The real facts about the picture and statue seem to be that the picture was presented somewhere about 1740certainly before the verses were written by the Corporation to Nash, and placed in the Pump Room, though in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1741 it is declared that Nash presented it himself. In 1752 the white marble statue by William Hoare was placed in the Pump Room, the expense being defrayed by the leading inhabitants of the city in gratitude for the services Nash had rendered to Bath.

CHAPTER VIII

Forget thou wert ever

BEAU

Called King Antiochus. With this charity

I enter thee a beggar.

PHILIP MASSINGER, Believe as You List.

EAU Nash had a great reputation for his fatherly care for young girls, and indeed for all who displayed a want of knowledge both of life and of evil practices. He watched people and events shrewdly, and on more than one occasion prevented an impulsive girl from doing that which she would have regretted all the rest of her life.

One such instance is that of Miss L whose father intended to leave her a fortune, and wanted her to marry a certain lord. The girl however was in love with a penniless colonel, and they would have married had not Nash revealed the matter to the father. The colonel challenged Nash-who naturally declined—and then, his creditors being too many for him, disappeared.

Two years later, the father having died and left his daughter £1,500 a year, she, though still loving her colonel, accepted the nobleman. But Nash discovered that the poor soldier was reduced to what in those days was regarded as the last extremity, that of acting with strolling players at Peterborough. He therefore invited Miss L

and her lover to go there with him and see the play. They sat in the front row of the spectators when the colonel as Tom in The Conscious Lovers

appeared on the stage. He saw the girl at once, and she fainted at the sight of him. Distracted, he could not remember his part, and his emotion overcoming every other thought, "he flew and caught her in his arms." Nash gave his blessing, and the wedding took place soon after.

Another instance is the much-quoted case of Miss Sylvia S, who, well-born, beautiful, and gay, with a fortune of £10,000, arrived at Bath at the age of nineteen. She became a toast, and found so many lovers that she knew not how to choose. Her choice fell upon a worthless man, who allowed her to dissipate her fortune in paying his debts in spite of all that Nash could do to prevent. The lover disappeared, and Sylvia was left penniless and heart-broken. Nash induced her to return to Bath, interested ladies in her behalf, and so gave her a new start; but she took to gaming, and accepting the invitation of a disreputable woman, who was keeper of a table, she still further lost caste. Then Nash, knowing that she was foolish and not vicious, induced a gentleman to make her governess to his children, and at his house she lived quietly for some time, but eventually committed suicide by hanging herself with a girdle made of silver thread, the ribbon she had at first used having broken with her weight.

The evidences of Nash's generosity are innumerable. There was the poor clergyman who did his best to support his wife and six children on £30 a year, and whose coat and stockings were so full of holes that Nash gave him the name of Dr. Cullender. Being made aware of the man's distress, however, the Beau, one Sunday evening when the people were drinking tea at Harrison's, went round raising a subscription, beginning it himself with five guineas. Thus he raised two hundred guineas,

Erecting a Hospital

117

and further persuaded a patron to bestow a living worth £150 a year upon the poor parson.

Nash's charity, indiscriminate and impulsive, often doing no lasting good, at times saved people from want and despair and gave them a new start. In severe weather, when hunger came upon the poor, he would visit their houses and directly relieve those too proud to beg. He spent enormous sums himself in this way, and collected more. Perhaps the greatest monument to his charitable nature lay in the hospital he suggested; and with the help of Doctor Oliver and Mr. Allen-the last-named being one of the greatest benefactors that Bath could number among its inhabitants—this hospital was at length erected, being large enough to hold a hundred and ten leprous and paralytic patients. It took thirty years of constant begging and giving before the building was complete, for the public was slow to see the necessity or the good of the scheme.

The Beau thoroughly understood the value of advertisement. When the Prince of Orange was cured by taking the waters in 1734, Nash caused an obelisk thirty feet high to be erected in The Grove, which was afterwards called Orange Grove. The Prince's arms adorned one side of the pedestal and a Latin inscription was carved on another to this effect: "In Memory of the Happy Restoration of the Health of the Prince of Orange through the Favour of God, and to the Great Joy of Britain, by Drinking the Bath Waters."

When Frederick, Prince of Wales, was cured, in 1738, he gave a large gold enamelled snuff-box to Nash, and the latter erected an obelisk seventy feet high in Queen Square, to commemorate this important visit. With some difficulty he induced Pope to write an inscription for this, which, when done, was of simple enough

tenor. It seems that the Prince of Orange also

gave Nash a snuff-box, and thenceforward every one who wished to acknowledge kindness from the Beau, presented him with one of these dainty toys, until for him it seemed to rain snuff-boxes.

Goldsmith says that Nash was at this time at the height of his authority and vanity. "He was treated in every respect like a great man; he had his levee, his flatterers, his buffoons, his good-natured creatures, and even his dedicators. A trifling, ill-supported vanity was his foible, and while he received the homage of the vulgar, and enjoyed the familiarity of the rich, he felt no pain for the unpromising view of poverty that lay before him; he enjoyed the world as it went, and drew upon content for the deficiencies of fortune."

Among the people who honoured Nash by wishing to dedicate a book to him, was one Poulter or Baxter, a highwayman, swindler, and rogue. Even to Nash's vanity this was too much; he would not allow the book to be printed, but he kept the manuscript and by the help of Baxter learnt much concerning sharpers and gamesters, which enabled him to do many a good turn to his subjects in advising and warning them. Douglas Jerrold's amusing play introduces Baxter as one of the prominent characters, and shows by what subtle methods Nash worked to save men from their own folly.

The Beau was a professed free-thinker, and had many disputes and arguments upon the subject of religion. Wesley, in his Journal, records a meeting with him in which, for once, the victory was not with the Wit.

"There was great expectation at Bath of what a noted man was to do to me there; and I was much entreated not to preach, because no one knew what might happen. By this report I also gained a much larger