CHURCH OF KING CHARLES THE MARTYR.
One of the earliest evidences of the permanence of this settlement was the building of a chapel, in 1684. This is the existing church, dedicated by the then ascendant Royalists to “King Charles the Martyr.” It and the Pantiles—and of course the Common—are the only vestiges of the Tunbridge Wells of that time.
It is to Queen Anne that we owe the name of the Pantiles. She had come here while still the Princess Anne, for the health of herself and her ailing son, the Duke of Gloucester, and gave a hundred pounds for paving the walk, so that no other little boy, duke or commoner, should stumble there, as hers had done. When she returned, the next season, her hundred pounds had been expended in some mysterious way totally unconnected with pavements, and so, very rightly offended, she left the place, never to revisit it, even though the authorities at last hastened to lay the walk with those pantiles that gave it so distinctive a title. Stone slabs, in 1793, replaced those red tiles, and for a lengthy period the stupidity of the local governing body rechristened the famous walk “the Parade,” but it has now reverted to its original style.
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.
