EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BATH

and

flannel, duly equipped with wooden bowls and bouquets, at the King's Bath, where, through a streaming atmosphere, you may survey their artless manœuvres (as does Lydia Melford in Humphry Clinker) from the windows of the Pump Room, to which rallying-place they will presently repair to drink the waters, in a medley of notables and notorieties, members of Parliament, chaplains, and led-captains, Noblemen with ribbons and stars, dove-coloured Quakers, Duchesses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys, lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, boarding-school misses. . . With the gathering shades of even, you may pass, if so minded, to Palmer's Theatre in Orchard Street, and follow Mrs. Siddons acting Belvidera in Otway's Venice Preserv'd to the Pierre of that forgotten Mr. Lee whom Fanny Burney put next to Garrick; or you may join the enraptured audience whom Mrs. Jordan is delighting with her favourite part of Priscilla Tomboy in The Romp. You may assist at the concerts of Signor Venanzio Rauzzini and Monsieur La Motte; you may take part in a long minuet or country dance at the Upper or Lower Assembly Rooms, which Bunbury will caricature; you may even lose a few pieces at the green tables; and, should you return home late enough, may watch a couple of stout chairmen at the door of the Three Tuns" in Stall Street, hoisting that seasoned toper, Mr. James Quin, into a sedan after his evening's quantum of claret. What you do to-day, you will do to-morrow, if the bad air of the Pump Room has not given you a headache, or the waters a touch of vertigo; and you will continue to do it for a month or six weeks, when the lumbering vehicle

44

HOME REMEDIES

44

with the leathern straps and crane-necked springs will carry you back again over the deplorable roads ("so sidelum and jumblum," one traveller calls them) to your town-house, or your country-box, or your cityshop or chambers, as the case may be. Here, in due course, you will begin to meditate upon your next excursion to THE BATH, provided always that you have not dipped your estate at E.O.," or been ruined by milliners' bills;-that your son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter been married at Charlcombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish peer. For all these things-however painful the admission—were, according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging, card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasureseeking city in the loop of " the soft flowing Avon."

It is an inordinate paragraph, outraging all known rules of composition! But then-how seductive a subject is eighteenth-century Bath!-and how rich in memories is M. Barbeau's book!

(De Libris.)

HOME REMEDIES OF THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY

THESE were the days when people took cowslip-wine for sleeplessness, added saffron to their tea against low spirits, and put goose-grass in their springporridge as "good for the scurvy." Conserve of marigold-flowers was reckoned a specific for trembling of the heart; while an approved recipe for toothache was trefoil, primrose leaves, and pounded yarrow.

A GENTLEWOMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

Viper broth was still used medicinally; and elixir of vitriol was recommended for asthma. Snails, also, were in favour, not as the table-delicacy referred to in Bramston's" Man of Taste," but to cure consumption. Some of the other remedies read oddly. Mrs. Delany speaks of a spider in a goose-quill, hung round a child's neck, as infallible in ague; and one of Mrs. Montagu's correspondents describes the lamentable case of an ancient Countess of Northampton who succumbed after a treatment of bouillon prepared from a cock which had been previously dosed for the purpose by Dr. Ward's celebrated pill.

44

(Rosalba's Journal and Other Papers.)

A GENTLEWOMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

SHE lived in Georgian era too.

Most women then, if bards be true,
Succumbed to Routs and Cards, or grew
Devout and acid.

But hers was neither fate. She came
Of good west-country folk, whose fame

Has faded now.

For us her name

Is "Madam Placid."

Patience or Prudence,-what you will,
Some prefix faintly fragrant still
As those old musky scents that fill
Our grandams' pillows;

And for her youthful portrait take

Some long-waist child of Hudson's make,
Stiffly at ease beside a lake

With swans and willows.

A GENTLEWOMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

I keep her later semblance placed
Beside my desk,—'tis lawned and laced,
In shadowy sanguine stipple traced
By Bartolozzi ;

A placid face, in which surprise
Is seldom seen, but yet there lies
Some vestige of the laughing eyes
Of arch Piozzi.

For her e'en Time grew debonair.
He, finding cheeks unclaimed of care,
With late-delayed faint roses there,
And lingering dimples,

Had spared to touch the fair old face,
And only kissed with Vauxhall grace
The soft white hand that stroked her lace,
Or smoothed her wimples.

So left her beautiful. Her age

Was comely as her youth was sage,

And yet she once had been the rage ;—
It hath been hinted,

Indeed, affirmed by one or two,

Some spark at Bath (as sparks will do)
Inscribed a song to "Lovely Prue,"
Which Urban printed.

I know she thought; I know she felt;
Perchance could sum, I doubt she spelt;
She knew as little of the Celt

As of the Saxon ;

I know she played and sang, for yet
We keep the tumble-down spinet
To which she quavered ballads set
By Arne or Jackson.

A GENTLEWOMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

Her tastes were not refined as ours;
She liked plain food and homely flowers,
Refused to paint, kept early hours,
Went clad demurely;

Her art was sampler-work design,
Fireworks for her were "vastly fine,"
Her luxury was elder-wine,-

She loved that "purely."

She was renowned, traditions say,

For June conserves, for curds and whey,
For finest tea (she called it "tay "),

And ratafia;

She knew, for sprains, what bands to choose,
Could tell the sovereign wash to use
For freckles, and was learned in brews
As erst Medea.

Yet studied little. She would read,
On Sundays," Pearson on the Creed,"
Though, as I think, she could not heed
His text profoundly;

Seeing she chose for her retreat

The warm west-looking window-seat,
Where, if you chanced to raise your feet,
You slumbered soundly.

This, 'twixt ourselves. The dear old dame,
In truth, was not so much to blame;
The excellent divine I name

Is scarcely stirring;

Her plain-song piety preferred

Pure life to precept. If she erred,

She knew her faults. Her softest word

Was for the erring.