240 THE BATH ROAD 



business avouIcI go round at all. When a meeting- 

 took place between a lady and a gentleman, the 

 gentleman inquiring, with a most elaborate bow, after 

 lier health, in such terms as " I am vastly honoured 

 to have the pleasure of seeing you ; I trust the 

 salubrious airs of the Bath are keeping you in good 

 health ; " and the lady replying, " I am much 

 obleeged* by your thoughtful inquiries: I protest 

 I am mighty well," it took quite an appreciable time 

 to descend from those rarefied heights of courtesy and 

 come down to the gossip and scandals which were, 

 we are told, among the principal pastimes of this 

 health-resort in the days of powder and patches. 



But Nash not onlv saw to it that his fashionable 

 clients behaved themselves. He had to contend with 

 the camp-followers of fashion who swarmed into Bath. 

 Mendicants infested the streets and made the gorge 

 of those delicate eighteenth-century creatures rise 

 with the sio'ht of their rags and diseases. Nash knew 

 that if he did not administer his kingdom severely, 

 and if he allowed many of these stern realities of the 

 world to obtrude upon the sight of the fastidious, the 

 new-found fortunes of Bath would disappear, and his 

 career with them. So, perhaps from an acute sense of 

 the necessity for self-preservation, rather than from 

 any desire to play the autocrat, he imposed his Avill 

 so thoroughly that he became an unquestioned ruler. 

 He induced the Corporation, which had entrusted him 

 with these powders, to procure an Act in 1739 for the 

 suppression of the beggars. It begins by reciting that 



* Once the recognized pronunciation of the word. The great 

 Duke of Wellington was probably the last who spoke it thus. 



