It is observable that the heads of the various branches of an establishment are all in favour of “master” spending all his money on their particular department. Thus, the coachman would have him run entirely to carriages, the groom to horses, the cook to the _cuisine_, the butler to wines, the gardener to grapes, &c., and so on.
Mrs. Pringle, we need hardly say, favoured lady’s-maids and valets. It has been well said, that if a man wants to get acquainted with a gentleman’s private affairs, he should either go to the lawyer or else to the valet that’s courting the lady’s-maid; and Mrs. Pringle was quite of that opinion. Moreover, she held that no man with an efficient, properly trained valet, need ever be catspawed or jilted, because the lady’s-maid would feel it a point of honour to let the valet know how the land lay, a compliment he would return under similar circumstances. To provide Billy with this, as she considered, most essential appendage to a gentleman, was her next consideration—a valet that should know enough and not too much—enough to enable him to blow his master’s trumpet properly, and not too much, lest he should turn restive and play the wrong tune.
At length she fixed upon the Anglo-Frenchman, whose name stands at the head of this chapter—Jean Rougier, or Jack Rogers. Jack was the son of old Jack Rogers, so well known as the enactor of the Drunken Huzzar, and similar characters of Nutkins’s Circus; and Jack was entered to his father’s profession, but disagreeing with the clown, Tom Oliver, who used to give him sundry most unqualified cuts and cuffs in the Circus, Jack, who was a tremendously strong fellow, gave Oliver such a desperate beating one night as caused his life to be despaired off. This took place at Nottingham, from whence Jack fled for fear of the consequences; and after sundry vicissitudes he was next discovered as a post-boy, at Sittingbourne, an office that he was well adapted for, being short and stout and extremely powerful. No brute was ever too bad for Jack’s riding: he would tame them before the day was over. Somehow he got bumped down to Dover, when taking a fancy to go “foreign,” he sold his master’s horses for what they would fetch; and this being just about the time that the late Mr. Probert expiated a similar mistake at the Old Bailey, Jack hearing of it, thought it was better to stay where he was than give Mr. Calcraft any trouble. He therefore accepted the situation of boots to the Albion Hotel, Boulogne-sur-mer; but finding that he did not get on half so well as he would if he were a Frenchman, he took to acquiring the language, which, with getting his ears bored, letting his hair and whiskers grow, and adopting the French costume in all its integrity, coupled with a liberal attack of the small-pox, soon told a tale in favour of his fees. After a long absence, he at length returned at the Bill Smith Revolution; and vacillating for some time between a courier and a valet, finally settled down to what we now find him.