The Bath Road Part 17

THOMAS GARNER, Labourer, about five feet seven or eight Inches high; wears his own Hair, of a light Brown Complexion; hath lately, or is now belonging to the Militia.

"And EDWARD BROWNING, Labourer, about five Feet four or five Inches high, wears his own Hair, of a dark complexion; was one of Lord North's Soldiers in the last War.

"Whoever will apprehend either, or both of them, and conduct them to the Parish Officers of Claverton aforesaid, shall receive HALF A GUINEA for each or either of them, and THREEPENCE per Mile for every Mile they shall travel with them."

History does not relate whether or no these gay deceivers were ever captured. If those who sought them relied upon the ill.u.s.tration, it would seem quite likely that they never were!

XLV

[Sidenote: _THE ABBEY_]

The Abbey is the very centre of Bath. Round it cl.u.s.ter the Munic.i.p.al Offices, the Baths, and the Pump Room, and along the broad pavements invalids are drawn in Bath chairs--one of the five articles with which the name of the City is indissolubly linked. When Bath chairs, Bath chaps, Bath stone, and Bath buns are no longer so distinguished, then will come the final crash. One need not insist so greatly upon Bath Olivers, because they are not in every one's mouth, either literally or figuratively; although, to be sure, they are much more exclusively a local product than "Bath" buns; while "Bath" bricks are not made at Bath, but at Bridgewater.

The surroundings of Bath Abbey are strikingly Continental in appearance, for that great church stands in a flagged _place_, instead of being set in a green and shady close, as usually is the case in England. Its surroundings have always been thronged, from the time when the Flying Machines crawled, to when the last of the mail coaches drew up in front of the "White Lion," in the Market Place hard by, or at the "White Hart,"

which stood until 1866, where the "Grand Pump Room" Hotel now rises. The story of the Abbey is too long for these pages; but it is remarkable at once for being one of the very latest Gothic buildings in the country; for its possessing windows so large and so many that it has been called the "Lantern of England;" for its central tower, which is not square, being eleven feet narrower on its north and south sides than those to the east and west; and for the prodigious number of small marble and stone memorial tablets on its interior walls--tablets so many that they gave rise to the famous epigram by Quin:--

"These walls, so full of monument and bust, Shew how Bath waters serve to lay the dust."

Quite distinguished dust it is, too. n.o.blemen and dames of high degree; Admirals of the Blue, the White, the Red; legal, and military, and clerical dignitaries, and all manner of Civil servants, mostly of the mid-eighteenth century, and chiefly hailing from India and the Colonies, as described with much pomp and circ.u.mstance on their cenotaphs which so thickly cover the walls, and spoil the architectural effect. "The Bath,"

was the solace of their kind, returning from the Tropics with nutmeg livers, gout, and autocratic ways. At "the Bath" they resided on half-pay, drank the waters, supported the local doctors, quarrelled with their neighbours, and consistently d.a.m.ned all "new-fangled notions," until death laid them by the heels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BATH ABBEY: THE WEST FRONT.]

There must have been--if we are capable of believing their epitaphs--some paragons of all the virtues in those times, and Bath seems to have claimed them all. Here, for instance, is Alicia, Countess of Erroll, "in whom was combined every virtue that could adorn human nature." She died young; the world is too wicked for such.

[Sidenote: _"JACOB'S LADDER"_]

Bath Abbey is remarkable in one respect far above all the minsters and cathedrals of England. As you stand facing the great West Front, which looks so grim and grey upon the stony courtyard that stretches before it, you see, flanking the immense west window, two heavy piers, terminating in turrets. On these piers are carved the singular representations of "Jacob's Ladder" that have given the Abbey a fame even beyond the merit of its architecture. From near the ground-level, almost to the turrets, this curious carving stretches, battered long years ago by the fury of an age which prided itself on its enmity to "superst.i.tious images," and reduced by the further neglect of more than two hundred years to an almost shapeless ma.s.s. The origin of this curious decoration is found in the vision of Bishop Oliver King, who restored the then ruined Abbey in 1499.

In this vision, by which he was induced to undertake the great work, he saw angels ascending and descending a ladder, and heard a voice say, "Let an Olive establish a Crown, and let a King restore the Church." He interpreted this as a Divine injunction to himself to repair the Abbey, and accordingly commenced the work; dying, however, before it was completed. The "ladders" have sculptured angels on them, while on the wall above the arch of the great window is represented a great concourse of adoring angels, with a figure of G.o.d in glory in their midst. Many of the figures have their heads knocked off; but the whole of this sculpture is shortly to be restored.

XLVI

Bath entered upon a dead period about 1820. For a long while the newer and more easily reached glories of Brighton had taken the mere fashionables away, and even the waters were less favoured. Continental wars had ceased, and unpatriotic Britons flocked to foreign spas instead; Bath looking idly on and letting its customers go.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROMAN BATH, RESTORED.]

It was some ten years later that d.i.c.kens visited Bath. From what he saw there he drew his portraits of place and persons in the "Pickwick Papers;"

and the impression after reading them is undoubtedly one of faded gentility.

So it remained until after the visit of the British a.s.sociation in 1864, when the advice of the scientific men to the Corporation--to bring back business by providing more up-to-date accommodation--was laid to heart, and improvements begun. Since then the City has steadily climbed back again to the favour of invalids and the medical profession, and new Baths and all manner of modern appliances, a new railway station, and an air of an enlightened modernity, bid fair to keep Bath successful against all foreign compet.i.tion for a long time to come.

[Sidenote: _MODERN BATH_]

Since this Renaissance of thirty-five years ago was begun, many things have happened at Bath. Roman remains, more extensive than ever the bygone generations suspected, have been discovered, and excavations have lain bare baths long covered up by shabby and altogether undistinguished buildings. Judicious restoration has preserved the great Roman Bath, long a scene of wreck and shattered stones, and has brought it into use again.

This restored Bath affords perhaps the most picturesque view in the City, for from its margin one may gaze upwards and see to great advantage the beautiful tower of the Abbey soaring aloft; its late Gothic architecture contrasting piquantly with the cla.s.sic elegance of that restored bathing-place, while the reflections of the columns deep down in the quiet pool give a singularly complete sense of restfulness.

All this modern prosperity is, no doubt, very gratifying, but prosperity means much building, and Bath has now its suburbs; uncharted stretches of new villas, isolated, or in streets, that climb the hillsides of Combe Down, Beechen Cliff, and Lansdowne, and help to destroy Macaulay's well-known, if something too overdrawn, architectural picture of Bath, as "that beautiful City which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio, and which" (horrible literary solecism!) "the genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen, has made cla.s.sic ground."

Bath, indeed, was a jewel set in midst of her picturesque amphitheatre of rocky and wooded hills; but now that those hills and those woods are being covered with houses whose architecture is less calculated to "charm the eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio" than were the buildings of a century and a half ago, the setting of the jewel is by way of becoming tarnished. Now, also, it has been reserved to these times of cheap railway carriage of goods for brick houses to be seen at Bath; the one place in the world where brick never had an opportunity until these latter days of the "combine" of the allied "Bath Stone Firms," which has raised the price of Bath stone, so that in certain cases it has been found cheaper to bring bricks from the Midlands to build houses in Bath than to use the stone quarried on the spot. So, in the wilderness of new suburbs, the traveller who is whisked away by rail to Bristol may see, to his astonishment, amid the stone houses, rows of the most undeniable red-brick villas. And thus has come the spirit of what the late Professor Freeman was pleased to call "modernity" over Bath, once the peculiar preserve of stone and Cla.s.sicism.

The End