Ярмарка тщеславия / Vanity Fair

This is certain, that if the world neglected Miss Sharp, she never was known to do a good action for anybody.

Miss Sharp’s father was an artist, and had given lessons of drawing at Miss Pinkerton’s school. He was a clever man; a pleasant companion; a careless student. When he was drunk, he used to beat his wife and daughter; and the next morning, with a headache, he would rail at the world for its neglect of his genius, and abuse, with a good deal of cleverness, and sometimes with perfect reason, the fools, his brother painters.

He was married to a young woman of the French nation, who was by profession an opera-girl.

Rebecca’s mother had had some education somewhere, and her daughter spoke French with purity and a Parisian accent. When her mother died, her father wrote a letter to Miss Pinkerton, recommending the orphan child to her protection and died too. Rebecca was seventeen when she came to Chiswick; her duties being to talk French, and her privileges to live cost free, and, with a few guineas a year, to gather scraps of knowledge from the professors who attended the school.

She was small and slight in person; pale, sandy-haired, and with eyes habitually cast down: when they looked up they were very large, odd, and attractive. By the side of many tall and bouncing young ladies in the establishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child. But she had the dismal experience of poverty. She talked to tradesmen to have a free meal granted, chatted with her father, who was very proud of her wit, and heard the talk of his wild companions – often ill-suited for a girl to hear.

But she never had been a girl, she said; she had been a woman since she was eight years old. The rigid formality of the place suffocated her. She had a little room, where the maids heard her walking and sobbing at night; but it was with rage, and not with grief.

She had never mingled in the society of women. The gentle tender-hearted Amelia Sedley was the only person to whom she could attach herself in the least.

The advantages of the young women round her gave Rebecca pangs of envy.

She took advantage, therefore, of the means of study the place offered her; and as she was already a musician and a good linguist, she speedily went through the little course of study which was considered necessary for ladies in those days.

Miss Pinkerton noticed her level of music performance and said to Miss Sharp that she was to instruct the children in music for the future.