London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
SOMETHING TO ANTICIPATE AND SOMETHING TO REMEMBER.
My friend Ashby Sterry was right in making his guide a specimen. Life in Tunbridge Wells is quiet to a degree. There is a story that the gayer of the inhabitants spent their existence in six months of anticipation of delight and six months in pleasant recollections around the central event of the year's story, the visit of a famous conjuror to the Large Hall. I happened to be staying in the town when this function came off, and can testify to the excitement caused by the display of the portraits of the wonder-worker. Crowds flattened their noses against the shop windows in which these pleasing features were displayed. | |
Then there is the band daily on where, for the price of one penny, one can get a chair with a programme of the music thrown in free, gratis, and for nothing. The bandmaster is fond of classical music, and frequently When he does, it is not difficult to people the old promenade with persons of the period-Dr. Johnson and Boswell, Steele and Addison, Angelica Kaufmann and Sir Joshua Reynolds; and, of course, my Lord Lovelace and my Lady Bettie Modish, and | |
320 | all the belles from the Mall and the beaux from the They pace up and down as you listen with half-closed eyes to the strains of the band. And here, by the way, why not reproduce Tunbridge Wells on the stage? What an excellent for a theatrical management strong in its painting room! |