good as ever I heard at London almost, or anywhere.'

The hours of bathing were from six to nine in the morning, and the bathers came from all parts of the city. Some were staying in the lodging-houses that surrounded three sides of the King's Bath and had direct access to it; and others, residing further away, were brought in closed chairs, dressed already in bathing costumes; while from the neighbouring Bear Inn came the rest, through the yard which connected the hostelry with the King's Bath. "The poor, trembling valetudinarian is carried in a chair, between the heels of a double row of horses, wincing under the currycombs of grooms and postillions, over and above the hazard of being obstructed or overturned by the carriages which are continually making their exits or their entrances," Smollett wrote. "I suppose, after

some chairmen have been maimed, and a few lives lost by these accidents, the corporation will think, in earnest, about providing a more safe and commodious passage.

The bathers were not only exposed to wind and rain, but also to the public gaze; and one of the favourite pastimes of the throng of idle visitors was to watch the bathing from the galleries. It throws a strange light on the manners of the aristocracy and well-to-do classes towards the end of the seventeenth century, to read that the music played by a band in the Cross Bath was followed by such a chorus from the bathers that the Corporation discontinued it in 1676; and that," There is a serjeant belonging to ye baths that *"Humphrey Clinker."

all the bathing tyme walkes in galleryes and takes notice order is observed and punishes ye rude, and most people of fashion sends to him when they begin to bathe, then he takes particular Care of them and Compliments you every morning which deserves its reward at ye end of the Season."* In the eighteenth century the spectators who conducted themselves better, were more numerous than ever.

Oh, 'twas pretty to see them all put on their flannels,
And then take the water like so many spaniels,

And though all the while it grew hotter and hotter,
They swam just as if they were hunting an otter;
'Twas a glorious sight to behold the fair sex
All wading with gentlemen up to their necks,
And view them so prettily tumble and sprawl
In a great smoking kettle as big as our hall;
And to-day many persons of rank and condition,
Were boiled by command of an able physician.†

Particulars of some of the old bathing customs have been preserved. It is known, for instance, that ladies were attended by a woman, and were presented with a little floating dish in which they put a handkerchief, a snuff-box, and a nosegay; and then would traverse the bath, either alone or with a guide; while Celia Fiennes, who came to Bath when travelling Through England on a Side-Saddle" in the reign of William and Mary, noted that, "The Ladyes goes into the bath with Garments made of a fine yellow canvas, which is stiff and made large with great sleeves like a

66

* Celia Fiennes : "Through England on a Side-Saddle.”
Anstey: "The New Bath Guide."

‡ Goldsmith: "Life of Nash."

parson's gown; the water fills it up so that its borne off that your shape is not seen, it does not cling close as other linning, which Looks sadly in the poorer sort that go in their own linning. The Gentlemen have drawers and wastcoats of the same sort of canvas, this is the best linning, for the bath water will Change any other yellow." However, others state that the bathing costumes were originally white, and that the properties of the water turned it yellow; while the very observant Miss Lydia Melford wrote that: "The Ladies wore jackets and petticoats of brown linen, with chip hats, in which they place their handkerchiefs to wipe the sweat from the 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 all these causes together, they looked so flushed and so frightful, that I always turn my eyes another way. "* Pope, on the other hand, thought the bathing becoming. "Let me tell her," he wrote from Bath in 1714 to Teresa Blount about her sister Martha, "she will never look so finely, while she is upon earth, as she would here in the water. It is not here, as in most instances; for those ladies, who would please extremely, must go out of their own element. She does not make half so good a figure on horseback as Christina, Queen of Sweden; but were she once seen in Bath, no man would part with her for the best mermaid in Christendom. You know, I have seen you often; I perfectly know how you look in black and white. I have experienced the utmost you can do in colours; but all your movements, all

* Smollett: "Humphrey Clinker."

your graceful steps, deserve not half the glory you might here attain, of a moving and easy behaviour in buckram; something between swimming and walking -free enough, and more modestly half-naked than you can appear anywhere else. You have conquered enough already by land. vanquish, also, by water."

Show your ambition, and

In the days before the Pump Room was erected those who were ordered to take the waters internally, obtained it by dipping a jug into a well, or extracting the water from a pump. It was by drinking the water in 1750 that Sir John Cope caught St. Anthony's fire, whereupon Dr. Oliver gave him sound advice:

See Gentle Cope with love and gout oppress'd
Alternate torments rattling in his breast,
Trys at a cure but tampers still in vain,
What eases one, augments the other pain.
The charming girl who strives to lend relief,
Instead of healing, heightens all his grief:
He drinks for health, but then for love he sighs,
She gives us water, but with each touch a lass!
The wicked girl electrifies the glass;
To ease the gout we swallow draughts of love
And then, like Etna, burst in flames above,

Sip not, dear knight, the daughter's liquid fire,
But take the healing beverage from the sire,
"Twill ease your gout; for love no cure is known,
The god of physick could not heal his own.*

The state of the baths was long so unsatisfactory as to call forth innumerable complaints. Dr. Jordan * Hist. MSS. Com., Report IX. App. III., i., p.

132.

in 1638 was "sorry he cannot recommend the waters' internal use, as they could not be procured clear enough for drinking"; and Wood's indictment has been printed in an earlier chapter;* but even when the baths were emptied every day the main objection was not removed, and this was very clearly stated by Smollett. "I have done with the Bath, therefore your advice comes a day too late. I grant that physic is no mystery of your making; I know it is a mystery in its own nature, and, like other mysteries, requires a strong gulp of faith to make it go down. Two days ago I went into the King's Bath by the advice of our friend Charleton, in order to clear the strainer of the skin, for the benefit of a free perspiration; and the first object that saluted my eyes was a child, full of scrofulous ulcers, carried in the arms of one of the guides, under the very noses of the bathers. I was so shocked at the sight that I retired immediately with indignation and disgust. Suppose the matter of those ulcers, floating in the water, comes in contact with my skin, when the pores are all open, I would ask you what must be the consequence? Good heavens! the very thought makes my blood run cold! We know not what sores may be running into the waters while we are bathing, and what sort of matter we may thus imbibe; the King's evil, the scurvy, and the cancer, and, no doubt, the heat will render the virus the more volatile and penetrating. To purify myself from all such contamination, I went to the Duke of Kingston's private bath, and there I was almost suffocated from want of free air, the place was

* See ante, pp. 28-9.