Vanity Fair (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  Figs‘s left made terrific play during all the rest of the combat. Cuff went down every time. At the sixth round there were almost as many fellows shouting out, ‘Go it, Figs,‘ as there were youths exclaiming, ‘Go it, Cuff.‘ At the twelfth round the latter champion was all abroad, as the saying is, and had lost all presence of mind and power of attack or defence. Figs, on the contrary, was as calm as a quaker. His face being quite pale, his eyes shining open, and a great cut on his under-lip bleeding profusely, gave this young fellow a fierce and ghastly air, which perhaps struck terror into many spectators. Nevertheless, his intrepid adversary prepared to close for the thirteenth time.

  If I had the pen of a Napier,ar or a Bell‘s Life,as I should like to describe this combat properly. It was the last charge of the Guard (that is, it would have been, only Waterloo had not yet taken place)—it was Ney‘s column breasting the hill of La Haye Sainte, bristling with ten thousand bayonets, and crowned with twenty eagles—it was the shout of the beef-eating British, as leaping down the hill they rushed to hug the enemy in the savage arms of battleat—in other words, Cuff coming up full of pluck, but quite reeling and groggy, the Fig-merchant put in his left as usual on his adversary‘s nose, and sent him down for the last time.

  ‘I think that will do for him,‘ Figs said, as his opponent dropped as neatly on the green as I have seen Jack Spot‘s ball plump into the pocket at billiards; and the fact is, when time was called, Mr. Reginald Cuff was not able, or did not choose, to stand up again.

  And now all the boys set up such a shout for Figs as would make you think he had been their darling champion through the whole battle; and as absolutely brought Dr. Swishtail out of his study, curious to know the cause of the uproar. He threatened to flog Figs violently, of course; but Cuff, who had come to himself by this time, and was washing his wounds, stood up and said, ‘It‘s my fault, sir—not Figs‘s—not Dobbin‘s. I was bullying a little boy; and he served me right.‘ By which magnanimous speech he not only saved his conqueror a whipping, but got back all his ascendancy over the boys which his defeat had nearly cost him.

  Young Osborne wrote home to his parents an account of the transaction.

  SUGARCANE HOUSE, RICHMOND, March 18—.

  DEAR MAMA,—I hope you are quite well. I should be much obliged to you to send me a cake and five shillings. There has been a fight here between Cuff & Dobbin. Cuff, you know, was the Cock of the School. They fought thirteen rounds, and Dobbin Licked. So Cuff is now Only Second Cock. The fight was about me. Cuff was licking me for breaking a bottle of milk, and Figs wouldn‘t stand it. We call him Figs because his father is a Grocer. Figs & Rudge, Thames St., City—I think as he fought for me you ought to buy your Tea & Sugar at his father‘s. Cuff goes home every Saturday, but can‘t this, because he has 2 Black Eyes. He has a white Pony to come and fetch him, and a groom in livery on a bay mare. I wish my Pa would let me have a Pony, and I am, Your dutiful Son,

  Your dutiful Son,

  GEORGE SEDLEY OSBORNE.

  PS.—Give my love to little Emmy. I am cutting her out a Coach in cardboard. Please not a seed-cake, but a plum-cake.

  In consequence of Dobbin‘s victory, his character rose prodigiously in the estimation of all his schoolfellows, and the name of Figs, which had been a byword of reproach, became as respectable and popular a nickname as any other in use in the school. ‘After all, it‘s not his fault that his father‘s a grocer,‘ George Osborne said, who, though a little chap, had a very high popularity among the Swishtail youth; and his opinion was received with great applause. It was voted low to sneer at Dobbin about this accident of birth. ‘Old Figs‘ grew to be a name of kindness and endearment ; and the sneak of an usher jeered at him no longer.

  And Dobbin‘s spirit rose with his altered circumstances. He made wonderful advances in scholastic learning. The superb Cuff himself, at whose condescension Dobbin could only blush and wonder, helped him on with his Latin verses;‘coached‘ him in play-hours; carried him triumphantly out of the little-boy class into the middle-sized form; and even there got a fair place for him. It was discovered, that although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick. To the contentment of all, he passed third in algebra, and got a French prize-book at the public midsummer examination. You should have seen his mother‘s face when Télé maqueau (that delicious romance) was presented to him by the Doctor in the face of the whole school and the parents and company, with an inscription to Gulielmoav Dobbin. All the boys clapped hands in token of applause and sympathy. His blushes, his stumbles, his awkwardness, and the number of feet which he crushed as he went back to his place, who shall describe or calculate? Old Dobbin, his father, who now respected him for the first time, gave him two guineas publicly; most of which he spent in a general tuck-out for the school: and he came back in a tail-coat after the holidays.

  Dobbin was much too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happy change in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and manly disposition: he chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his good fortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed such a love and affection as is only felt by children—such an affection as we read in the charming fairy-book uncouth Orson had for splendid young Valentine his conqueror. He flung himself down at little Osborne‘s feet, and loved him. Even before they were acquainted, he had admired Osborne in secret. Now he was his valet, his dog, his man Friday.aw He believed Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the most generous of created boys. He shared his money with him: bought him uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals, toffee, Little Warblers,ax and romantic books, with large coloured pictures of knights and robbers, in many of which latter you might read inscriptions to George Sedley Osborne, Esquire, from his attached friend William Dobbin—the which tokens of homage George received very graciously, as became his superior merit.

  So that when Lieutenant Osborne, coming to Russell Square on the day of the Vauxhall party, said to the ladies, ‘Mrs. Sedley, ma‘am, I hope you have room; I‘ve asked Dobbin of ours to come and dine here, and go with us to Vauxhall. He‘s almost as modest as Jos.‘

  ‘Modesty! pooh,‘ said the stout gentleman, casting a vainqueuray look at Miss Sharp.

  ‘He is—but you are incomparably more graceful, Sedley,‘ Osborne added, laughing. ‘I met him at the Bedford, when I went to look for you; and I told him that Miss Amelia was come home, and that we were all bent on going out for a night‘s pleasuring; and that Mrs. Sedley had forgiven his breaking the punch-bowl at the child‘s party. Don‘t you remember the catastrophe, ma‘am, seven years ago?‘

  ‘Over Mrs. Flamingo‘s crimson silk gown,‘ said good-natured Mrs. Sedley. ‘What a gawky it was! And his sisters are not much more graceful. Lady Dobbin was at Highbury last night with three of them. Such figures, my dears.‘

  ‘The Alderman‘s very rich, isn‘t he?‘ Osborne said archly. ‘Don‘t you think one of the daughters would be a good spec for me, ma‘am?‘

  ‘You foolish creature! Who would take you, I should like to know, with your yellow face?‘

  ‘Mine a yellow face? Stop till you see Dobbin. Why, he had the yellow fever three times; twice at Nassau, and once at St. Kitts.‘

  ‘Well, well; yours is quite yellow enough for us. Isn‘t it, Emmy?‘ Mrs. Sedley said: at which speech Miss Amelia only made a smile and a blush; and looking at Mr. George Osborne‘s pale interesting countenance, and those beautiful black, curling, shining whiskers, which the young gentleman himself regarded with no ordinary complacency, she thought, in her little heart, that in His Majesty‘s army, or in the wide world, there never was such a face or such a hero. ‘I don‘t care about Captain Dobbin‘s complexion,‘ she said, ‘or about his awkwardness. I shall always like him, I know;‘ her little reason being that he was the friend and champion of George.

  ‘There‘s not a finer fellow in the service
,‘ Osborne said,‘nor a better officer, though he is not an Adonis, certainly.‘ And he looked towards the glass himself with much naïveté; and in so doing, caught Miss Sharp‘s eye fixed keenly upon him, at which he blushed a little, and, Rebecca thought in her heart, ‘Ah, mon beau monsieur!az I think I have your gauge‘—the little artful minx!

  That evening, when Amelia came tripping into the drawing-room in a white muslin frock, prepared for conquest at Vauxhall, singing like a lark, and as fresh as a rose—a very tall ungainly gentleman, with large hands and feet, and large ears, set off by a closely cropped head of black hair, and in the hideous military frogged coat and cocked hat of those times, advanced to meet her, and made her one of the clumsiest bows that was ever performed by a mortal.

  This was no other than Captain William Dobbin, of His Majesty‘s—Regiment of Foot, returned from yellow fever in the West Indies, to which the fortune of the service had ordered his regiment, whilst so many of his gallant comrades were reaping glory in the Peninsula.

  He had arrived with a knock so very timid and quiet, that it was inaudible to the ladies upstairs: otherwise, you may be sure Miss Amelia would never have been so bold as to come singing into the room. As it was, the sweet fresh little voice went right into the captain‘s heart, and nestled there. When she held out her hand for him to shake, before he enveloped it in his own, he paused and thought—‘Well, is it possible—are you the little maid I remember in the pink frock, such a short time ago—the night I upset the punch-bowl, just after I was gazetted? Are you the little girl that George Osborne said should marry him? What a blooming young creature you seem, and what a prize the rogue has got!‘ All this he thought before he took Amelia‘s hand into his own, and as he let his cocked-hat fall.

  His history since he left school, until the very moment when we have the pleasure of meeting him again, although not fully narrated, has yet, I think, been indicated sufficiently for an ingenious reader by the conversation in the last page. Dobbin, the despised grocer, was Alderman Dobbin—Alderman Dobbin was Colonel of the City Light Horse, then burning with military ardour to resist the French Invasion. Colonel Dobbin‘s corps, in which old Mr. Osborne himself was but an indifferent corporal, had been reviewed by the Sovereign and the Duke of York; and the colonel and alderman had been knighted. His son had entered the army: and young Osborne followed presently in the same regiment. They had served in the West Indies and in Canada. Their regiment had just come home, and the attachment of Dobbin to George Osborne was as warm and generous now, as it had been when the two were schoolboys.

  So these worthy people sat down to dinner presently. They talked about war and glory, and Boney and Lord Wellington, and the last Gazette. In those famous days every gazette had a victory in it, and the two gallant young men longed to see their own names in the glorious list, and cursed their unlucky fate to belong to a regiment which had been away from the chances of honour. Miss Sharp kindled with this exciting talk, but Miss Sedley trembled and grew quite faint as she heard it. Mr. Jos told several of his tiger-hunting stories: finished the one about Miss Cutler and Lance the surgeon; helped Rebecca to everything on the table, and himself gobbled and drank a great deal.

  He sprang to open the door for the ladies, when they retired, with the most killing grace—and coming back to the table, filled himself bumper after bumper of claret, which he swallowed with nervous rapidity.

  ‘He‘s priming himself,‘ Osborne whispered to Dobbin, and at length the hour and the carriage arrived for Vauxhall.

  CHAPTER VI

  Vauxhall4

  I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there are some terrific chapters coming presently), and must beg the good-natured reader to remember, that we are only discoursing at present about a stockbroker‘s family in Russell Square, who are taking walks, or luncheon, or dinner, or talking, and making love as people do in common life, and without a single passionate and wonderful incident to mark the progress of their loves. The argument stands thus—Osborne, in love with Amelia, has asked an old friend to dinner and to Vauxhall—Jos Sedley is in love with Rebecca. Will he marry her? That is the great subject now in hand.

  We might have treated this subject in the genteel, or in the romantic, or in the facetious manner.5 Suppose we had laid the scene in Grosvenor Square,ba with the very same adventures—would not some people have listened? Suppose we had shown how Lord Joseph Sedley fell in love, and the Marquis of Osborne became attached to Lady Amelia, with the full consent of the duke, her noble father: or instead of the supremely genteel, suppose we had resorted to the entirely low, and described what was going on in Mr. Sedley‘s kitchen;—how black Sambo was in love with the cook (as indeed he was), and how he fought a battle with the coachman in her behalf; how the knife-boy was caught stealing a cold shoulder of mutton, and Miss Sedley‘s new femme de chambrebb refused to go to bed without a wax candle; such incidents might be made to provoke much delightful laughter, and be supposed to represent scenes of ‘life‘. Or if, on the contrary, we had taken a fancy for the terrible, and made the lover of the new femme de chambre a professional burglar, who bursts into the house with his band, slaughters black Sambo at the feet of his master, and carries off Amelia in her night-dress, not to be let loose again till the third volume, we should easily have con structed a tale of thrilling interest, through the fiery chapters of which the readers should hurry, panting. But my readers must hope for no such romance, only a homely story, and must be content with a chapter about Vauxhall, which is so short that it scarce deserves to be called a chapter at all. And yet it is a chapter, and a very important one too. Are not there little chapters in everybody‘s life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

  Let us then step into the coach with the Russell Square party, and be off to the Gardens. There is barely room between Jos and Miss Sharp, who are on the front seat. Mr. Osborne sitting bodkin opposite, between Captain Dobbin and Amelia.

  Every soul in the coach agreed, that on that night Jos would propose to make Rebecca Sharp Mrs. Sedley. The parents at home had acquiesced in the arrangement, though, between ourselves, old Mr. Sedley had a feeling very much akin to contempt for his son. He said he was vain, selfish, lazy, and effeminate. He could not endure his airs as a man of fashion, and laughed heartily at his pompous braggadocio stories. ‘I shall leave the fellow half my property,‘ he said; ‘and he will have, besides, plenty of his own; but as I am perfectly sure that if you, and I, and his sister were to die to- morrow he would say “Good Gad!” and eat his dinner just as well as usual, I am not going to make myself anxious about him. Let him marry whom he likes. It‘s no affair of mine.‘

  Amelia, on the other hand, as became a young woman of her prudence and temperament, was quite enthusiastic for the match. Once or twice Jos had been on the point of saying something very important to her, to which she was most willing to lend an ear, but the fat fellow could not be brought to unbosom himself of his great secret, and very much to his sister‘s disappointment he only rid himself of a large sigh and turned away.

  This mystery served to keep Amelia‘s gentle bosom in a perpetual flutter of excitement. If she did not speak with Rebecca on the tender subject, she compensated herself with long and intimate conversations with Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, who dropped some hints to the lady‘s-maid, who may have cursorily mentioned the matter to the cook, who carried the news, I have no doubt, to all the tradesmen, so that Mr. Jos‘s marriage was now talked of by a very considerable number of persons in the Russell Square world.

  It was, of course, Mrs. Sedley‘s opinion that her son would demean himself by a marriage with an artist‘s daughter. ‘But, lor‘, ma‘am,‘ ejaculated Mrs. Blenkinsop, ‘we was only grocers when we married Mr. S., who was a stockbroker‘s clerk, and we hadn‘t five hundred pounds among us, and we‘re rich enough now.‘ And Amelia was entirely of this opinion, to which, gradually, the good-natured Mrs. Sedley was brought.

  Mr. Sedley was
neutral. ‘Let Jos marry whom he likes,‘ he said; ‘it‘s no affair of mine. This girl has no fortune; no more had Mrs. Sedley. She seems good-humoured and clever, and will keep him in order, perhaps. Better she, my dear, than a black Mrs. Sedley, and a dozen of mahogany grand-children.‘

  So that everything seemed to smile upon Rebecca‘s fortunes. She took Jos‘s arm, as a matter of course, on going to dinner; she had sat by him on the box of his open carriage (a most tremendous ‘buck‘ he was, as he sat there, serene, in state, driving his greys), and though nobody said a word on the subject of the marriage, everybody seemed to understand it. All she wanted was the proposal, and ah! how Rebecca now felt the want of a mother!—a dear, tender mother, who would have managed the business in ten minutes, and, in the course of a little delicate confidential conversation, would have extracted the interesting avowal from the bashful lips of the young man!

  Such was the state of affairs as the carriage crossed Westminster Bridge.

  The party was landed at the Royal Gardens in due time. As the majestic Jos stepped out of the creaking vehicle the crowd gave a cheer for the fat gentleman, who blushed and looked very big and mighty, as he walked away with Rebecca under his arm. George, of course, took charge of Amelia. She looked as happy as a rose-tree in sunshine.

  ‘I say, Dobbin,‘ says George, ‘just look to the shawls and things, there‘s a good fellow.‘ And so while he paired off Miss Sedley, and Jos squeezed through the gate into the Gardens with Rebecca at his side, honest Dobbin contented himself by giving an arm to the shawls, and by paying at the door for the whole party.

  He walked very modestly behind them. He was not willing to spoil sport. About Rebecca and Jos he did not care a fig. But he thought Amelia worthy even of the brilliant George Osborne, and as he saw that good-looking couple, threading the walks to the girl‘s delight and wonder, he watched her artless happiness with a sort of fatherly pleasure. Perhaps he felt that he would have liked to have something on his own arm besides a shawl (the people laughed at seeing the gawky young officer carrying this female burden); but William Dobbin was very little addicted to selfish calculation at all; and so long as his friend was enjoying himself, how should he be discontented? And the truth is, that of all the delights of the Gardens; of the hundred thousand extra lamps, which were always lighted; the fiddlers, in cocked-hats, who played ravishing melodies under the gilded cockle-shell in the midst of the Gardens; the singers, both of comic and sentimental ballads, who charmed the ears there; the country dances, formed by bouncing cockneys and cockneyesses, and executed amidst jumping, thumping, and laughter; the signal which announced that Madame Saqui was about to mount skyward on a slack-rope ascending to the stars; the hermit that always sat in the illuminated hermitage; the dark walks, so favourable to the interviews of young lovers; the pots of stout handed about by the people in the shabby old liveries; and the twinkling boxes, in which the happy feasters made believe to eat slices of almost invisible ham; of all these things, and of the gentle Simpson,bc that kind smiling idiot, who, I dare say, presided even then over the place—Captain William Dobbin did not take the slightest notice.