Katherine Thomson

The White Mask

3 vols. Richard Bentley, 1844.

Meantime Lord Sussex and Amy proceeded...to the celebrated pleasure gardens of Marylebone...The Tavern, gay with flags, and filled with company of the highest rank, commanded extensive gardens, in which a band of music was playing. The diversions which attracted persons to this place were still decorous - still inoffensive...Paying a shilling for their admittance, the gay and great poured into the gardens, which formed a sort of Exchange for the polite world...Here a group of high-born ladies, in hoods, and masks, sat round a tea-table, laying aside their masks to converse, but holding them up to shade their faces, as young gallants passed, and paid their obeisance...

The period is c.1690, and 'the riotous manners, and dark deeds which Gay had figured forth' had not yet 'sullied this fashionable resort'. Not that his lordship would have minded, he's only there for the bowling, and Amy has to sit and watch while her companion, 'his fingers tingling from the propensity to draw forth his money and to bet, became wholly absorbed in the game'. (See the Sheffield entry for a duke who liked to 'bowl time away' in low company.)

The game of bowls lasted until the sun began to decline - and then, there was a general push and scramble for refreshments, which each person, such was the arrangement of Marylebone Gardens, might take to the extent of the introductory shilling. Of course it was fashionable and liberal greatly to exceed that amount...and, accordingly, young men were seen crowding around booths at which wine, and even spirits were to be purchased. A more staid and intellectual tribe seated themselves at tables, on which the milder and more refined luxuries of chocolate and coffee, and afterwards of tea, were to be gracefully sipped in the company of fair ladies, a bow at every sip, a compliment with every bow; and sometimes, it must be avowed, a double entendre with every compliment...

The scene ends at page 161.