Vanity Fair
continued he, following up his advantage.
"Gracious heavens! Father," cried Joseph.
"There now, I have hurt his feelings. Mrs. Sedley, my dear, I have
hurt your son's feelings. I have alluded to his buckskins. Ask Miss
Sharp if I haven't? Come, Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp, and let
us all go to dinner."
"There's a pillau, Joseph, just as you like it, and Papa has brought
home the best turbot in Billingsgate."
"Come, come, sir, walk downstairs with Miss Sharp, and I will follow
with these two young women," said the father, and he took an arm of
wife and daughter and walked merrily off.
If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart upon making the
conquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to
blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and
with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas,
recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicate
matters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself,
there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off
her hands. What causes young people to "come out," but the noble
ambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping to watering-places?
What keeps them dancing till five o'clock in the morning through a
whole mortal season? What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas,
and to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a guinea a lesson,
and to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and to
wear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may
bring down some "desirable" young man with those killing bows and
arrows of theirs? What causes respectable parents to take up their
carpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their
year's income in ball suppers and iced champagne? Is it sheer love of
their species, and an unadulterated wish to see young people happy and
dancing? Psha! they want to marry their daughters; and, as honest Mrs.
Sedley has, in the depths of her kind heart, already arranged a score
of little schemes for the settlement of her Amelia, so also had our
beloved but unprotected Rebecca determined to do her very best to
secure the husband, who was even more necessary for her than for her
friend. She had a vivid imagination; she had, besides, read the Arabian
Nights and Guthrie's Geography; and it is a fact that while she was
dressing for dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her brother
was very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent castle in
the air, of which she was mistress, with a husband somewhere in the
background (she had not seen him as yet, and his figure would not
therefore be very distinct); she had arrayed herself in an infinity of
shawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces, and had mounted upon an
elephant to the sound of the march in Bluebeard, in order to pay a
visit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul. Charming Alnaschar visions! it is
the happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fanciful
young creature besides Rebecca Sharp has indulged in these delightful
day-dreams ere now!
Joseph Sedley was twelve years older than his sister Amelia. He was in
the East India Company's Civil Service, and his name appeared, at the
period of which we write, in the Bengal division of the East India
Register, as collector of Boggley Wollah, an honourable and lucrative
post, as everybody knows: in order to know to what higher posts Joseph
rose in the service, the reader is referred to the same periodical.
Boggley Wollah is situated in a fine, lonely, marshy, jungly district,
famous for snipe-shooting, and where not unfrequently you may flush a
tiger. Ramgunge, where there is a magistrate, is only forty miles off,
and there is a cavalry station about thirty miles farther; so Joseph
wrote home to his parents, when he took possession of his
collectorship. He had lived for about eight years of his life, quite
alone, at this charming place, scarcely seeing a Christian face except
twice a year, when the detachment arrived to carry off the revenues
which he had collected, to Calcutta.
Luckily, at this time he caught a liver complaint, for the cure of
which he returned to Europe, and which was the source of great comfort
and amusement to him in his native country. He did not live with his
family while in London, but had lodgings of his own, like a gay young
bachelor. Before he went to India he was too young to partake of the
delightful pleasures of a man about town, and plunged into them on his
return with considerable assiduity. He drove his horses in the Park;
he dined at the fashionable taverns (for the Oriental Club was not as
yet invented); he frequented the theatres, as the mode was in those
days, or made his appearance at the opera, laboriously attired in
tights and a cocked hat.
On returning to India, and ever after, he used to talk of the pleasure
of this period of his existence with great enthusiasm, and give you to
understand that he and Brummel were the leading bucks of the day. But
he was as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley Wollah. He scarcely
knew a single soul in the metropolis: and were it not for his doctor,
and the society of his blue-pill, and his liver complaint, he must have
died of loneliness. He was lazy, peevish, and a bon-vivant; the
appearance of a lady frightened him beyond measure; hence it was but
seldom that he joined the paternal circle in Russell Square, where
there was plenty of gaiety, and where the jokes of his good-natured old
father frightened his amour-propre. His bulk caused Joseph much
anxious thought and alarm; now and then he would make a desperate
attempt to get rid of his superabundant fat; but his indolence and love
of good living speedily got the better of these endeavours at reform,
and he found himself again at his three meals a day. He never was well
dressed; but he took the hugest pains to adorn his big person, and
passed many hours daily in that occupation. His valet made a fortune
out of his wardrobe: his toilet-table was covered with as many pomatums
and essences as ever were employed by an old beauty: he had tried, in
order to give himself a waist, every girth, stay, and waistband then
invented. Like most fat men, he would have his clothes made too tight,
and took care they should be of the most brilliant colours and youthful
cut. When dressed at length, in the afternoon, he would issue forth to
take a drive with nobody in the Park; and then would come back in order
to dress again and go and dine with nobody at the Piazza Coffee-House.
He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one of
the results of his extreme vanity. If Miss Rebecca can get the better
of him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person of
no ordinary cleverness.
The first move showed considerable skill. When she called Sedley a
very handsome man, she knew that Amelia would tell her mother, who
would probably tell Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased by
the compliment paid to her son. All mothers are. If you had told
Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have
been pleased, witch as she was. Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley would
overhear the compliment--Rebecca spoke loud enough--and he did hear,
and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the praise
thrilled through every fibre of his big body, and made it tingle with
pleasure. Then, however, came a recoil. "Is the girl making fun of
me?" he thought, and straightway he bounced towards the bell, and was
for retreating, as we have seen, when his father's jokes and his
mother's entreaties caused him to pause and stay where he was. He
conducted the young lady down to dinner in a dubious and agitated frame
of mind. "Does she really think I am handsome?" thought he, "or is she
only making game of me?" We have talked of Joseph Sedley being as vain
as a girl. Heaven help us! the girls have only to turn the tables, and
say of one of their own sex, "She is as vain as a man," and they will
have perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite as eager for
praise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of their
personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination,
as any coquette in the world.
Downstairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca very
modest, and holding her green eyes downwards. She was dressed in
white, with bare shoulders as white as snow--the picture of youth,
unprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity. "I must be very
quiet," thought Rebecca, "and very much interested about India."
Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her
son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of this
dish was offered to Rebecca. "What is it?" said she, turning an
appealing look to Mr. Joseph.
"Capital," said he. His mouth was full of it: his face quite red with
the delightful exercise of gobbling. "Mother, it's as good as my own
curries in India."
"Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish," said Miss Rebecca. "I
am sure everything must be good that comes from there."
"Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear," said Mr. Sedley, laughing.
Rebecca had never tasted the dish before.
"Do you find it as good as everything else from India?" said Mr. Sedley.
"Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the
cayenne pepper.
"Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really interested.
"A chili," said Rebecca, gasping. "Oh yes!" She thought a chili was
something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. "How
fresh and green they look," she said, and put one into her mouth. It
was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer.
She laid down her fork. "Water, for Heaven's sake, water!" she cried.
Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock
Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes). "They are
real Indian, I assure you," said he. "Sambo, give Miss Sharp some
water."
The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital.
The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered
too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed
her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it,
and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured
air, "I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of
Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you put
cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?"
Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured
girl. Joseph simply said, "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in
Bengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got
to prefer it!"
"You won't like EVERYTHING from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old
gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old
fellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap
at you."
"Pooh! nonsense!" said Joe, highly flattered. "I recollect, sir, there
was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and
afterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in
the year '4--at me and Mulligatawney, whom I mentioned to you before
dinner--a devilish good fellow Mulligatawney--he's a magistrate at
Budgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years. Well, sir, the
Artillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the King's 14th, said to me,
'Sedley,' said he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hooks
either you or Mulligatawney before the rains.' 'Done,' says I; and
egad, sir--this claret's very good. Adamson's or Carbonell's?"
A slight snore was the only reply: the honest stockbroker was asleep,