CHAPTER IX

Family Portraits

Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called low

life. His first marriage with the daughter of the noble Binkie had

been made under the auspices of his parents; and as he often told Lady

Crawley in her lifetime she was such a confounded quarrelsome high-bred

jade that when she died he was hanged if he would ever take another of

her sort, at her ladyship's demise he kept his promise, and selected

for a second wife Miss Rose Dawson, daughter of Mr. John Thomas Dawson,

ironmonger, of Mudbury. What a happy woman was Rose to be my Lady

Crawley!

Let us set down the items of her happiness. In the first place, she

gave up Peter Butt, a young man who kept company with her, and in

consequence of his disappointment in love, took to smuggling, poaching,

and a thousand other bad courses. Then she quarrelled, as in duty

bound, with all the friends and intimates of her youth, who, of course,

could not be received by my Lady at Queen's Crawley--nor did she find

in her new rank and abode any persons who were willing to welcome her.

Who ever did? Sir Huddleston Fuddleston had three daughters who all

hoped to be Lady Crawley. Sir Giles Wapshot's family were insulted

that one of the Wapshot girls had not the preference in the marriage,

and the remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their

comrade's misalliance. Never mind the commoners, whom we will leave to

grumble anonymously.

Sir Pitt did not care, as he said, a brass farden for any one of them.

He had his pretty Rose, and what more need a man require than to please

himself? So he used to get drunk every night: to beat his pretty Rose

sometimes: to leave her in Hampshire when he went to London for the

parliamentary session, without a single friend in the wide world. Even

Mrs. Bute Crawley, the Rector's wife, refused to visit her, as she said

she would never give the pas to a tradesman's daughter.

As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted Lady Crawley were

those of pink cheeks and a white skin, and as she had no sort of

character, nor talents, nor opinions, nor occupations, nor amusements,

nor that vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often falls to the

lot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir Pitt's affections was

not very great. Her roses faded out of her cheeks, and the pretty

freshness left her figure after the birth of a couple of children, and

she became a mere machine in her husband's house of no more use than

the late Lady Crawley's grand piano. Being a light-complexioned woman,

she wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, in

preference, in draggled sea-green, or slatternly sky-blue. She worked

that worsted day and night, or other pieces like it. She had

counterpanes in the course of a few years to all the beds in Crawley.

She had a small flower-garden, for which she had rather an affection;

but beyond this no other like or disliking. When her husband was rude

to her she was apathetic: whenever he struck her she cried. She had

not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slipshod

and in curl-papers all day. O Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! This might

have been, but for you, a cheery lass--Peter Butt and Rose a happy man

and wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty family; and an honest portion

of pleasures, cares, hopes and struggles--but a title and a coach and

four are toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair: and if Harry

the Eighth or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do you

suppose he could not get the prettiest girl that shall be presented

this season?

The languid dulness of their mamma did not, as it may be supposed,

awaken much affection in her little daughters, but they were very happy

in the servants' hall and in the stables; and the Scotch gardener

having luckily a good wife and some good children, they got a little

wholesome society and instruction in his lodge, which was the only

education bestowed upon them until Miss Sharp came.

Her engagement was owing to the remonstrances of Mr. Pitt Crawley, the

only friend or protector Lady Crawley ever had, and the only person,

besides her children, for whom she entertained a little feeble

attachment. Mr. Pitt took after the noble Binkies, from whom he was

descended, and was a very polite and proper gentleman. When he grew to

man's estate, and came back from Christchurch, he began to reform the

slackened discipline of the hall, in spite of his father, who stood in

awe of him. He was a man of such rigid refinement, that he would have

starved rather than have dined without a white neckcloth. Once, when

just from college, and when Horrocks the butler brought him a letter

without placing it previously on a tray, he gave that domestic a look,

and administered to him a speech so cutting, that Horrocks ever after

trembled before him; the whole household bowed to him: Lady Crawley's

curl-papers came off earlier when he was at home: Sir Pitt's muddy

gaiters disappeared; and if that incorrigible old man still adhered to

other old habits, he never fuddled himself with rum-and-water in his

son's presence, and only talked to his servants in a very reserved and

polite manner; and those persons remarked that Sir Pitt never swore at

Lady Crawley while his son was in the room.

It was he who taught the butler to say, "My lady is served," and who

insisted on handing her ladyship in to dinner. He seldom spoke to her,

but when he did it was with the most powerful respect; and he never let

her quit the apartment without rising in the most stately manner to

open the door, and making an elegant bow at her egress.

At Eton he was called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say, his

younger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently. But though his

parts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent by

meritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years at

school, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally thought

none but a cherub can escape.

At college his career was of course highly creditable. And here he

prepared himself for public life, into which he was to be introduced by

the patronage of his grandfather, Lord Binkie, by studying the ancient

and modern orators with great assiduity, and by speaking unceasingly at

the debating societies. But though he had a fine flux of words, and

delivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to

himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not

perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he

failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have insured

any man a success. He did not even get the prize poem, which all his

friends said he was sure of.

After leaving college he became Private Secretary to Lord Binkie, and

was then appointed Attache to the Legation at Pumpernickel, which post

he filled with perfect honour, and brought home despatches, consisting

of Strasburg pie, to the Foreign Minister of the day. After remaining

ten years Attache (several years after the lamented Lord Binkie's

demise), and finding the advancement slow, he at length gave up the

diplomatic service in some disgust, and began to turn country gentleman.

He wrote a pamphlet on Malt on returning to England (for he was an

ambitious man, and always liked to be before the public), and took a

strong part in the Negro Emancipation question. Then he became a

friend of Mr. Wilberforce's, whose politics he admired, and had that

famous correspondence with the Reverend Silas Hornblower, on the

Ashantee Mission. He was in London, if not for the Parliament session,

at least in May, for the religious meetings. In the country he was a

magistrate, and an active visitor and speaker among those destitute of

religious instruction. He was said to be paying his addresses to Lady

Jane Sheepshanks, Lord Southdown's third daughter, and whose sister,

Lady Emily, wrote those sweet tracts, "The Sailor's True Binnacle," and

"The Applewoman of Finchley Common."

Miss Sharp's accounts of his employment at Queen's Crawley were not

caricatures. He subjected the servants there to the devotional

exercises before mentioned, in which (and so much the better) he

brought his father to join. He patronised an Independent meeting-house

in Crawley parish, much to the indignation of his uncle the Rector, and

to the consequent delight of Sir Pitt, who was induced to go himself

once or twice, which occasioned some violent sermons at Crawley parish

church, directed point-blank at the Baronet's old Gothic pew there.

Honest Sir Pitt, however, did not feel the force of these discourses,

as he always took his nap during sermon-time.

Mr. Crawley was very earnest, for the good of the nation and of the

Christian world, that the old gentleman should yield him up his place

in Parliament; but this the elder constantly refused to do. Both were

of course too prudent to give up the fifteen hundred a year which was

brought in by the second seat (at this period filled by Mr. Quadroon,

with carte blanche on the Slave question); indeed the family estate was

much embarrassed, and the income drawn from the borough was of great

use to the house of Queen's Crawley.

It had never recovered the heavy fine imposed upon Walpole Crawley,

first baronet, for peculation in the Tape and Sealing Wax Office. Sir

Walpole was a jolly fellow, eager to seize and to spend money (alieni

appetens, sui profusus, as Mr. Crawley would remark with a sigh), and

in his day beloved by all the county for the constant drunkenness and

hospitality which was maintained at Queen's Crawley. The cellars were

filled with burgundy then, the kennels with hounds, and the stables

with gallant hunters; now, such horses as Queen's Crawley possessed

went to plough, or ran in the Trafalgar Coach; and it was with a team

of these very horses, on an off-day, that Miss Sharp was brought to the

Hall; for boor as he was, Sir Pitt was a stickler for his dignity while

at home, and seldom drove out but with four horses, and though he dined

off boiled mutton, had always three footmen to serve it.

If mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley might

have become very wealthy--if he had been an attorney in a country town,

with no capital but his brains, it is very possible that he would have

turned them to good account, and might have achieved for himself a very

considerable influence and competency. But he was unluckily endowed

with a good name and a large though encumbered estate, both of which

went rather to injure than to advance him. He had a taste for law,

which cost him many thousands yearly; and being a great deal too clever

to be robbed, as he said, by any single agent, allowed his affairs to

be mismanaged by a dozen, whom he all equally mistrusted. He was such a

sharp landlord, that he could hardly find any but bankrupt tenants; and

such a close farmer, as to grudge almost the seed to the ground,

whereupon revengeful Nature grudged him the crops which she granted to

more liberal husbandmen. He speculated in every possible way; he worked

mines; bought canal-shares; horsed coaches; took government contracts,

and was the busiest man and magistrate of his county. As he would not

pay honest agents at his granite quarry, he had the satisfaction of

finding that four overseers ran away, and took fortunes with them to

America. For want of proper precautions, his coal-mines filled with

water: the government flung his contract of damaged beef upon his

hands: and for his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the kingdom

knew that he lost more horses than any man in the country, from

underfeeding and buying cheap. In disposition he was sociable, and far

from being proud; nay, he rather preferred the society of a farmer or a

horse-dealer to that of a gentleman, like my lord, his son: he was fond

of drink, of swearing, of joking with the farmers' daughters: he was

never known to give away a shilling or to do a good action, but was of

a pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would cut his joke and drink his

glass with a tenant and sell him up the next day; or have his laugh

with the poacher he was transporting with equal good humour. His

politeness for the fair sex has already been hinted at by Miss Rebecca

Sharp--in a word, the whole baronetage, peerage, commonage of England,

did not contain a more cunning, mean, selfish, foolish, disreputable

old man. That blood-red hand of Sir Pitt Crawley's would be in

anybody's pocket except his own; and it is with grief and pain, that,

as admirers of the British aristocracy, we find ourselves obliged to

admit the existence of so many ill qualities in a person whose name is

in Debrett.

One great cause why Mr. Crawley had such a hold over the affections of

his father, resulted from money arrangements. The Baronet owed his son

a sum of money out of the jointure of his mother, which he did not find

it convenient to pay; indeed he had an almost invincible repugnance to

paying anybody, and could only be brought by force to discharge his

debts. Miss Sharp calculated (for she became, as we shall hear

speedily, inducted into most of the secrets of the family) that the

mere payment of his creditors cost the honourable Baronet several

hundreds yearly; but this was a delight he could not forego; he had a

savage pleasure in making the poor wretches wait, and in shifting from

court to court and from term to term the period of satisfaction.

What's the good of being in Parliament, he said, if you must pay your

debts? Hence, indeed, his position as a senator was not a little useful

to him.

Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did

not care to read--who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose

aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or

enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, and

honours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the land, and a

pillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach.

Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a

higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue.

Sir Pitt had an unmarried half-sister who inherited her mother's large

fortune, and though the Baronet proposed to borrow this money of her on

mortgage, Miss Crawley declined the offer, and preferred the security

of the funds. She had signified, however, her intention of leaving her

inheritance between Sir Pitt's second son and the family at the

Rectory, and had once or twice paid the debts of Rawdon Crawley in his

career at college and in the army. Miss Crawley was, in consequence, an

object of great respect when she came to Queen's Crawley, for she had a

balance at her banker's which would have made her beloved anywhere.

What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's! How

tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative (and may every

reader have a score of such), what a kind good-natured old creature we

find her! How the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling

to the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman!

How, when she comes to pay us a visit, we generally find an opportunity

to let our friends know her station in the world! We say (and with

perfect truth) I wish I had Miss MacWhirter's signature to a cheque for

five thousand pounds. She wouldn't miss it, says your wife. She is my

aunt, say you, in an easy careless way, when your friend asks if Miss

MacWhirter is any relative. Your wife is perpetually sending her

little testimonies of affection, your little girls work endless worsted

baskets, cushions, and footstools for her. What a good fire there is

in her room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife laces

her stays without one! The house during her stay assumes a festive,

neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other seasons. You

yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find

yourself all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a

rubber. What good dinners you have--game every day, Malmsey-Madeira,

and no end of fish from London. Even the servants in the kitchen share

in the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the stay of Miss

MacWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much stronger, and the

consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (where her maid takes her

meals) is not regarded in the least. Is it so, or is it not so? I

appeal to the middle classes. Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would

send me an old aunt--a maiden aunt--an aunt with a lozenge on her

carriage, and a front of light coffee-coloured hair--how my children

should work workbags for her, and my Julia and I would make her

comfortable! Sweet--sweet vision! Foolish--foolish dream!