II.—The Pump Room and Assembly Rooms
No group of architectural objects is more effective or touches one more nearly than the buildings gathered about the Baths. There is something quaint and old-fashioned in the arrangement, and I am never tired of coming back to the pretty, open colonnade, the faded yet dignified Pump-room, with the ambitious hotel and the solemn Abbey rising solemnly behind. Then there is the delightful Promenade opposite, under the arcades—a genuine bit of old fashion—under whose shadow the capricious Fanny Burney had often strolled. Everything about this latter conglomeration—the shape of the ground, the knowledge that the marvellous Roman baths are below, and even the older portion of the municipal buildings whose elegant decorations, sculptured garlands, &c., bespeak the influence of the graceful Adam, whose pupil or imitator Mr. Baldwin may have been.
Boz’s description of the tarnished Pump-room answers to what is seen now, save as to the tone of the decorations. I say “Boz’s,” for Pickwick, it should be recollected, was not actually acknowledged by the author, under his proper name. It was thought that the well-known and popular “Boz” of the “Sketches” would attract far more than the obscure C. Dickens. Now Boz and the Sketches have receded and are little thought of. Boz and Pickwick go far better together than do Pickwick and Dickens. There is an old-fashioned solemnity over this Pump-room which speaks of the old classical taste
over a hundred years ago. How quaint and suitable the inscription, “’Αριστον yεν υδορ,” in faded gilt characters. Within it is one stately chamber, not altered a bit since the day, sixty-three years ago, that Boz strolled in and wrote this inscription: As I sat with a friend beside me in the newly finished concert-room, which is in happy keeping, I called up the old genial Pickwick promenading about under the direction of Bantam, M.C., and the genial tone of the old gaiety and good spirits.
The “Tompion Clock,” which is carefully noted by Boz, seems to have been always regarded as a sort of monument. It is like an overgrown eight-day clock, without any adornment and plain to a degree—no doubt relying upon its Tompion works. It is in exactly the same place as it was over sixty years ago, and goes with the old regularity. Nay, for that matter, it stands where it did a hundred years ago—in the old recess by Nash’s statue and inscription, and was no doubt ordered at the opening of the rooms. In an old account of Bath, at the opening of the century, attention is called to the Tompion clock with a sort of pride. The steep and shadowy Gay Street, which leads up to the inviting Crescent and the more sombre Queen’s Square, affects one curiously. Then we come to the old Assembly Rooms close by the Circus, between Alfred Street and Bennell Street—a stately, dignified pile—in the good old classical style of Bath. One looks on it with a mysterious reverence: it seems charged with all sorts of memories of old, bygone state. For here all the rank and fashion of Bath used to make its way of Assembly nights. Many years ago, there was here given a morning concert to which I found my way, mainly for the purpose of calling up ghostly memories of the Thrales, and Doctor Johnson, and Miss Burney, and, above all, of Mr. Pickwick. Though the music was the immortal “Passion” of Bach, my eyes were travelling all the while from one piece of faded rococo work and decoration. Boz never fails to secure the tone of any strange place he is describing. We all, for instance, have that pleased, elated feeling on the first morning after our arrival over night at a new place—the general brightness, surprise, and air of novelty. We are willing to be pleased with everything, and pass from object to object with enjoyment.
Now all this is difficult to seize or to describe. Boz does not do the latter, but he conveys it perfectly. We see the new arrivals seated at breakfast, and the entrance of the Dowlers with the M.C., and the party setting off to see the “Lions,” the securing tickets for the Assembly, the writing down their names in “the book,” Sam sent specially up to Queen’s Square, and so on. All which is very exhilarating, and reveals one’s own feeling on such an occasion. The “Pump-room books” are formally mentioned in the regulations. We can see the interior of the Assembly Rooms in Phiz’s plate, with its huge and elaborately framed oval mirrors and chandeliers—the dancing-room set round with raised benches. After the pattern of Ridotto rooms abroad, there were the card-rooms and tea-rooms, where Mr. Pickwick played whist with Miss Bolo. We note the sort of Adam or Chippendale chair on which the whist Dowager is sitting with her back to us.
Considering that the rules of dress were so strict, pumps and silk stockings being of necessity, we may wonder how it was that the President of the Pickwick Club was admitted in his morning dress, his kerseymere tights, white waistcoat, and black gaiters. It is clear that he never changed his dress for evening parties, save on one occasion. Mr. Pickwick’s costume was certainly in defiance of all rules and regulations. It is laid in the regulations of Mr. Tyson, M.C., who directed that “no gentleman in boots or half-boots be admitted into the rooms on ball nights or card nights.” Half-boots might certainly cover Mr. Pickwick’s gaiters. So accurate is the picture that speculation arises whether Phiz went specially to Bath to make his sketches; for he has caught in the most perfect way the whole tone of a Bath Assembly, and he could not have obtained this from descriptions by others. So, too, with this picture of the Circus in Mr. Winkle’s escapade. It will be remembered that Boz was rather particular about this picture, and suggested some minute alterations. Bantam, the M.C., or “the Grand Master” as Boz oddly calls him, was drawn from life from an eccentric functionary named Jervoise. I have never been quite able to understand his odd hypothesis about Mr. Pickwick being “the gentleman who had the waters bottled and sent to Clapham.” But how characteristic the dialogue on the occasion! It will be seen that
this M.C. cannot credit the notion of anyone of such importance as Mr. Pickwick “never having been in Ba-ath.” His ludicrous and absurd, “Not bad—not bad! Good—good. He, he, re-markable!” showed how it struck him. A man of such a position, too; it was incredible. With a delightful sense of this theory, he began: “It is long—very long, Mr. Pickwick, since you drank the waters—it appears an age.” Mr. Pickwick protested that it was certainly long since he had drunk the waters, and his proof was that he had never been in Bath in his life. After a moment’s reflection the M.C. saw the solution. “Oh, I see; yes, yes; good, good; better and better. You are the gentleman residing on Clapham Green who lost the use of your limbs from imprudently taking cold after port wine, who could not be moved in consequence of acute suffering, and who had the water from the King’s Bath bottled at 103 degrees and sent by waggon to his bed-room in town, where he bathed, sneezed, and same day recovered.” This amusing concatenation is, besides, an admirable and very minute stroke of character, and the frivolous M.C. is brought before us perfectly. While a capital touch is that when he saw young Mr. Mutanhead approaching. “Hush! draw a little nearer, Mr. Pickwick. You see that splendidly dressed young man coming this way—the richest young man in Bath!”
“You don’t say so,” said Mr. Pickwick.
“Yes, you’ll hear his voice in a moment, Mr. Pickwick. He’ll speak to me.” Particular awe and reverence could not be better expressed.
It is curious how accurate the young fellow was in all his details. He describes the ball as beginning at “precisely twenty minutes before eight o’clock;” and according to the old rules it had to begin as soon after seven as possible. “Stay in the tea room and take your sixpennorths.” Mr. Dowler’s advice was after a regulation “that everyone admitted to the tea-rooms on dress nights shall pay 6d. for tea.” The M.C.’s visit to Mr. Pickwick was a real carrying out of the spirit of the regulations, in which it was requested that “all strangers will give the M.C. an opportunity of being introduced to them before they themselves are entitled to that attention and respect.”
Nothing is more gratifying to the genuine Pickwickians than to find how all these old memories of the book are fondly cherished in
the good city. All the Pickwickian localities are identified, and the inhabitants are eager in every way to maintain that Mr. Pickwick belongs to them, and had been with them. We should have had his room in the White Hart pointed out, and “slept in” by Americans and others, had it still been left to stand. Not long since, the writer went down to the good old city for the pleasant duty of “preaching Pickwick,” as he had done in a good many places. There is an antique building or temple not far from where an old society of the place—the Bath Literary and Scientific Institute—holds its meetings, and here, to a crowded gathering under the presidency of Mr. Austen King, the subject was gone into. It was delightful for the Pickwickian stranger to meet so appreciative a response, and many curious details were mentioned. At the close—such is the force of the delusion—we were all discussing Mr. Pickwick and his movements here and there, with the same conviction as we would have had in the case of Miss Burney, or Mrs. Thrale or Dr. Johnson. The whole atmosphere was congenial, and there was an old-world, old-fashioned air over the rooms. It was delightful to be talking of Mr. Pickwick’s Bath adventures in Bath.
Nor was there anything unreasonably fantastical in making such speculations all but realities. Bantam lived, as we know, in St. James’s Square—that very effective enclosure, with its solemn house and rich deep greenery, that recall our own Fitzroy. No. 14 was his house, and this, it was ascertained, was the actual residence of the living M.C. How bold, therefore, of Boz to send up Sam to the very Square! Everyone, too, knew Mrs. Craddock’s house in the Circus—at least it was one of two. It was No. 15 or 16, because at the time there were only a couple in the middle which were let in lodgings, the rest being private houses. This was fairly reasonable. But how accurate was Boz! No doubt he had some friends who were quartered in lodgings there.
I scarcely hoped to find the scene of the footmen’s “swarry” tracked out, but so it was. On leaving Queen Square in company with Mr. Smauker to repair to the scene of the festivity, Sam and his friend set off walking “towards High Street,” then “turned down a bye-street,” and would “soon be there.” This bye-street was one
turning out of Queen Square at the corner next Bantam’s house; and a few doors down we find a rather shabby-looking “public” with a swinging sign, on which is inscribed “The Beaufort Arms”—a two-storied, three-windowed house. This, in the book, is called a “greengrocer’s shop,” and is firmly believed to be the scene of “the Swarry” on the substantial ground that the Bath footmen used to assemble here regularly as at their club. The change from a public to a greengrocer’s scarcely affects the point. The uniforms of these gentlemen’s gentlemen were really splendid, as we learn from the text—rich plushes, velvets, gold lace, canes, &c. There is no exaggeration in this, for natives of Bath have assured me they can recall similar displays at the fashionable church—of Sundays—when these noble creatures, arrayed gorgeously as “generals,” were ranged in lines outside “waiting their missuses,” pace Mr. John Smauker. At the greengrocer’s, where the Bath footmen had their “swarry,” the favourite drink was “cold srub and water,” or “gin and water sweet;” also “S’rub punch,” a West Indian, drink, has now altogether disappeared. It sounds strange to learn that a fashionable footman should consult “a copper timepiece which dwelt at the bottom of a deep watch-pocket, and was raised to the surface by means of a black string with a copper key.” A copper watch seems extraordinary, though we have now those of gun metal.
The Royal Crescent, with its fine air and fine view, always strikes one with admiration as a unique and original monument: the size and proportions are so truly grand. The whole scene of Mr. Winkle’s escapade here is extraordinarily vivid, and so protracted, while Mrs. Dowler was waiting in her sedan for the door to be opened, that it has the effect of imprinting the very air, look, and tone of the Royal Cresent on us. We seem to be waiting with her and the chair-man. It seems the most natural thing in the world. The houses correspond almost exactly with Phiz’s drawing.
Pickwick, it has been often pointed out, is full of amusing “oversights,” which are pardonable enough, and almost add to the “fun” of the piece. At the opening, Mr. Pickwick is described as carrying his portmanteau—in the picture it is a carpet-bag. The story opens in 1827, but at once Mr. Jingle begins to talk of being
present at the late Revolution of 1830. The “George and Vulture” is placed in two different streets. Old Weller is called Samuel. During the scene at the Royal Crescent we are told that Mrs. Craddock threw up the drawing-room window “just as Mr. Winkle was rushing into the chair.” She ran and called Mr. Dowler, who rushed in just as Mr. Pickwick threw up the other window, “when the first object that met the gaze of both was Mr. Winkle bolting into the sedan chair” into which he had bolted a minute before. The late Charles Dickens the younger, in the notes to his father’s writings, affects to have discovered an oversight in the account of the scene in the Circus. It is described how he “took to his heels and tore round the Crescent, hotly pursued by Dowler and the coachman. He kept ahead; the door was open as he came round the second time, &c.” Now, objects the son, the Cresent is only a half circle; there is no going round it, you must turn back when you come to the end. Boz must have been thinking of the Circus. Hardly—for he knew both well—and Circus and Crescent are things not to be confused. The phrase was a little loose, but, as the Circus was curved “round,” is not inappropriate, and he meant that Winkle turned when he got to the end, and ran back.
It must have been an awkward thing for Winkle to present himself once more at Mrs. Craddock’s in the Crescent. How was the incident to be explained save either at his own expense or at that of Mr. Dowler? If Dowler were supposed to have gone in pursuit of him, then Mr. Winkle must have fled, and if he were supposed to have gone to seek a friend, then Dowler was rather compromised. No doubt both gentlemen agreed to support the one story that they had gone away for mutual satisfaction, and had made it up.
Then, we are told, if it were theatre night perhaps the visitors met at the theatre. Did Mr. Pickwick ever go? This is an open question. Is the chronicler here a little obscure, as he is speaking of “the gentlemen” en bloc? Perhaps he did, perhaps he did’nt, as Boz might say. On his visit to Rochester, it does not appear that he went to see his “picked-up” friend, Jingle, perform. The Bath Theatre is in the Saw Close, next door to Beau Nash’s picturesque old house. The old grey front, with its blackened mouldings and
sunk windows, is still there; but a deep vestibule, or entrance, with offices has been built out in front, which, as it were, thrusts the old wall back—an uncongenial mixture. Within, the house has been reconstructed, as it is called, so that Mr. Palmer or Dimond, or any of the old Bath lights, to say nothing of Mr. and Mrs. Siddons, would not recognise it. Attending it one night, I could not but recall the old Bath stories, when this modest little house supplied the London houses regularly with the best talent, and “From the Theatre Royal, Bath,” was an inducement set forth on the bill.