Among other pleasant premonitions of the present _entente cordiale_
between France and England is the increased attention which, for some
time past, our friends of Outre Manche have been devoting to our
literature. That this is wholly of recent growth, is not, of course, to
be inferred. It must be nearly five-and-forty years since M. Hippolyte
Taine issued his logical and orderly _Histoire de la Littérature
Anglaise_; while other isolated efforts of insight and importance--such
as the _Laurence Sterne_ of M. Paul Stapfer, and the excellent _Le
Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIII^e Siècle_ of the
late M. Alexandre Beljame of the Sorbonne--are already of distant date.
But during the last two decades the appearance of similar productions
has been more recurrent and more marked. From one eminent writer
alone--M. J.-J. Jusserand--we have received an entire series of studies
of exceptional charm, variety, and accomplishment. M. Felix Rabbe has
given us a sympathetic analysis of Shelley; M. Auguste
Angellier,--himself a poet of individuality and distinction,--what has
been rightly described as a "splendid work" on Burns;[52] while M. Émile
Legouis, in a minute examination of "The Prelude," has contrasted and
compared the orthodox Wordsworth of maturity with the juvenile
semi-atheist of Coleridge. Travelling farther afield, M. W. Thomas has
devoted an exhaustive volume to Young of the _Night Thoughts_; M. Léon
Morel, another to Thomson; and, incidentally, a flood of fresh light has
been thrown upon the birth and growth of the English Novel by the
admirable _Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les Origines du Cosmopolitisme
Littéraire_ of the late Joseph Texte--an investigation unquestionably of
the ripest scholarship, and the most extended research. And now once
more there are signs that French lucidity and French precision are about
to enter upon other conquests; and we have M. Barbeau's study of a
famous old English watering-place[53]--appropriately dedicated, as is
another of the books already mentioned, to M. Beljame.[54]
Notes:
[52] A volume of _Pages Choisies de Auguste Angellier, Prose et
Vers_, with an Introduction by M. Legouis, has recently (1908) been
issued by the Clarendon Press. It contains lengthy extracts from M.
Angellier's study of Burns.
[53:]_Une Ville d'Eaux anglaise au XVIIIe Siècle, La Société Elegante
et Littéraire à Bath sous la Reine Anne et sous les Georges_. Par A.
Barbeau. Paris, Picard, 1904.
[54] The list grows apace. To the above, among others, must now
be added M. René Huchon's brilliant little essay on Mrs. Montagu, and
his elaborate study of Crabbe, to say nothing of M. Jules Derocquigny's
Lamb, M. Jules Douady's Hazlitt, and M. Joseph Aynard's Coleridge.
At first sight, topography, even when combined with social sketches, may
seem less suited to a foreigner and an outsider than it would be to a
resident and a native. In the attitude of the latter to the land in
which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something
of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special
perceptive faculty, are but imperfect substitutes. On the other hand,
the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for
observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little--it has been
often said--of the position of posterity. He takes in more at a glance;
he leaves out less; he is disturbed by no apprehensions of explaining
what is obvious, or discovering what is known. As a consequence, he sets
down much which, from long familiarity, an indigenous critic would be
disposed to discard, although it might not be, in itself, either
uninteresting or superfluous. And if, instead of dealing with the
present and actual, his concern is with history and the past, his
external standpoint becomes a strength rather than a weakness. He can
survey his subject with a detachment which is wholly favourable to his
project; and he can give it, with less difficulty than another, the
advantages of scientific treatment and an artistic setting. Finally, if
his theme have definite limits--as for instance an appreciable
beginning, middle, and end--he must be held to be exceptionally
fortunate. And this, either from happy guessing, or sheer good luck, is
M. Barbeau's case. All these conditions are present in the annals of the
once popular pleasure-resort of which he has elected to tell the story.
It arose gradually; it grew through a century of unexampled prosperity;
it sank again to the level of a county-town. If it should ever arise
again,--and it is by no means a _ville morte_,--it will be in an
entirely different way. The particular Bath of the eighteenth
century--the Bath of Queen Anne and the Georges, of Nash and Fielding
and Sheridan, of Anstey and Mrs. Siddons, of Wesley and Lady Huntingdon,
of Quin and Gainsborough and Lawrence and a hundred others--is no more.
It is a case of _Fuit Ilium_. It has gone for ever; and can never be
revived in the old circumstances. To borrow an apposite expression from
M. Texte, it is an organism whose evolution has accomplished its course.
M. Barbeau's task, then, is very definitely mapped-out and
circumscribed. But he is far too good a craftsman to do no more than
give a mere panorama of that daily Bath programme which King Nash and
his dynasty ordained and established. He goes back to the origins; to
the legend of King Lear's leper-father; to the _Diary_ of the
too-much-neglected Celia Fiennes; to Pepys[55] and Grammont's Memoirs; to
the days when hapless Catherine of Braganza, with the baleful "_belle_
Stewart" in her train, made fruitless pilgrimage to Bladud's spring as a
remedy against sterility. He sketches, with due acknowledgments to
Goldsmith's unique little book, the biography of that archquack,
_poseur_, and very clever organiser, Mr. Richard Nash, the first real
Master of the Ceremonies; and he gives a full account of his followers
and successors. He also minutely relates the story of Sheridan's
marriage to his beautiful "St. Cecilia," Elizabeth Ann Linley. A
separate and very interesting chapter is allotted to Lady Huntingdon and
the Methodists, not without levies from the remarkable _Spiritual
Quixote_ of that Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, of whom an excellent
account was given not long since in Mr. W. H. Hutton's suggestive
_Burford Papers_. Other chapters are occupied with Bath and its _belles
lettres_; with "Squire Allworthy" of Prior Park and his literary guests,
Pope, Warburton, Fielding and his sister, etc.; with the historic
Frascati vase of Lady Miller at Batheaston, which stirred the ridicule
of Horace Walpole, and is still, it is said, to be seen in a local park.
The dosing pages treat of Bath--musical, artistic, scientific--of its
gradual transformation as a health resort--of its eventual and
foredoomed decline and fall as the one fashionable watering-place,
supreme and single, for Great Britain and Ireland.
Note:
[55] Oddly enough--if M. Barbeau's index is to be trusted, and
it is an unusually good one,--he makes no reference to Evelyn's visit to
Bath. But Evelyn went there in June, 1654, bathed in the Cross Bath,
criticised the "_facciata_" of the Abbey Church, complained of the
"narrow, uneven and unpleasant streets," and inter-visited with the
company frequenting the place for health. "Among the rest of the idle
diversions of the town," he says, "one musician was famous for acting a
changeling [idiot or half-wit], which indeed he personated strangely."
(_Diary_, Globe edn., 1908, p. 174.)
But it is needless to prolong analysis. One's only wonder--as usual
after the event--is that what has been done so well had never been
thought of before. For while M. Barbeau is to be congratulated upon the
happy task he has undertaken, we may also congratulate ourselves that he
has performed it so effectively. His material is admirably arranged. He
has supported it by copious notes; and he has backed it up by an
impressive bibliography of authorities ancient and modern. This is
something; but it is not all[56]. He has done much more than this. He has
contrived that, in his picturesque and learned pages, the old "Queen of
the West" shall live again, with its circling terraces, its grey stone
houses and ill-paved streets, its crush of chairs and chariots, its
throng of smirking, self-satisfied prom-enaders.
Note:
[56] To the English version (Heinemann, 1904) an eighteenth-century map
of Bath, and a number of interesting views and portraits have been added.
One seems to see the clumsy stage-coaches depositing their touzled and
tumbled inmates, in their rough rocklows and quaint travelling headgear,
at the "Bear" or the "White Hart," after a jolting two or three days'
journey from Oxford or London, not without the usual experiences, real
and imaginary, of suspicious-looking horsemen at Hounslow, or masked
"gentlemen of the pad" on Claverton Down. One hears the peal of
five-and-twenty bells which greets the arrival of visitors of
importance; and notes the obsequious and venal town-waits who follow
them to their lodgings in Gay Street or Milsom Street or the
Parades,--where they will, no doubt, be promptly attended by the Master
of the Ceremonies, "as fine as fivepence," and a very pretty,
sweet-smelling gentleman, to be sure, whether his name be Wade or
Derrick. Next day will probably discover them in chip hats and flannel,
duly equipped with wooden bowls and bouquets, at the King's Bath, where,
through a steaming atmosphere, you may survey their artless manoeuvres
(as does Lydia Melford in _Humphry Clinker_) from the windows of the
Pump Room, to which rallying-place they will presently repair to drink
the waters, in a medley of notables and notorieties, members of
Parliament, chaplains and led-captains, Noblemen with ribbons and stars,
dove-coloured Quakers, Duchesses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys,
lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, and boarding-school misses. Ferdinand
Count Fathom will be there, as well as my Lord Ogleby; Lady Bellaston
(and Mr. Thomas Jones); Geoffry Wildgoose and Tugwell the cobbler;
Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble; the caustic Mrs. Selwyn and the blushing
Miss Anville. Be certain, too, that, sooner or later, you will encounter
Mrs, Candour and Lady Sneerwell, Sir Benjamin Backbite and his uncle,
Mr. Crabtree, for this is their main haunt and region--in fact, they
were born here. You may follow this worshipful and piebald procession to
the Public Breakfasts in the Spring Gardens, to the Toy-shops behind the
Church, to the Coffee-houses in Westgate Street, to the Reading Rooms on
the Walks, where, in Mr. James Leake's parlour at the back--if you are
lucky--you may behold the celebrated Mr. Ralph Allen of Prior Park,
talking either to Mr. Henry Fielding or to Mr. Leake's brother-in-law,
Mr. Samuel Richardson, but never--if we are correctly informed--to both
of them together. Or you may run against Mr. Christopher Anstey of the
over-praised _Guide_, walking arm-in-arm with another Bathonian, Mr.
Melmoth, whose version of Pliny was once held to surpass its original.
At the Abbey--where there are daily morning services--you shall listen
to the silver periods of Bishop Kurd, whom his admirers call fondly "the
Beauty of Holiness"; at St. James's you can attend the full-blown
lectures, "more unctuous than ever he preached," of Bishop Beilby
Porteus; or you may succeed in procuring a card for a select hearing, at
Edgar Buildings, of Lady Huntingdon's eloquent chaplain, Mr. Whitefield.
With the gathering shades of even, you may pass, if so minded, to
Palmer's Theatre in Orchard Street, and follow Mrs. Siddons acting
Belvidera in Otway's _Venice Preserv'd_ to the Pierre of that forgotten
Mr. Lee whom Fanny Burney put next to Garrick; or you may join the
enraptured audience whom Mrs. Jordan is delighting with her favourite
part of Priscilla Tomboy in _The Romp_. You may assist at the concerts
of Signer Venanzio Rauzzini and Monsieur La Motte; you may take part in
a long minuet or country dance at the Upper or Lower Assembly Rooms,
which Bunbury will caricature; you may even lose a few pieces at the
green tables; and, should you return home late enough, may watch a
couple of stout chairmen at the door of the "Three Tuns" in Stall
Street, hoisting that seasoned toper, Mr. James Quin, into a sedan after
his evening's quantum of claret. What you do to-day, you will do
to-morrow, if the bad air of the Pump Room has not given you a headache,
or the waters a touch of vertigo; and you will continue to do it for a
month or six weeks, when the lumbering vehicle with the leathern straps
and crane-necked springs will carry you back again over the deplorable
roads ("so _sidelum_ and _jumblum_," one traveller calls them) to your
town-house, or your country-box, or your city-shop or chambers, as the
case may be. Here, in due course, you will begin to meditate upon your
next excursion to THE BATH, provided always that you have not dipped
your estate at "E.O.", or been ruined by milliners' bills;--that your
son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter
been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish
peer. For all these things--however painful the admission--were,
according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent
accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging,
card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasure-seeking city in the loop of "the
soft-flowing Avon."
It is an inordinate paragraph, outraging all known rules of composition!
But then--How seductive a subject is eighteenth-century Bath!--and how
rich in memories is M. Barbeau's book!