at is, it would have been, only
Waterloo had not yet taken place)--it was Ney's column
breasting the hill of La Haye Sainte, bristling with ten
thousand bayonets, and crowned with twenty eagles--it
was the shout of the beef-eating British, as leaping down
the hill they rushed to hug the enemy in the savage arms
of battle--in other words, Cuff coming up full of pluck,
but quite reeling and groggy, the Fig-merchant put in his
left as usual on his adversary's nose, and sent him down
for the last time.

"I think that will do for him," Figs said, as his opponent
dropped as neatly on the green as I have seen Jack
Spot's ball plump into the pocket at billiards; and the
fact is, when time was called, Mr. Reginald Cuff was not
able, or did not choose, to stand up again.

And now all the boys set up such a shout for Figs as
would have made you think he had been their darling
champion through the whole battle; and as absolutely
brought Dr. Swishtail out of his study, curious to know
the cause of the uproar.  He threatened to flog Figs
violently, of course; but Cuff, who had come to himself
by this time, and was washing his wounds, stood up and
said, "It's my fault, sir--not Figs'--not Dobbin's.  I was
bullying a little boy; and he served me right." By which
magnanimous speech he not only saved his conqueror a
whipping, but got back all his ascendancy over the boys
which his defeat had nearly cost him.

Young Osborne wrote home to his parents an account
of the transaction.

Sugarcane House, Richmond, March, 18--

DEAR MAMA,--I hope you are quite well.  I should be
much obliged to you to send me a cake and five shillings.
There has been a fight here between Cuff & Dobbin.
Cuff, you know, was the Cock of the School.  They
fought thirteen rounds, and Dobbin Licked.  So Cuff is
now Only Second Cock.  The fight was about me.  Cuff
was licking me for breaking a bottle of milk, and Figs
wouldn't stand it.  We call him Figs because his father is
a Grocer--Figs & Rudge, Thames St., City--I think as
he fought for me you ought to buy your Tea & Sugar
at his father's.  Cuff goes home every Saturday, but can't
this, because he has 2 Black Eyes.  He has a white Pony
to come and fetch him, and a groom in livery on a bay
mare.  I wish my Papa would let me have a Pony, and I
am

Your dutiful Son,
GEORGE SEDLEY OSBORNE

  P.S.--Give my love to little Emmy.  I am cutting her
out a Coach in cardboard.  Please not a seed-cake, but a
plum-cake.

In consequence of Dobbin's victory, his character rose
prodigiously in the estimation of all his schoolfellows, and
the name of Figs, which had been a byword of reproach,
became as respectable and popular a nickname as any
other in use in the school.  "After all, it's not his fault
that his father's a grocer," George Osborne said, who,
though a little chap, had a very high popularity among
the Swishtail youth; and his opinion was received with
great applause.  It was voted low to sneer at Dobbin
about this accident of birth.  "Old Figs" grew to be a
name of kindness and endearment; and the sneak of an
usher jeered at him no longer.

And Dobbin's spirit rose with his altered circumstances.
He made wonderful advances in scholastic learning.  The
superb Cuff himself, at whose condescension Dobbin
could only blush and wonder, helped him on with his
Latin verses; "coached" him in play-hours: carried him
triumphantly out of the little-boy class into the middle-
sized form; and even there got a fair place for him.  It
was discovered, that although dull at classical learning,
at mathematics he was uncommonly quick.  To the
contentment of all he passed third in algebra, and got a
French prize-book at the public Midsummer examination.
You should have seen his mother's face when Telemaque
(that delicious romance) was presented to him by
the Doctor in the face of the whole school and the parents
and company, with an inscription to Gulielmo Dobbin.  All
the boys clapped hands in token of applause and
sympathy.  His blushes, his stumbles, his awkwardness, and
the number of feet which he crushed as he went back to
his place, who shall describe or calculate? Old Dobbin, his
father, who now respected him for the first time, gave
him two guineas publicly; most of which he spent in a
general tuck-out for the school: and he came back in a
tail-coat after the holidays.

Dobbin was much too modest a young fellow to
suppose that this happy change in all his circumstances
arose from his own generous and manly disposition: he
chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his good
fortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George
Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed such a love and
affection as is only felt by children--such an affection, as
we read in the charming fairy-book, uncouth Orson had
for splendid young Valentine his conqueror.  He flung
himself down at little Osborne's feet, and loved him.
Even before they were acquainted, he had admired
Osborne in secret.  Now he was his valet, his dog, his man
Friday.  He believed Osborne to be the possessor of
every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, the
most active, the cleverest, the most generous of created
boys.  He shared his money with him: bought him
uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals,
toffee, Little Warblers, and romantic books, with large
coloured pictures of knights and robbers, in many of which
latter you might read inscriptions to George Sedley
Osborne, Esquire, from his attached friend William Dobbin
--the which tokens of homage George received very
graciously, as became his superior merit.

So that Lieutenant Osborne, when coming to Russell
Square on the day of the Vauxhall party, said to the
ladies, "Mrs. Sedley, Ma'am, I hope you have room; I've
asked Dobbin of ours to come and dine here, and go with
us to Vauxhall.  He's almost as modest as Jos."

"Modesty! pooh," said the stout gentleman, casting a
vainqueur look at Miss Sharp.

"He is--but you are incomparably more graceful,
Sedley," Osborne added, laughing.  "I met him at the
Bedford, when I went to look for you; and I told him that
Miss Amelia was come home, and that we were all bent
on going out for a night's pleasuring; and that Mrs. Sedley
had forgiven his breaking the punch-bowl at the child's
party.  Don't you remember the catastrophe, Ma'am, seven
years ago?"

"Over Mrs. Flamingo's crimson silk gown," said good-
natured Mrs. Sedley.  "What a gawky it was! And his
sisters are not much more graceful.  Lady Dobbin was at
Highbury last night with three of them.  Such figures! my
dears."

"The Alderman's very rich, isn't he?" Osborne said
archly.  "Don't you think one of the daughters would be a
good spec for me, Ma'am?"

"You foolish creature! Who would take you, I should
like to know, with your yellow face?"

"Mine a yellow face? Stop till you see Dobbin.  Why, he
had the yellow fever three times; twice at Nassau, and
once at St. Kitts."

"Well, well; yours is quite yellow enough for us.  Isn't
it, Emmy?" Mrs. Sedley said: at which speech Miss
Amelia only made a smile and a blush; and looking at Mr.
George Osborne's pale interesting countenance, and those
beautiful black, curling, shining whiskers, which the young
gentleman himself regarded with no ordinary
complacency, she thought in her little heart that in
His Majesty's army, or in the wide world, there never
was such a face or such a hero.  "I don't care about Captain
Dobbin's complexion," she said, "or about his awkwardness.
I shall always like him, I know," her little reason being,
that he was the friend and champion of George.

"There's not a finer fellow in the service," Osborne
said, "nor a better officer, though he is not an Adonis,
certainly." And he looked towards the glass himself with
much naivete; and in so doing, caught Miss Sharp's eye
fixed keenly upon him, at which he blushed a little, and
Rebecca thought in her heart, "Ah, mon beau Monsieur!
I think I have YOUR gauge"--the little artful minx!

That evening, when Amelia came tripping into the
drawing-room in a white muslin frock, prepared for
conquest at Vauxhall, singing like a lark, and as fresh as a
rose--a very tall ungainly gentleman, with large hands
and feet, and large ears, set off by a closely cropped head
of black hair, and in the hideous military frogged coat
and cocked hat of those times, advanced to meet her, and
made her one of the clumsiest bows that was ever
performed by a mortal.

This was no other than Captain William Dobbin, of
His Majesty's Regiment of Foot, returned from
yellow fever, in the West Indies, to which the fortune
of the service had ordered his regiment, whilst so many
of his gallant comrades were reaping glory in the Peninsula.

He had arrived with a knock so very timid and quiet
that it was inaudible to the ladies upstairs: otherwise, you
may be sure Miss Amelia would never have been so bold
as to come singing into the room.  As it was, the sweet
fresh little voice went right into the Captain's heart, and
nestled there.  When she held out her hand for him to
shake, before he enveloped it in his own, he paused, and
thought--"Well, is it possible--are you the little maid I
remember in the pink frock, such a short time ago--the
night I upset the punch-bowl, just after I was gazetted?
Are you the little girl that George Osborne said should
marry him?  What a blooming young creature you seem,
and what a prize the rogue has got!" All this he thought,
before he took Amelia's hand into his own, and as he let
his cocked hat fall.

His history since he left school, until the very moment
when we have the pleasure of meeting him again, although
not fully narrated, has yet, I think, been indicated
sufficiently for an ingenious reader by the conversation
in the last page.  Dobbin, the despised grocer, was Alderman
Dobbin--Alderman Dobbin was Colonel of the City Light
Horse, then burning with military ardour to resist the
French Invasion.  Colonel Dobbin's corps, in which old
Mr. Osborne himself was but an indifferent corporal, had
been reviewed by the Sovereign and the Duke of York;
and the colonel and alderman had been knighted.  His
son had entered the army: and young Osborne followed
presently in the same regiment.  They had served in the
West Indies and in Canada.  Their regiment had just come
home, and the attachment of Dobbin to George Osborne
was as warm and generous now as it had been when the
two were schoolboys.

So these worthy people sat down to dinner presently.
They talked about war and glory, and Boney and Lord
Wellington, and the last Gazette.  In those famous days
every gazette had a victory in it, and the two gallant young
men longed to see their own names in the glorious list,
and cursed their unlucky fate to belong to a regiment
which had been away from the chances of honour.  Miss
Sharp kindled with this exciting talk, but Miss Sedley
trembled and grew quite faint as she heard it.  Mr. Jos
told several of his tiger-hunting stories, finished the one
about Miss Cutler and Lance the surgeon; helped
Rebecca to everything on the table, and himself gobbled
and drank a great deal.

He sprang to open the door for the ladies, when they
retired, with the most killing grace--and coming back to
the table, filled himself bumper after bumper of claret,
which he swallowed with nervous rapidity.

"He's priming himself," Osborne whispered to Dobbin,
and at length the hour and the carriage arrived
for Vauxhall.



CHAPTER VI


Vauxhall

I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild
one (although there are some terrific chapters
coming presently), and must beg the good-natured
reader to remember that we are only discoursing
at present about a stockbroker's family in Russell
Square, who are taking walks, or luncheon, or dinner,
or talking and making love as people do in common life,
and without a single passionate and wonderful
incident to mark the progress of their loves.  The
argument stands thus--Osborne, in love with Amelia,
has asked an old friend to dinner and to Vauxhall--Jos
Sedley is in love with Rebecca.  Will he marry her?
That is the great subject now in hand.

We might have treated this subject in the genteel, or in
the romantic, or in the facetious manner.  Suppose we had
laid the scene in Grosvenor Square, with the very same
adventures--would not some people have listened?
Suppose we had shown how Lord Joseph Sedley fell in love,
and the Marquis of Osborne became attached to Lady
Amelia, with the full consent of the Duke, her noble
father: or instead of the supremely genteel, suppose we
had resorted to the entirely low, and described what was
going on in Mr. Sedley's kitchen--how black Sambo was
in love with the cook (as indeed he was), and how he
fought a battle with the coachman in her behalf; how the
knife-boy was caught stealing a cold shoulder of mutton,
and Miss Sedley's new femme de chambre refused to go
to bed without a wax candle; such incidents might be
made to provoke much delightful laughter, and be
supposed to represent scenes of "life." Or if, on the contrary,
we had taken a fancy for the terrible, and made the lover
of the new femme de chambre a professional burglar, who
bursts into the house with his band, slaughters black
Sambo at the feet of his master, and carries off Amelia in
her night-dress, not to be let loose again till the third
volume, we should easily have constructed a tale of
thrilling interest, through the fiery chapters of which the
reader should hurry, panting.  But my readers must hope
for no such romance, only a homely story, and must be
content with a chapter about Vauxhall, which is so short
that it scarce deserves to be called a chapter at all.  And
yet it is a chapter, and a very important one too.  Are not
there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be
nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

Let us then step into the coach with the Russell Square
party, and be off to the Gardens.  There is barely room
between Jos and Miss Sharp, who are on the front seat.  Mr.
Osborne sitting bodkin opposite, between Captain Dobbin
and Amelia.

Every soul in the coach agreed that on that night Jos
would propose to make Rebecca Sharp Mrs. Sedley.  The
parents at home had acquiesced in the arrangement,
though, between ourselves, old Mr. Sedley had a feeling
very much akin to contempt for his son.  He said he was
vain, selfish, lazy, and effeminate.  He could not endure his
airs as a man of fashion, and laughed heartily at his
pompous braggadocio stories.  "I shall leave the fellow half
my property," he said; "and he will have, besides, plenty
of his own; but as I am perfectly sure that if you, and I,
and his sister were to die to-morrow, he would say 'Good
Gad!' and eat his dinner just as well as usual, I am not
going to make myself anxious about him.  Let him marry
whom he likes.  It's no affair of mine."

Amelia, on the other hand, as became a young woman
of her prudence and temperament, was quite enthusiastic
for the match.  Once or twice Jos had been on the point
of saying something very important to her, to which she
was most willing to lend an ear, but the fat fellow could
not be brought to unbosom himself of his great secret,
and very much to his sister's disappointment he only rid
himself of a large sigh and turned away.

This mystery served to keep Amelia's gentle bosom in a
perpetual flutter of excitement.  If she did not speak with
Rebecca on the tender subject, she compensated herself
with long and intimate conversations with Mrs. Blenkinsop,
the housekeeper, who dropped some hints to the
lady's-maid, who may have cursorily mentioned the matter
to the cook, who carried the news, I have no doubt, to all
the tradesmen, so that Mr. Jos's marriage was now talked
of by a very considerable number of persons in the
Russell Square world.

It was, of course, Mrs. Sedley's opinion that her son
would demean himself by a marriage with an artist's
daughter.  "But, lor', Ma'am," ejaculated Mrs. Blenkinsop,
"we was only grocers when we married Mr. S., who
was a stock-broker's clerk, and we hadn't five hundred
pounds among us, and we're rich enough now." And
Amelia was entirely of this opinion, to which, gradually,
the good-natured Mrs. Sedley was brought.

Mr. Sedley was neutral.  "Let Jos marry whom he likes,"
he said; "it's no affair of mine.  This girl has no fortune;
no more had Mrs. Sedley.  She seems good-humoured and
clever, and will keep him in order, perhaps.  Better she,
my dear, than a black Mrs. Sedley, and a dozen of
mahogany grandchildren."

So that everything seemed to smile upon Rebecca's
fortunes.  She took Jos's arm, as a matter of course, on going
to dinner; she had sate by him on the box of his open
carriage (a most tremendous "buck" he was, as he sat
there, serene, in state, driving his greys), and though
nobody said a word on the subject of the marriage,
everybody seemed to understand it.  All she wanted was
the proposal, and ah! how Rebecca now felt the want of a
mother!--a dear, tender mother, who would have managed
the business in ten minutes, and, in the course of a little
delicate confidential conversation, would have extracted
the interesting avowal from the bashful lips of the young
man!

Such was the state of affairs as the carriage crossed
Westminster bridge.

The party was landed at the Royal Gardens in due time.
As the majestic Jos stepped out of the creaking vehicle
the crowd gave a cheer for the fat gentleman, who blushed
and looked very big and mighty, as he walked away with
Rebecca under his arm.  George, of course, took charge of
Amelia.  She looked as happy as a rose-tree in sunshine.

"I say, Dobbin," says George, "just look to the shawls
and things, there's a good fellow." And so while he paired
off with Miss Sedley, and Jos squeezed through the gate
into the gardens with Rebecca at his side, honest Dobbin
contented himself by giving an arm to the shawls, and by
paying at the door for the whole party.

He walked very modestly behind them.  He was not
willing to spoil sport.  About Rebecca and Jos he did not
care a fig.  But he thought Amelia worthy even of the
brilliant George Osborne, and as he saw that good-looking
couple threading the walks to the girl's delight and
wonder, he watched her artless happiness with a sort of
fatherly pleasure.  Perhaps he felt that he would have liked
to have something on his own arm besides a shawl (the
people laughed at seeing the gawky young officer carrying
this female burthen); but William Dobbin was very little
addicted to selfish calculation at all; and so long as his
friend was enjoying himself, how should he be discontented?
And the truth is, that of all the delights of the
Gardens; of the hundred thousand extra lamps, which
were always lighted; the fiddlers in cocked hats, who
played ravishing melodies under the gilded cockle-shell in
the midst of the gardens; the singers, both of comic and
sentimental ballads, who charmed the ears there; the
country dances, formed by bouncing cockneys and
cockneyesses, and executed amidst jumping, thumping and
laughter; the signal which announced that Madame Saqui
was about to mount skyward on a slack-rope ascending
to the stars; the hermit that always sat in the illuminated
hermitage; the dark walks, so favourable to the interviews
of young lovers; the pots of stout handed about by the
people in the shabby old liveries; and the twinkling boxes,
in which the happy feasters made-believe to eat slices of
almost invisible ham--of all these things, and of the
gentle Simpson, that kind smiling idiot, who, I daresay,
presided even then over the place--Captain William Dobbin
did not take the slightest notice.

He carried about Amelia's white cashmere shawl, and
having attended under the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs.
Salmon performed the Battle of Borodino (a savage
cantata against the Corsican upstart, who had lately met
with his Russian reverses)--Mr. Dobbin tried to hum it
as he walked away, and found he was humming--the tune
which Amelia Sedley sang on the stairs, as she came
down to dinner.

He burst out laughing at himself; for the truth is, he
could sing no better than an owl.

It is to be understood, as a matter of course, that our
young people, being in parties of two and two, made the
most solemn promises to keep together during the evening,
and separated in ten minutes afterwards.  Parties at
Vauxhall always did separate, but 'twas only to meet
again at supper-time, when they could talk of their mutual
adventures in the interval.

What were the adventures of Mr. Osborne and Miss
Amelia? That is a secret.  But be sure of this--they were
perfectly happy, and correct in their behaviour; and as
they had been in the habit of being together any time these
fifteen years, their tete-a-tete offered no particular
novelty.

But when Miss Rebecca Sharp and her stout companion
lost themselves in a solitary walk, in which there were not
above five score more of couples similarly straying, they
both felt that the situation was extremely tender and
critical, and now or never was the moment Miss Sharp
thought, to provoke that declaration which was trembling
on the timid lips of Mr. Sedley.  They had previously been
to the panorama of Moscow, where a rude fellow, treading
on Miss Sharp's foot, caused her to fall back with a little
shriek into the arms of Mr. Sedley, and this little incident
increased the tenderness and confidence of that gentleman
to such a degree, that he told her several of his favourite
Indian stories over again for, at least, the sixth time.

"How I should like to see India!" said Rebecca.

"SHOULD you?" said Joseph, with a most killing tenderness;
and was no doubt about to follow up this artful
interrogatory by a question still more tender (for he puffed
and panted a great deal, and Rebecca's hand, which was
placed near his heart, could count the feverish pulsations
of that organ), when, oh, provoking! the bell rang for the
fireworks, and, a great scuffling and running taking place,
these interesting lovers were obliged to follow in the
stream of people.

Captain Dobbin had some thoughts of joining the party
at supper: as, in truth, he found the Vauxhall
amusements not particularly lively--but he paraded
twice before the box where the now united couples were
met, and nobody took any notice of him.  Covers were laid for
four.  The mated pairs were prattling away quite happily,
and Dobbin knew he was as clean forgotten as if he had
never existed in this world.

"I should only be de trop," said the Captain, looking at
them rather wistfully.  "I'd best go and talk to the hermit,"
--and so he strolled off out of the hum of men, and noise,
and clatter of the banquet, into the dark walk, at the end
of which lived that well-known pasteboard Solitary.  It
wasn't very good fun for Dobbin--and, indeed, to be
alone at Vauxhall, I have found, from my own experience,
to be one of the most dismal sports ever entered into by a
bachelor.

The two couples were perfectly happy then in their
box: where the most delightful and intimate conversation
took place.  Jos was in his glory, ordering about the waiters
with great majesty.  He made the salad; and uncorked
the Champagne; and carved the chickens; and ate and
drank the greater part of the refreshments on the tables.
Finally, he insisted upon having a bowl of rack punch;
everybody had rack punch at Vauxhall.  "Waiter, rack
punch."

That bowl of rack punch was the cause of all this
history.  And why not a bowl of rack punch as well as any
other cause? Was not a bowl of prussic acid the cause of
Fair Rosamond's retiring from the world? Was not a bowl
of wine the cause of the demise of Alexander the Great,
or, at least, does not Dr. Lempriere say so?--so did this
bowl of rack punch influence the fates of all the principal
characters in this "Novel without a Hero," which we are
now relating.  It influenced their life, although most of
them did not taste a drop of it.

The young ladies did not drink it; Osborne did not
like it; and the consequence was that Jos, that fat
gourmand, drank up the whole contents of the bowl;
and the consequence of his drinking up the whole contents
of the bowl was a liveliness which at first was astonishing,
and then became almost painful; for he talked and laughed so
loud as to bring scores of listeners round the box, much
to the confusion of the innocent party within it; and,
volunteering to sing a song (which he did in that maudlin
high key peculiar to gentlemen in an inebriated state), he
almost drew away the audience who were gathered round
the musicians in the gilt scollop-shell, and received from
his hearers a great deal of applause.

"Brayvo, Fat un!" said one; "Angcore, Daniel Lambert!"
said another; "What a figure for the tight-rope!"
exclaimed another wag, to the inexpressible alarm of
the ladies, and the great anger of Mr. Osborne.

"For Heaven's sake, Jos, let us get up and go," cried
that gentleman, and the young women rose.

"Stop, my dearest diddle-diddle-darling," shouted Jos,
now as bold as a lion, and clasping Miss Rebecca round
the waist.  Rebecca started, but she could not get away her
hand.  The laughter outside redoubled.  Jos continued to
drink, to make love, and to sing; and, winking and waving
his glass gracefully to his audience, challenged all or any
to come in and take a share of his punch.

Mr. Osborne was just on the point of knocking down a
gentleman in top-boots, who proposed to take advantage
of this invitation, and a commotion seemed to be
inevitable, when by the greatest good luck a gentleman
of the name of Dobbin, who had been walking about the
gardens, stepped up to the box.  "Be off, you fools!" said
this gentleman--shouldering off a great number of the crowd,
who vanished presently before his cocked hat and fierce
appearance--and he entered the box in a most agitated state.

"Good Heavens! Dobbin, where have you been?" 0sborne
said, seizing the white cashmere shawl from his
friend's arm, and huddling up Amelia in it.--"Make
yourself useful, and take charge of Jos here, whilst I
take the ladies to the carriage."

Jos was for rising to interfere--but a single push from
Osborne's finger sent him puffing back into his seat again,
and the lieutenant was enabled to remove the ladies in
safety.  Jos kissed his hand to them as they retreated, and
hiccupped out "Bless you! Bless you!" Then, seizing
Captain Dobbin's hand, and weeping in the most pitiful way,
he confided to that gentleman the secret of his loves.  He
adored that girl who had just gone out; he had broken
her heart, he knew he had, by his conduct; he would marry
her next morning at St. George's, Hanover Square; he'd
knock up the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth: he
would, by Jove! and have him in readiness; and, acting on
this hint, Captain Dobbin shrewdly induced him to leave
the gardens and hasten to Lambeth Palace, and, when once
out of the gates, easily conveyed Mr. Jos Sedley into a
hackney-coach, which deposited him safely at his lodgings.

George Osborne conducted the girls home in safety:
and when the door was closed upon them, and as he
walked across Russell Square, laughed so as to astonish
the watchman.  Amelia looked very ruefully at her friend,
as they went up stairs, and kissed her, and went to bed
without any more talking.

"He must propose to-morrow," thought Rebecca.  "He
called me his soul's darling, four times; he squeezed my
hand in Amelia's presence.  He must propose to-morrow."
And so thought Amelia, too.  And I dare say she thought
of the dress she was to wear as bridesmaid, and of the
presents which she should make to her nice little sister-in-
law, and of a subsequent ceremony in which she herself
might play a principal part, &c., and &c., and &c., and &c.

Oh, ignorant young creatures! How little do you know
the effect of rack punch! What is the rack in the punch,
at night, to the rack in the head of a morning? To this
truth I can vouch as a man; there is no headache in the
world like that caused by Vauxhall punch.  Through the
lapse of twenty years, I can remember the consequence
of two glasses!two wine-glasses!but two, upon the
honour of a gentleman; and Joseph Sedley, who had a
liver complaint, had swallowed at least a quart of the
abominable mixture.

That next morning, which Rebecca thought was to
dawn upon her fortune, found Sedley groaning in agonies
which the pen refuses to describe.  Soda-water was not
invented yet.  Small beer--will it be believed!--was the
only drink with which unhappy gentlemen soothed the
fever of their previous night's potation.  With this mild
beverage before him, George Osborne found the ex-
Collector of Boggley Wollah groaning on the sofa at
his lodgings.  Dobbin was already in the room, good-
naturedly tending his patient of the night before.  The two
officers, looking at the prostrate Bacchanalian, and
askance at each other, exchanged the most frightful
sympathetic grins.  Even Sedley's valet, the most solemn
and correct of gentlemen, with the muteness and gravity of
an undertaker, could hardly keep his countenance in
order, as he looked at his unfortunate master.

"Mr. Sedley was uncommon wild last night, sir," he
whispered in confidence to Osborne, as the latter mounted
the stair.  "He wanted to fight the 'ackney-coachman, sir.
The Capting was obliged to bring him upstairs in his
harms like a babby." A momentary smile flickered over
Mr. Brush's features as he spoke; instantly, however, they
relapsed into their usual unfathomable calm, as he flung
open the drawing-room door, and announced "Mr.
Hosbin."

"How are you, Sedley?" that young wag began, after
surveying his victim.  "No bones broke? There's a
hackney-coachman downstairs with a black eye, and a
tied-up head, vowing he'll have the law of you."

"What do you mean--law?" Sedley faintly asked.

"For thrashing him last night--didn't he, Dobbin? You
hit out, sir, like Molyneux.  The watchman says he never
saw a fellow go down so straight.  Ask Dobbin."

"You DID have a round with the coachman," Captain
Dobbin said, "and showed plenty of fight too."

"And that fellow with the white coat at Vauxhall! How
Jos drove at him! How the women screamed! By Jove,
sir, it did my heart good to see you.  I thought you civilians
had no pluck; but I'll never get in your way when you
are in your cups, Jos."

"I believe I'm very terrible, when I'm roused,"
ejaculated Jos from the sofa, and made a grimace so
dreary and ludicrous, that the Captain's politeness could
restrain him no longer, and he and Osborne fired off a
ringing volley of laughter.

Osborne pursued his advantage pitilessly.  He thought
Jos a milksop.  He had been revolving in his mind the
marriage question pending between Jos and Rebecca, and
was not over well pleased that a member of a family into
which he, George Osborne, of the --th, was going
to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody
--a little upstart governess.  "You hit, you poor old
fellow!" said Osborne.  "You terrible! Why, man, you
couldn't stand--you made everybody laugh in the
Gardens, though you were crying yourself.  You were
maudlin, Jos.  Don't you remember singing a song?"

"A what?" Jos asked.

"A sentimental song, and calling Rosa, Rebecca, what's
her name, Amelia's little friend--your dearest diddle-
diddle-darling?" And this ruthless young fellow, seizing
hold of Dobbin's hand, acted over the scene, to the horror
of the original performer, and in spite of Dobbin's good-
natured entreaties to him to have mercy.

"Why should I spare him?" Osborne said to his friend's
remonstrances, when they quitted the invalid, leaving him
under the hands of Doctor Gollop.  "What the deuce right
has he to give himself his patronizing airs, and make fools
of us at Vauxhall? Who's this little schoolgirl that is
ogling and making love to him? Hang it, the family's
low enough already, without HER.  A governess is all very
well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law.  I'm
a liberal man; but I've proper pride, and know my own
station: let her know hers.  And I'll take down that great
hectoring Nabob, and prevent him from being made a
greater fool than he is.  That's why I told him to look out,
lest she brought an action against him."

"I suppose you know best," Dobbin said, though rather
dubiously.  "You always were a Tory, and your family's
one of the oldest in England.  But --"

"Come and see the girls, and make love to Miss Sharp
yourself," the lieutenant here interrupted his friend; but
Captain Dobbin declined to join Osborne in his daily visit
to the young ladies in Russell Square.

As George walked down Southampton Row, from
Holborn, he laughed as he saw, at the Sedley Mansion,
in two different stories two heads on the look-out.

The fact is, Miss Amelia, in the drawing-room balcony,
was looking very eagerly towards the opposite side of the
Square, where Mr. Osborne dwelt, on the watch for the
lieutenant himself; and Miss Sharp, from her little bed-
room on the second floor, was in observation until Mr.
Joseph's great form should heave in sight.

"Sister Anne is on the watch-tower," said he to Amelia,
"but there's nobody coming"; and laughing and enjoying
the joke hugely, he described in the most ludicrous terms
to Miss Sedley, the dismal condition of her brother.

"I think it's very cruel of you to laugh, George," she
said, looking particularly unhappy; but George only
laughed the more at her piteous and discomfited mien,
persisted in thinking the joke a most diverting one, and
when Miss Sharp came downstairs, bantered her with a
great deal of liveliness upon the effect of her charms on
the fat civilian.

"O Miss Sharp! if you could but see him this morning,"
he said--"moaning in his flowered dressing-gown--
writhing on his sofa; if you could but have seen him
lolling out his tongue to Gollop the apothecary."

"See whom?" said Miss Sharp.

"Whom? O whom?  Captain Dobbin, of course, to whom
we were all so attentive, by the way, last night."

"We were very unkind to him," Emmy said, blushing
very much.  "I--I quite forgot him."

"Of course you did," cried Osborne, still on the laugh.

"One can't be ALWAYS thinking about Dobbin, you know,
Amelia.  Can one, Miss Sharp?"

"Except when he overset the glass of wine at dinner,"
Miss Sharp said, with a haughty air and a toss of the
head, "I never gave the existence of Captain Dobbin one
single moment's consideration."

"Very good, Miss Sharp, I'll tell him," Osborne said;
and as he spoke Miss Sharp began to have a feeling of
distrust and hatred towards this young officer, which he
was quite unconscious of having inspired.  "He is to make
fun of me, is he?" thought Rebecca.  "Has he been
laughing about me to Joseph?  Has he frightened him?
Perhaps he won't come."--A film passed over her eyes,
and her heart beat quite quick.

"You're always joking," said she, smiling as innocently
as she could.  "Joke away, Mr. George; there's nobody
to defend ME." And George Osborne, as she walked away
--and Amelia looked reprovingly at him--felt some little
manly compunction for having inflicted any unnecessary
unkindness upon this helpless creature.  "My dearest
Amelia," said he, "you are too good--too kind.  You
don't know the world.  I do.  And your little friend Miss
Sharp must learn her station."

"Don't you think Jos will--"

"Upon my word, my dear, I don't know.  He may, or
may not.  I'm not his master.  I only know he is a very
foolish vain fellow, and put my dear little girl into a very
painful and awkward position last night.  My dearest
diddle-diddle-darling!" He was off laughing again, and he
did it so drolly that Emmy laughed too.

All that day Jos never came.  But Amelia had no fear
about this; for the little schemer had actually sent away
the page, Mr. Sambo's aide-de-camp, to Mr. Joseph's
lodgings, to ask for some book he had promised, and how
he was; and the reply through Jos's man, Mr. Brush, was,
that his master was ill in bed, and had just had the doctor
with him.  He must come to-morrow, she thought, but she
never had the courage to speak a word on the subject
to Rebecca; nor did that young woman herself allude
to it in any way during the whole evening after the night
at Vauxhall.

The next day, however, as the two young ladies sate on
the sofa, pretending to work, or to write letters, or to
read novels, Sambo came into the room with his usual
engaging grin, with a packet under his arm, and a note
on a tray.  "Note from Mr. Jos, Miss," says Sambo.

How Amelia trembled as she opened it!

So it ran:

Dear Amelia,--I send you the "Orphan of the Forest."
I was too ill to come yesterday.  I leave town to-day
for Cheltenham.  Pray excuse me, if you can, to the
amiable Miss Sharp, for my conduct at Vauxhall, and
entreat her to pardon and forget every word I may have
uttered when excited by that fatal supper.  As soon as
I have recovered, for my health is very much shaken, I
shall go to Scotland for some months, and am

Truly yours,
Jos Sedley


It was the death-warrant.  All was over.  Amelia did
not dare to look at Rebecca's pale face and burning eyes,
but she dropt the letter into her friend's lap; and got up,
and went upstairs to her room, and cried her little heart
out.

Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, there sought her presently
with consolation, on whose shoulder Amelia wept
confidentially, and relieved herself a good deal.  "Don't take
on, Miss.  I didn't like to tell you.  But none of us in the
house have liked her except at fust.  I sor her with my
own eyes reading your Ma's letters.  Pinner says she's
always about your trinket-box and drawers, and
everybody's drawers, and she's sure she's put your white
ribbing into her box."

"I gave it her, I gave it her," Amelia said.

But this did not alter Mrs. Blenkinsop's opinion of Miss
Sharp.  "I don't trust them governesses, Pinner," she
remarked to the maid.  "They give themselves the hairs and
hupstarts of ladies, and their wages is no better than
you nor me."

It now became clear to every soul in the house, except
poor Amelia, 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, surlily; "because he looks to his
farthings.  You'll know him better afore long."

"And like me none the worse, Miss Sharp," said the
old gentleman, with an air almost of politeness.  "I must
be just before I'm generous."

 "He never gave away a farthing in his life," growled
Tinker.

"Never, and never will: it's against my principle.  Go
and get another chair from the kitchen, Tinker, if you
want to sit down; and then we'll have a bit of supper."

Presently the baronet plunged a fork into the saucepan
on the fire, and withdrew from the pot a piece of tripe
and an onion, which he divided into pretty equal
portions, and of which he partook with Mrs. Tinker.  "You
see, Miss Sharp, when I'm not here Tinker's on board
wages: when I'm in town she dines with the family.
Haw! haw! I'm glad Miss Sharp's not hungry, ain't you,
Tink?" And they fell to upon their frugal supper.

After supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his
pipe; and when it became quite dark, he lighted the
rushlight in the tin candlestick, and producing from an
interminable pocket a huge mass of papers, began reading
them, and putting them in order.

"I'm here on law business, my dear, and that's how it
happens that I shall have the pleasure of such a pretty
travelling companion to-morrow."

"He's always at law business," said Mrs. Tinker,
taking up the pot of porter.

"Drink and drink about," said the Baronet.  "Yes; my
dear, Tinker is quite right: I've lost and won more
lawsuits than any man in England.  Look here at Crawley,
Bart. v. Snaffle.  I'll throw him over, or my name's not
Pitt Crawley.  Podder and another versus Crawley, Bart.
Overseers of Snaily parish against Crawley, Bart.  They
can't prove it's common: I'll defy 'em; the land's mine.
It no more belongs to the parish than it does to you or
Tinker here.  I'll beat 'em, if it cost me a thousand guineas.
Look over the papers; you may if you like, my dear.
Do you write a good hand? I'll make you useful when
we're at Queen's Crawley, depend on it, Miss Sharp.
Now the dowager's dead I want some one."

"She was as bad as he," said Tinker.  "She took the
law of every one of her tradesmen; and turned away
forty-eight footmen in four year."

"She was close--very close," said the Baronet, simply;
"but she was a valyble woman to me, and saved me a
steward."--And in this confidential strain, and much to
the amusement of the new-comer, the conversation
continued for a considerable time.  Whatever Sir Pitt
Crawley's qualities might be, good or bad, he did not make
the least disguise of them.  He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in the coarsest and vulgarest Hampshire accent; sometimes adopting the tone of a man of the world.  And so,
with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five in the
morning, he bade her good night.   "You'll sleep with Tinker
to-night," he said; "it's a big bed, and there's room for two.
Lady Crawley died in it.  Good night."

Sir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn
Tinker, rushlight in hand, led the way up the great
bleak stone stairs, past the great dreary drawing-room
doors, with the handles muffled up in paper, into the
great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept her
last.  The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy,
you might have fancied, not only that Lady Crawley died
in the room, but that her ghost inhabited it.  Rebecca
sprang about the apartment, however, with the greatest
liveliness, and had peeped into the huge wardrobes, and
the closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers
which were locked, and examined the dreary pictures
and toilette appointments, while the old charwoman
was saying her prayers.  "I shouldn't like to sleep in this
yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss," said the old
woman.  "There's room for us and a half-dozen of ghosts
in it," says Rebecca.  "Tell me all about Lady Crawley
and Sir Pitt Crawley, and everybody, my DEAR Mrs.
Tinker."

But old Tinker was not to be pumped by this little
cross-questioner; and signifying to her that bed was a
place for sleeping, not conversation, set up in her corner
of the bed such a snore as only the nose of innocence
can produce.  Rebecca lay awake for a long, long time,
thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which
she was going, and of her chances of success there.  The
rushlight flickered in the basin.  The mantelpiece cast up
a great black shadow, over half of a mouldy old sampler,
which her defunct ladyship had worked, no doubt, and
over two little family pictures of young lads, one in a
college gown, and the other in a red jacket like a soldier.
When she went to sleep, Rebecca chose that one to
dream about.

At four o'clock, on such a roseate summer's morning
as even made Great Gaunt Street look cheerful, the
faithful Tinker, having wakened her bedfellow, and bid her
prepare for departure, unbarred and unbolted the great
hall door (the clanging and clapping whereof startled
the sleeping echoes in the street), and taking her way
into Oxford Street, summoned a coach from a stand
there.  It is needless to particularize the number of the
vehicle, or to state that the driver was stationed thus
early in the neighbourhood of Swallow Street, in hopes
that some young buck, reeling homeward from the tavern,
might need the aid of his vehicle, and pay him with
the generosity of intoxication.

It is likewise needless to say that the driver, if he had
any such hopes as those.above stated, was grossly
disappointed; and that the worthy Baronet whom he drove
to the City did not give him one single penny more than
his fare.  It was in vain that Jehu appealed and stormed;
that he flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter
at the 'Necks, and swore he would take the law of his
fare.

"You'd better not," said one of the ostlers; "it's Sir
Pitt Crawley."

"So it is, Joe," cried the Baronet, approvingly; "and
I'd like to see the man can do me."

"So should oi," said Joe, grinning sulkily, and
mounting the Baronet's baggage on the roof of the coach.

"Keep the box for me, Leader," exclaims the Member
of Parliament to the coachman; who replied, "Yes,
Sir Pitt," with a touch of his hat, and rage in his soul
(for he had promised the box to a young gentleman
from Cambridge, who would have given a crown to a
certainty), and Miss Sharp was accommodated with a
back seat inside the carriage, which might be said to be
carrying her into the wide world.

How the young man from Cambridge sulkily put his
five great-coats in front; but was reconciled when little
Miss Sharp was made to quit the carriage, and mount
up beside him--when he covered her up in one of his
Benjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured--how
the asthmatic gentleman, the prim lady, who declared
upon her sacred honour she had never travelled in a
public carriage before (there is always such a lady in a
coach--Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?),
and the fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their
places inside--how the porter asked them all for money,
and got sixpence from the gentleman and five greasy
halfpence from the fat widow--and how the carriage
at length drove away--now threading the dark lanes of
Aldersgate, anon clattering by the Blue Cupola of St.
Paul's, jingling rapidly by the strangers' entry of Fleet-
Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now departed
to the world of shadows--how they passed the White
Bear in Piccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the
market-gardens of Knightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen,
Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--need not be told here.
But the writer of these pages, who has pursued in former
days, and in the same bright weather, the same remarkable
journey, cannot but think of it with a sweet and
tender regret.  Where is the road now, and its merry
incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or Greenwich for
the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen?  I wonder where
are they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead?
and the waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited,
and the cold rounds of beef inside, and the stunted ostler,
with his blue nose and clinking pail, where is he, and
where is his generation?  To those great geniuses now in
petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved reader's
children, these men and things will be as much legend
and history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack
Sheppard.  For them stage-coaches will have become romances
--a team of four bays as fabulous as Bucephalus or Black
Bess.  Ah, how their coats shone, as the stable-men pulled
their clothes off, and away they went--ah, how their
tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end
they demurely walked away into the inn-yard.  Alas!  we
shall never hear the horn sing at midnight, or see the
pike-gates fly open any more.  Whither, however, is the
light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying us? Let us be
set down at Queen's Crawley without further divagation,
and see how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there.




CHAPTER VIII



Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley,
Russell Square, London.
(Free.--Pitt Crawley.)

MY DEAREST, SWEETEST AMELIA,

With what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the
pen to write to my dearest friend!  Oh, what a change
between to-day and yesterday! Now I am friendless and
alone; yesterday I was at home, in the sweet company
of a sister, whom I shall ever, ever cherish!

I will not tell you in what tears and sadness I passed
the fatal night in which I separated from you.  YOU went
on Tuesday to joy and happiness, with your mother and
YOUR DEVOTED YOUNG SOLDIER by your side; and I thought
of you all night, dancing at the Perkins's, the prettiest,
I am sure, of all the young ladies at the Ball.  I was
brought by the groom in the old carriage to Sir Pitt
Crawley's town house, where, after John the groom had
behaved most rudely and insolently to me (alas! 'twas
safe to insult poverty and misfortune!), I was given over
to Sir P.'s care, and made to pass the night in an old
gloomy bed, and by the side of a horrid gloomy old
charwoman, who keeps the house.  I did not sleep one
single wink the whole night.

Sir Pitt is not what we silly girls, when we used to
read Cecilia at Chiswick, imagined a baronet must have
been.  Anything, indeed, less like Lord Orville cannot be
imagined.  Fancy an old, stumpy, short, vulgar, and very
dirty man, in old clothes and shabby old gaiters, who
smokes a horrid pipe, and cooks his own horrid supper
in a saucepan.  He speaks with a country accent, and
swore a great deal at the old charwoman, at the hackney
coachman who drove us to the inn where the coach went
from, and on which I made the journey OUTSIDE FOR THE
GREATER PART OF THE WAY.

I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and
having arrived at the inn, was at first placed inside the
coach.  But, when we got to a place called Leakington,
where the rain began to fall very heavily--will you
believe it?--I was forced to come outside; for Sir Pitt is a
proprietor of the coach, and as a passenger came at
Mudbury, who wanted an inside place, I was obliged to
go outside in the rain, where, however, a young
gentleman from Cambridge College sheltered me very
kindly in one of his several great coats.

This gentleman and the guard seemed to know Sir
Pitt very well, and laughed at him a great deal.  They
both agreed in calling him an old screw; which means a
very stingy, avaricious person.  He never gives any money
to anybody, they said (and this meanness I hate); and
the young gentleman made me remark that we drove
very slow for the last two stages on the road, because
Sir Pitt was on the box, and because he is proprietor
of the horses for this part of the journey.  "But won't I
flog 'em on to Squashmore, when I take the ribbons?"
said the young Cantab.  "And sarve 'em right, Master
Jack," said the guard.  When I comprehended the
meaning of this phrase, and that Master Jack intended to
drive the rest of the way, and revenge himself on Sir
Pitt's horses, of course I laughed too.

A carriage and four splendid horses, covered with
armorial bearings, however, awaited us at Mudbury,
four miles from Queen's Crawley, and we made our
entrance to the baronet's park in state.  There is a fine
avenue of a mile long leading to the house, and the woman
at the lodge-gate (over the pillars of which are a serpent
and a dove, the supporters of the Crawley arms), made
us a number of curtsies as she flung open the old iron
carved doors, which are something like those at odious
Chiswick.

"There's an avenue," said Sir Pitt, "a mile long.
There's six thousand pound of timber in them there
trees.  Do you call that nothing?" He pronounced avenue
--EVENUE, and nothing--NOTHINK, so droll; and he had
a Mr. Hodson, his hind from Mudbury, into the carriage
with him, and they talked about distraining, and selling
up, and draining and subsoiling, and a great deal about
tenants and farming--much more than I could
understand.  Sam Miles had been caught poaching, and Peter
Bailey had gone to the workhouse at last.  "Serve him
right," said Sir Pitt; "him and his family has been
cheating me on that farm these hundred and fifty years."
Some old tenant, I suppose, who could not pay his rent.
Sir Pitt might have said "he and his family," to be sure;
but rich baronets do not need to be careful about
grammar, as poor governesses must be.

As we passed, I remarked a beautiful church-spire
rising above some old elms in the park; and before them,
in the midst of a lawn, and some outhouses, an old red
house with tall chimneys covered with ivy, and the
windows shining in the sun.  "Is that your church, sir?"
I said.

"Yes, hang it," (said Sir Pitt, only he used, dear, A MUCH
WICKEDER WORD); "how's Buty, Hodson? Buty's my
brother Bute, my dear--my brother the parson.  Buty and
the Beast I call him, ha, ha!"

Hodson laughed too, and then looking more grave
and nodding his head, said, "I'm afraid he's better, Sir
Pitt.  He was out on his pony yesterday, looking at our
corn."

"Looking after his tithes, hang'un (only he used the
same wicked word).  Will brandy and water never kill
him? He's as tough as old whatdyecallum--old
Methusalem."

Mr. Hodson laughed again.  "The young men is home
from college.  They've whopped John Scroggins till he's
well nigh dead."

"Whop my second keeper!" roared out Sir Pitt.

"He was on the parson's ground, sir," replied Mr.
Hodson; and Sir Pitt in a fury swore that if he ever caught
'em poaching on his ground, he'd transport 'em, by the
lord he would.  However, he said, "I've sold the
presentation of the living, Hodson; none of that breed
shall get it, I war'nt"; and Mr. Hodson said he was quite right:
and I have no doubt from this that the two brothers are
at variance--as brothers often are, and sisters too.  Don't
you remember the two Miss Scratchleys at Chiswick,
how they used always to fight and quarrel--and Mary
Box, how she was always thumping Louisa?

Presently, seeing two little boys gathering sticks in the
wood, Mr. Hodson jumped out of the carriage, at Sir
Pitt's order, and rushed upon them with his whip.  "Pitch
into 'em, Hodson," roared the baronet; "flog their little
souls out, and bring 'em up to the house, the vagabonds;
I'll commit 'em as sure as my name's Pitt." And presently
we heard Mr. Hodson's whip cracking on the
shoulders of the poor little blubbering wretches, and
Sir Pitt, seeing that the malefactors were in custody,
drove on to the hall.

All the servants were ready to meet us, and
. . .

Here, my dear, I was interrupted last night by a
dreadful thumping at my door: and who do you think it
was? Sir Pitt Crawley in his night-cap and dressing-
gown, such a figure! As I shrank away from such a
visitor, he came forward and seized my candle.  "No
candles after eleven o'clock, Miss Becky," said he.  "Go to
bed in the dark, you pretty little hussy" (that is what
he called me), "and unless you wish me to come for the
candle every night, mind and be in bed at eleven." And
with this, he and Mr. Horrocks the butler went off
laughing.  You may be sure I shall not encourage any more
of their visits.  They let loose two immense bloodhounds
at night, which all last night were yelling and howling
at the moon.  "I call the dog Gorer," said Sir Pitt; "he's
killed a man that dog has, and is master of a bull, and
the mother I used to call Flora; but now I calls her
Aroarer, for she's too old to bite.  Haw, haw!"

Before the house of Queen's Crawley, which is an
odious old-fashioned red brick mansion, with tall
chimneys and gables of the style of Queen Bess, there is a
terrace flanked by the family dove and serpent, and on
which the great hall-door opens.  And oh, my dear, the
great hall I am sure is as big and as glum as the great
hall in the dear castle of Udolpho.  It has a large
fireplace, in which we might put half Miss Pinkerton's
school, and the grate is big enough to roast an ox at the
very least.  Round the room hang I don't know how
many generations of Crawleys, some with beards and
ruffs, some with huge wigs and toes turned out, some
dressed in long straight stays and gowns that look as
stiff as towers, and some with long ringlets, and oh, my
dear! scarcely any stays at all.  At one end of the hall is
the great staircase all in black oak, as dismal as may be,
and on either side are tall doors with stags' heads.over
them, leading to the billiard-room and the library, and
the great yellow saloon and the morning-rooms.  I think
there are at least twenty bedrooms on the first floor; one
of them has the bed in which Queen Elizabeth slept;
and I have been taken by my new pupils through all
these fine apartments this morning.  They are not
rendered less gloomy, I promise you, by having the shutters
always shut; and there is scarce one of the apartments,
but when the light was let into it, I expected to
see a ghost in the room.  We have a schoolroom on the
second floor, with my bedroom leading into it on one
side, and that of the young ladies on the other.  Then
there are Mr. Pitt's apartments--Mr. Crawley, he is
called--the eldest son, and Mr. Rawdon Crawley's rooms
--he is an officer like SOMEBODY, and away with his
regiment.  There is no want of room I assure you.  You
might lodge all the people in Russell Square in the
house, I think, and have space to spare.

Half an hour after our arrival, the great dinner-bell
was rung, and I came down with my two pupils (they
are very thin insignificant little chits of ten and eight
years old).  I came down in your dear muslin gown
(about which that odious Mrs. Pinner was so rude,
because you gave it me); for I am to be treated as one of
the family, except on company days, when the young
ladies and I are to dine upstairs.

Well, the great dinner-bell rang, and we all assembled
in the little drawing-room where my Lady Crawley
sits.  She is the second Lady Crawley, and mother of the
young ladies.  She was an ironmonger's daughter, and
her marriage was thought a great match.  She looks as
if she had been handsome once, and her eyes are always
weeping for the loss of her beauty.  She is pale and
meagre and high-shouldered, and has not a word to say
for herself, evidently.  Her stepson Mr. Crawley, was
likewise in the room.  He was in full dress, as pompous
as an undertaker.  He is pale, thin, ugly, silent; he has
thin legs, no chest, hay-coloured whiskers, and straw-
coloured hair.  He is the very picture of his sainted
mother over the mantelpiece--Griselda of the noble
house of Binkie.

"This is the new governess, Mr. Crawley," said Lady
Crawley, coming forward and taking my hand.  "Miss
Sharp."

"0!" said Mr. Crawley, and pushed his head once
forward and began again to read a great pamphlet
with which he was busy.

"I hope you will be kind to my girls," said Lady
Crawley, with her pink eyes always full of tears.

"Law, Ma, of course she will," said the eldest: and I
saw at a glance that I need not be afraid of THAT woman.
"My lady is served," says the butler in black, in an
immense white shirt-frill, that looked as if it had been
one of the Queen Elizabeth's ruffs depicted in the hall;
and so, taking Mr. Crawley's arm, she led the way to the
dining-room, whither I followed with my little pupils in
each hand.

Sir Pitt was already in the room with a silver jug.  He
had just been to the cellar, and was in full dress too;
that is, he had taken his gaiters off, and showed his little
dumpy legs in black worsted stockings.  The sideboard
was covered with glistening old plate--old cups, both
gold and silver; old salvers and cruet-stands, like
Rundell and Bridge's shop.  Everything on the table was in
silver too, and two footmen, with red hair and canary-
coloured liveries, stood on either side of the sideboard.

Mr. Crawley said a long grace, and Sir Pitt said amen,
and the great silver dish-covers were removed.

"What have we for dinner, Betsy?' said the Baronet.

"Mutton broth, I believe, Sir Pitt," answered Lady
Crawley.

"Mouton aux navets," added the butler gravely
(pronounce, if you please, moutongonavvy); "and the
soup is potage de mouton a l'Ecossaise.  The side-dishes
contain pommes de terre au naturel, and choufleur a l'eau."

"Mutton's mutton," said the Baronet, "and a devilish
good thing.  What SHIP was it, Horrocks, and when did
you kill?"

"One of the black-faced Scotch, Sir Pitt: we killed on Thursday.

"Who took any?"

"Steel, of Mudbury, took the saddle and two legs, Sir
Pitt; but he says the last was too young and confounded
woolly, Sir Pitt."

"Will you take some potage, Miss ah--Miss Blunt?
said Mr. Crawley.

"Capital Scotch broth, my dear," said Sir Pitt, "though
they call it by a French name."

"I believe it is the custom, sir, in decent society," said
Mr. Crawley, haughtily, "to call the dish as I have called
it"; and it was served to us on silver soup plates by the

footmen in the canary coats, with the mouton aux
navets.  Then "ale and water" were brought, and served
to us young ladies in wine-glasses.  I am not a judge of
ale, but I can say with a clear conscience I prefer water.

While we were enjoying our repast, Sir Pitt took
occasion to ask what had become of the shoulders of
the mutton.

"I believe they were eaten in the servants' hall," said
my lady, humbly.

"They was, my lady," said Horrocks, "and precious
little else we get there neither."

Sir Pitt burst into a horse-laugh, and continued his
conversation with Mr. Horrocks.  "That there little black
pig of the Kent sow's breed must be uncommon fat
now."

"It's not quite busting, Sir Pitt," said the butler with
the gravest air, at which Sir Pitt, and with him the young
ladies, this time, began to laugh violently.

"Miss Crawley, Miss Rose Crawley," said Mr. Crawley,
"your laughter strikes me as being exceedingly out
of place."

"Never mind, my lord," said the Baronet, "we'll try
the porker on Saturday.  Kill un on Saturday morning,
John Horrocks.  Miss Sharp adores pork, don't you, Miss
Sharp?"

And I think this is all the conversation that I remember
at dinner.  When the repast was concluded a jug of
hot water was placed before Sir Pitt, with a case-bottle
containing, I believe, rum.  Mr. Horrocks served myself
and my pupils with three little glasses of wine, and a
bumper was poured out for my lady.  When we retired,
she took from her work-drawer an enormous interminable
piece of knitting; the young ladies began to play at
cribbage with a dirty pack of cards.  We had but one
candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silver
candlestick, and after a very few questions from my lady,
I had my 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.  0 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.

What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at
the banker's!  How tenderly we look at her faults if she
is a relative (and may every reader have a score of such),
what a kind good-natured old creature we find her!  How
the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling
to the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the fat
wheezy coachman! How, when she comes to pay us a
visit, we generally find an opportunity to let our friends
know her station in the world!  We say (and with perfect
truth) I wish I had Miss MacWhirter's signature to a
cheque for five thousand pounds.  She wouldn't miss it,
says your wife.  She is my aunt, say you, in an easy
careless way, when your friend asks if Miss MacWhirter is
any relative.  Your wife is perpetually sending her little
testimonies of affection, your little girls work endless
worsted baskets, cushions, and footstools for her.  What a
good fire there is in her room when she comes to pay
you a visit, although your wife laces her stays without
one!  The house during her stay assumes a festive, neat,
warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other
seasons.  You yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after
dinner, and find yourself all of a sudden (though you
invariably lose) very fond of a rubber.  What good
dinners you have--game every day, Malmsey-Madeira, and
no end of fish from London.  Even the servants in the
kitchen share in the general prosperity; and, somehow,
during the stay of Miss MacWhirter's fat coachman, the
beer is grown much stronger, and the consumption of tea
and sugar in the nursery (where her maid takes her
meals) is not regarded in the least.  Is it so, or is it not
so?  I appeal to the middle classes.  Ah, gracious powers!
I wish you would send me an old aunt--a maiden aunt
--an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage, and a front
of light coffee-coloured hair--how my children should
work workbags for her, and my Julia and I would make
her comfortable! Sweet--sweet vision! Foolish--foolish
dream!




CHAPTER X


Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends

And now, being received as a member of the amiable
family whose portraits we have sketched in the foregoing
pages, it became naturally Rebecca's duty to make
herself, as she said, agreeable to her benefactors, and to
gain their confidence to the utmost of her power.  Who
can but admire this quality of gratitude in an unprotected
orphan; and, if there entered some degree of selfishness
into her calculations, who can say but that her
prudence was perfectly justifiable?  "I am alone in the
world," said the friendless girl.  "I have nothing to look
for but what my own labour can bring me; and while
that little pink-faced chit Amelia, with not half my sense,
has ten thousand pounds and an establishment secure,
poor Rebecca (and my figure is far better than hers)
has only herself and her own wits to trust to.  Well, let
us see if my wits cannot provide me with an honourable
maintenance, and if some day or the other I cannot show
Miss Amelia my real superiority over her.  Not that I
dislike poor Amelia: who can dislike such a harmless,
good-natured creature?--only it will be a fine day when
I can take my place above her in the world, as why,
indeed, should I not?"  Thus it was that our little
romantic friend formed visions of the future for herself--
nor must we be scandalised that, in all her castles in
the air, a husband was the principal inhabitant.  Of
what else have young ladies to think, but husbands? Of
what else do their dear mammas think?  "I must be my
own mamma," said Rebecca; not without a tingling
consciousness of defeat, as she thought over her little
misadventure with Jos Sedley.

So she wisely determined to render her position with
the Queen's Crawley family comfortable and secure, and
to this end resolved to make friends of every one around
her who could at all interfere with her comfort.

As my Lady Crawley was not one of these personages,
and a woman, moreover, so indolent and void of
character as not to be of the least consequence in her own
house, Rebecca soon found that it was not at all necessary
to cultivate her good will--indeed, impossible to gain it.  She
used to talk to her pupils about their "poor mamma"; and,
though she treated that lady with every demonstration
of cool respect, it was to the rest of the family that she
wisely directed the chief part of her attentions.

With the young people, whose applause she thoroughly
gained, her method was pretty simple.  She did not
pester their young brains with too much learning, but,
on the contrary, let them have their own way in
regard to educating themselves; for what instruction is more
effectual than self-instruction? The eldest was rather fond
of books, and as there was in the old library at Queen's
Crawley a considerable provision of works of light
literature of the last century, both in the French and English
languages (they had been purchased by the Secretary
of the Tape and Sealing Wax Office at the period of his
disgrace), and as nobody ever troubled the book-shelves
but herself, Rebecca was enabled agreeably, and, as
it were, in playing, to impart a great deal of instruction
to Miss Rose Crawley.

She and Miss Rose thus read together many delightful
French and English works, among which may be
mentioned those of the learned Dr. Smollett, of the ingenious
Mr. Henry Fielding, of the graceful and fantastic
Monsieur Crebillon the younger, whom our immortal poet
Gray so much admired, and of the universal Monsieur de
Voltaire.  Once, when Mr. Crawley asked what the young
people were reading, the governess replied "Smollett."
"Oh, Smollett," said Mr. Crawley, quite satisfied.  "His
history is more dull, but by no means so dangerous as
that of Mr. Hume.  It is history you are reading?" "Yes,"
said Miss Rose; without, however, adding that it was the
history of Mr. Humphrey Clinker.  On another occasion
he was rather scandalised at finding his sister with a
book of French plays; but as the governess remarked
that it was for the purpose of acquiring the French idiom
in conversation, he was fain to be content.  Mr. Crawley,
as a diplomatist, was exceedingly proud of his own skill
in speaking the French language (for he was of the world
still), and not a little pleased with the compliments which
the governess continually paid him upon his proficiency.

Miss Violet's tastes were, on the contrary, more rude
and boisterous than those of her sister.  She knew the
sequestered spots where the hens laid their eggs.  She
could climb a tree to rob the nests of the feathered
songsters of their speckled spoils.  And her pleasure was to
ride the young colts, and to scour the plains like Camilla.
She was the favourite of her father and of the stablemen.
She was the darling, and withal the terror of the
cook; for she discovered the haunts of the jam-pots, and
would attack them when they were within her reach.
She and her sister were engaged in constant battles.  Any
of which peccadilloes, if Miss Sharp discovered, she did
not tell them to Lady Crawley; who would have told
them to the father, or worse, to Mr. Crawley; but
promised not to tell if Miss Violet would be a good girl
and love her governess.

With Mr. Crawley Miss Sharp was respectful and
obedient.  She used to consult him on passages of French
which she could not understand, though her mother was
a Frenchwoman, and which he would construe to her
satisfaction: and, besides giving her his aid in profane
literature, he was kind enough to select for her books
of a more serious tendency, and address to her much of
his conversation.  She admired, beyond measure, his
speech at the Quashimaboo-Aid Society; took an
interest in his pamphlet on malt: was often affected, even
to tears, by his discourses of an evening, and