The Tinted Venus

MP3 Audio CD. The Tinted Venus

IN PURSUIT OF PLEASURE

I.

"Ther hopped Hawkyn,
Ther daunsed Dawkyn,
Ther trumped Tomkyn...."

The Tournament of Tottenham.


In Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, there is a small alley or passage
leading into Queen Square, and rendered inaccessible to all but foot
passengers by some iron posts. The shops in this passage are of a
subdued exterior, and are overshadowed by a dingy old edifice dedicated
to St. George the Martyr, which seems to have begun its existence as a
rather handsome chapel, and to have improved itself, by a sort of
evolution, into a singularly ugly church.

Into this alley, one Saturday afternoon late in October, came a short
stout young man, with sandy hair, and a perpetual grin denoting
anticipation rather than enjoyment. Opposite the church he stopped at a
hairdresser's shop, which bore the name of Tweddle. The display in the
window was chastely severe; the conventional half-lady revolving slowly
in fatuous self-satisfaction, and the gentleman bearing a piebald beard
with waxen resignation, were not to be found in this shop-front, which
exhibited nothing but a small pile of toilet remedies and a few lengths
of hair of graduated tints. It was doubtful, perhaps, whether such
self-restraint on the part of its proprietor was the result of a
distaste for empty show, or a conviction that the neighbourhood did not
expect it.