contained in Becky's little hall, and were billeted off in the
neighbouring public-houses, whence, when they were
wanted, call-boys summoned them from their beer.
Scores of the great dandies of London squeezed and
trod on each other on the little stairs, laughing to find
themselves there; and many spotless and severe ladies of
ton were seated in the little drawing-room, listening to
the professional singers, who were singing according to
their wont, and as if they wished to blow the windows
down. And the day after, there appeared among the
fashionable reunions in the Morning Post a paragraph
to the following effect:
"Yesterday, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley entertained a
select party at dinner at their house in May Fair. Their
Excellencies the Prince and Princess of Peterwaradin,
H. E. Papoosh Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador (attended
by Kibob Bey, dragoman of the mission), the Marquess
of Steyne, Earl of Southdown, Sir Pitt and Lady
Jane Crawley, Mr. Wagg, &c. After dinner Mrs. Crawley
had an assembly which was attended by the Duchess
(Dowager) of Stilton, Duc de la Gruyere, Marchioness
of Cheshire, Marchese Alessandro Strachino, Comte de
Brie, Baron Schapzuger, Chevalier Tosti, Countess of
Slingstone, and Lady F. Macadam, Major-General and
Lady G. Macbeth, and (2) Miss Macbeths; Viscount
Paddington, Sir Horace Fogey, Hon. Sands Bedwin,
Bobachy Bahawder," and an &c., which the reader may fill
at his pleasure through a dozen close lines of small type.
And in her commerce with the great our dear friend
showed the same frankness which distinguished her
transactions with the lowly in station. On one occasion,
when out at a very fine house, Rebecca was (perhaps
rather ostentatiously) holding a conversation in the
French language with a celebrated tenor singer of that
nation, while the Lady Grizzel Macbeth looked over her
shoulder scowling at the pair.
"How very well you speak French," Lady Grizzel said,
who herself spoke the tongue in an Edinburgh accent
most remarkable to hear.
"I ought to know it," Becky modestly said, casting
down her eyes. "I taught it in a school, and my mother
was a Frenchwoman."
Lady Grizzel was won by her humility and was
mollified towards the little woman. She deplored the fatal
levelling tendencies of the age, which admitted persons
of all classes into the society of their superiors, but her
ladyship owned that this one at least was well behaved
and never forgot her place in life. She was a very good
woman: good to the poor; stupid, blameless, unsuspicious.
It is not her ladyship's fault that she fancies herself
better than you and me. The skirts of her ancestors'
garments have been kissed for centuries; it is a thousand
years, they say, since the tartans of the head of the
family were embraced by the defunct Duncan's lords and
councillors, when the great ancestor of the House
became King of Scotland.
Lady Steyne, after the music scene, succumbed before
Becky, and perhaps was not disinclined to her. The
younger ladies of the house of Gaunt were also
compelled into submission. Once or twice they set people at
her, but they failed. The brilliant Lady Stunnington tried
a passage of arms with her, but was routed with great
slaughter by the intrepid little Becky. When attacked
sometimes, Becky had a knack of adopting a demure
ingenue air, under which she was most dangerous. She
said the wickedest things with the most simple unaffected
air when in this mood, and would take care artlessly to
apologize for her blunders, so that all the world should
know that she had made them.
Mr. Wagg, the celebrated wit, and a led captain and
trencher-man of my Lord Steyne, was caused by the
ladies to charge her; and the worthy fellow, leering at his
patronesses and giving them a wink, as much as to say,
"Now look out for sport," one evening began an assault
upon Becky, who was unsuspiciously eating her dinner.
The little woman, attacked on a sudden, but never
without arms, lighted up in an instant, parried and riposted
with a home-thrust, which made Wagg's face tingle with
shame; then she returned to her soup with the most
perfect calm and a quiet smile on her face. Wagg's great
patron, who gave him dinners and lent him a little money
sometimes, and whose election, newspaper, and other
jobs Wagg did, gave the luckless fellow such a savage
glance with the eyes as almost made him sink under the
table and burst into tears. He looked piteously at my
lord, who never spoke to him during dinner, and at the
ladies, who disowned him. At last Becky herself took
compassion upon him and tried to engage him in talk.
He was not asked to dinner again for six weeks; and
Fiche, my lord's confidential man, to whom Wagg
naturally paid a good deal of court, was instructed to tell
him that if he ever dared to say a rude thing to Mrs.
Crawley again, or make her the butt of his stupid jokes,
Milor would put every one of his notes of hand into his
lawyer's hands and sell him up without mercy. Wagg
wept before Fiche and implored his dear friend to intercede
for him. He wrote a poem in favour of Mrs. R. C.,
which appeared in the very next number of the Harum-
scarum Magazine, which he conducted. He implored her
good-will at parties where he met her. He cringed and
coaxed Rawdon at the club. He was allowed to come back
to Gaunt House after a while. Becky was always good to
him, always amused, never angry.
His lordship's vizier and chief confidential servant
(with a seat in parliament and at the dinner table), Mr.
Wenham, was much more prudent in his behaviour and
opinions than Mr. Wagg. However much he might be
disposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a
staunch old True Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-
merchant in the north of England), this aide-de-camp of
the Marquis never showed any sort of hostility to the
new favourite, but pursued her with stealthy kindnesses
and a sly and deferential politeness which somehow
made Becky more uneasy than other people's overt
hostilities.
How the Crawleys got the money which was spent
upon the entertainments with which they treated the
polite world was a mystery which gave rise to some
conversation at the time, and probably added zest to these
little festivities. Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley
gave his brother a handsome allowance; if he did,
Becky's power over the Baronet must have been
extraordinary indeed, and his character greatly changed in his
advanced age. Other parties hinted that it was Becky's
habit to levy contributions on all her husband's friends:
going to this one in tears with an account that there was
an execution in the house; falling on her knees to that
one and declaring that the whole family must go to gaol
or commit suicide unless such and such a bill could be
paid. Lord Southdown, it was said, had been induced to
give many hundreds through these pathetic representations.
Young Feltham, of the --th Dragoons (and son of the firm of
Tiler and Feltham, hatters and army accoutrement makers),
and whom the Crawleys introduced into fashionable
life, was also cited as one of Becky's victims in the
pecuniary way. People declared that she got money
from various simply disposed persons, under pretence of
getting them confidential appointments under Government.
Who knows what stories were or were not told of
our dear and innocent friend? Certain it is that if she had
had all the money which she was said to have begged or
borrowed or stolen, she might have capitalized and been
honest for life, whereas,--but this is advancing matters.
The truth is, that by economy and good management--
by a sparing use of ready money and by paying scarcely
anybody--people can manage, for a time at least, to
make a great show with very little means: and it is our
belief that Becky's much-talked-of parties, which were
not, after all was said, very numerous, cost this lady very
little more than the wax candles which lighted the walls.
Stillbrook and Queen's Crawley supplied her with game
and fruit in abundance. Lord Steyne's cellars were at her
disposal, and that excellent nobleman's famous cooks
presided over her little kitchen, or sent by my lord's
order the rarest delicacies from their own. I protest it is
quite shameful in the world to abuse a simple creature,
as people of her time abuse Becky, and I warn the
public against believing one-tenth of the stories against her.
If every person is to be banished from society who runs
into debt and cannot pay--if we are to be peering into
everybody's private life, speculating upon their income,
and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure
--why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling
Vanity Fair would be! Every man's hand would be
against his neighbour in this case, my dear sir, and the
benefits of civilization would be done away with. We
should be quarrelling, abusing, avoiding one another. Our
houses would become caverns, and we should go in rags
because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down.
Parties wouldn't be given any more. All the tradesmen
of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights,
comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs,
Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and
splendid high-stepping carriage horses--all the delights
of life, I say,--would go to the deuce, if people did but
act upon their silly principles and avoid those whom they
dislike and abuse. Whereas, by a little charity and mutual
forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly
enough: we may abuse a man as much as we like, and
call him the greatest rascal unhanged--but do we wish
to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands when we
meet. If his cook is good we forgive him and go and dine
with him, and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus
trade flourishes--civilization advances; peace is kept;
new dresses are wanted for new assemblies every week;
and the last year's vintage of Lafitte will remunerate the
honest proprietor who reared it.
At the time whereof we are writing, though the Great
George was on the throne and ladies wore gigots and
large combs like tortoise-shell shovels in their hair,
instead of the simple sleeves and lovely wreaths which are
actually in fashion, the manners of the very polite world
were not, I take it, essentially different from those of the
present day: and their amusements pretty similar. To us,
from the outside, gazing over the policeman's shoulders
at the bewildering beauties as they pass into Court or
ball, they may seem beings of unearthly splendour and in
the enjoyment of an exquisite happiness by us unattainable.
It is to console some of these dissatisfied beings
that we are narrating our dear Becky's struggles, and
triumphs, and disappointments, of all of which, indeed,
as is the case with all persons of merit, she had her share.
At this time the amiable amusement of acting charades
had come among us from France, and was considerably
in vogue in this country, enabling the many ladies
amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, and
the fewer number who had cleverness to exhibit their wit.
My Lord Steyne was incited by Becky, who perhaps
believed herself endowed with both the above qualifications,
to give an entertainment at Gaunt House, which should
include some of these little dramas--and we must take
leave to introduce the reader to this brilliant reunion,
and, with a melancholy welcome too, for it will be among
the very last of the fashionable entertainments to which
it will be our fortune to conduct him.
A portion of that splendid room, the picture gallery of
Gaunt House, was arranged as the charade theatre. It
had been so used when George III was king; and a
picture of the Marquis of Gaunt is still extant, with his hair
in powder and a pink ribbon, in a Roman shape, as it
was called, enacting the part of Cato in Mr. Addison's
tragedy of that name, performed before their Royal
Highnesses the Prince of Wales, the Bishop of Osnaburgh,
and Prince William Henry, then children like the actor.
One or two of the old properties were drawn out of the
garrets, where they had lain ever since, and furbished up
anew for the present festivities.
Young Bedwin Sands, then an elegant dandy and Eastern
traveller, was manager of the revels. An Eastern traveller
was somebody in those days, and the adventurous
Bedwin, who had published his quarto and passed some
months under the tents in the desert, was a personage of
no small importance. In his volume there were several
pictures of Sands in various oriental costumes; and he
travelled about with a black attendant of most
unprepossessing appearance, just like another Brian de Bois
Guilbert. Bedwin, his costumes, and black man, were
hailed at Gaunt House as very valuable acquisitions.
He led off the first charade. A Turkish officer with an
immense plume of feathers (the Janizaries were
supposed to be still in existence, and the tarboosh had not
as yet displaced the ancient and majestic head-dress of
the true believers) was seen couched on a divan, and
making believe to puff at a narghile, in which, however,
for the sake of the ladies, only a fragrant pastille was
allowed to smoke. The Turkish dignitary yawns and
expresses signs of weariness and idleness. He claps his hands
and Mesrour the Nubian appears, with bare arms,
bangles, yataghans, and every Eastern ornament--gaunt,
tall, and hideous. He makes a salaam before my lord the
Aga.
A thrill of terror and delight runs through the assembly.
The ladies whisper to one another. The black slave
was given to Bedwin Sands by an Egyptian pasha in
exchange for three dozen of Maraschino. He has sewn up
