XXVI
Tunbridge Wells of to-day bears not the slightest resemblance, apart from these three landmarks of Church, Common, and Pantiles, to the resort of long ago. It is unlike in appearance and manners. To-day you see an overgrown town with suburban roads climbing up all the hillsides, and continued, if you explore them, on the corresponding descent. It is an effect of grey sobriety, for the greatest period of its expansion was in the ’60’s and ’70’s, when plaster was prevalent; and its chief hotel was built in the days before architects could be made to understand that comfort is desired by guests more than grandeur. To climb up flights of stairs to enter the front door is a weariness, and bedrooms twice as lofty as they are broad or long outrage one’s sense of proportion.
Socially, too, Tunbridge Wells of to-day is the antipodes of what it was. The traveller of old who “took the waters,” presently arriving “by the grace of God,” in his chariot, or by public coach, did no sooner come up from Tonbridge within sight of the Spa, than he was assailed by a swarm of touts who thrust their heads into the windows, eager to bespeak his custom:
Soon as they set eyes on you, off flies the hat:
Does your honour want this? does your honour want that?
To-day you enter from the railway-station, and the only people who take any interest in you are the cabmen. That is distinctly a gain, for touts are an abomination; but the public life once insisted upon by Nash is as distinctly a loss. The fact is that the English have no genius for it, and the climate really forbids. Moreover the local conditions are different. It is a great residential town now, and visitors are in the minority.
THE PANTILES, TUNBRIDGE WELLS.
Still you see the Pantiles, with the quaint colonnade and the overshadowing limes, now grown very reverend trees indeed, but it is not a scene of gaiety, and when on summer nights the place is beautifully illuminated with coloured electric lights, and open-air concerts are held there, it is a crowd of servants and of shopkeepers’ assistants that listens.
Alas! for the red-heeled, red-faced voluptuaries, the patched and powdered beauties, the morris-dancers, the fiddlers! They have all danced or hobbled off, and have been long since ferried over to the other side of Styx. And where they leered and ogled and minced, “protested,” and “stopped their vitals,” in their eighteenth-century way, there are a few inquisitive tourists peering about in corners, and really wondering if all those tales of eld are so much moonshine.
The waters of Tunbridge Wells and the Roman Catholic clergy have, according to Mrs. Malaprop, one quality in common: both are “chalybeate.” Perhaps they owed much of their old-time popularity to being described as “salutiferous,” and certainly they were likely to impress people more, and to do more imaginary good, under that title than if merely “health-giving.”
But the good wrought by the water is undoubted. It will not mend broken bones, nor set up an altogether shattered constitution; it is not Lethean, and at a draught you do not forget sorrows; but it is an excellent tonic, and—experto crede—good for incipient dyspepsia. Modern scepticism looks upon the fine air of Tunbridge Wells, rather than the water, as author of the beneficial effects upon visitors, and so it is less taken than formerly. It is safe to say that the majority of those who taste it are impelled by curiosity, and to all the taste suggests ink.
You come past the Church of King Charles, with its sundial inscribed, “You may Waste but cannot Stop me,” to the Pantiles and the spring. The water is, by an old Act of Parliament, free to all, but there are two granite basins: one, with a gigantic utensil like a pantomime soup-ladle, with which, bending down, you scoop up the water, in company with Lazarus and the vulgar herd; another where, in more genteel fashion, you pay a penny and are handed a glassful by one of the two old ladies known as “Dippers.” If you please, you can commute your payments by subscribing 2s. a week, 3s. 6d. for two weeks, or 30s. for a year. By that time the three grains of iron contained in every gallon of the water should have strung the participant up to concert-pitch, and have plated his teeth with a coating of iron, unless he adopts the old custom of cleaning them with sage-leaves, after drinking.