Cache-Control: public, max-age=1024000 Covent Garden Ladies 1788: Miss Johnston

Harris's List of Covent-Garden Ladies for the year 1788

Miss Johnston

Miss J—hn—t—n, No. 6, Church Court, St. Martin's Lane.

Here roses red, and lilys fair;
The gifts of nature, deck her air.

Oh for a touch of the pencil of animation to color the picture of one of the most lively productions in our exhibition; she is genteel and well made, with a beautiful face, the tints in which are done by nature alone, fine light hair, and a pretty learing eye, that would make a monk disregard his vow of celibacy, or a mahometan think that he had got one of the daughters of paradise; her mouth small, her lips tempting; her teeth even, white, and regular; her foot and leg smart, and her dress at once neat and genteel. But these are not the sole powers of this lady; she is acquainted at once with the whole rationale of love, as well as with the entire practice of it; and whether we talk of those mysteries which are only known by the adepts, or those more clumsily applied operations of the lower orders of the sisterhood, she is up to every thing in love's tactics. Her dialect does not tell us she is a native of Scotland, tho' her father, who is an half pay officer, yet resides there; at this period when the powers of love or lust are at their full bloom, necessity and inclination together, prompted her to become a dancer on our cyprian stage, and is very desirous of pleasing every man that makes her his partner, and is so very careful of her health, that before she receives her guinea, she must examine every one of her partner's legs.