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

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

Miss Betsy Hasting

Miss Betsy H—st—ng, No. 30, Duke-street, St. James's.

Blest with such charms, the snowy heart could move
Such melting beauties sovereign claims of love;
She sweetly smiles, unconscious of her pow'r,
And with her pleasing chat beguiles each hour.

It is an undoubted fact she, must please, she must charm the heart, and win the foul to exquisite delight; how can it be otherwise! behold her eyes, drinking their living moisture in cups of the purest hazel, and holding converse with the heart, in such a language, the least meeting glance must immediately understand; behold her hair, glossy as the pearly drops that gild the flow'ry field when Phoebus first his eastern rays extends, and soft as turtles down; which, when suffered to sport in nature's wanton folds, hold all the graces in their sportive curls; view next her teeth, as white as the polish'd elephants, and beautiful as white;,/p>

Cheeks from whence the roses seek their bloom,
And lips from whence the zephyrs steal perfume

but all these charms united, fall very short of her mental qualifications: her lively wit charms the heart, and makes her the desirable companion; her behaviour, Which in company never deviates from the strict line of modesty, gains her the truest merit: her apartments are very genteel, and her dress corresponds with her person. Her professional abilities are not less to be priz'd than her other natural gifts; her natural structure in those parts is so well adapted, that it must please; and every additional improvement to enhance the coming pleasure our delicate charmer is well acquainted with; being now only nineteen she cannot, in the least, have lost the keen edge of amorous transport; neither are the essential parts at all deprived of their magical power; the liquid eye streams with the maddening fire of youth, with all the desires of unsatiated love; the panting heave, accompanying the quick interrupted sigh, speaks desire in its fullest tone; and so mutually does she interchange the liquid store at the die-away convulsive moment, that all her soul seems centred in the blissful spot. She is tall, and elegantly form'd in every limb; Mr. Arch—r, the musician, is at present her favourite man; him she will oblige at any time, from every one else she expects three guineas.