Publisher's Synopsis
"'Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, ' said my uncle Toby, 'but nothing to this.'"-Tristram Shandy. It lay in the heart of Bohemia. It was approached through a labyrinth of streets that grew denser and darker as one neared the precincts of the club. Could any of the brother Scufflers have seen the neighbourhood by day, it would have presented an appearance dismal and sordid enough. Dealers in faded wardrobes, -merchants in tinsel and rouge de theatre, -retailers of wigs and fleshings and all manner of stage wares, seemed one with another to have made the locality their home. One missed certainly the bone-sellers and refuse-sifters of the adjacent Clare Market, and one was[Pg ] spared the cheap cosmetic shops and smug undertakers of the neighbouring Soho. But you were recompensed, here in the heart of mid-Bohemia, by the all-pervading odour of potations and provisions, -of banquets long past, and of banquets that were yet to come."
