Indeed I have no heart, on account of our dear Amelia‘s sake, to go through the story of George‘s last days at home.
At last the day came, the carriage drove up, the little humble packets containing tokens of love and remembrance were ready and disposed in the hall long since—George was in his new suit, for which the tailor had come previously to measure him. He had sprung up with the sun and put on the new clothes; his mother hearing him from the room close by, in which she had been lying, in speechless grief and watching. Days before she had been making preparations for the end; purchasing little stores for the boy‘s use; marking his books and linen; talking with him and preparing him for the change—fondly fancying that he needed preparation.
So that he had change, what cared he? He was longing for it. By a thousand eager declarations as to what he would do, when he went to live with his grandfather, he had shown the poor widow how little the idea of parting had cast him down. ‘He would come and see his mamma often on the pony,‘ he said: ‘he would come and fetch her in the carriage; they would drive in the Park, and she should have everything she wanted.‘ The poor mother was fain to content herself with these selfish demonstrations of attachment, and tried to convince herself how sincerely her son loved her. He must love her. All children were so: a little anxious for novelty, and—no, not selfish but self-willed. Her child must have his enjoyments and ambition in the world. She herself, by her own selfishness and imprudent love for him, had denied him his just rights and pleasures hitherto.
I know few things more affecting than that timorous debasement and self-humiliation of a woman. How she owns that it is she and not the man who is guilty: how she takes all the faults on her side: how she courts in a manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not committed, and persists in shielding the real culprit! It is those who injure women who get the most kindness from them—they are born timid and tyrants, and maltreat those who are humblest before them.
So poor Amelia had been getting ready in silent misery for her son‘s departure, and had passed many and many a long solitary hour in making preparations for the end. George stood by his mother, watching her arrangements without the least concern. Tears had fallen into his boxes; passages had been scored in his favourite books; old toys, relics, treasures had been hoarded away for him, and packed with strange neatness and care,—and of all these things the boy took no note. The child goes away smiling as the mother breaks her heart. By heavens it is pitiful, the bootless love of women for children in Vanity Fair.
GEORGY GOES TO CHURCH GENTEELLY
A few days are passed: and the great event of Amelia‘s life is consum mated. No angel has intervened. The child is sacrificed and offered up to fate; and the widow is quite alone.
The boy comes to see her often, to be sure. He rides on a pony with the coachman behind him, to the delight of his old grandfather, Sedley, who walks proudly down the lane by his side. She sees him, but he is not her boy any more. Why, he rides to see the boys at the little school, too, and to show off before them his new wealth and splendour. In two days he has adopted a slight imperious air and patronizing manner. He was born to command, his mother thinks, as his father was before him.
It is fine weather now. Of evenings on the days when he does not come, she takes a long walk into London—yes, as far as Russell Square, and rests on the stone by the railing of the garden opposite Mr. Osborne‘s house. It is so pleasant and cool. She can look up and see the drawing-room windows illuminated, and, at about nine o‘clock the chamber in the upper story where Georgy sleeps. She knows—he has told her. She prays there as the light goes out, prays with a humble, humble heart, and walks home shrinking and silent. She is very tired when she comes home. Perhaps she will sleep the better for that long weary walk; and she may dream about Georgy.
One Sunday she happened to be walking in Russell Square, at some distance from Mr. Osborne‘s house (she could see it from a distance though) when all the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and George and his aunt came out to go to church; a little sweep asked for charity, and the footman, who carried the books, tried to drive him away; but Georgy stopped and gave him money. May God‘s blessing be on the boy! Emmy ran round the square, and coming up to the sweep, gave him her mite too. All the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and she followed them until she came to the Foundling Church, into which she went. There she sat in a place whence she could see the head of the boy under his father‘s tombstone. Many hundred fresh children‘s voices rose up there and sang hymns to the Father Beneficent; and little George‘s soul thrilled with delight at the burst of glorious psalmody. His mother could not see him for awhile, through the mist that dimmed her eyes.
CHAPTER LI
In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader
After Becky‘s appearance at my Lord Steyne‘s private and select parties the claims of that estimable woman as regards fashion, were settled; and some of the very greatest and tallest doors in the metropolis were speedily opened to her—doors so great and tall that the beloved reader and writer hereof may hope in vain to enter at them. Dear brethren, let us tremble before those august portals. I fancy them guarded by grooms of the chamber with flaming silver forks with which they prong all those who have not the right of the entree. They say the honest newspaper-fellow who sits in the hall and takes down the names of the great ones who are admitted to the feasts, dies after a little time. He can‘t survive the glare of fashion long. It scorches him up, as the presence of Jupiter in full dress wasted that poor imprudent Semeleow—a giddy moth of a creature who ruined herself by venturing out of her natural atmosphere. Her myth ought to be taken to heart amongst the Tyburnians, the Belgravians,—her story, and perhaps Becky‘s too. Ah, ladies!—ask the Reverend Mr. Thurifer if Belgravia is not a sounding brass, and Tyburnia a tinkling cymbal.ox These are vanities. Even these will pass away. And some day or other (but it will be after our time, thank goodness), Hyde Park Gardens will be no better known than the celebrated horticultural outskirts of Babylonoy; and Belgrave Square will be as desolate as Baker Street, or Tadmoroz in the wilderness.
Ladies, are you aware that the Great Pitt lived in Baker Street? What would not your grandmothers have given to be asked to Lady Hester‘s parties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it—moi qui vous parle.pa I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead. As we sat soberly drinking claret there with men of to-day, the spirits of the departed came in and took their places round the darksome board. The pilot who weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritual port: the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a heeltap.—Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly manner, and would not be behindhand when the noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from under bushy eyebrows winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce‘s eyes went up to the ceiling, so that he did not seem to know how his glass went up full to his mouth and came down empty;—up to the ceiling which was above us only yesterday, and which the great of the last days have all looked at. They let the house as a furnished lodging now. Yes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and lies asleep in the wilderness. Eöthenpb saw her there—not in Baker Street: but in the other solitude.
It is all vanity to be sure: but who will not own to liking a little of it? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast-beef? That is a vanity; but may every man who reads this, have a wholesome portion of it through life, I beg: aye, though my readers were five hundred thousand. Sit down, gentlemen, and fall to, with a good hearty appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy, the horse-radish as you like it—don‘t spare it. Another glass of wine, Jones, my boy—a little bit of the Sunday side. Yes, let us eat our fill of the vain thing, and be thankful therefore. And let us make the best of Becky‘s aristocratic pleasures likewise—for these too, like all other mortal delights, were but transitory.
The upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was, that His Highness the Prince of Peterwaradin took occasion t
o renew his acquaintance with Colonel Crawley, when they met on the next day at the club, and to compliment Mrs. Crawley in the ring of Hyde Park with a profound salute of the hat. She and her husband were invited immediately to one of the prince‘s small parties at Levant House, then occupied by his highness during the temporary absence from England of its noble proprietor. She sang after dinner to a very little comité.pc The Marquis of Steyne was present, paternally superintending the progress of his pupil.
At Levant House Becky met one of the finest gentlemen and greatest ministers that Europe has produced—the Duc de la Jabotière, then ambassador from the Most Christian King,pd and subsequently minister to that monarch. I declare I swell with pride as these august names are transcribed by my pen; and I think in what brilliant company my dear Becky is moving. She became a constant guest at the French embassy, where no party was considered to be complete without the presence of the charming Madame Ravdonn Cravley.
Messieurs de Truffigny (of the Périgord family) and Champignac, both attaches of the embassy, were straightway smitten by the charms of the fair colonel‘s wife: and both declared, according to the wont of their nation (for who ever yet met a Frenchman, come out of England, that has not left half a dozen families miserable, and brought away as many hearts in his pocket-book?) both, I say, declared that they were au mieuxpe with the charming Madame Ravdonn.
But I doubt the correctness of the assertion. Champignac was very fond of écarté, and made many parties with the colonel of evenings, while Becky was singing to Lord Steyne in the other room; and as for Truffigny, it is a well-known fact that he dared not go to the Travellers‘, where he owed money to the waiters, and if he had not had the embassy as a dining-place, the worthy young gentleman must have starved. I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either of these young men as a person on whom she would bestow her special regard. They ran of her messages, purchased her gloves and flowers, went in debt for opera-boxes for her, and made themselves amiable in a thousand ways. And they talked English with adorable simplicity, and to the constant amusement of Becky and my Lord Steyne. She would mimic one or other to his face, and compliment him on his advance in the English language with a gravity which never failed to tickle the marquis, her sardonic old patron. Truffigny gave Briggs a shawl by way of winning over Becky‘s confidante, and asked her to take charge of a letter which the simple spinster handed over in public to the person to whom it was addressed; and the composition of which amused everybody who read it greatly. Lord Steyne read it: everybody, but honest Rawdon; to whom it was not necessary to tell everything that passed in the little house in May Fair.
Here, before long, Becky received not only ‘the best‘ foreigners (as the phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some of the best English people too. I don‘t mean the most virtuous, or indeed the least virtuous, or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or the richest, or the best born, but ‘the best‘,—in a word, people about whom there is no question—such as the great Lady Fitz-Willis, that Patron Saint of Almack‘s,pf the great Lady Slowbore, the great Lady Grizzel Macbeth (she was Lady G. Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey of Glowry), and the like. When the Countess of Fitz-Willis (her ladyship is of the Kingstreet family, see Debrett and Burke)pg takes up a person, he or she is safe. There is no question about them any more. Not that my Lady Fitz-Willis is any better than anybody else, being, on the contrary, a faded person, fifty-seven years of age, and neither handsome, nor wealthy, nor entertaining; but it is agreed on all sides that she is of the ‘best people‘. Those who go to her are of the best: and from an old grudge probably to Lady Steyne (for whose coronet her ladyship, then the youthful Georgina Frederica, daughter of the Prince of Wales‘s favourite, the Earl of Portansherry, had once tried), this great and famous leader of the fashion chose to acknowledge Mrs. Rawdon Crawley: made her a most marked curtsy at the assembly over which she presided: and not only encouraged her son, St. Kitts (his lordship got his place through Lord Steyne‘s interest), to frequent Mrs. Crawley‘s house, but asked her to her own mansion, and spoke to her twice in the most public and condescending manner during dinner. The important fact was known all over London that night. People who had been crying fie about Mrs. Crawley, were silent. Wenham, the wit and lawyer, Lord Steyne‘s right-hand man, went about everywhere praising her: some who had hesitated, came forward at once and welcomed her; little Tom Toady, who had warned Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman, now besought to be introduced to her. In a word, she was admitted to be among the ‘best‘ people. Ah, my beloved readers and brethren, do not envy poor Becky prematurely—glory like this is said to be fugitive. It is currently reported that even in the very inmost circles, they are no happier than the poor wanderers outside the zone; and Becky, who penetrated into the very centre of fashion, and saw the great George IV face to face, has owned since that there too was Vanity.
We must be brief in descanting upon this part of her career. As I cannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a shrewd idea that it is a humbug: so an uninitiated man cannot take upon himself to portray the great world accurately, and had best keep his opinions to himself whatever they are.
Becky has often spoken in subsequent years of this season of her life when she moved among the very greatest circles of the London fashion. Her success excited, elated, and then bored her. At first no occupation was more pleasant than to invent and procure (the latter a work of no small trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in a person of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley‘s very narrow means)—to procure, we say, the prettiest new dresses and ornaments; to drive to fine dinner parties, where she was welcomed by great people; and from the fine dinner parties to fine assemblies, whither the same people came with whom she had been dining, whom she had met the night before, and would see on the morrow—the young men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted, with the neatest glossy boots and white gloves—the elders portly, brass-buttoned, noble-looking, polite, and prosy—the young ladies blonde, timid, and in pink—the mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in diamonds. They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in the novels. They talked about each others‘ houses, and characters, and families: just as the Joneses do about the Smiths. Becky‘s former acquaintances hated and envied her: the poor woman herself was yawning in spirit. ‘I wish I were out of it,‘ she said to herself. ‘I would rather be a parson‘s wife, and teach a Sunday school than this; or a sergeant‘s lady and ride in the regimental wagon; or, oh, how much gayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers, and dance before a booth at a fair.‘
‘You would do it very well,‘ said Lord Steyne, laughing. She used to tell the great man her ennuisph and perplexities in her artless way—they amused him.
‘Rawdon would make a very good Ecuyerpi—Master of the Ceremonies—what do you call him—the man in the large boots and the uniform, who goes round the ring cracking the whip? He is large, heavy, and of a military figure. I recollect,‘ Becky continued, pensively, ‘my father took me to see a show at Brookgreen Fair when I was a child; and when we came home I made myself a pair of stilts, and danced in the studio to the wonder of all the pupils.‘
‘I should have liked to see it,‘ said Lord Steyne.
‘I should like to do it now,‘ Becky continued. ‘How Lady Blinkey would open her eyes, and Lady Grizzel Macbeth would stare! Hush! silence! there is Pastapj beginning to sing.‘ Becky always made a point of being conspicuously polite to the professional ladies and gentlemen who attended at these aristocratic parties—of following them into the corners where they sat in silence, and shaking hands with them, and smiling in the view of all persons. She was an artist herself, as she said very truly: there was a frankness and humility in the manner in which she acknowledged her origin, which provoked, or disarmed, or amused lookers-on, as the case might be. ‘How cool that woman is,‘ said one; ‘what airs of independence she assumes, where she ought to sit still and be thankful if anybody speaks to her.‘ ‘What an honest and good-nat
ured soul she is,‘ said another. ‘What an artful little minx,‘ said a third. They were all right very likely; but Becky went her own way, and so fascinated the professional personages, that they would leave off their sore throats in order to sing at her parties, and give her lessons for nothing.
Yes, she gave parties in the little house in Curzon Street. Many scores of carriages, with blazing lamps, blocked up the street, to the disgust of No. 100, who could not rest for the thunder of the knocking, and of 102, who could not sleep for envy. The gigantic footmen who accompanied the vehicles were too big to be 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 réunions 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, dragomanpk of the mission), the Marquess of Steyne, Earl of Southdown, Mr. 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 Gruyère, 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 Padding-ton, Sir Horace Fogey, Hon. Sands Bedwin, Bobbachy Bahawder,‘ and an &c. which the reader may fill at his pleasure through a dozen close lines of small type.
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