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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,