III.

LIFE AT BATH.

At the end of 1770, Mr. Sheridan removed with his family from London to Bath, a city in which his lectures had been greatly liked and where he hoped to rise still higher in popular favour and to reap a far richer harvest. The attractions of Bath were then unique. Life there was most delightful to seekers after amusement, while those who aspired after fame and wealth enjoyed many advantages and found many excellent opportunities.

It is difficult to realize the condition of Bath during the Eighteenth century. No other city in England could then vie with it. It is still famous and fashionable ; its special beauties have neither faded nor failed ; its healing springs have lost none of their magical virtues, yet its meretricious charms have vanished, and their departure cannot be noted without a slight feeling of regret.

Whatever once delighted idlers in London could be found on a smaller scale and in an even more pleasant form in Bath, and those who were ailing in the larger city might hope to become well in the smaller. A renowned health resort is a paradise for hypo

chondriacs, and hypochrondriacs are generally wealthy persons who readily part with their money to regain the health which they fancy has been lost. They crowded to Bath, and, to use Horace Walpole's familiar phrase, they "went there well and returned home cured."1

When Bath was in its prime as a city of pleasure, the line of demarcation between classes was less tightly drawn and clearly defined than in London, and a plausible adventurer had a better chance of playing his game among credulous and foolish men and women in the watering-place than in the Capital. A handsome person and polished manners, a fluent tongue and an insinuating address, fine clothes and fine sentiments, constituted passports to admission into the best society of Bath for many years before Richard Brinsley Sheridan first saw it and for many more after he had ceased to be a resident. During his sojourn it was the favourite haunt of fortunehunters and of rascals who lived by their wits and their wickedness. Monte Carlo now represents in many particulars what Bath was in the years that are gone.

The liveliest, the most attractive, and probably the most correct pictures of society in old Bath are to be found in old novels. Smollett, who practised

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as a physician there, repeatedly introduces the place into his works; Jane Austen has given a pleasanter account of it as seen at a later time; Walter Scott has recorded the impression which it made upon him when a little boy.

In Roderick Random it is stated how the hero escorted Miss Snapper to the Long-room ; how Nash, the Master of the Ceremonies, displayed his bad breeding by asking the name of Tobit's dog, and was rightly and unexpectedly rebuffed by the answer, “his name was Nash and an impudent dog he was.” In Peregrine Pickle it is narrated how Godfrey Gauntlett checkmated the sharpers at billiards and cards, and hoaxed the doctors.

The following passages in Humphrey Clinker are even more instructive, because they exhibit the views of a censorious elderly man on the one hand, and of a gushing young lady on the other. Matthew Bramble says in a letter to Dr. Lewis :-“Every upstart of a fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, presents himself at Bath, as in the very focus of observation : Clerks and factors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces; planters, negro - drivers and hucksters from our American plantations, enriched they know not how; agents, commissaries and contractors who have fattened, in two successive wars, on the blood of the nation ; usurers, brokers and jobbers of every kind; men of low birth and no breeding, have found themselves suddenly translated into a state of affluence, unknown to former ages; and no wonder that their brains should be intoxicated with pride, VOL. I.

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vanity and presumption. Knowing no other criterions of greatness but the ostentation of wealth, they discharge their affluence, without taste or conduct, through every channel of the most absurd extravagance; and all of them hurry to Bath, because here, without any farther qualification, they can mingle with the princes and nobles of the land. Even the wives and daughters of low tradesmen who, like shovel-nosed sharks, prey upon the blubber of those uncouth whales of fortune, are infected with the same rage of displaying their importance; and the slightest indisposition serves them for a pretext to insist upon being conveyed to Bath, where they may hobble country-dances and cotillions among lordlings, squires, counsellors and clergy."

The picture drawn by Mr. Bramble's niece, Miss Lydia Melford, in a letter to Miss Willis at Gloucester, illustrates the difference caused by the point of view. Her description conveys a vivid account of the manners, conduct and characters which made the place appear a heaven to impressionable and uncritical young ladies :-“ Bath is to me a new world—all is gaiety, good-humour and diversion. The eye is continually entertained with the splendour of dress and equipage, and the ear with the sound of coaches, chaises, chairs and other carriages. The merry bells ring round, from morn till night. Then we are welcomed by the city waits in our own lodgings; we have music in the Pump-room every morning, cotillions every forenoon in the rooms, balls twice a week, and concerts every other night, besides private assemblies and parties without

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a

number. As soon as we were settled in lodgings, we were visited by the Master of the Ceremonies, a pretty little gentleman, so sweet, so fine, so civil and polite, that in our country he might pass for a Prince of Wales. .

“At eight in the morning we go in dishabille to the Pump-room, which is crowded like a Welsh fair ; and there you see the highest quality and the lowest tradesfolks jostling each other without ceremony, hail fellow! well met! The noise of the music playing in the gallery, the heat and flavour of such a crowd, and the hum and buzz of their conversation gave me the headache and vertigo the first day ; but, afterwards, all these things became familiar and even agreeable. Right under the Pump-room windows is the King's bath ; a huge cistern, where you see the patients up to their necks in the water. The ladies wear jackets and petticoats of brown linen, with chip hats, in which they fix their handkerchiefs and wipe the sweat from their faces; but, truly, whether it is owing to the steam that surrounds them, or the heat of the water or the nature of the dress, or to all these causes together, they look so flushed and so frightened, that'I always turn my eyes another way. ... Hard by the Pumproom is a coffee-house for the ladies ; but my aunt says young girls are not admitted, inasmuch as the conversation turns upon politics, scandal, philosophy and other subjects above our capacity ; but we are allowed to accompany them to the booksellers' shops, which are charming places of resort, where we read novels, plays, pamphlets and newspapers for so small