CHAPTER II. BATH
I.—The Old City
Bath, which already owed so much to famous writers, was destined to owe even more to Boz, the genial author of “Pickwick”—a book which has so much increased the gaiety of the nation. The scenes at the old city are more minute and vivid than any yet offered. But, if it owe much to Boz, it repaid him by furnishing him with a name for his book which has gone over the world. Everything about this name will be interesting; and it is not generally known when and how Boz obtained it.
There is a small hamlet some few miles from Bath and 97 from London—which is 106 miles away from Bath—bearing the name of “Pickwick.” The Bath coach, by the way, started from the White Horse Cellars, Piccadilly, at half-past seven in the morning, and took just twelve hours for the journey. Now it is made by the Great Western in two! Here, many years ago, at the time of the story, was “Pickwick House, the seat of C. N. Loscombe, Esq.,” and also “Pickwick Lodge,” where dwelt Captain Fenton. Boz had never seen or heard of such places, but all the same they indirectly furnished him with the name. A mail-coach guard found an infant on the road in this place, and gave it the name of “Pickwick.” The word “Pickwick” contains the common terminal “wick,” as in “Warwick,” and which means a village or hamlet of some kind. Pickwick, however, has long since disappeared from the face of the map. Probably, after the year 1837, folk did not relish dating their letters from a spot of such humorous memories.
This Moses Pickwick was taken into the service of the coaching hotel, the White Hart, gradually devoted himself to the horse and coaching business, and, at the time of Boz’s or Mr. Pickwick’s visit, was the actual proprietor of the coaches on the road. “The name,” said Sam, “is not only down on the vay-bill, sir, but they’ve
painted vun on ’em on the door of the coach.” As Sam spoke he pointed to that part of the door on which the proprietor’s name usually appears, and there, sure enough, in gilt letters of a goodly size, was the magic name of Pickwick. “Dear me,” said Mr. Pickwick, quite staggered by the coincidence, “what a very extraordinary thing!” “Yes; but that ain’t all,” said Sam, again directing his master’s attention to the coach-door. “Not content with writin’ up ‘Pickwick,’ they put ‘Moses’ afore it, which I calls adding insult to injury.” “It’s odd enough, certainly,” said Mr. Pickwick. When he was casting about for a good name for his venture, it recurred to him as having a quaint oddity and uncanniness. And thus it is that we owe to Bath, and to Bath only, this celebrated name. It is said that he rushed into the publisher’s office, exultingly proclaiming his selection.
Few cities have had their society and manners sketched by such eminent pens as Bath—Smollett, Miss Burney, Miss Austen, and Boz. The old walls and houses are thus made to live. Boz has given one of the most vivid and vivacious pictures of its expiring glories in the thirties, when there were still “M.C.s,” routs, assemblies, and sedans. His own connection with the place is a personal, and a very interesting one. He was there in 1835 on election business hurrying after Lord John Russell, all over the country, to report his speeches—a young fellow of three and twenty, full of “dash,” “go,” and readiness of resource, of immense energy and carelessness of fatigue, ready to go anywhere and do anything. While thus engaged on serious business, he kept his eyes wide open, took in all the humours of Bath, and noted them in his memory, though he made no use of this till more than two years later, when he was well on into “Pickwick.”
The entering an old city by night always leaves a curious romantic impression, and few old cities gain so much as Bath by this mode of approach. The shadowy houses have a monumental air; the fine streets which we mostly ascend show a mystery, especially as we flit by the open square, under the great, black Abbey, which seems a beetling rock. This old Bath mysteriousness seems haunted by the ghosts of Burney, Johnson, Goldsmith, Wilkes, Quin, Thrale,
Mr. Pickwick, and dozens more. Fashion and gentilily hover round its stately homes. Nothing rouses such ideas of state and dignity as the Palladian Circus. There is a tone of mournful grandeur about it—something forlorn. Had it, in some freak of fashion, been abandoned, and suffered, for a time at least, to go to neglect and be somewhat overgrown with moss and foliage, it would pass for some grand Roman ruin. There is a solemn, greyish gloom about it; the grass in the enclosure is rank, long, and very green. Pulteney Street, too: what a state and nobility there is about it! So wide and so spacious; the houses with an air of grand solidity, with no carvings or frittering work, but relying on their fine lines and proportion. To lodge there is an education, and the impression remains with one as of a sense of personal dignity from dwelling in such large and lofty chambers, grandly laid out with noble stairs and the like. The builders in this fine city would seem to have been born architects; nearly all the houses have claims to distinction: each an expression and feeling of its own. The fine blackened or browned tint adds to the effect. The mouldings are full of reserve and chastened, suited exactly to the material. There is something, too, very stately about the octagon Laura Place, which opens on to Pulteney Street.
In this point of view Bath is a more interesting city than Edinburgh. Mr. Peach has written two most interesting little quartos on the “Historic Houses of Bath;” and Mr. T. Sturge Cotterell has prepared a singularly interesting map of Bath, in which all the spots honoured by the residence of famous visitors are marked down. It is very extraordinary the number and distinction of these personages.