Vanity Fair - Page 309/573

In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we are

bound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year. These

mansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have credit

with Messrs. Gillows or Bantings, you can get them splendidly montees

and decorated entirely according to your own fancy; or they are to be

let furnished, a less troublesome and complicated arrangement to most

parties. It was so that Crawley and his wife preferred to hire their

house.

Before Mr. Bowls came to preside over Miss Crawley's house and cellar

in Park Lane, that lady had had for a butler a Mr. Raggles, who was

born on the family estate of Queen's Crawley, and indeed was a younger

son of a gardener there. By good conduct, a handsome person and

calves, and a grave demeanour, Raggles rose from the knife-board to the

footboard of the carriage; from the footboard to the butler's pantry.

When he had been a certain number of years at the head of Miss

Crawley's establishment, where he had had good wages, fat perquisites,

and plenty of opportunities of saving, he announced that he was about

to contract a matrimonial alliance with a late cook of Miss Crawley's,

who had subsisted in an honourable manner by the exercise of a mangle,

and the keeping of a small greengrocer's shop in the neighbourhood.

The truth is, that the ceremony had been clandestinely performed some

years back; although the news of Mr. Raggles' marriage was first

brought to Miss Crawley by a little boy and girl of seven and eight

years of age, whose continual presence in the kitchen had attracted the

attention of Miss Briggs.

Mr. Raggles then retired and personally undertook the superintendence

of the small shop and the greens. He added milk and cream, eggs and

country-fed pork to his stores, contenting himself whilst other retired

butlers were vending spirits in public houses, by dealing in the

simplest country produce. And having a good connection amongst the

butlers in the neighbourhood, and a snug back parlour where he and Mrs.

Raggles received them, his milk, cream, and eggs got to be adopted by

many of the fraternity, and his profits increased every year. Year

after year he quietly and modestly amassed money, and when at length

that snug and complete bachelor's residence at No. 201, Curzon Street,

May Fair, lately the residence of the Honourable Frederick Deuceace,

gone abroad, with its rich and appropriate furniture by the first

makers, was brought to the hammer, who should go in and purchase the

lease and furniture of the house but Charles Raggles? A part of the

money he borrowed, it is true, and at rather a high interest, from a

brother butler, but the chief part he paid down, and it was with no

small pride that Mrs. Raggles found herself sleeping in a bed of carved

mahogany, with silk curtains, with a prodigious cheval glass opposite

to her, and a wardrobe which would contain her, and Raggles, and all

the family.