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Royal Tunbridge Wells
conspicuous." Burr did not realise that Tunbridge Wells at the time he wrote was at the zenith of its fame : yet such, indeed, was the case. In only five years more, Brighton had already taken a definite place among the resorts for fashionable society. " The Music and entertainments of Bath are over for the season," Melford (in Humphry Clinker) wrote to Sir Watkin Phillips, in 1771; " and all our gay birds of passage have taken their flight to Bristol Wells, Tunbridge, Brighthelmstone, Scarborough, Harrogate, &c." In 1782 the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland stayed at Brighton, and in the next year the Prince of Wales paid a visit to his uncle and aunt, and, liking the place very much, returned there during the next season. In 1787 began the building of the Pavilion. On the subsequent history of Brighton there is no need here to enlarge.
Though, then, Tunbridge Wells, at the beginning of the nineteenth century was already on the wane as a fashionable resort, it was not, of course, by any means entirely neglected by visitors. Mary Berry was there in September 1807, and stayed at a house on Mount Sion for some weeks. On one evening during this 274 |
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