_Some account of the person, and character of_ Dolly Tinder,
Tom’_s new mistress_.
Here would have been a fair opportunity for some writers, fond of
digressions, to indulge their favourite passions, by making, or
fabricating a good long chapter upon _judicial Astrology_, but
we scorn to swell our book to an enormous size by any such mean
expedient, as we do not want matter, (we will not say subject matter,
for fear of offending that delicate mythologist, master _Launcelot_,
the templar) sufficient to carry on a larger volume, than the
present, without having recourse to such low stratagems.
We shall give the reader a concise, and more entertaining chapter
on the charms and morals of _Dolly Tinder_, daughter of an eminent
lamp-lighter of this metropolis. Her mother was as famous in her
branch of business, being a very substantial linen-draper, (as the
Welch collier says in the recruiting officer of his wife, poor Mary
——) it being this matrons business to gather rags for the paper
mills. Thus born of mean but honest parents, _Dolly_, who, as she
grew up, was a jolly bucksom wench, seemed cut out for servitude,
and to this she applied herself with indefatigable industry; but
unhappily for her among the other places in which she had lived, she
was in the sixteenth year of her age, in the employ of a warfinger,
in the regions of _Black Fryars_, here it was that she contracted
an acquaintance with the water-men, and an amour with one of the
lads of the skullers. Many were the voyages she made on the Thames,
with her lover, who always refused the least fee, or gratuity for
his beloved mistress, as he had reason to expect, she would pay
him the fare in another coin. Neither did she prove ungrateful, or
unfavourable to his wishes; for before she was in her seventeenth
year, she found her stays grow narrower, and narrower, so as not to
be able to contain that waist, so often commended for it’s taper
symmetry; when those evident marks of her pregnancy appeared, she
quitted her mother’s house, and fled for refuge to that of her
mother-in-law, who received her as the wife of her son, and she was
brought to bed of a chopping boy, which, when she was well, was by
general consent, carried by the good old matron to the foundling
hospital, and there deposited; whether he is as yet received into
the marine society, we cannot be assured, but being begot under
_Aquarius_, he may probably one day become an able commander at sea,
and be an honour to the element from whence he sprung. The waterman
her lover, like his native river, was like all other lovers, liable
to inconstancy, so he soon manifested his neglect by a very cold
indifference, and once by a severe beating. She was not behind hand
with him, for she revenged the insult by immediately throwing herself
into the element of _Fire_, and took up with a glass-man. Thus she
became again connected to her own family affinities, since her lover
had a near correspondence with the occupation of her father,—_Glass_
and _Fire_. As she had lived so long among the _Pleiades_, she now
removed her quarters to the hotter constellations, and since her
Aquarius with his buckets, was unwilling any longer to quench that
flame which he had lighted up in her bosom, she resolved to repel
_heat_ by _heat_, choosing her residence under the sultry influence
of _Sirius_, the Dog-star; by him she had, during the succession
of ten years, a litter of whelps, most of which fell to the lot
of the above repository, which as the grave receives the _forlorn
dead_, is appointed to receive the _forlorn living_. After so long
a cohabitation, and a visible decline in her charms, from incessant
child-bearing, it is no wonder if the Glass man, burnt up with the
flames of coals, and the flames of love, was now burnt to a cinder,
which indeed he was in a metaphorical sense, for he died of a decay,
and left her a widow to the wide world, and forlorn-hope.—But _Dolly_
was not so very much fallen into the vale of years, being now
twenty-eight, but she retained some reliques of her former beauty,
and one day as she was walking across the Temple courts, an old
gentleman of the Middle Temple became enamoured of her, and giving
her the keys of his chambers, was soon admitted to her embraces,
though not to his affections, for she was of too liberal a nature to
refuse the repeated sollicitations of several young Templers, with
whom she lived successively, being nevertheless constant to each of
her paramours, during her legal administration among them. By their
bounty, she became possessed of ten pounds, which she generously
bestowed on an eminent chimney-sweeper, being unwilling to quit the
precincts of her favourite element the _fire_, of which she had so
much in her constitution, that some say, she was troubled with
Messalina’s failing: But with this Vulcan she did not chuse to live
long, being tired of his sooty embraces; she accordingly robbed
him, and fled to the Borough, where she actually, and for the first
time married a chairman; but thinking this condition of life too
humble, she aspired to the coach-box, and having eloped from the
Christian beast of burthen, she lived with Automedon, and afterwards
entered into the constellation of Auriga, by going into the arms
of a waggoner, till at length tired with a variety of lovers, she
prudently resolved to turn oyster-woman, and live independant of
that monster man, so far as her warm complexion would admit her. She
soon grew weary of this occupation of life, and lived with a _Jew_,
an old clothes-man, by whose itinerations through Monmouth-street,
she became acquainted with her late mistress, and entered into her
service much about the æra of our _feline_ history. The other part of
_Dolly_’s history the reader has been informed of, and therefore we
shall resume the more respectable annals of our Hero.