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Royal Tunbridge Wells
brings quick intelligence of all that passes there : the morning papers reach us before the hour of dinner and the evening ones before breakfast the next day; whilst between the arrival of the general post and its departure there is an interval of twelve hours; an accommodation in point of correspondence that even London cannot boast of." So he wrote in his Memoirs, and further on in the same work he referred again to his residence at the spa. " More than twenty years I lived at Tunbridge Wells inhabiting the same house, and cultivating a plot of garden ground, embowered with trees, and amply sufficient for a profusion of flowers . . . : it was then, if only common justice had been rendered to me by Government, I should have enjoyed as much tranquillity and content, as can fall to the lot of imperfect man; for my mind was emancipated from the shackles of office, and I seemed to have a property in the day, for which I paid no tax to business. Whilst I lived in town I had hardly ever passed a year without a long and dangerous fever, but in this salubrious clime I never once experienced so much indisposition as to confine me to my bed even for a single hour. In possession of a most excellent wife I had all 114 |
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