Ask Mamma.

Red Leather spine with gilt decoration (hunting emblems) and title on the spine. Red marbled boards. Part of a set. Ask Mamma - or The Richest Commoner In England by Robert Smith Surtees It may be a recommendation to the lover of light literature to be told, that the following story does not involve the complication of a plot. It is a mere continuous narrative of an almost every day exaggeration, interspersed with sporting scenes and excellent illustrations by Leech. CONSIDERING that Billy Pringle, or Fine Billy, as his good-natured friends called him, was only an underbred chap, he was as good an imitation of a Swell as ever we saw. He had all the airy dreaminess of an hereditary high flyer, while his big talk and off-hand manner strengthened the delusion. It was only when you came to close quarters with him, and found that though he talked in pounds he acted in pence, and marked his fine dictionary words and laboured expletives, that you came to the conclusion that he was "painfully gentlemanly." So few people, however, agree upon what a gentleman is, that Billy was well calculated to pass muster with the million. Fine shirts, fine ties, fine talk, fine trinkets, go a long way towards furnishing the character with many. Billy was liberal, not to say prodigal, in all these. The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one. Just as the man who is always talking about honour, morality, fine feeling, and so or never knows anything of these qualities but the name. Nature had favoured Billy's pretensions in the lady-killing way. In person he was above the middle height, five feet eleven or so, slim and well-proportioned, with a finely-shaped head and face, fair complexion, light brown hair, laughing blue eyes, with long lashes, good eyebrows, regular pearly teeth and delicately pencilled moustache. Whiskers he did not aspire to. Nor did Billy abuse the gifts of Nature by disguising himself in any of the vulgar groomy gamekeepery style of dress, that so effectually reduce all mankind to the level of the labourer, nor adopt any of the "loud" patterns that have lately figured so conspicuously in our streets. On the contrary, he studied the quiet unobtrusive order of costume, and the harmony of colours, with a view of producing a perfectly elegant general effect. Neatly-fitting frock or dress coats, instead of baggy sacks, with trouser legs for sleeves, quiet-patterned vests and equally quiet-patterned trousers. If he could only have been easy in them he would have done extremely well, but there was always a nervous twitching, and jerking, and feeling, as if he was wondering what people were thinking or saying of him. Robert Smith Surtees (17 May 1805 – 16 March 1864) was an English editor, novelist, and sporting writer, widely known as R. S. Surtees. He was the second son of Anthony Surtees of Hamsterley Hall, a member of an old County Durham family. He is remembered for his invented character of Jorrocks, a vulgar but good-natured sporting cockney grocer. Surtees attended a school at Ovingham and then Durham School, before being articled in 1822 to Robert Purvis, a solicitor in Market Street, Newcastle upon Tyne. Surtees left for London in 1825, intending to practise law in the capital, but had difficulty making his way and began contributing to the Sporting Magazine. He launched out on his own with the New Sporting Magazine in 1831, contributing the comic papers which appeared as Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities in 1838. Jorrocks, the sporting cockney grocer, with his vulgarity and good-natured artfulness, was a great success with the public, and Surtees produced more Jorrocks novels in the same vein, notably Handley Cross and Hillingdon Hall, where the description of the house is very reminiscent of Hamsterley. Another hero, Soapey Sponge, appears in Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour, possibly Surtees best work. All Surtees' novels were composed at Hamsterley Hall, where he wrote standing up at a desk, like Victor Hugo. In 1835, Surtees abandoned his legal practice and after inheriting Hamsterley Hall in 1838, devoted himself to hunting and shooting, meanwhile writing anonymously for his own pleasure. He was a friend and admirer of the great hunting man Ralph Lambton, who had his headquarters at Sedgefield County Durham, the 'Melton of the North'. Surtees became Lord High Sheriff of Durham in 1856. He died in Brighton in 1864 and was buried in Ebchester church. Though Surtees did not set his novels in any readily identifiable locality, he uses North East place-names like Sheepwash, Howell (How) Burn, and Winford Rig. His memorable Geordie James Pigg, in Handley Cross, is based on Joe Kirk, a Slaley huntsman. The famous incident, illustrated by Leech, when Pigg jumps into the melon frame was inspired by a similar episode involving Kirk in Corbridge. As a creator of comic personalities, Surtees is still readable today. Thackeray envied him his powers of observation, while William Morris considered him "a master of life" and ranked him with Dickens. The novels are engaging and vigorous, and abound with sharp social observation, with a keener eye than Dickens for the natural world. Perhaps Surtees most resembles the Dickens of Pickwick Papers, which was originally intended as mere supporting matter for a series of sporting illustrations to rival Jorrocks. Most of Surtees's later novels, were illustrated by John Leech. They included Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853); Ask Mamma (1858); Plain or Ringlets? (1860) and Mr Facey Romford's Hounds (1865). The last of these novels appeared posthumously. In 1841 Surtees married Elizabeth Jane Fenwick, daughter of Addison Fenwick of Bishopwearmouth, by whom he had one son and two daughters. His younger daughter Eleanor married John Vereker, afterwards 5th Viscount Gort. Their son was Field Marshal Lord Gort, commander of the BEF in France in 1940.