【英文原著类】MEN’S WIVES(妻室).pdf

MEN'S WIVES
MEN'S WIVES
By William Makepeace Thackeray
1
MEN'S WIVES
CHAPTER I.
WHICH IS ENTIRELY INTRODUCTORY - CONTAINS AN
ACCOUNT OF MISS CRUMP, HER SUITORS, AND HER FAMILY
CIRCLE.
In a certain quiet and sequestered nook of the retired village of London
- perhaps in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square, or at any rate
somewhere near Burlington Gardens--there was once a house of
entertainment called the "Bootjack Hotel." Mr. Crump, the landlord, had,
in the outset of life, performed the duties of Boots in some inn even more
frequented than his own, and, far from being ashamed of his origin, as
many persons are in the days of their prosperity, had thus solemnly
recorded it over the hospitable gate of his hotel.
Crump married Miss Budge, so well known to the admirers of the
festive dance on the other side of the water as Miss Delancy; and they had
one daughter, named Morgiana, after that celebrated part in the "Forty
Thieves" which Miss Budge performed with unbounded applause both at
the "Surrey" and "The Wells." Mrs. Crump sat in a little bar, profusely
ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg, Rose,
Parisot, who plied the light fantastic toe in 1805, down to the Sylphides of
our day. There was in the collection a charming portrait of herself, done
by De Wilde; she was in the dress of Morgiana, and in the act of pouring,
to very slow music, a quantity of boiling oil into one of the forty jars. In
this sanctuary she sat, with black eyes, black hair, a purple face and a
turban, and morning, noon, or night, as you went into the parlour of the
hotel, there was Mrs. Crump taking tea (with a little something in it),
looking at the fashions, or reading Cumberland's "British Theatre." The
Sunday Times was her paper, for she voted the Dispatch, that journal
which is taken in by most ladies of her profession, to be vulgar and
Radical, and loved the theatrical gossip in which the other mentioned
journal aboun