[336] Buckingham Memoirs.
[337] Relics of Royalty.
[338] Lord Carlisle's Reminiscences.
[339] Byron: Letters and Journal.
[340] Jerningham Letters.
BY LEWIS MELVILLE
READY SHORTLY
Bath Under Beau Nash
Demy 8vo, with portraits and illustrations. Price 15s. net
Bath's most abiding memory, and one before which all others fade into comparative insignificance, is Richard, more frequently referred to as Beau Nash, the man of men to whom the city owes its fame.
Indeed, by most the creator is still esteemed greater than his creation, and for one who is interested in Bath, a score are fascinated by the romance of its erstwhile Master of the Ceremonies. In that city even to-day his presence is felt. Of course, there is the tablet in the Abbey Church and the memorial stone on the house, in which he died, for all the world to see; but these are his least enduring monuments, for his name is written on two-thirds of the buildings in Bath. The theatre was his residence for many years; the existing Pump Room is on the site of the older building where he held his court and whence he promulgated his laws; the lecture hall of the Literary Institution was the ball-room of Harrison's Assembly Rooms, over which he ruled with despotic power. There in "The Grove" is the obelisk he erected to commemorate the stay of the Prince of Orange; there, in Queen's Square, is another which he placed in honour of the visit of Frederick, Prince of Wales. So might Bath be traversed from north to south, from east to west, and everywhere signs discovered of the presiding spirit, even to that small street where an inn tempts passers-by to enter and drink "Beau Nash and Sulis."
All the world over the old order changeth and giveth place unto the new, but it is sad to see historic landmarks neglected as they are in Bath, where Londonderry House has been converted into cheap shops, and the house where Nash died into a furniture warehouse; Sydney House stands decaying, and Ralph Allen's city home is let in tenements. The folly of this is the greater, because the fates may yet decree a revival of this city which, Landor declared, is "the only place after Florence," and the beauty of which has been sung in his sweetest strains by the greatest living English poet.