SOCIETY AT ROYAL TUNBRIDGE WELLS - Online Book

People, Society & Culture of Tunbridge Wells in the 18th Century & later.

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Since the Eighteenth Century
subsequently beheld, can all the wit I have heard or read in later times, compare with your fashion, with your brilliancy, with your de­lightful grace, and sparkling vivacious rattle ? " Who knows ? They may have kept those very books at the library still—at the well-remembered library on the Pantiles, where they sell that delightful, useful Tunbridge Ware. I will go and see. I wend my way to the Pantiles, the queer little old-world Pantiles, where, a hundred years since, so much good company came to take its pleasure. Is it possible, that in the past century, gentle-folks of the first rank . . . assembled here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing, fiddling, and tea ? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but where is the fine company ? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops, and magnificent embroidered game­sters ? A half-dozen children and their nurses are listening to the musicians; an old lady or two in a poke bonnet passes; and for the rest, I see but an uninteresting population of native tradesmen. As for the library, its window is full of pictures of burly theologians, and their works, sermons, apologues, and so forth. Can
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