Out and about in Bath
Another postcard from Bath
First of all, I had no idea that Bath was on the River Avon— or any river, for that matter. Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer had sadly misled me on this point! Or, more likely, they thought it so obvious that there was no need to mention it. But the river made for a lovely setting: narrow boats moored along the banks near the train station; the picturesque weir, originally constructed in the late Middle Ages to prevent flooding and rebuilt into its distinctive V-shape in the 1970s; and Pulteney Bridge, lined on either side with tiny shops, so that you have to look through a shop and out its window to realize that you’re on the river. Apparently, it’s one of only four such bridges in the world.
By the way, I was interested to discover that Laura Place (home to Lady Dalrymple and the honourable Miss Carteret — “our cousins in Laura Place”) was on the other side of the river from the town centre (across the Pulteney Bridge), as are Great Pulteney Street and the Sydney Gardens. The Eliot’s lodgings in Camden Place (now Camden Crescent), on the other hand, were in the upper part of town, beyond where I ventured. Thus I was able to replace a few of the dragons in my mental cartography of Bath with actual locations.
This postcard also shows the mineral water fountain in the Pump Room, an important place to meet and greet for the fashionables of Austen’s day and now a restaurant. I tasted the water, whose 43 minerals give it a distinctive but not too unpleasant taste (I expected far worse). Still, I infinitely preferred my champagne tea: the fruit scones were especially good!
ASIDE: Back in the 17th century, as I learned from my visit to No. 1, Royal Crescent, tea was so expensive that it was often kept in a locked tea caddy. The servants in a wealthy household would save and dry the used leaves to brew a cuppa for themselves — or even to sell, sometimes adding something to color the steeping liquid and make the tea appear fresher than it was.
Fathoming fashions
The central picture is my favorite dress from Bath’s Fashion Museum: a light cotton day dress from the 1860s displayed over a cage crinoline. It looks so airy and romantic… until you think about the sort of infrastructure required to support it! The Fashion Museum is a great place to find out what the heck Georgette Heyer was talking about when she described the clothing worn by her characters — things like spencers and tippets, redingotes, sacque dresses, half boots, and many other archaic fashions.
For me, the myriad details of material culture, language, and manners that Heyer includes in her historical novels are one of the great pleasures of these books. Through these details, she recreates the everyday life of this period so vividly that I sometimes feel I have actually seen it. On the other hand, Jane Austen’s novels are not the most useful introduction to the material minutiae of her world. Austen and her characters simply inhabit this world without needing to explain or conjure it. Thus the native in contrast with the ethnographer.
A toast to the pleasures of travel,
which reveals our prejudices and enlightens our ignorance.
Connections
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