THE ANCIENT MONARCHY OF BATH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2672, 31 May 1905, Page 71

THE ANCIENT MONARCHY OF BATH.

A delightful article m the kingdom of Bath and its double centenary, by Mr J. H. Lobban, appears in the April Blackwood. "Exactly 200 years ago," says Mr Lobban, "the ancient monarchy of Bath, after many centuries of inglorious lethargy, awoke to* a new and splendid life. The change was nearly as sudden as it was complete. Sleepy' Hollow, as by magic, ■was transformed into Vanity Fair. A dull and moribund provincial town was suddenly chosen by Folly, Wit, and Fashion as their court," and for a hundred years it provided the favourite background to all the great masterpieces of English fiction. There is not in our social history the record" of any metamorphosis quite so remarkable. Without disrespect, the story of Bath may be likened to a comedy. When the curtain ises .Richard Nash is discovered ascending the throne, and through three entire acts — in which the unities are scrupulously adhered to, in a manner generally foreign to humdrum history — he is the life and the soul of the play. The characters are bewildering in number, and are chosen indifferently from fiction and real life. Tabitha Bramble is* as 'real' as Fanny Burney, Captain Absolute as King Nash. By the end of the fourth act it is already apparent that the play is unduly protracted, that the mummers are tired, and the audience listless. The interest in the end of the 'Bath comedy' is of a purely sentimental kind. The time is 1805; the scene, Vanity Fair still. But no longer the same Vanity Fair, bustling with life and resonant with laughter. Bath in vain attempted to defy the unity of time by protracting its comedy for 100 years. The result was bathos and anachronism, and it is a relief when the curtain is finally lowered to subdued music, as the announcement is made that Christopher Anstey, poet-laureate of the kingdom of Bath, is now no more. We rub our eyes, and find that we are once more in Sleepy Hollow. And all this is sober history, not the insubstantial pageant of Prospero's wand ! " The most astonishing feature of Bath in the first half of the eighteenth century — its golden age — was the entire absence of the barriers of caste. The season there tras a kind of prolong-ed carnival, in which all ranks were bound together by the camaraderie of the quest of pleasure ; but, as Smollett is careful to underline, Bath, friendships did not survive the return to town, and he slyly suggests some affinity be-

tween the waters of Bath and Lethe. Nash was 'the first who diffused a defsire of society and an easiness of address among the whole people, who were formerly censured by foreigners for a reservedness of behaviour and an awkward timidity in their first approaches. He first taught a familiar intercourse among strangers in Bath and Tunbridge, which still subsists among them. That ease and open access first acquired there, our gentry brought back to the metropolis, and thus the whole kingdom by degrees became more refined by le&sons originally derived from him.' The strictness of his rule was inexorable. When he raised his finger at 11 p.m. the music in the Assembly Room stopped as by magic, even though it were the Princess Amelia who begged for another dance. From the Duchess of Queensberry he plucked her white apron, and Prior's Kitty had to swallow the affront. Occasionally .he caught a Tart3r, as when he asked little Miss Snapper if she knew the name of Tobit's dog, and was told that his name was Nash, 'and an impudent dog he was.' The abolition of the wearing of s words was a social reformation of mere than trifling importance. It is Nash's greatest legislative act. When gentlemen who had diunk too much claret met impudent chairmen, brawls and bloodshed were the customary sequel. Within his own sphere Ring Richard was more potent than George I, and who shall say that bis sway was less beneficent? Many" years later we have Sheridan's allusions to this excellent enactment. 'We wear no swords Here,' said Sir Lucius O'Trigger ; and Captain Absolute roundly affirmed that 'a sword seen in the streets of Bath would raise as great an alarm as a mad dog.' The testimony of the dramatist is strikingly reinforced by that of the serious historian. 'Beau Nash,' says Mr Lecky, 'made 'a great step in sustaining the pacific habits that were growing in society.' It is a curious irony of fate that couples Mr Spectator and Beau Nash as the two greatest social reformers of their age.

"The marriage lottery was for a century one of the institutions of Bath. It was a society that for more than 60 years knew no cliques, in spite of its amazing diversity. Every class was there — from Ministers of State to strayed 'prentices, from quality to dancing masters. The only people, in fact, not represented were invalids, Bath being the on. place in England in which 'to enjoy good health and turn It to account.' The town was accordingly a super-excellent hotbed for intrigue. Fortune-hunters in search of wife or husband flocked -to Bath : witness the testimony r»f Mistress Moll Flanders, Mr Fitzpatrick, Mi Random, Captain Cormorant. With justice Johnson tells Mrs Thrale that 'Bath is a good place for the initiation of a young lady.' The town was acknowledged to be 'a licensed and acknowledged mart for men and. matrimony' ; and its customs were, such that Miss Lydia Languish had good reason for complaint that she had" been denied the honours o£ abduction.

"While Nash was strutting in his Vanity Fair, the greatest wits of England were enjoying at Prior Park the hospitality of Ralph Allen, the real maker of Bath, the greatest of English patrons. The story of Allen's life is one of the romances of commerce. He was the enlighteneo. pioneer of postal reform, and reaped a splendid fortune from his enterprise. From his quarries came the stone with which the Woods erected for themselves a great- seii°s of enduring monuments. For these reasons alone, Ralph Allen's name would not h&ve perished ; but he made assurance a hundred times surer by linking his name indissoluble with all the sovereign intellects of his generation. If Gibbon's prediction regarding 'Tom Jones' be true, then no man has been more splendidly rewarded fior his liberality than the original of Squire Allworthy. Allen's kindness to Fielding began when the author was but little known ; it persisted through his life-time ; after his death it was continued to his orphans and his sister. Fielding's return did honour to his noble heart. Instead of concealing or minimising the obligation, he blazoned it in letters of gold on three great masterpieces of art. To Pope this course was impossible. He, too, owed much to the 'humble Allen,'whose stealthy charity he celebrated in a memorable couplet, not quite free from a suspicion of malice. . . . When Pope was basking in the sunshine of Prior Park he could not deny himself the pleasure of lavishing his friend's hospitality on others. At his bidding came the redoubtable Warburton (in later years Pope referred to him as 'the sneaking parson'), who- played his part so well that he became Allen's nephew-in-law and heir to his vast estate. At Allen's table Eichardson hao. the opportunity of telling Sarah Fielding how shocked Jie was at her brother's scurrilous treatment of Pamela's exemplary brother. . . . There were many other guests of note to be met in Prior Park. Garrick Avas a friend of long standing. His conversation with Quin may often have caused mild surprise to Bishop Huvd, and given a moment of relaxation and amusement to the harasspd mind of Pitt. The connection of the latter with Bath is its greatest political glory. When he oeased to be its representative, his friendship with Allen remained the same, and his letter to Mrs Alien, acknowledging his friend's remembrance of him in his will, is worthy of a place side by side with the thrice-told eulogy of Henry Fielding."