Jin apology to JUr. Surtees 



* Ask Mamma ' is quite as good a comedy of manners as 

 *Mr, Sponge's Sporting Tour.' The central figure is Billy 

 Pringle, reputed to be the richest commoner in England. 

 His mother had been a lady's maid, and wore a ruby ring 

 which ' that gallant old philanthropist ' the Earl of Lady- 

 thorne of Tantivy Castle had slipped upon her finger as he 

 met her (accidentally of course) in the passage early one 

 morning at the house of her employer Lady Delacey. As 

 the widow Pringle she lived in Curtain Crescent — not 

 Pimlico, but Belgravia — and his lordship's saddle-horses 

 might often be seen tossing their heads in front of her door 

 on a summer's afternoon. Billy was launched into society 

 by a hunting visit to Tantivy Castle. The description of 

 the Earl and his castle is one of Mr. Surtees 's best, and after 

 allowing for the exaggeration which the author admits in his 

 preface, is an indication of what really could be done, and 

 perhaps was done, in the stately homes of England before 

 the days of the illustrated penny press. There was no 

 Countess of Ladythorne. It was the reigning favourite 

 who dispensed the honours of the castle to such of the 

 local toadies as would accept them ; his lordship drove her 

 to the meet in his carriage and four, and would then ex- 

 change her society for that of the famous coquette Miss de 

 Glancy, whom he piloted and made love to in the hunting- 

 field. This was the wicked old gentleman whom good 

 Queen Victoria had in her innocence made Lord-Lieutenant 

 of Featherbedfordshire. Billy's account of the establishment 

 in his letters to his mother, and his mother's answers, full 



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