31 JANUARY 1891, Page 39

"Series of Family Letters" represent extravagant sons, daughters

who are frivolous if they are anything, a preternaturally silly mother, and a father who seems to have little raison d'etre, except the finding of funds for the family expenditure. Add a drunken

butler and a cook who is as near an idiot as possible, and you have the Fludyer household. Cambridge, of course, figures as a place for senseless dissipation.