Vanity Fair T

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Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray

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Vanity Fair

BEFORE THE CURTAIN

As the manager of the Performance sits before thecurtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of thebustling place. There is a great quantity of eating anddrinking, making love and jilting, laughing and thecontrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing andfiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling thewomen, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawlingin front of their booths, and yokels looking up at thetinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while thelight-fingered folk are operating upon their pocketsbehind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral placecertainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at thefaces of the actors and buffoons when they come off fromtheir business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off hischeeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and thelittle Jack Puddings behind the canvas. The curtain will beup presently, and he will be turning over head and heels,and crying, ‘How are you?’2

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A man with a reflective turn of mind, walking throughan exhibition of this sort, will not be oppressed, I take it,by his own or other people’s hilarity. An episode of humour or kindness touches and amuses him here andthere—a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; apretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her andchooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind thewaggon, mumbling his bone with the honest family whichlives by his tumbling; but the general impression is onemore melancholy than mirthful. When you come home you sit down in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitableframe of mind, and apply yourself to your books or your business.I have no other moral than this to tag to the presentstory of ‘Vanity Fair.’ Some people consider Fairs immoralaltogether, and eschew such, with their servants andfamilies: very likely they are right. But persons who thinkotherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcasticmood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, andlook at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts;some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding,some scenes of high life, and some of very middlingindeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and somelight comic business; the whole accompanied by3

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