CHAPTER VII TUNBRIDGE WELLS SINCE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE discovery of the efficacy of sea-bathing dealt a blow to all the inland watering-places, and Tunbridge Wells was as much affected as any place when Brighton developed from a fishing village into a fashionable resort. A writer speaking of Brighton at the beginning of the eighteenth century remarked that it would cost eight thousand pounds to protect the coast against encroachment by the sea, and "if one were to look on the town," he added, "[this sum] would seem to be more than all the houses are worth." Twenty years later Defoe speaks of cornfields that came down almost to the shore; but he mentions that a fine lawn, called the Steine, was the resort of the company for walking in an evening -which shows that some people went there even at this early date. Indeed, every week a pacquet sailed from Brighton to Diep a route to Paris which, though longer th that through Calais, was much cheaper. regular season began about 1730, but it not until after 1750, in which year Dr. Rich Russell wrote a treatise advocating the us sea-water in diseases of the glands-" 1 sertatis de Tabe Glandulari et de Usu A Marina in Morbis Glandularum ”—that a satirical writer of the day put it), desert Bath, Tunbridge Wells, Epsom, and the ot inland watering-places— . . . all with ails in heart or lungs, In liver or in spine, Rush'd coastward to be cur'd like tongues Presently the change in fashion was chronic by Cowper in his poem, "Retirement ❞— "Your prudent grandmammas, ye modern bell Content with Bristol, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells When health requir'd it, would consent to roam, Else more attach'd to pleasures found at home. But now alike, gay widow, virgin, wife, Ingenious to diversify dull life, In coaches, chaises, caravans, and hoys, Very slowly was the popularity of the inland watering-places undermined, so slowly, indeed, that Burr, the historian of Tunbridge Wells, writing in 1766, enthusiastically supported the project of a turnpike road from Tunbridge Wells to Lewes, because it could not fail, he thought, of establishing a more open and constant communication between "The Wells" and all that part of Sussex. "One advantage most obviously arising from it will be an inducement to the company going to and returning from Brighthelmstone to pass two or three days or a week by the way at Tunbridge, and this will be making that place as serviceable to The Wells' in some respects, as it may be esteemed detrimental in others," he wrote. "If, indeed, Brighthelmstone was the superior place, where pleasures abounded in greater perfection than at The Wells,' it might be bad policy to open an easier communication between them; but, as Tunbridge has confessedly greatly the advantage of her rival in every respect, she cannot suffer, but must, on the whole, be an infinite gainer by such a close comparison as will, while it sets off her perfections to the greatest advantage, make her adversary's deficiencies but the more |