Burton was Mr. Buckley’s[372] home.
[372] With whom the three younger Robinson boys had lived.
We must now return to Mrs. Montagu. Tunbridge Wells agreed with her, her spirits mended, and to the duchess’s inquiries she states—
“I can eat more buttered roll in a morning than a great girl at a boarding school, and more beef at dinner than a yeoman of the Guards; I sleep well, and am indeed in perfect health, and the waters have done me much service.”
DR. YOUNG
With Dr. Young’s company she was delighted, and she rode with him often. One ride she describes thus—
“I have been in the vapours these two days, on account of Dr. Young’s leaving us: he was so good as to let me have his company very often, and we used to ride and walk and take sweet counsel together. A few days before he went away, he carried Mrs. Rolt[373] and myself to Tunbridge,[374] five miles from hence, where we were to see some fine ruins.... First rode the Doctor on a tall steed, decently caparizoned in grey; next ambled Mrs. Rolt on a hackney horse lean as the famed Rosinante, but in shape much resembling Sancho’s ass; then followed your humble servant on a milk white Palfrey, whose reverence for the human kind induced him to be governed by a creature not half as strong and I fear scarce thrice as wise as himself. The two figures that brought up the rear, the first was my servant valiantly armed with two uncharged pistols, whose holsters were covered with two civil harmless monsters, that signified the valour and courtesy of our ancestors. The last was the Doctor’s man, whose uncombed hair so resembled the mane of the horse he rode on, one could not help imagining they were of him.... On his head was a velvet cap much resembling a black saucepan, and on his side hung a little basket. Thus did we ride, or rather jog on to Tunbridge town. To tell you how the dogs barked at us, the children squalled, and the men and women stared at us, would take too much time.... At last we arrived at the ‘King’s Head’: the loyalty of the Doctor induced him to alight.... We took this progress to see the ruins of an old Castle; but first our Divine would visit the Churchyard, where we read that folks were born and died, the natural, moral, and physical history of Mankind. In the Churchyard grazed the Parson’s Steed, whose back was worn bare with carrying a pillion Seat for the comely, fat personage, this ecclesiastic’s wife. Though the creature eat daily part of the parish, he was most miserably lean. Tired of dead and living bones, Mrs. Rolt and I jumped over a stile into the Parson’s field, and from thence, allured by the sight of golden Pippins, we made an attempt to break into the holy man’s orchard. He came most courteously to us and invited us to his apple-trees; to show our moderation we each of us gathered two mellow codlings....
“The good parson offered to show us the inside of his Church, but made some apology for his undress, which was a truly canonical dishabille. He had on a grey striped calamanco night gown, a wig that once was white, but by the influence of an uncertain climate turned to a pale orange, a brown hat, encompassed by a black hatband, a band somewhat dirty that decently retired under his chin, a pair of grey stockings well mended with blue worsted, strong symbol of the conjugal care and affection of his wife, who had mended his hose with the very worsted she bought for her own.... When we had seen the Church, the parson invited us to take some refreshment, but Dr. Young thought we had before trespassed on the good man’s time, so desired to be excused, else we should, no doubt, have been welcomed to the house by Madam in her muslin pinners and sarsenet hood, who would have given some Mead and a piece of a cake that she made in the Whitsun holidays for her cousins.”
[373] Mrs. Rolt, a friend of Dr. Conyers Middleton.
[374] Tunbridge and Tunbridge Wells are separate towns.