They idled, fiddled, danced, gabbled, gadded and gossiped. The "School for Scandal" was written on the spot, with models drawn from life. It wasn't a play—it was a cross-section of Bath Society.
Bath was a clearing-house for the wit, learning and folly of all England—the combined Hot Springs, Coney Island, Saratoga and Old Point Comfort of the Kingdom. The most costly church of its size in America is at Saint Augustine, Florida. The repentant ones patronize it in Lent; the rest of the year it is closed.
At Bath there was the Octagon Chapel, which had the best pipe-organ in England. Herschel played the organ: where he learned how nobody seemed to know—he himself did not know. But playing musical instruments is a little like learning a new language.
A man who speaks three languages can take a day off and learn a fourth almost any time. Somebody has said that there is really only one language, and most of us have only a dialect. Acquire three languages and you perceive that there is a universal basis upon which the various tongues are built.
Herschel could play the hautboy, the violin and the harpsichord. The organ came easy. When he played the organ in the Chapel at Bath, fair ladies forgot the Pump-Room, and the gallants followed them—naturally. Herschel became the rage. He was a handsome fellow, with a pride so supreme that it completed the circle, and people called it humility. He talked but little, and made himself scarce—a point every genius should ponder well.
The disarming of the populace—confiscating canes, umbrellas and parasols—before allowing people to enter an art-gallery is necessary; although it is a peculiar comment on humanity to think people have a tendency to smite, punch, prod and poke beautiful things. The same propensity manifests itself in wishing to fumble a genius. Get your coarse hands on Richard Mansfield if you can! Corral Maude Adams—hardly. To do big things, to create, breaks down tissue awfully, and to mix it with society and still do big things for society is impossible.
At Bath, Herschel was never seen in the Pump-Room, nor on the North Parade. People who saw him paid for the privilege. "In England about this time look out for a shower of genius," the almanackers might have said.
To Bath came two Irishmen, Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Burke rented rooms of Doctor Nugent, and married the doctor's daughter, and never regretted it. Sheridan also married a Bath girl, but added the right touch of romance by keeping the matter secret, with the intent that if either party wished to back out of the agreement it would be allowed. This was quite Irish-like, since according to English Law a marriage is a marriage until Limbus congeals and is used for a skating-rink.
With the true spirit of chivalry, Sheridan left the questions of publicity or secrecy to his wife: she could have her freedom if she wished. He was a fledgling barrister, with his future in front of him, the child of "strolling players"; she, the beautiful Miss Linlay, was a singer of note. Her father was the leader of the Bath Orchestra, and had a School of Oratory where young people agitated the atmosphere in orotund and tremolo and made the ether vibrate in glee. Doctor Linlay's daughter was his finest pupil, and with her were elucidated all his theories concerning the Sixteen Perspective Laws of Art. She also proved a few points in stirpiculture. She was a most beautiful girl of seventeen when Richard Brinsley Sheridan led her to the altar, or I should say to a Dissenting Pastor's back door by night. She could sing, recite, act, and impersonate in pantomime and Greek gown, the passions of Fear, Hate, Supplication, Horror, Revenge, Jealousy, Rage and Faith.
Romney moved down to Bath just so as to have Miss Linlay and Lady Hamilton for models. He posed Miss Linlay as the Madonna, Beulah, Rena, Ruth, Miriam and Cecilia; and Lady Hamilton for Susannah at the Bath, Alicia and Andromache, and also had her illustrate the Virtues, Graces, Fates and Passions.