Chapter: Family Portraits

Sir Pitt Crawley was a philosopher with a taste for what is called low
life.  His first marriage with the daughter of the noble Binkie had
been made under the auspices of his parents; and as he often told Lady
Crawley in her lifetime she was such a confounded quarrelsome high-bred
jade that when she died he was hanged if he would ever take another of
her sort, at her ladyship's demise he kept his promise, and selected
for a second wife Miss Rose Dawson, daughter of Mr. John Thomas Dawson,
ironmonger, of Mudbury. What a happy woman was Rose to be my Lady
Crawley!

Let us set down the items of her happiness.  In the first place, she
gave up Peter Butt, a young man who kept company with her, and in
consequence of his disappointment in love, took to smuggling, poaching,
and a thousand other bad courses.  Then she quarrelled, as in duty
bound, with all the friends and intimates of her youth, who, of course,
could not be received by my Lady at Queen's Crawley--nor did she find
in her new rank and abode any persons who were willing to welcome her.
Who ever did? Sir Huddleston Fuddleston had three daughters who all
hoped to be Lady Crawley.  Sir Giles Wapshot's family were insulted
that one of the Wapshot girls had not the preference in the marriage,
and the remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their
comrade's misalliance.  Never mind the commoners, whom we will leave to
grumble anonymously.

Sir Pitt did not care, as he said, a brass farden for any one of them.
He had his pretty Rose, and what more need a man require than to please
himself? So he used to get drunk every night: to beat his pretty Rose
sometimes: to leave her in Hampshire when he went to London for the
parliamentary session, without a single friend in the wide world.  Even
Mrs. Bute Crawley, the Rector's wife, refused to visit her, as she said
she would never give the pas to a tradesman's daughter.

As the only endowments with which Nature had gifted Lady Crawley were
those of pink cheeks and a white skin, and as she had no sort of
character, nor talents, nor opinions, nor occupations, nor amusements,
nor that vigour of soul and ferocity of temper which often falls to the
lot of entirely foolish women, her hold upon Sir Pitt's affections was
not very great.  Her roses faded out of her cheeks, and the pretty
freshness left her figure after the birth of a couple of children, and
she became a mere machine in her husband's house of no more use than
the late Lady Crawley's grand piano. Being a light-complexioned woman,
she wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, in
preference, in draggled sea-green, or slatternly sky-blue.  She worked
that worsted day and night, or other pieces like it.  She had
counterpanes in the course of a few years to all the beds in Crawley.
She had a small flower-garden, for which she had rather an affection;
but beyond this no other like or disliking.  When her husband was rude
to her she was apathetic: whenever he struck her she cried.  She had
not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slipshod
and in curl-papers all day.  O Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! This might
have been, but for you, a cheery lass--Peter Butt and Rose a happy man
and wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty family; and an honest portion
of pleasures, cares, hopes and struggles--but a title and a coach and
four are toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair: and if Harry
the Eighth or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do you
suppose he could not get the prettiest girl that shall be presented
this season?

The languid dulness of their mamma did not, as it may be supposed,
awaken much affection in her little daughters, but they were very happy
in the servants' hall and in the stables; and the Scotch gardener
having luckily a good wife and some good children, they got a little
wholesome society and instruction in his lodge, which was the only
education bestowed upon them until Miss Sharp came.

Her engagement was owing to the remonstrances of Mr. Pitt Crawley, the
only friend or protector Lady Crawley ever had, and the only person,
besides her children, for whom she entertained a little feeble
attachment.  Mr. Pitt took after the noble Binkies, from whom he was
descended, and was a very polite and proper gentleman.  When he grew to
man's estate, and came back from Christchurch, he began to reform the
slackened discipline of the hall, in spite of his father, who stood in
awe of him.  He was a man of such rigid refinement, that he would have
starved rather than have dined without a white neckcloth.  Once, when
just from college, and when Horrocks the butler brought him a letter
without placing it previously on a tray, he gave that domestic a look,
and administered to him a speech so cutting, that Horrocks ever after
trembled before him; the whole household bowed to him: Lady Crawley's
curl-papers came off earlier when he was at home: Sir Pitt's muddy
gaiters disappeared; and if that incorrigible old man still adhered to
other old habits, he never fuddled himself with rum-and-water in his
son's presence, and only talked to his servants in a very reserved and
polite manner; and those persons remarked that Sir Pitt never swore at
Lady Crawley while his son was in the room.

It was he who taught the butler to say, "My lady is served," and who
insisted on handing her ladyship in to dinner.  He seldom spoke to her,
but when he did it was with the most powerful respect; and he never let
her quit the apartment without rising in the most stately manner to
open the door, and making an elegant bow at her egress.

At Eton he was called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say, his
younger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently.  But though his
parts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent by
meritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years at
school, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally thought
none but a cherub can escape.

At college his career was of course highly creditable. And here he
prepared himself for public life, into which he was to be introduced by
the patronage of his grandfather, Lord Binkie, by studying the ancient
and modern orators with great assiduity, and by speaking unceasingly at
the debating societies.  But though he had a fine flux of words, and
delivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to
himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not
perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he
failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have insured
any man a success.  He did not even get the prize poem, which all his
friends said he was sure of.

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.

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.

Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair!  Here was a man, who could not spell, and did
not care to read--who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose
aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or
enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, and
honours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the land, and a
pillar of the state.  He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach.
Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a
higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue.

Sir Pitt had an unmarried half-sister who inherited her mother's large
fortune, and though the Baronet proposed to borrow this money of her on
mortgage, Miss Crawley declined the offer, and preferred the security
of the funds. She had signified, however, her intention of leaving her
inheritance between Sir Pitt's second son and the family at the
Rectory, and had once or twice paid the debts of Rawdon Crawley in his
career at college and in the army. Miss Crawley was, in consequence, an
object of great respect when she came to Queen's Crawley, for she had a
balance at her banker's which would have made her beloved anywhere.

What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's! How
tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative (and may every
reader have a score of such), what a kind good-natured old creature we
find her!  How the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling
to the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman!
How, when she comes to pay us a visit, we generally find an opportunity
to let our friends know her station in the world!  We say (and with
perfect truth) I wish I had Miss MacWhirter's signature to a cheque for
five thousand pounds.  She wouldn't miss it, says your wife.  She is my
aunt, say you, in an easy careless way, when your friend asks if Miss
MacWhirter is any relative.  Your wife is perpetually sending her
little testimonies of affection, your little girls work endless worsted
baskets, cushions, and footstools for her.  What a good fire there is
in her room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife laces
her stays without one!  The house during her stay assumes a festive,
neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other seasons. You
yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find
yourself all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a
rubber.  What good dinners you have--game every day, Malmsey-Madeira,
and no end of fish from London.  Even the servants in the kitchen share
in the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the stay of Miss
MacWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much stronger, and the
consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (where her maid takes her
meals) is not regarded in the least.  Is it so, or is it not so?  I
appeal to the middle classes.  Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would
send me an old aunt--a maiden aunt--an aunt with a lozenge on her
carriage, and a front of light coffee-coloured hair--how my children
should work workbags for her, and my Julia and I would make her
comfortable! Sweet--sweet vision! Foolish--foolish dream!

 So, this is one those chapters that doesn't advance the plot or anything, but instead gives us some more details and biography about the characters. First up, Lady Crawley. Sir Pitt's first wife had been a very high-class, aristocratic lady. They did not get along too well. So the second time around, he decided to marry down, picking the daughter of an ironmonger . The narrator has a sarcastic little tidbit telling us that if Lady Crawley had been allowed to stay in her own socioeconomic class, she would have been a pretty happy, if somewhat silly, wife. As it is, she no longer has any friends. Her old friends are too low-class for a Lady, but her low birth makes her too low-class for other aristocrats. She is kind of dumb, and since she no longer has her good looks, she exists as "a mere machine in her husband's house, of no more use than the late Lady Crawley's grand piano." She doesn't even have "character enough to take to drinking." Ouch. OK, enough about her. Now for Mr. Pitt Crawley, Sir Pitt's oldest son. He's prissy and a little compulsive with the whole acting-like-a-gentleman thing. He's so fixated on manners that at college his nickname was "Miss Crawley." Kids can be so cruel. Mr. Crawley is also very ambitious, and the narrator mocks him for having "a mediocrity which ought to have insured any man a success" . Get it? The joke is that only the average and boring get promoted. So far, Mr. Crawley's ambitions haven't gotten too many results. He's published some articles and is active in the government of the county. These achievements are meant to sound way lame. So that's Mr. Crawley. Here's a bit more about Sir Pitt: his cheapness and general bad nature make him a poor money manager. In the long run, he doesn't invest in his estate - which decreases any money he could make from it. And he is a horrible landlord and people person - which means that no good people will work for him and he is constantly swindled by the thieves that surround him. Now, more about the family finances. Sir Pitt still owes Mr. Crawley a bunch of money. This is money that Sir Pitt's first wife left to her eldest son , but which Sir Pitt has yet to give to Mr. Crawley. Probably because it's already been spent. And finally, one more family member. Sir Pitt and his brother Bute have a half-sister, Miss Crawley. She is super-rich and has no children. Both Sir Pitt and Bute really, really want her money. And even maybe more than that, they want the other one not to get any of it.

