"Ask Mamma"; or, The Richest Commoner In EnglandSurtees, Robert Smith
General
"Ask Mamma"; or, The Richest Commoner In England
Surtees, Robert Smith
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Fox hunting -- Fiction
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.
We know not how it is, if valets are so essentially necessary,
that there should always be so many out of place, but certain it
is that an advertisment in a morning paper will always bring a
full crop to a door.
Perhaps, being the laziest of all lazy lives, any one can turn
his hand to valeting, who to dig is unable, and yet to want is
unwilling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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