When England’s wisest statesmen, judges,
Lawyers, peers, will all be—Fudges.
Miss Biddy Fudge, a sentimental girl of 18, in love with “romances, high bonnets, and Mde. le Roy.” She writes letters i., v., x., and xi., describing to her friend Dolly or Dorothy the sights of Paris, and especially how she becomes acquainted with a gentleman whom she believes to be the king of Prussia in disguise, but afterwards she discovers that her disguised king calls himself “Colonel Calicot.” Going with her brother to buy some handkerchiefs, her visions of glory are sadly dashed when “the hero she fondly had fancied a king” turns out to be a common linen-draper. “There stood the vile treacherous thing, with the yard-measure in his hand.” “One tear of compassion for your poor heart-broken friend. P.S.—You will be delighted to know we are going to hear Brunel to-night, and have obtained the governor’s box; we shall all enjoy a hearty good laugh, I am sure.”
Bob or Robert Fudge, son of Phil Fudge, Esq., a young exquisite of the first water, writes letters iii. and viii. to his friend Richard. These letters describe how French dandies dress, eat, and kill time.—T. Moore (1818).
⁂ A sequel, called The Fudge Family in England, was published.
Fulgentio, a kinsman of Roberto (king of the two Sicilies). He was the most rising and most insolent man in the court. Cami´ola calls him “a suit-broker,” and says he had the worse report among all good men for bribery and extortion. This canker obtained the king’s leave for his marriage with Camiŏla, and he pleaded his suit as a right, not a favor; but the lady rejected him with scorn, and Adoni killed the arrogant “sprig of nobility” in a duel.—Massinger, The Maid of Honor (1637).
Fulkerson, Western man who removes to New York, and sets up a magazine founded upon “the greatest idea that has been struck since—the creation of man. I don’t want to claim too much, and I draw the line at the creation of man. But if you want to ring the morning stars into the prospectus, all right!”
He makes a success of it, as he has a habit of making of everything; marries a Southern girl, and goes to live over “the office.” “In New York you may do anything.” He violates all sorts of conventionalities, talks slang and loudly, yet is everybody’s friend and most people’s favorite.—W.D. Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889).
Fulmer, a man with many shifts, none of which succeed. He says:
“I have beat through every quarter of the compass ... I have blustered for prerogative; I have bellowed for freedom; I have offered to serve my country; I have engaged to betray it ... I have talked treason, writ treason ... And here I set up as a bookseller, but men leave off reading; and if I were to turn butcher, I believe ... they’d leave off eating.”