Vanity Fair - Page 67/573

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.