238 THE BATH ROAD 



the Baths were open to the public view, the said 

 public delighting to throw dead cats, ofFal, and all 

 manner of nastinesses among the bathers ! 



A local doctor, named Oliver, took up these griev- 

 ances in 1702, and the Corporation then set about 

 building a Pump Room. This was opened in 1704, 

 and the celebrated Beau Nash liavino- been at about 

 the same period appointed Master of the Ceremonies, 

 the Bath visitors' list showed a decided improvement. 



Let us see what the amusements at " the Batli " 

 had been hitherto. The place was devoid of elegant 

 or attractive amusements, and the only promenade 

 for the fashionables who followed Queen Anne to this 

 then outlandish town was a grove of sycamores in 

 which there was a bowling-green, and a band con- 

 sisting of two performers, playing a fiddle and a 

 hautboy ! The courtiers wlio had deserted St. James's 

 to follow her gouty Majesty to the waters must have 

 cursed their folly when they saw those sycamores and 

 heard that band ! 



Nash altered all this. He was no King Log, and 

 accordingly soon procured a band of music for the 

 new Pump Room ; an Assembly Room for the fashion- 

 ables to take " tay" or chocolate, to dance, play cards, 

 or to gossip in ; and devised a code of manners, if not 

 of morals, for the regulation of his little world, which 

 he ruled with a rod of iron. He regulated everything, 

 from the greatest festivities down to the smallest 

 details of dress and deportment, and not the late M. 

 Worth himself was more autocratic as to what should 

 be worn. It is a familiar story how, the "Dutchess" 

 of Queensbury appearing at a dress ball in an apron 



