We have heard that there were six mammas, bowling about in their barouches, at the close of his second season, innuendoing, nodding, and hinting to their friends, 'that, &c.,' when there wasn't one of their daughters who had penetrated the rhinoceros-like hide of his own conceit. The consequence was that all these ladies, all their daughters, all the relations and connexions of this life, thought it incumbent upon them to 'blow' our friend Puff—proclaim how infamously he had behaved—all because he had danced three supper dances with one girl, brought another a fine bouquet from Covent Garden, walked a third away from her party at a picnic at Erith, begged the mamma of a fourth to take her to a Woolwich ball, sent a fifth a ticket for a Toxophilite meeting, and dangled about the carriage of the sixth at a review at the Scrubbs. Poor Puff never thought of being more than an amaazin' instance of a pop'lar man!
Not that the ladies' denunciations did the Corinthian any harm at first—old ladies know each other better than that; and each new mamma had no doubt but Mrs. Depecarde or Mrs. Mainchance, as the case might be, had been deceiving herself—'was always doing so, indeed; her ugly girls were not likely to attract any one—certainly not such an elegant man as Corinthian Tom.'
But as season after season passed away, and the Corinthian still played the old game—still went the old rounds—the dinner and ball invitations gradually dwindled away, till he became a mere stop-gap at the one, and a landing-place appendage at the other.
MR. PUFFINGTON, FROM THE ORIGINAL PICTURE
CHAPTER XXXII
THE MAN OF P-R-O-R-PERTY
And now behold Mr. Puffington, fat, fair, and rather more than forty—Puffington, no longer the light limber lad who patronized us in Bond Street, but Puffington a plump, portly sort of personage, filling his smart clothes uncommonly full. Men no longer hailing him heartily from bay windows, or greeting him cheerily in short but familiar terms, but bowing ceremoniously as they passed with their wives, or perhaps turning down streets or into shops to avoid him. What is the last rose of summer to do under such circumstances? What, indeed, but retire into the country? A man may shine there long after he is voted a bore in town, provided none of his old friends are there to proclaim him. Country people are tolerant of twaddle, and slow of finding things out for themselves. Puff now turned his attention to the country, or rather to the advertisements of estates for sale, and immortal George Robins soon fitted him with one of his earthly paradises; a mansion replete with every modern elegance, luxury, and convenience, situated in the heart of the most lovely scenery in the world, with eight hundred acres of land of the finest quality, capable of growing forty bushels of wheat after turnips. In addition to the estate there was a lordship or reputed lordship to shoot over, a river to fish in, a pack of fox-hounds to hunt with, and the advertisements gave a sly hint as to the possibility of the property influencing the representation of the neighbouring borough of Swillingford, if not of returning the member itself.