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Eighteenth Century Post-Bag
tions I have met with from illness in taking them, will induce me to stay as long as the weather is good.
Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu to Mrs. Donellan. Tunbridge Wells, the 26th, 1749.
. . . Indeed this is a strange place, for one has neither business nor leisure here—so many glasses of water are to be drank, so many buttered rolls to be eaten, so many turns on the walk to be taken, so many miles to be gone in a post-chaise or on horseback, so much pains to be well, so much attention to be civil, that breakfasting, visiting, etc., etc., leave one no time even to write the important transactions of the day. Since I wrote to you we have had a change of persons, but not of amusements ; we have lost most of those who by the courtesy of the world are called good company; but of politeness or sense no visible decrease. In the beginning of the season there are many people of quality whose behaviour is extremely bourgeoise; at the end of it, citizens who by their pride and their impertinence think they are behaving like persons of quality; and each, by happily deviating from the manners and conduct their condition of life seems to N 193 |
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