Men's Wives

"In a certain quiet and sequestered nook of the retired village of London
- perhaps in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square, or at any rate somewhere near
Burlington Gardens--there was once a house of entertainment called the "Bootjack
Hotel." Mr. Crump, the landlord, had, in the outset of life, performed the
duties of Boots in some inn even more frequented than his own, and, far from
being ashamed of his origin, as many persons are in the days of their
prosperity, had thus solemnly recorded it over the hospitable gate of his
hotel.

Crump married Miss Budge, so well known to the admirers of the festive
dance on the other side of the water as Miss Delancy; and they had one daughter,
named Morgiana, after that celebrated part in the "Forty Thieves" which Miss
Budge performed with unbounded applause both at the "Surrey" and "The Wells."
Mrs. Crump sat in a little bar, profusely ornamented with pictures of the
dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg, Rose, Parisot, who plied the light
fantastic toe in 1805, down to the Sylphides of our day. There was in the
collection a charming portrait of herself, done by De Wilde; she was in the
dress of Morgiana, and in the act of pouring, to very slow music, a quantity of
boiling oil into one of the forty jars. In this sanctuary she sat, with black
eyes, black hair, a purple face and a turban, and morning, noon, or night, as
you went into the parlour of the hotel, there was Mrs. Crump taking tea (with a
little something in it), looking at the fashions, or reading Cumberland's
"British Theatre." The Sunday Times was her paper, for she voted the Dispatch,
that journal which is taken in by most ladies of her profession, to be vulgar
and Radical, and loved the theatrical gossip in which the other mentioned
journal abounds."

- Excerpted from "Men's Wives"