No. 6 Pocklington Gardens (the house with the quantity of flowers in the
windows, and the awning over the entrance), George Bumpsher, Esquire,
M.P. for Humborough (and the Beaustalks, Kent).
For some time after this gorgeous family came into our quarter, I
mistook a bald-headed stout person, whom I used to see looking through
the flowers on the upper windows, for Bumpsher himself or for the butler
of the family; whereas it was no other than Mrs. Bumpsher, without her
chesnut wig; and who is at least three times the size of her husband.
The Bumpshers and the house of Mango at the Pineries vie together in
their desire to dominate over the neighbourhood; and each votes the
other a vulgar and purse-proud family. The fact is, both are City
people. Bumpsher, in his mercantile capacity, is a wholesale stationer
in Thames Street; and his wife was daughter of an eminent bill-broking
firm, not a thousand miles from Lombard Street.
He does not sport a coronet and supporters upon his London plate and
carriages; but his country-house is emblazoned all over with those
heraldic decorations. He puts on an order when he goes abroad, and is
Count Bumpsher of the Roman States--which title he purchased from the
late Pope (through Prince Polonia the banker) for a couple of thousand
scudi.
It is as good as a coronation to see him and Mrs. Bumpsher go to Court.
I wonder the carriage can hold them both. On those days Mrs. Bumpsher
holds her own drawing-room before her Majesty’s; and we are invited to
come and see her sitting in state, upon the largest sofa in her rooms.
She has need of a stout one, I promise you. Her very feathers must weigh
something considerable. The diamonds on her stomacher would embroider a
full-sized carpet-bag. She has rubies, ribbons, cameos, emeralds, gold
serpents, opals, and Valenciennes lace, as if she were an immense sample
out of Howell and James’s shop.
She took up with little Pinkney at Rome, where he made a charming
picture of her, representing her as about eighteen, with a cherub in her
lap, who has some liking to Bryanstone Bumpsher, her enormous, vulgar
son; now a Cornet in the Blues, and anything but a cherub, as those
would say who saw him in his uniform jacket.
I remember Pinkney when he was painting the picture, Bryanstone being
then a youth in what they call a skeleton suit
[Illustration: VENUS AND CUPID.]
(as if such a pig of a child could ever have been dressed in anything
resembling a skeleton)--I remember, I say, Mrs. B. sitting to Pinkney in
a sort of Egerian costume, her boy by her side, whose head the artist
turned round and directed it towards a piece of gingerbread, which he
was to have at the end of the sitting.
Pinkney, indeed, a painter!--a contemptible little humbug, and parasite
of the great! He has painted Mrs. Bumpsher younger every year for these
last ten years--and you see in the advertisements of all her parties his
odious little name stuck in at the end of the list. I’m sure, for my
part, I’d scorn to enter her doors, or be the toady of any woman.
[Illustration]