Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the honour to encounter
on this her first presentation to the grand world, it does not become
the present historian to say much. There was his Excellency the Prince
of Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly girthed, with a
large military chest, on which the plaque of his order shone
magnificently, and wearing the red collar of the Golden Fleece round
his neck. He was the owner of countless flocks. "Look at his face. I
think he must be descended from a sheep," Becky whispered to Lord
Steyne. Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long, solemn, and white,
with the ornament round his neck, bore some resemblance to that of a
venerable bell-wether.
There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to the
American Embassy and correspondent of the New York Demagogue, who, by
way of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne,
during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear friend,
George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and George had been most intimate
at Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together. Mr. Jones wrote a full
and particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in the
Demagogue. He mentioned the names and titles of all the guests, giving
biographical sketches of the principal people. He described the
persons of the ladies with great eloquence; the service of the table;
the size and costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and wines
served; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable value of the
plate. Such a dinner he calculated could not be dished up under
fifteen or eighteen dollars per head. And he was in the habit, until
very lately, of sending over proteges, with letters of recommendation
to the present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimate
terms on which he had lived with his dear friend, the late lord. He
was most indignant that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earl
of Southdown, should have taken the pas of him in their procession to
the dining-room. "Just as I was stepping up to offer my hand to a
very pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley,"--he wrote--"the young patrician interposed between me
and the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology. I was
fain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's husband, a stout
red-faced warrior who distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he had
better luck than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans."
The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite society wore as
many blushes as the face of a boy of sixteen assumes when he is
confronted with his sister's schoolfellows. It has been told before
that honest Rawdon had not been much used at any period of his life to
ladies' company. With the men at the Club or the mess room, he was
well enough; and could ride, bet, smoke, or play at billiards with the
boldest of them. He had had his time for female friendships too, but
that was twenty years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of those
with whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as having been
familiar before he became abashed in the presence of Miss Hardcastle.
The times are such that one scarcely dares to allude to that kind of
company which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are frequenting
every day, which nightly fills casinos and dancing-rooms, which is
known to exist as well as the Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation at
St. James's--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral of
societies is determined to ignore. In a word, although Colonel Crawley
was now five-and-forty years of age, it had not been his lot in life to
meet with a half dozen good women, besides his paragon of a wife. All
except her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature had tamed
and won him, scared the worthy Colonel, and on occasion of his first
dinner at Gaunt House he was not heard to make a single remark except
to state that the weather was very hot. Indeed Becky would have left
him at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by her
side to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her first
appearance in polite society.