The Bath Road Part 16

Allen was a man of a modest and retiring habit, but with the greatest confidence in himself. He needed all his confidence, and all the untiring industry and vigilance that were his, for when three years of the seven had expired he found himself a loser by a small amount, and when the contract lapsed, his gain was quite inappreciable. Yet he renewed it for another seven years, convinced that the better facilities he had provided for the carriage of letters must needs lead to great developments. He was right: the correspondence of the country grew, and in 1741 we find him bidding 17,500 per annum for another term of seven years. He continued thus until his death in 1764, in receipt, for many years, of an income of not less than 12,000 a year on his post-office enterprise alone.

[Sidenote: _POSTAL SERVICES_]

Those were the times of the real post-boys. All letters were carried by mounted messengers, since the stage-coaches then running (where they existed at all!) were not fast enough, frequent enough, or sufficiently safe for the purpose. A side-light is thrown upon the average "speed" of these stage-coaches, not then considered speedy enough, by the onerous condition in Allen's contract that the mails were to be carried by his post-boys "at not less than five miles an hour."

Allen was in the forefront of Bath enterprise, and was a.s.sociated with John Wood, the elder of the two architects of that name, in rebuilding the city. Before their time it had been a place of mean streets and winding alleys, the out-at-elbows remains of Gothic times. As a result of their labours, and the labours of their immediate successors, Bath renewed her youth in a revived Cla.s.sicism. Among the monuments of that time, Prior Park is conspicuous. It was built by John Wood in 1743 for Allen, whose great object in erecting this veritable palace was to demonstrate the qualities of the building-stone on his Combe Down property. Here he entertained some of the foremost literary men of his time: Pope, Fielding, Warburton; and is enshrined by Fielding as "Squire Allworthy" in "Tom Jones," and by Pope in the lines--

"Let low-born Allen, with ingenuous shame, Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."

The situation, and the front elevation of Prior Park, form together, perhaps, the n.o.blest grouping of cla.s.sic architecture and romantic scenery to be found in England. It was a time tinged with romanticism of an artificial kind which generally showed itself in affected and objectionable ways. But this artificiality was a matter of deportment merely. Literature was practised then, and Architecture flourished in the land.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRIOR PARK.]

[Sidenote: _"SHAM CASTLE"_]

There is another work of Allen's crowning the hill at Bathwick, which serves to show at once the romantic and the artificial signs of the times.

Allen looked out from the windows of his Town House upon the bare hilltop, and thought how the view would have been improved had there been a ruined castle showing against the sky-line. Accordingly he built such an one, and there it is to-day; and if you don't know it to be a ruin built to order, it is very impressive indeed--at a distance. If, however, you know it to be a Sham Castle (which, by the way, is the name of it), romance immediately flies, abashed. There it stands, on its wind-swept heights, naked and unashamed; a frontage with nothing behind it; an empty mask, with crossbow slits from which arrows never were discharged, and battlements scarce more substantial than the pasteboard turrets that furnish the stage in romantic drama. If hypocrisy be indeed the homage that Vice pays to Virtue; then, by parallel reasoning, here is homage of the most flattering kind paid to Gothicism by an age that above all things prided itself on the way it fulfilled its cla.s.sic ideals. It was a common failing of the time; and possibly, if attention had been called to it, a ready answer might have been found in the retort that "consistency is the bugbear of little minds."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHAM CASTLE."]

XLII

But to return to the Beau, who seems to represent Bath more fully than any other person connected with its history. In his old age Nash fell upon evil times. Ruined by his own folly and extravagance, he had no opportunities of retrieving the position, for he had lived to see the friends of his more fortunate era pa.s.s away, and to witness the arrival of a younger generation which regarded his laws with indifference, if not with open contempt. His last years were eked out with the aid of a pittance of 10 a month given him by the Corporation of the city for which he had done so much, and a new Master of the Ceremonies presently reigned in his stead.

In his declining days, Bath had altogether changed from the place it had been when in the zenith of his power. It had, for one thing, grown out of all knowledge, architecturally. The Grand Circus, parades, terraces, squares, all manner of finely designed houses, had sprung up. Smollett, in "Humphrey Clinker," makes Squire Bramble peevishly recount those changes, and say, "The same artist who planned the Circus has likewise projected a crescent: when that is finished, we shall probably have a star; and those who are living thirty years hence may perhaps see all the signs of the zodiac exhibited in architecture at Bath."

[Sidenote: _BATH SOCIETY_]

Then the select society of fifty years before had given place to a very mixed concourse, if we are to believe the same authority: "Every upstart of 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, vanity, and presumption. Knowing no other criterion 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 further qualification, they can mingle with the princes and n.o.bles of the land.

Even the wives and daughters of low tradesmen, who, like shovel-nosed sharks, prey on 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 on being conveyed to Bath, where they may hobble country-dances and cotillons among lordlings, squires, counsellors, and clergy. These delicate creatures from Bedfordbury, Butcher-row, Crutched-friars, and Botolph-lane, cannot breathe in the gross air of the lower town, or conform to the vulgar rules of a common lodging-house: the husband, therefore, must provide an entire house or elegant apartments in the new buildings. Such is the composition of what is called fas.h.i.+onable company at Bath."

XLIII

What, however, of the literary celebrities, visitors or residents, or of the statesmen, the naval and military commanders, who were frequenting Bath at the time when that jaundiced criticism was penned. Dr. Johnson was then taking the waters, which are said by a later authority to taste of "warm smoothin'-irons;" Gainsborough alternately painted and bathed; while the Earl of Chatham and his still greater son; Nelson, Wolfe, Sheridan, and Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Southey, Jane Austin, and Landor, helped to sustain the repute of this, which Landor called the next most beautiful place in the world to Florence, well on into the next century.

[Sidenote: _THE BATH OF LONG AGO_]

A diarist of over a century ago tells us how he went to Bath, and what he saw and did there. This was the Reverend Thomas Campbell, a lively Irishman (notwithstanding his Scottish name), who journeyed to England in 1775, and visited Johnson and other literary bigwigs in London, coming to Bath on April 28, to take the waters. The coach set out from the New Church in the Strand (by which, no doubt, Saint Mary-le-Strand is indicated) at six o'clock in the morning, and came to Speenhamland ("Spinomland," says the clergyman in his diary), where they lay. The country, he remarks, was very rich from London to this place, yet it was so level that there was scarce a good prospect the whole way, unless Clieveden, near Maidenhead Bridge could be so called.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD PULTENEY BRIDGE.]

When the coach resumed its journey the next day--the pa.s.sengers, doubtless, lightened in pocket by that "long bill" of the "Pelican" at Speenhamland--the bleakness of Marlborough Downs communicated itself to the air, and from Newbury to Cottenham,[8] a distance of nearly thirty miles, the countryside was very bare of trees and herbage, in addition to being the worst land this Irishman had seen in England, and certainly swarming with beggars. For miles together the coach was pursued by them, from two to nine at a time, almost all of them children. They were more importunate than those of Ireland, or _even_ those in Wales. Poor Taffy!

When our traveller reached Bath he rejoiced greatly, and, the next day being Sunday, went to the Abbey Church with other fas.h.i.+onables, and heard a sorry discourse, wretchedly delivered. Afterwards, in the Pump Room, where the yawning visitors were a.s.sembled, he met Lady Molyneux, who asked him to dinner, where he spent the pleasantest day since he came to England, for there were five or six lively Irish girls who sang and danced, and did everything but agree among themselves. "Women," remarks our diarist, "are certainly more envious than men, or at least they discover it upon more trifling occasions, and they cannot bear with patience that one of their party should obtain a preference of attention; this was thoroughly exemplified this day. One of these, who was a pretty little coquet, went home after dinner to dress for the Rooms, and her colour was certainly altered on returning for tea; they all fell into a t.i.tter, and one of them (who was herself painted, as I conceived) cried out, 'Heavens, look at her cheeks!'" This, truly, was unkind, and more certainly indiscreet. The young lady with the startling cheeks subsequently sang a song, which somewhat surprised the clergyman, from its breadth of idea, but the other ladies, and matrons too, "were kicking with laughter." Presently they all went home, the ladies most affectionate toward one another, and, says Mr. Campbell, "it is amazing what pleasure women find in kissing each other, for they do smack amazingly."

[Sidenote: _A TORY PROPHECY_]

The worthy clergyman seems to have been introduced to the less dignified circles of fas.h.i.+on. The general tone of the more exclusive sets was by no means so lively, for it was about this time that the Indian nabobs, the Civil servants, the retired officers of the Army and Navy and the East India Company began to discover Bath and to settle there, filling the place with Toryism and grumblings about "the services going to the dogs, sir." Here is a Tory prophecy, not yet verified: "There is one comfort I cannot have at Bath," said the Duke of Northumberland in 1779. "I like to read the newspapers at breakfast, and at Bath the post does not come in till one o'clock; that is a drawback to my pleasure." "So," said Lord Mansfield, "your grace likes the _comfort_ of reading the newspapers--the _comfort_ of reading the newspapers! Mark my words. A little sooner or later those newspapers will most a.s.suredly write the Dukes of Northumberland out of their t.i.tles and possessions, and the country out of its king. Mark my words, for this will happen."

As a prophecy, it may readily be conceded that this is an extremely bad shot, and that Lord Mansfield by no means, either figuratively or literally, inherited the mantle of Elijah. A hundred and twenty years have pa.s.sed since then, and there are still dukes who have not been reduced to sweep crossings or keep chandlers' shops. True, if they have not come down so far in the world, it is in some cases owing to American dollars; but that is not the doing of the newspapers, one way or the other. As I have just remarked, that was a Tory prophecy, and though my Toryism is, I trust, of the most mediaeval and crusted kind, and wholly beyond cavil, it may frankly be admitted here that the Party never has shone in prophecy.

Nor, for that matter, has any party. The only seers are the leader-writers, and they never see beyond their noses.

So Princ.i.p.alities and Powers and t.i.tles are at least as powerful as ever they were, and--cynical fact--certain newspaper proprietors have been raised to the House of Peers; a thing, we may be sure, that Lord Mansfield never contemplated.

Many other things, however, have happened in the meanwhile. Agitation does not pay so well as it did. The newspapers which were to do such dreadful things have greatly increased in number, if not in power, and the contents of them have changed radically; other times, other manners, as a glance at even the advertis.e.m.e.nts of that date will prove.

XLIV

[Sidenote: _OLD ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nTS_]

The advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of a paper just over a century old often afford amus.e.m.e.nt to those who come upon them. The manners and customs of those times and these are so different that the very quaintness of our forefathers' att.i.tude of mind brings a smile upon our faces, although those eighteenth-century forbears of ours were really very serious people indeed, and took life, for the most part, like a dose of medicine, while we are apt to go to the other extreme and take it like champagne. No doubt our great-great-grandfathers would think the most sedate of us not a little wild could they witness how we live to-day, while, in our turn, we look back upon their times, and think times and people alike brutal. We wonder what sort of people they were who could, in this England of ours, offer a "Black boy for sale--docile and obedient. Answers to the name of Peter." Yet such advertis.e.m.e.nts were common on the front page of our newspapers once upon a time. Slavery was then a matter of course, and to have a black page for her very own was my lady's hall-mark of "quality."

Sometimes such advertis.e.m.e.nts were embellished with little figures supposed to represent n.i.g.g.e.r-boys.

The race of African negroes has either improved in good looks since then, or else the engravers of that day were not very careful in portraiture.

But, indeed, black pages were almost as common as pet dogs, and were advertised in very much the same way, and these blocks were not portraits at all, but just printers' stock ill.u.s.trations. The printer of a hundred years ago kept a curious little a.s.sortment of advertis.e.m.e.nt blocks. If a s.h.i.+p was about to sail for the colonies, it was advertised for weeks beforehand, and in a corner of the announcement was placed something that purported to be an ill.u.s.tration of the vessel. It generally looked like a Spanish galleon strayed from the Armada of two hundred years previously, and pa.s.sengers would have been quite justified in not booking berths on so antiquated an affair.

But perhaps the most amusing advertis.e.m.e.nts are the "Run away from his Home" and the "Stolen" varieties, also adorned with ill.u.s.trations. It speaks very little for the morality of that age when we say that the ordinary newspaper printer also kept these blocks in stock.

And, indeed, they seem to have frequently been required. Here is one example out of many in the newspapers of that age:--

"STOLEN Out of the Stable of ROBERT COLGATE, The 24th instant August, 1780

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A black horse, rising five years old, thirteen Hands and a Half High, Star in his forehead, small Ears, Mane stands up rough, being lately rubbed off, long Tail, hangs his Tongue out often on the Road, good Carriage; also a good Saddle, marked Barnard, with Spring Stumps.

"Whoever gives Information, so that the Said Horse may be had again, shall receive TWO GUINEAS REWARD."

It would scarcely be possible to identify the stolen horse from the accompanying cut. He has no long tail, as described in the advertis.e.m.e.nt, and his tongue _doesn't_ hang out. Moreover, he is burdened with a quite imaginary thief, who has a property devil whipping him on. The "awful example" hanging from the gibbet appears to be made of bolsters, and to have had, not a drop too much, but scarcely enough.

The party with hands bigger than his head, who is here seen striking a dramatic att.i.tude, is not a Howling Swell, although he wears his hair parted in the middle. Appearances here (as usually was the case in the old advertis.e.m.e.nts) are deceptive, and so far from being a Swell, Howling or otherwise, he is really a Heartless Villain, for he is one of two labourers who have--

"RUN AWAY.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

And left their families chargeable to the Parish of CLAVERTON,