Although fat and middle-aged he considers himself a young lover and has an unfortunate amorous entanglement with the spinster Rachael Wardle.

Time and feeding had expanded his once romantic body; the black silk waistcoat had become larger and larger; inch by inch the gold watch-chain beneath that waistcoat had disappeared from Mr Tupman's sight; and gradually his chin had grown until it hid the white tie around his neck.

[4] Despite being middle-aged and portly, Tupman is a flirtatious ladies' man who regularly falls in and out of love but who is never successful in affairs of the heart.

The spinster aunt trembled, till some pebbles which had accidentally found their way into the large watering-pot shook like an infant’s rattle.

He jumped up, and, throwing his arm round the neck of the spinster aunt, imprinted upon her lips numerous kisses, which after a due show of struggling and resistance, she received so passively, that there is no telling how many more Mr. Tupman might have bestowed, if the lady had not given a very unaffected start, and exclaimed in an affrighted tone— “Mr.

— we are discovered!”[6] However, despite Tupman's protestations of affection she elopes with the engaging charlatan and trickster Alfred Jingle.

[7] Tupman writes to Mr Pickwick, "You do not know what it is, at one blow, to be deserted by a lovely and fascinating creature, and to fall victim to the artifices of a villain."

Overcome with melancholy, Tupman absents himself from his friends with the intention of doing away with himself but instead is found by them at Cobham with his other great love - a plate of food.

Eventually, Tupman takes lodgings at Richmond, where he "walks continuously on the Terrace during the summer months, with a youthful and jaunty air which has rendered him the admiration of the numerous elderly ladies of the single condition, who reside in the vicinity.