The Fudge Papers:

BEING THE OBSERVATIONS AT HOME AND ABROAD OF DIVERS MEMBERS OF

THE FUDGE FAMILY

RENDERED INTO WRITING BY TONY FUDGE.

INTRODUCTION.

'FIRST, my fear; then, my courtesy; last, my speech.'- DANCER'S EPILOGUE

I MUST Confess that I feel diffident in entering upon the work which I have taken in hand. It is no light thing to meddle in family matters; on the contrary, persons of experience will bear me testimony that it is in nine cases out of ten a very serious business. If a promise were not already given, I should even now retire.

Very few know what it is to assume the position that I have taken; viz., to entertain the public with a record of the observations, fancies, history, and feelings of one's own family. Many people do this in a quiet way; but I am not aware that it has heretofore been undertaken in the unblushing manner which I propose to myself.

I shall expect misrepresentation and calumny. It will not surprise me to find some squeamish individual of the Fudge family denying my claim to membership, and roundly asserting that I am not the TONY FUDGE I profess to be. I am prepared for such denial.

I shall expect the Widow Fudge to refuse all sanction of my papers as veritable history, and to declare stoutly that the writer is an impostor; and that such incidents as I may set down, in my simplicity, are utterly without foundation, and entirely unknown to herself, as well as to every respectable member of the Fudge family. I shall expect the Miss Fudges to turn up their noses at many little expressions of moral doctrine which will come into my record, and to sneer publicly at my portraits of their habits and tastes. I shall, without doubt, be disputed by them on the score of age, clearness of complexion, fixings, accomplishments, and such other matters as may make good the pictures of my excellent second cousins, the Miss Fudges. For this, I am prepared.

I shall furthermore expect that Mrs. Phoebe Fudge will utterly deny my statements with respect to her weight. I doubt even if she will admit the truth of what I shall have to say regarding her public charities, and her interest in the Society for the Relief of Respectable Indigent. Females. She will very possibly deny the truth of any comparisons I may draw between her expenses at Mrs. Lawson's and her droppings into the poor-box of Dr. Taylor's church. The chances are large in favor of her repudiation of all relationship with any man who calls himself TONY FUDGE; and of the additional assertion, that such individual can never have seen good society, and must therefore be thoroughly ignorant of whatever concerns herself. Indeed, I am prepared for it.

Mr. Solomon Fudge, her husband, who is another estimable member of the Fudge family, I shall expect to trouble himself very little about my remarks, so long as I confine myself to his wife's foibles, her virtues, or her boudoir; these are matters which concern him very little; but when I touch upon the gentleman's financial engagements, or upon some recent suspension, when moneyed rates 'ruled high,' (whereby some few small friends subsided into insolvency,) I shall anticipate a certain fidgety manner, and an abrupt refusal of all kinship with his very excellent nephew, TONY. I am prepared for this.

It would seem that I was undertaking a very odious employ, in thus provoking the wanton assaults of so many members of my own family. But I shall be consoled with the reflection, that I am doing no inconsiderable service to the public, as well as elevating the Fudge family into a certain historic dignity.

There are few people, after all, who will not risk a great deal of their modesty, and a very respectable fraction of their morals, for the sake of a prominent position in the public eye; and however much my dear cousins, and kin of all sorts, who come under the Fudge arms, may rail at my indiscretion, and my lack of breeding, they will, I venture to say, hug the éclat which my rambling record will give to their character and

name.

With this much of preface, which I contend is more to the purpose than most of the prefaces of the day, I shall enter at once upon my design.

THE Fudge family is large. Where it originated, I cannot well say. Many lady-members of the family are of opinion that it is very old, and can be traced back to some of the braves. of those Norman knights who did battle against Harold. They have adopted the crest of some of those heroes in support of this belief, and wear the same upon their fingers. I can hardly conceive of a prettier argument, or one more prettily handled. Reverence for antiquity is a delightful trait of the female character. A romantic admiration for knights and men-at-arms is a charming characteristic of the sex.

It would be unwise to discredit openly a lady's statement in respect to her paternity, or to make light of any argument by which she supports. the dignity of her family. My own opinion is, however, that it is much more probable that the Fudge family would find its true origin in the more humble antiquity dating with the Restoration. This limit would throw out at once all Puritanic taint, which I observe it is becoming quite fashionable to discard, and would furthermore be strengthened by a host of probabilities, in view of the great increase of family names

which grew up under the pleasant auspices of Charles the Second and his court.

I would by no means impugn the motives of those members of the family who wish to go farther back, or question the taste of such crests as they have adopted. On the contrary, many of them are particularly ingenious, and do great credit to all concerned. They moreover give a certain spice of dignity to the family, which, under republican neglect, might otherwise never be laid hold upon.

The Miss Fudges, my excellent cousins, Bridget and Jemima by name, are particularly tenacious on this point; their tenacity, moreover, is well sustained by the use of signets, and a very creditable air of hauteur.

I am sorry to say that I cannot learn that our family was ever much distinguished; and I have been shocked to find the name of Fudge among the humblest purveyors for King Charles's camp, before the battle of Worcester. This, however, is proof of a strong royalist feeling, which still obtains to a very considerable degree among the lady members of the family, particularly one or two interesting spinsters, who divided a season, two years ago, between Homberg and Wiesbaden.

Upon the Newgate Calendar I find, on close inspection, only two entries of the name. I regard this as a very flattering circumstance.

The first is that of Johnny Fudge, who, in the reign of Queen Anne, was convicted of horse-stealing at a June term of the York Assizes, and was condemned (III. Ph. and M. c. 12) to the gallows. The second appears to have been a criminal of much more character and consideration. It appears that in the first half of the reign of George III., one Solomon Fudge was indicted for seditious and treasonable acts. What the precise nature of the acts were, does not appear upon the calendar; I cannot doubt that they were worthy of the reputation of the family. We learn, that after a royal reprieve, Solomon was second time the victim of the law, and expiated his offences, in the year of grace 1760, upon Tower Hill.

Miss Bridget Fudge, indeed, who is of kin with the present Mr. Solomon Fudge, and who has latterly worked a very brilliant ancestral tree in pink and yellow chenil, on silk canvas, insists that the name of these culprits was spelt Foodge; and that they could not therefore have been connected, even remotely, with JACQUES DE FUDGE, Baron de La Bien Aimée, who lost a spur or two at the battle of Hastings. It certainly is an open question, well worthy of a doubt, if not of discussion, at the hands of the Historical Society.

For my own taste, I would much prefer to leave ancestral inquiries in the dark; and feel confident that if the same trepidation and fear of issues belonged to most of our ancestral inquirers about town, they would wear much safer names, and infinitely better repute. Hap-hazard will do very much more for the most of them, than Heraldry; and I have a strong suspicion that, in slighting the claims of Hap-hazard, they are slighting the claims of a veritable progenitor.

As for the history of the Fudges, since they have become a portion of the American stock, little can be said which would not apply with equal pertinency to nearly all the first families of the country. A stray scion has now and then, in a fit of love, demeaned himself by intermarriage

with the daughter of some plain person; or, in an equally unfortunate fit of policy, brought about by habits of extravagance, he has sought to supply the 'needful' by obtaining possession of some heiress of the town, who had little to recommend her, save a passable grace in the dance, and a moderately taking eye.

By these unfortunate casualties, it has happened that the purity of the original Fudge stock has become singularly impaired. It is even hinted, among the knowing gossips of the family, that the late Solomon Fudge, father to the present Solomon Fudge, made a sad slip in this way, and contracted an awkward-looking, left-handed marriage, very much to the exasperation of all the spinster connections of the family.

It appears that the old gentleman was rather frisky in his young days, and after a certain affaire du cœur, which threatened to create great scandal in the family, he was fain to marry his mother's waiting-maid. She, however, proved a most notable house-wife, and provoked all her married kin-folk with a swarm of the liveliest and ruddiest children that had been known in the Fudge family for several generations.

More attention, however, is now given to the race. I have already alluded to the ancestral tree worked in chenil, and to the crests. The spinster members of the family particularly, have shown great caution; they are waiting for 'blood.' Indeed, I may say, they have already waited for no inconsiderable time.

Although the stock may be made nobler under this regimen, I have my doubts whether it will be made any purer or stronger. I have therefore recommended to my cousin Bridget, who is not indisposed to change her condition-seeing that she is now verging upon her thirty-fifth year-a comely man in the retail line, who lives nearly opposite her house in the town, and who has shown repeated attentions through the medium of a small-sized ivory-mounted opera-glass.

I should hardly venture to urge the matter, unless I knew that the gentleman alluded to is about retiring upon a competency; and with a slight change of name, a suit of black in place of gaiters and plaids, to break up any old associations which might prove unpleasant, I really think that he would prove a most eligible partner for Miss Bridget. Of course, she affects, as most young ladies do, proper disdain for any one recommended by a gentleman-friend; but I understand that she is by no means careful to avoid his opera-glass observation. This is certainly a rather promising sign.

Miss Jemima, her sister, is prim and wiry, and takes to books. I shall have more to say of her as I get on. It is quite possible that I may relieve my papers with some short poems from her own hand. I do not, however, feel at liberty to promise this unconditionally.

As for myself, I have lived off and on, about the town, for some twentyodd years. Naturally, I verge upon middle age. Very few, however, I flatter myself, would suspect as much. I am particular about my wig, waistcoat, and boots. My wig has a careless, easy effect; my waistcoat is never unbuttoned, never stained with my dinner; my boots always fit. I am thoroughly convinced that proper attention to these three points is essential. They diffuse the charm of youth and grace over the bodies of individuals otherwise mature.

I am married-only to the world, which I find to be an agreeable spouse, something fat, and with streaks of ill-temper; but, upon the whole, as good-natured and yielding as a moderate man ought to expect.

I think I might easily pass for a man of five-and-thirty; I have been mistaken for a younger man even than this. I profess to be a judge of chowders, sherries, and wines generally. Sometimes I dine at the club; sometimes with a friend; sometimes with my esteemed uncle, Solomon Fudge; and on odd afternoons, with the widow Fudge, Miss Jemima, and Miss Bridget Fudge.

I admire beauty, and have had, like most men, my tender passages. At eighteen, I was in love with a widow of thirty-five-madly in love. My opinion is, that if she had not left the country unexpectedly, I should have died at her feet, or at her fire! At twenty-one, I was engaged to a blonde of three-and-twenty, with very blue eyes, and of a demure countenance, which I still remember with considerable sentiment. It was broken off with mutual good-will, and with some heart-burnings on both sides. She has now five children, lives in Thompson-street, and weighs, I should guess, near upon two hundred: her husband puts it at a figure or two less. I call her Mabel, and she calls me Tony.

At twenty-four, I was desperate. I am of opinion that no man was ever more so. Sir Charles Grandison, in comparison, was a tame lover. The scarlet waistcoat, that I wore at that particular epoch, seemed of a dingy ash color. I not unfrequently put it on, through absence, with the back side in front. I lived entirely upon vegetables. I wrote a surprising number of sonnets. I think the number of lines in each was altogether unprecedented.

But, alas for human hopes!—as historians and romance-writers are in the habit of saying-she proved a coquette. I forgave her after two weeks, during which I suffered intensely, and forgot her in four. It is my opinion that she forgot me about the same time.

Now, however, she is a cheerful spinster. I sometimes take a dish of tea with her. I observe that she begins to use hair-dye.

Since that time, I have been variously enamored of married and single women; the latter generally quite young. The very last could hardly have been more than sixteen. My opinion is, that I am more attractive to individuals of that age, than to older girls. They are certainly more attractive to me.

The absurd fallacy that young men are more successful lovers than the middle-aged, is now quite clear to me. I begin to appreciate the good judgment of the sex. Ladies are by no means so silly as young men take them to be. I am quite confident that my power of fascination was never so great as since I entered upon my fortieth year. I do not affirm that the same could be said of all bachelors of similar age.

I have undertaken to be personal in this chapter, and shall not therefore spare my modesty. It is not my way to halve things: if my story is to be told at all, it shall be fully told.

As for my more immediate family history, however, I do not propose to enter into particulars. Like most men about town, I am at present my own master, and trust that nothing will interrupt this private mastership for some time to come. I rely very little upon any Fudge counsel,