Two fans were published in June 1757 by G. Speren, giving a view of the interior of the Pump-Room at Bath, and the Orange Grove, with obelisk, garden, and buildings.
Lady Charlotte Schreiber quotes the following advertisement which appeared in the Craftsman during this year:—
‘This day is publish’d, by Jonathan Pinchbeck, Fan-maker, at the Fan and Crown in New Road-Court in the Strand, and sold by him Wholesale and Retail.
‘The Bath Medley; Being an accurate and curious Draught of the Pump Room at Bath, and most of the known Company who frequent it, adorn’d with the Portraitures of her Royal Highness the Princess Amelia[159] and other illustrious personages who honour’d the Place with their Presence the last Season; wherein the Topicks of Discourse and Conversations of Companies are impartially consider’d; their different Behaviours, Airs, Attitudes, etc., judiciously represented; the Foppery of the Beaus hinted at, and the Intrigues of the famous B— N— and others fully exploded. Taken from the Life, and finely delineated in above fifty Hieroglyphical figures.
‘N.B.—A spurious pyratical Copy of this Fan is lately publish’d, which is not like the Place it should represent, and may easily be discover’d from the Original by its having Pillars to support the Musick Gallery, and in the Middle is wrote The Bath Medley.’
The first Pump-Room was opened in 1706, with all the éclat of a public procession, and a musical fête, at which was sung a song specially composed in honour of King Bladud, the father of Lear, and mythical founder of Bath, recounting the story of his glorious deeds, and his soaring ambition, which, Icarus-like, finally overreached itself.[160]
The sequel to the story is to be found in the following quotation in Meehan, Famous Houses of Bath:—
‘Vex’d at the brutes alone possessing
What ought to be a common blessing:
He drove them thence in mighty wrath,
And built the stately town of Bath.