spect for the New Inn, the fine red-brick building which in
Parkhurst's day was built for a tavern, and which still stands, but has
now fallen to shops. But in the days when the city aldermen brought
their wives to show off their finery, and the young sparks threw their
money about at Epsom, what a bustling, handsome, pursy, turtle-soup
sort of place the Wells must have been. John Toland, writing in 1711,
describes Epsom Wells at their height. Eudoxa is his mistress, and to
Eudoxa he pictures all Epsom's charms. I quote a few passages from a
long letter:--

"Here are two bowling-greens with raffling shops and musick for the
ladies' diversion, as at Tunbridge; but the ladies do not appear every
day on the walks as there. Here you see them, on Saturdays, in the
evening, as their husbands come from London; on Sundays at church, and
on Mondays in all their splendour, when there are balls in the
Long-rooms; and many of them shake their elbows at Passage and Hazard
with a good grace."

Surely they never forgave Toland for writing that. Here he writes on the
ladies' husbands:--"By the conversation of those that walk there, you
would fancy yourself to be this minute on the Exchange, and the next at
St. James's; one while in an East India factory, and another while with
the army in Flanders, or on board the fleet in the Ocean; nor is there
any profession, trade, or calling that you can miss of here, either for
your instruction or diversion."

Thus does Toland, unkinder than Pownall, set out the glories of Epsom
without comparing them to Bath. But what could be better than the luxury
of it all? "You would think yourself in some enchanted camp, to see the
peasants ride to every house with the choicest fruits, herbs, roots and
flowers; with all sorts of tame and wild fowl, with the rarest fish and
venison, and with every kind of butcher's meat, among which
Banstead-down mutton is the most relishing dainty. Thus, to see the
fresh and artless damsels of the plain, either accompanied by their
amorous swains or aged parents, striking their bargains with the nice
court and city ladies, who, like queens in a tragedy, display all their
finery on benches before their doors (where they hourly censure, and are
censured), and to observe how the handsomest of each degree equally
admire, envy and cozen one another, is to me one of the chiefest
amusements of the place. The ladies who are too lazy, or too stately,
but especially those who sit