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Royal Tunbridge Wells
Ephraim, the scene of the accident in which Camilla's life is saved by Sir Sidney Clarendon, lived the Thrale's friend, Sophie Streatfield, a young lady who understood Greek, and of whom Mrs. Thrale was for a while jealous. " Mr. Thrale has fallen in love, really and seriously, with Sophy Streatfield," so runs a passage in Thraliana; '' but there is no wonder; she is very pretty, very gentle, soft and insinuating ; hangs about him, dances round him, cries when she parts from him, squeezes his hand slily, and with her sweet eyes full of tears looks so fondly in his face—and all for love of me, as she pretends, that I can hardly sometimes help laughing in her face. A man must ' not be a man, but an it, to resist such artillery." Almost the only literary personage possessed of means to travel who never went to Tunbridge Wells was Horace Walpole, who, though in 1752 he lay a night at the neighbouring town of Tunbridge, did not think it worth while to go a few miles out of his way to view the fashionable resort where so many of his friends and acquaintances foregathered.
Royalty throughout the century continued faithful to Tunbridge Wells. The Princess 110 |
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