"Ask Mamma"; or, The Richest Commoner In England
by Robert Smith Surtees · English · Gutenberg #44822 · 1,135,084 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: "Ask Mamma"; or, The Richest Commoner In England
Author: Robert Smith Surtees
Illustrator: John Leech
Release date: February 2, 2014 [eBook #44822]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44822
Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "ASK MAMMA"; OR, THE RICHEST COMMONER IN ENGLAND ***
“ASK MAMMA”,
or
THE RICHEST COMMONER IN ENGLAND
By R. S. Surtees
Illustrated by JOHN LEECH
001m
_Original Size_
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.
CHAPTER I. OUR HERO AND CO.—A SLEEPING PARTNER.
CHAPTER II. THE ROAD.
CHAPTER III. THE ROAD RESUMED.—MISS PHEASANT-FEATHERS.
CHAPTER IV. A GLASS COACH.—MISS WILLING (EN GRAND COSTUME)
CHAPTER V. THE LADY’S BOUDOIR.—A DECLARATION.
CHAPTER VI. THE HAPPY UNITED FAMILY.—CURTAIN CRESCENT.
CHAPTER VII. THE EARL OF LADYTHORNE.—MISS DE GLANCEY.
CHAPTER VIII. CUB-HUNTING.
CHAPTER IX. A PUP AT WALK.—IMPERIAL JOHN.
CHAPTER X. JEAN ROUGIER, OR JACK ROGERS.
CHAPTER XI. THE OPENING DAY.—THE HUNT BREAKFAST.
CHAPTER XII. THE MORNING FOX.—THE AFTERNOON FOX.
CHAPTER XIII. GONE AWAY!
CHAPTER XIV. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE.
CHAPTER XV. MAJOR YAMMERTON’S COACH STOPS THE WAY.
CHAPTER XVI. THE MAJOR’S MENAGE.
CHAPTER XVII. ARRIVAL AT YAMMERTON GRANGE.—A FAMILY PARTY.
CHAPTER XVIII. A LEETLE, CONTRETEMPS.
CHAPTER XIX. THE MAJOR’S STUD.
CHAPTER XX. CARDS FOR A SPREAD.
CHAPTER XXI. THE GATHERING.—THE GRAND SPREAD ITSELF.
CHAPTER XXII. A HUNTING MORNING.—UNKENNELING.
CHAPTER XXIII. SHOWING A HORSE.—THE MEET.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE WILD BEAST ITSELF.
CHAPTER XXV. A CRUEL FINISH.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE.
CHAPTER XXVII. SIR MOSES MAINCHANCE.
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE HIT-IM AND HOLD-IM SHIRE HOUNDS.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE PANGBURN PARK ESTATE.
CHAPTER XXX. COMMERCE AND AGRICULTURE.
CHAPTER XXXI. SIR MOSES’S MENAGE.—DEPARTURE OF FINE BILLY.
CHAPTER XXXII. THE BAD STABLE; OR, “IT’S ONLY FOR ONE NIGHT.”
CHAPTER XXXIII. SIR MOSES’S SPREAD.
CHAPTER XXXIV. GOING TO COVER WITH THE HOUNDS.
CHAPTER XXXV. THE MEET.
CHAPTER XXXVI. A BIRD’S EYE VIEW.
CHAPTER XXXVII. TWO ACCOUNTS OF A RUN; OR, LOOK ON THIS PICTURE.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE SICK HORSE AND THE SICK MASTER.
CHAPTER XXXIX. MR. PRINGLE SUDDENLY BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE H.
H. H.
CHAPTER XL. THE HUNT DINNER,
CHAPTER XLI. THE HUNT TEA.—BUSHEY HEATH AND BARE ACRES.
CHAPTER XLII. MR. GEORDEY GALLON.
CHAPTER XLIII. SIR MOSES PERPLEXED—THE RENDEZVOUS FOR THE RACE.
CHAPTER XLIV. THE RACE ITSELF.
CHAPTER XLV. HENEREY BROWN & CO. AGAIN.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE PRINGLE CORRESPONDENCE.
CHAPTER XLVII. A CATASTROPHE.—A TÊTE-À-TÊTE DINNER
CHAPTER XLVIII. ROUGIER’S MYSTERIOUS LODGINGS—THE GIFT HORSE.
CHAPTER XLIX. THE SHAM DAY.
CHAPTER L. THE SURPRISE.
CHAPTER LI. MONEY AND MATRIMONY.
CHAPTER LII. A NIGHT DRIVE.
CHAPTER LIII. MASTER ANTHONY THOM.
CHAPTER LIV. MR. WOTHERSPOON’S DEJEUNER À LA FOURCHETTE.
CHAPTER LV. THE COUNCIL OF WAR.—POOR PUSS AGAIN!
CHAPTER LVI. A FINE RUN!—THE MAINCHANCE CORRESPONDENCE.
CHAPTER LVII. THE ANTHONY THOM TRAP.
CHAPTER LVIII. THE ANTHONY THOM TAKE.
CHAPTER LIX. ANOTHER COUNCIL OF WAR.—MR. GALLON AT HOME.
CHAPTER LX. MR. CARROTY KEBBEL.
CHAPTER LXI. THE HUNT BALL.—MISS DE GLANCEY’S REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXII. LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT.—CUPID’S SETTLING DAY.
CHAPTER LXIII. A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT.
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.
IT may be a recommendation to the lover of light literature to be
told, that the following story does not involve the complication
of a plot. It is a mere continuous narrative of an almost
everyday exaggeration, interspersed with sporting scenes and
excellent illustrations by Leech.
March 31, 1858.
CHAPTER I. OUR HERO AND CO.—A SLEEPING PARTNER.
017m _Original Size_
ONSIDERING that Billy Pringle, or Fine Billy, as his good-natured
friends called him, was only an underbred chap, he was as good an
imitation of a Swell as ever we saw. He had all the airy
dreaminess of an hereditary high flyer, while his big talk and
off-hand manner strengthened the delusion.
It was only when you came to close quarters with him, and found
that though he talked in pounds he acted in pence, and marked his
fine dictionary words and laboured expletives, that you came to
the conclusion that he was “painfully gentlemanly.” So few
people, however, agree upon what a gentleman is, that Billy was
well calculated to pass muster with the million. Fine shirts,
fine ties, fine talk, fine trinkets, go a long way towards
furnishing the character with many. Billy was liberal, not to say
prodigal, in all these. The only infallible rule we know is, that
the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is
one. Just as the man who is always talking about honour,
morality, fine feeling, and so on never knows anything of these
qualities but the name.
Nature had favoured Billy’s pretensions in the lady-killing way.
In person he was above the middle height, five feet eleven or so,
slim and well-proportioned, with a finely-shaped head and face,
fair complexion, light brown hair, laughing blue eyes, with long
lashes, good eyebrows, regular pearly teeth and delicately
pencilled moustache. Whiskers he did not aspire to. Nor did Billy
abuse the gifts of Nature by disguising himself in any of the
vulgar groomy gamekeepery style of dress, that so effectually
reduce all mankind to the level of the labourer, nor adopt any of
the “loud” patterns that have lately figured so conspicuously in
our streets. On the contrary, he studied the quiet unobtrusive
order of costume, and the harmony of colours, with a view of
producing a perfectly elegant general effect. Neatly-fitting
frock or dress coats, instead of baggy sacks, with trouser legs
for sleeves, quiet-patterned vests and equally quiet-patterned
trousers. If he could only have been easy in them he would have
done extremely well, but there was always a nervous twitching,
and jerking, and feeling, as if he was wondering what people were
thinking or saying of him.
In the dress department he was ably assisted by his mother, a
lady of very considerable taste, who not only fashioned his
clothes but his mind, indeed we might add his person, Billy
having taken after her, as they say; for his father, though an
excellent man and warm, was rather of the suet-dumpling order of
architecture, short, thick, and round, with a neck that was
rather difficult to find. His name, too, was William, and some,
the good-natured ones again of course, used to say that he might
have been called “Fine Billy the first,” for under the auspices
of his elegant wife he had assumed a certain indifference to
trade; and when in the grand strut at Ramsgate or Broadstairs, or
any of his watering-places, if appealed to about any of the
things made or dealt in by any of the concerns in which he was a
“Co.,” he used to raise his brows and shrug his shoulders, and
say with a very deprecatory sort of air, “‘Pon my life, I should
say you’re right,” or “‘Deed I should say it was so,” just as if
he was one of the other Pringles,—the Pringles who have nothing
to do with trade,—and in noways connected with Pringle & Co.;
Pringle & Potts; Smith, Sharp & Pringle; or any of the firms that
the Pringles carried on under the titles of the original
founders. He was neither a tradesman nor a gentleman. The
Pringles—like the happy united family we meet upon wheels; the
dove nestling with the gorged cat, and so on—all pulled well
together when there was a common victim to plunder; and kept
their hands in by what they called taking fair advantages of each
other, that is to say, cheating each other, when there was not.
Nobody knew the ins and outs of the Pringles. If they let their
own right hands know what their left hands did, they took care
not to let anybody else’s right hand know. In multiplicity of
concerns they rivalled that great man “Co.,” who the country-lad
coming to London said seemed to be in partnership with almost
everybody. The author of “Who’s Who?” would be puzzled to post
people who are Brown in one place, Jones in a second, and
Robinson in a third. Still the Pringles were “a most respectable
family,” mercantile morality being too often mere matter of
moonshine. The only member of the family who was not exactly
“legally honest,”—legal honesty being much more elastic than
common honesty,—was cunning Jerry, who thought to cover by his
piety the omissions of his practice. He was a fawning,
sanctified, smooth-spoken, plausible, plump little man, who
seemed to be swelling with the milk of human kindness, anxious
only to pour it out upon some deserving object. His manner was so
frank and bland, and his front face smile so sweet, that it was
cruel of his side one to contradict the impression and show the
cunning duplicity of his nature. Still he smirked and smiled, and
“bless-you, dear” and “hope-your-happy,” deared the women, that,
being a bachelor, they all thought it best to put up with his
“mistakes,” as he called his peculations, and sought his favour
by frequent visits with appropriate presents to his elegant villa
at Peckham Rye. Here he passed for quite a model man; twice to
church every Sunday, and to the lecture in the evening, and would
not profane the sanctity of the day by having a hot potato to eat
with his cold meat.
He was a ripe rogue, and had been jointly or severally, as the
lawyers say, in a good many little transactions that would not
exactly bear inspection; and these “mistakes” not tallying with
the sanctified character he assumed, he had been obliged to
wriggle out of them as best he could, with the loss of as few
feathers as possible. At first, of course, he always tried the
humbugging system, at which he was a great adept; that failing,
he had recourse to bullying, at which he was not bad, declaring
that the party complaining was an ill-natured, ill-conditioned,
quarrelsome fellow, who merely wanted a peg to hang a grievance
upon, and that Jerry, so far from defrauding him, had been the
best friend he ever had in his life, and that he would put him
through every court in the kingdom before he would be imposed
upon, by him. If neither of these answered, and Jerry found
himself pinned in a corner, he feigned madness, when his
solicitor, Mr. Supple, appeared, and by dint of legal threats,
and declaring that if the unmerited persecution was persisted in,
it would infallibly consign his too sensitive client to a lunatic
asylum, he generally contrived to get Jerry out of the scrape by
some means or other best known to themselves. Then Jerry, of
course, being clear, would inuendo his own version of the story
as dexterously as he could, always taking care to avoid a
collision with the party, but more than insinuating that he
(Jerry) had been infamously used, and his well-known love of
peace and quietness taken advantage of; and though men of the
world generally suspect the party who is most anxious to
propagate his story to be in the wrong, yet their number is but
small compared to those who believe anything they are told, and
who cannot put “that and that” together for themselves.
So Jerry went on robbing and praying and passing for a very
proper man. Some called him “cunning Jerry,” to distinguish him
from an uncle who was Jerry also; but as this name would not do
for the family to adopt, he was generally designated by them as
“Want-nothin’-but-what’s-right Jerry,” that being the form of
words with which he generally prefaced his extortions. In the
same way they distinguished between a fat Joe and a thin one,
calling the thin one merely “Joe,” and the fat one “Joe who can’t
get within half a yard of the table;” and between two clerks,
each bearing the not uncommon name of Smith, one being called
Smith, the other “Head-and-shoulders Smith,”—the latter, of
course, taking his title from his figure.
With this outline of the Pringle family, we will proceed to draw
out such of its members as figure more conspicuously in our
story.
With Mrs. William Pringle’s (_née_ Willing) birth, parentage, and
education, we would gladly furnish the readers of this work with
some information, but, unfortunately, it does not lie in our
power so to do, for the simple reason, that we do not know
anything. We first find her located at that eminent Court
milliner and dressmaker’s, Madame Adelaide Banboxeney, in
Furbelow Street, Berkeley Square, where her elegant manners, and
obliging disposition, to say nothing of her taste in torturing
ribbons and wreaths, and her talent for making plain girls into
pretty ones, earned for her a very distinguished reputation. She
soon became first-hand, or trier-on, and unfortunately, was
afterwards tempted into setting-up for herself, when she soon
found, that though fine ladies like to be cheated, it must be
done in style, and by some one, if not with a carriage, at all
events with a name; and that a bonnet, though beautiful in Bond
Street, loses all power of attraction if it is known to come out
of Bloomsbury. Miss Willing was, therefore, soon sold up; and
Madame Banboxeney (whose real name was Brown, Jane Brown, wife of
John Brown, who was a billiard-table marker, until his wife’s
fingers set him up in a gig), Madame Banboxeney, we say, thinking
to profit by Miss Willing’s misfortunes, offered her a very
reduced salary to return to her situation; but Miss Willing
having tasted the sweets of bed, a thing she very seldom did at
Madame Banboxeney’s, at least not during the season, stood out
for more money; the consequence of which was, she lost that
chance, and had the benefit of Madame’s bad word at all the other
establishments she afterwards applied to. In this dilemma, she
resolved to turn her hand to lady’s-maid-ism; and having mastered
the science of hair-dressing, she made the rounds of the
accustomed servant-shops, grocers, oilmen, brushmen, and so on,
asking if they knew of any one wanting a perfect lady’s-maid.
As usual in almost all the affairs of life, the first attempt was
a failure. She got into what she thoroughly despised, an untitled
family, where she had a great deal more to do than she liked, and
was grossly “put upon” both by the master and missis. She gave
the place up, because, as she said, “the master would come into
the missis’s room with nothing but his night-shirt and spectacles
on,” but, in reality, because the missis had some of her things
made-up for the children instead of passing them on, as of right
they ought to have been, to her. She deeply regretted ever having
demeaned herself by taking such a situation. Being thus out of
place, and finding the many applications she made for other
situations, when she gave a reference to her former one, always
resulted in the ladies declining her services, sometimes on the
plea of being already suited, or of another “young person” having
applied just before her, or of her being too young (they never
said too pretty, though one elderly lady on seeing her shook her
head, and said she “had sons”); and, being tired of living on old
tea leaves, Miss Willing resolved to sink her former place, and
advertise as if she had just left Madame Banboxeney’s.
Accordingly she drew out a very specious advertisement, headed
“_to the nobility_,” offering the services of a lady’s-maid, who
thoroughly understood millinery, dress-making, hair-dressing, and
getting up fine linen, with an address to a cheese shop, and made
an arrangement to give Madame Banboxeney a lift with a heavy
wedding order she was busy upon, if she would recommend her as
just fresh from her establishment.
This advertisement produced a goodly crop of letters, and Miss
Willing presently closed with the Honourable Mrs. Cavesson, whose
husband was a good deal connected with the turf, enjoying that
certain road to ruin which so many have pursued; and it says much
for Miss Willing’s acuteness, that though she entered Mrs.
Cavesson’s service late in the day, when all the preliminaries
for a smash had been perfected, her fine sensibilities and
discrimination enabled her to anticipate the coming evil, and to
deposit her mistress’s jewellery in a place of safety
three-quarters of an hour before the bailiffs entered. This act
of fidelity greatly enhanced her reputation, and as it was well
known that “poor dear Mrs. Cavesson” would not be able to keep
her, there were several great candidates for this “treasure of a
maid.” Miss Willing had now nothing to do but pick and choose;
and after some consideration, she selected what she called a high
quality family, one where there was a regular assessed tax-paper
establishment of servants, where the butler sold his lord’s
wine-custom to the highest bidder, and the heads of all the
departments received their “reglars” upon the tradesmen’s bills;
the lady never demeaning herself by wearing the same gloves or
ball-shoes twice, or propitiating the nurse by presents of
raiment that was undoubtedly hers—we mean the maid’s. She was a
real lady, in the proper acceptation of the term.
This was the beautiful, and then newly married, Countess Delacey,
whose exquisite garniture will still live in the recollection of
many of the now bald-headed beaux of that period. For these
delightful successes, the countess was mainly indebted to our
hero’s mother, Miss Willing, whose suggestive genius oft came to
the aid of the perplexed and exhausted milliner. It was to the
service of the Countess Delacey that Miss Willing was indebted
for becoming the wife of Mr. Pringle, afterwards “Fine Billy the
first,”—an event that deserves to be introduced in a separate
chapter.
CHAPTER II. THE ROAD.
IT was on a cold, damp, raw December morning, before the
emancipating civilisation of railways, that our hero’s father,
then returning from a trading tour, after stamping up and down
the damp flags before the Lion and Unicorn hotel and
posting-house at Slopperton, waiting for the old True Blue
Independent coach “comin’ hup,” for whose cramped inside he had
booked a preference seat, at length found himself bundled into
the straw-bottomed vehicle, to a very different companion to what
he was accustomed to meet in those deplorable conveyances.
Instead of a fusty old farmer, or a crumby basket-encumbered
market-woman, he found himself opposite a smiling, radiant young
lady, whose elegant dress and ring-bedizened hand proclaimed, as
indeed was then generally the case with ladies, that she was
travelling in a coach “for the first time in her life.”
This was our fair friend, Miss Willing.
The Earl and Countess Delacey had just received an invitation to
spend the Christmas at Tiara Castle, where the countess on the
previous year had received if not a defeat, at all events had not
achieved a triumph, in the dressing way, over the Countess of
Honiton, whose maid, Miss Criblace, though now bribed to secrecy
with a full set of very little the worse for wear Chinchilla fur,
had kept the fur and told the secret to Miss Willing, that their
ladyships were to meet again. Miss Willing was now on her way to
town, to arrange with the Countess’s milliner for an annihilating
series of morning and evening dresses wherewith to extinguish
Lady Honiton, it being utterly impossible, as our fair friends
will avouch, for any lady to appear twice in the same attire. How
thankful men ought to be that the same rule does not prevail with
them!
Miss Willing was extremely well got up; for being of nearly the
same size as the countess, her ladyship’s slightly-worn things
passed on to her with scarcely a perceptible diminution of
freshness, it being remarkable how, in even third and fourth-rate
establishments, dresses that were not fit for the “missus” to be
seen in come out quite new and smart on the maid.
On this occasion Miss Willing ran entirely to the dark colours,
just such as a lady travelling in her own carriage might be
expected to wear. A black terry velvet bonnet with a single
ostrich feather, a dark brown Levantine silk dress, with rich
sable cuffs, muff, and boa, and a pair of well-fitting
primrose-coloured kid gloves, which if they ever had been on
before had not suffered by the act.
Billy—old Billy that is to say—was quite struck in a heap at such
an unwonted apparition, and after the then usual salutations, and
inquiries how she would like to have the window, he popped the
old question, “How far was she going?” with very different
feelings to what it was generally asked, when the traveller
wished to calculate how soon he might hope to get rid of his
_vis-à-vis_ and lay up his legs on the seat.
“To town,” replied the lady, dimpling her pretty cheeks with a
smile. “And you?” asked she, thinking to have as good as she
gave.
“Ditto,” replied the delighted Billy, divesting himself of a
great coarse blue and white worsted comforter, and pulling up his
somewhat dejected gills, abandoning the idea of economising his
Lincoln and Bennett by the substitution of an old Gregory’s
mixture coloured fur cap, with its great ears tied over the top,
in which he had snoozed and snored through many a long journey.
Miss Willing then drew from her richly-buckled belt a beautiful
Geneva watch set round with pearls, (her ladyship’s, which she
was taking to town to have repaired), and Billy followed suit
with his substantial gold-repeater, with which he struck the
hour. Miss then ungloved the other hand, and passed it down her
glossy brown hair, all smooth and regular, for she had just been
scrutinising it in a pocket-mirror she had in her
gold-embroidered reticule.
Billy’s commercial soul was in ecstacies, and he was fairly over
head and ears in love before they came to the first change of
horses. He had never seen sich a sample of a hand before, no, nor
sich a face; and he felt quite relieved when among the
multiplicity of rings he failed to discover that thin plain gold
one that intimates so much.
Whatever disadvantages old stage coaches possessed, and their
name certainly was legion, it must be admitted that in a case of
this sort their slowness was a recommendation. The old True Blue
Independent did not profess to travel or trail above eight miles
an hour, and this it only accomplished under favourable
circumstances, such as light loads, good roads, and stout steeds,
instead of the top-heavy cargo that now ploughed along the woolly
turnpike after the weak, jaded horses, that seemed hardly able to
keep their legs against the keen careering wind. If, under such
circumstances, the wretched concern made the wild-beast-show
looking place in London, called an inn, where it put up, an hour
or an hour and a half or so after its time, it was said to be all
very well, “considering,”—and this, perhaps, in a journey of
sixty miles.
Posterity will know nothing of the misery their forefathers
underwent in the travelling way; and whenever we hear—which we
often do—unreasonable grumblings about the absence of trifling
luxuries on railways, we are tempted to wish the parties
consigned to a good long ride in an old stage coach. Why the
worst third class that ever was put next the engine is infinitely
better than the inside of the best of them used to be, to say
nothing of the speed. As to the outsides of the old coaches, with
their roastings, their soakings, their freezings, and their
smotherings with dust, one cannot but feel that the establishment
of railways was a downright prolongation of life. Then the coach
refreshments, or want of refreshments rather; the turning out at
all hours to breakfast, dine, or sup, just as the coach reached
the house of a proprietor “wot oss’d it,” and the cool incivility
of every body about the place. Any thing was good enough for a
coach passenger.
On this auspicious day, though Miss Willing had her reticule full
of macaroons and sponge biscuits, and Fine Billy the first had a
great bulging paper of sandwiches in his brown overcoat pocket,
they neither of them felt the slightest approach to hunger, ere
the lumbering vehicle, after a series of clumsy,
would-be-dash-cutting lurches and evolutions over the rough
inequalities of the country pavement, pulled up short at the
arched doorway of the Salutation Inn—we beg pardon, hotel—in
Bramfordrig, and a many-coated, brandy-faced, blear-eyed guard
let in a whole hurricane of wind while proclaiming that they
“dined there and stopped half an hour.” Then Fine Billy the first
had an opportunity of showing his gallantry and surveying the
figure of his innamorata, as he helped her down the perilous
mud-shot iron steps of the old Independent, and certainly never
countess descended from her carriage on a drawing-room day with
greater elegance than Miss Willing displayed on the present
occasion, showing a lettle circle of delicate white linen
petticoat as she protected her clothes from the mud-begrimed
wheel, and just as much fine open-worked stocking above the
fringed top of her Adelaide boots. On reaching the ground, which
she did with a curtsey, she gave such a sweet smile as emboldened
our Billy to offer his arm; and amid the nudging of outsiders,
and staring of street-loungers, and “make way"-ing of inn
hangers-on, our Billy strutted up the archway with all the
dignity of a drum-major. His admiration increased as he now
became sensible of the lady’s height, for like all little men he
was an admirer of tall women. As he caught a glimpse of himself
in the unbecoming mirror between the drab and red fringed window
curtains of the little back room into which they were ushered, he
wished he had had on his new blue coat and bright buttons, with a
buff vest, instead of the invisible green and black spot
swansdown one in which he was then attired.
The outside passengers having descended from their eminences,
proceeded to flagellate themselves into circulation, and throw
off their husks, while Billy strutted consequentially in with the
lady on his arm, and placed her in the seat of honour beside
himself at the top of the table. The outsides then came swarming
in, jostling the dish-bearers and seating themselves as they
could. All seemed bent upon getting as much as they could for
their money.
Pork was the repast. Pork in varions shapes: roast at the top,
boiled at the bottom, sausages on one side, fry on the other; and
Miss Willing couldn’t eat pork, and, curious coincidence! neither
could Billy. The lady having intimated this to Billy in the most
delicate way possible, for she had a particular reason for not
wishing to aggravate the new landlord, Mr. Bouncible, Billy
gladly sallied forth to give battle as it were on his own
account, and by way of impressing the household with his
consequence, he ordered a bottle of Teneriffe as he passed the
bar, and then commenced a furious onslaught about the food when
he got into the kitchen. This reading of the riot act brought
Bouncible from his “Times,” who having been in the profession
himself took Billy for a nobleman’s gentleman, or a house-steward
at least—a class of men not so easily put upon as their masters.
He therefore, after sundry regrets at the fare not being ‘zactly
to their mind, which he attributed to its being washing-day,
offered to let them have the first turn at a very nice dish of
hashed venison that was then simmering on the fire for Mrs. B.
and himself, provided our travellers would have the goodness to
call it hashed mutton, so that it might not be devoured by the
outsiders, a class of people whom all landlords held in great
contempt. To this proposition Billy readily assented, and
returned triumphantly to the object of his adoration. He then
slashed right and left at the roast pork, and had every plate but
hers full by the time the hashed mutton made its appearance. He
then culled out all the delicate tit-bits for his fair partner,
and decked her hot plate with sweet sauce and mealy potatoes.
Billy’s turn came next, and amidst demands for malt liquor and
the arrival of smoking tumblers of brown brandy and water,
clatter, patter, clatter, patter, became the order of the day,
with an occasional suspicious, not to say dissatisfied, glance of
a pork-eating passenger at the savoury dish at the top of the
table. Mr. Bonncible, however, brought in the Teneriffe just at
the critical moment, when Billy having replenished both plates,
the pork-eaters might have expected to be let in; and walked off
with the dish in exchange for the decanter. Our friends then
pledged each other in a bumper of Cape. The pork was followed by
an extremely large strong-smelling Cheshire cheese, in a high
wooden cradle, which in its turn was followed by an extremely
large strong-smelling man in a mountainous many-caped greatcoat,
who with a bob of his head and a kick out behind, intimated that
paying time was come for him. Growls were then heard of its not
being half an hour, or of not having had their full time,
accompanied by dives into the pockets and reticules for the
needful—each person wondering how little he could give without a
snubbing.
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Quite “optional” of course. Billy, who was bent on doing the
magnificent, produced a large green-and-gold-tasseled purse,
almost as big as a stocking, and drew therefrom a great
five-shilling piece, which having tapped imposingly on his plate,
he handed ostentatiously to the man, saying, “for this lady and
me,” just as if she belonged to him; whereupon down went the head
even with the table, with an undertoned intimation that Billy
“needn’t ‘urry, for he would make it all right with the guard.”
The waiter followed close on the heels of the coachman, drawing
every body for half-a-crown for the dinner, besides what they had
had to drink, and what they “pleased for himself,” and Billy
again anticipated the lady by paying for both. Instead, however,
of disputing his right so to do, she seemed to take it as a
matter of course, and bent a little forward and said in a sort of
half-whisper, though loud enough to be heard by a twinkling-eyed,
clayey-complexioned she-outsider, sitting opposite, dressed in a
puce-coloured cloth pelisse and a pheasant-feather bonnet, “I
fear you will think me very troublesome, but do you think you
could manage to get me a finger-glass?” twiddling her pretty
taper fingers as she spoke.
“Certainly!” replied Billy, all alacrity, “certainly.”
“With a little tepid water,” continued Miss Willing, looking
imploringly at Billy as he rose to fulfil her behests.
“Such airs!” growled Pheasant-feathers to her next neighbour with
an indignant toss of her colour-varying head.
Billy presently appeared, bearing one of the old deep
blue-patterned finger-glasses, with a fine damask napkin, marked
with a ducal coronet—one of the usual perquisites of servitude.
Miss then holding each pretty hand downwards, stripped her
fingers of their rings, just as a gardener strips a stalk of
currants of its fruit, dropping, however, a large diamond ring
(belonging to her ladyship, which she was just airing) skilfully
under the table, and for which fat Billy had to dive like a dog
after an otter.
“Oh, dear!” she was quite ashamed at her awkwardness and the
trouble she had given, she assured Billy, as he rose red and
panting from the pursuit.
“Done on purpose to show her finery,” muttered Pheasant-feather
bonnet, with a sneer.
Miss having just passed the wet end of the napkin across her
cherry lips and pearly teeth, and dipped her fingers becomingly
in the warm water, was restoring her manifold rings, when the
shrill _twang, twang, twang_ of the horn, with the prancing of
some of the newly-harnessed cripples on the pavement as they
tried to find their legs, sounded up the arch-way into the little
room, and warned our travellers that they should be reinvesting
themselves in their wraps. So declining any more Teneriffe, Miss
Willing set the example by drawing on her pretty kid gloves, and
rising to give the time to the rest. Up they all got.
CHAPTER III. THE ROAD RESUMED.—MISS PHEASANT-FEATHERS.
THE room, as we said before, being crammed, and our fair friend
Miss Willing taking some time to pass gracefully down the line of
chair-backs, many of whose late occupants were now swinging their
arms about in all the exertion of tying up their mouths, and
fighting their ways into their over-coats, Mr. Pringle, as he
followed, had a good opportunity of examining her exquisite
_tournure_, than which he thought he never saw anything more
beautifully perfect. He was quite proud when a little more width
of room at the end of the table enabled him to squeeze past a
robing, Dutch-built British-lace-vending pack-woman, and reclaim
his fair friend, just as a gentleman does his partner at the end
of an old country dance. How exultingly he marched her through
the line of inn hangers-on, hostlers, waiters, porters,
post-boys, coachmen, and insatiable Matthews-at-home of an inn
establishment, “Boots,” a gentleman who will undertake all
characters in succession for a consideration. How thankful we
ought to be to be done with these harpies!
Bouncible, either mistaking the rank of his guests, or wanting to
have a better look at the lady, emerged from his glass-fronted
den of a bar, and salaam’d them up to the dirty coach, where the
highly-fee’d coachman stood door in hand, waiting to perform the
last act of attention for his money. In went Billy and the
beauty, or rather the beauty and Billy, bang went the door, the
outsiders scrambled up on to their perches and shelves as best
they could. “_All right! Sit tight!_” was presently heard, and
whip, jip, crack, cut, three blind ‘uns and a bolter were again
bumping the lumbering vehicle along the cobble-stoned street,
bringing no end of cherry cheeks and corkscrew ringlets to the
windows, to mark that important epoch of the day, the coach
passing by.
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_Original Size_
Billy, feeling all the better for his dinner, and inspirited by
sundry gulps of wine, proceeded to make himself comfortable, in
order to open fire as soon as ever the coach got off the stones.
He took a rapid retrospect of all the various angels he had
encountered, those who had favoured him, those who had frowned,
and he was decidedly of opinion that he had never seen anything
to compare to the fair lady before him. He was rich and thriving
and would please himself without consulting
Want-nothin’-but-what’s-right Jerry, Half-a-yard-of-the-table
Joe, or any of them. It wasn’t like as if they were to be in Co.
with him in the lady. She would never come into the balance
sheets. No; she was to be all his, and they had no business with
it. He believed Want-nothin’-but-what’s-right would be glad if he
never married. Just then the coach glid from the noisy pavement
on to the comparatively speaking silent macadamised road, and
Billy and the lady opened fire simultaneously, the lady about the
discomforts of coach-travelling, which she had never tried
before, and Billy about the smack of the Teneriffe, which he
thought very earthy. He had some capital wine at home, he said,
as everybody has. This led him to London, the street conveniences
or inconveniences as they then were of the metropolis, which
subject he plied for the purpose of finding out as well where the
lady lived as whether her carriage would meet her or not; but
this she skilfully parried, by asking Billy where he lived, and
finding it was Doughty Street, Russell Square, she observed, as
in truth it is, that it was a very airy part of the town, and
proceeded to expatiate on the beauty of the flowers in Covent
Garden, from whence she got to the theatres, then to the opera,
intimating a very considerable acquaintance as well with the
capital as with that enchanted circle, the West-end, comprising
in its contracted limits what is called the world. Billy was
puzzled. He wished she mightn’t be a cut above him—such lords,
such ladies, such knowledge of the court—could she be a
maid-of-honour? Well, he didn’t care. No ask no have, so he
proceeded with the pumping process again. “Did she live in town?”
_Fair Lady_.—“Part of the year.”
_Billy_.—“During the season I ‘spose?”
_Fair Lady_.—“During the sitting of parliament.”
“There again!” thought Billy, feeling the expectation-funds fall
ten per cent, at least. “Well, faint heart never won fair lady,”
continued he to himself, considering how next he should sound
her. She was very beautiful—what pretty pearly teeth she had, and
such a pair of rosy lips—such a fair forehead too, and _such_
nice hair—he’d give a fipun note for a kiss!—he’d give a tenpun
note for a kiss!—dashed if he wouldn’t give a fifty-pun for a
kiss. Then he wondered what Head-and-shoulders Smith would think
of her. As he didn’t seem to be making much progress, however, in
the information way, he now desisted from that consideration, and
while contemplating her beauty considered how best he should
carry on the siege. Should he declare who and what he was, making
the best of himself of course, and ask her to be equally
explicit, or should he beat about the bush a little longer and
try to fish out what he could about her.
They had a good deal of day before them yet, dark though the
latter part of it would be; which, however, on second thoughts,
he felt might be rather favourable, inasmuch as she wouldn’t see
when he was taken aback by her answers. He would beat about the
bush a little longer. It was very pleasant sport.
“Did you say you lived in Chelsea?” at length asked Billy, in a
stupid self-convicting sort of way.
“No,” replied the fair lady with a smile; “I never mentioned
Chelsea.”
“Oh, no; no more you did,” replied Billy, taken aback, especially
as the lady led up to no other place.
“Did she like the country?” at length asked he, thinking to try
and fix her locality there, if he could not earth her in London.
“Yes, she liked the country, at least out of the season—there was
no place like London in the season,” she thought.
Billy thought so too; it was the best place in summer, and the
only place in winter.
Well, the lady didn’t know, but if she had to choose either place
for a permanency, she would choose London.
This sent the Billy funds up a little. He forgot his intention of
following her into the country, and began to expatiate upon the
luxuries of London, the capital fish they got, the cod and
hoyster sauce (for when excited, he knocked his h’s about a
little), the cod and hoyster sauce, the turbot, the mackerel, the
mullet, that woodcock of the sea, as he exultingly called it,
thinking what a tuck-out he would have in revenge for his country
inn abstinence. He then got upon the splendour of his own house
in Doughty Street—the most agreeable in London. Its spacious
entrance, its elegant stone staircase; his beautiful
drawing-room, with its maroon and rose-coloured brocaded satin
damask curtains, and rich Tournay carpet, its beautiful
chandelier of eighteen lights, and Piccolo pianoforte, and was
describing a most magnificent mirror—we don’t know what size, but
most beautiful and becoming—when the pace of the vehicle was
sensibly felt to relax; and before they had time to speculate on
the cause, it had come to a stand-still.
“Stopped,” observed Billy, lowering the window to look out for
squalls.
No sooner was the window down, than a head at the door proclaimed
mischief. The _tête-à-tête_ was at an end. The guard was going to
put Pheasant-feather bonnet inside. Open sesame _—W-h-i-s-h_. In
came the cutting wind—oh dear what a day!
“Rum for a leddy?” asked the guard, raising a great half-frozen,
grog-blossomy face out of the blue and white coil of a
shawl-cravat in which it was enveloped,—“Git in” continued he,
shouldering the leddy up the steps, without waiting for an
answer, and in popped Pheasant-feathers; when, slamming-to the
door, he cried “_right!_” to the coachman, and on went the
vehicle, leaving the enterer to settle into a seat by its
shaking, after the manner of the omnibus cads, who seem to think
all they have to do is to see people past the door. As it was,
the new-comer alighted upon Billy, who cannoned her off against
the opposite door, and then made himself as big as he could, the
better to incommode her. Pheasant-feathers, however, having
effected an entrance, seemed to regard herself as good as her
neighbours, and forthwith proceeded to adjust the window to her
liking, despite the eyeing and staring of Miss Willing. Billy was
indignant at the nasty peppermint-drop-smelling woman intruding
between the wind and his beauty, and inwardly resolved he would
dock the guard’s fee for his presumption in putting her there.
Miss Willing gathered herself together as if afraid of
contamination; and, forgetting her _role_, declared, after a jolt
received in one of her seat-shiftings, that it was just the
“smallest coach she had ever been in.” She then began to
scrutinise her female companion’s attire.
A cottage-bonnet, made of pheasant-feathers; was there ever such
a frightful thing seen,—all the colours of the rainbow
combined,—must be a poacher’s daughter, or a poulterer’s. Paste
egg-coloured ribbons; what a cloth pelisse,—puce colour in some
parts,—bath-brick colour in others,—nearly drab in
others,—thread-bare all over. Dare say she thought herself fine,
with her braided waist, up to her ears. Her glazy gloves might be
any colour—black, brown, green, gray. Then a qualm shot across
Miss Willing’s mind that she had seen the pelisse before. Yes,
no, yes; she believed it was the very one she had sold to Mrs.
Pickles’ nursery governess for eighteen shillings. So it was. She
had stripped the fur edging off herself, and there were the
marks. Who could the wearer be? Where could she have got it? She
could not recollect ever having seen her unwholesome face before.
And yet the little ferrety, white-lashed eyes settled upon her as
if they knew her. Who could she be? What, if she had lived
fellow—(we’ll not say what)—with the creature somewhere. There
was no knowing people out of their working clothes, especially
when they set up to ride inside of coaches. Altogether, it was
very unpleasant.
Billy remarked his fair friend’s altered mood, and rightly
attributed it to the intrusion of the nasty woman, whose gaudy
headgear the few flickering rays of a December sun were now
lighting up, making the feathers, so beautiful on a bird, look,
to Billy’s mind, so ugly on a bonnet, at least on the bonnet that
now thatched the frightful face beside him. Billy saw the fair
lady was not accustomed to these sort of companions, and wished
he had only had the sense to book the rest of the inside when the
coach stopped to dine. However, it could not be helped now; so,
having ascertained that Pheasant-feathers was going all the way
to “Lunnnn,” as she called it, when the sun sunk behind its
massive leadeen cloud, preparatory to that long reign of darkness
with which travellers were oppressed,—for there were no oil-lamps
to the roofs of stage-coaches,—Billy being no longer able to
contemplate the beauties of his charmer, now changed his seat,
for a little confidential conversation by her side.
He then, after a few comforting remarks, not very flattering to
Pheasant-feathers’ beauty, resumed his expatiations about his
splendid house in Doughty Street, Russell Square, omitting, of
course, to mention that it had been fitted up to suit the taste
of another lady, who had jilted him. He began about his
dining-room, twenty-five feet by eighteen, with a polished steel
fender, and “pictors” all about the walls; for, like many people,
he fancied himself a judge of the fine arts, and, of course, was
very frequently fleeced.
This subject, however, rather hung fire, a dining-room being
about the last room in a house that a lady cares to hear about,
so she presently cajoled him into the more genial region of the
kitchen, which, unlike would-be fine ladies of the present day,
she was not ashamed to recognise. From the kitchen they proceeded
to the store-room, which Billy explained was entered by a door at
the top of the back stairs, six feet nine by two feet eight,
covered on both sides with crimson cloth, brass moulded in panels
and mortise latch. He then got upon the endless, but
“never-lady-tiring,” subject of bed-rooms—his best bed-room, with
a most elegant five-feet-three canopy-top, mahogany bedstead,
with beautiful French chintz furniture, lined with pink, outer
and inner valance, trimmed silk tassel fringe, &c., &c., &c. And
so he went maundering on, paving the way most elaborately to an
offer, as some men are apt to do, instead of getting briskly to
the “ask-mamma” point, which the ladies are generally anxious to
have them at.
To be sure, Billy had been bowled over by a fair, or rather
unfair one, who had appeared quite as much interested about his
furniture and all his belongings as Miss Willing did, and who,
when she got the offer, and found he was not nearly so well off
as Jack Sanderson, declared she was never so surprised in her
life as when Billy proposed; for though, as she politely said,
every one who knew him must respect him, yet he had never even
entered her head in any other light than that of an agreeable
companion. This was Miss Amelia Titterton, afterwards Mrs.
Sanderson. Another lady, as we said before (Miss Bowerbank), had
done worse; for she had regularly jilted him, after putting him
to no end of expense in furnishing his house, so that, upon the
whole, Billy had cause to be cautious. A coach, too, with its
jolts and its jerks, and its brandy-and-water stoppages, is but
ill calculated for the delicate performance of offering, to say
nothing of having a pair of nasty white-lashed,
inquisitive-looking, ferrety eyes sitting opposite, with a pair
of listening ears, nestling under the thatch of a
pheasant-feather bonnet. All things considered, therefore, Billy
may, perhaps, stand excused for his slowness, especially as he
did not know but what he was addressing a countess.
And so the close of a scarcely dawned December day, was followed
by the shades of night, and still the jip, jip, jipping; whip,
whip, whipping; creak, creak, creaking of the heavy lumbering
coach, was accompanied by Billy’s maunderings about his noble
ebony this, and splendid mahogany that, varied with, here and
there, a judicious interpolation of an “indeed,” or a “how
beautiful,” from Miss Willing, to show how interested she was in
the recital; for ladies are generally good listeners, and Miss
Willing was essentially so.
The “demeanour of the witness” was lost, to be sure, in the
chancery-like darkness that prevailed; and Billy felt it might be
all blandishment, for nothing could be more marked or agreeable
than the interest both the other ladies had taken in his family,
furniture, and effects. Indeed, as he felt, they all took much
the same course, for, for cool home-questioning, there is no man
can compete with an experienced woman. They get to the
“What-have-you-got, and What-will-you-do” point, before a man has
settled upon the line of inquiry—very likely before he has got
done with that interesting topic—the weather.
At length, a sudden turn of the road revealed to our friends, who
were sitting with their faces to the horses, the first distant
curve of glow-worm-like lamps in the distance, and presently the
great white invitations to “try warren’s,” or “day and martin’s
blacking,” began to loom through the darkness of the dead walls
of the outskirts of London. They were fast approaching the
metropolis. The gaunt elms and leafless poplars presently became
fewer, while castellated and sentry-box-looking summer-houses
stood dark in the little paled-off gardens. At last the villas,
and semi-detached villas, collapsed into one continuous gas-lit
shop-dotted street. The shops soon became better and more
frequent,—more ribbons and flowers, and fewer periwinkle stalls.
They now got upon the stones. Billy’s heart jumped into his month
at the jerk, for he knew not how soon his charmer and he might
part, and as yet he had not even ascertained her locality. Now or
never, thought he, rising to the occasion, and, with difficulty
of utterance, he expressed a hope that he might have the pleasure
of seeing her ‘ome.
“Thank you, _no_,” replied Miss Willing, emphatically, for it was
just the very thing she most dreaded, letting him see her
reception by the servants.
“Humph!” grunted Billy, feeling his funds fall five-and-twenty
per cent.—“Miss Titterton or Miss Bowerbank over again,” thought
he.
“Not but that I most fully appreciate your kindness,” whispered
Miss Willing, in the sweetest tone possible, right into his ear,
thinking by Billy’s silence that her vehemence had offended him;
“but,” continued she, “I’m only going to the house of a friend, a
long way from you, and I expect a servant to meet me at the Green
Man in Oxford Street.”
“Well, but let me see you to the”—(puff, gasp)—“Green Man,”
ejaculated Billy, the funds of hope rising more rapidly than his
words.
“It’s very kind,” whispered Miss Willing, “and I feel it _very,
very_ much, but”—
“But if your servant shouldn’t come,” interrupted Billy, “you’d
never find your way to Brompton in this nasty dense yellow fog,”
for they had now got into the thick of a fine fat one.
“Oh, but I’m not going to Brompton,” exclaimed Miss Willing,
amused at this second bad shot of Billy’s at her abode.
“Well, wherever you are going, I shall only be too happy to
escort you,” replied Billy, “I know Lunnun well.”
“So do I,” thought Miss Willing, with a sigh. And the coach
having now reached that elegant hostelry, the George and Blue
Badger, in High Holborn, Miss showed her knowledge of it by
intimating to Billy that that was the place for him to alight; so
taking off her glove she tendered him her soft hand, which Billy
grasped eagerly, still urging her to let him see her home, or at
all events to the Green Man, in Oxford Street.
Miss, however, firmly but kindly declined his services, assuring
him repeatedly that she appreciated his kindness, which she
evinced by informing him that she was going to a friend’s at No.
—, Grosvenor Square, that she would only be in town for a couple
of nights; but that if he _really_ wished to see her
again,—“_really_ wished it,” she repeated with an emphasis, for
she didn’t want to be trifled with,—she would be happy to see him
to tea at eight o’clock on the following evening.
“_Eight o’clock!_” gasped Billy. “No. ——, Gruvenor Square,”
repeated he. “I knows it—I’ll be with you to a certainty—I’ll be
with you to a”—(puff)—“certainty.” So saying, he made a sandwich
of her fair taper-fingered hand, and then responded to the
inquiry of the guard, if there was any one to “git oot there,” by
alighting. And he was so excited that he walked off, leaving his
new silk umbrella and all his luggage in the coach, exclaiming,
as he worked his way through the fog to Doughty Street, “No.——,
Gruvenor Square—eight o’clock—eight o’clock—No.——, Gruvenor
Square—was there ever such a beauty!—be with her to a certainty,
be with her to a certainty.” Saying which, he gave an ecstatic
bound, and next moment found himself sprawling a-top of a
murder!—crying apple-woman in the gutter. Leaving him there to
get up at his leisure, let us return to his late companion in the
coach.
Scarcely was the door closed on his exit, ere a sharp shrill
“_You don’t know me!—you don’t know me!_” sounded from under the
pheasant-feather bonnet, and shot through Miss Willing like a
thrill.
“Yes, no, yes; who is it?” ejaculated she, thankful they were
alone.
“Sarey Grimes, to be sure,” replied the voice, in a semi-tone of
exultation.
“Sarah Grimes!” exclaimed Miss Willing, recollecting the veriest
little imp of mischief that ever came about a place, the daughter
of a most notorious poacher. “So it is! Why, Sarah, who would
ever have thought of seeing you grown into a great big woman.”
“I thought you didn’t know me,” replied Sarah; “I used often to
run errands for you,” added she.
“I remember,” replied Miss Willing, feeling in her reticule for
her purse. Sarah had carried certain delicate missives in the
country that Miss Willing would now rather have forgotten, how
thankful she was that the creature had not introduced herself
when her fat friend was in the coach. “What are you doing now?”
asked Miss Willing, jingling up the money at one end of the purse
to distinguish between the gold and the silver.
Sarey explained that being now out of place (she had been
recently dismissed from a cheesemonger’s at Lutterworth for
stealing a copper coal-scoop, a pound of whitening, and a pair of
gold spectacles, for which a donkey-travelling general merchant
had given her seven and sixpence), the guard of the coach, who
was her great-uncle, had given her a lift up to town to try what
she could do there again; and Miss Willing’s quick apprehension
seeing that there was some use to be made of such a sharp-witted
thing, having selected a half-sovereign out of her purse, thus
addressed her:
“Well, Sarah, I’m glad to see you again. You are very much
improved, and will be very good-looking. There’s half a sovereign
for you,” handing it to her, “and if you’ll come to me at six
o’clock to-morrow evening in Grosvenor Square, I dare say I shall
be able to look out some things that may be useful to you.”
“Thanke, mum; thanke!” exclaimed Sarey, delighted at the idea.
“I’ll be with you, you may depend.”
“You know Big Ben,” continued Miss Willing, “who was my lord’s
own man; he’s hall-porter now, ring and tell him you come for me,
and he’ll let you in at the door.”
“Certainly, mum, certainly,” assented Pheasant-feathers, thinking
how much more magnificent that would be than sneaking down the
area.
And the coach having now reached the Green Man, Miss Willing
alighted and took a coach to Grosvenor Square, leaving Miss
Grimes to pursue its peregrinations to the end of its journey.
And Billy Pringle having, with the aid of the “pollis,” appeased
the basket-woman’s wrath, was presently ensconced in his
beautiful house in Doughty Street.
So, _tinkle, tinkle, tinkle_,—down goes the curtain on this
somewhat long chapter.
CHAPTER IV. A GLASS COACH.—MISS WILLING (EN GRAND COSTUME)
NEXT day our friend Billy was buried in looking after his lost
luggage and burnishing up the gilt bugle-horn buttons of the
coat, waist-coat, and shorts of the Royal Epping Archers, in
which he meant to figure in the evening. Having, through the
medium of his “Boyle,” ascertained the rank of the owner of the
residence where he was going to be regaled, he ordered a
glass-coach—not a coach made of glass, juvenile readers, in which
we could see a gentleman disparting himself like a gold-fish in a
glass bowl, but a better sort of hackney coach with a less filthy
driver, which, by a “beautiful fiction” of the times, used to be
considered the hirer’s “private carriage.”
It was not the “thing” in those days to drive up to a gentleman’s
door in a public conveyance, and doing the magnificent was very
expensive: for the glass fiction involved a pair of gaunt
raw-boned horses, which, with the napless-hatted
drab-turned-up-with-grease-coated-coachman, left very little
change out of a sovereign. How thankful we ought to be to
railways and Mr. Fitzroy for being able to cut about openly at
the rate of sixpence a mile. The first great man who drove up St.
James’s Street at high tide in a Hansom, deserves to have his
portrait painted at the public expense, for he opened the door of
common sense and utility.
What a follow-my-leader-world it is! People all took to street
cabs simultaneously, just as they did to walking in the Park on a
Sunday when Count D’Orsay set up his “‘andsomest ombrella in de
vorld,” being no longer able to keep a horse. But we are getting
into recent times instead of attending Mr. Pringle to his party.
He is supposed to have ordered his glass phenomenon.
Now Mr. Forage, the job-master, in Lamb’s Conduit Street, with
whom our friend did his magnificence, “performed funerals” also,
as his yard-doors indicated, and being rather “full,” or more
properly speaking, empty, he acted upon the principle of all
coaches being black in the dark, and sent a mourning one, so
there was a striking contrast between the gaiety of the Royal
Epping Archers’ uniform—pea-green coat with a blue collar,
salmon-coloured vest and shorts—in which Mr. Pringle was attired,
and the gravity of the vehicle that conveyed him. However, our
lover was so intent upon taking care of his pumps, for the fog
had made the flags both slippery and greasy, that he popped in
without noticing the peculiarity, and his stuttering knock-knee’d
hobble-de-hoy, yclept “Paul,” having closed the door and mounted
up behind, they were presently jingling away to the west, Billy
putting up first one leg and then the other on to the opposite
seat to admire his white-gauze-silk-encased calves by the gas and
chemists’ windows as they passed. So he went fingering and
feeling at his legs, and pulling and hauling at his coat,—for the
Epping Archer uniform had got rather tight, and, moreover, had
been made on the George-the-Fourth principle, of not being easily
got into—along Oxford Street, through Hanover Square, and up
Brook Street, to the spacious region that contained the object of
his adoration. The coach presently drew up at a stately
Italian-column porticoed mansion: down goes Paul, but before he
gets half through his meditated knock, the door opens suddenly in
his face, and he is confronted by Big Ben in the full livery,—we
beg pardon,—uniform of the Delacey family, beetroot-coloured
coat, with cherry-coloured vest and shorts, the whole elaborately
bedizened with gold-lace.
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The unexpected apparition, rendered more formidable by the
blazing fire in the background, throwing a lurid light over the
giant, completely deprived little Paul of his breath, and he
stood gaping and shaking as if he expected the monster to address
him.
“Who may you please to want?” at length demanded Ben, in a deep
sonorous tone of mingled defiance and contempt.
“P—p—p—please, wo—wo—wo—want,” stuttered little Paul, now
recollecting that he had never been told who to ask for.
“Yes, who do you wish to see?” demanded Ben, in a clear
explanatory tone, for though he had agreed to dress up for the
occasion on the reciprocity principle of course—Miss Willing
winking at his having two nephews living in the house—he by no
means undertook to furnish civility to any of the undergraduates
of life, as he called such apologies as Paul.
“I—I—I’ll ask,” replied Paul, glad to escape back to the coach,
out of which the Royal Archer’s bull-head was now protruding,
anxious to be emancipated.
“Who—ho—ho am I to a—a—ask for, pa—pa—per—please?” stuttered
Paul, trembling all over with fear and excitement, for he had
never seen such a sight except in a show.
“Ask for!” muttered Billy, now recollecting for the first time
that the fair lady and he were mutually ignorant of each other’s
names. “Ask for! What if it should be a hoax?” thought he; “how
foolish he would look!”
While these thoughts were revolving in Billy’s mind, Big Ben,
having thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his
cherry-coloured shorts, was contemplating the dismal-looking
coach in the disdainful cock-up-nose sort of way that a high-life
Johnny looks at what he considers a low-life equipage; wondering,
we dare say, who was to be deceived by such a thing.
Billy, seeing the case was desperate, resolved to put a bold face
on the matter, especially as he remembered his person could not
be seen in the glass coach; so, raising his crush hat to his
face, he holloaed out, “_I say! is this the Earl of Delacey’s?_”
“It is,” replied Ben, with a slight inclination of his gigantic
person.
“Then, let me out,” demanded Billy of Paul. And this request
being complied with, Billy skipped smartly across the flags, and
was presently alongside of Ben, whispering up into his now
slightly-inclined ear, “_I say, was there a lady arrived here
last night from the country?_” (He was going to say “by the
coach,” but he checked himself when he got to the word country.)
“There was, sir,” replied Ben, relaxing into something like
condescension.
“Then I’m come to see her,” whispered Billy, with a grin.
“Your name, if you please, sir?” replied Ben, still getting up
the steam of politeness.
“Mr. Pringle—Mr. William Pringle!” replied Billy with firmness.
“All right, sir,” replied the blood-red monster, pretending to
know more than he did; and, motioning Billy onward into the black
and white marble-flagged entrance hall, he was about to shut him
in, when Billy, recollecting himself, holloaed, “‘_Ome!_” to his
coachman, so that he mightn’t be let in for the two days’ hire.
The door then closed, and he was in for an adventure.
It will be evident to our fair friends that the Archer bold had
the advantage over the lady, in having all his raiment in town,
while she had all hers, at least all the pick of hers,—her
first-class things,—in the country. Now every body knows that
what looks very smart in the country looks very seedy in London,
and though the country cousins of life do get their new things to
take back with them there, yet regular town-comers have theirs
ready, or ready at all events to try on against they arrive, and
so have the advantage of looking like civilised people while they
are up. London, however, is one excellent place for remedying any
little deficiency of any sort, at least if a person has only
either money or credit, and a lady or gentleman can soon be
rigged out by driving about to the different shops.
Now it so happened that Miss Willing had nothing of her own in
town, that she felt she would be doing herself justice to appear
before Billy in, and had omitted bringing her ladyship’s keys,
whereby she might have remedied the deficiency out of that
wardrobe; however, with such a commission as she held, there
could be no difficulty in procuring the loan of whatever was
wanted from her ladyship’s milliner. We may mention that on
accepting office under Lady Delacey, Miss Willing, with the
greatest spirit of fairness, had put her ladyship’s custom in
competition among three distinguished modistes, viz. her old
friend Madame Adelaide Banboxeney, Madame Celeste de Montmorency,
of Dover Street, and Miss Julia Freemantle, of Cowslip Street,
May Fair; and Miss Freemantle having offered the same percentage
on the bill (£15) as the other two, and £20 a year certain money
more than Madame Banboxeney, and £25 more than Madame Celeste de
Montmorency, Miss Freemantle had been duly declared the
purchaser, as the auctioneers say, and in due time (as soon as a
plausible quarrel could be picked with the then milliner) was in
the enjoyment of a very good thing, for though the Countess
Delacey, in the Gilpin-ian spirit of the age, tried to tie Miss
Freemantle down to price, yet she overlooked the extras, the
little embroidery of a bill, if we may so call it, such as four
pound seventeen and sixpence for a buckle, worth perhaps the odd
silver, and the surreptitious lace, at no one knows what, so long
as they were not all in one item, and were cleverly scattered
about the bill in broken sums, just as the lady thought the
ribbon dear at a shilling a yard, but took it when the
counter-skipper replied, “S’pose, marm, then, we say thirteen
pence”—Miss Willing having had a consultation with Miss
Freemantle as to the most certain means of quashing the Countess
of Honiton, broached her own little requirements, and Miss
Freemantle, finding that she only wanted the dress for one night,
agreed to lend her a very rich emerald-green Genoa velvet
evening-dress, trimmed with broad Valenciennes lace, she was on
the point of furnishing for Alderman Boozey’s son’s bran-new
wife; Miss Freemantle feeling satisfied, as she said, that Miss
Willing would do it no harm; indeed, would rather benefit it by
the sit her fine figure would give it, in the same way as
shooters find it to their advantage to let their keepers have a
day or two’s wear out of their new shoes in order to get them to
go easy for themselves.
The reader will therefore have the goodness to consider Miss
Willing arrayed in Alderman Boozey’s son’s bran-new wife’s
bran-new Genoa velvet dress, with a wreath of pure white
camellias on her beautiful brown Madonna-dressed hair, and a
massive true-lover’s-knot brooch in brilliants at her bosom. On
her right arm she wears a magnificent pearl armlet, which Miss
Freemantle had on sale or return from that equitable
diamond-merchant, Samuel Emanuel Moses, of the Minories, the
price ranging, with Miss Freemantle, from eighty to two hundred
and fifty guineas, according to the rank and paying properties of
the inquirer, though as between Moses and “Mantle,” the price was
to be sixty guineas, or perhaps pounds, depending upon the humour
Moses might happen to be in, when she came with the dear £. s. d.
The reader will further imagine an elegant little boudoir with
its amber-coloured silk fittings and furniture, lit up with the
united influence of the best wax and Wallsend, and Miss Willing
sitting at an inlaid centre-table, turning over the leaves of
Heath’s “Picturesque Annual” of the preceding year. Opposite the
fire are large white and gold folding-doors, opening we know not
where, outside of which lurks Pheasant-feathers, placed there by
Miss Willing on a service of delicacy.
CHAPTER V. THE LADY’S BOUDOIR.—A DECLARATION.
THIS way, sir,—please, sir,—yes, sir,” bowed the now obsequious
Ben, guiding Billy by the light of a chamber candle through the
intricacies of the half-lit inner entrance. “Take care, sir,
there’s a step, sir,” continued he, stopping and showing where
the first stumbling-block resided. Billy then commenced the
gradual accent of the broad, gently-rising staircase, each step
increasing his conviction of the magnitude of the venture, and
making him feel that his was not the biggest house in town. As he
proceeded he wondered what Nothin’-but-what’s-right Jerry, or
Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe, above all Mrs.
Half-a-yard-of-the-table, would say if they could see him thus
visiting at a nobleman’s house, it seemed more like summut in a
book or a play than downright reality. Still there was no reason
why a fine lady should not take a fancy to him—many deuced deal
uglier fellows than he had married fine ladies, and he would take
his chance along with the rest of them—so he laboured up after
Ben, hoping he might not come down stairs quicker than he went
up.
The top landing being gained, they passed through lofty
folding-doors into the suite of magnificent but now put-away
drawing-rooms, whose spectral half collapsed canvas bags, and
covered statues and sofas, threw a Kensal-Green-Cemetery sort of
gloom over Billy’s spirits; speedily, however, to be dispelled by
the radiance of the boudoir into which he was now passed through
an invisible door in the gilt-papered wall. “Mr. William Pringle,
ma’m,” whispered Ben, in a tone that one could hardly reconcile
to the size of the monster: and Miss Willing having risen at the
sound of the voice, bowing, Billy and she were presently locked
hand in hand, smiling and teeth-showing most extravagantly. “I’ll
ring for tea presently,” observed she to Ben, who seemed disposed
to fuss and loiter about the room. “If you please, my lady,”
replied Ben, bowing himself backwards through the panel. Happy
Billy was then left alone with his charmer, save that
beetroot-coloured Ben was now listening at one door on his own
account, and Pheasant-feathers at the other on Miss Willing’s.
Billy was quite taken aback. If he had been captivated in the
coach what chance had he now, with all the aid of dress, scenery,
and decorations. He thought he had never seen such a beauty—he
thought he had never seen such a bust—he thought he had never
seen such an arm! Miss Titterton—pooh!—wasn’t to be mentioned in
the same century—hadn’t half such a waist. “Won’t you be seated?”
at length asked Miss Willing, as Billy still stood staring and
making a mental inventory of her charms. “Seat”—(puff)—“seat”
(wheeze), gasped Billy, looking around at the shining
amber-coloured magnificence by which he was surrounded, as if
afraid to venture, even in his nice salmon-coloured shorts. At
length he got squatted on a gilt chair by his charmer’s side,
when taking to look at his toes, she led off the ball of
conversation. She had had enough of the billing and cooing or
gammon and spinach of matrimony, and knew if she could not bring
him to book at once, time would not assist her. She soon probed
his family circle, and was glad to find there was no “mamma” to
“ask,” that dread parent having more than once been too many for
her. She took in the whole range of connection with the precision
of an auctioneer or an equity draftsman.
There was no occasion for much diplomacy on her part, for Billy
came into the trap just like a fly to a “Ketch-’em-alive O!” The
conversation soon waxed so warm that she quite forgot to ring for
the tea; and Ben, who affected early hours in the winter, being
slightly asthmatical, as a hall-porter ought to be, at length
brought it in of his own accord. Most polite he was; “My lady”
and “Your ladyship-ing” Miss Willing with accidental intention
every now and then, which raised Billy’s opinion of her
consequence very considerably. And so he sat, and sipped and
sipped, and thought what a beauty she would be to transfer to
Doughty Street. Tea, in due time, was followed by the tray—Melton
pie, oysters, sandwiches, anchovy toast, bottled stout, sherry
and Seltzer water, for which latter there was no demand.
A profane medicine-chest-looking mahogany case then made its
appearance, which, being opened, proved to contain four cut-glass
spirit-bottles, labelled respectively, “Rum,” “Brandy,”
“Whiskey,” “Gin,” though they were not true inscriptions, for
there were two whiskey’s and two brandy’s. A good old-fashioned
black-bottomed kettle having next mounted a stand placed on the
top bar, Miss intimated to Ben that if they had a few more coals,
he need not “trouble to sit up;” and these being obtained, our
friends made a brew, and then drew their chairs together to enjoy
the feast of reason and the flow of soul; Miss slightly raising
Alderman Boozey’s son’s bran-new wife’s bran-new emerald-green
velvet dress to show her beautiful white-satin slippered foot, as
it now rested on the polished steel fender.
The awkwardness of resuming the interrupted addresses being at
length overcome by sundry gulphs of the inspiring fluid, our
friend Mr. Pringle was soon in full fervour again. He
anathematised the lawyers and settlements, and delay, and was all
for being married off-hand at the moment.
Miss, on her part, was dignified and prudent. All she would say
was that Mr. William Pringle was not indifferent to her,—“No,”
sighed she, “he wasn’t”—but there were many, many considerations,
and many, many points to be discussed, and many, many questions
to be asked of each other, before they could even begin to _talk_
of such a thing as immediate—“hem”—(she wouldn’t say the word)
turning away her pretty head.
“_Ask away, then!_” exclaimed Billy, helping himself to another
beaker of brandy—for he saw he was approaching the
“Ketch-’em-alive O.” Miss then put the home-question whether his
family knew what he was about, and finding they did not, she saw
there was no time to lose; so knocking off the expletives, she
talked of many considerations and points, the main one being to
know how she was likely to be kept,—whether she was to have a
full-sized footman, or an under-sized stripling, or a buttony boy
of a page, or be waited upon by that greatest aversion to all
female minds, one of her own sex. Not that she had the slightest
idea of saying “No,” but her experience of life teaching her that
all early grandeur may be mastered by footmen, she could very
soon calculate what sort of a set down she was likely to have by
knowing the style of her attendant. “Show me your footman, and I
will tell you what you are,” was one of her maxims. Moreover, it
is well for all young ladies to have a sort of rough estimate, at
all events, of what they are likely to have,—which, we will
venture to say, unlike estimates in general, will fall very far
short of the reality. Our friend Billy, however, was quite in the
promising mood, and if she had asked for half-a-dozen Big Bens he
would have promised her them, canes, powder, and all.
“Oh! she should have anything, everything she wanted! A tall man
with good legs, and all right about the mouth,—an Arab horse, an
Erard harp, a royal pianoforte, a silver tea-urn, a gold
coffee-pot, a service of gold—_eat gold_, if she liked,” and as
he declared she might eat gold if she liked, he dropped upon his
salmon-coloured knees, and with his glass of brandy in one hand,
and hers in the other, looked imploringly up at her, a beautiful
specimen of heavy sentimentality; and Miss, thinking she had got
him far enough, and seeing it was nearly twelve o’clock, now
urged him to rise, and allow her maid to go and get him a coach.
Saying which, she disengaged her hand, and slipping through the
invisible door, was presently whispering her behests to the
giggling Pheasant-feathers, on the other side of the folding
ones. A good half-hour, however, elapsed before one of those
drowsy vehicles could be found, during which time our suitor
obtained the fair lady’s consent to allow him to meet her at her
friend Mrs. Freemantle’s, as she called her, in Cowslip Street,
May Fair, at three o’clock in the following afternoon; and the
coach having at length arrived, Miss Willing graciously allowed
Mr. Pringle to kiss her hand, and then accompanied him to the
second landing of the staircase, which commanded the hall, in
order to check any communication between Pheasant-feathers and
him.
The reader will now perhaps accompany us to this famed milliner,
dress and mantle-maker’s, who will be happy to execute any orders
our fair ones may choose to favour her with.
Despite the anathemas of a certain law lord, match-forwarding is
quite the natural prerogative and instinct of women. They all
like it, from the duchess downwards, and you might as well try to
restrain a cat from mousing as a woman from match-making. Miss
Freemantle (who acted Mrs. on this occasion) was as fond of the
pursuit as any one. She looked Billy over with a searching,
scrutinising glance, thinking what a flat he was, and wondered
what he would think of himself that time twelvemonths. Billy, on
his part, was rather dumb-foundered. Talking before two women was
not so easy as talking to one; and he did not get on with the
immediate matrimony story half so well as he had done over-night.
The ladies saw his dilemma, and Miss Willing quickly essayed to
relieve him. She put him through his pleadings with all the skill
of the great Serjeant Silvertougue, making Billy commit himself
most irretrievably.
“Mamma” (Miss Freemantle that is to say) then had her innings.
She was much afraid it couldn’t be done off-hand—indeed she was.
There was a place on the Border—Gretna Green—she dare say’d he’d
heard of it; but then it was a tremendous distance, and would
take half a lifetime to get to it. Besides, Miss p’raps mightn’t
like taking such a journey at that time of year.
Miss looked neither yes nor no. Mamma was more against it than
her, Mamma feeling for the countess’s coming contest and her
future favours. Other difficulties were then discussed,
particularly that of publicity, which Miss dreaded more than the
journey to Gretna. It must be kept secret, whatever was done.
Billy must be sworn to secrecy, or Miss would have nothing to say
to him. Billy was sworn accordingly.
Mamma then thought the best plan was to have the banns put up in
some quiet church, where no questions would be asked as to where
they lived, and it would be assumed that they resided within the
parish, and when they had been called out, they could just go
quietly and get married, which would keep things square with the
countess and everybody else. And this arrangement being
perfected, and liberty given to Billy to write to his bride,
whose name and address were now furnished him, he at length took
his departure; and the ladies having talked him over, then
resolved themselves into a committee of taste, to further the
forthcoming tournament. And by dint of keeping all hands at work
all night, Miss Willing was enabled to return to the countess
with the first instalment of such a series of lady-killing
garments as mollified her heart, and enabled her to sustain the
blow that followed, which however was mitigated by the assurance
that Mr. and Mrs. William Pringle were going to live in London,
and that Madam’s taste would always be at her ladyship’s command.
We wish we could gratify our lady readers with a description of
the brilliant attire that so completely took the shine out of the
Countess of Honiton as has caused her to hide her diminished head
ever since, but our pen is unequal to the occasion, and even if
we had had a John Leech to supply our deficiencies, the dresses
of those days would look as nothing compared to the rotatory
haystacks of the present one.
What fair lady can bear the sight of her face painted in one of
the old poke bonnets of former days? To keep things right, the
bonnet ought to be painted to the face every year or two.
But to the lovers.
In due time “Mamma” (Miss Freemantle) presented her blooming
daughter to the happy Billy, who was attended to the hymeneal
alter by his confidential clerk, Head-and-shoulders Smith. Big
Ben, who was dressed in a blue frock coat with a velvet collar,
white kerseymere trousers, and varnished boots, looking very like
one of the old royal dukes, was the only other person present at
the interesting ceremony, save Pheasant-feathers, who lurked in
one of the pews.
The secret had been well kept, for the evening papers of that day
and the morning ones of the next first proclaimed to the “great
world,” that sphere of one’s own acquaintance, that William
Pringle, Esquire, of Doughty Street, Russell Square, was married
to Miss Emma Willing, of—the papers did not say where.
CHAPTER VI. THE HAPPY UNITED FAMILY.—CURTAIN CRESCENT.
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THE PRINGLES of course were furious when they read the
announcement of Billy’s marriage. Such a degradation to such a
respectable family, and communicated in such a way. We need
scarcely say that at first they all made the worst of it, running
Mrs. William down much below her real level, and declaring that
Billy though hard enough in money matters, was soft enough in
love affairs. Then Mrs. Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe, who up to
that time had been the _belle_ of the family, essayed to pick her
to pieces, intimating that she was much indebted to her
dress—that fine feathers made fine birds—hoped that Billy would
like paying for the clothes, and wondered what her figure would
be like a dozen years thence. Mrs. Joe had preserved hers, never
having indeed having been in the way of spoiling it. Joe looked
as if he was to perpetuate the family name. By-and-by, when it
became known that the Countess Delacey’s yellow carriage, with
the high-stepping greys and the cocked-up-nose
beet-root-and-cherry-coloured Johnnies, was to be seen
astonishing the natives in Doughty Street, they began to think
better of it; and though they did not stint themselves for
rudeness (disguised as civility of course), they treated her less
like a show, more especially when Billy was present. Still,
though they could not make up their minds to be really civil to
her, they could not keep away from her, just as the moth will be
at the candle despite its unpleasant consequences. Indeed, it is
one of the marked characteristics of Snobbism, that they won’t be
cut. At least, if you do get a Snob cut, ten to one but he will
take every opportunity of rubbing up against you, or sitting down
beside you in public, or overtaking you on the road, or stopping
a mutual acquaintance with you in the street, either to show his
indifference or his independence, or in the hope of its passing
for intimacy. There are people who can’t understand any coolness
short of a kick. The Pringles were tiresome people. They would
neither be in with Mrs. William, nor out with her. So there was
that continual knag, knag, knagging going on in the happy united
family, that makes life so pleasant and enjoyable. Mrs. William
well knew, when any of them came to call upon her, that her
sayings and doings would furnish recreation for the rest of the
cage. It is an agreeable thing to have people in one’s house
acting the part of spies. One day Mrs. Joe, who lived in
Guildford Street, seeing the Countess’s carriage-horses
cold-catching in Doughty Street, while her ladyship discussed
some important millinery question with Mrs. William, could not
resist the temptation of calling, and not being introduced to the
Countess, said to Mis. William, with her best vinegar sneer, the
next time they met. She “‘oped she had told her fine friend that
the vulgar woman she saw at her ‘ouse was no connection of
her’s.” But enough of such nonsense. Let us on to something more
pleasant.
Well, then, of course the next step in our story is the
appearance of our hero, the boy Billy——Fine Billy, aforesaid.
Such a boy as never was seen! All other mammas went away
dissatisfied with theirs, after they had got a peep of our Billy.
If baby-shows had been in existence in those days, Mrs. Billy
might have scoured the country and carried away all the prizes.
Everybody was struck in a heap at the sight of him, and his
sayings and doings were worthy of a place in Punch. So thought
his parents, at least. What perfected their happiness, of course,
operated differently with the family, and eased the minds of the
ladies, as to the expediency of further outward civility to Mrs.
William, who they now snubbed at all points, and prophesied all
sorts of uncharitableness of. Mrs., on her side, surpassed them
all in dress and good looks, and bucked Billy up into a very
produceable-looking article. Though he mightn’t exactly do for
White’s bay-window on a summer afternoon, he looked uncommonly
well on “‘Change,” and capitally in the country. Of course, he
came in for one of the three cardinal sources of abuse the world
is always so handy with, viz., that a man either behaves ill to
his wife, is a screw, or is out-running the constable, the
latter, of course, being Billy’s crime, which admitted of a large
amount of blame being laid on the lady, though, we are happy to
say, Billy had no trial of speed with the constable, for his
wife, by whose permission men thrive, was a capital manager, and
Billy slapped his fat thigh over his beloved balance-sheets every
Christmas, exclaiming, as he hopped joyously round on one leg,
snapping his finger and thumb, “_Our Billy shall be a gent! Our
Billy shall be a gent!_” And he half came in to the oft-expressed
wish of his wife, that he might live to see him united to a
quality lady: Mr. and Lady Arabella Pringle, Mr. and Lady Sophia
Pringle, or Mr. and Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Pringle, as the case
might be.
Vainglorious ambition! After an inordinate kidney supper, poor
Billy was found dead in his chair. Great was the consternation
among the Pringle family at the lamentable affliction. All except
Jerry, who, speculating on his habits, had recently effected a
policy on his life, were deeply shocked at the event. They buried
him with all becoming pomp, and then, Jerry, who had always
professed great interest in the boy Billy—so great, indeed, as to
induce his brother (though with no great opinion of Jerry, but
hoping that his services would never be wanted, and that it might
ingratiate the nephew with the bachelor uncle,) to appoint him an
executor and guardian—waited upon the widow, and with worlds of
tears and pious lamentations, explained to her in the most
unexplanatory manner possible, all how things were left, but
begging that she would not give herself any trouble about her
son’s affairs, for, if she would attend to his spiritual wants,
and instil high principles of honour, morality, and fine feeling
into his youthful mind, he would look after the mere worldly
dross, which was as nothing compared to the importance of the
other. “Teach him to want nothin’ but what’s right,” continued
Jerry, as he thought most impressively. “Teach him to want
nothin’ but what’s right, and when he grows up to manhood marry
him to some nice, pious respectable young woman in his own rank
of life, with a somethin’ of her own; gentility is all very well
to talk about, but it gets you nothin’ at the market,” added he,
forgetting that he was against the mere worldly dross.
But Mrs. Pringle, who knew the value of the article, intimated at
an early day, that she would like to be admitted into the money
partnership as well, whereupon Jerry waxing wroth, said with an
irate glance of his keen grey eyes, “My dear madam, these family
matters, in my opinion, require to be treated not only in a
business-like way, but with a very considerable degree of
delicacy,” an undisputed dogma, acquiring force only by the
manner in which it was delivered. So the pretty widow saw she had
better hold her tongue, and hope for the best from the little
fawning bully.
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The melancholy catastrophe with which we closed our last chapter
found our hero at a preparatory school, studying for Eton,
whither papa proposed sending him on the old principle of getting
him into good society; though we believe it is an experiment that
seldom succeeds. The widow, indeed, took this view of the matter,
for her knowledge of high life caused her to know that though a
“proud aristocracy” can condescend, and even worship wealth, yet
that they are naturally clannish and exclusive, and tenacious of
pedigree. In addition to this, Mrs. Pringle’s experience of men
led her to think that the solemn pedantic “Greek and Latin ones,”
as she called them, who know all about Julius Cæsar coming,
“_summa diligentia_,” on the top of the diligence, were not half
so agreeable as those who could dance and sing, and knew all that
was going on in the present-day world; which, in addition to her
just appreciation of the delicate position of her son, made her
resolve not to risk him among the rising aristocracy at Eton,
who, instead of advancing, might only damage his future prospects
in life, but to send him to Paris, where, besides the three
R’s,—“reading, riting, and rithmetic,”—he would acquire all the
elegant accomplishments and dawn fresh upon the world an
unexpected meteor.
This matter being arranged, she then left Dirty Street, as she
called Doughty Street, with all the disagreeable Pringle family
espionage, and reminiscences, and migrated westward, taking up
her abode in the more congenial atmosphere of Curtain Crescent,
Pimlico, or Belgravia, as, we believe the owners of the houses
wish to have it called. Here she established herself in a very
handsome, commodious house, with porticoed doorway and balconied
drawing-rooms—every requisite for a genteel family in short; and
such a mansion being clearly more than a single lady required,
she sometimes accommodated the less fortunate, through the medium
of a house-agent, though both he and she always begged it to be
distinctly understood that she did not let lodgings, but
“apartments;” and she always requested that the consideration
might be sent to her in a sealed envelope by the occupants, in
the same manner as she transmitted them the bill. So she managed
to make a considerable appearance at a moderate expense, it being
only in the full season that her heart yearned towards the
houseless, when of course a high premium was expected. There is
nothing uncommon in people letting their whole houses; so why
should there be anything strange in Mrs. Pringle occasionally
letting a part of one? Clearly nothing. Though Mrs. Joe did say
she had turned a lodging-house keeper, she could not refrain from
having seven-and-sixpence worth of Brougham occasionally to see
how the land lay.
It is but justice to our fair friend to say that she commenced
with great prudence. So handsome unprotected a female being open
to the criticisms of the censorious, she changed her good-looking
footman for a sedate elderly man, whose name, Properjohn, John
Properjohn, coupled with the severe austerity of his manners, was
enough to scare away intruders, and to keep the young girls in
order, whom our friend had consigned to her from the country, in
the hopes that her drilling and recommendation would procure them
admission into quality families.
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Properjohn had been spoiled for high service by an attack of the
jaundice, but his figure was stately and good, and she sought to
modify his injured complexion by a snuff-coloured, Quaker-cut
coat and vest, with claret-coloured shorts, and buckled shoes.
Thus attired, with his oval-brimmed hat looped up with gold cord,
and a large double-jointed brass-headed cane in his hand, he
marched after his mistress, a damper to the most audacious.
Properjohn, having lived in good families until he got spoiled by
the jaundice, had a very extensive acquaintance among the
aristocracy, with whom Mrs. Pringle soon established a peculiar
intercourse. She became a sort of ultimate Court of Appeal, a
_Cour de Cassation_, in all matters of taste in apparel,—whether
a bonnet should be lilac or lavender colour, a dress deeply
flounced or lightly, a lady go to a ball in feathers or diamonds,
or both—in all those varying and perplexing points that so excite
and bewilder the female mind: Mrs. Pringle would settle all
these, whatever Mrs. Pringle said the fair applicants would abide
by, and milliners and dress-makers submitted to her judgment.
This, of course, let her into the privacies of domestic life. She
knew what husbands stormed at the milliners’ and dress-makers’
bills, bounced at the price of the Opera-box, and were eternally
complaining of their valuable horses catching cold. She knew who
the cousin was who was always to be admitted in Lavender Square,
and where the needle-case-shaped note went to after it had
visited the toy-shop in Arcadia Street. If her own information
was defective, Properjohn could supply the deficiency. The two,
between them, knew almost everything.
Nor was Mrs. Pringle’s influence confined to the heads of houses,
for it soon extended to many of the junior members also. It is a
well known fact that, when the gorgeous Lady Rainbow came to
consult her about her daughter’s goings on with Captain Conquest,
the Captain and Matilda saw Mamma alight from the flaunting
hammer-clothed tub, as they stood behind the figured yellow
tabaret curtains of Mrs. Pringle’s drawing-room window, whither
they had been attracted by the thundering of one of the old noisy
order of footmen. Blessings on the man, say we, who substituted
bells for knockers—so that lovers may not be disturbed, or
visitors unaccustomed to public knocking have to expose their
incompetence.
We should, however, state, that whenever Mrs. Pringle was
consulted by any of the juveniles upon their love affairs, she
invariably suggested that they had better “Ask Mamma,” though
perhaps it was only done as a matter of form, and to enable her
to remind them at a future day, if things went wrong, that she
had done so. Many people make offers that they never mean to have
accepted, but still, if they are not accepted, _they made them
you know_. If they are accepted, why then they wriggle out of
them the best way they can. But we are dealing in generalities,
instead of confining ourselves to Mrs. Pringle’s practice. If the
young lady or gentleman—for Mrs. Pringle was equally accessible
to the sexes—preferred “asking” her to “Asking Mamma,” Mrs.
Pringle was always ready to do what she could for them; and the
fine Sèvres and Dresden china, the opal vases, the Bohemian
scent-bottles, the beautiful bronzes, the or-molu jewel caskets,
and Parisian clocks, that mounted guard in the drawing-room when
it was not “in commission” (occupied as apartments), spoke
volumes for the gratitude of those she befriended. Mrs. Pringle
was soon the repository of many secrets, but we need not say that
the lady who so adroitly concealed Pheasant Feathers on her own
account was not likely to be entrapped into committing others;
and though she was often waited upon by pleasant
conversationalists on far-fetched errands, who endeavoured to
draw carelessly down wind to their point, as well as by seedy and
half-seedy gentlemen, who proceeded in a more business-like
style, both the pleasant conversationalists and the seedy and the
half-seedy gentlemen went away as wise as they came. She never
knew anything; it was the first she had heard of anything of the
sort.
Altogether, Mrs. Pringle was a wonderful woman, and not the least
remarkable trait in her character was that, although servants,
who, like the rest of the world, are so ready to pull people down
to their own level, knew her early professional career, yet she
managed them so well that they all felt an interest in elevating
her, from the Duke’s Duke, down to old quivering-calved Jeames de
la Pluche, who sipped her hop champagne, and told all he heard
while waiting at table—that festive period when people talk as if
their attendants were cattle or inanimate beings.
The reader will now have the goodness to consider our friend,
Fine Billy, established with his handsome mother in Curtain
Crescent—not Pimlico, but Belgravia—with all the airs and action
described in our opening chapter. We have been a long time in
working up to him, but the reader will not find the space wasted,
inasmuch as it has given him a good introduction to “Madam,”
under whose auspices Billy will shortly have to grapple with the
“Ask Mamma” world. Moreover, we feel that if there has been a
piece of elegance overlooked by novelists generally, it is the
delicate, sensitive, highly-refined lady’s-maid. With these
observations, we now pass on to the son He had exceeded, if
possible, his good mother’s Parisian anticipations, for if he had
not brought away any great amount of learning, if he did not know
a planet from a fixed star, the difference of oratory between
Cicero and Demosthenes, or the history of Cupid and the minor
heathen deities, he was nevertheless an uncommonly good hand at a
polka, could be matched to waltz with any one, and had a
tremendous determination of words to the mouth. His dancing
propensities, indeed, were likely to mislead him at starting;
for, not getting into the sort of society Mrs. Pringle wished to
see him attain, he took up with Cremorne and Casinos, and
questionable characters generally.
Mrs. Pringle’s own establishment, we are sorry to say, soon
furnished her with the severest cause of disquietude; for having
always acted upon the principle of having pretty maids—the
difference, as she said, between pretty and plain ones being,
that the men ran after the pretty ones, while the plain ones ran
after the men—having always, we say, acted upon the principle of
having pretty ones, she forgot to change her system on the return
of her hopeful son; and before she knew where she was, he had
established a desperate _liaison_ with a fair maid whose aptitude
for breakage had procured for her the _sobriquet_ of Butter
Fingers. Now, Butter Fingers, whose real name was Disher—Jane
Disher—was a niece of our old friend, Big Ben, now a flourishing
London hotel landlord, and Butter Fingers partook of the goodly
properties and proportions for which the Ben family are
distinguished. She was a little, plump, fair, round-about thing,
with every quality of a healthy country beauty.
Fine Billy was first struck with her one Sunday afternoon,
tripping along in Knightsbridge, as she was making her way home
from Kensington Gardens, when the cheap finery—the parasol, the
profusely-flowered white gauze bonnet, the veil, the machinery
laced cloak, the fringed kerchief, worked sleeves, &c., which she
kept at Chickory the greengrocer’s in Sun Street, and changed
there for the quiet apparel in which she left Mrs. Pringle’s
house in Curtain Crescent—completely deceived him; as much as did
the half-starting smile of recognition she involuntarily gave him
on meeting. Great was his surprise to find that such a smart,
neat-stepping, well-set-up, _bien chaussée_ beauty and he came
from the same quarters. We need not say what followed: how
Properjohn couldn’t see what everybody else saw; and how at
length poor Mrs. Pringle, having changed her mind about going to
hear Mr. Spurgeon, caught the two sitting together, on her richly
carved sofa of chaste design, in the then non-commissioned
put-away drawing room. There was Butter Fingers in a flounced
book-muslin gown with a broad French sash, and her hair clubbed
at the back _à la_ crow’s-nest. It was hard to say which of the
three got the greatest start, though the blow was undoubtedly the
severest on the poor mother, who had looked forward to seeing her
son entering the rank of life legitimately in which she had
occupied a too questionable position. The worst of it was, she
did not know what to do—whether to turn her out of the house at
the moment, and so infuriate the uncle and her son also, or give
her a good scolding, and get rid of her on the first plausible
opportunity. She had no one to consult. She knew what
“Want-nothin’-but-what’s-right Jerry” would say, and that nothing
would please Mrs. Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe more than to read
the marriage of Billy and Butter Fingers.
Mrs. Pringle was afraid too of offending Big Ben by the abrupt
dismissal of his niece, and dreaded if Butter Fingers had gained
any ascendancy over William, that he too might find a convenient
marrying place as somebody else had done.
Altogether our fair friend was terribly perplexed. Thrown on the
natural resources of her own strong mind, she thought, perhaps,
the usual way of getting young ladies off bad matches, by showing
them something better, might be tried with her son. Billy’s
_début_ in the metropolis had not been so flattering as she could
have wished, but then she could make allowances for town
exclusiveness, and the pick and choice of dancing activity which
old family connections and associations supplied. The country was
very different; there, young men were always in request, and were
taken with much lighter credentials.
If, thought she, sweet William could but manage to establish a
good country connection, there was no saying but he might retain
it in town; at all events, the experiment would separate him from
the artful Butter Fingers, and pave the way for her dismissal.
To accomplish this desirable object, Mrs. Pringle therefore
devoted her undivided attention.
CHAPTER VII. THE EARL OF LADYTHORNE.—MISS DE GLANCEY.
AMONG Mrs. Pringle’s many visitors was that gallant old
philanthropist, the well-known Earl of Ladythorne, of Tantivy
Castle, Featherbedfordshire and Belvedere House, London.
His lordship had known her at Lady Delacey’s, and Mrs. Pringle
still wore and prized a ruby ring he slipped upon her finger as
he met her (accidentally of course) in the passage early one
morning as he was going to hunt. His saddle-horses might often be
seen of a summer afternoon, tossing their heads up and down
Curtain Crescent, to the amusement of the inhabitants of that
locality. His lordship indeed was a well-known general patron of
all that was fair and fine and handsome in creation, fine women,
fine houses, fine horses, fine hounds, fine pictures, fine
statues, fine every thing. No pretty woman either in town or
country ever wanted a friend if he was aware of it.
He had long hunted Featherbedfordshire in a style of great
magnificence, and though latterly his energies had perhaps been
as much devoted to the pursuit of the fair as the fox, yet, as he
found the two worked well together, he kept up the hunting
establishment with all the splendour of his youth. Not that he
was old: as he would say, “_far from it!_” Indeed, to walk behind
him down St. James’s Street (he does not go quite so well up),
his easy jaunty air, tall graceful figure, and elasticity of
step, might make him pass for a man in that most uncertain period
of existence the “prime of life,” and if uncivil, unfriendly,
inexorable time has whitened his pow, his lordship carries it off
with the aid of gay costume and colour. He had a great reputation
among the ladies, and though they all laughed and shook their
heads when his name was mentioned, from the pretty simpering Mrs.
Ringdove, of Lime-Tree Grove, who said he was a “naughty man,”
down to the buxom chambermaid of the Rose and Crown, who giggled
and called him a “gay old gentleman,” they all felt pleased and
flattered by his attentions.
Hunting a country undoubtedly gives gay old gentlemen great
opportunities, for, under pretence of finding a fox, they may
rummage any where from the garret[1] to the cellar.
[1] Ex. gra., As we say in the classics. “A Fox Run into a Lady’s
Dressing-Room.—The Heythrop hounds met at Ranger’s Lodge, within about
a mile of Charlbury, found in Hazell Wood, and went away through Great
Cranwell, crossing the park of Cornbury, on by the old kennel to Live
Oak, taking the side hill, leaving Leafield (so celebrated for
clay-pipes) to his left, crossed the bottom by Five Ashes; then turned
to the right, through King’s Wood. Smallstones, Knighton Copse, over
the plain to Ranger’s Lodge, with the hounds close at his brush, where
they left him in a mysterious manner. After the lapse of a little time
he was discovered by a maid- servant in the ladies’ dressing-room,
from which he immediately bolted on the appearance of the petticoats,
without doing the slightest damage to person or property."—Bell’s
Life. What a gentlemanly fox!
In this interesting pursuit, his lordship was ably assisted by
his huntsman, Dicky Boggledike. Better huntsman there might be
than Dicky, but none so eminently qualified for the double
pursuit of the fox and the fine. He had a great deal of tact and
manner, and looked and was essentially a nobleman’s servant. He
didn’t come blurting open-mouthed with “I’ve seen a davilish,”
for such was his dialect, “I’ve seen a davilish fine oss, my
lord,” or “They say Mrs. Candle’s cow has gained another prize,”
but he would take an opportunity of introducing the subject
neatly and delicately, through the medium of some allusion to the
country in which they were to be found, some cover wanting
cutting, some poacher wanting trouncing, or some puppy out at
walk, so that if his lordship didn’t seem to come into the humour
of the thing, Dicky could whip off to the other scent as if he
had nothing else in his mind. It was seldom, however, that his
lordship was not inclined to profit by Dicky’s experience, for he
had great sources of information, and was very careful in his
statements. His lordship and Dicky had now hunted
Featherbedfordshire together for nearly forty years, and though
they might not be so punctual in the mornings, or so late in
leaving off in the evenings, as they were; and though his
lordship might come to the meet in his carriage and four with the
reigning favourite by his side, instead of on his neat cover
hack, and though Dicky did dance longer at his fences than he
used, still there was no diminution in the scale of the
establishment, or in Dicky’s influence throughout the country.
Indeed, it would rather seem as if the now well-matured hunt ran
to show instead of sport, for each succeeding year brought out
either another second horseman (though neither his lordship nor
Dicky ever tired one), or another man in a scarlet and cap, or
established another Rose and Crown, whereat his lordship kept dry
things to change in case he got wet. He was uncommonly kind to
himself, and hated his heir with an intensity of hatred which was
at once the best chance for longevity and for sustaining the
oft-disappointed ambitious hopes of the fair.
Now Mrs. Pringle had always had a very laudable admiration of
fox-hunters. She thought the best introduction for a young man of
fortune was at the cover side, and though Jerry Pringle (who
looked upon them as synonymous) had always denounced “gamblin’
and huntin’” as the two greatest vices of the day, she could
never come in to that opinion, as far as hunting was concerned.
She now thought if she could get Billy launched under the
auspices of that distinguished sportsman, the Earl of Ladythorne,
it might be the means of reclaiming him from Butter Fingers, and
getting him on in society, for she well knew how being seen at
one good place led to another, just as the umbrella-keepers at
the Royal Academy try to lead people into giving them something
in contravention of the rule above their heads, by jingling a few
half-pence before their faces. Moreover, Billy had shown an
inclination for equitation—by nearly galloping several of Mr.
Spavin, the neighbouring livery-stable-keeper’s horses’ tails
off; and Mrs. Pringle’s knowledge of hunting not being equal to
her appreciation of the sport, she thought that a master of
hounds found all the gentlemen who joined his hunt in horses,
just as a shooter finds them in dogs or guns, so that the thing
would be managed immediately.
Indeed, like many ladies, she had rather a confused idea of the
whole thing, not knowing but that one horse would hunt every day
in the week; or that there was any distinction of horses, further
than the purposes to which they were applied. Hunters and
racehorses she had no doubt were the same animals, working their
ways honestly from year’s end to year’s end, or at most with only
the sort of difference between them that there is between a
milliner and a dressmaker. Be that as it may, however, all things
considered, Mrs. Pringle determined to test the sincerity of her
friend the Earl of Ladythorne: and to that end wrote him a
gossiping sort of letter, asking, in the postscript, when his
dogs would be going out, as her son was at home and would “_so
like_” to see them.
Although we introduced Lord Ladythorne as a philanthropist, his
philanthropy, we should add, was rather lop-sided, being chiefly
confined to the fair. Indeed, he could better stand a dozen women
than one man. He had no taste or sympathy, for the hirsute tribe,
hence his fields were very select, being chiefly composed of his
dependents and people whom he could d—— and do what he liked
with. Though the Crumpletin Railway cut right through his
country, making it “varry contagious,” as Harry Swan, his first
whip, said, for sundry large towns, the sporting inhabitants
thereof preferred the money-griping propensities of a certain
Baronet—Sir Moses Mainchance—whose acquaintance the reader will
presently make, to the scot-free sport with the frigid civilities
of the noble Earl. Under ordinary circumstances, therefore, Mrs.
Pringle had made rather an unfortunate selection for her son’s
_début_, but it so happened that her letter found the Earl in
anything but his usual frame of mind.
He was suffering most acutely for the hundred and twentieth time
or so from one of Cupid’s shafts, and that too levelled by a hand
against whose attacks he had always hitherto been thought
impervious. This wound had been inflicted by the
well-known—perhaps to some of our readers too
well-known—equestrian coquette, Miss de Glancey of
Half-the-watering-places-in-England-and-some-on-the-Continent,
whose many conquests had caused her to be regarded as almost
irresistible, and induced, it was said—with what degree of truth
we know not—a party of England’s enterprising sons to fit her out
for an expedition against the gallant Earl of Ladythorne under
the Limited Liability Act.
Now, none but a most accomplished, self-sufficient coquette, such
as Miss de Glancey undoubtedly was, would have undertaken such an
enterprise, for it was in direct contravention of two of the
noble Earl’s leading principles, namely, that of liking large
ladies (fine, coarse women, as the slim ones call them,) and of
disliking foxhunting ones, the sofa and not the saddle being, as
he always said, the proper place for the ladies; but Miss de
Glancey prided herself upon her power of subjugating the tyrant
man, and gladly undertook to couch the lance of blandishment
against the hitherto impracticable nobleman. In order, however,
to understand the exact position of parties, perhaps the reader
will allow us to show how his lordship came to be seized with his
present attack, and also how he treated it.
Well, the ash was yellow, the beech was brown, and the oak ginger
coloured, and the indomitable youth was again in cub-hunting
costume—a white beaver hat, a green cut-away, a buff vest, with
white cords and caps, attended by Boggledike and his whips in
hats, and their last season’s pinks or purples, disturbing the
numerous litters of cubs with which the country abounded, when,
after a musical twenty minutes with a kill in Allonby Wood, his
lordship joined horses with Dicky, to discuss the merits of the
performance, as they rode home together.
“Yas, my lord, yas,” replied Dicky, sawing away at his hat, in
reply to his lordship’s observation that they ran uncommonly
well; “yas, my lord, they did. I don’t know that I can ever
remamber bein’ better pleased with an entry than I am with this
year’s. I really think in a few more seasons we shall get ’em as
near parfection as possible. Did your lordship notish that
Barbara betch, how she took to runnin’ to-day? The first time she
has left my oss’s eels. Her mother, old Blossom, was jest the
same. Never left my oss’s eels the first season, and everybody
said she was fit for nothin’ but the halter; but my!” continued
he, shaking his head, “what a rare betch she did become.”
“She did that,” replied his lordship, smiling at Dicky’s
pronunciation.
“And that reminds me,” continued Dicky, emboldened by what he
thought the encouragement, “I was down at Freestone Banks
yasterday, where Barbara was walked, a seein’ a pup I have there
now, and I think I seed the very neatest lady’s pad I ever set
eyes on!”—Dicky’s light-blue eyes settling on his lordship’s
eagle ones as he spoke. “Aye! who’s was that?” asked the gay old
gentleman, catching at the word “lady.”
“Why, they say she belongs to a young lady from the south—a Miss
Dedancey, I think they call her,” with the aptitude people have
for mistaking proper names.
“Dedancey,” repeated his lordship, “Dedancey; never heard of the
name before—what’s set her here?”
“She’s styin’ at Mrs. Roseworth’s, at Lanecroft House, but her
osses stand at the Spread Heagle, at Bush Dill—Old Sam
‘Utchison’s, you know.”
_Indomitable Youth_. Horses! what, has she more than one?
_Dicky_. Two, a bay and a gray,—it’s the bay that takes my fancy
most:—the neatest stepper, with the lightest month, and fairest,
freeest, truest action I ever seed.
_Indomitable Youth_. What’s she going to do with them?
_Dicky._ Ride them, ride them! They say she’s the finest
oss-woman that ever was seen.
“In-deed,” mused his lordship, thinking over the _pros_ and
_cons_ of female equestrianism,—the disagreeableness of being
beat by them,—the disagreeableness of having to leave them in the
lurch,—the disagreeableness of seeing them floored,—the
disagreeableness of seeing them all running down with
perspiration;—the result being that his lordship adhered to his
established opinion that women have no business out hunting.
Dicky knew his lordship’s sentiments, and did not press the
matter, but drew his horse a little to the rear, thinking it
fortunate that all men are not of the same way of thinking. Thus
they rode on for some distance in silence, broken only by the
occasional flopping and chiding of Harry Swan or his brother whip
of some loitering or refractory hound. His lordship had a great
opinion of Dicky’s judgment, and though they might not always
agree in their views, he never damped Dicky’s ardour by openly
differing with him. He thought by Dicky’s way of mentioning the
lady that he had a good opinion of her, and, barring the riding,
his lordship saw no reason why he should not have a good opinion
of her too. Taking advantage of the Linton side-bar now bringing
them upon the Somerton-Longville road, he reined in his horse a
little so as to let Dicky come alongside of him again.
“What is this young lady like?” asked the indomitable youth, as
soon as they got their horses to step pleasantly together again.
“Well now,” replied Dicky, screwing up his mouth, with an
apologetic touch of his hat, knowing that that was his weak
point, “well now, I don’t mean to say that she’s zactly—no, not
zactly, your lordship’s model,—not a large full-bodied woman like
Mrs. Blissland or Miss Poach, but an elegant, _very_ elegant,
well-set-up young lady, with a high-bred hair about her that one
seldom sees in the country, for though we breeds our women very
beautiful—uncommon ‘andsome, I may say—we don’t polish them hup
to that fine degree of parfection that they do in the towns, and
even if we did they would most likely spoil the ‘ole thing by
some untoward unsightly dress, jest as a country servant spoils a
London livery by a coloured tie, or goin’ about with a great
shock head of ‘air, or some such disfigurement; but this young
lady, to my mind, is a perfect pictor, self, oss, and seat,—all
as neat and perfect as can be, and nothing that one could either
halter or amend. She is what, savin’ your lordship’s presence, I
might call the ‘pink of fashion and the mould of form!’—Dicky
sawing away at his hat as he spoke.
“Tall, slim, and genteel, I suppose,” observed his lordship
drily.
“Jest so,” assented Dicky, with a chuck of the chin, making a
clean breast of it, “jest so,” adding, “at least as far as one
can judge of her in her ‘abit, you know.”
“Thought so,” muttered his lordship.
And having now gained one of the doors in the wall, they cut
across the deer-studded park, and were presently back at the
Castle. And his lordship ate his dinner, and quaffed his sweet
and dry and twenty-five Lafitte without ever thinking about
either the horse, or the lady, or the habit, or anything
connected with the foregoing conversation, while the reigning
favourite, Mrs. Moffatt, appeared just as handsome as could be in
his eyes.
CHAPTER VIII. CUB-HUNTING.
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THOUGH his lordship, as we said before, would stoutly deny being
old, he had nevertheless got sufficiently through the morning of
life not to let cub-hunting get him out of bed a moment sooner
than usual, and it was twelve o’clock on the next day but one to
that on which the foregoing conversation took place, that Mr.
Boggledike was again to be seen standing erect in his stirrups,
yoiking and coaxing his hounds into Crashington Gorse. There was
Dicky, cap-in-hand, in the Micentre ride, exhorting the young
hounds to dive into the strong sea of gorse. “_Y-o-o-icks! wind
him! y-o-o-icks! pash him up!_” cheered the veteran, now turning
his horse across to enforce the request. There was his lordship
at the high corner as usual, ensconced among the clump of
weather-beaten blackthorns—thorns that had neither advanced nor
receded a single inch since he first knew them,—his eagle eye
fixed on the narrow fern and coarse grass-covered dell down which
Reynard generally stole. There was Harry Swan at one corner to
head the fox back from the beans, and Tom Speed at the other to
welcome him away over the corn-garnered open. And now the whimper
of old sure-finding Harbinger, backed by the sharp “yap” of the
terrier, proclaims that our friend is at home, and presently a
perfect hurricane of melody bursts from the agitated gorse,—every
hound is in the paroxysm of excitement, and there are
five-and-twenty couple of them, fifty musicians in the whole!
“_Tally-ho!_ there he goes across the ride!”
“_Cub!_” cries his lordship.
“_Cub!_” responded Dicky.
“_Crack!_” sounds the whip.
Now the whole infuriated phalanx dashed across the ride and dived
into the close prickly gorse on the other side as if it were the
softest, pleasantest quarters in the world. There is no occasion
to coax, and exhort, and ride cap-in-hand to them now. It’s all
fury and commotion. Each hound seems to consider himself
personally aggrieved,—though we will be bound to say the fox and
he never met in their lives,—and to be bent upon having immediate
satisfaction. And immediate, any tyro would think it must
necessarily be, seeing such preponderating influence brought to
bear upon so small an animal. Not so, however: pug holds his own;
and, by dint of creeping, and crawling, and stopping, and
listening, and lying down, and running his foil, he brings the
lately rushing, clamorous pack to a more plodding, pains-taking,
unravelling sort of performance.
Meanwhile three foxes in succession slip away, one at Speed’s
corner, two at Swan’s; and though Speed screeched, and screamed,
and yelled, as if he were getting killed, not a hound came to see
what had happened. They all stuck to the original scent.
“Here he comes again!” now cries his lordship from his
thorn-formed bower, as the cool-mannered fox again steals across
the ride, and Dicky again uncovers, and goes through the capping
ceremony. Over come the pack, bristling and lashing for
blood—each hound looking as if he would eat the fox
single-handed. Now he’s up to the high corner as though he were
going to charge his lordship himself, and passing over fresh
ground the hounds get the benefit of a scent, and work with
redoubled energy, making the opener gorse bushes crack and bend
with their pressure. Pug has now gained the rabbit-burrowed bank
of the north fence, and has about made up his mind to follow the
example of his comrades, and try his luck in the open, when a
cannonading crack of Swan’s whip strikes terror into his heart,
and causes him to turn tail, and run the moss-grown mound of the
hedge. Here he unexpectedly meets young Prodigal face to face,
who, thinking that rabbit may be as good eating as fox, has got
up a little hunt of his own, and who is considerably put out of
countenance by the _rencontre_; but pug, not anticipating any
such delicacy on the part of a pursuer, turns tail, and is very
soon in the rear of the hounds, hunting them instead of their
hunting him. The thing then becomes more difficult, businesslike,
and sedate—the sages of the pack taking upon them to guide the
energy of the young. So what with the slow music of the hounds,
the yap, yap, yapping of the terriers, and the shaking of the
gorse, an invisible underground sort of hunt is maintained—his
lordship sitting among his blackthorn bushes like a gentleman in
his opera-stall, thinking now of the hunt, now of his dinner, now
of what a good thing it was to be a lord, with a good digestion
and plenty of cash, and nobody to comb his head.
At length pug finds it too hot to hold him. The rays of an
autumnal sun have long been striking into the gorse, while a warm
westerly wind does little to ventilate it from the steam of the
rummaging inquisitive pack. Though but a cub, he is the son of an
old stager, who took Dicky and his lordship a deal of killing,
and with the talent of his sire, he thus ruminates on his
uncomfortable condition.
“If,” says he, “I stay here, I shall either be smothered or fall
a prey to these noisy unrelenting monsters, who seem to have the
knack of finding me wherever I go. I’d better cut my stick as I
did the time before, and have fresh air and exercise at all
events, in the open:” so saying he made a dash at the hedge near
where Swan was stationed, and regardless of his screams and the
cracks of his whip, cut through the beans and went away, with a
sort of defiant whisk of his brush.
What a commotion followed his departure! How the screeches of the
men mingled with the screams of the hounds and the twangs of the
horn! In an instant his lordship vacates his opera-stall and is
flying over the ragged boundary fence that separates him from the
beans; while Mr. Boggledike capers and prances at a much smaller
place, looking as if he would fain turn away were it not for the
observation of the men. Now Dicky is over! Swan and Speed take it
in their stride, just as the last hound leaves the gorse and
strains to regain his distant companions. A large grass field,
followed by a rough bare fallow, takes the remaining strength out
of poor pug; and, turning short to the left, he seeks the
friendless shelter of a patch of wretched oats. The hounds
overrun the scent, but, spreading like a rocket, they quickly
recover it; and in an instant, fox, hounds, horses, men, are
among the standing corn,—one ring in final destruction of the
beggarly crop, and poor pug is in the hands of his pursuers. Then
came the grand _finale_, the _who hoop!_ the baying, the blowing,
the beheading, &c. Now Harry Swan, whose province it is to
magnify sport and make imaginary runs to ground, exercises his
calling, by declaring it was five-and-thirty minutes (twenty
perhaps), and the finest young fox he ever had hold of. Now his
lordship and Dicky take out their _tootlers_ and blow a shrill
reverberating blast; while Swan stands straddling and yelling,
with the mangled remains high above his head, ready to throw it
into the sea of mouths that are baying around to receive it.
After a sufficiency of noise, up goes the carcase; the wave of
hounds breaks against it as it falls, while a half-ravenous,
half-indignant, growling worry succeeds the late clamourous
outcry.
“Tear ‘im and eat ‘im!” cries Dicky.
“Tear ‘im and eat ‘im!” shouts his lordship.
“Tear ‘im and eat ‘im!” shrieks Speed.
“_Hie worry! worry! worry!_” shouts Swan, trying to tantalize the
young hounds with a haunch, which, however, they do not seem much
to care about.
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The old hounds, too, seem as if they had lost their hunger with
their anger; and Marmion lets Warrior run off with his leg with
only a snap and an indignant rise of his bristles.
Altogether the froth and effervescence of the thing has
evaporated; so his lordship and Dicky turning their horses’
heads, the watchful hounds give a bay of obedient delight as they
frolic under their noses; and Swan having reclaimed his horse
from Speed, the onward procession is formed to give Brambleton
Wood a rattle by way of closing the performance of the day.
His lordship and Dicky ride side by side, extolling the merits of
the pack and the excellence of Crashington Gorse. Never was so
good a cover. Never was a better pack. Mainchance’s! _pooh!_ Not
to be mentioned in the same century. So they proceed, magnifying
and complimenting themselves in the handsomest terms possible,
down Daisyfield lane, across Hill House pastures, and on by
Duston Mills to Broomley, which is close to Brambleton Wood.
Most of our Featherbedfordshire friends will remember that after
leaving Duston Mills the roads wind along the impetuous Lime,
whose thorn and broom-grown banks offer dry, if not very secure,
accommodation for master Reynard; and the draw being pretty, and
the echo fine, his lordship thought they might as well run the
hounds along the banks, not being aware that Peter Hitter, Squire
Porker’s keeper, had just emerged at the east end as they came up
at the west. However, that was neither here nor there, Dicky got
his _Y-o-o-icks_, his lordship got his view, Swan and Speed their
cracks and canters, and it was all in the day’s work. No fox, of
course, was the result. “_Tweet, tweet, tweet_,” went the horns,
his lordship taking a blow as well as Dicky, which sounded up the
valley and lost itself among the distant hills. The hounds came
straggling leisurely out of cover, as much as to say, “You know
there never _is_ a fox there, so why bother us?”
All hands being again united, the cavalcade rose the hill, and
were presently on the Longford and Aldenbury turnpike. Here the
Featherbedfordshire reader’s local knowledge will again remind
him that the Chaddleworth lane crosses the turnpike at right
angles, and just as old Ringwood, who, as usual, was trotting
consequentially in advance of the pack, with the fox’s head in
his mouth, got to the finger-post, a fair equestrian on a tall
blood bay rode leisurely past with downcast eyes in full view of
the advancing party. Though her horse whinnied and shied, and
seemed inclined to be sociable, she took no more notice of the
cause than if it had been a cart, merely coaxing and patting him
with her delicate primrose-coloured kid gloves. So she got him
past without even a sidelong look from herself.
But though she did not look my lord did, and was much struck with
the air and elegance of everything—her mild classic features—her
black-felt, Queen’s-patterned, wide-awake, trimmed with
lightish-green velvet, and green cock-feathered plume, tipped
with straw-colour to match the ribbon that now gently fluttered
at her fair neck,—her hair, her whip, her gloves, her _tout
ensemble_. Her lightish-green habit was the quintessence of a
fit, and altogether there was a high-bred finish about her that
looked more like Hyde Park than what one usually sees in the
country.
“Who the deuce is that, Dicky?” asked his lordship, as she now
got out of hearing.
“That be _her_, my lord,” whispered Dicky, sawing away at his
hat. “That be _her_,” repeated he with a knowing leer.
“_Her!_ who d’ye mean?” asked his lordship, who had forgotten all
Dicky’s preamble.
“Well,—Miss—Miss—What’s her name—Dedancev, Dedancey,—the lady I
told you about.”
And the Earl’s heart smote him, for he felt that he had done
injustice to Dicky, and moreover, had persevered too long in his
admiration of large ladies, and in his repudiation of
horsemanship. He thought he had never seen such a graceful seat,
or such a piece of symmetrical elegance before, and inwardly
resolved to make Dicky a most surprising present at Christmas,
for he went on the principle of giving low wages, and of
rewarding zeal and discretion, such as Dicky’s, profusely. And
though he went and drew Brambleton Wood, he was thinking far more
of the fair maid, her pensive, downcast look, her long eyelashes,
her light silken hair, her graceful figure, and exquisite seat,
than of finding a fox; and he was not at all sorry when he heard
Dicky’s horn at the bridle-gate at the Ashburne end blowing the
hounds out of cover. They then went home, and his lordship was
very grumpy all that evening with his fat fair-and-forty friend,
Mrs. Moffatt, who could not get his tea to his liking at all.
We dare say most of our readers will agree with us, that when a
couple want to be acquainted there is seldom much difficulty
about the matter, even though there be no friendly go-between to
mutter the cabalistic words that constitute an introduction; and
though Miss de Glancey did ride so unconcernedly past, it was a
sheer piece of acting, as she had long been waiting at Carlton
Clumps, which commands a view over the surrounding country,
timing herself for the exact spot where she met the too
susceptible Earl and his hounds.
No one knew better how to angle for admiration than this renowned
young lady,—when to do the bold—when the bashful—when the
timid—when the scornful and retiring, and she rightly calculated
that the way to attract and win the young old Earl was to look as
if she didn’t want to have anything to say to him. Her downcast
look, and utter indifference to that fertile source of
introduction, a pack of hounds, had sunk deeper into his tender
heart than if she had pulled up to admire them collectively, and
to kiss them individually. We all know how useful a dog can be
made in matters of this sort—how the fair creatures can express
their feelings by their fondness. And if one dog can be so
convenient, by how much more so can a whole pack of hounds be
made!
CHAPTER IX. A PUP AT WALK.—IMPERIAL JOHN.
N ext day his lordship, who was of the nice old Andlesey school
of dressers, was to be seen in regular St. James’s Street attire,
viz. a bright blue coat with gilt buttons, a light blue scarf, a
buff vest with fawn-coloured leathers, and brass heel spurs,
capering on a long-tailed silver dun, attended by a diminutive
rosy-cheeked boy—known in the stables as Cupid-without-Wings—on a
bay.
He was going to see a pup he had at walk at Freestone Banks, of
which the reader will remember Dicky had spoken approvingly on a
previous day; and the morning being fine and sunny, his lordship
took the bridle-road over Ashley Downs, and along the range of
undulating Heathmoor Hills, as well for the purpose of enjoying
the breeze as of seeing what was passing in the vale below. So he
tit-up’d and tit-up’d away, over the sound green sward, on his
flowing-tailed steed, his keen far-seeing eye raking all the
roads as he went. There seemed to be nothing stirring but heavy
crushing waggons, with doctor’s gigs and country carts, and here
and there a slow-moving steed of the grand order of agriculture.
When, however, he got to the broken stony ground where all the
independent hill tracks join in common union to effect the
descent into the vale, his hack pricked his ears, and looking
a-head to the turn of the lane into which the tracks ultimately
resolved themselves, his lordship first saw a fluttering,
light-tipped feather, and then the whole figure of a horsewoman,
emerge from the concealing hedge as it were on to the open space
beyond. Miss, too, had been on the hills, as the Earl might have
seen by her horse’s imprints, if he had not been too busy looking
abroad; and she had just had time to effect the descent as he
approached. She was now sauntering along as unconcernedly as if
there was nought but herself and her horse in the world. His
lordship started when he saw her, and a crimson flush suffused
his healthy cheeks as he drew his reins, and felt his hack gently
with his spur to induce him to use a little more expedition down
the hill. Cupid-without-Wings put on also, to open the rickety
gate at the bottom, and his lordship telling him, as he passed
through, to “shut it gently,” pressed on at a well-in-hand trot,
which he could ease down to a walk as he came near the object of
his pursuit. Miss’s horse heard footsteps coming and looked
round, but she pursued the even tenour of her way apparently
indifferent to everything—even to a garotting. His lordship,
however, was not to be daunted by any such coolness; so stealing
quietly alongside of her, he raised his hat respectfully, and
asked, in his mildest, blandest tone, if she had “seen a man with
a hound in a string?”
“_Hound! me! see!_” exclaimed Miss de Glancey, with a well
feigned start of astonishment. “_No, sir, I have not,_” continued
she haughtily, as if recovering herself, and offended by the
inquiry.
“I’m afraid my hounds startled your horse the other day,”
observed his lordship, half inclined to think she didn’t know
him.
“Oh, no, they didn’t,” replied she with an upward curl of her
pretty lip; “my horse is not so easily startled as that; are you,
Cock Robin?” asked she, leaning forward to pat him.
Cock Robin replied by laying back his ears, and taking a snatch
at his lordship’s hack’s silver mane, which afforded him an
opportunity of observing that Cock Robin was not very sociable.
“_Not with strangers_,” pouted Miss de Glancey, with a flash of
her bright hazel eyes. So saying, she touched her horse lightly
with her gold-mounted whip, and in an instant she was careering
away, leaving his lordship to the care of the now grinning
Cupid-without-Wings.
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And thus the mynx held the sprightly youth in tow, till she
nearly drove him mad, not missing any opportunity of meeting him,
but never giving him too much of her company, and always pouting
at the suggestion of _her_ marrying a “_mere fox-hunter._” The
whole thing, of course, furnished conversation for the gossips,
and Mr. Boggledike, as in duty bound, reported what he heard. She
puzzled his lordship more than any lady he had ever had to do
with, and though he often resolved to strike and be free, he had
only to meet her again to go home more subjugated than ever. And
so what between Miss de Glancey out of doors and Mrs. Moffatt in,
he began to have a very unpleasant time of it. His hat had so
long covered his family, that he hardly knew how to set about
obtaining his own consent to marry; and yet he felt that he ought
to marry if it was only to spite his odious heir—_old_ General
Binks; for his lordship called him old though the General was ten
years younger than himself; but still he would like to look about
him a little longer. What he would now wish to do would be to
keep Miss de Glancey in the country, for he felt interested in
her, and thought she would be ornamental to the pack. Moreover,
he liked all that was handsome, _piquant_, and gay, and to be
joked about the Featherbedfordshire witches when he went to town.
So he resolved himself into a committee of ways and means, to
consider how the object was to be effected, without surrendering
himself. That must be the last resource at all events, thought
he.
Now upon his lordship’s vast estates was a most unmitigated
block-head called Imperial John, from his growing one of those
chin appendages. His real name was Hybrid—John Hybrid, of Barley
Hill Farm; but his handsome sister, “Imperial Jane,” as the wags
called her, having attracted his lordship’s attention, to the
danger as it was thought of old Binks, on leaving her furnishing
seminary at Turnham Green, John had been taken by the hand, which
caused him to lose his head, and make him set up for what he
called “a gent.” He built a lodge and a portico to Barley Hill
Farm, rough cast, and put a pine roof on to the house, and then
advertised in the “Featherbedfordshire Gazette,” that letters and
papers were for the future to be addressed to John Hybrid,
Esquire, Barley Hill Hall, and not Farm as they had hitherto
been. And having done so much for the place, John next revised
his own person, which, though not unsightly, was coarse, and a
long way off looking anything like that of a gentleman. He first
started the imperial aforesaid, and not being laughed at as much
as he expected for that, he was emboldened to order a red coat
for the then approaching season. Mounting the pink is a critical
thing, for if a man does not land in the front rank they will not
admit him again into the rear, and he remains a sort of red bat
for the rest of his life,—neither a gentleman nor a farmer.
John, however, feeling that he had his lordship’s countenance,
went boldly at it, and the first day of the season before that
with which we are dealing, found him with his stomach buttoned
consequentially up in a spic and span scarlet with fancy buttons,
looking as bumptious as a man with a large balance at his
banker’s. He sat bolt upright, holding his whip like a
field-marshal’s bâton, on his ill-groomed horse, with a
tight-bearing rein chucking the Imperial chin well in the air,
and a sort of half-defiant “you’d better not laugh at me” look.
And John was always proud to break a fence, or turn a hound, or
hold a horse, or do anything his lordship bid him, and became a
sort of hunting aide-de-camp to the great man. He was a boasting,
bragging fool, always talking about m-o-y hall, and m-o-y lodge,
and m-o-y plate in m-o-y drawing-room, for he had not discovered
that plate was the appendage of a dining-room, and altogether he
was very magnificent.
Imperial Jane kept old Binks on the fret for some time, until
another of his lordship’s tenants, young Fred Poppyfield,
becoming enamoured of her charms, and perhaps wishing to ride in
scarlet too, sought her fair hand, whereupon his lordship, acting
with his usual munificence, set them up on a farm at so low a
rent that it acquired the name of Gift Hall Farm. This
arrangement set Barley Hall free so far as the petticoats were
concerned, and his lordship little knowing how well she was “up”
in the country, thought this great gouk of a farmer, with his
plate in his drawing-room, might come over the accomplished Miss
de Glancey,—the lady who sneered at himself as “a mere
fox-hunter.” And the wicked monkey favoured the delusion, which
she saw through the moment his lordship brought the pompous
egotist up at Newington Gorse, and begged to be allowed to
introduce his friend, Mr Hybrid, and she inwardly resolved to
give Mr. Hybrid a benefit. Forsaking his lordship therefore
entirely, she put forth her most seductive allurements at
Imperial John, talked most amazingly to him, rode over whatever
he recommended, and seemed quite smitten with him.
And John, who used to boast that somehow the “gals couldn’t
withstand him,” was so satisfied with his success, that he
presently blundered out an offer, when Miss de Glancey, having
led him out to the extreme length of his tether, gave such a
start and shudder of astonishment as Fanny Kemble, or Mrs.
Siddons herself, might have envied.
“O, Mr. Hybrid! O, Mr. Hybrid!” gasped she, opening wide her
intelligent eyes, as if she had but just discovered his meaning.
“O, Mr. Hybrid!” exclaimed she for the third time,
“_you—you—you_,” and turning aside as if to conceal her emotion,
she buried her face in her laced-fringed, richly-cyphered
kerchief.
John, who was rather put out by some women who were watching him
from the adjoining turnip-field, construing all this into the
usual misfortune of the ladies not being able to withstand him,
returned to the charge as soon as he got out of their hearing,
when he was suddenly brought up by such a withering “_Si-r-r-r!
do you mean to insult me?_” coupled with a look that nearly
started the basket-buttons of his green cut-away, and convinced
him that Miss de Glancey, at all events, could withstand him. So
his Majesty slunk off, consoling himself with the reflection,
that riding-habits covered a multitude of sins, and that if he
was not much mistaken, she would want a deal of oil-cake, or cod
liver oil, or summut o’ that sort, afore she was fit to show.
And the next time Miss met my lord (which, of course, she did by
accident), she pouted and frowned at the “mere fox-hunter,” and
intimated her intention of leaving the country—going home to her
mamma, in fact.
It was just at this juncture that Mrs. Pringle’s letter arrived,
and his lordship’s mind being distracted between love on his own
account, dread of matrimony, and dislike of old Binks, he caught
at what he would in general have stormed at, and wrote to say
that he should begin hunting the first Monday in November, and if
Mrs. Pringle’s son would come down a day or two before, he would
“put him up” (which meant mount him), and “do for him” (which
meant board and lodge him), all, in fact, that Mrs. Pringle could
desire. And his lordship inwardly hoped that Mr. Pringle might be
more to Miss de Glancey’s liking than his Imperial Highness had
proved. At all events, he felt it was but a simple act of justice
to himself to try. Let us now return to Curtain Crescent.
CHAPTER X. JEAN ROUGIER, OR JACK ROGERS.
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WE need not say that Mrs. Pringle was overjoyed at the receipt of
the Earl’s letter. It was so kind and good, and so like him. He
always said he would do her a good turn if he could: but there
are so many fine-weather friends in this world that there is no
being certain of any one. Happy are they who never have occasion
to test the sincerity of their friends, say we.
Mrs. Pringle was now all bustle and excitement, preparing Billy
for the great event.
His wardrobe, always grand, underwent revision in the
undergarment line. She got him some magnificently embroidered
dress shirts, so fine that the fronts almost looked as if you
might blow them out, and regardful of the _rôle_ he was now about
to play, she added several dozen with horses, dogs, birds, and
foxes upon them, “suitable for fishing, shooting, boating, &c.,”
as the advertisements said. His cambric kerchiefs were of the
finest quality, while his stockings and other things were in
great abundance, the whole surmounted by a splendid
dressing-case, the like of which had ne’er been seen since the
days of Pea-Green Haine. Altogether he was capitally provided,
and quite in accordance with a lady’s-maid’s ideas of gentility.
Billy, on his part, was active and energetic too, for though he
had his doubts about being able to sit at the jumps, he had no
objection to wear a red coat; and mysterious-looking boys, with
blue bags, were constantly to be found seated on the mahogany
bench, in the Curtain Crescent passage, waiting to try on his top
boots; while the cheval glass up-stairs was constantly reflecting
his figure in scarlet, _à la_ Old Briggs. The concomitants of the
chase, leathers, cords, whips, spurs, came pouring in apace. The
next thing was to get somebody to take care of them.
It is observable that the heads of the various branches of an
establishment are all in favour of “master” spending all his
money on their particular department. Thus, the coachman would
have him run entirely to carriages, the groom to horses, the cook
to the _cuisine_, the butler to wines, the gardener to grapes,
&c., and so on.
Mrs. Pringle, we need hardly say, favoured lady’s-maids and
valets. It has been well said, that if a man wants to get
acquainted with a gentleman’s private affairs, he should either
go to the lawyer or else to the valet that’s courting the
lady’s-maid; and Mrs. Pringle was quite of that opinion.
Moreover, she held that no man with an efficient, properly
trained valet, need ever be catspawed or jilted, because the
lady’s-maid would feel it a point of honour to let the valet know
how the land lay, a compliment he would return under similar
circumstances. To provide Billy with this, as she considered,
most essential appendage to a gentleman, was her next
consideration—a valet that should know enough and not too
much—enough to enable him to blow his master’s trumpet properly,
and not too much, lest he should turn restive and play the wrong
tune.
At length she fixed upon the Anglo-Frenchman, whose name stands
at the head of this chapter—Jean Rougier, or Jack Rogers. Jack
was the son of old Jack Rogers, so well known as the enactor of
the Drunken Huzzar, and similar characters of Nutkins’s Circus;
and Jack was entered to his father’s profession, but disagreeing
with the clown, Tom Oliver, who used to give him sundry most
unqualified cuts and cuffs in the Circus, Jack, who was a
tremendously strong fellow, gave Oliver such a desperate beating
one night as caused his life to be despaired off. This took place
at Nottingham, from whence Jack fled for fear of the
consequences; and after sundry vicissitudes he was next
discovered as a post-boy, at Sittingbourne, an office that he was
well adapted for, being short and stout and extremely powerful.
No brute was ever too bad for Jack’s riding: he would tame them
before the day was over. Somehow he got bumped down to Dover,
when taking a fancy to go “foreign,” he sold his master’s horses
for what they would fetch; and this being just about the time
that the late Mr. Probert expiated a similar mistake at the Old
Bailey, Jack hearing of it, thought it was better to stay where
he was than give Mr. Calcraft any trouble. He therefore accepted
the situation of boots to the Albion Hotel, Boulogne-sur-mer; but
finding that he did not get on half so well as he would if he
were a Frenchman, he took to acquiring the language, which, with
getting his ears bored, letting his hair and whiskers grow, and
adopting the French costume in all its integrity, coupled with a
liberal attack of the small-pox, soon told a tale in favour of
his fees. After a long absence, he at length returned at the Bill
Smith Revolution; and vacillating for some time between a courier
and a valet, finally settled down to what we now find him.
We know not how it is, if valets are so essentially necessary,
that there should always be so many out of place, but certain it
is that an advertisment in a morning paper will always bring a
full crop to a door.
Perhaps, being the laziest of all lazy lives, any one can turn
his hand to valeting, who to dig is unable, and yet to want is
unwilling.
Mrs. Pringle knew better than hold a levee in Curtain Crescent,
letting all the applicants pump Properjohn or such of the maids
as they could get hold of; and having advertised for written
applications, stating full particulars of previous service, and
credentials, to be addressed to F. P. at Chisel the baker’s, in
Yeast Street, she selected some half-dozen of the most promising
ones, and appointed the parties to meet her, at different hours
of course, at the first-class waiting-room of the great Western
Station, intimating that they would know her by a bunch of red
geraniums she would hold in her hand. And the second applicant,
Jean Rougier, looked so like her money, having a sufficient
knowledge of the English language to be able to understand all
that was said, and yet at the same time sufficiently ignorant of
it to invite confidential communications to be made before him;
that after glancing over the testimonials bound up in his little
parchment-backed passport book, she got the name and address of
his then master, and sought an interview to obtain Monsieur’s
character. This gentleman, Sir Harry Bolter, happening to owe
Jack three-quarters of a year’s wages, which he was not likely to
pay, spoke of him in the highest possible terms, glossing over
his little partiality for drink by saying that, like all
Frenchmen, he was of a convivial turn; and in consequence of Sir
Harry’s and Jack’s own recommendations, Mrs. Pringle took him.
The reader will therefore now have the kindness to consider our
hero and his valet under way, with a perfect pyramid of luggage,
and Monsieur arrayed in the foraging cap, the little coatee, the
petticoat trowsers, and odds and ends money-bag of his long
adopted country, slung across his ample chest.
Their arrival and reception at Tantivy Castle will perhaps be
best described in the following letter from Billy to his mother:—
Tantivy Castle.
My dearest Mamma,
_I write a line to say that I arrived here quite safe by the 5-30
train, and found the Earl as polite as possible. I should tell
you that I made a mistake at starting, for it being dark when I
arrived, and getting confused with a whole regiment of footmen, I
mistook a fine gentleman who came forward to meet me for the
Earl, and made him a most respectful bow, which the ass returned,
and began to talk about the weather; and when the real Earl came
in I took him for a guest, and was going to weather him. However
he soon put all matters right, and introduced me to Mrs. Moffatt,
a very fine lady, who seems to rule the roast here in grand
style. They say she never wears the same dress twice._
_There are always at least half-a-dozen powdered footmen, in
cerulean blue lined with rose-coloured silk, and pink silk
stockings, the whole profusely illustrated with gold lace, gold
aigulets, and I don’t know what, lounging about in the halls and
passages, wailing for company which Rougier says never comes.
This worthy seems to have mastered the ins and outs of the place
already, and says, “my lor has an Englishman to cook his
beef-steak for breakfast, a Frenchman to cook his dinner, and an
Italian confectioner; every thing that a ‘my lord’ ought to have”
It is a splendid place,—as you will see by the above picture, *
more like Windsor than anything I ever saw, and there seems to be
no expense spared that could by any possibility be incurred. I’ve
got a beautiful bedroom with warm and cold baths and a
conservatory attached._
* Our friend was writing on Castle-paper, of course.
_To-morrow is the first day of the season, and all the world and
his wife will be there to a grand déjeuner à la Fourchette. The
hounds meet before the Castle. His lordship says he will put me
on a safe, steady hunter, and I hope he will, for I am not quite
sure that I can sit at the jumps. However I’ll let you know how I
come on. Meanwhile as the gong is sounding for dressing, believe
me, my dearest mamma,_
_Ever your truly affectionate son,_
Wm. PRINGLE.
Mrs. Pringle,
Curtain Crescent, Belgrade Square, London.
CHAPTER XI. THE OPENING DAY.—THE HUNT BREAKFAST.
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REVERSING the usual order of things, each first Monday in
November saw the sporting inmates of Tantivy Castle emerge from
the chrysalis into the butterfly state of existence. His
lordship’s green-duck hunter and drab caps disappeared, and were
succeeded by a spic-and-span span new scarlet and white top; Mr.
Roggledike’s last year’s pink was replaced by a new one, his hat
was succeeded by a cap; and the same luck attended the garments
of both Swan and Speed. The stud-groom, the pad-groom, the
sending-on groom, all the grooms down to our little friend,
Cupid-without-Wings, underwent renovation in their outward men.
The whole place smelt of leather and new cloth. The Castle itself
on this occasion seemed to participate in the general festivity,
for a bright sun emblazoned the quarterings of the gaily
flaunting flag, lit up the glittering vanes of the lower towers,
and burnished the modest ivy of the basements. Every thing was
bright and sunny, and though Dicky Boggledike did not “zactly
like” the red sunrise, he “oped the rine might keep off until
they were done, ‘specially as it was a show day.” Very showy
indeed it was, for all the gentlemen out of livery,—those strange
puzzlers—were in full ball costume; while the standard footmen
strutted like peacocks in their rich blue liveries with
rose-coloured linings, and enormous bouquets under their noses,
feeling that for once they were going to have something to do.
The noble Earl, having got himself up most elaborately in his new
hunting garments, and effected a satisfactory tie of a
heart’s-ease embroidered blue satin cravat, took his usual stand
before the now blazing wood and coal fire in the enormous grate
in the centre of his magnificent baronial hall, ready to receive
his visitors and pass them on to Mrs. Moffat in the banqueting
room. This fair lady was just as fine as hands could make her,
and the fit of her rich pale satin dress, trimmed with
swan’s-down, reflected equal credit on her milliner and her maid.
Looking at her as she now sat at the head of the
sumptuously-furnished breakfast table, her plainly dressed hair
surmounted by a diminutive point-lace cap, and her gazelle-like
eye lighting up an intelligent countenance, it were hardly
possible to imagine that she had ever been handsomer, or that
beneath that quiet aspect there lurked what is politely called a
“high spirit,” that is to say, a little bit of temper.
That however is more the Earl’s look-out than ours, so we will
return to his lordship at the entrance hall fire.
Of course this sort of gathering was of rather an anomalous
character,—some coming because they wanted something, some
because they “dirsn’t” stay away, some because they did not know
Mrs. Moffat would be there, some because they did not care
whether she was or not. It was a show day, and they came to see
the beautiful Castle, not Mrs. Anybody.
The first to arrive were the gentlemen of the second class, the
agents and dependents of the estate,—Mr. Cypher, the auditor, he
who never audited; Mr. Easylease, the land agent; his son, Mr.
John Easylease, the sucking land agent; Mr. Staple, the mining
agent; Mr. James Staple, the sucking mining agent; Mr. Section,
the architect; Mr. Pillerton, the doctor; Mr. Brick, the builder;
&c., who were all very polite ard obsequious, “your lordship” and
my “my lording” the Earl at every opportunity. These, ranging
themselves on either side of the fire, now formed the nucleus of
the court, with the Earl in the centre.
Presently the rumbling of wheels and the grinding of gravel was
succeeded by the muffled-drum sort of sound of the wood pavement
of the grand covered portico, and the powdered footmen threw back
the folding-doors as if they expected Daniel Lambert or the
Durham Ox to enter. It was our old friend Imperial John, who
having handed his pipeclayed reins to his ploughman-groom,
descended from his buggy with a clumsy half buck, half hawbuck
sort of air, and entered the spacious portals of the Castle hall.
Having divested himself of his paletot in which he had been doing
“the pride that apes humility,” he shook out his red feathers,
pulled up his sea-green-silk-tied gills, finger-combed his stiff
black hair, and stood forth a sort of rough impersonation of the
last year’s Earl. His coat was the same cut, his hat was the same
shape, his boots and breeches were the same colour, and
altogether there was the same sort of resemblance between John
and the Earl that there is between a cart-horse and a race-horse.
Having deposited his whip and paletot on the table on the
door-side of a tall, wide-spreading carved oak screen, which at
once concealed the enterers from the court, and kept the wind
from that august assembly, John was now ready for the very
obsequious gentleman who had been standing watching his
performances without considering it necessary to give him any
assistance. This bland gentleman, in his own blue coat with a
white vest, having made a retrograde movement which cleared
himself of the screen, John was presently crossing the hall,
bowing and stepping and bowing and stepping as if he was
measuring off a drain.
His lordship, who felt grateful for John’s recent services, and
perhaps thought he might require them again, advanced to meet him
and gave him a very cordial shake of the hand, as much as to say,
“Never mind Miss de Glancey, old fellow, we’ll make it right
another time.” They then fell to conversing about turnips, John’s
Green Globes having turned out a splendid crop, while his Swedes
were not so good as usual, though they still might improve.
A more potent wheel-roll than John’s now attracted his lordship’s
attention, and through the far windows he saw a large
canary-coloured ark of a coach, driven by a cockaded coachman,
which he at once recognised as belonging to his natural enemy
Major Yammerton, “five-and-thirty years master of haryers,” as
the Major would say, “without a subscription.” Mr. Boggledike had
lately been regaling his lordship with some of the Major’s
boastings about his “haryars” and the wonderful sport they
showed, which he had had the impudence to compare with his
lordship’s fox hounds. Besides which, he was always disturbing
his lordship’s covers on the Roughborough side of the country,
causing his lordship to snub him at all opportunities. The Major,
however, who was a keen, hard-bitten, little man, not easily
choked off when he wanted anything, and his present want being to
be made a magistrate, he had attired himself in an antediluvian
swallow-tailed scarlet, with a gothic-arched collar, and brought
his wife and two pretty daughters to aid in the design. Of course
the ladies were only coming to see the Castle.
The cockaded coachman having tied his reins to the rail of the
driving-box, descended from his eminence to release his
passengers, while a couple of cerulean-blue gentlemen looked
complacently on, each with half a door in his hand ready to throw
open as they approached, the party were presently at the hall
table, where one of those indispensable articles, a
looking-glass, enabled the ladies to rectify any little
derangement incidental to the joltings of the journey, while the
little Major run a pocket-comb through a fringe of carroty curls
that encircled his bald head, and disposed of a cream-coloured
scarf cravat to what he considered the best advantage. Having
drawn a doeskin glove on to the left hand, he offered his arm to
his wife, and advanced from behind the screen with his hat in his
ungloved right hand ready to transfer it to the left should
occasion require.
“Ah Major Yammerton!” exclaimed the Earl, breaking off in the
middle of the turnip dialogue with Imperial John. “Ah, Major
Yammerton, I’m delighted to see you” (getting a glimpse of the
girls). “Mrs. Yammerton, this is indeed extremely kind,”
continued he, taking both her hands in his; “and bringing your
lovely daughters,” continued he, advancing to greet them.
Mrs. Yammerton here gave the Major a nudge to remind him of his
propriety speech. “The gi—gi—girls and Mrs. Ya—Ya—Yammerton,” for
he always stuttered when he told lies, which was pretty often;
“the gi—gi—girls and Mrs. Ya—Ya—Yammerton have done me the
honour—”
Another nudge from Mrs. Yammerton.
“I mean to say the gi—gi—girls and Mrs. Ya—Ya—Yammerton,”
observed he, with a stamp of the foot and a shake of the head,
for he saw that his dread enemy, Imperial John, was laughing at
him, “have done themselves the honour of co—co—coming, in hopes
to be allowed the p—p—p—pleasure of seeing your mama—magnificent
collection of pi—pi—pictors.” the Major at length getting out
what he had been charged to say.
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“By all means!” exclaimed the delighted Earl, “by all means; but
first let me have the pleasure of conducting you to the
refreshment-room;” saying which his lordship offered Mrs.
Yammerton his arm. So passing up the long gallery, and entering
by the private door, he popped her down beside Mrs. Moffatt
before Mrs. Yammerton knew where she was.
Just then our friend Billy Pringle, who, with the aid of Rougier,
had effected a most successful _logement_ in his hunting things,
made his appearance, to whom the Earl having assigned the care of
the young ladies, now beat a retreat to the hall, leaving Mrs.
Yammerton lost in astonishment as to what her Mrs. Grundy would
say, and speculations as to which of her daughters would do for
Mr. Pringle.
Imperial John, who had usurped the Earl’s place before the fire,
now shied off to one side as his lordship approached, and made
his most flexible obeisance to the two Mr. Fothergills and Mr.
Stot, who had arrived during his absence. These, then, gladly
passed on to the banqueting-room just as the Condor-like wings of
the entrance hall door flew open and admitted Imperial Jane, now
the buxom Mrs. Poppyfield. She came smiling past the screen,
magnificently attired in purple velvet and ermine, pretending she
had only come to warm herself at the “‘All fire while Pop looked
for the groom, who had brought his ‘orse, and who was to drive
her ‘ome;” but hearing from the Earl that the Yammertons were all
in the banqueting-room, she saw no reason why she shouldn’t go
too; so when the next shoal of company broke against the screen,
she took Imperial John’s arm, and preceded by a cloud of lackeys,
cerulean-blue and others, passed from the hall to the grand
apartment, up which she sailed majestically, tossing her plumed
head at that usurper Mrs. Moffatt; and then increased the kettle
of fish poor Mrs. Yammerton was in by seating herself beside her.
“Impudent woman,” thought Mrs. Yammerton, “if I’d had any idea of
this I wouldn’t have come;” and she thought how lucky it was she
had put the Major up to asking to see the “pictors.” It was
almost a pity he was so anxious to be a magistrate. Thought he
might be satisfied with being Major of such a fine regiment as
the Featherbedfordshire Militia. Nor were her anxieties
diminished by the way the girls took the words out of each
other’s mouths, as it were, in their intercourse with Billy
Pringle, thus preventing either from making any permanent
impression.
The great flood of company now poured into the hall, red coats,
green coats, black coats, brown coats, mingled with
variously-coloured petticoats. The ladies of the court, Mrs.
Cypher, Mrs. Pillerton, Mrs. and the Misses Easylease, Mrs.
Section, and others, hurried through with a shivering sort of
step as if they were going to bathe. Mr. D’Orsay Davis, the “we”
of the Featherbedfordshire Gazette, made his bow and passed on
with stately air, as a ruler of the roast ought to do. The Earl
of Stare, as Mr. Buckwheat was called, from the fixed
protuberance of his eyes—a sort of second edition of Imperial
John, but wanting his looks, and Gameboy Green, the hard rider of
the hunt, came in together; and the Earl of Stare, sporting
scarlet, advanced to his brother peer, the Earl, who, not
thinking him an available card, turned him over to Imperial John
who had now returned from his voyage with Imperial Jane, while
his lordship commenced a building conversation with Mr. Brick.
A lull then ensuing as if the door had done its duty, his
lordship gave a wave of his hand, whereupon the trained courtiers
shot out into horns on either side, with his lordship in the
centre, and passed majestically along to the banqueting-room.
The noble apartment a hundred feet long, and correspondingly
proportioned, was in the full swing of hospitality when the Earl
entered. The great influx of guests for which the Castle was
always prepared, had at length really arrived, and from Mrs.
Moffatt’s end of the table to the door, were continuous lines of
party-coloured eaters, all engaged in the noble act of
deglutition. Up the centre was a magnificent avenue of choice
exotics in gold, silver, and china vases, alternating with
sugar-spun Towers, Temples, Pagodas, and Rialtos, with here and
there the more substantial form of massive plate, _èpergnes_,
testimonials, and prizes of different kinds. It was a regular
field day for plate, linen, and china.
The whole force of domestics was now brought to bear upon the
charge, and the cerulean-blue gentlemen vied with the gentlemen
out of livery in the assiduity of their attentions. Soup, game,
tea, coffee, chocolate, ham, eggs, honey, marmalade, grapes,
pines, melons, ices, buns, cakes, skimmed and soared, and floated
about the room, in obedience to the behests of the callers. The
only apparently disengaged person in the room, was Monsieur Jean
Rougier, who, in a blue coat with a velvet collar and bright
buttons, a rolling-collared white vest, and an amplified
lace-tipped black Joinville, stood like a pouter pigeon behind
Mr. Pringle’s chair, the _beau ideal_ of an indifferent
spectator. And yet he was anything but an indifferent spectator;
for beneath his stubbly hair were a pair of little roving,
watchful eyes, and his ringed ears were cocked for whatever they
could catch. The clatter, patter, clatter, patter of eating,
which was slightly interrupted by the entrance of his lordship
was soon in full vigour again, and all eyes resumed the
contemplation of the plates.
Presently, the “fiz, pop, bang” of a champagne cork was heard on
the extreme right, which was immediately taken up on the left,
and ran down either side of the table like gigantic crackers.
Eighty guests were now imbibing the sparkling fluid, as fast as
the footmen could supply it. And it was wonderful what a
volubility that single glass a-piece (to be sure they were good
large ones) infused into the meeting; how tongue-tied ones became
talkative, and awed ones began to feel themselves sufficiently at
home to tackle with the pines and sugar ornaments of the centre.
Grottoes and Pyramids and Pagodas and Rialtos began to topple to
their fall, and even a sugar Crystal Palace, which occupied the
post of honour between two flower-decked Sèvres vases, was
threatened with destruction. The band and the gardeners were
swept away immediately, and an assault on the fountains was only
prevented by the interference of Mr. Beverage, the butler. And
now a renewed pop-ponading commenced, more formidable, if
possible, than the first, and all glasses were eagerly drained,
and prepared to receive the salute.
All being ready, Lord Ladythorne rose amid the applause so justly
due to a man entertaining his friends, and after a few prefatory
remarks, expressive of the pleasure it gave him to see them all
again at the opening of another season, and hoping that they
might have many more such meetings, he concluded by giving as a
toast, “Success to fox-hunting!”—which, of course, was drunk
upstanding with all the honours.
All parties having gradually subsided into their seats after this
uncomfortable performance, a partial lull ensued, which was at
length interrupted by his lordship giving Imperial John, who sat
on his left, a nod, who after a loud throat-clearing _hem!_ rose
bolt upright with his imperial chin well up, and began,
“Gentlemen and Ladies!” just as little weazeley Major Yammerton
commenced “Ladies and gentlemen!” from Mrs. Moffatt’s end of the
table. This brought things to a stand still—some called for
Hybrid, some for Yammerton, and each disliking the other, neither
was disposed to give way. The calls, however, becoming more
frequent for Yammerton, who had never addressed them before,
while Hybrid had, saying the same thing both times, the Earl gave
his Highness a hint to sit down, and the Major was then left in
that awful predicament, from which so many men would be glad to
escape, after they have achieved it, namely,—the possession of
the meeting.
However, Yammerton had got his speech well off, and had the heads
of it under his plate; so on silence being restored, he thus went
away with it:—
“Ladies and gentlemen,—(cough)—ladies and gentlemen,—(hem) I
rise, I assure you—(cough)—with feelings of considerable
trepidation—(hem)—to perform an act—(hem)—of greater difficulty
than may at first sight appear—(hem, hem, haw)—for let me ask
what it is I am about to do? (“You know best,” growled Imperial
John, thinking how ill he was doing it.) I am going to propose
the health of a nobleman—(applause)—of whom, in whose presence,
if I say too much, I may offend, and if I say too little, I shall
most justly receive your displeasure (renewed applause). But,
ladies and gentlemen, there are times when the ‘umblest abilities
become equal to the occasion, and assuredly this is
one—(applause). To estimate the character of the illustrious
nobleman aright, whose health I shall conclude by proposing, we
must regard him in his several capacities—(applause)—as
Lord-Lieutenant of the great county of Featherbedford, as a great
and liberal landlord, as a kind and generous neighbour, and
though last, not least, as a brilliant sportsman—(great applause,
during which Yammerton looked under his plate at his notes.)—As
Lord-Lieutenant,” continued he, “perhaps the greatest praise I
can offer him, the ‘ighest compliment I can pay him, is to say
that his appointments are so truly impartial as not to disclose
his own politics—(applause)—as a landlord, he is so truly a
pattern that it would be a mere waste of words for me to try to
recommend him to your notice,—(applause)—as a neighbour, he is
truly exemplary in all the relations of life,—(applause)—and as a
sportsman, having myself kept haryers five-and-thirty years
without a subscription, I may be permitted to say that he is
quite first-rate,—(laughter from the Earl’s end of the table, and
applause from Mrs. Moffatt’s.)—In all the relations of life,
therefore, ladies and gentlemen,”—continued the Major, looking
irately down at the laughers—“I beg to propose the bumper toast
of health, and long life to our ‘ost, the noble Earl of
Ladythorne!”
Whereupon the little Major popped down on his chair, wondering
whether he had omitted any thing he ought to have said, and
seeing him well down, Imperial John, who was not to be done out
of his show-off, rose, glass in hand, and exclaimed in a
stentorian voice,
“Gentlemen and Ladies! Oi beg to propose that we drink this toast
up standin’ with all the honours!—Featherbedfordshire fire!” upon
which there was a great outburst of applause, mingled with
demands for wine, and requests from the ladies, that the
gentlemen would be good enough to take their chairs off their
dresses, or move a little to one side, so that they might have
room to stand up; Crinoline, we should observe, being very
abundant with many of them.
A tremendous discharge of popularity then ensued, the cheers
being led by Imperial John, much to the little Major’s chagrin,
who wondered how he could ever have sat down without calling for
them.
Now, the Earl, we should observe, had not risen in the best of
moods that morning, having had a disagreeable dream, in which he
saw old Binks riding his favourite horse Valiant, Mazeppa
fashion, making a drag of his statue of the Greek slave,
enveloped in an anise-seeded bathing-gown; a vexation that had
been further increased when he arose, by the receipt of a letter
from his “good-natured friend” in London, telling him how old
Binks had been boasting at Boodle’s that he was within an ace of
an Earldom, and now to be clumsily palavered by Yammerton was
more than he could bear.
He didn’t want to be praised for anything but his sporting
propensities, and Imperial John knew how to do it. Having,
however, a good dash of satire in his composition, when the
applause and the Crinoline had subsided, he arose as if highly
delighted, and assured them that if anything could enhance the
pleasure of that meeting, it was to have his health proposed by
such a sportsman as Major Yammerton, a gentleman who he believed
had kept harriers five-and-thirty years, a feat he believed
altogether unequalled in the annals of sporting—(laughter and
applause)—during which the little Major felt sure he was going to
conclude by proposing his health with all the honours, instead of
which, however, his lordship branched off to his own department
of sport, urging them to preserve foxes most scrupulously, never
to mind a little poultry damage, for Mr. Boggledike would put all
that right, never to let the odious word Strychnine be heard in
the country, and concluded by proposing a bumper to their next
merry meeting, which was the usual termination of the
proceedings. The party then rose, chairs fell out of line, and
flying crumpled napkins completed the confusion of the scene.
CHAPTER XII. THE MORNING FOX.—THE AFTERNOON FOX.
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THE day was quite at its best, when the party-coloured bees
emerged from the sweets of Tantivy Castle, to taint the pure
atmosphere with their nasty cigars, and air themselves on the
terrace, letting the unadmitted world below see on what excellent
terms they were with an Earl. Then Imperial John upbraided Major.
Yammerton for taking the words out of his mouth, as it were, and
the cockey Major turned up his nose at the “farmer fellow” for
presuming to lector him. Then the emboldened ladies strolled
through the picture-galleries and reception-rooms, regardless of
Mrs. Moffatt or any one else, wondering where this door led to
and where that. The hounds had been basking and loitering on the
lawn for some time, undergoing the inspection and criticisms of
the non-hunting portion of the establishment, the gardeners, the
gamekeepers, the coachmen, the helpers, the housemaids, and so
on. They all pronounced them as perfect as could be, and Mr.
Hoggledike received their compliments with becoming satisfaction,
saying, with a chuck of his chin, “Yas, Yas, I think they’re
about as good as can be! Parfaction. I may say!”
Having abused the cigars, we hope our fair friends will now
excuse us for saying that we know of few less agreeable scenes
than a show meet with fox-hounds. The whole thing is opposed to
the wild nature of hunting. Some people can eat at any time, but
to a well-regulated appetite, having to undergo even the
semblance of an additional meal is inconvenient; while to have to
take a _bonâ fide_ dinner in the morning, soup, toast, speeches
and all, is perfectly suicidal of pleasure. On this occasion, the
wine-flushed guests seemed fitted for Cremorne or Foxhall, as
they used to pronounce Vauxhall, than for fox-hunting. Indeed,
the cigar gentry swaggered about with a very rakish, Regent
Street air. His lordship alone seemed impressed with the
importance of the occasion; but his anxiety arose from
indecision, caused by the Binks’ dream and letter, and fear lest
the Yammerton girls might spoil Billy for Miss de Glancey, should
his lordship adhere to his intention of introducing them to each
other. Then he began to fidget lest he might be late at the
appointed place, and Miss de Glancey go home, and so frustrate
either design.
“_To horse! to horse!_” therefore exclaimed he, now hurrying
through the crowd, lowering his Imperial Jane-made hat-string,
and drawing on his Moffatt-knit mits. “_To horse! to horse!_”
repeated he, flourishing his cane hunting-whip, causing a
commotion among the outer circle of grooms. His magnificent black
horse, Valiant (the one he had seen old Binks bucketing),
faultless in shape, faultless in condition, faultless every way,
stepped proudly aside, and Cupid-without-Wings dropping himself
off by the neck, Mr. Beanley, the stud groom, swept the
coronetted rug over the horse’s bang tail, as the superb and
sensible animal stepped forward to receive his rider, as the Earl
came up. With a jaunty air, the gay old gentleman vaulted lightly
into the saddle, saying as he drew the thin rein, and felt the
horse gently with his left leg, “Now get Mr. Pringle his horse.”
His lordship then passed on a few paces to receive the
sky-scraping salutes of the servants, and at a jerk of his head
the cavalcade was in motion.
Our friend Billy then became the object of attention. The
dismounted Cupid dived into the thick of the led horses to seek
his, while Mr. Beanley went respectfully up to him, and with a
touch of his flat-brimmed hat, intimated that “his oss was at
‘and.”
“What sort of an animal is it?” asked the somewhat misgiving
Billy, now bowing his adieus to the pretty Misses Yammerton.
“A very nice oss, sir,” replied Mr. Beanley, with another touch
of hat; “yes, sir, a very nice oss—a perfect ‘unter—nothin’ to do
but sit still, and give ‘im ‘is ‘ead, he’ll take far better care
o’ you than you can of ‘im.” So saying, Mr. Beanley led the way
to a very sedate-looking, thorough-bred bay, with a flat flapped
saddle, and a splint boot on his near foreleg, but in other
respects quite unobjectionable. He was one of Swan’s stud, but
Mr. Beanley, understanding from the under butler, who had it from
Jack Rogers—we beg his pardon,—Monsieur Rougier himself, that Mr.
Pringle was likely to be a good tip, he had drawn it for him. The
stirrups, for a wonder, being the right length, Billy was
presently astride, and in pursuit of his now progressing
lordship, the gaping crowd making way for the young lord as they
supposed him to be—for people are all lords when they visit at
lords.
Pop, pop, bob, bob, went the black caps of the men in advance,
indicating the whereabouts of the hounds, while his lordship
ambled over the green turf on the right, surrounded by the usual
high-pressure toadies. Thus the cavalcade passed through the
large wood-studded, deer-scattered park, rousing the nearer herds
from their lairs, frightening the silver-tails into their holes,
and causing the conceited hares to scuttle away for the
fern-browned, undulating hills, as if they had the vanity to
suppose that this goodly array would condescend to have anything
to do with them. Silly things! Peppercorn, the keeper, had a much
readier way of settling their business. The field then crossed
the long stretch of smooth, ornamental water, by the old
gothic-arched bridge, and passed through the beautiful iron gates
of the south lodge, now wheeled back by grey-headed porters, in
cerulean-blue plush coats, and broad, gold-laced hats. Meanwhile,
the whereabouts of the accustomed hunt was indicated by a
lengthening line of pedestrians and small cavalry, toiling across
the park by Duntler the watcher’s cottage and the deer sheds, to
the door in the wall at the bottom of Crow-tree hill, from whence
a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding country is obtained. The
piece had been enacted so often, the same company, the same day,
the same hour, the same find, the same finish, that one might
almost imagine it was the same fox On this particular occasion,
however, as if out of pure contradiction, Master Reynard, by a
series of successful manoeuvres, lying down, running a wall,
popping backwards and forwards between Ashley quarries and
Warmley Gorse, varied by an occasional trip to Crow-tree hill,
completely baffled Mr. Boggledike, so that it was afternoon
before he brought his morning fox to hand, to the great
discomfort of the Earl, who had twice or thrice signaled Swan to
“who hoop” him to ground, when the tiresome animal popped up in
the midst of the pack. At length Boggledike mastered him; and
after proclaiming him a “cowardly, short-running dastardly
traitor, no better nor a ‘are,” he chucked him scornfully to the
hounds, decorating Master Pillerton’s pony with the brush, while
Swan distributed the pads among others of the rising generation.
The last act of the “show meet” being thus concluded, Mr.
Boggledike and his men quickly collected their hounds, and set
off in search of fresh fields and pastures new.
The Earl, having disposed of his show-meet fox—a bagman, of
course—now set up his business-back, and getting alongside of Mr.
Boggledike, led the pack at as good a trot as the hounds and the
state of the line would allow. The newly laid whinstone of the
Brittleworth road rather impeded their progress at first; but
this inconvenience was soon overcome by the road becoming less
parsimonious in width, extending at length to a grass siding,
along which his lordship ambled at a toe in the stirrup trot, his
eagle-eye raking every bend and curve, his mind distracted with
visions of Binks, and anxiety for the future.
He couldn’t get over the dream, and the letter had anything but
cheered him.
“Very odd,” said he to himself, “very odd,” as nothing but
drab-coated farmers and dark-coated grooms lounging leisurely
“on,” with here and there a loitering pedestrian, broke the
monotony of the scene. “Hope she’s not tired, and gone home,”
thought he, looking now at his watch, and now back into the
crowd, to see where he had Billy Pringle. There was Billy riding
alongside of Major Yammerton’s old flea-bitten grey, whose rider
was impressing Billy with a sense of his consequence, and the
excellence of his “haryers,” paving the way for an invitation to
Yammerton Grange. “_D-a-ash_ that Yammerton,” growled his
lordship, thinking how he was spoiling sport at both ends; at the
Castle by his uninvited eloquence, and now by his fastening on to
the only man in the field he didn’t want him to get acquainted
with. And his lordship inwardly resolved that he would make
Easylease a magistrate before he would make the Major one. So
settling matters in his own mind, he gave the gallant Valiant a
gentle tap on the shoulder with his whip, and shot a few paces
ahead of Dicky, telling the whips to keep the crowd off the
hounds—meaning off himself. Thus he ambled on through the quiet
little village of Strotherdale, whose inhabitants all rushed out
to see the hounds pass, and after tantalising poor Jonathan Gape,
the turnpike-gate man, at the far end, who thought he was going
to get a grand haul, he turned short to the left down the
tortuous green lane leading to Quarrington Gorse.
“There’s a footmark,” said his lordship to himself, looking down
at the now closely eaten sward. “Ah! and there’s a hat and
feather,” added he as a sudden turn of the lane afforded a
passing glimpse. Thus inspirited, he mended his pace a little,
and was presently in sight of the wearer. There was the bay, and
there was the wide-awake, and there was the green trimming, and
there was the feather; but somehow, as he got nearer, they all
seemed to have lost _caste_. The slender waist and graceful
upright seat had degenerated into a fuller form and lazy slouch;
the habit didn’t look like her habit, nor the bay horse like her
bay horse, and as he got within speaking distance, the healthy,
full-blown face of Miss Winkworth smiled upon him instead of the
mild, placid features of the elegant de Glancey.
“Ah, my dear Miss Winkworth!” exclaimed his half-disgusted,
half-delighted lordship, raising his hat, and then extending the
right-hand of fellowship; “Ah, my dear Miss Winkworth, I’m
charmed to see you” (inwardly wondering what business women had
out hunting). “I hope you are all well at home,” continued he
(most devoutly wishing she was there); and without waiting for an
answer, he commenced a furious assault upon Benedict, who had
taken a fancy to follow him, a performance that enabled General
Boggledike to come up with that army of relief, the pack, and
engulf the lady in the sea of horsemen in the rear.
“If that had been _her_,” said his lordship to himself, “old
Binks would have had a better chance;” and he thought what an
odious thing a bad copy was.
Another bend of the land and another glimpse, presently put all
matters right. The real feather now fluttered before him. There
was the graceful, upright seat, the elegant air, the well-groomed
horse, the _tout ensemble_ being heightened, if possible, by the
recent contrast with the coarse, country attired Miss Winkworth.
The Earl again trotted gently on, raising his hat most
deferentially as he came along sid
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