Didactic fiction; Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
The first person who accosted him was called Blear-eyed Moll, a woman
of no very comely appearance. Her eye (for she had but one), whence she
derived her nickname, was such as that nickname bespoke; besides which,
it had two remarkable qualities; for first, as if Nature had been
careful to provide for her own defect, it constantly looked towards her
blind side; and secondly, the ball consisted almost entirely of white,
or rather yellow, with a little grey spot in the corner, so small that
it was scarce discernible. Nose she had none; for Venus, envious perhaps
at her former charms, had carried off the gristly part; and some earthly
damsel, perhaps, from the same envy, had levelled the bone with the rest
of her face: indeed it was far beneath the bones of her cheeks, which
rose proportionally higher than is usual. About half a dozen ebony teeth
fortified that large and long canal which nature had cut from ear to
ear, at the bottom of which was a chin preposterously short, nature
having turned up the bottom, instead of suffering it to grow to its due
length.
Her body was well adapted to her face; she measured full as much round
the middle as from head to foot; for, besides the extreme breadth of her
back, her vast breasts had long since forsaken their native home, and
had settled themselves a little below the girdle.
I wish certain actresses on the stage, when they are to perform
characters of no amiable cast, would study to dress themselves with the
propriety with which Blear-eyed Moll was now arrayed. For the sake
of our squeamish reader, we shall not descend to particulars; let it
suffice to say, nothing more ragged or more dirty was ever emptied out
of the round-house at St Giles’s.
We have taken the more pains to describe this person, for two remarkable
reasons; the one is, that this unlovely creature was taken in the fact
with a very pretty young fellow; the other, which is more productive of
moral lesson, is, that however wretched her fortune may appear to the
reader, she was one of the merriest persons in the whole prison.
Blear-eyed Moll then came up to Mr. Booth with a smile, or rather grin,
on her countenance, and asked him for a dram of gin; and when Booth
assured her that he had not a penny of money, she replied--“D--n your
eyes, I thought by your look you had been a clever fellow, and upon
the snaffling lay [Footnote: A cant term for robbery on the highway] at
least; but, d--n your body and eyes, I find you are some sneaking budge
[Footnote: Another cant term for pilfering] rascal.” She then launched
forth a volley of dreadful oaths, interlarded with some language not
proper to be repeated here, and was going to lay hold on poor Booth,
when a tall prisoner, who had been very earnestly eying Booth for some
time, came up, and, taking her by the shoulder, flung her off at some
distance, cursing her for a b--h, and bidding her let the gentleman
alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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