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 Beanstalks, 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 chestnut 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 neighborhood; 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 the 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 (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, a 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.