Bath

Bath from Institution Gardens

Bath By Junius F. Wells, Associate Editor of the "Millennial Star"

Although no town of England, in the pride of its antiquity, possesses richer relics of its Roman occupation than Bath, its in- habitants pride themselves on a far earlier origin as a place of importance and worthy distinction. The mythical story of Bladud the Briton, the son of King Hudibras and father of King Lear, made famous by the play of Shakespeare, is accepted and solemnly vouched for as a credible tradition by citizens, as re- cently as 1741. The story is that Bladud was a leper and ex- pelled from the Court, because of his infectious disease. He fled and took obscure refuge as a common swineherd at a village near Bath. His pigs contracted his ailment, and as he drove them abroad they rushed, pig-like, into the oozing slime of the spring nearby. When they came forth and were properly washed, it was found they were cleansed of leprosy. Believing that what was good for pigs would be better for men, Bladud followed their example and enjoyed the mud-bath, from which he emerged wholesome and clean. He returned to Court, suc- ceeded his father upon the throne, and reigned twenty years. He erected a temple to Sul-Minerva, cleaned the springs, established baths and built a beautiful city, whose date is at least fifteen centuries earlier than the Roman control, from about 40 B. C, for four hundred years. The excavations of the Roman remains are comparatively

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modern and, largely, quite recent, and they reveal the fact that it was a city of wealth and delight in which the luxurious baths

were the great attraction. These were built, as were those of Nero and Caracalla at Rome, without regard to cost; adorned with sculpture and mosaics, and fitted for recreation and the

The Great Circular Roman Bath indolent pleasures, which always have accompanied the ex- tremes of wealth and pagan splendor. When the Romans withdrew from Britain, 410 A. D., the decadence of Bath began and its occupation in the conflicts of the Britons with the Anglo-Saxons is described in the John- sonian phrase as "a distant, inarticulate reverberation of internal convulsion." In this state Bath virtually remained until the 18th century, in spite of the fact that King Edgar was crowned in the Abbey there, and Queen Elizabeth visited it and gave orders for its betterment. Concerning the latter, the following old letter ad- dressed to Lord Burleigh by Sir John Harrington is redolent of the Elizabethan spirit and literary quality:

The city of Bathe, my Lord, being both poore enough and proude enough, hath, since Her Highnesse being there, wonderfully beautified itself in fine houses for victualling and lodging, but decays fast. * * * The fair church Her Highnesse gave order should be re-edified, stands at a stay; and their common sewer, which before stood in an ill-place, stands now in no place, for they have not any at all; which for a towne so plentifully served of water, in a countrey so well provided of stone, in a place resorted unto so greatly, methinke seemeth an unworthie and dishonourable thing. If the funds were honestly used, I would not doubt of a ruinate church to make a reverent church, and of an unsavorie town a most sweete town.

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Early in the Eighteenth century, Bath came under influences that led to its permanent rise from a condition of low life and squalor to the supremacy among England's most fair and famous cities of respectable residence and recreation. Chief among these influences was that of Fashion, vitalized by Beau Nash, aided by the enterprise of some famous architects and artists. Bath, already famous for its hot springs and possessing good accommodation for visitors, became the rallying place of good company. Here met together all that was illustrious—the most noble ladies and the most celebrated men. The chiefs of every department, the heads and leaders of every movement, the foremost professors of every science, and the brightest ornaments of every art. The gamblers and duellists, those distinguishing characters of the age, made this their rendezvous and battle- field. Players and playwrights, musicians, statesmen, theologians, philoso- — phers, social reformers, Christian philanthropists all muster in the same hour in the Pump Room, and mingle in the same crowd with idlers, ennui- dispellers and fortune-hunters. Hardly a biography, a memoir, or a novel of the eighteenth century, but contains some notice of Bath.

The people who at first frequented Bath for health were soon outnumbered by the votaries of gaiety, who made the place their own and ran riot in their indulgence of pleasure. The gaming tables were crowded nightly. The fashionable world, after the visit of Queen Anne, came in such numbers that the architects and builders were kept busy preparing houses for

The Royal Crescent

them. In this period Wood, senior and son, made their archi- tectural reputation in the structures of Queen Square, Gay Street, The Circus, and the most beautiful and distinguished object in — Bath, the Royal Crescent a half -circle of noble residences that

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have sheltered, at times, half the notable men and women of two centuries. When Beau Richard Nash, who was born in Swansea, 1674, came to Bath, it was as an adventurer who had not succeeded in any of the occupations he had tried. But he was observant, a natural student of human nature, and a genius. He found the place crowded with pleasure-seekers whose entertainments were lacking in refinement and without organization. The ballroom reeked with tobacco smoke, men danced in muddy boots with spurs on. Women, poor imitators of Court fashions, were ar- — rayed in the strangest garb even wearing aprons at the dances. The Pump Room was a picture of disorder, and society was any-

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The Grand Pump Room thing but refined. The absence of police regulations encouraged acts of violence from the criminal class, and it was dangerous to be in the streets. Duelling was indulged upon slight provoca- tion, and many encounters, often with dire results, were con- tinually chronicled. The dormant energy of Nash was roused by the chaos at Bath. His first suggestions for improvement were made plaus- ible by his own demeanor. His manner and appearance in the Pump Room and at the dances in the Town hall pleased the people and he soon became the leader of fashion. He went beyond that and really established himself as the uncrowned king of Bath. His dicta and decisions were accepted as law. He drew up a code of conduct to be observed at all functions laying any pretense to fashion; and succeeded in raising funds for keeping the Pump Room clean and in order, and for the

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maintenance of a band; also for lighting and paving the prin- cipal streets. He ruled strictly by the appeal to propriety, and was himself the mirror in which others might see what was good form and acceptable to good society. There were three — great daily functions in the fashionable circle drinking the waters, attending the Abbey services, and playing at the gaming tables. From six to nine were the bathing hours, followed by the leisurely drinking of the customary three glasses. Then horseback riding or walking in the meadows by the Avon, and scaling the heights above the town. When the stage-coaches

Bath Abbey —Institution Gardens arrived with visitors the Abbey bells were rung, and the people would rush out to see and welcome the newcomers. Nash was rewarded on all sides with the smiles that wait on success and prosperity. He was at the height of his popularity in 1738, when the Prince of Orange presented him with a snuff-box. The nobility paid similar tribute to him, and the civil magistracy bowed to him as before royalty. A full length portrait wag provided by popular subscription and placed in the ballroom between busts of Newton and Pope. This called forth the fol- lowing satirical verses ascribed doubtfully to Lord Chesterfield: Immoital Newton never spoke More truth than here you'll find; Nor Pope himself e'er penned a joke Severer on mankind.

The picture placed the busts between Adds to the thought much strength; Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly's at full length.

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Nash's period of popularity was not long, and he survived it in neglected poverty many years, dying at the age of eighty- six.But his influence survived, and Bath was socially what he had made it, for more than half a century after his fall from chief control as the master of ceremonies. The dawn of the nineteenth century marked the zenith of Bath's glory, as a resort of fashion and of the affectation of fash- ion. Then began the welcome change. The better class of visit- ors, grown weary of the artificial manners of the beau monde, retired from public parties and introduced private teas. Jane Austen's novels were the vogue, and give evidence of the decline of fashion in favor of intellectual culture. Her dignified hero- ines express contempt for the customs and opinions of the mod- ish ladies of Queen's Square, and insist on dwelling in the ex- clusive precincts of the Circus or Royal Crescent.

Battle- 1825

The main interest of Bath, in the last half of the eighteenth and early decades of the nineteen century, hovers about the pres- ence there of the leaders of intellectual life. Painters and actors, novelists, poets and dramatists, statesmen and warriors, explorers and eminent divines, came in great numbers to spend there a part of each year. This is the bright and fascinating period that lives in the comedies of Sheridan. Here he found the idea and setting for the "School for Scandal." Dickens came here and met Mr. Pickwick and his bosom friends and Sam Weller: Mr. Pickwick was fortunate enough to meet in the tea-room some distinguished members of Bath society, who were pointed out to him by the Master of Ceremonies. "Mr. Pickwick, do you see the lady in the gauze turban?" "The fat old lady?" inquired Mr. Pickwick innocently.

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T , "? ush my dear sir—nobody's fat or old in Bath. ! That's the Dowager Lady Snuphanuph." "Is it indeed?" said Mr. Pickwick. "No less a person, I assure you," said the Master of Ceremonies. Nowhere in England have so many famous Englishmen dwelt for brief periods as at Bath, outside of London itself, and left evidences of their sojourn. The names of Chatham and his greater son, of Burke and Camden, of Wolfe and Nelson, of Gainsborough and Lawrence, of Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Southey, Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Landor, but serve to illustrate the quality and variety of notables who resided there. It was the temporary home of Pope and Warburton, Lytton, But- ler, Garrick, Quin, Mrs. Siddons, and Herschel, the astronomer. Mr. Arthur Waugh pays tribute to the glories of Bath, past and present, in the following comprehensive paragraph:

A city of the eighteenth century, bland and beautiful, dreaming with her grey stone eyes of the glories of an unforgctable past. Many of her mansions have known what it is to have shop fronts driven into their carved facades; some of her chapels have changed into badminton courts and of- fices, and Beau Nash's private house is now a public theatre. But many more of the old buildings remain refreshingly unspoiled; the link-ex- tinguishers still survive amid the fine wrought-iron work; the interiors, with their lofty, garlanded ceilings and noble doors, are still unsacrificed to vandalism. Indoors and out the city keeps its old-world face for those who have time to linger and look at it, nowhere more than in the long Assembly rooms, where the towering chandeliers, with suggestion of ancient lights, and the dancing floor still shines from the polishing feet of the beaux and belles of a gayer generation. What a world one can call up, standing in the shadowy vestibule and looking down the dim and empty hall, what life and spirit of "The old Augustan days Of formal courtesies and formal phrase, The ruffles' flutter and flash of steel." Here Mrs. Malaprop grows garrulous over her cards; there Lydia Languished eyelashes lift in answer to some quick retort; and surely that is Captain Absolute by the door, fresh and irresponsible as ever. Shadows of the past, flitting but imperishable!

Bath of the present day is much modernized in the im- provement of its parks, the pavement of its streets, its tramcars, ils electric lights, the comfort of its hotels and the splendor of its shops. The drinking and bathing establishments, owned by the corporation, are fully equipped to supply every kind of thermal indulgence; lying in its pools, drinking its waters, or taking medical treatment under the hands of experts, who prescribe for all the ills of humanity the right spray or vapor, packing or massage, to produce a cure. As one of the attendants remarked: "If you know anyone who has been given up as a hopeless case elsewhere, send him to me." The three flowing springs, from which the half million gal-

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Ions daily are derived and conveyed in forty miles of distributing pipes, vary little in the temperature of about 120° Fahr. or in consistency. Like as at the great Spas of the Continent, the treat- ment depends for its effectiveness as much upon the regimen of diet and exercise as upon the virtue of the waters. The Pump Room is still visited by travelers, who taste the waters; and the museum and concert hall connected with it af- ford them pleaeant entertainment. The regular residents are the ultra respectable retired statesmen, soldiers, men of letters, and the gouty in general; dowager ladies of high degree in quiet elegance ride about in their victorias. Quietude and rest perme- ate the place with the solemnity of a Sabbath morning, the live- liest thing left being the name of its one time principal street Gay. You get the social atmosphere of Bath by pronouncing it with a very broad a. The a is broad enough in England any- way, but you stress it in Bath. We were fortunate in having friends to the habit and the manner born. Our party, comprising President and Sister Rich- ards, and the writer, were entertained by Elder Thatcher and his charming and hospitable family, who reside in the suburban town of Twerton, where Fielding lived. They showed us about and made the day delightful in going from place to place and getting thoroughly into the spirit of it. A day and experience long to be remembered. Liverpool, England.