29th January 1826

(No church this morning – hurrah! – as we went to the Royal Surrey last night and were back v. late.)

Our trip to the theatre was a jolly outing. Unfortunately, Pa only had orders for the uppermost tier, a balcony full of the coarsest specimens of humanity. Half the people were noisily devouring oranges; the other half gorging on immense tumbling rounds of ham sandwiches. Moreover, when Mama took out her opera-glasses, a Cockney matron, wearing an enormous sprouting confusion of a feathery bonnet – a sparrow short of a bird’s nest – remarked loudly, ‘Oi! Oi! I see no ships!’ Poor Mama blushed bright red and put them straight back in her reticule.

But such a play – Murder and Madness; or The Horrors of Constantinople – and a juggler and rope-dancer in the interval! I have kept my own copy of the playbill.

The scenes were:

I.  A Rendez-vous at the Benighted Millpond

II. Crossing the Heady Bosphorus

III.  The Sorry Eunuch and the Hareem at Midnight

IV.  The Accursed Sands of Anchora

V. Doomed in a Dungeon

VI.  The Amative Caliph’s Castle

The best actress was Miss Catherine Calthrop – ‘Lady Jessamima’ – who was kidnapped twice (once by pirates, once by the Caliph), drowned once, and sang a comic song about a camel.

(She is not as beautiful as S., though.)

[note to self: might the Duke of Albemarlia own a giraffe?]

We walked back through Covent Garden and mingled promiscuously with the great crowds pouring out of the Lyceum and Drury Lane. Saw two suspicious-looking fellows whom I will wager were pickpockets; several ladies of dubious virtue; and a very drunken old chap making passionate advances to a lamppost. Mama jabbed me in the arm and nodded towards him, as if to say, ‘Look upon the Wages of Sin!’ My own mother now seems to think I am some sort of confirmed lushington!


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