It will suffice, in short, to say of our characters (if once more we may be allowed to paraphrase some of Mr. Austin Dobson's dainty verses) that
They lived in that past Georgian day,
When men were less inclined to say
That "Time is Gold" and overlay
With toil their pleasure....
Those were, on the whole, rather more joyous times than our own, and more different than the mere lapse of one century seems to account for. The gentlemen then, dressed almost as handsomely, prinked and plumed themselves as elaborately, as the ladies. Gallantry in both senses and ready wit were their most precious claim: a fight was considered a full remedy to a slight, a sharp epigram to an injury. Heavy drinking was held an indispensable accompaniment to good-fellowship; and love-making was a far suppler art than seems known to this more earnest century—a pastime for "the quality," something on par with the gambling passion. "Virtue" not modesty, was woman's fair fame. A forcible abduction would at a pinch be argued as an undeniable compliment. Life ran like a dance then, with merry, tapping heels and light-hearted interchange of partner: those old-world days were much younger than ours.
So much for the times, and for the characters. For scenery we have this gem among prosperous towns. The grey stone city of wealthy, sedate residences, arranged with noble architectural effect in broad straight streets, wide open squares, parades, terraces, crescents; tier upon tier on the slope of a hill down to the water's edge; set serenely in a wooded valley, with much green in perspective beyond the lazy, slowly winding Avon.
Indeed, of its kind, Bath is unique among the cities of Europe: deprived as it is, by modern conditions, of its former social attractions, it is still one of the most beautiful.
Like so many very old towns, it has had a long Roman existence; its luxurious baths and other remains testify to its splendour when it was known as Aquae Solis. It filled, also, an important place in the land as a Mediaeval Borough, wall-girt and defensible: of that period the Abbey Church, the "Lantern of England" remains a handsome bequest. But, on the surface at least, there is now nothing to recall vividly any older past than the days of periwig, of powder and patches, of "wine and walnut" wit. Its characteristic charm, one which, happily, the present age has had little power to efface, is par excellence that of the 18th Century; for it was in early and middle Georgian years that, with a strange suddenness "The Bath" became an accepted centre of fashion and pleasure, and assumed its special physiognomy of leisure, wealth and exclusiveness.
This old-world air still hangs about the residential part of the Town and in a singularly haunting way. In those broad streets, calm and silent and almost deserted at most hours, in those high-windowed houses, typical of stateliness and cold elegance rather than of lolling comfort, the very atmosphere seems to this day redolent of "Chippendale" notions. The sordidly plain modern dress of man is painfully incongruous. The rattling cab is a discord. It would be a relief, much more than an astonishment, to note an obvious three-cornered hat, a broad-skirted coat, on one's fellow man, to hear on the flags the regular tramp of Chairmen swinging along some dainty charge deliciously powdered and rouged!
The course of an hundred and odd years has obliterated some scenes, and modified all to some extent. Orange Grove has lost, 'tis true, much of its discreet character; and its neighbouring chocolate rooms, so handy to intrigues, are now only memories. The Assembly Rooms are shorn of all fashion. The new Great Pump Room is not quite a replica of the old, though it has retained its general air—but the Crescents, Royal and Lansdowne, the Circus, Gay Street and Queen Square, the Parades, and the flags of Abbey Place, are still for us. At certain hours, if we have the mood, we can readily people them again in our mind's eye with notable guests of "The Bath" in its great days.... Dr. Johnson and my Lord Chesterfield, Pops, Oliver Goldsmith, Sheridan, Smollett, Chatham, Gainsborough, Fanny Burney, according to the fleeting thought—all "faithfuls of the Spa"—Greatness, Literature, Art, mere Fashion—or, again, shall we say Squire Bramble, or Lydia Languish, or Sir Anthony Absolute; or blushing, too ingenuous Evelina...?
Why, the place is alive with suggestion! Here a house front, with its carved stone wreaths and urns and bosses, with its pedimented windows or its shell-canopied door (still provided with its long since honorary link-extinguisher) if you look at it enquiringly, seems ready to tell its tale of by-gone life. But, unlike that of so many buildings of a past age, the tale of a house in Bath rarely takes the earnest romantic turn: it is irresistibly a "Comedy," comedy of intrigue and manners, of fashion and all its consequent frivolity (with perhaps just a little pathos, but never beyond the limits of elegance) Comedie à la Française mostly. Je trompe, tu trompes, nous trompons...!
In this guise the first stately building at the western extremity of the Royal Crescent, its pilasters, its stone steps, curvetting iron-work, clamoured to tell of Lady Standish's so nearly disastrous experiment on her husband's credulity. The corner house of Gay Street near George Street (opposite the alluring old-book store of Mr. Meehan—the genial Bath Antiquary) proclaimed at all the pores of its crumbling stones, as clearly as if the commemorative tablet had duly been erected, that the warm-hearted Irishman, the Honble. Denis O'Hara, had dwelt there in the year 17—. There is another house, at the southern corner of Queen Square, adorned with Cupid's heads and cornucopiae, which beyond all manner of doubt in that same year was the "lodging" (Fashion spoke of lodgings then!) of the ingenious young widow Bellairs. In the same manner the middle building, facing west, of Pierrepont's Street, one of the most correct in Bath, has still all the conscious air of having sheltered once that most excellent young man, Lord Verney.