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The Marquis of Holmesford’s Harem
G. Stiff
1846
Wood engraving
Source: The Project Gutenberg version of G. W. M. Reynolds’s The Mysteries of London
The illustration depicts a text in Chapter 252 but appears in an earlier chapter.
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The artist does not follow Reynolds’s description of the women and depict them in “loose morning-wrappers” displaying their bare breasts, though he does follow the text to the extent of drawing the French woman (at the right) playing with her gold chain. The women also do not appear to be conversing, as they do in the text.
Grouped together upon two ottomans drawn close to each other, five beautiful women were conversing in a tone so low that it almost sank to a whisper; while their charming countenances wore an expression of mingled suspense and sorrow.
They were all in deshabillée, though it was now past four o'clock in the afternoon.
This negligence, however, extended only to their attire; for each of those lovely creatures had bathed her beauteous form in a perfumed bath, and had arranged her hair in the manner best calculated to set off its luxuriance to advantage and at the same time to enhance the charms of that countenance which it enclosed.
But farther than this the toilette of those five fascinating girls had not progressed; and the loose morning-wrappers which they wore, left revealed all the glowing beauties of each voluptuous bust. There was the Scotch charmer, with her brilliant complexion, her auburn hair, and her red cherry lips:—there was the English girl—the pride of Lancashire—with her brown hair, and her robust but exquisitely modelled proportions:—and next to her, on the same ottoman, sate the Irish beauty, whose sparkling black eyes denoted all the fervour of sensuality.
On the sofa facing these three women, sate the French wanton, her taper fingers playing with the gold chain which, in the true spirit of coquetry, she had thrown negligently round her neck, and the massive links of which made not the least indentation upon the plump fullness of her bosom. By her side was the Spanish houri, her long black ringlets flowing on the white drapery which set off her transparent olive skin to such exquisite advantage.
This group formed an assemblage of charms which would have raised palpitations and excited mysterious fires in the heart of the most heaven-devoted anchorite that ever vowed a life of virgin-purity.
And the picture was the more fascinating—the more dangerous, inasmuch as its voluptuousness was altogether unstudied at this moment, and those beauteous creatures noticed not, in their sisterly confidence towards each other, that their glowing and half-naked forms were thus displayed almost as it might have seemed in a spirit of competition and rivalry. — Volume 2, Chapter 252, “Death of the Marquis of Holmesford”
Reynolds, George W. M. The Mysteries of London. vol 2. London: George Vickers, 1846. Project Gutenberg EBook #51294. Produced by Richard Tonsing, Chuck Greif, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Web. 3 October 2016.
Last modified 4 October 2016