Pitt Crawley

“ And as for Sir Pitt Crawley, Bart.—Sir Pitt that pattern of decorum, Sir Pitt who had led off at missionary meetings—he never for one moment thought of not going too. "Where you see such persons as the Bishop of Ealing and the Countess of Slingstone, you may be pretty sure, Jane," the Baronet would say, "that we cannot be wrong. The great rank and station of Lord Steyne put him in a position to command people in our station in life. The Lord Lieutenant of a County, my dear, is a respectable man. Besides, George Gaunt and I were intimate in early life ”

“ The elder and younger son of the house of Crawley hated each other cordially, and Rawdon Crawley, who was in the heavy dragoons, seldom came to the place except when Miss Crawley paid her annual visit. The great good quality of this old lady was that she possessed seventy thousand pounds, and had almost adopted Rawdon.
Both Miss Crawley and Rawdon were charmed with Rebecca, and on Lady Crawley's death Sir Pitt said to his children's governess, "I can't get on without you. Come and be my wife. You're as good a lady as ever I see. Say yes, Becky. I'm good for twenty years. ”

“ Craw'ford (Lord) , captain of the Scottish guard at Plessis lés Tours, in the pay of Louis XI.—Sir W. Scott, Quentin Durward (time, Edward IV.) .
Crawley (Sir Pitt) , of Great Gaunt Street, and of Queen's Crawley, Hants. A sharp, miserly, litigious, vulgar, ignorant baronet, very rich, desperately mean, "a philosopher with a taste for low life," and intoxicated every night. Becky Sharp was engaged by him to teach his two daughters. On the death of his second wife, Sir Pitt asked her to become lady Crawley, but Becky had already married his son, Captain Rawdon Crawley. ”

“ Crawley, after a pause.
"'Sir Pitt will do anything,' said the Rector's wife, 'we must get Miss Crawley to make him promise it, James.'
"'Pitt will promise anything,' replied the brother, 'he promised he'd pay my college bills, when my father died; he promised he'd build the new wing to the Rectory. And it is to this man's son—this scoundrel, gambler, swindler, murderer, of a Rawdon Crawley, that Matilda leaves the bulk of her money. I say it's unchristian. By Jove it is. The infamous dog has got every vice except hypocrisy, and that belongs to his brother." ”

“ Only two or three domestics shuddered in the bleak old servant's hall. The stables and offices were vacant, and shut up, and half ruined. Sir Pitt lived in private, and boozed nightly with Horrocks, his butler or house-steward (as he now began to be called) , and the abandoned Ribbons. The times were very much changed since the period when she drove to Mudbury in the spring-cart, and called the small tradesmen "Sir." It may have been shame, or it may have been dislike of his neighbours, but the old Cynic of Queen's Crawley hardly issued from his park-gates at all now. ”

“ His excellency Colonel Rawdon Crawley died of yellow fever at Coventry Island, six weeks before the death of his brother Sir Pitt, who had succeeded to the title.
Rebecca, Lady Crawley (so she called herself, though she never was Lady Crawley) has a liberal allowance, and chiefly hangs about Bath and Cheltenham, where a very strong party of excellent people consider her a most injured woman. ”

“ Sir Pitt was always buying and mortgaging; he had twenty men of business, and quarrels with each; quarrels with all his tenants, and lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers; lawsuits with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was proprietor; and with every person with whom he had business. To unravel these difficulties and to set the estate clear was a task worthy of the orderly and persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel, and he set himself to work with prodigious assiduity. His whole family, of course, was transported to Queen's Crawley, whither Lady Southdown, of course, came too ”

“ No function was complete without the presence of this celebrity, be it bull tight or prize fight, or dog fight, or a prearranged resort to the arbitration of the Winchester. Crawley was a great man, in counterdistinction to a bad man. Personally, he neither quarrelled nor fought, and one would have no more considered shooting at Crawley than he would have considered shooting at his grandmother. This proprietor of the Emporium maintained his position, not by virtue of arms and skill in their use, but by virtue of an interesting something which passed with him for an intellect. ”

“ At a silent gesture Crawley took a chair and sat quivering with curiosity. Meadows walked in deep thought.
“You demanded my confidence. It is a dangerous secret, for once you know it you must serve me with red-hot zeal, or be my enemy and be crushed out of life like a blind-worm, or an adder, Peter Crawley.”
“I know that, dear sir,” assented Peter, ruefully.
“First, how far have you guessed?”
“I guess Mr. Levi is somehow against us.”
“He is,” replied Meadows, carelessly.
“Then that is a bad job. He will beat us. He is as cunning as a fox.” ”

“ Crawley put eager questions, and received ready answers. He was shown the bank up to which the men had ridden in broad daylight; the one on the big horse had the nugget on his saddle; they had taken it, and broken it, and weighed it, and sold it in the bank parlor for three thousand eight hundred pounds. Crawley did not like this, he had rather they had not converted it into paper. His next question was, whether it was known where the men lodged.
“Known! I believe you; why, they are more thought of than the governor. Everybody runs to get a word with them, gentle or simple. ”

“ I was to bribe them to rob.”
“Where do I countenance the use of deadly weapons?”
“Where is there a word against deadly weapons?” asked Crawley, sharply. “Be just to me, sir,” he added in a more whining tone. “You know you are a man that must and will be obeyed. You sent me to Australia to do a certain thing, and you would have flung me to perdition if I had stuck at anything to do it. Well, sir, I tried skill without force—look here,” and he placed a small substance like white sugar on the table. ”

“ Kreutz and Crawley were in communication.
'There is more than chance in that frightful appearance,' I heard Crawley say. 'And this calm too—it will never end. God have mercy on us! Is there no man that will undertake to sink the body? I cannot stand the gaze of these white balls. See! the face is directed towards me; and yet I did not do the deed, though I authorized it. Will no one save me from the glare of the grim avenger? I will give twenty gold pieces to the man who will remove it to the deep. ”

“ He had nothing more to tell me, and he took his departure after receiving his second shilling.
I turned to Crawley and asked him how he had picked up the tramp.
"I was having half a pint at the Staff's Head," replied Crawley, "when he came in. Seeing he was a tramp, stood him a pint, and asked him where he'd come from. From Deering, he said. Then I asked him whether he'd met anybody in particular on the road, and he said nobody; but when I spoke of three men in company, and gave him an idea of what Dr. Peterssen was like, he brightened up and told me what he told you. ”

“ As by contact with Adam Smith he marched at the head of the new and peaceful commercialism, so too through his friendship with Wilberforce he felt the throb of the philanthropic movements of his times.
For the new stirrings of life in the spheres of religion, art, and literature, Pitt felt no deep concern. Like his father, and like that great genius of the South who wrecked his career, he was “a political being.” ”

“ After the severe disappointments of the session of 1785, the signs of friskiness vanish from the life of Pitt. Up to that time his hopefulness is of almost boyish intensity. Confidence in himself, and in the goodness of his cause, and determination to carry out a work of national revival, lead him to grapple with great enterprises in a way that astonishes friends and baffles opponents. ”

“ Now we know the real Pitt; the men of these times saw only the professional mask; and therefore we find exclamations like that of Sir Gilbert Elliot who, after hearing the almost inspired speech of Pitt on the abolition of275 the slave-trade, remarked: “One felt almost to like the man”;378 or again Lady Anne Hamilton in her “Memoirs of the Court of George III,” asserted that Pitt was always cold and carried his frostiness even into his carouses. ”

“ Not one of them had the Boswellian love of detail which enables us to peer right into the heart of Johnson, and discern the loves and hates, the prejudices and envyings, the whims and fancies which swayed it. A man can never be known unless we have, not merely his great speeches, but also his small talk. That of Pitt must have been of singular charm, not only from the richness of his mental gifts, but also from the width of the culture which informed them. In learning he equalled the best of his compeers at Cambridge ”

“ The hours of recreation, rather than those spent in the office, reveal the inner life. Alas! the self-revealing episodes in the life of Pitt are hidden from us. None of his friends was a Boswell. Wilberforce, who might have been the enlightener, was troubled by defective eyesight, which curtailed his correspondence; and his Diary is a series of tantalizing jottings, a veritable Barmecide feast. As for Pitt’s relatives, they never drew him out of himself. Lord Chatham, though a good talker in general company, seems to have exerted on his younger brother a slightly chilling influence ”

“ PETER CRAWLEY received a regular allowance during his chief's absence and remained in constant communication with him, and was as heretofore his money-bag, his tool, his invisible hand. But if anybody had had a microscope and lots of time they might have discovered a gloomy hue spreading itself over Crawley's soul. A pleasant illusion had been rudely shaken.
All men have something they admire.
Crawley admired cunning. It is not a sublime quality, but Crawley thought it was, and revered it with pious, affectionate awe. He had always thought Mr. Meadows No. ”

“ A conspicuous member of the fraternity was Thomas Pitt, the progenitor of two of the greatest British statesmen, and himself a man who in later life won considerable distinction. Pitt was a born free lance. He had gauged to a nicety the foibles of the Oriental and he played upon them with a master hand during a career of almost unbroken prosperity extending from the year 1674 into the new century. The Directors, when they got to hear of him, as they soon did, sent out orders that he should be seized and imprisoned pending the arrival of a ship in which he could be dispatched to England. ”

“ Here, as in other parts of this philanthropic movement, Pitt displayed little or no initiative. To the cause of abolition he gave the support of his eloquence and his influence in Parliament; but he gave no decided lead in these and cognate efforts, a fact which somewhat detracts from his greatness as a statesman in this formative period. The merit of starting the movement and of utilizing new openings belongs to the Quakers, to Granville Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce and his friends. ”

“ This affair deserves mention here because it illustrates what was the chief weakness of Pitt. His secluded childhood, his education apart from other youths, even at Cambridge, his shyness in general company, and his decided preference for the society of a few friends, gave him very few opportunities for knowing ordinary men. ”

“ When those endeavours were frustrated by ignorance and faction, he turned towards France, but slowly and suspiciously. Not until the negotiation was far advanced did he show much eagerness on the subject. But it is the mark of a great Minister to keep a firm grasp upon colleagues and subordinates at all important points; and Pitt saw the futility of Carmarthen’s prejudices no less than the possible danger of Eden’s Gallophile enthusiasm. ”

“ He says he would give his right hand to undo the past."
"The man must be a wretch! Why, he ought to have known your father better!" declared Mrs. Cragg. Like most persons of suspicious temperament, she was voluble in condemning others for doing what she would have done herself.
"I think he ought; but it is easy for us to say that now. I suppose it was not easy for him to feel sure then. My father never spoke a hard word of Mr. Peterson."
"And your father will never know that the truth is found out. I do think that's too bad."
Cragg was silent, watching the light on Pattie's face. ”

“ This having been duly settled, and the proper ceremony of introduction having taken place between the dean and Lucy, they proceeded to discuss the character of Mr. Crawley.
"I have known him all my life," said the dean, "having been at school and college with him, and for years since that I was on terms of the closest intimacy with him; but in spite of that, I do not know how to help him in his need. A prouder-hearted man I never met, or one less willing to share his sorrows with his friends." ”

“ Pitt now began to bestir himself on this matter. In order to have at Paris a commissioner abler, or more acceptable, than Craufurd seems to have been, he made overtures to William Eden (the future Lord Auckland) with a view to his acting as special commissioner in his place. ”

“ Beyond was chaos—a dark gulf, into which the building had disappeared.
No voice spoke, no human being stirred. Cragg could see nothing of Mr. Dale, or of the maid-servant. Only Pattie Dale was visible, and Cragg hurried beneath the window.
"What does it all mean? Are you hurt?" he cried. He was close enough to render shouting unnecessary.
Pattie made no reply. She seemed to be dazed, perhaps hardly conscious. He could see that her blue eyes were widely-opened in a fixed stare.
"My dear," he called, "you must wake up; you must let me help you down. It isn't safe there." ”