We must be brief in descanting upon this part of her career. As I
cannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a shrewd
idea that it is a humbug, so an uninitiated man cannot take upon
himself to portray the great world accurately, and had best keep his
opinions to himself, whatever they are.
Becky has often spoken in subsequent years of this season of her life,
when she moved among the very greatest circles of the London fashion.
Her success excited, elated, and then bored her. At first no
occupation was more pleasant than to invent and procure (the latter a
work of no small trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in a person of Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley's very narrow means)--to procure, we say, the prettiest
new dresses and ornaments; to drive to fine dinner parties, where she
was welcomed by great people; and from the fine dinner parties to fine
assemblies, whither the same people came with whom she had been dining,
whom she had met the night before, and would see on the morrow--the
young men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted, with the neatest
glossy boots and white gloves--the elders portly, brass-buttoned,
noble-looking, polite, and prosy--the young ladies blonde, timid, and
in pink--the mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in
diamonds. They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in the
novels. They talked about each others' houses, and characters, and
families--just as the Joneses do about the Smiths. Becky's former
acquaintances hated and envied her; the poor woman herself was yawning
in spirit. "I wish I were out of it," she said to herself. "I would
rather be a parson's wife and teach a Sunday school than this; or a
sergeant's lady and ride in the regimental waggon; or, oh, how much
gayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers and dance before a
booth at a fair."
"You would do it very well," said Lord Steyne, laughing. She used to
tell the great man her ennuis and perplexities in her artless way--they
amused him.
"Rawdon would make a very good Ecuyer--Master of the Ceremonies--what
do you call him--the man in the large boots and the uniform, who goes
round the ring cracking the whip? He is large, heavy, and of a military
figure. I recollect," Becky continued pensively, "my father took me to
see a show at Brookgreen Fair when I was a child, and when we came
home, I made myself a pair of stilts and danced in the studio to the
wonder of all the pupils."