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
