3-034-675 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

On the Kursaal Terrace, Hombourg-es-Monts, Germany, 1871. Visitors in '...a place of fashionable resort named Hombourg,...now part of the kingdom of Prussia. It has of late years been as much patronised by the English...Thanks, probably, to the attractions of its medicinal waters, its mineral baths, its brilliant atmosphere, and its extensive pleasure grounds, with the general charms of the Kursaal...it has had the German Emperor sojourning there; and subsequently the Duke of Cambridge..., and more recently the Prince and Princess of Wales; besides lesser personages, of magnitude sufficient to attract British admirers of rank to this particular German spa...drinking the waters is, with some of them, merely a pretext, the gambling-tables being the grand attraction...The English matrons promenade their marriageable daughters, who, being English, are, as a matter of course, charming and assumed to be rich. So are many of the American belles, who muster at Hombourg this season in force...All the ladies have parasols, adapted to the double purpose of shading off the sun and serving as walking-canes. Here people lounge and promenade while the band is playing under the covered orchestra erected in the gardens below'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.