Gronow, if he comminates his neighbor's congregation, is the affectionate father of his own. Oriel, if he loves pointed Gothic and parched peas for breakfast, has a prodigious soup-kitchen for his poor; and as for little Father Mole, who never lifts his eyes from the ground, ask our doctor at what bedsides he finds him, and how he soothes poverty, and braves misery and infection.
THE BUMPSHERS.
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, Imistook 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.
JOLLY NEWBOY, ESQ., M.P.
How different it is with the Newboys, now, where I have an entree (having indeed had the honor in former days to give lessons to both the ladies)--and where such a quack as Pinkney would never be allowed to enter! A merrier house the whole quarter cannot furnish. It is there you meet people of all ranks and degrees, not only from our quarter, but from the rest of the town. It is there that our great man, the Right Honorable Lord Comandine, came up and spoke to me in so encouraging a manner that I hope to be invited to one of his lordship's excellent dinners (of which I shall not fail to give a very flattering description) before the season is over.
It is there you find yourself talking to statesmen, poets, and artists--not sham poets like Bulbul, or quack artists like that Pinkney--but to the best members of all society. It is there Imade this sketch, while Miss Chesterforth was singing a deep-toned tragic ballad, and her mother scowling behind her. What a buzz and clack and chatter there was in the room to be sure! When Miss Chesterforth sings, everybody begins to talk. Hicks and old Fogy were on Ireland: Bass was roaring into old Pump's ears (or into his horn rather) about the Navigation Laws; I was engaged talking to the charming Mrs. Short; while Charley Bonham (a mere prig, in whom I am surprised that the women can see anything,) was pouring out his fulsome rhapsodies in the ears of Diana White. Lovely, lovely Diana White! were it not for three or four other engagements, Iknow a heart that would suit you to a T.
Newboy's I pronounce to be the jolliest house in the street. He has only of late had a rush of prosperity, and turned Parliament man; for his distant cousin, of the ancient house of Newboy of ----shire, dying, Fred--then making believe to practise at the bar, and living with the utmost modesty in Gray's Inn Road--found himself master of a fortune, and a great house in the country; of which getting tired, as in the course of nature he should, he came up to London, and took that fine mansion in our Gardens. He represents Mumborough in Parliament, a seat which has been time out of mind occupied by a Newboy.
Though he does not speak, being a great deal too rich, sensible, and lazy, he somehow occupies himself with reading blue-books, and indeed talks a great deal too much good sense of late over his dinner-table, where there is always a cover for the present writer.