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in useless luxuries.
The bowling-green of Southwark was called Tarrinzeau Field, because it
had belonged to the Barons Hastings, who are also Barons Tarrinzeau and
Mauchline. From the Lords Hastings the Tarrinzeau Field passed to the
Lords Tadcaster, who had made a speculation of it, just as, at a later
date, a Duke of Orleans made a speculation of the Palais Royal.
Tarrinzeau Field afterwards became waste ground and parochial property.
Tarrinzeau Field was a kind of permanent fair ground covered with
jugglers, athletes, mountebanks, and music on platforms; and always full
of "fools going to look at the devil," as Archbishop Sharp said. To look
at the devil means to go to the play.
Several inns, which harboured the public and sent them to these
outlandish exhibitions, were established in this place, which kept
holiday all the year round, and thereby prospered. These inns were
simply stalls, inhabited only during the day. In the evening the
tavern-keeper put into his pocket the key of the tavern and went away.
One only of these inns was a house, the only dwelling in the whole
bowling-green, the caravans of the fair ground having the power of
disappearing at any moment, considering the absence of any ties in the
vagabond life of all mountebanks.
Mountebanks have no roots to their lives.
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