The English Spy, page 309 by Bernard Blackmantle
<< Return to Title Details & Download310
. In later times, Her Majesty the Queen of Bohemia{7} raised her standard in Tavistock-row, Covent Garden, where she held a midnight court for the wits; superintended by the renowned daughter of Hibernia, and maid of honour to her majesty, the facetious Mother Butler--the ever-constant supporter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, esquire, and a leading feature in all the memorable Westminster elections of the last fifty years. How many jovial nights have I passed and jolly fellows have I met in the snug sanctum sanctorum! a little crib, as the fishmongers would call it, with an entrance through the bar, and into which none were ever permitted to enter without a formal introduction and the gracious permission of the hostess. Among those who were thus specially privileged, and had the honour of the entré, were the reporters for the morning papers, the leading members of the eccentrics, the actors and musicians of the two Theatres Royal, merry members of both Houses of
7 The sign of the house.
~351~~Parliament, and mad wags of every country who had any established claim to the kindred feelings of genius. Such were the frequenters of the Finish. Here, poor Tom Sheridan, with a comic gravity that set discretion at defiance, would let fly some of his brilliant drolleries at the improvisatore, Theodore Hook; who, lacking nothing of his opponent's wit, would quickly return his tire with the sharp encounter of a satiric epigram or a brace of puns, planted with the most happy effect upon the weak side of his adversary's merriment. There too might be seen the wayward and the talented George Cook, gentlemanly in conduct, and full of anecdote when sober, but ever captious and uproarious in his cups. Then might be heard a strange encounter of expressions between the queen of Covent Garden and the voluptuary, Lord Barrymore,{8} seconded by his brother, the pious Augustus. In one corner might be seen poor Dermody, the poet, shivering with wre