Vanity Fair (15 page)

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!

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 would say—"Oh, thank
you, sir," with a sigh, and a look up to heaven, that made him
occasionally condescend to shake hands with her. "Blood is
everything, after all," would that aristocratic religionist say.
"How Miss Sharp is awakened by my words, when not one of the people
here is touched. I am too fine for them—too delicate. I must
familiarise my style—but she understands it. Her mother was a
Montmorency."

Indeed it was from this famous family, as it appears, that Miss
Sharp, by the mother's side, was descended. Of course she did not
say that her mother had been on the stage; it would have shocked Mr.
Crawley's religious scruples. How many noble emigres had this
horrid revolution plunged in poverty! She had several stories about
her ancestors ere she had been many months in the house; some of
which Mr. Crawley happened to find in D'Hozier's dictionary, which
was in the library, and which strengthened his belief in their
truth, and in the high-breeding of Rebecca. Are we to suppose from
this curiosity and prying into dictionaries, could our heroine
suppose that Mr. Crawley was interested in her?—no, only in a
friendly way. Have we not stated that he was attached to Lady Jane
Sheepshanks?

He took Rebecca to task once or twice about the propriety of playing
at backgammon with Sir Pitt, saying that it was a godless amusement,
and that she would be much better engaged in reading "Thrump's
Legacy," or "The Blind Washerwoman of Moorfields," or any work of a
more serious nature; but Miss Sharp said her dear mother used often
to play the same game with the old Count de Trictrac and the
venerable Abbe du Cornet, and so found an excuse for this and other
worldly amusements.

But it was not only by playing at backgammon with the Baronet, that
the little governess rendered herself agreeable to her employer.
She found many different ways of being useful to him. She read
over, with indefatigable patience, all those law papers, with which,
before she came to Queen's Crawley, he had promised to entertain
her. She volunteered to copy many of his letters, and adroitly
altered the spelling of them so as to suit the usages of the present
day. She became interested in everything appertaining to the
estate, to the farm, the park, the garden, and the stables; and so
delightful a companion was she, that the Baronet would seldom take
his after-breakfast walk without her (and the children of course),
when she would give her advice as to the trees which were to be
lopped in the shrubberies, the garden-beds to be dug, the crops
which were to be cut, the horses which were to go to cart or plough.
Before she had been a year at Queen's Crawley she had quite won the
Baronet's confidence; and the conversation at the dinner-table,
which before used to be held between him and Mr. Horrocks the
butler, was now almost exclusively between Sir Pitt and Miss Sharp.
She was almost mistress of the house when Mr. Crawley was absent,
but conducted herself in her new and exalted situation with such
circumspection and modesty as not to offend the authorities of the
kitchen and stable, among whom her behaviour was always exceedingly
modest and affable. She was quite a different person from the
haughty, shy, dissatisfied little girl whom we have known
previously, and this change of temper proved great prudence, a
sincere desire of amendment, or at any rate great moral courage on
her part. Whether it was the heart which dictated this new system
of complaisance and humility adopted by our Rebecca, is to be proved
by her after-history. A system of hypocrisy, which lasts through
whole years, is one seldom satisfactorily practised by a person of
one-and-twenty; however, our readers will recollect, that, though
young in years, our heroine was old in life and experience, and we
have written to no purpose if they have not discovered that she was
a very clever woman.

The elder and younger son of the house of Crawley were, like the
gentleman and lady in the weather-box, never at home together—they
hated each other cordially: indeed, Rawdon Crawley, the dragoon, had
a great contempt for the establishment altogether, and seldom came
thither except when his aunt paid her annual visit.

The great good quality of this old lady has been mentioned. She
possessed seventy thousand pounds, and had almost adopted Rawdon.
She disliked her elder nephew exceedingly, and despised him as a
milksop. In return he did not hesitate to state that her soul was
irretrievably lost, and was of opinion that his brother's chance in
the next world was not a whit better. "She is a godless woman of
the world," would Mr. Crawley say; "she lives with atheists and
Frenchmen. My mind shudders when I think of her awful, awful
situation, and that, near as she is to the grave, she should be so
given up to vanity, licentiousness, profaneness, and folly." In
fact, the old lady declined altogether to hear his hour's lecture of
an evening; and when she came to Queen's Crawley alone, he was
obliged to pretermit his usual devotional exercises.

"Shut up your sarmons, Pitt, when Miss Crawley comes down," said his
father; "she has written to say that she won't stand the
preachifying."

"O, sir! consider the servants."

"The servants be hanged," said Sir Pitt; and his son thought even
worse would happen were they deprived of the benefit of his
instruction.

"Why, hang it, Pitt!" said the father to his remonstrance. "You
wouldn't be such a flat as to let three thousand a year go out of
the family?"

"What is money compared to our souls, sir?" continued Mr. Crawley.

"You mean that the old lady won't leave the money to you?"—and who
knows but it was Mr. Crawley's meaning?

Old Miss Crawley was certainly one of the reprobate. She had a snug
little house in Park Lane, and, as she ate and drank a great deal
too much during the season in London, she went to Harrowgate or
Cheltenham for the summer. She was the most hospitable and jovial
of old vestals, and had been a beauty in her day, she said. (All old
women were beauties once, we very well know.) She was a bel esprit,
and a dreadful Radical for those days. She had been in France
(where St. Just, they say, inspired her with an unfortunate
passion), and loved, ever after, French novels, French cookery, and
French wines. She read Voltaire, and had Rousseau by heart; talked
very lightly about divorce, and most energetically of the rights of
women. She had pictures of Mr. Fox in every room in the house: when
that statesman was in opposition, I am not sure that she had not
flung a main with him; and when he came into office, she took great
credit for bringing over to him Sir Pitt and his colleague for
Queen's Crawley, although Sir Pitt would have come over himself,
without any trouble on the honest lady's part. It is needless to
say that Sir Pitt was brought to change his views after the death of
the great Whig statesman.