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.