The Mysteries of the Court of London by Pauline Clarendon — page 351: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

348 THE COURT OF LONDON ladies of rank with their handsome footmen, honourable misses with the noble father’s pretty pages, and fashionable luxurious immorality and voluptuous profligacy of the upper classes enjoyed all the delights of secure and well- concealed sin, the loathed and despised wretches of the vile districts of the metropolis were quitting their orgies and returning to their squalor, their rags, and their wretchedness in those dens which they called their homes. The slipshod waiter had closed the door of the Beggar’s Staff, extinguished the lights in the public room, and retired to his bed which he made up in the kitchen; but the Big Beggarman remained smoking and drinking in the little parlour behind the bar, in case his daughter should return before the place was opened to the morning customers. On ordinary occasions this man could drink an ineredible quantity of potent liquor without experiencing its intoxi- cating effects; but, in the present instance, he.was far advanced toward a stage of complete ebriety. Not only had he considerably exceeded his usual quantum, large as this allowance invariably was, but the exciting occurrences of the evening and the night, not forgetting the severe blow on the head which he received from Lady Letitia, had assisted the brandy in exercising a strong influence over him. But still he continued to drink and smoke, until his countenance glowed like a furnace, the flesh around his eyes became so swollen that the twinkling orbs seemed buried in valleys of a purply livid flesh, and every vein in his fore- head was swollen almost to bursting. It was about six o’clock on that cold, misty, winter’s morning, when an imperious knock at the street door ot the establishment aroused the Big Beggarman irom his solitary orgy; and staggering cumbrously out of the parlour, he proceeded to answer the summons. As he had suspected, it was Carrotty Poll who thus sought admission; and, on entering the place, she proceeded without uttering a word into the bar, where she helped herself to a large dram of brandy. Then, sinking almost exhausted upon a chair in the parlour, while her father resumed his own seat, she threw back her hood and revealed a countenance a trifle more menacing in its vixenish ferocity than that of a tiger- cat. demireps with elegant guardsmen, —while, in fact, the ECORNIE OOOKS (EO) m