Tales From Dickens: THE PICKWICK PAPERS

At Bath, a resort very popular with people of fashion, the Pickwickians decided to spend the next two months, and started by coach at once, accompanied by Sam Weller. On the coach they fell in with a fierce-looking, abrupt gentleman named Dowler, with a bald, glossy forehead and large black whiskers, who introduced them to the society of Bath, particularly to Mr. Angelo Cyrus Bantam, master of ceremonies at the famous Assembly-Room, where the fashionable balls were held. Mr. Bantam carried a gold eye-glass, a gold snuff-box, gold rings on his finger, a gold watch in his waistcoat pocket, a gold chain and an ebony cane with a gold head. His linen was the whitest, his wig the blackest, and his teeth were so fine that it was hard to tell the real ones from the false ones.

Mr. Bantam made the Pickwickians welcome and in three days' time they were settled in a fine house, where Mr. and Mrs. Dowler also lodged. Mr. Pickwick passed his days in drinking the spring-water for which Bath was famous, and in walking; his evenings he spent at the Assembly balls, at the theater or in making entries in his journal.