Captain Bragg, then occupied in building Bungalow Lodge--Bragg, I say, living on the first floor, and entertaining sea-captains, merchants, and East Indian friends with his grand ship’s plate, being disappointed in a project of marrying a director’s daughter, who was also a second-cousin once removed of a peer, sent in a fury for Mrs. Cammysole, his landlady, and proposed to marry Flora off-hand, and settle four hundred a-year upon her. Flora was ordered from the back parlour (the Ground-floor occupies the Second-floor bed-room), and was on the spot made acquainted with the splendid offer which the First-floor had made her. She has been Mrs. Captain Bragg these twelve years.
You see her portrait, and that of the brute, her husband, on the opposite side of the page.
Bragg to this day wears anchor-buttons, and has a dress-coat with a gold strap for epaulets, in case he should have a fancy to sport them. His house is covered with portraits, busts, and miniatures of himself. His wife is made to wear one of the latter. On his sideboard are pieces of plate, presented by the passengers of the Ram Chunder to Captain Bragg. “The Ram Chunder East Indiaman, in a gale, off Table Bay;” “The Outward-bound Fleet, under convoy of Her Majesty’s frigate Loblollyboy, Captain Gutch, beating off the French squadron, under Commodore Leloup (the Ram Chunder, S.E. by E., is represented engaged with the Mirliton corvette);” “The Ram Chunder standing into the Hooghly, with Captain Bragg, his telescope, and speaking-trumpet, on the poop;” “Captain Bragg presenting the Officers of the Ram Chunder to General Bonaparte at St. Helena”--TITMARSH (this fine piece was painted by me when I was in favour with Bragg); in a word, Bragg and the Ram Chunder are all over the house.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN AND MRS. BRAGG OF OUR STREET.]
Although I have eaten scores of dinners at Captain Bragg’s charge, yet his hospitality is so insolent that none of us who frequent his mahogany, feel any obligation to our braggart entertainer.
After he has given one of his great heavy dinners he always takes an opportunity to tell you, in the most public way, how many bottles of wine were drunk. His pleasure is to make his guests tipsy, and to tell everybody how and when the period of inebriation arose. And Miss Clapperclaw tells me that he often comes over laughing and giggling to her, and pretending that he has brought _me_ into this condition--a calumny which I fling contemptuously in his face.