Vanity Fair - Page 391/573

All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in Gaunt

Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads, whither we first

conducted Rebecca, in the time of the departed Sir Pitt Crawley.

Peering over the railings and through the black trees into the garden

of the Square, you see a few miserable governesses with wan-faced

pupils wandering round and round it, and round the dreary grass-plot in

the centre of which rises the statue of Lord Gaunt, who fought at

Minden, in a three-tailed wig, and otherwise habited like a Roman

Emperor. Gaunt House occupies nearly a side of the Square. The

remaining three sides are composed of mansions that have passed away

into dowagerism--tall, dark houses, with window-frames of stone, or

picked out of a lighter red. Little light seems to be behind those

lean, comfortless casements now, and hospitality to have passed away

from those doors as much as the laced lacqueys and link-boys of old

times, who used to put out their torches in the blank iron

extinguishers that still flank the lamps over the steps. Brass plates

have penetrated into the square--Doctors, the Diddlesex Bank Western

Branch--the English and European Reunion, &c.--it has a dreary

look--nor is my Lord Steyne's palace less dreary. All I have ever seen

of it is the vast wall in front, with the rustic columns at the great

gate, through which an old porter peers sometimes with a fat and gloomy

red face--and over the wall the garret and bedroom windows, and the

chimneys, out of which there seldom comes any smoke now. For the

present Lord Steyne lives at Naples, preferring the view of the Bay and

Capri and Vesuvius to the dreary aspect of the wall in Gaunt Square.

A few score yards down New Gaunt Street, and leading into Gaunt Mews

indeed, is a little modest back door, which you would not remark from

that of any of the other stables. But many a little close carriage has

stopped at that door, as my informant (little Tom Eaves, who knows

everything, and who showed me the place) told me. "The Prince and

Perdita have been in and out of that door, sir," he had often told me;

"Marianne Clarke has entered it with the Duke of ------. It conducts to

the famous petits appartements of Lord Steyne--one, sir, fitted up all

in ivory and white satin, another in ebony and black velvet; there is a

little banqueting-room taken from Sallust's house at Pompeii, and

painted by Cosway--a little private kitchen, in which every saucepan

was silver and all the spits were gold. It was there that Egalite

Orleans roasted partridges on the night when he and the Marquis of

Steyne won a hundred thousand from a great personage at ombre. Half of

the money went to the French Revolution, half to purchase Lord Gaunt's

Marquisate and Garter--and the remainder--" but it forms no part of our

scheme to tell what became of the remainder, for every shilling of

which, and a great deal more, little Tom Eaves, who knows everybody's

affairs, is ready to account.