Vanity Fair - Page 68/573

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.