present at the late Revolution of 1830. The “George and Vulture” is placed in two different streets. Old Weller is called Samuel. During the scene at the Royal Crescent we are told that Mrs. Craddock threw up the drawing-room window “just as Mr. Winkle was rushing into the chair.” She ran and called Mr. Dowler, who rushed in just as Mr. Pickwick threw up the other window, “when the first object that met the gaze of both was Mr. Winkle bolting into the sedan chair” into which he had bolted a minute before. The late Charles Dickens the younger, in the notes to his father’s writings, affects to have discovered an oversight in the account of the scene in the Circus. It is described how he “took to his heels and tore round the Crescent, hotly pursued by Dowler and the coachman. He kept ahead; the door was open as he came round the second time, &c.” Now, objects the son, the Cresent is only a half circle; there is no going round it, you must turn back when you come to the end. Boz must have been thinking of the Circus. Hardly—for he knew both well—and Circus and Crescent are things not to be confused. The phrase was a little loose, but, as the Circus was curved “round,” is not inappropriate, and he meant that Winkle turned when he got to the end, and ran back.
It must have been an awkward thing for Winkle to present himself once more at Mrs. Craddock’s in the Crescent. How was the incident to be explained save either at his own expense or at that of Mr. Dowler? If Dowler were supposed to have gone in pursuit of him, then Mr. Winkle must have fled, and if he were supposed to have gone to seek a friend, then Dowler was rather compromised. No doubt both gentlemen agreed to support the one story that they had gone away for mutual satisfaction, and had made it up.
Then, we are told, if it were theatre night perhaps the visitors met at the theatre. Did Mr. Pickwick ever go? This is an open question. Is the chronicler here a little obscure, as he is speaking of “the gentlemen” en bloc? Perhaps he did, perhaps he did’nt, as Boz might say. On his visit to Rochester, it does not appear that he went to see his “picked-up” friend, Jingle, perform. The Bath Theatre is in the Saw Close, next door to Beau Nash’s picturesque old house. The old grey front, with its blackened mouldings and
sunk windows, is still there; but a deep vestibule, or entrance, with offices has been built out in front, which, as it were, thrusts the old wall back—an uncongenial mixture. Within, the house has been reconstructed, as it is called, so that Mr. Palmer or Dimond, or any of the old Bath lights, to say nothing of Mr. and Mrs. Siddons, would not recognise it. Attending it one night, I could not but recall the old Bath stories, when this modest little house supplied the London houses regularly with the best talent, and “From the Theatre Royal, Bath,” was an inducement set forth on the bill.
III.—Boz and Bath
After his brilliant, genial view of the old watering-place, it is a surprise to find Boz speaking of it with a certain acerbity and even disgust. Over thirty years later, in 1869, he was there, and wrote to Forster: “The place looks to me like a cemetery which the dead have succeeded in rising and taking. Having built streets of their old gravestones, they wander about scantly, trying to look alive—a dead failure.” And yet, what ghostly recollections must have come back on him as he walked those streets, or as he passed by into Walcot, the Saracen’s Head, where he had put up in those old days, full of brightness, ardour, and enthusiasm; but not yet the famous Boz! Bath folk set down this jaundiced view of their town to a sort of pique at the comparative failure of the Guild dramatic performance at the Old Assembly Rooms, where, owing to the faulty arrangement of the stage, hardly a word could be heard, to the dissatisfaction of the audience. The stage, it seems, was put too far behind the proscenium, “owing to the headstrong perversity of Dickens, who never forgave the Bath people.” Charles Knight, it was said, remonstrated, but in vain. Boz, however, was not a man to indulge in such feelings. In “Bleak House” he calls it “dreary.”
There had been, however, a previous visit to Bath, in company with Maclise and Forster, to see Landor, who was then living at No. 35 St. James’s Square—a house become memorable because it was there that the image of his “Little Nell” first suggested itself. The enthusiastic Landor used, in his “tumultuous” fashion, to proclaim that he would set fire to the house and burn it to the ground
to prevent its being profaned by less sacred associations. He had done things even more extravagant than this, and would take boisterous roars of laughter as his odd compliment was discussed.
The minuteness of his record of the gaieties shows how amused and interested Boz was in all that he saw. Nothing escaped him of the routine, day, hour, and place; all is given, even the different rooms at the Assembly House. “In the ball-room, the long card-room, the octagon card-room, the staircases, the passages, the hum of many voices and the sound of many feet were perfectly bewildering; dresses rustled, feathers waved, lights shone, and jewels sparkled. There was the music, not of the quadrille band, for it had not yet commenced,” &c. Here Bantam, M.C., arrived at precisely twenty minutes before eight, “to receive the company.” And such company! “Brilliant eyes, lighted up with pleasurable expectation, gleamed from every side, and, look where you would, some exquisite form glided gracefully through the throng, and was no sooner lost than it was replaced by another as dainty and bewitching”; the warmth of which description showing how delighted was the young man with all he saw. But how did he secure admission? For it was a highly fashionable company; there were vouchers and tickets to be secured. But these were slight difficulties for our brilliant “pushful” young man. He could make his way, and his mission found him interest. He certainly saw as much of Bath as anyone could in the time. Yet, gay and sprightly as was his account of Bath, there may have been a reason why Boz may have not recalled the place with pleasurable feelings. It will be recollected that, after giving a few lines to the account of Mr. Pickwick and friends being set down at the White Hart, he carries them off at once to lodgings in the Crescent. That first-class hotel was, alas! not open to the poor, over-worked reporter; and he could tell of nothing that went on within its portals. Hotel life on a handsome scale was not for him, and he was obliged to put up at far humbler quarters, a sort of common inn.
There is nothing more quaint or interesting than this genuine antique—the Saracen’s Head in Walcot. It may pair off with the old White Horse in Canongate, where “Great Sam” put up for a night. It is surely the most effective of all the old inns one could