Vanity Fair (14 page)

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
polite manner; and those persons remarked that Sir Pitt never swore
at Lady Crawley while his son was in the room.

It was he who taught the butler to say, "My lady is served," and who
insisted on handing her ladyship in to dinner. He seldom spoke to
her, but when he did it was with the most powerful respect; and he
never let her quit the apartment without rising in the most stately
manner to open the door, and making an elegant bow at her egress.

At Eton he was called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say,
his younger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently. But though
his parts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent by
meritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years at
school, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally
thought none but a cherub can escape.

At college his career was of course highly creditable. And here he
prepared himself for public life, into which he was to be introduced
by the patronage of his grandfather, Lord Binkie, by studying the
ancient and modern orators with great assiduity, and by speaking
unceasingly at the debating societies. But though he had a fine
flux of words, and delivered his little voice with great pomposity
and pleasure to himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion
which was not perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin
quotation; yet he failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which
ought to have insured any man a success. He did not even get the
prize poem, which all his friends said he was sure of.

After leaving college he became Private Secretary to Lord Binkie,
and was then appointed Attache to the Legation at Pumpernickel,
which post he filled with perfect honour, and brought home
despatches, consisting of Strasburg pie, to the Foreign Minister of
the day. After remaining ten years Attache (several years after the
lamented Lord Binkie's demise), and finding the advancement slow, he
at length gave up the diplomatic service in some disgust, and began
to turn country gentleman.

He wrote a pamphlet on Malt on returning to England (for he was an
ambitious man, and always liked to be before the public), and took a
strong part in the Negro Emancipation question. Then he became a
friend of Mr. Wilberforce's, whose politics he admired, and had that
famous correspondence with the Reverend Silas Hornblower, on the
Ashantee Mission. He was in London, if not for the Parliament
session, at least in May, for the religious meetings. In the
country he was a magistrate, and an active visitor and speaker among
those destitute of religious instruction. He was said to be paying
his addresses to Lady Jane Sheepshanks, Lord Southdown's third
daughter, and whose sister, Lady Emily, wrote those sweet tracts,
"The Sailor's True Binnacle," and "The Applewoman of Finchley
Common."

Miss Sharp's accounts of his employment at Queen's Crawley were not
caricatures. He subjected the servants there to the devotional
exercises before mentioned, in which (and so much the better) he
brought his father to join. He patronised an Independent meeting-
house in Crawley parish, much to the indignation of his uncle the
Rector, and to the consequent delight of Sir Pitt, who was induced
to go himself once or twice, which occasioned some violent sermons
at Crawley parish church, directed point-blank at the Baronet's old
Gothic pew there. Honest Sir Pitt, however, did not feel the force
of these discourses, as he always took his nap during sermon-time.

Mr. Crawley was very earnest, for the good of the nation and of the
Christian world, that the old gentleman should yield him up his
place in Parliament; but this the elder constantly refused to do.
Both were of course too prudent to give up the fifteen hundred a
year which was brought in by the second seat (at this period filled
by Mr. Quadroon, with carte blanche on the Slave question); indeed
the family estate was much embarrassed, and the income drawn from
the borough was of great use to the house of Queen's Crawley.

It had never recovered the heavy fine imposed upon Walpole Crawley,
first baronet, for peculation in the Tape and Sealing Wax Office.
Sir Walpole was a jolly fellow, eager to seize and to spend money
(alieni appetens, sui profusus, as Mr. Crawley would remark with a
sigh), and in his day beloved by all the county for the constant
drunkenness and hospitality which was maintained at Queen's Crawley.
The cellars were filled with burgundy then, the kennels with hounds,
and the stables with gallant hunters; now, such horses as Queen's
Crawley possessed went to plough, or ran in the Trafalgar Coach; and
it was with a team of these very horses, on an off-day, that Miss
Sharp was brought to the Hall; for boor as he was, Sir Pitt was a
stickler for his dignity while at home, and seldom drove out but
with four horses, and though he dined off boiled mutton, had always
three footmen to serve it.

If mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley might
have become very wealthy—if he had been an attorney in a country
town, with no capital but his brains, it is very possible that he
would have turned them to good account, and might have achieved for
himself a very considerable influence and competency. But he was
unluckily endowed with a good name and a large though encumbered
estate, both of which went rather to injure than to advance him. He
had a taste for law, which cost him many thousands yearly; and being
a great deal too clever to be robbed, as he said, by any single
agent, allowed his affairs to be mismanaged by a dozen, whom he all
equally mistrusted. He was such a sharp landlord, that he could
hardly find any but bankrupt tenants; and such a close farmer, as to
grudge almost the seed to the ground, whereupon revengeful Nature
grudged him the crops which she granted to more liberal husbandmen.
He speculated in every possible way; he worked mines; bought canal-
shares; horsed coaches; took government contracts, and was the
busiest man and magistrate of his county. As he would not pay
honest agents at his granite quarry, he had the satisfaction of
finding that four overseers ran away, and took fortunes with them to
America. For want of proper precautions, his coal-mines filled with
water: the government flung his contract of damaged beef upon his
hands: and for his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the
kingdom knew that he lost more horses than any man in the country,
from underfeeding and buying cheap. In disposition he was sociable,
and far from being proud; nay, he rather preferred the society of a
farmer or a horse-dealer to that of a gentleman, like my lord, his
son: he was fond of drink, of swearing, of joking with the farmers'
daughters: he was never known to give away a shilling or to do a
good action, but was of a pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would
cut his joke and drink his glass with a tenant and sell him up the
next day; or have his laugh with the poacher he was transporting
with equal good humour. His politeness for the fair sex has already
been hinted at by Miss Rebecca Sharp—in a word, the whole
baronetage, peerage, commonage of England, did not contain a more
cunning, mean, selfish, foolish, disreputable old man. That blood-
red hand of Sir Pitt Crawley's would be in anybody's pocket except
his own; and it is with grief and pain, that, as admirers of the
British aristocracy, we find ourselves obliged to admit the
existence of so many ill qualities in a person whose name is in
Debrett.

One great cause why Mr. Crawley had such a hold over the affections
of his father, resulted from money arrangements. The Baronet owed
his son a sum of money out of the jointure of his mother, which he
did not find it convenient to pay; indeed he had an almost
invincible repugnance to paying anybody, and could only be brought
by force to discharge his debts. Miss Sharp calculated (for she
became, as we shall hear speedily, inducted into most of the secrets
of the family) that the mere payment of his creditors cost the
honourable Baronet several hundreds yearly; but this was a delight
he could not forego; he had a savage pleasure in making the poor
wretches wait, and in shifting from court to court and from term to
term the period of satisfaction. What's the good of being in
Parliament, he said, if you must pay your debts? Hence, indeed, his
position as a senator was not a little useful to him.

Vanity Fair—Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and
did not care to read—who had the habits and the cunning of a boor:
whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or
emotion, or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had
rank, and honours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the
land, and a pillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a
golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in
Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or
spotless virtue.

Sir Pitt had an unmarried half-sister who inherited her mother's
large fortune, and though the Baronet proposed to borrow this money
of her on mortgage, Miss Crawley declined the offer, and preferred
the security of the funds. She had signified, however, her intention
of leaving her inheritance between Sir Pitt's second son and the
family at the Rectory, and had once or twice paid the debts of
Rawdon Crawley in his career at college and in the army. Miss
Crawley was, in consequence, an object of great respect when she
came to Queen's Crawley, for she had a balance at her banker's which
would have made her beloved anywhere.