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.