rj CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Professor F. C, PresGott Cornell University Library PR 5600.E98 "'The works of William "altepeace Thac^^^^ 3 1924 016 659 157 DATE DUE ...^AJ^I^MK j^ip^msi Siil!WU4 -JA^I _9_ i-ims ^rfflr^^^ ^B0f J '' 'WOT 1 1 GAVLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION THE WORKS OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTIONS BY HIS DAUGHTER, ANNE RITCHIE IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES Volume I. VANITY FAIR ^ I'' /'I ''Hill, .'/■■' ■J'> > ■J' m, .;oW The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 66591 57 Puhlishedtj Harper &:BrothBrs,NewYork, V A N I T Y ' i^cv^i witbout R D«i» HTLLIAM WAKKi >:A<:ii IIIACKEKa^ VITH /LLVSTMiT!'.':y #5' r^c ,,,, ■•*■ 'f-, if^' .< ■ : HERS PUBl ISHERS ViiKk 4NB LONDON 1898 VANITY FAIR a IRovel wttbout a "Ibcro WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR AND A PORTRAIT HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON 1898 A '/) I t^sCoUi ^'^ e/f/^^/^ SItOt) v.l 2S7l^ "-IJS Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers. ^// rights reserved. * * * MY Father never wished for any Biography of him- self to be written, and for this reason I have never attempted to write one. It is only after a qitarter of a century that I have determined to publish m,emories which chiefly concern his books. Certain selections from his. letters are also included, which tell of the places where his work was done, and of the times when he wrote. So much has been forgotten, so much that is ephemeral has been recorded, that it is my desire to mark down som£ of the truer chords to which his life was habitually set. For this reason I have included one letter to my Mother among the rest : it will show that he knew how to value the priceless gifts of home and of happiness while they lasted, as well as to bear trouble and loneliness when they fell upon him. A. I. E. November 28, 1897. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .... DEDICATION TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION BEFORE THE CURTAIN CHAP. I. II. III. rv. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. xlv. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. CHISWICK MALL IN WHICH MISS SHARP AND MISS SEDLEY PREPARE TO OPEN THE CAMPAIGN REBECCA IS IN PRESENCE OF THE ENEMY THE GREEN SILK PURSE .... DOBBIN OF OURS ..... VAUXHALL CRAWLEY OF QUEEN's CRAWLEY . PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL FAMILY PORTRAITS ..... MISS SHARP BEGINS TO MAKE FRIENDS ARCADIAN SIMPLICITY QUITE A SENTIMENTAL CHAPTER SENTIMENTAL AND OTHERWISE MISS CRAWLEY AT HOME .... IN WHICH Rebecca's husband appears for a SHORT TIME ...... THE LETTER ON THE PINCUSHION HOW CAPTAIN DOBBIN BOUGHT A PIANO WHO PLAYED ON THE PIANO CAPTAIN DOBBIN BOUGHT? .... . . ix FAaK XV xli xliii 1 7 16 23 35 45 57 64 73 80 86 100 108 119 136 144 152 160 X CONTENTS CHAP. XIX. MISS CRAWLEY AT NURSE . . ■ ■ XX. IN WHICH CAPTAIN DOBBIN ACTS AS THE MES- SENGER OF HYMEN . . . • • XXI. A QUARREL ABOUT AN HEIRESS XXII. A MARRIAGE AND PART OF A HONEYMOON XXIII. CAPTAIN DOBBIN PROCEEDS ON HIS CANVASS XXIV. IN WHICH MR. OSBORNE TAKES DOWN THE FAMILY BIBLE ...... XXV. IN WHICH ALL ' THE ' PRINCIPAL PERSONAGES THINK FIT TO LEAVE BRIGHTON . XXVI. BETWEEN LONDON AND CHATHAM XXVII. IN WHICH AMELIA JOINS HER REGIMENT . XXVIII. IN WHICH AMELIA INVADES THE LOW COUNTRIES XXIX. BRUSSELS XXX. "THE GIRL. I LEFT BEHIND ME " . XXXI. IN WHICH JOS SEDLEY TAKES CARE OF HIS SISTER . . ... XXXII. IN WHICH JOS TAKES PLIGHT, AND THE WAR IS BROUGHT TO A CLOSE .... XXXHL IN WHICH MISS CRAWLEY's RELATIONS ARE VERY ANXIOUS ABOUT HER XXXIV. JAMES Crawley's pipe is put out . XXXV. WIDOW AND MOTHER XXXVI. HOW TO LIVE WELL ON NOTHING A YEAR XXXVII. THE SUBJECT CONTINUED ..... XXXVIII. A FAMILY IN A VERY SMALL WAY . XXXIX. A CYNICAL CHAPTER XL. IN WHICH BECKY IS RECOGNISED BY THE FAMILY XLL IN WHICH BECKY REVISITS THE HALLS OF HEE ANCESTORS XLII. WHICH TREATS OF THE OSBORNE FAMILY . XLIII. IN WHICH THE READER HAS TO DOUBLE THE CAPE FAQI 171 181 190 199 207 213 225 243 250 256 265 277 286 297 312 322 337 347 355 369 382 391 399 410 417 CONTENTS CHAP. XLIV. XLV. XLVI. XLVII. XLVIII. XLIX. L. LI. LII. LIII. LIV. LV. LVI. LVII. LVIII. LIX. LX. LXI. LXII. LXIII. LXIV. LXV. LXVI. LXVII. XI FAQB A ROUNDABOUT CHAPTER BETWEEN LONDON AND HAMPSHIRE 426 BETWEEN HAMPSHIRE AND LONDON . . 436 STRUGGLES AND TRIALS 445 GAUNT HOUSE 453 IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO THE VERY BEST OF COMPANY . . . .461 IN WHICH WE ENJOY THREE COURSES AND A DESSERT 472 CONTAINS A VULGAR INCIDENT . . . .479 IN WHICH A CHARADE IS ACTED WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT PUZZLE THE READER . . . 487 IN WHICH LORD STEYNE SHOWS HIMSELF IN A MOST AMIABLE LIGHT .... 504 A RESCUE AND A CATASTROPHE . . . .513 SUNDAY AFTER THE BATTLE . . . .522 IN WHICH THE SAME SUBJECT IS PURSUED . 530 GEORGY IS MADE A GENTLEMAN . . . 544 EOTHEN 555 OUR FRIEND THE MAJOR 563 THE Old PIANO 574 RETURNS TO THE GENTEEL WORLD . . . 584 IN WHICH TWO LIGHTS ARE PUT OUT . . 590 AM RHEIN 603 IN WHICH WE MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE . 613 A VAGABOND CHAPTER 624 FULL OF BUSINESS AND PLEASURE . . . 639 AMANTIUM IR^ 647 WHICH CONTAINS BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS 661 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS POETEAIT OF THE AUTHOR Frontispiece MAJOR AND MRS. HOBKIEK FOE THE CONTINENT students' duel at GODESBERG HUMMEL DEVRIENT ....... A lady's glance at the AUTHOR . Thackeray's home in young street, Kensington designs for the cover of "vanity fair" amelia waiting in russell square studies for the miss osbornes the mesmeeizer ...... PAOB xix XXI xxii xxiii xxvi xxix xxxi xxxii xl REBECCA'S FAREWELL .... MR. JOSEPH ENTANGLED .... REBECCA MAKES ACQUAINTANCE WITH A LIVE BARONET ...... MISS Crawley's affectionate relatives MR. OSBORNe's WELCOME TO AMELIA THE NOTE ON THE PINCUSHION MR. SEDLEY at THE COFFEE-HOUSE . A FAMILY PARTY AT BRIGHTON MRS. o'dOWD at THE FLOWER MARKET . xiii To face page 4 »» 32 ?) 60 jj 92 j» 114 » 148 )> 184 jj 230 ») 262 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MR. JOS SHAVES OFF HIS MUSTACHIOS MRS. RAWDOn's departure FROM PARIS . GBORGY MAKES ACQUAINTANCE WITH A WATER- LOO MAN ..... SIB pitt's last stage .... BECKY IN LOMBARD STREET GEORGY GOES TO CHURCH GENTEELLY COLONEL CRAWLEY IS WANTED SIR PITt's STUDY-CHAIR .... GEORGY A GENTLEMAN .... A FINE SUMMER EVENING VIRTUE REWARDED, A BOOTH IN VANITY FAIR To face page 302 " 352 392 470 484 504 524 544 606 674 FACSIMILE OF JOS SEDLEY S LETTER AS IT APPEARS IN THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF "vanity fair" 54 INTRODUCTION TO VANITY FAIR 1817—1845-8 I. I CANNOT help thinking that although " Vanity Fair " was written in 1845 and the following years, it was really begun in 1817, when the little boy, so lately come from India, found him- self shut in behind those filigree iron gates at Chiswick, of which he -writes when he describes Miss Pinkerton's establishment. Whether Miss Pinkerton was, or was not, own sister to the great Doctor at the head of the boarding-school for young gentlemen on Chiswick Mall, to which " Billy boy " (as the author of " Van- ity Fair " used to be called in those early days) was sent, remains to be proved. There is certainly a very strong likeness between those two majestic beings, the awe-inspiring Doctor and the great Miss Pinkerton, whose dignity and whose Johnsonian language marked an epoch in education. I myself remember, as a child, hearing it said in the family, that when Dr. used to read the Ten Commandments of a Sunday to his boys and the rest of the people assembled, his wife and several members of the congre- gation had been heard to declare, that to hear his resounding tones reminded them of Mount Sinai itself ! Perhaps the little Indian boy did not realise this resemblance, nor enjoy his privileges so much as he might have done. He was not at all happy, he has told us, in either of his early schools, although he was kindly treated at Chiswick by the Doctor and his wife, who were indeed some distant connections of my grand- xvi VANITY FAIR mother's. In later days, driving to Richmond and elsewhere, my father has shown us the corner of the lane by the Hammersmith Road to which he ran away soon after he first came to Chiswick ; then being frightened, perhaps, by the great Hammersmith Road, and not knowing where to go, he ran back to school again, and no one was the wiser. He was still at Dr. 's when his mother and his stepfather came home. My grandmother in a letter to India has described the meeting, and how she went to fetch her boy from school. " He had a perfect recollection of me ; he conld not speak, but kissed me, and looked at me again and again, and I could almost have said, ' Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.' He is the living image of his father, and God in heaven send that he may resemble him in all but his too short life! He is tall, stout, and sturdy. His eyes are become darker, but there is still the same dear expression. His drawing is wonderful." My father must have been a sensitive little boy of nine or ten years old in those days, quick to feel, not over strong, but well- grown, and ruddy in looks. He was always very shortsighted ; and he has told me that this in his school-days was a great trouble to him, for he could not join in the games with any comfort or pleasure, nor even see the balls which he was set to stop at cricket. Soon after his parents' return he quitted Miss Pinkerton's estab- lishment and went to Charterhouse, which hardly comes into " Vanity Fair." Swishtails was not Grey Friars, and I have al- ways wondered where the great fight between Cuff and Dobbin took place. Russell Square and Jos Sedley and Bogglywollah, all belong to very early impressions. My father's holidays must have often, been spent in the streets round about Russell Square ; sev- eral members of his stepfather's family were then settled in that district. Dr. Carmichael-Smyth, the well-known physician, who was alive in those days, had a house in the neighbourhood. There is a lovely picture of his wife by Romney, gracious and beautiful in white and powder, a painting my father greatly admired. The lady was Miss Smyth of Athernay, and by her marriage with Dr. Carmichael she became Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth, and the mother of numerous daughters and handsome sons. She was no longer alive when my grandmother and her husband came home from India to the Paternal Roof. My step-grandfather was among the first of those many " brave young men, soldiers for the INTRODUCTION xvii most part," says the author of " Denis Duval " in one of the last chapters he ever wrote, " who told of Bhurtpore, of Bergen op Zoom, of Waterloo." One of the daughters was painted by Raeburn — a charming portrait, which hangs on our walls. It belonged to my step-grandfather, from whom it came to us. That eventful time was not history only to the people who were born, as my father was, in the first years of the century. It meant real life, near relations, hearts aching or throbbing with gratitude and exultant relief. To him it must have come in all the echoes of the voices with which he lived as a boy. He was eleven years old when he went to Charterhouse in 1822, only seven years after Waterloo was fought. In the August of that year, 1822, Major Carmichael-Smyth was appointed Governor to Addis- combe.* In one of his earliest letters to his mother from Charterhouse, the little boy asks to be told all about " Addiscombe and the gen- tleman cadets, and if papa has got a cock-hat that will fit him." From the age of eleven to thirteen he spent his holidays at the college. One cannot help also speculating whether the original King's Crawley may not have lain somewhere in that neighbour- hood. The Governor of Addiscombe did not remain there very long ; after two years he resigned his post, and removed with his family to Pendennis-land. Meanwhile my father had been coming and going from Charter- house. At Charterhouse afterwards, as a big boy, he seems to have had far more agreeable impressions of Chiswick than during his earlier experiences. It is in February 1828 that he mentions going back there on half-holidays. " Very gracious they were : I played two games of chess with Mrs. , and two rubbers of whist with the young ladies." Elsewhere in this same home letter from Charterhouse he continues: "I have only read one novel since I came back, and I dare say I shall not read another. I have not yet drawn out a plan for my stories, but certain germs thereof are budding in my mind, which I hope by assiduous application will flourish yet and bring forth fruit." . . . Then he apologises for * In Colonel Vibart's records of Addiscombe, he says it may be noted as a matter of interest that Thackeray was during his boyhood an inmate of the mansion there. 2 xviii VANITY FAIK writing so much every day. " I always feel as if I were at home when I am writing," he says ; " and although it may give you very little amusement, it is certainly very amusing to me — that is to say, when once I begin." The author of "Vanity Fair" was born in 1811, and must therefore have been four years old at the time of the battle of Waterloo ; but Becky and Jos, and Amelia and Dobbin, were all grown up, and out in the world by then. In " Vanity Fair " it- self we are told how the author met them at Pumpernickel in later years, when he was a student, and when Dobbin and the Sedleys, all well advanced in life, were touring abroad for rest and relaxation. The little comfortable grand ducal town of Pum- pernickel, whither Jos and his party, and Major Dobbin, on his return from India, all travelled together, is familiar to all readers of " Vanity Fair " ; and so is the carriage, and the courier on the box, and the Erb Prinz Hotel, where the whole party dined at the table d'hdte. Major and Mrs. Hobkirk were perhaps present on this occasion. Their portraits are here given. One of the first of the letters from Germany, dated Coblentz, July 31, 1830, gives prevailing fashions of churches, and sketches of the Castled Crag of Drachenfels, and of the people on board — one man would do for a buccaneer, says my father. The next letter contains a sketch of a students' duel at G-odesberg. One letter from my father to his mother, dated September 29, 1830, might almost be a page out of "Vanity Fair" itself, so absolute- ly does it reproduce the atmosphere of Pumpernickel and the echoes of that time. " You see the direction to my letter — Weimar — which, with your good leave, will be my direction while I remain in Ger- many. On arriving here I found an old schoolfellow,* who is staying with a German family, and who said that the place was exactly suited for me." " It seems that the old Grand Duke had a great love for Eng- * I believe that Mr. Lettsom (afterwards less comfortably established as a diplomat in South Amerisa) was the friend with whom my father lived at this time. Dr. Norman Macleod was also in Weimar that winter, and they ail three learnt German from Dr. Weissenborne. INTRODUCTION xix lish manners and English men ; and though the present Duke is not quite so prepossessed in our favour, yet he is happy to see all the Englishmen who come here — and there are generally three or four residing at his Court. I have accordingly had a pair of Wm MAJOR AND MRS. HOBKIRK FOR THE CONTINENT. trousers cut into breeches, and have had the honour of making my appearance in his august presence. There is a capital library, which is open to me ; an excellent theatre, which costs a shilling per night ; and a charming petite societe, which costs nothing. " Goethe, the great lion of Weimar, I have not seen, but his XX VANITY FAIR INTRODUCTION xxi daughter-in-law has promised to introduce me. So much for Weimar, which I think you will agree with me is as good a place as I could possibly select for my stay in this country. . . . " I slept at Gotha and came on here, and here, I trust, will end my travels ; for though the society is small (he continues), it is remarkably good ; and though the Court is absurdly ceremoni- ous, I think it will rub ofE a little of the rust which school and college have given me." " Now I am going to ask a very absurd favour ; I want a cor- netcy in Sir John Kennaway's yeomanry. The men here are all in some uniform, and if hereafter I go to other Courts in Ger- many, or in any other part of Europe, something of this sort is necessary as a Court dress. It is true that here I can do without it, but in case of my going elsewhere I must have some dress or other ; and a yeomanry dress is always a handsome and respect- able one. As it is, I have to air my legs in black breeches, and to sport a black coat, black waistcoat, and cocked hat ; looking something like a cross between a footman and a Methodist parson. . . . Last night we had at the theatre a translation of " Hernani," the trag- edy by Victor Hugo which made so much noise in Paris. I would recommend you to read it if possible. We have had three operas, " Medea," and the "Barber of Seville," and "II Flauto Magico." Hummel conducts the orchestra — , ■ ■ 1 • 7 • 1 1-1 1 • ^ HUMMEL. here is a picture which is somewhat like him for Mary. The orchestra is excellent, but the singers are not first- rate." Another letter gives an interesting account of Devrient, with a sketch : — " I went to Erfurt the other day to see the " Robbers," a play which is a little too patriotic and free for our Court Theatre. An actor of this place accompanied me and took me behind the scenes, thereby revealing to me all the mysteries of a German theatre. He introduced me to Dpvrient, the Kean of Germany, who in several particulars resembles his illustrious brother of the buskin. " His great character is Franz Moor in the " Robbers," and I think I never saw anything so terrible. There is a prayer which VANITY FAIR Franz makes while his castle is being attacted, whicli has the most awful efiect which can well be fancied : ' I am no common murderer, mein Herr Gott.' That picture is as like the man as may be, which ia saying a great deal — but I have done nothing but practise drawing his face since I saw it. "Jan. 38, 1831." We know how much Sedley and his party enjoyed their visit to the theatre, and how greatly Amelia was admired when she appeared there, and we have also read how charming she looked at the Grand Duke's ball. My fa- ther made a sketch of himself on that occasion in the cele- brated knee-breeches and cocked hat, and sent it to Edward Fitz- gerald. " I have got a book into which I paste the play-bills," he con- tinues, writing to his mother. " I have fallen in love with the Princess of Weimar, who is un- luckily married to Prince Charles of Prussia. I must get over this unfortunate passion, which will otherwise bring rae to an un- timely end. There are several very charming young persons Miss A — and ditto Miss B — are the evening belles. As 1 have delayed my letter a week, I must write again next week, and 1 will send you a couple of transla- tions from Korner, which will, I think, amuse you ; they ought to, were they anything like the original. . . . Write to me, ' hd Madame Mellor, at Weimar.' " I can remember my father pointing in after years to the win- dows of his old rooms, looking out into the Platz, upon which the afternoon sun was shining full. Here is one more extract from the correspondence of this time, together with the drawing which belongs to it : of the female sex here. INTRODUCTION xxiii " Blinded by the rays of her eyes, I am giving myself ecstat- ically up to — I can't finish the sentence. You must fancy ■another picture, in which the new-comer is standing between me and the sun, and giving me leisure to see and be wise. Man says tliat 's glancing eyes Wander too fond and free, But in gazing thus on all the world They have a look for me ; As if the something, something sua Was destined but to shine on one ! A lady's glance at the author. Here, dearest mother, you have the beginning of a rapturous ode on the innumerable beauties and perfections of a certain Mademoiselle de ; but a gentleman arrived who had been in the Guards, is heir to ten thousand a year, has several waistcoats of the most magnificent pattern, and makes love speeches to ad- miration : he has therefore cut me out, as he will some day be cut out in his turn. Flirting is a word much in vogue, but I think jilting is the proper term in this my unfortunate (or fortunate, as you please) desertion." "The flame has gone out," he says xxiv VANITY FAIR farther on, " and now I scarcely know what has become of the cinders !" The well-known letter to Lewes, published in his "Life of Goethe," is so interesting that I cannot help quoting the passage about his introduction to Goethe. " In 1831, though he had retired from the world, Goethe would nevertheless very kindly receive strangers. His daughter-in-law's tea-table was always spread for us. We passed hours after hours there, and night after night, with the pleasantest talk and music. We read over endless novels and poems in French, English, and German. My delight in those days was to make caricatures for children. I was touched to find that they were remembered, and some even kept until the present time ; and very proud to be told, as a lad, that the great Goethe had looked at some of them. " He remained in his private apartments, where only a very few privileged persons were admitted ; but he liked to know all that was happening, and interested himself about all strangers. When- ever a countenance struck his fancy, there was an artist settled in Weimar who made a portrait of it. Goethe had quite a gallery of heads, in black and white, taken by this painter.* His house was all over pictures, drawings, casts, statues, and medals. Of course I remember very well the perturbation of spirit with which, as a lad of nineteen, I received the long-expected intimation that the Herr Geheimrath would see me on such a morning. This audi- ence took place in a little antechamber of his private apartments, covered all round with antique casts and bas-reliefs. He was * Mendelssohn was in Weimar in the same year as my father. He too writes of Hummel and of Goethe in hia letters home. " I wrote this before going to see Goethe early in the forenoon after a walk in the park, but I could not find a moment to finish my letter till now. I shall probably remain here for a couple of days, which is no sacrifice, for I never saw tlie old gentleman so cheerful and amiable as on this occasion, or so talkative and communicative. My special reason, however, for staying two days longer is a very agreeable one, and makes me almost vain, or I ought rather to say proud, and I do not intend to keep it secret from you. Goethe, you must know, sent me a letter yesterday addressed to an artist here, a painter, which I am to deliver myself, and Ottilie confided to me that it con- tains a commission to take my portrait, as Goethe wishes to place it in a. collection of likenesses he has recently commenced of his friends. This cir- cumstance gratified me exceedingly." INTRODUCTION xxv habited in a long grey or drab redingot, with a white neckcloth, and a red ribbon in his buttonhole. Ee kept his hands behind his back, jnst as in Rauch's statuette. His complexion was very bright, clear, and rosy ; his eyes extraordinarily dark, piercing, and brilliant. I felt quite afraid before them, and recollect com- paring them to the eyes of the hero of a certain romance called ' Melnoth the Wanderer,' which used to alarm us boys thirty years ago ; eyes of an individual who had made a bargain with a Certain Person, and at an extreme old age retained these eyes in all their awful splendour. I fancied Goethe must have been still more handsome as an old man than even in the days of his youth. His voice was very rich and sweet. He asked me ques- tions about myself, which I answered as best I could. I recol- lect I was at first astonished, and then somewhat relieved, when I found he spoke French with not a good accent. . . . " Vidi tantum. — I saw him but three times — once walking in the garden of his house in the Frauenplan ; once going to step into his chariot on a sunshiny day, wearing a cap and a cloak with a red collar. He was caressing at the time a beautiful lit- tle golden-haired granddaughter, over whose sweet fair face the earth has long since closed too. . . " With a five-and-twenty years' experience since those happy days of which I write, and an acquaintance with an immense variety of human kind, I think I have never seen a society more simple, charitable, courteous, gentleman - like, than that of the dear little Saxon city, where the good Schiller and the great Goethe lived and lie buried." II. Once, writing to my grandmother, my father said, " It is the fashion to say that people are unfortunate who 'have lost their money.' Dearest mother, we know better than that." For years and years he had to face the great question of daily bread : life was no playtime either to him or to many of his con- temporaries, who also worked for others as well as for themselves — Carlyle, Tennyson, Dickens, John Leech, a dozen honoured names come to one's mind. But their work to each one of them (as xxvi VANITY FAIR to all true workers) was a happiness, a progress, a fulfilment, rather -than a task. They worked on for the work's sake as much as for what it brought to them, and understood what was best worth hav- ing; learning the things that people often don't learn who have only bought their places in the world, or inherited them from others. c^ t j I have written elsewhere of our early home m Young btreet, and •of our life there, and of the people who used to come to the old THACKKRAT's home at no. 13 young street, KENSINGTON, FROM 1846 TO 1853. house at the corner of Kensington Square, in which my father wrote " Vanity Fair," and " Pendennis," and " Esmond," and where he lived for seven years. They were fruitful years, bringing their sheaves and gathering in their full harvests. It was in Au- gust 1846 that my father, after some hesitation, settled down in Kensington. He writes to his mother, " I am beginning to count the days now till you come ; and I have got the rooms all ready in the rough, all but a couple of bedsteads and a few etceteras, which fall into their place in a day or two. ... As usual I am full of INTRODUCTION xxvii business and racket, working every day, and yet not advancing somehow ; and poor too, although everybody gives me credit for making a fortune. I like Kensington Gardens very much indeed, walk in and ont too sometimes, and I have health, and much more work and leisure too. . . . Aunt Halliday has sent me a farewell letter and a store of mango pickles and chutney. All the Lon- don gaieties are over. I dined three days running at my own expense, and enjoyed that relaxation amazingly. Shan't you bring a servant with the children ?" It was not till late in the autumn that we came to live with my father at Kensington. We had been at Paris with our grand- parents, while he was at work in London. It was a dark wintry evening. The fires were lighted, the servants were engaged, Eliza — what family would be complete without its Eliza? — was in waiting to show us our rooms. He was away ; he had not expected us so early. We saw the drawing-room, the empty study ; there was the feeling of London — London smelt of tobacco, we thought; we stared ont through the uncurtained windows at the dark gar- den behind ; and then climbing the stairs, we looked in at his bedroom door, and came to our own rooms above it. There were pictures ready hung on the wajls of the schoolroom, and of the adjoining fire-lit nursery — ^the Thorwaldsen prints. Hunt's de- lightful sleepy boy yawning at us over the chimney-piece, all of which he had caused to be put up ; and the picture of himself as a child he had hung up with his own hands, Eliza told us. Once more, after his first happy married years, my father had a home and a family — if a house, two young children, three servants, and a little black cat can be called a family. My grandmother, who had brought us over to England, returned to her husband in Paris ; but her mother, an old lady wrapped in Indian shawls, presently came to live with us, and divided her time between Kensington and the Champs Elysees until 1848, when she died at Paris. We did not see very much of our great-grandmoth- er ; she rarely spoke, and was almost always in her room ; but though my father was very busy, and often away from home, we seemed to live with him, and were indeed with him constantly — in the early mornings, and when he was drawing, and on Sundays especially, and on holidays when the work was finished. We often went for little expeditions together, which he liked. He was well xxviii VANITY FAIR and strong, and able both to work and to enjoy life to the fall ; though even then 'he was not without anxiety for the future. Success was slow ; his great book hung fire. One has heard of the journeys which the manuscript made to various publishers' houses before it could find oue ready to undertake the venture, and how long its appearance was delayed by various doubts and hesitations. The book was at last brought out in its yellow covers by Messrs. Bradbury & Evans on the 1st of January 1847. My great-grandmother did not speak much, as I have said, but I think she put on her spectacles and read "Vanity Fair" in the intervals of her books of devotion. I still remember going along Kensington Gardens with my sister and our nurse-maid carrying a parcel of yellow numbers, which she had given us to take to some friend who lived across the Park ; and as we walked along, somewhere near the gates of the gardens we met my father, who asked us what we were carrying. Then some- how he seemed vexed and troubled, told us not to go on, and to take the parcel home. Then he changed his mind, saying that if his grandmother wished it, the books had best be conveyed ; but we guessed, as children do, that something was seriously amiss. Something was seriously amiss. The sale of "Vanity Fair " was so small that it was a question at that time whether its publication should not be discontinued altogether. 1 have always been told that it was " Mrs. Perkins's Ball " which played the part of pilot or steam-tug to that great line-of-battle ship " Vanity Fair," and which brought it safely ofE the shoals. In later days I have heard my father speak of those times, and say that besides " Mrs. Per- kins's Ball," a review in the Edinburgh Review by Mr. A. Hay ward greatly helped the sale of " Vanity Fair." "We have still one or two of the early designs for the " Vanity Fair " drawings — Jos holding Becky's skein ; old Sedley in his coffee-house, with his head in his hands, waiting for prosperity to come back to him ; and among the rest Becky at the Fancy Fair selling to Dobbin with two or three hats fitted on to his head and shoulders. There is also a little sepia suggestion for the picture of Becky's first introduction to a baronet, and a first rough suggestion for the cover, two little pencil warriors with a flying pennant, on which are inscribed the titles of the book. But the picture for the cover which was eventually determined upon was far INTRODUCTION YAKITT m\ SroRY p DESIGNS FOR THE COYER OF "VANITY FAIR." XXX VANITY FAIE more characteristic, as may be seen from the designs here given. The pictures of Dobbin in his later life have certainly a great resemblance to one of my father's oldest friends and companions at college. This was Archdeacon Allen, a commander in an army where there are no Waterloos, no decisive victories and treaties of peace, but where for men such as he was, the arms are never laid away, and the watches are never relaxed. " Any one who knew the Archdeacon," his son-in-law writes, " and has studied ' Vanity Fair,' will recognise his portrait, mutatis mutandis, in the simple-minded, chivalrous Major Dobbin." I may as well also state here, that one morning a hansom drove up to the door, and out of it emerged a most charming, dazzling little lady dressed in black, who greeted my father with great affection and brilliancy, and who, departing presently, gave him a large bunch of fresh violets. This was the only time I ever saw the fascinating little person who was by many sup- posed to be the original of Becky ; my father only laughed when people asked him, but he never quite owned to it. He always said that he never consciously copied anybody. It was, of course, impossible that suggestions should not come to him. Concerning the originals of the characters in " Vanity Fair," here is a quotation from " Yeast," the accuracy of which I can vouch for from remembrance. Charles Kingsley writes : " I heard a story the other day of our most earnest and genial humourist, who is just now proving himself also our most earnest and genial novelist. ' I like your novel exceedingly,' said a lady ; ' the characters are so natural, all but the baronet, and he surely is overdrawn : it is impossible to find such coarseness in his rank of life !' " The artist laughed. ' That character,' said he, ' is almost the only exact portrait in the whole book.' " — " Yeast," chap. ii. It must have been in the summer of 1847 that my father wrote to his mother saying everything had mended, and " the book does everything but pay." I can remember hearing him speak of that very time long after, and saying, "' Vanity Fair ' is un- doubtedly the best of my books. It has the best story, and for another thing," he added, " the title is such a good one, you couldn't have a better." INTRODUCTION xxxi Wood-blocks played a very important part in our lives in those days, and the house was full of them, and of drawings and note- books and scrap-books. Friends were constantly turned into models for wood-blocks and etchings. Once a month an engraver used to come to " bite-in" the plates in the dining-room. One young friend of ours, called Eugenie, used very often to sit to my father. She used to be Amelia and the Miss Osbornes, in turn,. AMELIA WAITING IN RUSSELL SQUARE. while my sister and I figured proudly as models for the children fighting on the floor. I also remember making one of a group composed of the aforesaid Eug6nie, representing Amelia after the battle of Waterloo, with a sofa cushion for an infant ; a tall chair stood in the place of Dobbin, who brings the little horse for his godson to play with. The drawing of Amelia waiting in Russell Square to see little George go by must also have been drawn from this same friendly model. And besides all these familiar- xxxii VANITY FAIR people, the sketches for " Mrs. Perkins's Ball " were being etched and made ready. " There are no end of quarrels in this wicked ' Vanity Fair,' and my feet are perpetually in hot water," so my father wrote to his mother about this time. I have an old diary for 1847, but none of the anxieties or STUDIES FOB THE MISS OSBORNES. quarrels are written down in it — only the places to which the au- thor of " Vanity Fair " was bound, and the names of some of the people with whom he was living at the time. "Home" recurs very frequently, and various dinners at six o'clock, at half -past six, and a quarter to seven — with names still more or less well known. " January 4th, drew for Punch ; Tuesday 5th, Dufi Gordon ; "Wednesday 6th, drew, wrote ' Vanity Fair ' ; Thursday Tth, Sir INTRODUCTION xxxiii F. Pollock. Drew in the morning, and wrote at night for Punch.''' i'ladgate — Murphy — Mrs. Dilke, 76 Sloane Street — F. W. New- man, quarter - past six — Kenyon — Reeve — Buller — Talf ourd — Higgins — Macready — Procter — Molesworth — Merivale — Lord Holland — all follow in turn, still at their comfortable 6's and 7's, and early dinner hours. "Mt dearest Mother, — What has happened since I wrote a year ago ? The same story ot every day — work, work, gobble, gobble, scuffling through the day with business, a sort of pleasure wliich be- comes a business till bedtime, and no prospect of more than tempo- rary quiet. I liave just got my month's woik done, and with Tues- day the next month begins, and the next work, etcetera. Was ever such martyrdom ? On the best of victuals, to be sure. But I sup- pose there is no use in a man thinking about what he does in this world. What he is capable ot doing and knowing Is tlie thing, and "when we go hence into somewhere, where there will he time and ■quiet sufficient doubtless, who knows what a deal of good may be found ill us yet? What a thing it will be to be made good and wise. You see I am always thinking about 'Vanity Fair.' Everything is "very flat and dull. " Well, yesterday was my dear little M 's birthday, and we had a day of heat and idleness at Hampton Court ; finished with a cold collation at Mrs. Barber's at Twickenham, where all the ladies assem- bled were excellently kind to the children. The pictures did not charm them over much ; but General M'Leod's palace ot Moorsheda- bad, with a little Nawab palanquin, elephants, bearers, two inches iigh, delighted them hugely, and so did the labyrinth and the chest- nut-trees in full bloom, and the gardens all over green and sunshine. We all went to bed very tired and sober at ten o'clock, Mrs. Parker coming to console G. M. in our absence. She is weakly, and ot course moving surely downwards, but in pretty good spirits, and pleased vpith her little household occupations, fidgeting the servants quite unrestrained, and ringing the bell with unbounded liberty. . . . The night before, seeing ' King Lear ' was to be performed, I took A and Mrs. Brookfield and Eugenie. We all found the play a bore. We are the most superstitious people in England. It is almost blasphemy to say a play of Shakespeare is bad, but I can't help it if I think so, and there are other pieces of bookolatry too which make me rebel." The letter finishes with some domestic details, "and so having said nothing," he says, "I come to goodbye, and God bless my dearest M and G. P. I am as well as any mortal man almost. I have dined at home all the week, and am now going to dress in my best for a genteel party at Mr. Charles Buller's." 3 xxxiv VANITY FAIR In July he says of a visit to Harrow, "I am glad you have got Mrs. Huish to comfort your old heart. I saw Wentworth's tomb- stone over the boys' gallery at Harrow the other day, and took a ■walk with him on Tallaton Common while the parson preached the sermon. It is a long time back ; a great gap of life lies between, but it has been followed all through by the love of my dearest old mother. " As soon as the three Punch men who are gone to Paris for their holiday return, I will try to run over to Boulogne and take a house. Towards the end of the month I get so nervous, that I don't speak to anybody scarcely, and once actually got up in the middle of the night and came down and wrote in my night chimee ; but that don't happen often, and I own that I had a nap after dinner that day. The publishers are quite contented ; and now I must get to work." In October he speaks of a visit to Brighton, where he found kind friends, fresh air, a little reno- vation" of health and spirits. " The last numbers of ' Vanity Fair,' you will like best, I think ;" and again he repeats, " It does everything but sell, and appears really immensely to increase my reputation, if not my income." There is also a letter to Mr. Fitzgerald about this time, but it is not dated : — " My dkak old Ykdward,— It is not true what Gurlyle has written to you about my having become a tremenjous lion, etc. too grand to etc. ; but what is true is that a fellow who is writing all day for money gets sick of pens and paper when his work is over, and I go on dawdling and thinking of writing and months pass away. All that about being a Lion is nonsense. I can't eat more dinners than I used last year, and dine at home with my dear little women three times a week : but two or three great people ask me to their houses : and ' Vanity Fair' does everything but pay. 1 am glad if you like it. I don't care a dem if some other people do or don't: and always try to keep that damper against flattery. What does it matter whether this man who is an ass likes your book or not ? "This was wrote, I don't know how long ago ; but my mind has been unequal to the gigantic effort of filling a whole half sheet, and I think another number of 'Vanity Fair' has been written since I 'penned the above lines,' as the novelists say. "I caught a glimpse of the old Frau Mutter riding alone in the Park a few weeks ago, and looking very melancholy. I've not had the courage to call, but I have seen both Ainsworth and Albert Smith. INDRODUCTION xxxv As for Ainsworth, he is more baiiy than ever. He begins to sprout at his under-lip now, and curls all over. "A letter from the young Madrileno of the Calle de las Caritas ar- rived yesterdaj'. He says not a word from Fitz. G is immensely grand and savage now he has a Cromwellian letter against the Irish in this week's Examiner. Last Sunday I saw Jeames Spending walking in the Park with some children and a lady from the country. I am one of the swells there. I have got a cob, which is the admiration of all — strong, handsome, good-natured, fast, and never tired. You shall have a ride behind me if you come to London. Why don't you ? I am going to give a party on the 9th of May. Mrs. Dickens and Miss Hogarth made me give it, and I am in a great fright. I have not got a shilling — isn't it wonderful ? 1 make a great deal of money, and it goes pouring and pouring out in a frightful volubility. . . . This letter has been delayed and delayed, until I fancied it would never go ; nevertheless I am always yours, and like you almost as much as I did twenty years ago." In the summer of 1848 he writes to his mother: " We three have had a long walk in the Park and by the Serpentine after dinner to-day ; a beautiful day and sight. Yesterday I had a letter from a lady, who has just lost a little child, and who ends her letter, ' If anything can console his father, it will be this heavenly weather!' And yet the woman feels acutely the loss of the child. " Last Sunday we were at Eton and Windsor ; it was almost too much pleasure, though, for one day — the weather furiously bright, the landscape beautiful. We dined at an Eton boarding- house for boys. They had excellent fish, meat pudding, and beer, and a glass of wine. The hall in which we dined was Gothic, and hung round with banners, helmets, and quaint devices. The little fellows have the snuggest little studies, and a most gentle- man-like look. I shall go down again and get it up for a novel probably. We were locked into St. George's Chapel at Wind- sor, which caused me to be too late for a dinner to which I was engaged. " I went to see poor dear old Mrs. Buller at Richmond the other day. She is grown quite into the state of old womanhood. Dear old haggard eyes, how beautiful they were even in my time, and how kind and affectionate she has always been to me. . . . Buller was dying downstairs, the lamp of life just flickering out. He has been a good, honest, and kindly man, and Mrs. Buller told xxxvi VANITY FAIR me, with tears in her eyes, what a comfort her sons had been to her. Charles, with his indifferent manner, never forgets his duty. . . . When came home wanting money, Charles gave him all his savings. He never brags about his goodness, but goes laughing through the world, honest, and to be depended on. Next day at the Literary Fund I made, as I am told, an excellent funny speech. It is curious ; I was in such a panic, I did not know what I said, and don't know now. " And this I think is my chronicle of ' Vanity Fair.' I finish (D.V.) next month. How glad I shall be, for I dislike every- body in the book except Dob. and poor Amelia." My father has left his own criticisms of " Vanity Fair." " Of course," he says to his mother, " you are quite right about ' Vanity Fair ' and Amelia being selfish. It is mentioned in this very number. My object is not to make a perfect character, or anything like it. Don't you see how odious all the people are in the book (with the exception of Dobbin), behind all of which there is a dark moral, I hope. " What I want is to make a set of people living without God in the world (only that is a cant phrase), greedy, pompous men, perfectly self-satisfied for the most part, and at ease about their superior virtue. Dobbin and poor Briggs are the only two people with real humility as yet. Amelia's is to come when her scoundrel of a husband is well dead with a ball in his odious bowels, when she has had sufferings, a child and a religion. But she has at present a quality above most people, whizz — LOVE — by which she shall be saved. ... I wasn't going to write in this way when I began. But these thoughts pursue me plentifully. Will they ever come to a good end ? I should doubt God who gave them if I doubted them." By this time all fears for the book were over; anxiety had ceased, and day by day the popularity of " Vanity Fair " in- creased, and success was finally assured. Once more he writes on the 2nd July 1848 : " ' Vanity Fair' is this instant done, and I have worked so hard, that I can hardly hold a pen and say God bless my dearest old mother. I had not time even to listen to the awful cannonading in your town. Thank God ! you are going to leave it. ... I am very pleased to INTRODUCTION xxxvii have done, very melancholy and beat ;" and then he goes on to speak of his hope that he may not feel too much elation from the praise he gets ; and so once more sends his blessing to his mother. Even now after a lifetime, when three generations of readers have succeeded those who first read and praised " Vanity Fair," that moment seems almost present again as one looks at the old letter on its half sheet of paper, and realises what it must have been to the mother who read the letter, and to my father who wrote it. Now and again, in all the troubles and changes of life, I think he must have realised, as only a few can do, the conscious- ness of repose, of well-earned rest after effort, the immense hap- piness of good work achieved, the satisfaction of sympathy, and recognition coming after the years in which he had laboured, alone and in silence as it were, and without any great success. And though it was with the same cheerful humour that he wrote on, whether with success or without it, looking the world hon- estly and trustfully in the face, yet when people came at last with cordial words of appreciation and praise, it made him glad ; and when material difficulties were smoothed away for him and his, he enjoyed it to the full. " Vanity Fair " was dedicated to Mr. Procter, who had been so good to my father when he was in great trouble. There is a passage in a letter to Mrs. Brookfield saying, " Old Dilke of the AthenoBum vows that Procter and his wife between them wrote 'Jane Eyre,' and when I protest ignorance, says. Pooh! you know very well who wrote it." . . . The second edition of " Jane Eyre " came out with a dedication to my father. " I wonder whether it can be true (that the Procters wrote ' Jane Eyre ')," says my father. " It is just possible, and then, what a singular circumstance the crossfire of the two dedica- tions." My brother-in-law has some of the early MS. of "Vanity Fair." It is curious to compare it with that of "Esmond," for instance, which flows on straight and with scarcely an altera- tion. The early chapters of " Vanity Fair " are, on the contrary, altered and rewritten with many erasures and with sentences turned in many different ways. xxxviii VANITY FAIR The following letter tells its own story. It was written to the Duke of Devonshire of those days. It shows that although " Vanity Fair" was not quite finished at the time, the end was well in view. "Kensington, 1st May 1848. "Mt Lord Duke, — Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, whom I saw last week, and whom I informed of your Grace's desire lo have her por- trait, was good enough to permit me to copy a little drawing made of her ' in happier days,' she said with a sigh, by Smee, the Royal Academician. "Mrs. Crawley now lives in a small but very pretty little house in Belgravia ; and is conspicuous for her numerous charities — which al- ways get into the newspapers — and her unaffected piety. Many of the most exalted and spotless of her own sex visit her, and are of opinion that she is a- most injured woman. There is no S07't of truth in the stories regarding Mrs. Crawley and the late Lord Steyne. The licen- tious character of that nobleman alone gave rise to reports from which, alas ! the most spotless life and reputation cannot always de- fend themselves. The present Sir Rawdon Crawley (who succeeded his late uncle Sir Pitt, 1833— Sir Pitt died on the passing of the Re- form Bill) does not see his mother; and his undutifulness is a cause of the deepest grief to that admirable lady. ' If it were not for liigher things,' she says, 'how could she have borne up against the world's calumny, a wicked husband's cruelty and falseness, and tlie thanldess- nesa (sharper tlian a serpent's tooth) of an adored child ? But she has been preserved, merciftilly preserved, to bear all these griefs, and awaits her reward elsewhere.' The italics are Mrs. Crawley's own. "She took the style and title of Lady Crawley for some time after Sir Pitt's deatli in 1833, but it turned out that Colonel Crawley, Gov- ernor of Coventry Island, had died of fever three months before his brother, whereupon Mrs. Rawdon was obliged to lay down the title which slie had prematurely assumed. "The late Jos. Sedley, Esq., of the Bengal Civil Service, left her two lakhs of rupees, on the interest of which the widow lives in the practices of piety and benevolence before mentioned. She has lost what little good looks she once possessed, and wears false hair and teeth (the latter give her rather a ghastly look when she smiles), and —for a pious woman— is the best crinolined lady in Knightsbridge district. " Colonel and Mrs. W. Dobbin live in Hampshire, near Sir R. Crawley : Lady Jane was godmother to their little girl ; and the ladies are exceedingly attached to each other. The Colonel's 'His- tory of the Punjaub' is looked for with much anxietv in some circles. INTRODUCTION xxxix " Captain and Lt. -Colonel G. Sedley-Osborne (he wishes, he says, to be di3tinguished from some other branches of the Osborne family, and is descended by the mother's side from Sir Charles Sedley) is, I need not say, well, for I saw him in a most richly embroidered cambric pink shirt with diamond studs bowing to your Grace at the last party at Devonshire House. He is in Parliament ; but the property left him by his grandfather has, I hear, been a good deal overrated. " He was very sweet upon Miss Crawley, Sir Pitt's daughter, who married her cousin the present Baronet, and a good deal cut up when he was refused. He is not, however, a man to be permanently cast down by sentimental disappointments. His chief cause of annoyance at the present moment is that he is growing bald ; but his whiskers are still -without a grey hair, and the finest in London. "I think these are the latest particulars relating to a number of persons about whom your Grace was good enough to express some interest. I am very glad to be enabled to give this information, and am, " Your Grace's very much obliged servant, (Signed) "W. M. Thackeeat. "P.S. — Lady O'Dowd is at O'Dowd's town arming. She has just sent in a letter of adhesion to the Lord-Lieutenant, which has been acknowledged by his Excellency's private secretary, Mr. Corry Con- nellan. Miss Glorvina O'Dowd is thinking of coming up to the Castle to marry the last-named gentleman. " P.S. 3. — The India Mail just arrived announces the utter ruin of the Union Bank of Calcutta, in which all Mrs. Crawley's money was. Will Fate never cease to persecute that suffering Saint ?" A. I. R. ■'■«£ MESMEl!'^ tt TO B. W. PEOCTEE THIS STORY IS AFFEOTIONATISLY DEDICATED BEFORE THE CURTAIN AS the Manager of the Pe rformance sits before the curtain on the f-\ boards, and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melan- choly comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling : there are buUies pushing about, bucks ogling^ the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (other quacks, plague take them !) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon_ their pockets behind. Yes, this is Vanity Paie : not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the j laces of the actor s and buffoons when they come off from their business ; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvas. | The curtain will be up presently, and he wUr be turning over head and heels, and crying, " How are you V j A man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through an exhibition of this sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other people's hilarity. An episode of humour or kindnesSj touches and amuses him here and there ; — a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall ; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general impression is one more melancholy' than mirthful. When you come home you sit down, in a sober,j contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to your books or your business. I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of xliv BEFORE THE CURTAIN "Vanity Fair.'' Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families : very likely they Tare right. But persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for 1 half-an-hour, and look at~Eiie pertormances. There are scenes of all sorts : some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed ; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business ; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated \^ with the Author's own candles. What more has the Manager of the Performance to sayl — To acknowledge the kindness with which it has been received in all the principal towns of England through which the Show has passed, and where it has been most favourably noticed by the respected conductors of the public Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry. He is proud to think that his Puppet s have given satisfaction to the very best company m this empire. The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be uncommonly flexible in the jojnts, and lively on the wire : the Amelia Doll, thouglTTt has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet been carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist: the Dobbin Figure, though ap- parently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner : the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of this singular performance. r And with this, and a profound bow to his patrons, t he Manag er \ r^res, and the curtain rises. '^ London ; June 28, 1848. VA N I T Y FAIR A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO CHAPTER I CHISWICK MALL WHILE the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. A black servant, who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell, at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognised the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium-pots in the window of that lady's own drawing-room. " It is Mrs. Sedley's coach, sister," said Miss Jemima. " Sambo, the black servant, has just nmg the bell ; and the coacliman has a new red waistcoat." " Have you completed all the necessary preparations incident to Miss Sedley's departure. Miss Jemima ? " asked Miss Pinkerton her- self, that majestic lady ; the Semiramis of Hammersmith, the fiiend of Doctor Johnson, the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone herself. " The girls were up at four this morning, packing her trunks, sister," replied Miss Jemima; "we have made her a bow-pot." " Say a bouquet, sister Jemima, 'tis more genteel." "Well, a booky as big almost as a hay-stack; I have put up two bottles of the gillyflower-water for Mrs. Sedley, and the receipt for making it, in Amelia's box." "And I trust. Miss Jemima, you have made a copy of Miss Sedley's account. This is it, is it ? Very good — ninety-three pounds, 1 A 2 VANITY FAIR four shillings. Be kind enough to address it to John Sedley, Esquire, and to seal this billet which I have written to his lady." In Miss Jemima's eyes an autograph letter of her sister, Miss Pinkerton, was an object of as deep veneration as would have been a letter from a sovereign. Only when her pupils quitted the estabhsh- ment, or when they were about to be married, and once, when poor Miss Birch died of the scarlet fever, was Miss Pinkerton known to write personally to the parents of her pupils ; and it was Jemima's opinion that if anything could console Mrs. Birch for her daughter's loss, it would be that pious and eloquent composition in which Miss Pinkerton announced the event. In the present instance Miss Pinkerton's " billet " was to the following effect : — "The Mall, Chiswick, June is, i8 — . "Madam, — After her six years' residence at the Mail, I have the honour and happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her parents, as a young lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position in their polished and refined circle. Those virtues which characterise the young English gentlewoman, those accomplishments which become her birth and station, will not be found wanting in the amiable Miss Sedley, whose industry and obedience have endeared her to her instructors, and whose delightful sweetness of temper has charmed her affed and her youthful companions. " In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of em- broidery and needlework, she will be found to have realised her friends' fondest wishes. In geography there is stiU much to be desired ; and a careful and undeviating use of the backboard, for four hours daily during the next three years, is recommended as necessary to the acquirement of that dignified deportment and carriage, so requisite for every young lady oi fashion. " In the principles of religion and morality. Miss Sedley wiU be found worthy of an establishment which has been honoured by the pre- sence of The Great Lexicographer, and the patronage of the admirable Mrs. Chapone. In leaving the Mall, Miss Amelia carries with her the hearts of her companions, and the affectionate regards of her mistress, who has the honour to subscribe herself, madam, your most obhged humble servant, Baebaea Pinkeeton. " P.S. — Miss Sharp accompanies Miss Sedley. It is particularly requested that Miss Sharp's stay in Russell Square may not exceed ten days. The family of distinction with whom she is engaged, desire to avail themselves of her services as soon as possible." This letter completed, Miss Pinkerton proceeded to write her own name, and Miss Sedley's, in the fly-leaf of a Johnson's Dictionaiy— A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 3 the interesting work which she invariably presented to her scholars on their departure from the Mall. On the cover was inserted a copy of " Lines addressed to a young lady on quitting Miss Pinkerton's school, at the Mall; by the late revered Doctor Samuel Johnson." In fact, the Lexicographer's name was always on the lips of this majestic woman, and a visit he had paid to her was the cause of her reputation and her fortune. Being commanded by her elder sister to get "the Dictionary" from the cupboard, Miss Jemima had extracted two copies of the book from the receptacle in question. When Miss Pinkerton had finished the inscription in the first, Jemima, with rather a dubious and timid air, handed her the second. "For whom is this. Miss Jemima?" said Miss Pinkerton, with awful coldness. " For Becky Sharp," answered Jemima, trembling very much, and blushing over her withered face and neck, as she turned her back on her sister. " For Becky Sharp : she's going too." " MISS JEMIMA ! " exclaimed Miss Pinkerton, in the largest capitals. " Are you in your senses 1 Replace the Dixonary in the closet, and never venture to take such a hberty in future." " Well, gster, it's only two-and-ninepence, and poor Becky will be miserable if she don't get one." " Send Miss Sedley instantly to me," said Miss Pinkerton. And so venturing not to say another word, poor Jemima trotted off, ex- ceedingly flurried and nervous. Miss Sedley's papa was a merchant in London, and a man of some wealth ; whereas Miss Sharp was an articled pupil, for whom Miss Pinkerton had done, as she thought, quite enough, without con- ferring upon her at parting the high honour of the Dixonary. Although schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more nor less than churchyard epitaphs ; yet, as it sometimes happens that a person departs this life, who is really deserving of all the praises the stone-cutter, carves over his bones ; who is a good Christian, a good parent, chUd, wife, or husband ; who actually does leave a disconso- late family to mourn his loss ; so in academies of the male and female sex it occurs every now and then, that the pupil is fully worthy of the praises bestowed by the disinterested instructor. Now, Miss Amelia Sedley was a young lady of this singular species; and deserved not only all that Miss Pinkerton said in her praise, but had many charming qualities which that pompous old Minerva of a woman could not see, from the differences of rank and age between her pupU and herself. For she could not only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, and dance Kke HiUisberg or Parisot; and embroider beautifully; and spell as well as a Dixonary itself; but she had such a kindly, smiling, 4 VANITY FAIR tender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as won the love of every- body who came near her, from Minerva herself down to the poor girl in the scullery, and the one-eyed tart-woman's daughter, who was permitted to vend her wares once a week to the young ladies in the Mall. She had twelve intimate and bosom friends out of the twenty-four young ladies. Even envious Miss Briggs never spoke ill of her : high and mighty Miss Saltire (Lord Dexter's granddatightef) allowed that her figure was genteel ; and as for Miss Swartz, the rich woolly-haired mulatto from St. Kitt's, on the day Amelia went away she was in such a passion of tears, that they were obliged to send for Dr. Moss, and half tipsify her with sal volatile. Miss Pinkerton's attachment was, as may be supposed, from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified ; but Miss Jemima had ah-eady whimpered several times at the idea of Amelia's depar- tiu-e ; and, but for fear of her sister, would have gone off in down- right hysterics, like the heiress (who paid double) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed to parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and the servants to r superintend. But why speak about her? It is probable that we shall not hear of her again from this moment to the e nd' of time, and that when the great filigree iron gates are once closed on her, she and her .awful sister will never issue therefrom into this little world of histor y. But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no Tiarm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little ** creature ; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion, so guileless and good- ^_natm:ed a person. As she is not_a hOToine, there is no need to describe her person ; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather short than otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal too round and red (Jbr a hCToine ; but her face blushed with rosy health, and her lips with the freshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with the brightest and honestest good-humour, except indeed when they filled with tears, and that was a great deal too often ; for the I silly thing would cry over a dead canary-bird ; or over a mouse, that the cat haply had seized upon |_or over the end of a novel, were it ever so stupid j and as for saying an unkind word to her, were any persons hard-hearted enough to do so — why, so much the worse for them. Even Miss Pinkerton, that austere and god-like woman, ceased scolding her after the first time, and though she no more comprehended sensibihty than she did Algebra, gave all masters and teachers particular orders to treat Miss Sedley with the utmost gentleness, as harsh treatment was injurious to her. Rebecca's farewell. A NOVEL WITHOUT A HEEO 5 So that when the day of departure came, between her two customs of laughing and crying, Miss Sedley was greatly puzzled how to act. She was glad to go home, and yet most woefully sad at leaving school. For three days before, little Laura Martin, the orphan, followed her about like a little dog. She had to make and receive at least fourteen presents — to make fourteen solemn promises of writing every week : " Send my letters under coyer to my grand- papa, the Earl of Dexter," said Miss Saltire (who, by the way, was rather shabby) : " Never mind the postage, but write every day, you dear darling," said the impetuous and woolly-headed, but generous and affectionate Miss Swartz ; and the orphan little Laura Martin (who was just in round-hand), took her friend's hand and said, look- ing up in her face wistftdly, " Amelia, when I write to you I shall call you Mamma." All which details, I have no doubt, Jones, who" reads this book at his Club, will pronounce to be excessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultrar-sentimental. Yes ; I can see Jones at this minute (rather flushed with his joint of mutton and half-pint of wine), taking out his pencil and scoring under the words " foolish, twaddling," &c., and adding to them his own remark of " quite true." Well, he is a lofty man of genius, and admires the great and heroic in life and novels ; and so had better take warning and go elsewherel Well, then. The flowers, and the presents, and the trunks, and bonnet-boxes of Miss Sedley having been arranged by Mr. Sambo in the carriage, together with a very small and weather-beaten old cow's-skin tnmk with Miss Sharp's card neatly naUed upon it, which was delivered by Sambo with a grin, and packed by the coachman with a corresponding sneer — the hour for parting came ; and the grief of that moment was considerably lessened by the admirable discourse which Miss Pinkerton addressed to her pupil. Not that the parting speech caused Amelia to philosophise, or that it armed her in any way with a calmness, the result of argument ; but it was intolerably dull, pompous, and tedious ; and having the fear of her schoolmistress greatly before her eyes, Miss Sedley did not venture, in her presence, to give way to any ebullitions of private grief. A seed-cake and a bottle of wine were produced in the drawing-room, as on the solemn occasions of the visits of parents, and these refreshments being partaken of. Miss Sedley was at liberty to depart. " You'll go in and say good-bye to Miss Pinkerton, Becky ! " said Miss Jemima to a young lady of whom nobody took any notice, and who was coming downstairs with her own bandbox. " I suppose I must," said Miss Sharp calmly, and much to the wonder of Miss Jemima; and the latter having knocked at the door, and receiving permission to come in, Miss Sharp advanced in 6 VANITY FAIK a very unconcerned manner, and said in French, and with a perfect accent, "Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux." Miss Pinkerton did not understand French ; she only directed those who did : but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and Roman-nosed head (on the top of which figured a large and solemn turban), she said, "Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning." As the Hammersmith Semirami s spoke, she waved one hand, both by way STadieu, and to give Miss Sharp an opportunity of shaking one of the fingers of the hand which was left out for that purpose. Miss Sharp only folded her own hands with a very frigid smile and bow, and quite declined to accept the proffered honour; on which Semiramis tossed up her turban more indignantly than ever. In fact, it was a little battle between the young lady and the old one, and the latter was worsted. " Heaven bless you, my child," said she, embracing Amelia, and scowling the while over the girl's shoulder at Miss Sharp. " Come away, Becky," said Miss Jemima, pulling the young woman away in great alarm, and the drawing- room door closed upon them for ever. Then came the struggle and parting below. Words refuse to tell it. All the servants were there in the hall — all the dear friends — all the young ladies — the dancing-master who had just arrived; and there was such a scuffling, and hugging, and kissing, and crying, with the hysterical yoops of Miss Swartz, the parlour-boarder, from her room, as no pen can depict, and as the tender heart would fain pass over. The embracing was over ; they parted — that is. Miss Sedley parted from her friends. Miss Sharp had demurely entered the carriage some minutes before. Nobody cried for leaving her. Sambo of the bandy legs slammed the carriage door on his young weeping mistress. He sprang up behind the carnage. " Stop ! " cried Miss Jemima, rushing to the gate with a parcel. " It's some sandwiches, my dear," said she to Amelia. " You may be hungry, you know ; and Becky, Becky Sharp, here's a book for you that my sister — that is, I — Johnson's Dixonary, you know ; you mustn't leave us without that. Good-bye. Drive on, coach- man. God bless you ! " And the kind creatiu-e retreated into the garden, overcome with emotion. But, lo ! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her pale face out of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden. This almost caused Jemima to faint with terror. "Well, I never," — said she — " What an audacious " — Emotion prevented her from completing either sentence. The carriage rolled away ; the great Fgates were closed ; the bell rang for the dancing lesson. The world •|_is before the two young ladies ; and so, farewell to Chiswick Mall. CHAPTER II IN WHICH MISS SHARP AND MISS SEDLEY PREPARE TO OPEN THE CAMPAIGN WHEN Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned J in the last chapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying overv^ the pavement of the little garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished Miss Jemima, the young lady's countenance, which had before worn an almost livid look of hatred, assiuned a smile that perhaps was scarcely more agreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an easy frame of mind, saying, "So much for the Dixonary ; and, thank God, I'm out of Chiswick." -^ Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss Jemima had been ; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very agitated countenance, " I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr. Eaine." Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course of that evening. Dr. Eaine and his rod were just as awful to him in his heart then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If the Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age of threescore and eight, and had said in awfiil voice, " Boy, take down your pant * * " ? Well, well. Miss Sedley was exceedingly alarmed at this act of insubordination. " How could you do so, Rebecca ? " at last she said, after a pause. "Why, do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to the black-hole ? " said Rebecca, laughing. "No: but " " I hate the whole house," continued Miss Sharp in a fury. " I hope I may never set eyes on it again. I wish it were in the bottom of the Thames, I do ; and if Miss Pinkerton were there, I wouldn't pick her out, that I wouldn't. Oh, how I should like to see her floating in the water yonder, turban and all, with her train streaming after her, and her nose like the beak of a wherry." r 8 VANITY FAIE " Hush ! " cried Miss Sedley. " Why, will the black footman tell tales 1 " cried Miss Eebecca, laughing. " He may go back and tell Miss Pinkerton that I hate her with all my soul ; and I wish he would ; and I wish I had a means of proving it, too. For two years I have only had insults and outrage from her. I have been treated worse than any servant in the kitchen. I have never had a friend or a kind word, except from you. I have been made to tend the little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses, until I grew sick of my mother-tongue. But that talking French to Miss Pinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it? She doesn't know a word of French, and was too proud to confess it. I believe it was that which made her part with me ; and so thank Heaven for French. Vive la France ! Vive VEmpereur ! Vive Bonaparte ! " " Eebecca, Eebecca, for shame ! " cried Miss Sedley ; for this was the greatest blasphemy Eebecca had as yet uttered; and in those days, in England, to say, " Long live Bonaparte ! " was as much as to say, " Long Kve Lucifer ! " " How can you — how dare you have such wicked, revengeful thoughts ? " " Eevenge may be wicked, but it's natural," answered Miss Eebecca. " I'm no angel." And, to say the truth, she certainly l_was not. For it may be remarked in the course of this little conversation (which took place as the coach rolled along lazily by the river side) that though Miss Eebecca Sharp has twice had occasion to thank Heaven, it has been, in the first place, for ridding her of some person whom she hated, and secondly, for enabling her to bring her enemies to some sort of perplexity or confusion, neither of which are very amiable motives for religious gratitude, or such as would be put forward by persons of a kind and placable disposition. Miss Eebecca was not, then, in the least kind or placable. All the world used her ill, said this young misanthropist, and we may be pretty certain that persons whom aU the world treats ill, deserve entirely •the treatment they get. The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and ^_it will in turn look sourly upon you ; laugh at it and with it, and it is a joUy kind companion ; and so let aU young persons take their choice. This is certain, that if the world neglected Miss Sharp, she never was known to have done a good action in behalf of anybody ; nor can it be expected that twenty-fom- young ladies should all be as amiable as the heroine of this work. Miss Sedley (whom we have selected for the very reason that she was the best-natured of all ; otherwise what on earth was to have prevented us from putting up Miss Swartz, or Miss Ci-ump, or Miss Hopkins, as heroine in her A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 9 place f) — it could not be expected that every one should be of the humble and gentle temper of Miss Amelia Sedley; should take every opportunity to vanquish Rebecca's hard-heartcdness and iU- humour ; and, by a thousand kind words and offices, overcome, for once at least, her hostility to her kind. Miss Sharp's father was an artist, and in that quality had given lessons of drawing at Miss Pinkerton's school. He was a clever man ; a pleasant companion ; a careless student ; with a great propensity for running into debt, and a partiality for the tavern. When he was drunk, he used to beat his wife and daughter ; and the next morning, with a headache, he would rail at the world for its neglect of his genius, and abuse, with a good deal of cleverness, and sometimes with perfect reason, the fools, his brother painters. As it was with the utmost difficulty that he could keep himself, and as he owed money for a mile round Soho, where he lived, he thought to better his circumstances by marrying a young woman of the French nation, who was by profession an opera-girl. The humble calling of her female parent Miss Sharp never alluded to, but used to state subsequently that the !Entrechats were a noble family of = Gascony, and took great pride in her descent from them. And curious it is, that as she advanced in life this young lady's ancestors! increased in rank and splendour. , Rebecca's mother had had some education somewhere, and her daughter spoke French with purity and a Parisian accent. It was in those days rather a rare accomplishment, and led to her engage- ment with the orthodox Miss Pinkerton. For her mother being dead, her father, finding himself not likely to recover, after his third attack of delirivm, tremens, wrote a manly and pathetic letter to )) Miss Pinkerton, recommending the orphan child to her protection, and so descended to the grave, after two bailiffs had quarrelled over his corpse. Rebecca was seventeen when she came to Chiswick, and was bound over as an articled pupU ; her duties being to talk French, as we have seen ; and her privileges to live cost free, and, with a few guineas a year, to gather scraps of knowledge from the professors who attended the school. ' She was smaU. and slight in person ; pale, sandy-haired, and with eyes habitually cast down : when they looked up they were very large, odd, and attractive ; so attractive, that the Reverfilifl Mr. Crisp , fresh from Oxford, and curate to the Vicar of Chiswick, the Reverend Mr. Flowprrlpw^' ^ll in Iq v w^t.Ti Miaa pViag'; being shot dead by a glance of her eyes which was fired allthe way across Chiswick Church from the school-pew to the reading-desk. This infatuated young man used sometimes to take tea with Miss Pinker- 10 VANITY FAIR ton, to whom he had been presented by his mamma, and actually proposed something like marriage in an intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple-woman was charged to deliver. Mrs. Crisp was summoned from Buxton, and abruptly carried off her darling boy ; but the idea, even, of such an eagle in the Ohiswick dovecot caused a great flutter in the breast of Miss Pinkerton, who would have sent away Miss Sharp, but that she was bound to her under a forfeit, and who never could thoroughly believe the young lady's protestations that she had never exchanged a single word with Mr. Crisp, except under her own eyes on the two occasions when she had met him at tea. By the side of many tall and bouncing young ladies in the estab- lishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child. But she had the dismal precocity of poverty. Many a dun had she talked to, and turned away from her father's door; many a tradesman had she coaxed and wheedled into good-humour, and into the gi'anting of one meal more. She sate commonly with her father, who was very proud of her wit, and heard the talk of many of his wild companions — often but ill-suited for a girl to hear. But she never had been a girl, she said ; she had been a woman since she was eight years old. Oh, why did Miss Pinkerton let such a dangerous bird into her cage ? The fact is, the old lady believed Rebecca to be the meekest creature in the world, so admirably, on the occasions when her father brought her to Chiswick, used Rebecca to perform the part of the ingdmbe ; and only a year before the arrangement by which Rebecca had been admitted into her house, and when Rebecca was sixteen years old. Miss Pinkerton majestically, and with a little speech, made her a present of a doll — which was, by the way, the confis- cated property of Miss Swindle, discovered surreptitiously nursing it in school-hours. How the father and daughter laughed as they trudged home together after the evening party (it was on the occasion of the speeches, when all the professors were invited), and how Miss Pinkerton would have raged had she seen the caricature of herself L which the little mimic, Rebecca, managed to make out of her doll. Becky used to go through dialogues with it ; it formed the delight of Newman Street, Gerrard Street, and the Artists' quarter : and the" young painters, when they came to take their gin-and-water with their lazy, dissolute, clever, jovial senior, used regularly to ask Rebecca if Miss Pinkerton was at home : she was as well known to them, poor soul ! as Mr. Lawrence or President West. Once Rebecca had the honour to pass a few days at Ohiswick ; after which she brought back Jemima, and erected another doll as Miss Jemmy : for though that honest creature had made and given her jelly and cake enough A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO ii for three children, and a seven-shilling piece at parting, the girl's sense of ridicule was far stronger than her gratitude, and she sacri- ficed Miss Jemmy qvute as pitilessly as her sister. The catastrophe came, and she was brought to the Mall as to her home. The rigid formality of the place suffocated her : the prayers and the meals, the lessons and the walks, which were arranged with a conventual regularity, oppressed her almost beyond endur- ance ; and she looked back to the freedom and the beggary of the old studio in Soho with so much regret, that everybody, herself included, fancied she was consumed with grief for her father. She had a little room in the garret, where the maids heard her walking < and sobbing at night ; but it was^witlLxage, and not with grief. ^ She had not been much of a dissembler, until now her loneliness taught her to feign. She had never mingled in the society of women : her father, reprobate as he was, was a man of talent ; his conversation was a thousand times more agreeable to her than the talk of such of her own sex as she now encountered. The pompous vanity of the old schoolmistress, the foolish good-humour of her sister, the siUy chat and scandal of the elder girls, and the frigid correctness of the governesses equally annoyed her ; and she had no soft maternal heart, this unlucky girl, otherwise the prattle and talk of the younger children, with whose care she was chiefly intrusted, might have soothed and interested her ; but she lived among them two years, and not one was sorry that she went away. The gentle tender-hearted Amelia Sedley was the only person to whom she could attach herself in the least ; and who could help attaching herself to Ameha % The happiness — the superior advantages of the young women round about her, gave Rebecca inexpressible pangs of envy. " What airs that girl gives herself, because she is an Earl's granddaughter," she said of one. " How they cringe and bow to that Creole, because of her hundred thousand pounds ! I am a thousand times cleverer and more charming than that creature, for all her wealth. I am as well bred as the Earl's granddaughter, for all her fine pedigree ; and yet every one passes me by here. And yet, when I was at my father's, did not the men give up their gayest balls and parties in order to pass the evening with me % " She determined at any rate to get free from the prison in which she found herself, and now began to act for herself, and for the first time to make connected plans for the future. She took advantage, therefore, of the means of study the place ofiered her ; and as she was already a musician and a good linguist, she speedily went through the little course of study which was considered necessary for ladies in those days. Her music she prac- 12 VANITY FAIR tised incessantly, and one day, when the girls were out, and she had remained at home, she was overheard to play a piece so well, that Minerva thought wisely, she could spai-e herself the expense of a master for the juniors, and intimated to Miss Sharp that she was to instruct them in music for the future. The girl refused ; and for the fiLrst time, and to the astonishment of the majestic mistress of the school. " I am here to speak French with the children," Kebecca said abruptly, "not to teach them music, and save money for you. Give, me money, and I will teach them." Minerva was obliged to yield, and, of course, disliked her irom that day. "For five-and-thirty years," she said, and with great justice, "I never have seen the individual who has dared in my own house to question my authority. I have nourished a viper in my bosom." "A viper — a fiddlestick," said Miss Sharp to the old lady, almost fainting with astonishment. "You took me becaiise I was useful. There is no question of gratitude between us. I hate this place, and want to leave it. I will do nothing here but what I am obliged to do." It was in vain that the old lady asked her if she was aware she was speaking to Miss Pinkerton 1 Rebecca laughed in her face, with a horrid sarcastic demoniacal laughter, that almost sent the school- mistress into fits. " Give me a sum of money," said the girl, " and get rid of me — or, if you hke better, get me a good pkice as governess in a nobleman's family — you can do so if you please." And in their further disputes she always returned to this point, " Get me a situa- tion — we hate each other, and I am ready to go." Worthy Miss Pinkerton, although she had a Roman nose and a turban, and was as tall as a grenadier, and had been up to this time an irresistible princess, had no will or strength like that of her little apprentice, and in vain did battle against her, and tried to overawe her. Attempting once to scold her in public, Rebecca hit upon the before-mentioned plan of answering her in French, which quite routed the old woman. In order to maintain authority in her school, it became necessary to remove this rebel, this monster, this serpent, this firebrand ; and hearing about this time that Sir-JPitt Crawley's family was in want of a governess, she actually recommended Miss Sharp for the situation, firebrand and serpent as she was. " 1 cannot, certainly," she said, " find fault with Miss Sharp's conduct, except to myself; and must allow that her talents and accomplishments are of a high order. As far as the head goes, at least, she does credit to the educational system pursued at my establishment." And so the schoolmistress reconciled the recommendation to her A NOVEL WITHOUT A HEEO 13 conscience, and the indentures were cancelled, and the apprentice was free. The battle here described in a few lines, of course, lasted for some months. And as Miss Sedley, being now in her seventeenth year, was about to leave school, and had a friendship for Miss Sharp (" 'tis the only point in Amelia's behaviour," said Minerva, " which has not been satisfactory to her mistress "), Miss Sharp was invited by her friend to pass a week with her at home, before she entered upon her duties as governess in a private family. -1 Thus the world began for these two young ladies. For Amelia ' it was quite a new, fresh, brilliant world, with aU the bloom upon it. It was not quite a new one for Eebecca — (indeed, if the truth mustj be told with respect to the Crisp affair, the tart-woman hinted to somebody, who took an affidavit of the fact to somebody else, that there was a great deal more than was made public regarding Mr. Crisp and Miss Sharp, and that his letter was in answer to another letter). But who can tell you the real truth of the matter f At all events, if Rebecca was not beginnings the world, she was beginning it fivera,gain. By the time the young ladies reached Kensington turnpike, Amelia had not forgotten her companions, but had dried her tears, and had blushed very much and been delighted at a young officer oi the Life Guards, who spied her as he was riding by, and said, " A dem fine gal, egad ! " and before the carriage arrived in Russell Square, a great deal of conversation had taken place about the Drawing-room, and whether or not young ladies wore powder as well as hoops when presented, and whether she was to have that honour : to the Lord Mayor's ball she knew she v^as to go. And when at length home was reached, Miss Amelia Sedley skipped out on Sambo's arm, as happy and as handsome a girl as any in the whole big city of London. Both he and coachman agreed on this point, and so did her father and mother, and so did every one of the servants in the house, as they stood bobbing, and curtseying, and smiling, in the hall to wel- come their young mistress. You may be sure that she showed Rebecca over every room of the house, and everything in every one of her drawers ; and her books, and her piano, and her dresses, and all her necldaces, brooches, laces, and gimcracks. She insisted upon Rebecca accepting the white 'cor- nelian and the turquoise rings, and a sweet sprigged muslin, which was too small for her now, though it would fit her friend to a nicety ; and she determined in her heart to ask her mother's permission to present her white Cashmere shawl to her friend. Could she not spare it? and had not her brother Joseph just brought her two from India ? When Rebecca saw the two magnificent Cashmere shawls which 14 VANITY FAIR Joseph Sedley had brought home to his sister, she said, with perfect truth, " that it must be delightful to have a brother," and easily got the pity of the tender-hearted Amelia, for being alone in the world, an orphan without friends or kindred. " Not alone," said Amelia ; " you know, Rebecca, I shaU always be your friend, and love you as a sister— indeed I will." " Ah, but to have parents, as you have— kind, rich, affectionate parents, who give you everything you ask for ; and their love, which is more precious than all ! My poor papa could give me nothing, and I had but two frocks in all the world ! And then, to have a brother, a dear brother ! Oh, how you must love him ! " Amelia laughed. " What ! don't you love him ? you, who say you love everybody ? " " Yes, of course, I do — only " "Only what?" " Only Joseph doesn't seem to care much whether I love him or not. He gave me two iingers to shake when he arrived after ten years' absence ! He is very kind and good, but he scarcely ever speaks to me ; I think he loves his pipe a great deal better than his " * * * but here Amelia checked herself, for why should she speak ill of her brother? "He was very kind to me as a child," she added ; " I was but five years old when he went away." "Isn't he very rich?" said Rebecca. "They say all Indian nabobs are enormously rich." " I believe he has a very large income." " And is your sister-in-law a nice pretty woman ? " " La ! Joseph is not married," said Amelia, laughing again. Perhaps she had mentioned the fact already to Rebecca, but that young lady did not appear to have remembered it ; indeed, vowed and protested that she expected to see a number of Amelia's nephews and nieces. She was quite disappointed that Mr. Sedley was not married ; she was sure AmeKa had said he was, and she doted so on little children. " I think you must have had enough of them at Ohiswick," said Amelia, rather wondering at the sudden tenderness on her Mend's part ; and indeed in later days Miss Sharp would never have com- mitted herself so far as to advance opinions, the untruth of which T would have been so easily detected. But we must remember that she is but nineteen as yet, unused to the art of deceiving, poor jinnocent creature ! and making her own experience in her own person. The meaning of the above series of queries, as translated in the heart of this ingenious yoimg woman, was simply this : — " If ^-Mr. Joseph Sedley is rich and unmarried, why should I not marry him? I have only a fortnight, to be sure, but there is no harm in A NOVEL WITHOUT A HEEO 15 trying." And she determined within herself to make this laudable attempt. She redoubled her caresses to Amelia; she kissed the white comeUan necklace as she put it on ; and vowed she would never, never part with it. When the dinner-bell rang she went downstairs with her arm round her friend's waist, as is the habit of young ladies. She was so agitated at the drawing-room door, that she could hardly find courage to enter. " Feel my heart, how it beats, dear ! " said she to her friend. " No, it doesn't," said Amelia. " Come in, don't be frightened. Papa won't do you any harm." CHAPTER III REBECCA IS IN PRESENCE OF THE ENEMY AVERY stout, puffy man, in buckskins and Hessian boots, with several "immense neckcloths, that rose almost to his nose, ^ with a red striped waistcoat and an apple green coat with | steel buttons almost as large as crown pieces (it was the morning ; costume of a dandy or blood of those days), was reading the paper by the fire when the two girls entered, and bounced off his arm-chair, ' and blushed excessively, and hid his entire face almost in his neck- cloths at this apparition. " It's only your sister, Joseph," said Amelia, laughing and shaking the two fingers which he held out. " I've come home for good, you know; and this is my friend. Miss Sharp, whom you have heard me mention." " No, never, upon my word," said the head under the neckcloth, shaking very much, — " that is, yes, — ^what abominably cold weather, Miss ; " — and herewith he fell to poking the fire with aH his might, although it was in the middle of June. " He's very handsome," whispered Rebecca to Amelia, rath^Joud. " Do you think so t " said the latter. " I'll tell him." " Darling ! not for worlds," said Miss Sharp, starting back as timid as a fawn. She had previously made a respectful virgin-like curtsey to the gentleman, and her modest eyes gazed so perseveringly on the carpet that it was a wonder how she should have found an opportunity to see him. " Thank you for the beautiful shawls, brother,'' said Amelia to the fire poker. " Are they not beautiful, Rebecca? " " heavenly ! " said Miss Sharp, and her eyes went from the carpet straight to the chandelier. Joseph still continued a huge clattering at the poker and tongs, puffing and blowing the while, and turning as red as his yellow face would allow him. "I can't make you such handsome presents, Joseph," continued his sister, "but while I was at school, I have embroidered for you a very beautiful pair of braces." " Good Gad ! Amelia," cried the brother, in serious alarm, " what do you mean ? " and plunging with all his might at the bell-rope, that A NOVEL WITHOUT A HEEO 17 article of furniture came away in his hand, and increased the honest fellow's confusion. " For Heaven's sake see if my buggy's at the door. I canH wait. I must go. D — that groom of mine. I must go." At this minute the father of the family walked in, rattling his seals like a true British merchant. " What's the matter, Emmy 1, " says he. " Joseph wants me to see if his — his buggy is at the door. What is a buggj", papa ? " " It is a one-horse palanquin," said the old gentleman, who was a wag in his way. Joseph at this burst out into a wild fit of laughter ; in which, encountering the eye of Miss Sharp, he stopped all of a sudden, as if he had been shot. " This yoimg lady is your iriend ? Miss Sharp, I am very happy to see you. Have you and Emmy been quarrelling already with Joseph, that he wants to be oflf 1 " " I promised Bonamy of our service, sir," said Joseph, " to dine with him." " fie ! didn't you tell your mother you would dine here '\ " "But in this dress it's impossible." "Look at him, isn't he handsome enough to dine anywhere, Miss Sharp?" On which, of course. Miss Sharp looked at her friend, and they both set off in a fit of laughter, highly agreeable to the old gentleman. "Did you ever see a pair of buckskins like those at Miss Pinkerton's ? " continued he, following up his advantage. " Gracious heavens ! Father," cried Joseph. " There now, I have hurt his feelings. Mrs. Sedley, my dear, I have hurt your son's feelings. I have alluded to his buckskins. Ask Miss Sharp if I haven't 1 Come, Joseph, be friends with Miss Sharp, and let us all go to dinner." "There's a piUau, Joseph, just as you like it, and papa has brought home the best turbot in Billingsgate." "Come, come, sir, walk downstairs with Miss Sharp, and I will foUow with these two young women," said the father, and he took an arm of wife and daughter and walked merrily off. If Miss Eebecca Sharp had determined in her heart upon riiaking the conquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas, recoUect that Miss Sharp had no kind paient to arrange these delicate matters for her, and that if she did not get i8 VANITY FAIR a husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble oflF her hands. What causes young people to " come 0M«," but the noble ambition of matrimony 1 What sends them trooping to watering-places? What keeps them dancmg till five o'clock in the morning through a whole mortal season ? What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas, and to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a guinea a lesson, and to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and to wear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may bring down some " desirable " young man with those killing bows and arrows of theirs 1 What causes respectable parents to take up their carpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their year's income in ball suppers and iced champagne? Is it sheer love of their species, and an unadulterated wish to see yoimg people happy and dancmg? Psha ! they want to marry their daughters ; and, as honest Mrs. Sedley has, in the depths of her kind heart, already arranged a score of little schemes for the settle- ment of her Amelia, so also had our beloved but improtected Eebecca determined to do her very best to secure the husband, who was (' even more necessary for her than for her friend. She had a vivid imagination; she had, besides, read the Arabian Wights and Guthrie's Geoc/raphy ; and it is a fact, that while she was dress- ing for dinner, and after she had asked Amelia whether her brother was very rich, she had built for herself a most magnificent castle in the air, of which she was mistress, with a husband somewhere in the background (she had not seen him as yet, and his figure jwould not therefore be very distinct) ; she had arrayed herself in an infinity of shawls, turbans, and diamond necldaces, and had moimted upon an elephant to the sound of the march in Bluebeard, in order to pay a visit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul. Charming Alnaschar visions ! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fancifiil young creatiure besides Rebecca Sharp has indulged in these delightfiil day-dreams ere now ! Joseph Sedley was twelve years older than his sister Amelia. He was in the East India Company's Civil Service, and his name appeared, at the period of which we write, in the Bengal division of the East India Register, as collector of Boggley Wollah, an 1^ honourable and lucrative post, as everybody knows : in order to know to what higher post Joseph rose in the service, the reader L is referred to the same periodical. Boggley Wollah is situated in a fine, lonely, marshy, jmigly dis- trict, famous for snipe-shooting, and where not unfrequeiitly you may flush a tiger. Ramgunge, where there is a magistrate, is only forty miles off, and there is a cavalry station about thirty miles A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 19 farther ; so Joseph wrote home to his parents, when he took posses- sion of his colleetorship. He had lived for about eight years of his life, quite alone, at this charming place, scarcely seeing a Christian face except twice a year, when the detachment arrived to carry off the revenues which he had collected, to Calcutta. Luckily, at this time he caught a liver complaint, for the cure of which he returned to Europe, and which was the source of great comfort and amusement to him in his native country. He did not live with his family while in London, but had lodgings of his own, like a gay young bachelor. Before he went to India he was too young to partake of the delightful pleasures of a man about town, and plunged into them on his return with considerable assiduity. He drove his horses in the Park; he dined at the fashionable taverns (for the Oriental Club was not as yet invented) ; he frequented the theatres, as the mode was in those days, or made his appearance at the opera, laboriously attired in tights and a cocked hat. On returning to India, and ever after, he used to talk of the pleasure of this period of his existence with great enthusiasm, and give you to understand that he and Brummel were the leading bucks of the day. But he was as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley WoUah. He scarcely knewji single soul in the metro- polis : and were it not for his doctor, aiid the society of his blue- piU, and his liver complaint, he must have died of loneliness. He was lazy, peevish, and a bon-vivant ; the appearance of a lady frightened him beyond measure ; hence it was but seldom that he joined the paternal circle in Russell Square, where there was plenty of gaiety, and where the jokes of his good-natured old father frightened his amxywr-propre. His bulk caused Joseph much anxious thought and alarm ; now and then he would make a desperate attempt to get rid of his superabundant fat ; but his indolence and love of good living speedily got the better of these endeavours at reform, and he found himself again at his three meals a day. He never was well dressed ; but he took the hugest pains to adorn his big person, and passed many hours daily in that occupation. His valet made a fortune out of his wardrobe : his toilet-table was covered with as many pomatums and essences as ever were employed by an old I beauty : he had tried, in order to give himself a waist, every girth, stay, and waistband then invented. Like most fat men, he would have his clothes made too tight, and took care they should be of the most briUiaiit colours and youthful cut. When dressed at length, in the afternoon, he would issue forth to take a drive with nobody in the Park ; and then would come back in order to dress again and go and dine with nobody at the Piazza Coffee-House. He was as vain as a girl ; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one of the 20 VANITY FAIE results of his extreme vanity. If Miss Rebecca can get the better of him, and at her first entrance into life, she is a young person of no ordinary cleverness. The first move showed considerable skill. When she called Sedley a very handsome man, she knew that Amelia would tell her mother, who would probably tell Joseph, or who, at any rate, would be pleased by the compliment paid to her son. AH mothers are. If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was. Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley would overhear the compliment — Rebecca spoke loud enough — and he did hear, and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the praise thrilled through every fibre of hiS big body, and made it tingle with pleasure. Then, however, came a recoil. " Is the girl making fun of me ? " he thought, and straight- way he bounced towards the bell, and was for retreating, as we have seen, when his father's jokes and his mother's entreaties caused him to pause and stay where he was. He conducted the young lady down to dinner in a dubious and agitated frame of mind. " Does she really think I am handsome?" thought he, "or is she only making game of me ? " We have talked of Joseph Sedley being as vain as a girl. Heaven help us ! the girls have only to turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex, " She is as vain as a man," and they will have perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world. Downstairs, then, they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca very modest, and holding her green eyes downwards. She was dressed in white, with bare shoulders as white as snow — the picture of youth, unprotected innocence, and humble virgin sim- plicity. "I must be very quiet," thought Rebecca, "and very much interested about India." Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of this dish was oifered to Rebecca. " What is it 1 " said she, turn- ing an appealing look to Mr. Joseph. " Capital," said he. His mouth was fiill of it ; his face quite red with the delightfiil exercise of gobbling. " Mother, it's as good as my own curries in India." "Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish," said Miss Rebecca. " I am sure everything must be good that comes fiwm there." "Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear," said Mr. Sedley, laughing. A NOVEL WITHOUT A HEKO 21 Rebecca had never tasted the dish before. " Do you find it as good as everything else from India ? " said Mr. Sedley. " Oh, excellent ! " said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the cayenne pepper. " Try a chili with it. Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really interested. " A chili," said Rebecca, gasping. " Oh yes ! " She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. " How fresh and green they look," she said,. and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry ; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. " Water, for Heaven's sake, water ! " she cried. Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practi- cal jokes). " They are real Indian, I assure you," said he. " Sambo, give Miss Sharp some water." The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured air — " I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir ? " Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good- humoured girl. Joseph simply said, "Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We generally use goats' milk ; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got to prefer it ! " " You won't like everything from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old gentleman ; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old fellow said to his son, " Have a care, Joe ; that girl is ,/ setting her cap at you." " Pooh ! nonsense ! " said Joe, highly flattered. " I recollect, sir, there was a girl at Dumdum, a daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and afterwards married to Lance, the surgeon, who made a dead set at me in the year '4 — at me and MuUigatawney, whom I mentioned to you before dinner — a devilish good fellow MuUi- gatawney — he's a magistrate at Budgebudge, and sure to be in council in five years. Well, sir, the Artillery gave a ball, and Quintin, of the King's 14th, said to me, 'Sedley,' said he, 'I bet you thirteen to ten that Sophy Cutler hooks either you or MuUi- gatawney before the rains.' 'Done,' says I; and egad, sir — this claret's very good. Adamson's or CarboneU's ? " . . . A slight snore was the only reply : the honest stock-broker was 22 VANITY FAIR asleep, and so the rest of Joseph's story was lost for that day. But he was always exceedingly communicative in a man's party, and has told this deUghtfiil tale many scores of times to his apothecary, Dr. Gollop, when he came to inqajire about the liver and the blue-pill. Being an invalid, Joseph Sedley contented himself with a bottle of claret besides his Madeira at dinner, and he managed a couple of plates full of strawberries and cream, and twenty-four little rout cakes, that were lying neglected in a plate near him, and certainly (for novelists have the privilege of knowing everything), he thought a great deal about the girl upstairs. " A nice, gay, merry young creature," thought he to himself. " How she looked at me when I picked up her handkerchief at dinner ! She dropped it twice. Who's that singing in the drawing-room 1 'Gad ! shall I go up and see ? " But his modesty came rushing upon him with uncontrollable force. His father was asleep : his hat was in the hall : there was a hackney- coach stand hard by in Southampton Eow. " I'll go and see the Forty Thieves" said he, " and Miss Decamp's Dance ; " and he slipped away gently on the pointed toes of his boots, and disappeared, without waking his worthy parent. "There goes Joseph," said AmeUa, who was looking from the open windows of the drawing-room, while Rebecca was singing at the piano. "Miss Sharp has frightened him away," said Mrs. Sedley. " Poor Joe, why wUl he be so shy % " CHAPTER IV THE GREEN SILK 'PURSE POOR Joe's panic lasted for two or three days ; during 'which he did not visit the house, nor during that period did Miss Rebecca ever mention his name. She was all respectful gratitude to Mrs. Sedley ; delighted beyond measure at the Bazaars ; and in a whirl of wonder at the theatre, whither the good-natured lady took her. One day Amelia had a headache, and could not go upon some party of pleasure to which the two young people were invited : nothing could induce her friend to go without her. " What ! you who have shown the poor orphan what happiness and love are for the first time in her life — quit you ? never ! " and the green eyes looked up to heaven and filled with tears ; and Mrs. Sedley could not but own that her daughter's friend had a charming kind heart of her own. As for Mr. Sedley's jokes, Rebecca laughed at them with a cor- diality and perseverance which not a little pleased and softened that good-natured gentleman. Nor was it with the chiefs of the family alone that Miss Sharp found favour. She interested Mrs. Blenkinsop by evincing the deepest sympathy in the raspberry-jam preserving, which operation was then going on in the Housekeeper's room ; she persisted in calling Sambo " Sir," and " Mr. Sambo," to the delight of that attendant ; and she apologised to the lady's maid for giving her trouble in ventming to ring the bell, with such sweetness and humility, that the Servants' Hall was almost as charmed with her as the Drawing-room. Once, in looking over some drawings which Amelia had sent from school, Rebecca suddenly came upon one which caused her to burst into tears and leave the room. It was on the day when Joe Sedley made his second appearance. Amelia hastened after her friend to know the cause of this dis- play of feeling, and the good-natured girl came back without her companion, rather affected too. " You know, her father was our drawing-master. Mamma, at Chiswick, and used to do all the best parts of our drawings." " My love ! I'm sure I always heard Miss Pinkerton say that he did not touch them — he only mounted them." 24 VANITY FAIR "It was called mounting, Mamma. Eebecca remembers the drawing, and her father working at it, and the thought of it came upon her rather suddenly — and so, you know, she " " The poor child is all heart," said Mrs. Sedley. " I wish she could stay with us another week," said Amelia. " She's devilish like Miss Cutler that I used to meet at Dumdum, only fairer. She's married now to Lance, the Artillery Surgeon. Do you know, Ma'am, that once Quintin, of the 14th, bet me " "0 Joseph, we know that story," said Amelia, laughing. " Never mind about telling that ; but persuade Mamma to write to Sir Something Crawley for leave of absence for poor dear Rebecca : — here she comes, her eyes red with weeping." " I'm better, now," said the girl, with the sweetest smile possible, taking good-natured Mrs. Sedley's extended hand and kissing it respectftdly. " How land you all are to me ! All," she added, with a laugh, "except you, Mr. Joseph." " Me ! " said Joseph, meditating an instant departure. " Gracious Heavens ! Good Gad ! Miss Sharp ! " " Yes ; how could you be so cruel as to make me eat that horrid pepper-dish at dinner, the first day I ever saw you 1 You are not so good to me as dear Anielia." " He doesn't know you so well," cried Amelia. " I defy anybody not to be good to you, my dear,'' said her mother. " The curry was capital ; indeed it was," said Joe, quite gravely. " Perhaps there was not enough citron juice in it ; — no, there was not." "And the chilis r' " By Jove, how they made you cry out ! " said Joe, caught by the ridicule of the circumstance, and exploding in a fit of laughter which ended quite suddenly, as usual. " I shall take care how I let you choose for me another time," said Rebecca, as they went down again to dinner. " I didn't think men were fond of putting poor harmless girls to pain." " By Gad, Miss Rebecca, I wouldn't hurt you for the world." " No," said she, " I know you wouldn't ; " and then she gave him ever so gentle a pressure with her Uttle hand, and drew it back quite fiightened, and looked first for one instant in his face, and then down at the carpet-rods ; and I am not prepared to say that Joe's heart did not thump at this little involuntary, timid, gentle motion of regard on the part of the simple girl. It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indis- putable correctness and gentility will condemn the action as im- modest ; but, you see, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms : if a dear girl has no dear A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 25 Mamma to settle matters with the young man, she must do it for herself. And oh, what a mercy it is that these women do not exer- cise their powers oftener ! We can't resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once : old or ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may maiTy whom she likes. Only let us be thank- ful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did. " Egad ! " thought Joseph, entering the dining-room, " I exactly begin to feel as I did at Dumdum with Miss Cutler." Many sweet little appeals, half tender, half jocular, did Miss Sharp make to him about the dishes at dinner ; for by this time she was on a footing of considerable familiarity with the family, and as for the girls, they loved each other like sisters. Young unmarried girls always do, if they are in a house together for ten days. As if bent upon advancing Rebecca's plans in every way — what must Amelia do, but remind her brother of a promise made last Easter holidays — " When I was a girl at school," said she, laughing — a promise that he, Joseph, would take her to Vauxhall. " Now," she said, " that Rebecca is with us, will be the very time." " Oh, delightful ! " said Rebecca, going to clap her hands ; but she recollected herself, and paused, like a modest creature, as she was. " To-night is not the night," said Joe. " Well, to-morrow." " To-morrow your Papa and I dine out," said Mrs. Sedley. " You don't suppose that I'm going, Mrs. Sed. 1 " said her husband, "and that a woman of your years and size is to catch cold, in such an abominable damp place 1 " "The children must have some one with them,'' cried Mrs. Sedley. " Let Joe go," said his father, laughing. " He's biff enough.'' At which speech even Mr. Sambo at the sideboard burst out laugh- ing, and poor fat Joe felt inclined to become a parricide almost. " Undo his stays ! " continued the pitiless old gentleman. " Fling some water in his face. Miss Sharp, or carry him upstairs : the dear creature's fainting. Poor victim ! carry him up ; he's as light as a feather." " If I stand this, sir, I'm d ! " roared Joseph. " Order Mr. Jos's elephant. Sambo ! " cried the father. " Send to Exeter 'Change, Sambo;" but seeing Jos ready almost to cry with vexation, the old joker stopped his laughter, and said, holding out his hand to his son, " It's all fair on the Stock Exchange, Jos,— and. Sambo, never mind the elephant, but give me and Mr. Jos a 26 VANITY FAIR glass of champagne. Boney himself hasn't got such in his cellar, my boy ! " A goblet of champagne restored Joseph's equanimity, and before the bottle was emptied, of which as an invalid he took two-thirds, he had agreed to take the young ladies to Vauxhall. " The girls must have a gentleman apiece," said the old gentle- man. " Jos will be sme to leave Emmy in the crowd, he will be so taken up with Miss Sharp here. Send to 96, and ask George Osborne if he'll come." At this, I don't know in the least for what reason, Mrs. Sedley looked at her husband and laughed. Mr. Sedley's eyes twinkled in a manner indescribably roguish, and he looked at Amelia ; and Amelia, hanging down her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen know how to blush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her life — at least not since she was eight years old, and when she was caught stealing jam out of a cupboard' by her god- mother. "Amelia had better write a note," said her father; "and let George Osborne see what a beautiful hand-writing we have brought back from Miss Pinkerton's. Do you remember when you wrote to him to come on Twelfth-night, Emmy, and spelt twelfth without the it" " That was years ago," said Amelia. " It seems like yesterday, don't it, John ? " said Mrs. Sedley to her husband ; and that night in a conversation which took place in a front room in the second-floor, in a sort of tent, hung roimd with chintz of a rich and fantastic India pattern, and double with calico of a tender rose-colour ; in the interior of which species of marquee was a feather-bed, on which were two pillows, on which were two round red faces, one in a laced nightcap, and one in a simple cotton one, ending in a tassel : — in a ewrtain lecture, I say, Mrs. Sedley took her husband to task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe. " It was quite wicked of you, Mr. Sedley," said she, " to torment the poor boy so." " My dear," said the cotton-tassel in defence of his conduct, " Jos is a great deal vainer than you ever were in your life, and that's say- ing a good deal. Though, some thirty years ago, in the year seventeen hundred and eighty — what was it ? — perhaps you had a right to be vain. — I don't say no. But I've no patience with Jos and his dandi- fied modesty. It is out-Josephing Joseph, my dear, and all the while the boy is only thinking of himself, and what a fine fellow he is. I doubt. Ma'am, we shall have some trouble with him yet. Here is Emmy's little friend making love to him as hard as she can ; that's quite clear ; and if she does not catch him some other will. That man is destined to be a prey to woman, as I am to go on 'Change every day. It's a mercy he did not bri us over a black daughter- A NOVEL WITHOUT A HEKO 27 in-law, my dear. But, mark my words, the first woman who fishes for him, hooks him." " She shall go oif to-morrow, the little artful creatm'e," said Mrs. Sedley, with great energy. "Why not she as well as another, Mrs. Sedley? The girl's a white face at any rate. I don't care who marries him. Let Joe please himself." And presently the voices of the two speakers were hushed, or were replaced by the gentle but unromantic music of the nose ; and save when the church bells tolled the hour and the watchman called it, all was sUent at the house of John Sedley, Esquire, of Russell Square, and the Stock Exchange. When morning came, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley no longer thought of executing her threats with regard to Miss Sharp ; for though nothing is more keen, nor more common, nor more justifiable, than maternal jealousy, yet she could not bring herself to suppose that the little, humble, grateful, gentle governess would dare to look up to such a magnificent personage as the Collector of Boggley WoUah. The petition, too, for an extension of the young lady's leave of absence had already been despatched, and it would be difficult to find a pretext for abruptly dismissing her. And as if all things conspired in favour of the gentle Eebecca, the very elements (although she was not inclined at first to acknow- ledge their action in her behalf) interposed to aid her. For on the evening appointed for the Vauxhall party, George Osborne having come to dinner, and the elders of the house having departed, accord- ing to invitation, to dine with Alderman Balls, at Highbury Bam, there came on such a thunder-storm as only happens on Vauxhall nights, and as obliged the young people, perforce, to remain at home. Mr. Osborne did not seem in the least disappointed at this occur- rence. He and Joseph Sedley drank a fitting quantity of port- wine, tete-a-tete, in the dining-room, — during the drinking of which Sedley told a number of his best Indian stories ; for he was extremely talka- tive in man's society ; — and afterwards Miss Amelia Sedley did the honours of the drawing-room ; and these four young persons passed such a comfortable evening together, that they declared they were rather glad of the thunder-storm than otherwise, which had caused them to put off their visit to Vauxhall. Osborne was Sedley's godson, and had been one of the family any time these three-and-twenty years. At six weeks old, he had received from John Sedley a present of a silver cup ; at six months old, a coral with gdd whistle and bells ; from his youth, upwards, he was " tipped " regularly by the old gentleman at Christmas : and on going back to school, he remembered perfectly well being thrashed 28 VANITY FAIK by Joseph Sedley, when the latter was a big, swaggering hobbadyhoy, and George an impudent urchin of ten yeai-s old. In a word, George was as familiar with the family as such daily acts of kindness and intercourse could make him. " Do you remember, Sedley, what a fury you were in, when I cut off the tassels of your Hessian boots, and how Miss — hem ! — how Amelia rescued me from a beating, by fallmg down on her knees and crying out to her brother Jos, not to beat little George ? " Jos remembered this remarkable circumstance perfectly well, but vowed that he had totally forgotten it. " Well, do you remember coming down in a gig to Dr. Swishtail's to see me, before you went to India, and giving me half a guinea and a pat on the head ? I always had an idea that you were at least seven feet high, and was quite astonished at your return from India to find you no taller than myself" " How good of Mr. Sedley to go to your school and give you the money ! " exclaimed Rebecca, in accents of extreme delight. " Yes, and after I had cut the tassels of his boots too. Boys never forget those tips at school, nor the givers." " I delight in Hessian boots," said Eebecca. Jos Sedley, who admired his own legs prodigiously, and always wore this ornamental chaussure, was extremely pleased at this remark, though he drew his legs under his chair as it was made. " Miss Sharp ! " said George Osborne, " you who are so clever an artist, you must make a grand historical pictm-e of the scene of the boots. Sedley shall be represented in buckskins, and holding one of the injm-ed boots in one hand ; by the other he shall have hold of my shirt-frill. Amelia shall be kneeling near him, with her little hands up ; and the picture shall have a grand allegorical title, as the frontispieces have in the Medulla and the spelling-book." " I shan't have time to do it here," said Rebecca. " I'll do it when — when I'm gone." And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad and piteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sjiry they would he to part with her. " Oh that you could stay longer, dear Eebecca," said Amelia. " Why 1, " answered the other, still more sadly. " That I may be only the more unhap — unwiOing to lose you 1 " And she turned away her head. Amelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears which, we have said, was one of the defects of this siEy little thing. George Osborne looked at the two young women with a touched curiosity ; and Joseph Sedley heaved somethmg very hke a sigh out of his big chest, as he cast his eyes' down towards his fiivomite Hessian boots. " Let us have some music, Miss Sedley — Amelia," said George, A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 29 who felt at that moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to seize the above-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her in the face of the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and if I should say that they fell in love with each other at that single instant of time, I should perhaps be telling an untruth, for the fact is, that these two young people had been bred up by their parents for this very purpose, and their banns had, as it were, been read in their respective famiUes any time these ten years. They went off to the piano, which was situated, as pianos usually are, in the back drawing-room ; and as it was rather dark, Miss Amelia, in the most unaflfected way in the world, put her hand into Mr. Osborne's, who, of course, could see the way among the chairs and ottomans a great deal better than she could. But this arrangement left Mr. Joseph Sedley tSte-Ortete with Eebecca, at the drawing-room table, where the latter was occupied in knitting a green silk purse. " There is no need to ask family secrets," said Miss Sharp. " Those two have told theirs." " As soon as he gets his company," said Joseph, " I believe the affair is settled. George Osborne is a capital fellow." " And your sister the dearest creature in the world," said Rebecca. " Happy the man who wins her ! " With this. Miss Sharp gave a great sigh. When two immarried persons get together, and talk upon such delicate subjects as the present, a great deal of confidence ani intimacy is presently established between them. There is no need! of giving a special report of the conversation which now took place between Mr. Sedley and the yoxmg lady ; for the conversation, as may be judged from the foregoing specimen, was not especially witty or eloquent ; it seldom is in private societies, or anywhere except in very high-flown and ingenious novels. As there was music in th^ next room, the talk was carried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though, for the matter of that, the couple in the next apart- ment would not have been disturbed had the talking been ever so loud, so occupied were they with their own pursuits. Almost for the first time in his life, Mr. Sedley found himself talking, without the least timidity or hesitation, to a person of the other sex. Miss Rebecca asked him a great number of questions about India, which gave him an opportunity of narrating many interesting anecdotes about that country and himself He described the balls at Government House, and the manner in which they kept themselves cool in the hot weather, with punkahs, tatties, and other contrivances; and he was very witty regarding the number of Scotchmen whom Lord Minto, the Governor-General, patronised ; and then he described a tiger-hunt ; and the manner in which the 30 VANITY FAIE mahout of his elephant had been pulled oflf his seat by one of the infuriated animals. How delighted Miss Kebecca was at the Govern- ment balls, and how she laughed at the stories of the Scotch aides- de-mmp, and called Mr. Sedley a sad wicked satirical creature ; and how frightened she was at the story of the elephant ! " For your mother's sake, dear Mr. Sedley," she said, " for the sake of all your friends, promise never to go on one of those horrid expeditions." "Pooh, pooh. Miss Sharp," said he, pulling up his shirt-collais; " the danger makes the sport only the pleasanter." He had never been but once at a tiger-hunt, when the accident in question occiurred, and when he was half killed — not by the tiger, but by the fright. And as he talked on, he grew quite bold, and actually had the audar city to ask Miss Rebecca for whom she was knitting the green silk purse ? He was quite surprised and delighted at his own graceful familiar manner. " For any one who wants a purse," replied Miss Rebecca, looking at him in the most gentle winning way. Sedley was going to make one of the most eloquent speeches possible, and had begun — " Miss Sharp, how " when some song which was performed in the other room came to an end, and caused him to hear his own voice so dis- tinctly that he stopped, blushed, and blew his nose in great agitation. " Did you ever hear anything like your brother's eloquence 1 " whispered Mr. Osborne to Aiaelia. ." Why, your friend has worked miracles." " The more the better," said Miss Amelia ; who, like almost all women who are worth a pin, was a match-maker in her heart, and would have been delighted that Joseph should carry back a wife to India. She had, too, in the course of this few days' constant inter- course, warmed into a most tender friendship for Rebecca, and dis- covered a million of virtues and amiable qualities in her which she had not perceived when they were at Chiswick together. For the affection of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack's bean-stalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night. It is no blame to them that after marriage this Sehnsucht nach der Liebe subsides. It is what sentimentalists, who deal in very big words, call a yearning after the Ideal, and simply means that women are commonly not satisfied until they have husbands and children on whom they may centre affections, which are spent elsewhere, as it were, in small change. Having expended her little store of songs, or having stayed long enough in the back drawing-room, it now appeared proper to Miss Amelia to ask her friend to sing. " You would not have listened to me," she said to Mr. Osborne (though she knew she was telling a fib), " had you heard Rebecca fiist." "I give Miss Sharp warning, though," said Osborne, "that. A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 31 right or wrong, I consider Miss Amelia Sedley the first singer in the world." " You shall hear," said Amelia ; and Joseph Sedley was actually polite enough to caxry the candles to the piano. Osborne hinted that he should like quite as well to sit in the dark ; but Miss Sedley, laughing, declined to bear him company any farther, and the two accordingly followed Mr. Joseph. Rebecca sang fax better than her friend (though of course Osborne was free to keep his opinion), and exerted herself to the utmost, and, indeed, to the wonder of Amelia, who had never known her perform so well. She sang a French song, which Joseph did not rmderstand in the least, and which George con- fessed he did not understand, and then a number of those simple ballads which were the fashion forty years ago, and in which British tars, our King, poor Susan, blue-eyed Mary, and the like, were the principal themes. They are not, it is said, very brilliant, in a musi- cal point of view, but contain numberless good-natured, simple appeals to the affections, which people understood better than the milk-and- water lagrime, sospiri, and felicitcb of the eternal Donizettian music with which we are favoiffed nowadays. Conversation of a sentimental sort, befitting the subject, was carried on between the songs, to which Sambo, after he had brought the tea, the delighted cook, and even Mrs. Blenkinsop, the house- keeper, condescended to listen on the landing-place. Among these ditties v/as one, the last of the concert, and to the following efiect : — Ah ! bleak and barren was the moor, Ah ! loud and piercing was the storm, The cottage roof was shelter'd sure, The cottage hearth was bright and warm — An orphan boy the lattice pass'd, And, as he mark'd its cheerful glow. Felt doubly keen the midnight blast, And doubly cold the fallen snow. They mark'd him as he onward prest. With fainting heart and weary limb : Kind voices bade him turn and rest, And gentle faces welcomed him. The dawn is up — the guest is gone, The cottage hearth is blazing still ; Heaven pity all poor wanderers lone ! Hark to the wind upon the hill ! It was the sentiment of the before-mentioned words, "When I'm gone," over again. As she came to the last words. Miss Sharp's "deep-toned voice faltered." Everybody felt the allusion to her 32 VANITY FAIE departure, and to her ha]^ess^j)han state. Joseph Sedley, who was fond of music, and soft-hearted, was In'a state of ravishment during the performanae of the song, and profoundly touched at its conclu- r sion. If he had had the coiusige ; if George and Miss Sedley had remained, according to the former's proposal, in the farther room, Joseph Sedley's bachelorhood would have been at an end, and this I work would never have been written. But at the close of the ditty, Kebecca quitted the piano, and giving her hand to Amelia, walked away into the front drawing-room twilight; and, at this moment, Mr. Sambo made his appearance with a tray, containing sandwiches, jellies, and some glittering glasses and decanters, on which Joseph Sedley's attention was immediately fixed. When the parents of the house of Sedley returned from their dinner-party, they found the young people so busy in talking, that they had not heard the arrival of the carriage, and Mr. Joseph was in the act of saying, " My dear Miss Sharp, one little teaspoonful of jelly to recruit you after your immense — your — your delightful exertions." " Bravo, Jos ! " said Mr. Sedley ; on hearing the bantering of which well-known voice, Jos instantly relapsed into an alarmed silence, and quickly took his depaxtiu-e. He did not lie awake all night thinking whether or. not he was in love with Miss Sharp ; the passion of love never interfered with the appetite or the slumber of Mr. Joseph Sedley; but he thought to himself how delightful it would be to hear such songs as those after Ciitcherry — what a dis- tingvAe girl she was— how she could speak French better than the Governor-General's lady herself — and what a sensation she would make at the Calcutta balls. " It's evident the poor devil's in love with me," thought he. " She is just as rich as most of the girls who come out to India. I might go farther, and fare worse, egad ! " And in these meditations he fell asleep. How Miss Sharp lay awake, thinking, will he come or not to- morrow \ need not be told here. To-morrow came, and, as sure as fate, Mr. Joseph Sedley made his appearance before luncheon. He had never been known before to confer such an honour on Russell Square. George Osborne was somehow there already (sadly "putting out" Amelia, who was writing to her twelve dearest friends at Chiswick Mall), and Rebecca was employed upon her yesterday's work. As Joe's buggy drove up, and while, after his usual thundering knock and pompous bustle at the door, the ex-Collector of Boggley WoUah laboured upstairs to the drawing- room, knowing glances were telegraphed between Osborne and Miss Sedley, and the pair, smiling archly, looked at Rebecca, who actually blushed as she bent her fair ringlets over her knitting. How her heart beat as Joseph appeared, — Joseph, puffing from MR. JOSEPH ENTANGLED. A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 33 the staircase in shining creaking boots, — Joseph, in a new waist- coat, red with heat and nervousness, and blushing behind his wadded neckcloth. It was a nervous moment for all ; and as for Amelia^ I think she was more ftightened than even the people most concerned. Sambo, who flung open the door and announced Mr. Joseph, followed grinning, in the Collector's rear, and bearing two handsome nosegays of flowers, which the monster had actually had the gallantry to purchase in Covent Garden Market that morning — ^they were not as big as the hay-stacks which ladies carry about with them nowa- days, in cones of filigree paper ; but the young women were delighted with the gift, as Joseph presented one to each, with an exceedingly solemn bow. " Bravo, Jos ! " cried Osborne. "Thank you, dear Joseph," said Amelia, quite ready to kiss her brother, if he were so minded. (And I think for a kiss from such a dear creature as Amelia, I would purchase all Mr. Lee's conservatories out of hand.) " O heavenly, heavenly flowers ! " exclaimed Miss Sharp, and smelt them delicately, and held them to her bosom, and cast up her eyes to the ceUing, in an ecstasy of admiration. Perhaps she just looked first into the bouquet, to see whether there was a billet- dovAc hidden among the flowers ; but there was no letter. "Do they talk the language of flowers at Boggley WoUah, Sedley 1 " asked Osborne, laughing. " Pooh, nonsense ! " replied the sentimental youth. " Bought 'em at Nathan's ; very glad you like 'em ; and eh, Amelia, my dear, I bought a pine-apple at the same time, which I gave to Siambo. Let's have it for tiflBn; very cool and nice this hot weather." Eebecca said she had never tasted. a pine, and longed beyond everything to taste one. So the conversation went on. I don't know on what pretext Osborne left the room, or why, presently, Amelia went away, perhaps to superintend the slicing of the pine-apple ; but Jos was left alone with Eebecca, who had resumed her work, and the green silk and the shining needles were quivering rapidly under her white slender fingers. "What a beautiful, hyoo-ootiful song that was you sang last night, dear Miss Sharp," said the Collector. " It made me cry almost ; 'pon my honour it did." " Because you have a kind heart, Mr. Joseph ; aU the Sedleys hfive, I think." " It kept me awake last night, and I was trying to hum it this morning, in bed; I was, upon my honour. GoUop, my doctor, 1 c 34 VANITY FAIR came in at eleven (for I'm a sad invalid, you know, and see Gollop every day), and, 'gad ! there I was, singing away liEfe — a robin." " you droll creature ! Do let me hear you sing it." "Me? No, you, Miss Sharp ; my dear Miss Sharp, do sing it." "Not now, Mr. Sedley," said Rebecca, with a sigh. "My spirits are not equal to it ; besides, I must finish the purse. Will you help me, Mr. Sedley 1 " And before he had time to ask how, Mr. Joseph Sedley, of the East India Company's service, was actually seated tete-dhtSte with a young lady, looking at her with a most killing expression; his arms stretched out before her in an imploring attitude, and his hands bound in a web of green silk, which she was unwinding. In this romantic position Osborne and Amelia foimd the interest- ing pair, when they entered to announce that tiffin was ready. The skein of silk was just wound round, the card ; but Mr. Jos had'never spoken. " I am sure he will to-night, dear," Amelia said, as she pressed Rebecca's hand ; and Sedley, too, had communed with his soul, and said to himself, " 'Gad, I'U pop the question at Vairxhall." CHAPTER V DOBBIN OF OURS CUFF'S fight with Dobbin, and the unexpected issue of that contest, will long be remembered by every man who was educated at Dr. Swishtail's famous school. The latter youth (who tised to be called Heigh ho Dobbin, Gee-h o Dobbin , and by many other names indicative of puerile contempt) was the quietest, the clumsiest, and, as it seemed, the dullest of aU Dr. Swishtail's young gentlemen. His parent was a grocer in the City : and it was bruited abroad that he was admitted into Dr. Swishtail's academy upon what are called " mutual principles " — that is to say, the expenses of his • board and schooling were defrayed by his father in goods, not money ; and he stood there — almost at the Ijottom of the school — in his scraggy corduroys and jacket, through the seams of which his great big bones were bursting— Gis the representative of so many pounds of tea, candles, sugar, mottled-soap, plums\(of which a very mild pro- portion was supplied for the puddings of the establishment), and other commodities. A dreadful day it was for young Dobbin when one of the youngsters of the school, having run into the town upon a poaching excursion for hardbake and polonies, espied the cart of Dobbin & Eudge, Grocers and Oilmen, Thames Street, London, at the Doctor's door, discharging a cargo of the wares in which the firm dealt. --' Young Dobbin had no peace after that. The jokes were frightful, and merciless against him. "Hullo, Dobbin," one wag would say, " here's good news in the paper. Sugar is ris', my boy." Another would set a sum — " If a pound of mutton-candles cost sevenpence- halipenny, how much must Dobbin cost 1 " and a roar would follow from all the circle of young knaves, usher and all, who rightly con- sidered that the selling of goods by retail is a shameful and infamous practice, meriting the contempt and scorn of all real gentlemen. " Your father's only a merchant, Osborne," Dobbin said in private to the httle boy who had brought down the storm upon him. At which the latter reph'ed haughtily, " My father's a gentleman, and keeps his carriage ; " and Mr. William Dobbin retreated to a remote outhouse in the playground, where he passed a half-holiday in the 36 VANITY FAIE bitterest sadness and woe. Who amongst us is there that does not recollect similar hours of bitter, bitter childish grief? Who feels injustice ; who shrinks before a slight ; who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy? and how many of those gentle souls do you degrade, estrange, torture, for the sake of a little loose arithmetic, and miserable dog-latin ? Now, William Dobbin, from an incapacity to acquire the rudiments of the above language, as they are propounded in that wonderful book the Eton Latin Grammar, was compelled to remain among the very last of Doctor SwishtaU's scholars, and was " taken down " continu- ally by little feUows with pink faces and pinafores when he marched up with the lower form, a giant amongst them, with his downcast, stupefied look, his dog's-eared primer, and his tight corduroys. High and low, all made fun of him. They sewed up those corduroys, tight as they were. They cut his bed-strings. They upset buckets and benches, so that he might break his shins over them, which he never failed to do. They sent him parcels, which, when opened, were found to contain the paternal soap and candles. There was no little fellow Hjut had his jeer and joke at Dobbin ; and he bore everything quite j_patiently, and was -entirely dumb and miserable. Cuflf, on the contrary, was the great chief and dandy of the Swishtail Seminary. He smuggled wine in. He fought the town- boys. Ponies used to come for him to ride home on Saturdays. He had his top-boots in his room, in which he used to hunt in the hohdays. He had a gold repeater : and took snuff like the Doctor. He had been to the Opera, and knew the merits of the principal actors, pre- ferring Mr. Kean to Mr. Kemble. He could knock you off forty Latin verses in an hour. He could make French poetry. What else didn't he know, or couldn't he do ? They said even the Doctor him- self was afhiid of him. Cuff, the unquestioned king of the school, ruled over his subjects, and bullied them, with splendid superiority. This one blacked his shoes : that toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him balls at cricket during whole summer afternoons. " Figs " was the fellow whom he despised most, and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering at him, he scarcely ever condescended to hold personal commimication. One day in private, the two young gentlemen had had a diflfer- ence. Figs, alone in the school-room, was blundering over a home letter; when Cuff, entering, bade him go upon some message, of which tarts were probably the subject. " I can't," says Dobbin ; "'l want to finish my letter." "You can't?" says Mr. Cuff, laying hold of that document (in which many words were scratched out, many were mis-spelt, on which A NOVEL WITHOUT A HEEO 37 had been spent I don't know how much thought, and labour, and tears ; for the poor fellow was writing to his mother, who was fond of him, although she was a grocer's wife, and lived in a back parlour in Thames Street). " You can't 1 " says Mr. Cufif : " I should like to know why, pray ? Can't you write to old Mother Figs to-morrow ? " "Don't call names," Dobbin said, getting off the bench very nervous. " Well, sir, will you go ? " crowed the cock of the school. " Put down the letter," Dobbin replied ; " no gentleman readth letterth." " Well, now will you go ? " says the other. "No, I won't. Don't strike, or I'll thmash you," roars out Dobbin, springing to a leaden inkstand, and looking so wicked, that Mr. Cuif paused, turned down his coat sleeves again, put his hands into his pockets, and walked away with a sneer. But he never meddled personally with the grocer's boy after that; though we must do him the justice to say he always spoke of Mr. Dobbin witFl 5** contempt behind his back. ^ Some time after this interview, it happened that Mr. Cuif, on a sunshiny afternoon, was in the neighboiu-hood of poor William Dobbin, who was lying under a tree in the playground, spelling over a favourite copy of the Arabian Nights which he had — apart from the rest of the school, who were pursuing their various sports — quite lonely, and almost happy. If people would but leave children to themselves ; if teachers would cease to bully them ; if parents would not insist upon directing their thoughts, and dominating their feelings — those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to all (for how much do you and I know of each other, of om* children, of dur fathers, of our neighbour, and how far more beautiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom you govern likely to be, than those of the dull and world-corrupted person who rules him ?) — if, I say, parents and masters would leave their children alone a little more, — small harm would accrue, although a less quantity of as in prcesenti might be acquired. ^ Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and wasi away with Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where thej Prince found her, and whither we should all like to make a tour ; when shriU cries, as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his pleasant reverie ; and looking up, he saw Cuif before him, belabouring a little boy. It was the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer's cart ; but he bore little malice, not at least towards the young and small. " How dare you, sir, break the bottle 1 " says Cuff to the little urchin, swinging a yeUow cricket-stump over him. 38 VANITY FAIR The boy had been instructed to get oyer the playground wall (at a selected spot where the broken glass had been removed from the top, and niches made convenient in the brick) ; to run a quarter of a mile ; to purchase a pint of rum-shrub on credit ; to brave all the Doctor's outlying spies, and to clamber back into the playground again ; during the performance of which feat his foot had slipt, and the bottle was broken, and the shrub had been spilt, and his panta- loons had been damaged, and he appeared before his employer a perfectly guilty and trembling, though harmless, wretch. " How dare you, sir, break it ? " says Cuff; " you blundering little thief You drank the shrub, and now you pretend to have broken the bottle. Hold out your hand, sir." Down came the stump with a great heavy thiimp on the child's hand. A moan followed. Dobbin looked up. The Pairy Peribanou had fled into the inmost cavern with Prince Ahmed ; the Eoc had whisked away Sindbad the Sailor out- of the Valley of Diamonds out of sight, far into the clouds : and there was everyday life before honest William ; and a big boy beating a little one without cause. " Hold out your other hand, sir," roars Cuff to his little school- fellonr, whose face was distorted with pain. Dobbin quivered, and gathered himself up in his narrow old clothe?. "Take that, you little devil!" cried Mr. Cuff, and down came the wicket again on the child's hand. — Don't be horrified, ladies, every boy at a public school has done it. Your children will so do and be done by, in aU probability. Down came the wicket again ; and Dobbin started up. I can't tell what his motive was. Torture in a public school is as much licensed as the knout in Russia. It would be ungentle- manlike (in a manner) to resist it. Perhaps Dobbin's foolish soul revolted against that exercise of tyranny ; or perhaps he had a hankering feeling of revenge in his mind, and longed to measure himself against that splendid bully and tyrant, who had all the glory, pride, pomp, circumstance, banners flying, drums beating, guards saluting, in the place. Whatever may have been his incen- tive, however, up he sprang, and screamed out, "Hold off. Cuff; don't bully that child any more ; or I'll " " Or you'll what ? " Cuff asked in amazement at this interrup- tion. " Hold out your hand, you little beast." " I'll give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your life," Dobbin said, in reply to the flrst part of Cuff's sentence ; and little Osborne, gasping and in tears, looked up with wonder and incredulity at seeing this amazing champion" put up suddenly to defend him : while Cuffs astonishment was scarcely less. Fancy our late monarch George III. when he heai-d of the revolt of the North American A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 39 colonies : fancy brazen Goliath when little David stepped forward and claimed a meeting ; and you have the feelings of Mr. Reginald Cuff when this rencontre was proposed to him. " After school," says he, of com-se ; after a pause and a look, as much as to say, " Make your will, and communicate your last wishes to your Mends between this time and that." "As you please," Dobbin said. "You must be my bottle- holder, Osborne." " Well, if you like," little Osborne replied ; for you see his papa kept a carriage, and he was rather ashamed of his champion. Yes, when the hour of battle came he was almost ashamed •, say, " Go it. Figs ; " and not a single other boy in the place uttered that cry for the first two or three rounds of this famous combat ; at the commencement of which the scientific Cuff, with a contemptuous smile on his face, and as light and as gay as if he was at a ball, planted his blows upon his adversary, and floored that unlucky champion three times running. At each faU there was a cheer ; and everybody was anxious to have the honour of offering the conqueror a knee. "What a licking I shall get when it's over," young Osborne thought, picking up his man. "You'd best give in," he said to Dobbin ; " it's only a thrashing, Figs, and you know I'm used to it. But Figs, all whose limbs were in a quiver, and whose nostrils were breathing rage, put his little bottle-holder aside, and went in for a fourth time. As he did not in the least know how to parry the blows that were aimed at himself, and Cuff had begun the attack on the three preceding occasions, without ever allowing his enemy to strike, Figs now determined that he would commence the engagement by a. charge on his own part ; and accordingly, being a left-handed man, brought that arm into action, and hit out a couple of times with all his might — once at Mr. Cuff's left eye, and once on his beautiful Roman nose. Cuff went down this time, to the astonishment of the assembly. " Well hit, by Jove," says little Osborne, with the air of a connois- seur, clapping his man on the back. " Give it him with the left, Figs my boy." Figs's left made terrific play during all the rest of the combat Cuff went down every time. At the sixth round, there were almost as many fellows shouting out, " Go it, Figs," as there were youths exclaiming, " Go it. Cuff." At the twelfth round the latter cham- pion was all abroad, as the saying is, and had lost all presence of mind and power of attack or defence. Figs, on the contrary, was 40 VANITY FAIE as calm as a Quaker. His face being quite pale, his eyes shining open, and a great cut on his under-lip bleeding profusely, gave this young fellow a fierce and ghastly air, which perhaps struck terror into many spectators. Nevertheless, his intrepid adversary prepared to close for the thirteenth time. p If I had the pen of a Napier, or a Bell's Life, I should Uke to de- scribe this combat properly. It was the last charge of the Guard — (that is, it would have been, only Waterloo had not yet taken place) — ^it was Ney's column breasting the hiU 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 hiU 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 feet 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. SwishtaU 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's — 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 ascendency 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 i8— ." " Dear Mama, — I hope you are quite welL I should be much obhged 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 A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO 41 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, GEOEaE Sedley Osborne. " F.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 prodigi- ously 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 SwishtaU 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 mathema- tics he was uncommonly quick. To the contentment of all he passed third in algebra, and got a French prize-book at the public Mid- summer examination. You should have seen his mother's face when T^l^maque (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 GuUelmo Dobbin. AH the boys clapped hands in token of applause and sympathy. His blushes, his stumbles, his awkwardness, and the niunber of feet which he crushed as he went back to his place, who shall describe or calculate 1 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 hohdays. 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 attri- bute his good fortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed such a love and affec- tion as is only felt by children — such an afiection, 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 4Z VANITY FAIE 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 inscrip- tions to George Sedley Osborne, Esquire, from his attached friend WUliam 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 VauxhaU. 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 gracefiil, 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 gracefiil. 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 y