it to somebody else.
From Miss Pinkerton's the indefatigable Mrs. Bute followed the track of
Sharp and his daughter back to the lodgings in Greek Street, which the
defunct painter had occupied; and where portraits of the landlady in
white satin, and of the husband in brass buttons, done by Sharp in lieu
of a quarter's rent, still decorated the parlour walls. Mrs. Stokes
was a communicative person, and quickly told all she knew about Mr.
Sharp; how dissolute and poor he was; how good-natured and amusing;
how he was always hunted by bailiffs and duns; how, to the landlady's
horror, though she never could abide the woman, he did not marry his
wife till a short time before her death; and what a queer little wild
vixen his daughter was; how she kept them all laughing with her fun and
mimicry; how she used to fetch the gin from the public-house, and was
known in all the studios in the quarter--in brief, Mrs. Bute got such a
full account of her new niece's parentage, education, and behaviour as
would scarcely have pleased Rebecca, had the latter known that such
inquiries were being made concerning her.
Of all these industrious researches Miss Crawley had the full benefit.
Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was the daughter of an opera-girl. She had danced
herself. She had been a model to the painters. She was brought up as
became her mother's daughter. She drank gin with her father, &c. &c.
It was a lost woman who was married to a lost man; and the moral to be
inferred from Mrs. Bute's tale was, that the knavery of the pair was
irremediable, and that no properly conducted person should ever notice
them again.
These were the materials which prudent Mrs. Bute gathered together in
Park Lane, the provisions and ammunition as it were with which she
fortified the house against the siege which she knew that Rawdon and
his wife would lay to Miss Crawley.
But if a fault may be found with her arrangements, it is this, that she
was too eager: she managed rather too well; undoubtedly she made Miss
Crawley more ill than was necessary; and though the old invalid
succumbed to her authority, it was so harassing and severe, that the
victim would be inclined to escape at the very first chance which fell
in her way. Managing women, the ornaments of their sex--women who
order everything for everybody, and know so much better than any person
concerned what is good for their neighbours, don't sometimes speculate
upon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extreme
consequences resulting from their overstrained authority.
Thus, for instance, Mrs. Bute, with the best intentions no doubt in the
world, and wearing herself to death as she did by foregoing sleep,
dinner, fresh air, for the sake of her invalid sister-in-law, carried
her conviction of the old lady's illness so far that she almost managed
her into her coffin. She pointed out her sacrifices and their results
one day to the constant apothecary, Mr. Clump.
"I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump," she said, "no efforts of mine have been
wanting to restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew
has laid on the bed of sickness. I never shrink from personal
discomfort: I never refuse to sacrifice myself."
"Your devotion, it must be confessed, is admirable," Mr. Clump says,
with a low bow; "but--"
"I have scarcely closed my eyes since my arrival: I give up sleep,
health, every comfort, to my sense of duty. When my poor James was in
the smallpox, did I allow any hireling to nurse him? No."
"You did what became an excellent mother, my dear Madam--the best of
mothers; but--"
"As the mother of a family and the wife of an English clergyman, I
humbly trust that my principles are good," Mrs. Bute said, with a happy
solemnity of conviction; "and, as long as Nature supports me, never,
never, Mr. Clump, will I desert the post of duty. Others may bring
that grey head with sorrow to the bed of sickness (here Mrs. Bute,
waving her hand, pointed to one of old Miss Crawley's coffee-coloured
fronts, which was perched on a stand in the dressing-room), but I will
never quit it. Ah, Mr. Clump! I fear, I know, that the couch needs
spiritual as well as medical consolation."
"What I was going to observe, my dear Madam,"--here the resolute Clump
once more interposed with a bland air--"what I was going to observe
when you gave utterance to sentiments which do you so much honour, was
that I think you alarm yourself needlessly about our kind friend, and
sacrifice your own health too prodigally in her favour."
"I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of my
husband's family," Mrs. Bute interposed.
"Yes, Madam, if need were; but we don't want Mrs. Bute Crawley to be a
martyr," Clump said gallantly. "Dr. Squills and myself have both
considered Miss Crawley's case with every anxiety and care, as you may
suppose. We see her low-spirited and nervous; family events have
agitated her."
"Her nephew will come to perdition," Mrs. Crawley cried.
"Have agitated her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dear
Madam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under the
pressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that our
amiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to her bed
necessary. She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps adds to her
depression. She should have change, fresh air, gaiety; the most
delightful remedies in the pharmacopoeia," Mr. Clump said, grinning and
showing his handsome teeth. "Persuade her to rise, dear Madam; drag
her from her couch and her low spirits; insist upon her taking little
drives. They will restore the roses too to your cheeks, if I may so
speak to Mrs. Bute Crawley."
"The sight of her horrid nephew casually in the Park, where I am told
the wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes," Mrs. Bute
said (letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of secrecy), "would
cause her such a shock, that we should have to bring her back to bed