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CHAPTER III |
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THE COMPANY AT TUNBRIDGE WELLS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The habit of leaving London for the summer months, which was already the vogue in the middle of the seventeenth century, as is indicated by the letter of the Due de Cominges quoted on an earlier page, became, as the roads improved and travelling became a less uncomfortable business, more and more widespread among the well-to-do classes. "Tun-bridge Wells, the Rendezvous of all the Gentry of the neighbouring County, and of the best Citizen Families in London," so John Macky described it in his Journey through England, published in 1714. " It is now a Rambling Time of the year, and the gentlemen being most of them gone out of town, Tunbridge and Epsom and such Places were full of people," Defoe wrote in Moll Flanders seven years later. " We are as full as we can hold; I don't doubt but Scarborough, Tunbridge, and all public ■ 65 |
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