Mr. Prigg’s home was charmingly small, but had all the pretensions of a stately country house—its conservatory, its drawing-room, its study, and a dining-room which told you as plainly as any dining-room could speak, “I am related to Donkey Hall, where the Squire lives: I belong to the same aristocratic family.”
Then there was the great heavy-headed clock in the passage. He did not appear at all to know that he had come down in the world through being sold by auction for two pounds ten. He said with great plausibility, “My worth is not to be measured by the amount of money I can command; I am the same personage as before.” And I thought it a very true observation, but the philosophy thereof was a little discounted by his haughty demeanour, which had certainly gone up as he himself had come down; and that is a reason why I don’t as a rule like people who have come down in the world—they are sure to be so stuck up. But I do like a person who has come down in the world and doesn’t at all mind it—much better than any man who has got up in the world from the half-crown, and does mind it upon all occasions.
Mrs. Prigg, apart from her high descent, was a very aristocratic person: as the presence of the grand piano in the drawing-room would testify. She could no more live without a grand piano than ordinary people could exist without food: the grand piano, albeit a very dilapidated one, was a necessity of her well-descended condition. It was no matter that it displaced more useful furniture; in that it only imitated a good many other persons, and it told you whenever you entered the room: “You see
me here in a comparatively small way, but understand, I have been in far different circumstances: I have been courted by the great, and listened to by the aristocracy of England. I follow Mrs. Prigg wherever she goes: she is a lady; her connections are high, and she never yet associated with any but the best families. You could not diminish from her very high breeding: put her in the workhouse, and with me to accompany her, it would be transformed into a palace.”
Mr. Prigg was by no means a rich man as the world counts richness. No one ever heard of his having a “practice,” although it was believed he did a great deal in the way of “lending his name” and profession to impecunious and uneducated men; who could turn many a six-and-eightpence under its prestige. So great is the moral “power of attorney,” as contradistinguished from the legal “power of attorney.”
But Prigg, as I have hinted, was not only respectable, he was good: he was more than that even, he was notoriously good: so much so, that he was called, in contradistinction to all other lawyers, “Honest Lawyer Prigg”; and he had further acquired, almost as a universal title, the sobriquet of “Nice.” Everybody said, “What a very nice man Mr. Prigg is!” Then, in addition to all this, he was considered clever—why, I do not know; but I have often observed that men can obtain the reputation of being clever at very little cost, and without the least foundation. The cheapest of all ways is to abuse men who really are clever, and if your abuse be pungently and not too coarsely worded, it will be accepted by the ignorant as criticism. Nothing goes down with shallow minds like criticism, and the severest criticism is generally based on envy and jealousy.
Mr. Prigg, then, was clever, respectable, good, and nice, remarkably potent qualities for success in this world.
So I saw in my dream that Mr. Bumpkin, whose feelings were duly aroused, turned his eye upon Honest Lawyer Prigg, and resolved to consult him upon the grievous outrage to which he had been subjected at the hands of the cunning Snooks: and without more ado he resolved to call on that very worthy and extremely nice gentleman.
CHAPTER IV.
On the extreme simplicity of going to law.