“Hush! Don’t wake Georgy!”
she added, as William Dobbin went to the door with
heavy steps. She did not hear the noise of his
cab-wheels as he drove away: she was looking
at the child, who was laughing in his sleep.
How to Live Well on Nothing a Year
I suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair of ours
so little observant as not to think sometimes about
the worldly affairs of his acquaintances, or so extremely
charitable as not to wonder how his neighbour Jones,
or his neighbour Smith, can make both ends meet at
the end of the year. With the utmost regard for
the family, for instance (for I dine with them twice
or thrice in the season), I cannot but own that the
appearance of the Jenkinses in the park, in the large
barouche with the grenadier-footmen, will surprise
and mystify me to my dying day: for though I
know the equipage is only jobbed, and all the Jenkins
people are on board wages, yet those three men and
the carriage must represent an expense of six hundred
a year at the very least—and then there
are the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, the
prize governess and masters for the girls, the trip
abroad, or to Eastbourne or Worthing, in the autumn,
the annual ball with a supper from Gunter’s
(who, by the way, supplies most of the first-rate
dinners which J. gives, as I know very well, having
been invited to one of them to fill a vacant place,
when I saw at once that these repasts are very superior
to the common run of entertainments for which the
humbler sort of J.’s acquaintances get cards)—who,
I say, with the most good-natured feelings in the
world, can help wondering how the Jenkinses make out
matters? What is Jenkins? We all know—Commissioner
of the Tape and Sealing Wax Office, with 1200 pounds
a year for a salary. Had his wife a private
fortune? Pooh!—Miss Flint—one
of eleven children of a small squire in Buckinghamshire.
All she ever gets from her family is a turkey at
Christmas, in exchange for which she has to board two
or three of her sisters in the off season, and lodge
and feed her brothers when they come to town.
How does Jenkins balance his income? I say,
as every friend of his must say, How is it that he
has not been outlawed long since, and that he ever
came back (as he did to the surprise of everybody)
last year from Boulogne?
“I” is here introduced to personify the
world in general—the Mrs. Grundy of each
respected reader’s private circle—every
one of whom can point to some families of his acquaintance
who live nobody knows how. Many a glass of wine
have we all of us drunk, I have very little doubt,
hob-and-nobbing with the hospitable giver and wondering
how the deuce he paid for it.
