might be styled “the worst of smokes into the purest of airs.” By the middle of the century the waters had won a name; and a little later Pepys found the place so full that he could not get a lodging. Nell Gwynne was another patron at this period. The height of its vogue seems to have been under Queen Anne, whose husband came to drink the waters. Nearness to London must have helped Epsom’s favour; and its people were not backward in laying themselves out to accommodate strangers, for whose entertainment were provided the usual gaieties of a watering-place, set off by its situation in what seemed “a great Park filled with little Groves, Lodges, and Retreats for coolness of Air and Shade from the Sun.” But it is only in summer, says Defoe, that visitors can be expected, the clays of the lowlands making ill roads for winter jaunts.
Defoe declares Tunbridge Wells then the more fashionable place, favoured by “the Nobility and Gentry, as Epsom rather by Merchants and Rich Citizens”; both frequented rather for “the Mirth and Company, for Gaming or Intriguing or the like,” than for “meer Physick”; and he states that Londoners of a lower class who sought serious treatment found it by walking out to the wells of Dulwich and Streatham, so much beset on holidays by “an unruly and unmannerly” crowd that the “better sort” kept aloof from such Cockney haunts. One notes how a contemporary French Guide du Baigneur advertises Dulwich and Streatham as well as Epsom among our spas, though other more famous British resorts have not yet swum into the ken of this authority. The sulphur water of Streatham, indeed, may still be tasted, pumped up behind the counter of a dairy by a dispenser who has informed me that he finds it excellent as “supper beer”—de gustibus, etc.
John Toland in 1711 gives the wordiest account of Epsom spa and its company, lodged in a group of hamlets about the main street, with the paved Terrace, Assembly Room, and two rival bowling-greens as centres of intercourse. The writer himself had a “Hermitage” at Woodcote Green, from which he thus describes, is his Letter to Eudoxa:—
By the Conversation of those who walk there, you would fancy yourself to be this Minute on the Exchange, and the next Minute at St. James’s; one while in an East-India Factory, or a West-India Plantation, and another while with the Army in Flanders, or on Board the Fleet in the Ocean.... A fairer Circle was never seen at Baiae, or Cumae of old, nor of late at Carelsbad, or Aix-la-Chapelle, than is to be admir’d on the High-Green and in the Long-Room, on a publick Day. If the German Baths out-number us in Princesses, we out-shine them in Nymphs and Goddesses, to whom their Princes wou’d be proud to pay Adoration. But not to dissemble any Thing, bountiful Nature has likewise provided us with many other Faces and Shapes, I may add, with another Sett of Dress, Speech, and Behaviour (not to mention Age) ordain’d to quench the cruel Flames, or to damp the inordinate Desires, which the Young, the Handsom, and the Accomplish’d, might undesignedly kindle.... The Rude, the Sullen, the Noisy, and the Affected, the Peevish, the Covetous, the Litigious, and the Sharping, the Proud, the Prodigal, the Impatient, and the Impertinent, become visible foils to the Well-bred, Prudent, Modest, and Good-humour’d, in the Eyes of all impartial Beholders. Our Doctors, instead of prescribing the Waters for the Vapours, or the Spleen, order their Patients to be assiduous at all publick Meetings, knowing that (if they be not themselves of the Number) they’ll find abundant Occasion to laugh at bankrupt Fortune-Hunters, crazy or superannuated Beaus, marry’d Coquets, intriguing Prudes, richly-dress’d Waiting-Maids and complimenting Footmen.... The Judicious Eudoxa will naturally conclude, that such a Concourse of all Ranks of People, must needs fill the Shops with most Sorts of useful and substantial Wares, as well as with finer Goods, Fancies, and Toys. The Taverns, the Inns, and the Coffee-houses answer the Resort of the Place. And I must do our Coffee-houses the Justice to affirm, that for social Virtue they are unequal’d by few, and exceeded by none; tho’ I wish they may be imitated by all. A Tory does not stare and leer when a Whig comes in, nor a Whig look sour and whisper at the Sight of a Tory. These distinctions are laid by with the Winter Suit at London, and a gayer, easier Habit worn in the Country.
Epsom’s credit appears to have been lost through the trickery of a certain apothecary, who set up “New Wells” with Assembly and gambling-rooms, which took for a time, till it leaked out how the virtue of this rival spring was only matter of imagination. That humbug had bought up the original well, and went so far as to close it by way of protecting his own dishonest enterprise. Then Epsom fell off as a resort; and though attempts were made to galvanise its repute, it never got back those throngs of visitors, while the artificial Epsom salts came to be a popular remedy. The once famous well is now obscurely enclosed in the grounds of a private mansion on the Common, to be seen above a row of cottages beside the railway, just outside the town. Among the Ashstead oaks, higher up on the Common, there is a still more neglected spring known as the “Roman Well,” the highest point of this open woodland having apparently been the site of a Roman camp.