In the early years of the eighteenth century the Spa seems to have gone out of fashion,[14] and in 1714 _The Field Spy_ speaks of it as a deserted place:-- The ancient drooping trees unprun’d appear’d; No ladies to be seen; no fiddles heard. The patronage of royal personages at last revived its fortunes. In the months of May and June 1733, the Princess Amelia, daughter of George II., and her sister Caroline came regularly to drink the waters. On some occasions the princesses were saluted by a discharge of twenty-one guns, and the gardens were thronged. On one morning the proprietor took £30, and sixteen hundred people are said to have been present. New Tunbridge Wells once more, for a few years, became the vogue. Pinchbeck, the toyman, prepared a view of the gardens which he sold as a mount for his fans. A song of the time, _The Charms of Dishabille_, which George Bickham illustrated with another view of the gardens, gives a picture of the scene (1733–1738):-- Behold the Walks, a chequer’d shade, In the gay pride of green array’d; How bright the sun! the air how still! In wild confusion there we view Red ribbons grouped with aprons blue; Scrapes, curtsies, nods, winks, smiles and frowns, Lords, milkmaids, duchesses and clowns, In their all-various dishabille. The same mixed company thus frequented the Spa as of old, and when my Lord Cobham honoured the garden with a visit, there were light-fingered knaves at hand to relieve him of his gold repeater. The physician who at this time attended at the Well was “Dr.” Misaubin, famous for his pills, and for his design to ruin the University of Cambridge (which had refused him a doctor’s degree) by sending his son to the University of Oxford. Among the habitués of the garden was an eccentric person named Martin, known as the Tunbridge Knight. He wore a yellow cockade and carried a hawk on his fist, which he named Royal Jack, out of respect to the Royal Family. [Illustration: ISLINGTON SPA IN 1733. BY GEORGE BICKHAM.] Fashion probably soon again deserted the Spa; but from about 1750 to 1770 it was a good deal frequented by water-drinkers and visitors who lodged for a time at the Wells. One young lady of good family, who was on a visit to London in June 1753, wrote home to her friends[15] that New Tunbridge Wells was “a very pretty Romantick place,” and the water “very much like Bath water, but makes one vastly cold and Hungary.” A ticket costing eighteenpence gave admission to the public breakfasting[16] and to the dancing from eleven to three. It was endeavoured to preserve the most perfect decorum, and no person of exceptionable character was to be admitted to the ball-room.[17] This invitation to the dance reads oddly at a time when the Spa was being industriously recommended to the gouty, the nervous, the weak-kneed, and the stiff-jointed.[18]