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.