It was on New Year’s Day that we left the Fleet; it was in the summer, at the end of June, when we decided that enough had been done to rub off the rust of that unfashionable place.
“You, my dear,” said Mrs. Esther, “have the sprightly graces of a well-born and well-bred young woman: I can present you in any society. I, for my part, have recovered the Pimpernel Manner. I can now make an appearance worthy of my father.”
I assured my kind lady that although, to be sure, I had never been able to witness the great original and model from which the Pimpernel Manner was derived, yet that no lady had so fine an air as herself; which was certainly true, madam being at once dignified and gifted with a formal condescension very pretty and uncommon.
CHAPTER II.
HOW WE WENT TO THE WELLS.
Access to the polite world is more readily gained (by those who have no friends) at one of the watering-places than in London. Considering this, we counselled whether it would not be better to visit one, or all, of the English Spas, rather than to climb slowly and painfully up the ladder of London fashion.
Mrs. Esther at first inclined to Bath, which certainly (though it is a long journey thither), is a most stately city, provided with every requisite for comfort, possessing the finest Assembly Rooms and the most convenient lodgings. It also affords opportunities for making the acquaintance and studying the manners of the Great. Moreover, there can be no doubt that its waters are efficient in the cure of almost all disorders; and the social enjoyment of the hot bath, taken in the company of the wits and toasts who go to be parboiled together in that liquid Court of scandal, chocolate, and sweets, is surely a thing without a rival.
On the other hand, Tunbridge Wells is nearer London; the roads are good; a coach reaches the place in one day; and, so amazing is the rapidity of communication (in which we so far excel our ancestors), that the London morning papers reach the Wells in the evening, and a letter posted from the Wells in the morning can be answered in the following evening. Also the air is fine at Tunbridge, the waters wholesome, and the amusements are said to be varied. Add to this that it is greatly frequented by the better sort of London citizens, those substantial merchants with their proud and richly dressed wives and daughters, whom Mrs. Esther always looked upon as forming the most desirable company in the world. So that it was at first resolved to go to Tunbridge.
But while we were making our preparations to go there, a curious longing came upon Mrs. Esther to revisit the scenes of her youth.
“My dear,” she said, “I should like to see once more the Wells of Epsom, whither my father carried us every year when we were children. The last summer I spent there was after his death, in the dreadful year of 1720, when the place was crowded with Germans, Jews, and the people who flocked to London with schemes which were to have made all our fortunes, but which only ruined us, filled the prisons and madhouses, drove honest men upon the road, and their children to the gutters. Let us go to Epsom.”