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.