people left too many evidences of their occupation of this island for many
doubts to be entertained as to where they settled, or when. Thus, when we
assign the close of the first half-century of the Christian era to their
discovery of the medicinal properties of these waters, we do so, not from
legend, but from the evidence of the buildings they have left behind. It
is singular that we do not, as a rule, lay much stress upon the Roman
occupation of Britain. Yet it lasted long, and was for nearly four
centuries what modern political slang terms "effectual." An advanced
civilization reigned here then, and Britain became both a populous and a
flourishing colony. The dealings of England with India in the present time
form a tolerably close parallel with Rome's conquest of this island, and
if we go further and liken the British who remained in the remote places
of Cornwall, Devon, and Wales to the fierce Afghans and Chitralis who have
troubled us on the borders of Hindostan, we shall by no means strain the
similitude. Bath--or rather _Aquae Solis_, the "Waters of the Sun"[6]--as
well as being the one health-resort in Britain for the wealthy Roman
colonists who needed such a retreat, was to the Roman officer of that era
what Simla and the Hills are to our own military men in India--a place for
rest and the restoration of health after the rigours of a hard campaign;
with this difference, indeed, that to the Hills they go for coolness,
while at Aquae Solis is the expatriated legionary found both healing
springs and a genial warmth after the bleak, inhospitable hills of the Far
West or the Farther North.
[Illustration: THE SUN GOD.]
Discoveries at Bath and in its immediate neighbourhood have proved that
there was a sanatorium for invalided officers on Combe Down, and we can
well imagine such being conveyed hither, to recover or to die, along the
road.
The Baths of the Romans were discovered in 1755, fifteen feet below the
surface of the ground; relics of a past magnificence; of a civilization
that expired in bloodshed and conflagration. It was in the year 410 that
the military forces of Rome left Britain. The weak Romano-British soon
retrograded, and, worse than all, the country split up into petty, and
mutually hostile, kingdoms. The Baths were neglected, the Arts decayed,
and in Britain generally there was not spirit sufficient to withstand the
marauding Saxons who finally overwhelmed the country and pillaged and
burnt _Aquae Solis_, just as they had pillaged every other city. It was
after the sanguinary Battle of Deorham, A.D. 577, that the three cities of
_Glevum_ (Gloucester), _Corinium_ (Cirencester), and _Aquae Solis_ fell,
spoils to the Saxon hosts under Ceawlin. You may search for the site of
that great contest at the village now called Dyreham, some fifteen miles
north-east of Bath, in Gloucestershire, and from its position it will be
at once evident that those three cities must immediately have fallen after
that fatal day. That was the cementing of the Saxon power in the West, and
a fitting end to a hundred and fifty years of incessant warfare. The
British never learned that union means strength; they never had the sense
to combine before a common foe, and so the fierce invaders met and
defeated them in detail, aided of course by their own fitness for the
fight, and by the British incapacity. The Britons were lapped in luxury,
and went drunk into battle, so that there was no possible hope for them in
fighting the hardy warriors from the North. The wars waged then were wars
of extermination, and neither persons nor places were spared. This proud
city was levelled with the ground, and the civilization of four hundred
years perished by fire in a day. Evidences of that dreadful time were
plainly to be seen when the Roman Baths were excavated. They are to be
seen even now, at the Museum, together with relics which prove the high
degree of civilization that had been attained.
[Illustration: MYSTERIOUS LEADEN TABLET DISCOVERED AT BATH.]
Among other marks of progress is an inscribed tablet with an inscription
which one authority declares to be the record of a "cure from either
taking the waters or bathing, certified by three great men;" while another
is equally positive that it is an "imprecation upon nine men, supposed to
be guests, who had stolen a tablecloth at the conclusion of a
dinner-party." The age of this tablet is fixed "between the second and
fifth centuries of the Christian era," which in itself seems to be a wide
enough margin. As if, however, this were not already sufficient, there are
others, learned in these things, who declare that this relic records how
a certain Quintus received 500,000 lbs. of copper coin for washing a lady
named "Vilbia"! We are left to take our choice between speculations
unfavourable to the personal cleanliness of that lady, or astonishment at
the mode and extravagance of the payment. There is, indeed, "another way,"
as the cookery books have it; but as that involves doubts about the
scholarship of professed antiquaries, this third resort may only be hinted
at in this place. Who shall decide where antiquaries disagree?
The Saxons were shy of the places they had burnt. Heathens that they were,
they generally believed the bloodstained ruins to be haunted by evil
spirits, and so built their settlements at some distance away. The site of
Bath seems to have been, to some degree, an exception. After lying waste
for over a hundred years, it was occupied again, for the fame of its
waters had not wholly died out: and "Akemanceaster," as the Saxons called
it, entered upon a new lease of life. At that period, too, the Roman Road
through Silchester, Speen, and Marlborough acquired its name of Akeman
Street; the names meaning, as some would say, the "Sick Man's Town," and
the "Sick Man's Road," from "aches" and the fame of the place, even then,
as a spot at which to cure them. This has been characterized as absurd,
and the derivation more plausibly held to be from a corruption of the
Roman word _Aquae_ affixed to the word "maen," or "man," meaning "stone" or
"place," and joined to the word "caester," a form of the Roman "castrum," a
fortification; the compound word thus obtained meaning "the Fortified
place at the Waters."
[Sidenote: _ROYAL VISITS_]
To follow the fortunes of Akemanceaster, or Bath, as it eventually became,
through the Saxon period to the present time would be an exercise too
prolonged for these pages. That Kings and Princes and ecclesiastics
visited it then we know, and that the Normans built a great Abbey church
where the present building of Bath Abbey stands is an easily ascertainable
fact; but all the comings and goings of the great ones of the earth during
the succeeding centuries would form but a bald catalogue. It is only when
we come to the middle of the seventeenth century that we need pick up the
thread of the narrative again, at the visits of the Queen of Charles the
First in 1644; of Charles the Second, the Duke and Duchess of York, and
Prince Rupert in 1663; the Queen of James the Second, 1687; and the
Princess Anne, 1692; and as Queen Anne, 1702. Truly, a brilliant list for
such a small place as Bath then was.
But these Royal visits did not greatly benefit the place, as we may judge
when we read that from 1592 to 1692, Bath had increased by only seventeen
houses. Why was this? I conceive it to have been owing to the
extraordinary apathy of the people of Bath, who had not provided the
slightest accommodation for those who then drank the waters. Of what use
was it for Sir Alexander Frayser, physician to Charles the Second, sending
all his patients hither instead of to Continental health-resorts like Aix,
if they had to drink the waters at a pump standing on the open pavement?
and imagine the delights of bathing when the Baths were open to the
public view, the said public delighting to throw dead cats, offal, and all
manner of nastinesses among the bathers!
A local doctor, named Oliver, took up these grievances in 1702, and the
Corporation then set about building a Pump Room. This was opened in 1704,
and the celebrated Beau Nash having been at about the same period
appointed Master of the Ceremonies, the Bath visitors' list showed a
decided improvement.
Let us see what the amusements at "the Bath" had been hitherto. The place
was devoid of elegant or attractive amusements, and the only promenade for
the fashionables who followed Queen Anne to this then outlandish town was
a grove of sycamores in which there was a bowling-green, and a band
consisting of two performers, playing a fiddle and a hautboy! The
courtiers who had deserted St. James's to follow her gouty Majesty to the
waters must have cursed their folly when they saw those sycamores and
heard that band!
Nash altered all this. He was no King Log, and accordingly soon procured a
band of music for the new Pump Room; an Assembly Room for the fashionables
to take "tay" or chocolate, to dance, play cards, or to gossip in; and
devised a code of manners, if not of morals, for the regulation of his
little world, which he ruled with a rod of iron. He regulated everything,
from the greatest festivities down to the smallest details of dress and
deportment, and not the late M. Worth himself was more autocratic as to
what should be worn. It is a familiar story how, the "Dutchess" of
Queensbury appearing at a dress ball in an apron (an article of dress
which, fashionable elsewhere, he had tabooed), he told her to remove it or
leave. The apron was one of point lace, and said to have been worth five
hundred guineas; but the Duchess removed it humbly enough, for had not
this mighty arbiter of fashions declared aprons "fit only for Abigails"
(by which name he meant maidservants to be understood), and who was she
that she should dispute such an authority? Then, when the Princess Amelia,
daughter of George the Third, begged him to allow another dance after
eleven o'clock, what did this potentate reply? Did he humbly grant the
request? Not at all; he refused, adding that the laws of Bath were, like
those of Lycurgus, unalterable.
XL
[Sidenote: _BEAU NASH_]
They say that Nash "made" Bath. That, however, is but partly true. Bath
was beginning to make its way when he appeared, and he simply exploited
the place. The Moment had come and brought the Man with it, and a tight
grip he retained over all fashionable functions for over fifty years. He
warred with the high-class rowdies who would have made the place a resort
of Mohocks, and elevated "Bath manners" into a school of conduct perfectly
well known and imitated, at a distance, in other parts of the Kingdom.
They were manners of the most elaborate kind, and if attempted nowadays,
it is difficult to conceive how the wheels of the world's business would
go round at all. When a meeting took place between a lady and a gentleman,
the gentleman inquiring, with a most elaborate bow, after her health, in
such terms as "I am vastly honoured to have the pleasure of seeing you; I
trust the salubrious airs of the Bath are keeping you in good health;" and
the lady replying, "I am much obleeged[7] by your thoughtful inquiries: I
protest I am mighty well," it took quite an appreciable time to descend
from those rarefied heights of courtesy and come down to the gossip and
scandals which were, we are told, among the principal pastimes of this
health-resort in the days of powder and patches.
[Sidenote: _SEVERE MEASURES_]
But Nash not only saw to it that his fashionable clients behaved
themselves. He had to contend with the camp-followers of fashion who
swarmed into Bath. Mendicants infested the streets and made the gorge of
those delicate eighteenth-century creatures rise with the sight of their
rags and diseases. Nash knew that if he did not administer his kingdom
severely, and if he allowed many of these stern realities of the world to
obtrude upon the sight of the fastidious, the new-found fortunes of Bath
would disappear, and his career with them. So, perhaps from an acute sense
of the necessity for self-preservation, rather than from any desire to
play the autocrat, he imposed his will so thoroughly that he became an
unquestioned ruler. He induced the Corporation, which had entrusted him
with these powers, to procure an Act in 1739 for the suppression of the
beggars. It begins by reciting that "several loose, idle, and disorderly
persons daily resort to the City of Bath, and remain wandering and begging
about the streets and other places of the said City, and the suburbs
thereof, under pretence of their being resident at The Bath for the
benefit of the Mineral and Medical Waters, to the great disturbances of
his Maj.'s subjects resorting to the said City. Be it enacted that the
Constables, petty Constables, Tything-men, and other Peace Officers of the
said City ... are hereby empowered and required to seize and apprehend all
such persons who shall be so found wandering, begging, or misbehaving
themselves, and them to carry before the Mayor, or some Justice, or
Justices, of the Peace for the said City; who shall upon the oath of one
sufficient witness, or upon his own view, commit the said person or
persons so wandering or begging, to the House of Correction for any time
not exceeding the space of 12 Kalendar months, and to be kept at hard
labour, and receive correction as loose, idle, and disorderlie persons."
So there was a reverse to the medal, and a very stringent government
prevailed behind the careless, butterfly existence of the age, when
literary squibs and lampoons and the gay personalities of Anstey's _New
Bath Guide_ formed the excitements of the Bath.
A curious relic of this artificial life is to be seen in the Victoria Park
in the "Batheaston Vase." This is the name given to a handsome antique
placed in a kind of classic temple. The vase was discovered at Tusculum,
Cicero's villa, near Frascati, and brought to England during the last
century by Sir John and Lady Miller, who then owned a beautiful villa at
Batheaston, one of the favourite resorts of the society of that day.
Decorated with garlands of bays, the vase was used at Lady Miller's
receptions as a depository for verses written by her guests. It was
presided over by one of the ladies of the party, posing as the Muse of
Poetry, who drew the poetic offerings from its recesses, and, reciting
them, crowned the authors of the best effort with bays. The opportunity
proved too tempting for some of the wilder spirits, who wrote verses of a
ribald and satirical character, better calculated to bring a blush to the
cheek of the Poetic Muse than to add to either the morals or the harmony
of those gatherings.
[Illustration: THE BATHEASTON VASE.]
XLI
[Sidenote: _RALPH ALLEN_]
Among this careless throng there were a few men of will and purpose. Ralph
Allen; the two Woods, father and son, architects; and, somewhat later than
them, John Palmer, were bold spirits who changed the aspect of Bath and
helped to revolutionize the communications of the country.
One of the greatest historical figures of Bath--perhaps even the greatest
figure of all--before whom Bladud, Prince of Britain, at one end of the
historic period, and Beau Nash at the other, sink into something like
insignificance, is that of Ralph Allen. And yet--so arbitrary is
fame--that for every ten who could recite you, off-hand, something of the
history and achievements of Allen, a hundred could recount the story of
Bladud or of Nash. This is not to say that Bath has forgotten her great
man. On the contrary, the citizens show you his "Town House" in Lilliput
Alley with no little pride, while his great mansion of Prior Park, to the
south of the city, and looking down upon it, remains to this day the most
princely edifice for miles around. But however mindful Bath may be of him,
and although his classic house on the hillside inevitably recalls him to
the memory of Bath people, the fact remains that Allen's is a name
comparatively unknown to Bath's visitors.
That he deserves a record in these pages must be conceded, for he it was
who first established a regular postal service between one provincial town
and another, and carried letters along the cross-roads, which, until his
time, had been utterly neglected by the Post-office.
It is a singular thing that to Bath should have belonged both Ralph Allen
and John Palmer; the men who respectively developed the postal service and
founded mail-coaches. It is true that Allen was not a native of Bath. His
father was an innkeeper at St. Blazey, in Cornwall, and in that far
western county he first learned the routine of a post-office, in the
early years of last century. He was eleven years of age when he was
placed with his grandmother, the post-mistress of St. Columb, and his
industry in keeping the accounts secured him the good word of the district
surveyor, who procured the lad an appointment as assistant to the
post-master at Bath. Fortune favoured him, and when the post-master died,
Allen was appointed in his stead. He had not long become post-master
before he matured a scheme for developing the "bye" and cross-road posts,
which should bring profit to himself and convenience the community. He
proposed to "farm" these posts and pay the Government an annual sum for
the privilege, leaving the direct posts between London and the provinces
in the hands of the Post-office. A "bye" post was one between provincial
towns; a cross-road post was one that lay off the half-dozen post routes
then existing.
It was in 1719 that Allen, then but twenty-six years of age, made his
proposal to the Government. The postage on those descriptions of letters
had hitherto amounted to L400 per annum. He was prepared to give L6000
yearly, and to work the posts for a period of seven years, in
consideration of receiving the whole of the revenue during that term. His
offer was accepted, and the contract took effect from June 21, 1720. How
Allen procured the funds for his enterprise is not known, but he must have
had substantial financial support, since his first quarter's expenditure
in establishing his system amounted to no less a sum than L1500, while the
salaries of the staff he got together totalled a further L3000 per annum.
Allen was a man of a modest and retiring habit, but with the greatest
confidence in himself. He needed all his confidence, and all the untiring
industry and vigilance that were his, for when three years of the seven
had expired he found himself a loser by a small amount, and when the
contract lapsed, his gain was quite inappreciable. Yet he renewed it for
another seven years, convinced that the better facilities he had provided
for the carriage of letters must needs lead to great developments. He was
right: the correspondence of the country grew, and in 1741 we find him
bidding L17,500 per annum for another term of seven years. He continued
thus until his death in 1764, in receipt, for many years, of an income of
not less than L12,000 a year on his post-office enterprise alone.
[Sidenote: _POSTAL SERVICES_]
Those were the times of the real post-boys. All letters were carried by
mounted messengers, since the stage-coaches then running (where they
existed at all!) were not fast enough, frequent enough, or sufficiently
safe for the purpose. A side-light is thrown upon the average "speed" of
these stage-coaches, not then considered speedy enough, by the onerous
condition in Allen's contract that the mails were to be carried by his
post-boys "at not less than five miles an hour."
Allen was in the forefront of Bath enterprise, and was associated with
John Wood, the elder of the two architects of that name, in rebuilding the
city. Before their time it had been a place of mean streets and winding
alleys, the out-at-elbows remains of Gothic times. As a result of their
labours, and the labours of their immediate successors, Bath renewed her
youth in a revived Classicism. Among the monuments of that time, Prior
Park is conspicuous. It was built by John Wood in 1743 for Allen, whose
great object in erecting this veritable palace was to demonstrate the
qualities of the building-stone on his Combe Down property. Here he
entertained some of the foremost literary men of his time: Pope, Fielding,
Warburton; and is enshrined by Fielding as "Squire Allworthy" in "Tom
Jones," and by Pope in the lines--
"Let low-born Allen, with ingenuous shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."
The situation, and the front elevation of Prior Park, form together,
perhaps, the noblest grouping of classic architecture and romantic scenery
to be found in England. It was a time tinged with romanticism of an
artificial kind which generally showed itself in affected and
objectionable ways. But this artificiality was a matter of deportment
merely. Literature was practised then, and Architecture flourished in the
land.
[Illustration: PRIOR PARK.]
[Sidenote: _"SHAM CASTLE"_]
There is another work of Allen's crowning the hill at Bathwick, which
serves to show at once the romantic and the artificial signs of the times.
Allen looked out from the windows of his Town House upon the bare hilltop,
and thought how the view would have been improved had there been a ruined
castle showing against the sky-line. Accordingly he built such an one, and
there it is to-day; and if you don't know it to be a ruin built to order,
it is very impressive indeed--at a distance. If, however, you know it
to be a Sham Castle (which, by the way, is the name of it), romance
immediately flies, abashed. There it stands, on its wind-swept heights,
naked and unashamed; a frontage with nothing behind it; an empty mask,
with crossbow slits from which arrows never were discharged, and
battlements scarce more substantial than the pasteboard turrets that
furnish the stage in romantic drama. If hypocrisy be indeed the homage
that Vice pays to Virtue; then, by parallel reasoning, here is homage of
the most flattering kind paid to Gothicism by an age that above all things
prided itself on the way it fulfilled its classic ideals. It was a common
failing of the time; and possibly, if attention had been called to it, a
ready answer might have been found in the retort that "consistency is the
bugbear of little minds."
[Illustration: "SHAM CASTLE."]
XLII
But to return to the Beau, who seems to represent Bath more fully than any
other person connected with its history. In his old age Nash fell upon
evil times. Ruined by his own folly and extravagance, he had no
opportunities of retrieving the position, for he had lived to see the
friends of his more fortunate era pass away, and to witness the arrival of
a younger generation which regarded his laws with indifference, if not
with open contempt. His last years were eked out with the aid of a
pittance of L10 a month given him by the Corporation of the city for which
he had done so much, and a new Master of the Ceremonies presently reigned
in his stead.
In his declining days, Bath had altogether changed from the place it had
been when in the zenith of his power. It had, for one thing, grown out of
all knowledge, architecturally. The Grand Circus, parades, terraces,
squares, all manner of finely designed houses, had sprung up. Smollett, in
"Humphrey Clinker," makes Squire Bramble peevishly recount those changes,
and say, "The same artist who planned the Circus has likewise projected a
crescent: when that is finished, we shall probably have a star; and those
who are living thirty years hence may perhaps see all the signs of the
zodiac exhibited in architecture at Bath."
[Sidenote: _BATH SOCIETY_]