



Produced by Juli Rew.









Vanity Fair


by

William Makepeace Thackeray




BEFORE THE CURTAIN

As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards
and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over
him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of
eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the
contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are
bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets,
policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!)
bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the
tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the
light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this
is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though
very noisy.  Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they
come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his
cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack
Puddings behind the canvas.   The curtain will be up presently, and he
will be turning over head and heels, and crying, "How are you?"

A man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through an exhibition of
this sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other
people's hilarity.   An episode of humour or kindness touches and
amuses him here and there--a pretty child looking at a gingerbread
stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses
her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone
with the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general
impression is one more melancholy than mirthful.  When you come home
you sit down in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind,
and apply yourself to your books or your business.

I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of "Vanity
Fair." Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such,
with their servants and families: very likely they are right.  But
persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a
sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look
at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful
combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life,
and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental,
and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate
scenery and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles.

What more has the Manager of the Performance to say?--To acknowledge
the kindness with which it has been received in all the principal towns
of England through which the Show has passed, and where it has been
most favourably noticed by the respected conductors of the public
Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry.  He is proud to think that his
Puppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in this
empire.  The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be
uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire; the Amelia
Doll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet been
carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist; the Dobbin
Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and
natural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and
please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on
which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at
the end of this singular performance.

And with this, and a profound bow to his patrons, the Manager retires,
and the curtain rises.

LONDON, June 28, 1848



CONTENTS

       I  Chiswick Mall
      II  In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the
          Campaign
     III  Rebecca Is in Presence of the Enemy
      IV  The Green Silk Purse
       V  Dobbin of Ours
      VI  Vauxhall
     VII  Crawley of Queen's Crawley
    VIII  Private and Confidential
      IX  Family Portraits
       X  Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends
      XI  Arcadian Simplicity
     XII  Quite a Sentimental Chapter
    XIII  Sentimental and Otherwise
     XIV  Miss Crawley at Home
      XV  In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears for a Short Time
     XVI  The Letter on the Pincushion
    XVII  How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano
   XVIII  Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought
     XIX  Miss Crawley at Nurse
      XX  In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen
     XXI  A Quarrel About an Heiress
    XXII  A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon
   XXIII  Captain Dobbin Proceeds on His Canvass
    XXIV  In Which Mr. Osborne Takes Down the Family Bible
     XXV  In Which All the Principal Personages Think Fit to Leave
          Brighton
    XXVI  Between London and Chatham
   XXVII  In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment
  XXVIII  In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries
    XXIX  Brussels
     XXX  "The Girl I Left Behind Me"
    XXXI  In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister
   XXXII  In Which Jos Takes Flight, and the War Is Brought to a Close
  XXXIII  In Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her
   XXXIV  James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out
    XXXV  Widow and Mother
   XXXVI  How to Live Well on Nothing a Year
  XXXVII  The Subject Continued
 XXXVIII  A Family in a Very Small Way
   XXXIX  A Cynical Chapter
      XL  In Which Becky Is Recognized by the Family
     XLI  In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors
    XLII  Which Treats of the Osborne Family
   XLIII  In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape
    XLIV  A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire
     XLV  Between Hampshire and London
    XLVI  Struggles and Trials
   XLVII  Gaunt House
  XLVIII  In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very Best of Company
    XLIX  In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert
       L  Contains a Vulgar Incident
      LI  In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the
          Reader
     LII  In Which Lord Steyne Shows Himself in a Most Amiable Light
    LIII  A Rescue and a Catastrophe
     LIV  Sunday After the Battle
      LV  In Which the Same Subject is Pursued
     LVI  Georgy is Made a Gentleman
    LVII  Eothen
   LVIII  Our Friend the Major
     LIX  The Old Piano
      LX  Returns to the Genteel World
     LXI  In Which Two Lights are Put Out
    LXII  Am Rhein
   LXIII  In Which We Meet an Old Acquaintance
    LXIV  A Vagabond Chapter
     LXV  Full of Business and Pleasure
    LXVI  Amantium Irae
   LXVII  Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths




CHAPTER I

Chiswick Mall

While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning
in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's
academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with
two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a
three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.  A black
servant, who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his
bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton's
shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell at least a score of
young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately
old brick house.  Nay, the acute observer might have recognized the
little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising
over some geranium pots in the window of that lady's own drawing-room.

"It is Mrs. Sedley's coach, sister," said Miss Jemima. "<DW71>, the
black servant, has just rung the bell; and the coachman has a new red
waistcoat."

"Have you completed all the necessary preparations incident to Miss
Sedley's departure, Miss Jemima?" asked Miss Pinkerton herself, that
majestic lady; the Semiramis of Hammersmith, the friend of Doctor
Johnson, the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone herself.

"The girls were up at four this morning, packing her trunks, sister,"
replied Miss Jemima; "we have made her a bow-pot."

"Say a bouquet, sister Jemima, 'tis more genteel."

"Well, a booky as big almost as a haystack; I have put up two bottles
of the gillyflower water for Mrs. Sedley, and the receipt for making
it, in Amelia's box."

"And I trust, Miss Jemima, you have made a copy of Miss Sedley's
account.  This is it, is it? Very good--ninety-three pounds, four
shillings.  Be kind enough to address it to John Sedley, Esquire, and
to seal this billet which I have written to his lady."

In Miss Jemima's eyes an autograph letter of her sister, Miss
Pinkerton, was an object of as deep veneration as would have been a
letter from a sovereign.  Only when her pupils quitted the
establishment, or when they were about to be married, and once, when
poor Miss Birch died of the scarlet fever, was Miss Pinkerton known to
write personally to the parents of her pupils; and it was Jemima's
opinion that if anything could console Mrs. Birch for her daughter's
loss, it would be that pious and eloquent composition in which Miss
Pinkerton announced the event.

In the present instance Miss Pinkerton's "billet" was to the following
effect:--

The Mall, Chiswick, June 15, 18

MADAM,--After her six years' residence at the Mall, I have the honour
and happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her parents, as a
young lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position in their polished
and refined circle.  Those virtues which characterize the young English
gentlewoman, those accomplishments which become her birth and station,
will not be found wanting in the amiable Miss Sedley, whose INDUSTRY
and OBEDIENCE have endeared her to her instructors, and whose
delightful sweetness of temper has charmed her AGED and her YOUTHFUL
companions.

In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroidery
and needlework, she will be found to have realized her friends' fondest
wishes.  In geography there is still much to be desired; and a careful
and undeviating use of the backboard, for four hours daily during the
next three years, is recommended as necessary to the acquirement of
that dignified DEPORTMENT AND CARRIAGE, so requisite for every young
lady of FASHION.

In the principles of religion and morality, Miss Sedley will be found
worthy of an