powerless against a sect which, though small, was so fervid, so single-minded and so absolutely convinced. Moreover, powerful or insignificant, ridiculous or admirable, the sect, as such, whether in Bath or elsewhere, was the least important fruit of the Methodist movement. Not by its immediate creations, its organised societies, but by its indirect and far-reaching effects did the new faith transform England. It sent a shock through the souls of the people, a shock that ran from one to the other, and startled the nation out of its moral and religious apathy; even at Bath, that centre of frivolity, its influence was felt; here, too, it revived a forgotten ideal. Side by side with the equivocal or light-minded society of that city, we shall henceforth see a company of austere, clean-living and clean-thinking men and women, who re-acted unconsciously, slowly but surely on the rest, and increased at its expense.1 The dissipated, gambling, dissolute Bath will settle down by degrees and come in line with other English cities, reformed characters like herself, though their crop of wild oats had been less abundant. From the beginning of the nineteenth century this uniformity was almost complete, so complete, in fact, as doubtless to be one of the reasons why Bath was then deserted by a certain-not the most regrettablesection of the birds of passage she was wont to attract. Birds of prey or airy songsters, they demand an atmosphere less clear and less calm, and, finding it no longer in England, they hie them swift-winged to the Continent. 1 Anstey notes the contrast, and describes "this adorable Scene": Where Gaming and graces Each other embraces, Dissipation and Piety meet;- Of Cards or Devotion Make Bath their delightful retreat. ("New Bath Guide," xv.) CHAPTER VII AUTHORS AT BATH-BATH IN PLAYS AND NOVELS— SHERIDAN, SMOLLETT, JANE AUSTEN, AND "1 DICKENS "The No English town, with the exception, as I have already said, of London, was so quoted, praised, criticised, and described by eighteenth-century writers as Bath. genius of Anstey and Smollett, Frances Burney and Miss Austen," has, as Macaulay declared, "made it classic ground." But how many other names he might have added to this illustrious quartet, from Goldsmith to Dickens, to go no further! The list would become interminable, if, to the writers who have made Bath the subject of their pictures, we should add those who visited the city, either to mend their shattered health, or to divert themselves with the spectacle of her society. At the dawn of her prosperity, we have noted the presence within her gates of Rochester, who there wrote his pastoral dialogue, "Alexis and Strephon."2 Wycherley made several appearances there at a later date, and also Congreve.1 1 66 History of England," chap. iii. 3 2 "Written at the Bath in the year 1674" ("Works," ed. of 1714). The play called Bath Intrigues (see above, chap. iv. p. 106) may have been written on the spot. 3 On March 2, 1705-1706, Wycherley writes to Pope that he intends to go to Bath (Pope, "Works," ed. Elwin and Courthope, vol. vi. p. 27). We find him there in 1711 (letter from Cromwell to Pope, ibid. p. 125) and in 1714 (letter from Pope to Caryll, ibid. p. 219). • Letter from Miss Bradshaw to Mrs. Howard, September 19, 1721, in the "Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk," vol. i. Lord Hervey, sending Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, at her 3 Defoe visited the town in 1711, and drew an elaborate picture of it in his "Tour Thro' Great Britain," which was re-edited and issued afresh many times afterwards. Addison took the waters the same year, accompanied by the poet Philips. Two years later, Steele found material at Bath for certain satirical descriptions. In 1714 Pope greatly enjoyed a visit there; he pronounced the Promenades the finest in the world, passed from the Assembly Rooms to the Chocolate Houses, from the Pump to the theatre, and tried, as he laughingly says, to make himself agreeable by imitating sometimes the civility, sometimes the impudence, and sometimes the folly of various acquaintances.* request, "a list of the sojourners and inmates of this place" [Bath], writes to her on October 8, 1728, as follows: "The Duchess of Marlborough, Congreve, and Lady Rich are the only people whose faces I know, whose names I ever heard, or who, I believe, have any names belonging to them" (Lady M. Wortley Montagu, "Letters and Works," vol. i. p. xlvii.; cf. the letter from Gay to Swift, March 16, 1728; Swift, "Works," Bohn ed. vol. ii. p. 616). It was on returning from this last journey that Congreve, already ill and blind, had the carriage accident that hastened his end. 1 "A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain," by a Gentleman (published in 1719). 2 "No, Mr. Addison does not go to Ireland this year: he pretended he would; he is gone to Bath with pastoral Philips, for his eyes (Swift," Journal to Stella," August 11, 1711, p. 229). 3 See above, chap. iv. p. 100. Letter of October 6 (1714) to Theresa and Martha Blount ("Works," Elwin and Courthope's edition, vol. ix. pp. 251-252): "Madam,-If I may ever be allowed to tell you the thoughts I have so often of you in your absence it is at this time, when I neglect the company of a great number of ladies to write this letter. From the window where I am seated I command the prospect of twenty or thirty in one of the finest promenades in the world, every moment that I take my eye off from the paper. If variety of diversions and new objects be capable of driving our friends out of our minds, I have the best excuse imaginable for forgetting you; for I have slid, I can't tell how, into all the amusements of the place. My whole day is shared by the Pump assemblies, the walks, the chocolate-houses, raffling-shops, medleys, &c. .. . I endeavour (like all awkward fellows) to become agreeable by imitation: and, observing who are most in favour with the fair, I sometimes copy the civil air of Gascoin, sometimes the impudent one of Nash, and sometimes for vanity, the silly one of a neighbour of yours, who has lost to the gamesters here that money of which the ladies only deserve to rob a man of his age." He went through all the round of amusements,1 becoming, he says, so dissipated and perverse that he is ashamed to be seen in company of Dr. Parnell (the author of "The Hermit"), and asks people "who that parson is?"2 All his life Pope continued to be an habitué of Bath, an habitué, we shall find later, together with Fielding, Warburton, and Graves, under the hospitable roof of Ralph Allen.3 After him, or at the same time with him, certain of his friends visited Bath Bolingbroke,+ Arbuthnot, Gay, who was present at the performance of his "Beggar's Opera "; other poets, such as Shenstone, who came to visit his old friend Graves, the author of the "Spiritual Don Quixote," Cowper, who in 1748 there composed the verses on a shoe with which the collection of his early poems opens. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote a rhymed farewell to the town, in which she recalls the many balls she had led in the Assembly Rooms.8 Two 1 "I have in one week run through whatever they call diverting here, and I should be ashamed to pass two just in the same track” (ibid. P. 252). 2 "I am so much a rake as to be ashamed of being seen with Dr. Parnell. I ask people abroad who that parson is ? " (ibid.) 3 See below, chap. ix. Letter from Gay to Swift, March 16, 1728 (Swift," Works," Bohn's ed., 1864, vol. ii. p. 616). 5 Letter from Gay to Mrs. Howard, 1724 ("Countess of Suffolk's Correspondence," pp. 176-177). 6 Letter from Mrs. Bradshaw to Mrs. Howard, ibid. p. 78 (1721); letter from Pope to Gay, September 11, 1722 (Pope, "Works," Elwin and Courthope ed., vol. vii. p. 422); letter from Gay to Swift, March 16, 1728 (Swift, "Works," Bohn's ed. 1864, vol. ii. p. 616). Their friendship began at Oxford (f. Graves, "Recollections of some Particulars of the Life of Mr. Shenstone "). 8 To all you ladies now at Bath, And eke, ye beaus, to you, Lindsey's and Hayes's, both farewell, With bounding steps and sprightly air graver personages, Butler and Berkeley, came to the baths in quest, not of pleasure, but of health; a bootless quest, for they both died there within a year one of another.1 Smollett probably thought of settling there to practise medicine, and wrote a treatise on the Bath waters; though he abandoned the project, he at least carried away with him reminiscences of the town, with which he filled "Roderick Random" and " Peregrine Pickle," reminiscences he came back to renew before beginning "Humphry Clinker." Young, the author of the "Night Thoughts," restored his health at Bath in 1757.3 Mrs. Catherine Macauley wrote a great part of her once famous "History of England" there, receiving extraordinary ovations from enthusiastic admirers, though the visit of a historian of a very different calibre, Hume, passed unnoticed.5 Goldsmith went to Bath in 1762, and his biography of Nash was the outcome of this visit. It was during a second visit, in 1771, that the well-known adventure befell him while he was the guest of Lord Nugent. One day, instead of returning to his host's house, he entered the adjoining one in a fit of abstraction, and taking the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, to whom it belonged, for visitors, he entertained them as such. Much amused, they put off the moment of 1 1752 2 44 Poor Nash, farewell! may fortune smile, Thy drooping soul revive, My heart is full, I can no more, John, bid the coachman drive. ("Farewell to Bath," in "Water Poetry," pp. 26-28). and 1753. Essay on the External Use of Water, with Particular Remarks on the Mineral Waters of Bath," London, 1752. 3 Thomas, "Le Poète Edward Young," p. 195. 4 Thicknesse states that her birthday was publicly celebrated every year ("New Prose Bath Guide," p. 65). His statements are not always to be received without reserve; but an extract he quotes from the Monthly Review shows us the historian receiving a tribute of six odes, which were afterwards published, and a gold medal, in the presence of a select and brilliant company, on April 2, 1777, the anniversary of her birth. 5 Letters to Strahan," May 10, 1776, p. 323. |