Vanity Fair - Page 277/573

When these ladies first came to their house at Brighton, it was to them

alone that Mr. Crawley paid his personal visits, contenting himself by

leaving a card at his aunt's house, and making a modest inquiry of Mr.

Bowls or his assistant footman, with respect to the health of the

invalid. When he met Miss Briggs coming home from the library with a

cargo of novels under her arm, Mr. Crawley blushed in a manner quite

unusual to him, as he stepped forward and shook Miss Crawley's

companion by the hand. He introduced Miss Briggs to the lady with whom

he happened to be walking, the Lady Jane Sheepshanks, saying, "Lady

Jane, permit me to introduce to you my aunt's kindest friend and most

affectionate companion, Miss Briggs, whom you know under another title,

as authoress of the delightful 'Lyrics of the Heart,' of which you are

so fond." Lady Jane blushed too as she held out a kind little hand to

Miss Briggs, and said something very civil and incoherent about mamma,

and proposing to call on Miss Crawley, and being glad to be made known

to the friends and relatives of Mr. Crawley; and with soft dove-like

eyes saluted Miss Briggs as they separated, while Pitt Crawley treated

her to a profound courtly bow, such as he had used to H.H. the Duchess

of Pumpernickel, when he was attache at that court.

The artful diplomatist and disciple of the Machiavellian Binkie! It

was he who had given Lady Jane that copy of poor Briggs's early poems,

which he remembered to have seen at Queen's Crawley, with a dedication

from the poetess to his father's late wife; and he brought the volume

with him to Brighton, reading it in the Southampton coach and marking

it with his own pencil, before he presented it to the gentle Lady Jane.

It was he, too, who laid before Lady Southdown the great advantages

which might occur from an intimacy between her family and Miss

Crawley--advantages both worldly and spiritual, he said: for Miss

Crawley was now quite alone; the monstrous dissipation and alliance of

his brother Rawdon had estranged her affections from that reprobate

young man; the greedy tyranny and avarice of Mrs. Bute Crawley had

caused the old lady to revolt against the exorbitant pretensions of

that part of the family; and though he himself had held off all his

life from cultivating Miss Crawley's friendship, with perhaps an

improper pride, he thought now that every becoming means should be

taken, both to save her soul from perdition, and to secure her fortune

to himself as the head of the house of Crawley.

The strong-minded Lady Southdown quite agreed in both proposals of her

son-in-law, and was for converting Miss Crawley off-hand. At her own

home, both at Southdown and at Trottermore Castle, this tall and awful

missionary of the truth rode about the country in her barouche with

outriders, launched packets of tracts among the cottagers and tenants,

and would order Gaffer Jones to be converted, as she would order Goody

Hicks to take a James's powder, without appeal, resistance, or benefit

of clergy. My Lord Southdown, her late husband, an epileptic and

simple-minded nobleman, was in the habit of approving of everything

which his Matilda did and thought. So that whatever changes her own

belief might undergo (and it accommodated itself to a prodigious

variety of opinion, taken from all sorts of doctors among the

Dissenters) she had not the least scruple in ordering all her tenants

and inferiors to follow and believe after her. Thus whether she

received the Reverend Saunders McNitre, the Scotch divine; or the

Reverend Luke Waters, the mild Wesleyan; or the Reverend Giles Jowls,

the illuminated Cobbler, who dubbed himself Reverend as Napoleon

crowned himself Emperor--the household, children, tenantry of my Lady

Southdown were expected to go down on their knees with her Ladyship,

and say Amen to the prayers of either Doctor. During these exercises

old Southdown, on account of his invalid condition, was allowed to sit

in his own room, and have negus and the paper read to him. Lady Jane

was the old Earl's favourite daughter, and tended him and loved him

sincerely: as for Lady Emily, the authoress of the "Washerwoman of

Finchley Common," her denunciations of future punishment (at this

period, for her opinions modified afterwards) were so awful that they

used to frighten the timid old gentleman her father, and the physicians

declared his fits always occurred after one of her Ladyship's sermons.