"Ask Mamma"; or, The Richest Commoner In England

IVY BANK Tower (formerly caled Cow gate Hill), the seat of Jeames Wotherspoon Esquire, stands on a gentle eminence about a stone’s throw from the Horseheath and Hinton turnpike...

THE Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt balls had long been celebrated for their matrimonial properties, as well for settling ripe flirtations, as for bringing to a close the billing...

SEE! a sudden thrill shoots through the field, though not a hound has spoken; no, not even a whimper been heard. It is Speed’s new cap rising from the dip of the ground at the l...

MRS. Yammerton carried the day, and the young ladies carried paper-booted Billy, or rather walked him up to Mrs. Wasperton’s at Prospect Hill, and showed him the ugly girls, and...

THE great event was ushered in by one of those fine bright autumnal days that shame many summer ones, and seem inclined to carry the winter months fairly over into the coming ye...

YOUR oss sall be seek—down in de mouth dis mornin’, sare,” observed Monsieur to Billy, as the latter lay tossing about in his uncomfortable bed, thinking how he could shirk that...

THE room, as we said before, being crammed, and our fair friend Miss Willing taking some time to pass gracefully down the line of chair-backs, many of whose late occupants were...

THE 15th rule of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, provides that all members who dine at the club, may have tea and muffins ad libitum for 6 d. a head afterwards, and certainly...

REVERSING the usual order of things, each first Monday in November saw the sporting inmates of Tantivy Castle emerge from the chrysalis into the butterfly state of existence. Hi...

THE day was quite at its best, when the party-coloured bees emerged from the sweets of Tantivy Castle, to taint the pure atmosphere with their nasty cigars, and air themselves o...

THE reader will perhaps wonder what our fair friend Mrs. Pringle is about, and how there happens to be no tidings from Curtain Crescent. Tidings there were, only the Tantivy Cas...

IT is all very well for people to affect the magnificent, to give general invitations, and say “Come whenever it suits you; we shall always be happy to see you,” and so on; but...

IF a dinner-party in town, with all the aids and appliances of sham-butlers, job-cooks, area-sneak-entrés, and extraneous confectionary, causes confusion in an establishment, ho...

HE friends reappeared at the front of the Crooked Billet Hotel when the whole cavalcade had swept away, leaving only the return ladies, and such of the grooms as meant to have a...

SATURDAY is a very different day in the country to what it is in London. In London it is the lazy day of the week, whereas it is the busy one in the country. It is marked in Lon...

THE PRINGLES of course were furious when they read the announcement of Billy’s marriage. Such a degradation to such a respectable family, and communicated in such a way. We need...

MR. Pringle’s return was greeted with an immense shoal of letters, one from Mamma, one with “Yammerton Grange” on the seal, two from his tailors—one with the following simple he...

SIR MOSES, being now a magnate of the land, associating with Lord Oilcake, Lord Repartee, Sir Harry Fuzball and other great dons, of course had to live up to the mark, an inconv...

THE two-penny post used to be thought a great luxury in London, though somehow great people were often shy of availing themselves of its advantages, indeed of taking their two-p...

DESCENDING Long Benningborough Hill on the approach from the west, the reader enters the rich vale of Hit-im and Hold-im shire, rich in agricultural productions, lavish of rural...

PEOPLE who travel in the winter should remember it isn’t summer, and time themselves accordingly. Sir Moses was so anxious to see Monsieur Rougier off the premises, in order to...

THE first thing that struck Sir Moses Mainchance after he became a “laird” was that he got very little interest for his money. Here he was he who had always looked down with sco...

NEXT day being a “dies non” in the hunting way, Sir Moses Mainchance lay at earth to receive his steward, Mr. Mordecai Nathan, and hear what sport he had had as well in hunting...

WE dare pay it has struck such of our readers as have followed the chace for more than the usual average allowance of three seasons, that hunts flourish most vigorously where th...

Time was when a visitor could hardly drive up to a great man’s door in the country in a po’chav—now it would be considered very magnificent—a bliss, or a one-oss fly being more...

SIR Moses Mainchance, having fortified himself against the night air with a pint of club port, and a glass of pale brandy after his tea, at length ordered out the inn fly, witho...

THE Bumbler, like our Mathews-at-home of a huntsman, is now metamorphosed, and in lieu of a little footman, we have a capped and booted whip. Not that he _is_ a whip, for Solomo...

_“Though I wrote to you only the other day, I take up my pen, stiff and sore as I am and scarcely able to sit, to tell you of my first day’s hunt, which, I assure you, was anyth...

ON, Sir, Sir, please step this way! please step this way!” exclaimed the _delirium tremems_ footman, rushing coatless into the room where our hero and Mr. Gaiters were,—his shir...

MAJOR Yammerton was rather a peculiar man, inasmuch as he was an Ass, without being a Fool. He was an Ass for always puffing and inflating himself, while as regarded worldly kno...

THE Crooked Billet Hotel and Posting house, on the Bushmead road had been severed from society by the Crumpletin Railway. It had indeed been cut off in the prime of life: for Jo...

CARCELY were the congratulations of the company to our hero, on his becoming a member of the renowned Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, over, ere a great rush of dinner poured into...

FROM Yammerton Grange to Pangburn Park is twelve miles as the crow flies, or sixteen by the road. The Major, who knows every nick and gap in the country, could ride it in ten or...

FROM the Nettleton cornstacks to Lawristone Clump was under two miles, and, barring Bendibus Brook, there was nothing formidable in the line—nothing at least to a peaceably disp...

EVERY hound having at length sniffed and snuffed, and sniffed and snuffed, to satiety, Solomon now essays to assist them by casting round the flat of smoke-infected ground. He m...

HE worst of these _dejeuners à la fourchette_, and also of luncheons, is, that they waste the day, and then send men out half-wild to ride over the hounds or whatever else comes...

His lordship had known her at Lady Delacey’s, and Mrs. Pringle still wore and prized a ruby ring he slipped upon her finger as he met her (accidentally of course) in the passage...

WHILE the ladies were absent adorning themselves, the gentlemen held a council of war as to the most advisable mode of dealing with the hare, aud the best way of making her face...

This, we think, is rather an exaggeration, both as regards time and money, unless the Major reckons an undivided moiety he had in an old lady-hound called “Lavender” along with...

WHAT a commotion there was in the house the next morning! As great a disturbance as if the Major had been going to hunt an African Lion, a royal Bengal Tiger, or a Bison itself....

IT was on a cold, damp, raw December morning, before the emancipating civilisation of railways, that our hero’s father, then returning from a trading tour, after stamping up and...

A sudden change now came over the country.—The weather, which had been mild and summer-like throughout, changed to frost, binding all nature up in a few hours. The holes in the...

ONSIDERING 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 a...

THOUGH his lordship, as we said before, would stoutly deny being old, he had nevertheless got sufficiently through the morning of life not to let cub-hunting get him out of bed...

HOW different a place generally proves to what we anticipate, and how difficult it is to recall our expectations after we have once seen it, unless we have made a memorandum bef...

THE Major’s ménage not admitting of two such great events as a hunt and a dinner party taking place on the same day, and market interfering as well, the hunt again had to be pos...

THIS way, sir,—please, sir,—yes, sir,” bowed the now obsequious Ben, guiding Billy by the light of a chamber candle through the intricacies of the half-lit inner entrance. “Take...

JUST as the old buck was resuming the thread of his fashionable high-life narrative, preparatory to sounding Billy about the Major and his family, the same sort of electric thri...

THE first paroxysm of rage being over, Sir Moses remounted his dog-cart, and drove rapidly off, seeming to take pleasure in making his boy-groom (who was at the mare’s head) run...

OUR friend Billy, as the foregoing letter shows, was now very comfortably installed in his quarters, and his presence brought sundry visitors, as well to pay their respects to h...

MRS. Margerum having soothed and pressed her beautiful boy to her bosom, ran into the house, and hurrying on the everlasting pheasant-feather bonnet in which she was first intro...

N ext day his lordship, who was of the nice old Andlesey school of dressers, was to be seen in regular St. James’s Street attire, viz. a bright blue coat with gilt buttons, a li...

NEXT day our friend Billy was buried in looking after his lost luggage and burnishing up the gilt bugle-horn buttons of the coat, waist-coat, and shorts of the Royal Epping Arch...

MR. Gallon’s liberality after the race with Mr. Flintoff was so great that Monsieur Rougier was quite overcome with his kindness and had to be put to bed at the last public-hous...

ONE of the most distinguishing features between commerce and agriculture undoubtedly is the marked indifference shown to the value of time by the small followers of the latter,...

MONSIEUR Jean Rougier having seen the field get small by degrees, if not beautifully less, and having viewed the quivering at the brook, thinking the entertainment over, now dis...

MR. Carroty Kebbel was a huge red-haired, Crimean-bearded, peripatetic attorney, who travelled from petty sessions to petty sessions, spending his intermediate time at the publi...

WE need not say that Mrs. Pringle was overjoyed at the receipt of the Earl’s letter. It was so kind and good, and so like him. He always said he would do her a good turn if he c...

SIR Moses was so fussy about his clothes, sending to the laundry for this shirt and that, censuring the fold of this cravat and that, inquiring after his new hunting ties and be...

CUDDY Flintoff did not awake at all comfortable the next morning, and he distinctly traced the old copyhead of “Familiarity breeds contempt,” in the hieroglyphic pattern of his...

THE Major having inducted his guest into one of those expensive articles of dining-room furniture, an easy chair—expensive, inasmuch as they cause a great consumption of candles...

HE proverbial serenity of Poodles was disturbed one dull winter afternoon by our old friend General Binks banging down the newly-arrived evening paper with a vehemence rarely wi...

MONEY and matrimony! what a fine taking title! If that does not attract readers, we don’t know what will. Money and matrimony! how different, yet how essentially combined, how i...

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 o...