BATH,
where, after an hour's ride, we arrived at 6.30 p. m. This is situated on the River Avon, and has a population of 52,542. It is one of the most ancient cities of Great Britain, was founded before the Roman invasion, and was an important station on the Roman road, leading from London to Wales. The remains of a Corinthian temple have been found; also many ancient Roman coins, vases, and altars. The city is chiefly built on level ground, or on a gentle slope; but it has along its rear side very elevated land, arranged in terraces and lawns, presenting, with its costly residences, an imposing background, giving to the place an air of consequence and picturesqueness. The city is principally built of brown stone, not at all dingy or sombre in appearance. A short ramble satisfied us that this was one of the aristocratic places of England. Substantial and clean was everything we beheld. Nothing anywhere was new; but the old was of the very best.
It is a fashionable place of resort for invalids, and we saw in the great thoroughfares carriages drawn by men and occupied by invalids of all ages. We said then and say now: "Let all who go to London go also to Bath." It is England's Queen City, and one of which she may well feel proud.
The cathedral is a perpendicular Gothic structure, very old, but in most perfect repair. It is 210 feet long, and has a tower 170 feet high, and is made of the reddish-drab sandstone of which the city is principally built. The stone ceiling of the church is of open fan-work, the finest of the kind in England. The whiteness of the whole interior is very striking, and accords with the neat exterior. There are no grounds about it, or even a fence; the streets are paved with large flagstones, reaching close to the building itself. The church and the world are in intimate proximity.
Here again the cathedral chimes saluted us every fifteen minutes, all day and all night. To the thoughtful their few notes speak with living lips. Sometimes they have two notes, and it requires but slight imagination to interpret them as saying "Quarter hour;" or three notes, and then they say "Quarter hour gone;" or four, and then we have it "Quarter hour more gone." The intervals are but short when the knell of departing time is not thus sounded. The poet Young says,—
We take no note of time,
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue
Is wise in man.
The advice is good, and we gave it a tongue; but it makes a deal of difference what the tongue says. If it waken regrets at the loss of time, when an eternity remains, then it had better have no tongue. These divisions of time are made by men, and are but incidentally a part of the Creator's plan. These sweet sounds are fresh music-flowers, strewn over the graves wherein are buried the new minutes of the quarter-hour just departed.
The city takes its name from its famous hot baths, and was frequented by the Romans for the purpose of using its waters, known to them by the name Aqua Solis, (sun-water). Baths were erected here in the time of Claudius, who died a. d. 54. These waters are saline and chalybeate, but they also contain sulphur and iron. The principal ones are called King's, Queen's, and the Cross baths, and the waters are constantly boiling at a temperature of from 109 to 117 degrees Fahrenheit. There are two others though of less note, called the Abbey and the Hot baths. Rooms for drinking the water and for bathing are constantly patronized, and at times the population of the city includes 14,000 visitors. King's Bath is the most popular. It is a fine old classic structure, fronting on one of the principal streets, in which is what is called the Pump Room, a saloon 85 feet long, 48 feet wide, and 34 feet high, elegantly finished and well furnished, where every convenience is provided the invalid for rest and refreshment, and for drinking the water from a constantly flowing fountain. These rooms are attended by matrons who for the small fee of a penny, furnish all the water desired. It is not unpleasant to the taste, though unmistakably impregnated with the materials named. It steams up well from the goblet, and is so warm that one must drink it in separate swallows. The old room was erected in 1760, and has been used by millions of people.
The baths connected with this building were the only ones we visited, and are a sample of the others. The visitor pays his shilling (24 cents), and receives a ticket which admits him to another part of the edifice, where he finds dressingrooms and toilet conveniences. He presently passes out into a small room, about four feet wide by eight feet long, closed on three sides; the fourth partly open, but protected by a screen reaching two thirds up to the top of the opening. The floor is covered with hot water, four feet deep, and stone steps lead into it. The bather can remain inside, or he may enter the great swimming-bath, filled with the same water. That is precisely what we did. Opening the screen, we found the great reservoir to be perhaps seventy-five feet square. Three sides were enclosed by rooms, similar to ours; the fourth side was a very ancient wall of stone, reaching ten feet or more above the water, in which were antique tablets telling of the foundation of the baths. The space was open to the sky. The water was so warm as at first to disincline one to enter it, but by degrees the sensation became far from unpleasant. Steam was constantly arising. The water was not clear, though clean, but had a dull clay-water, yellowish look, and was quiet, except in a space of ten feet square at the centre, where it constantly boiled up, at times with a rushing noise. We remained there nearly an hour, admiring and wondering.
In the great pump-room is a statue of the celebrated Richard Nash, familiarly known as Beau Nash, who died at Bath in 1761. He was at one time the leader of fashion. At the entertainment given by members of the Middle Temple to William III. he was employed to conduct the festivities. So marked was his success that the king offered to knight him, but conscious of his lack of means to support the honor, he declined it. More than any other person he aided in making Bath a place of fashionable resort. By his labors, propriety in dress and civility of manners were enforced in public resorts, till at length he was styled the King of Bath. He was an eccentric, and obtained his living at the gaming-table. He lived in great style, travelled in a coach with six outriders, and dispensed charity in a prodigal and reckless manner. Near the close of his life an act of Parliament was passed prohibiting gambling. Having depended entirely upon that, he afterwards lived in comparative indigence, and died in poverty, Feb. 3, 1761. Strange to say, he was ungainly in person, having coarse and even ugly features, and dressed in a tawdry style. It is remarkable that such a person could induce a system of public refinement, and be honored by this statue. Goldsmith was so interested in his strange career, that he anonymously published a biography of him in 1762, the year after his decease.
We can readily imagine what the place was prior to the time of Nash. Macaulay, quoting from Wood's "History of Bath," written in 1747, says:—
A writer who published an account of that city sixty years after the Revolution, has accurately described the changes which had taken place within his own recollections. He assures us that, in his younger days, the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining-rooms were uncarpeted, and were colored brown with a wash made of soot and small beer, in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or chimney-piece was of marble. A slab of common freestone, and fire-irons which had cost from three to four shillings, were sufficient for any fireplace. The best apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished with rush-bottomed chairs.
Samuel Pepys in his remarkably interesting diary, under date June 13, 1668, gives an account of his visit to the baths, and in his own quaint way tells the story as follows:—
Up at four o'clock, being by appointment called up to the Cross Bath, where we were carried one after another, myself and wife, and Betty Turner, Willett and W. Hewer, and by-and-by, though we designed to have done before company came, much company came; very fine ladies; and the manner pretty enough, only methinks it cannot be clean to go, so many bodies together in the same water. Good conversation among them that are acquainted here and stay together. Strange to see how hot the water is; and in some places, though this is the most temperate bath, the springs are so hot as the feet are not able to endure. But strange to see when women and men, here, that live all the seasons in these waters cannot but be parboiled, and look like the creatures of the bath! Carried away, wrapped in a sheet, and in a chair home; and there one after another thus carried, (I staying about two hours in the water) home to bed, sweating for an hour, and by-and-by comes music to play to me, extraordinary good as ever I heard in London almost, or anywhere.... Sunday, June 14: Up and walked up and down the town, and saw a pretty good market-place and many good streets, and fair storehouses, and so to the great church, and there saw Bishop Montague's tomb; and, when placed, did there see many brave people come, and among others, two men brought in, in litters, and set down in the chancel to hear; but I did not know one face. Here a good organ; but a vain pragmatical fellow preached a ridiculous, affected sermon, and made me angry, and some gentlemen that sat next me did sing well. 15th, Monday. Looked into the baths, and find the King and Queen's full of a mixed sort, of good and bad, and the Cross only almost for the gentry.
In 1768, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the dramatist, removed here, where his father's family had previously settled. At the age of nineteen, in conjunction with his friend Hathead, he began his literary career. In 1772, at the age of twenty-one, he fell in love with Miss Linley, the popular singer of Bath. To save her from the persecutions of the libertine Matthews, he fled with her to France, and they were secretly married at Calais.
Delighted inexpressibly with this Queen City of the South of England, the antipodes of everything in the South of Ireland, we left it at 2.30 p. m. for