Robert Smith Surtees

"Ask Mamma" Robert Smith Surtees

In the dress department he was ably assisted by his mother, a lady of very considerable taste, who not only fashioned his clothes but his mind, indeed we might add his person, Billy having taken after her, as they say; for his father, though an excellent man and warm, was rather of the suet dumpling order of architecture, short, thick, and round, with a neck that was rather difficult to find. His name, too, was William, and some, the good natured ones again of course, used to say that he might have been called "Fine Billy the first," for under the auspices of his elegant wife he had assumed a certain indifference to trade; and when in the grand strut at Ramsgate or Broadstairs, or any of his watering-places, if appealed to about any of the things made or dealt in by any of the concerns in which he was a "Co.," he used to raise his brows and shrug his shoulders, and say with a very deprecatory sort of air, "'Pon my life, I should say you're right," or "'Deed I should say it was so," just as if he was one of the other Pringles, the Pringles who have nothing to do with trade, and in noways connected with Pringle & Co.; Pringle & Potts; Smith, Sharp & Pringle; or any of the firms that the Pringles carried on under the titles of the original founders. He was neither a tradesman nor a gentleman. The Pringles like the happy united family we meet upon wheels; the dove nestling with the gorged cat, and so on all pulled well together when there was a common victim to plunder; and kept their hands in by what they called taking fair advantages of each other, that is to say, cheating each other, when there was not.