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Past Residents of the Royal
Crescent
Scroll down the page or click
on the following bookmarks for the Society's
archive to read about:
Click on the following
bookmarks to read about (these extracts
are from "By the
Waters of the Sul" by the Society's ex
Chairman Edward Goring from his time as a
colunmist at the Bath Chronicle):
Click on the following
bookmarks to read about:
The above profiles were
reproduced from
"They Came to Bath" by William Lowndes with
kind permission from Redcliffe Press - all
rights reserved.
Major Bernard
Cayzer
Fish and Chippendale in
Royal Crescent By Edward Goring
BERNARD CAYZER stepped briefly into the
unwelcome limelight at the weekend and listened
to the nice things people say about very rich
men who dip into their pockets for the public
good. He had dipped into his pocket to the
extent of around £60,000 for the benefit of
Bath.
He bought 1, Royal Crescent and gave it to
Bath Preservation Trust as it’s headquarters and
a Georgian showcase. The house cost £11,000. It
was in a very bad state. Restoration and
interior decoration cost £77,000 and Major
Cayzer paid for most of that, though he has a
gentleman’s distaste for discussing money and
prefers people not to go on about his
generosity. His brother is the shipping baronet
Sir Nicholas Cayzer. He also prefers the
seclusion of his Regency villa at Timsbury where
he relaxes in the heated swimming pool with only
one regret. No one seems to have invented a
floating drinks wagon.
The project for 1, Royal Crescent was his
idea. He told me, “I have an insatiable
curiosity to see how other people live and I
thought it would be wonderful if it could be
seen again as it was when the first people lived
there in 1767.”
The opening was a festive affair masterminded
by trust chairman Barbara Robertson, without
whom large areas of life in Bath would
presumably come to a full stop. The event had
the sunny flavour of a society wedding
reception, with women dressed to match. A matron
in mandarin hat and pale mauve looked genuinely
Georgian as is the décor. Under guidance from
the Victoria and Albert Museum and London
designer Jean Monro, the colours and fabrics
breathe life into the house. There’s no museum
feeling here.
As Sir Anthony Blunt, surveyor of the Queen’s
pictures, said when he declared the place open,
“It has become a living creature almost.” At the
moment there is little furniture and few
ornaments—the trust is appealing for gifts but
don’t embarrass them with junk from the
attic—and it is as if new occupants had just
started to move in. A harpsichord in an empty
room, a solitary bust, an occasional picture . .
.
The décor is so authentic that some visitors
were puzzled by the apparently unfinished
paintwork. It is in fact a painstaking
simulation of the limitations of its period. It
was no good saying Dulux to your 18th century
decorator. In the dining room there was even an
authentic smell. Fish. The experts were puzzled
at first. They traced it to the new floor
covering—calico painted to resemble tiles—which
came in for criticism on aesthetic as well as
aromatic grounds.
June, 1970.
ANSTEY, Christopher (1724- 1805) 5 Royal
Crescent
In 1766 a small book, The New Bath Guide, was
published by Dodsley, a London bookseller. It
was written by a country squire from
Cambridgeshire called Christopher Anstey, and it
became an immediate best seller. The book was
not a guide in the accepted sense of the word;
it was a satirical review, in verse, of
fashionable society in Bath in the mid
eighteenth century, and its broad humour found a
receptive audience in London and Bath, where it
was widely read and discussed. Ten editions
appeared during the decade following its
publication, and Anstey achieved a modest
measure of fame.
 He
was born at Brinkley in Cambridgeshire in 1724,
and was educated at Eton and King's College,
Cambridge, before settling down to manage his
father's estates. The idea of the book was
conceived after a visit to Bath to take the
waters; and following its remarkable success, he
came with his wife and children to live
permanently in the city, taking one of the new
houses that had just been erected by John Wood
the Younger in Royal Crescent. The bronze tablet
on No. 5 states that this was the house he
occupied; but the city's early rate books seem
to indicate that No. 4 was his house although
for some reason he paid the rates of No. 5 until
1789. In 1792 he moved to a house in the
recently completed Marlborough Buildings, and
there he lived until the year of his death in
1805.
His marriage was a successful one, and he and
his wife lived contentedly together for nearly
half a century; he described her as 'the pattern
of virtue, and the source of all my happiness'.
There were thirteen children of the marriage,
but only eight survived their father.
A portrait of Anstey hangs in the magnificent
Banqueting Room in the Guildhall at Bath. It was
painted by William Hoare, and it shows a dark
haired, good looking man in early middle age; he
wears a sage green coat, braided with gold, and
a long white waistcoat, unbuttoned at the top.
into which his left hand is thrust, in the
Napoleonic manner. His unlined, fresh
complexioned face has an undeniable air of
tranquillity and contentment. He looks every
inch a successful and happy man a best selling
author, savouring the acclaim his work had
brought him.
Oddly enough, he wrote nothing else of
consequence after The New Bath Guide. The little
book remains his memorial, and the justification
for the tablet that is dedicated to him in
Poet's Corner, in Westminster Abbey. It can
still be read with much pleasure and amusement.
Portrait of Christopher Anstey by William
Hoare, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
BURDETT, Sir Francis (1770 1844) 16 Royal
Crescent
Sir Francis Burdett lived at No. 16 Royal
Crescent from 1814 until 1822. As a politician,
he was an ardent champion of electoral reform at
a time when it was crucially needed, and he
worked tirelessly throughout his life to expose
abuses of power wherever he encountered them. As
a baronet whose favourite recreation was fox
hunting, he seems an unlikely standard bearer
for such nineteenth century ideals as prison
reform, freedom of speech, and the abolition of
flogging in the army; but he served two terms of
imprisonment for his outspoken views, and was
heavily fined. He never lacked the courage and
determination to challenge corruption in public
affairs; in 1809, when the born Duke of York was
involved in the unsavoury business of Bath,
bartered army commissions, he seconded the
motion in the, east House of Commons for an
enquiry into the Duke's behaviour. He was MP for
Westminster then, and represented the
constituency for thirty years. No politician Two
of his day had greater integrity.
BURDETT COUTTS, Angela Georgina, Baroness
Burdett Coutts (1814 1906) 16 Royal Crescent
The deep concern for social reform that
motivated Sir Francis Burdett was inherited by
his daughter, Angela Georgina. She lived at No.
16 Royal Crescent for the first eight years of
her life, and later as Baroness Burdett Coutts,
became celebrated for her great philanthropy.
Hundreds of worthy causes benefited from her
generosity. She administered several charities,
endowed St Stephen's Westminster, and other
London churches and, as a lifelong lover of
animals, gave active support to the work of the
RSPCA. At her instigation, sewing and cookery
were introduced into the curricula of elementary
schools: and she even helped the costermongers
of Bethnal Green in East London by providing
stables for their donkeys.
She was, of course, immensely wealthy; as a
granddaughter of Thomas Coutts, the celebrated
banker, she was known as 'the richest heiress in
England'. Later, she added his name to her own,
and in 1871 she was raised to the peerage in
recognition of her invaluable work. She was an
indefatigable hostess, and there were few
outstanding figures of the day who did not share
the hospitality of her table; she was intimate
with the royal family, the Duke of Wellington,
Sir Robert Peel, Disraeli, Gladstone, Dickens,
Sir Henry Irving and many others. She died in
1906 at the age of ninety two, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.
DU BARRE Jean Baptiste, Vicomte (1749 1778) 8
Royal Crescent
In the churchyard at Bathampton, on the
outskirts of Bath, there is a tombstone with an
inscription that reads: 'Here rest the remains
of Jean Baptiste du Barre. Obit, 18th November,
1778'. The brief statement is a sad little
postscript to a heated quarrel that took place
at No. 8 Royal Crescent, and ended tragically on
Claverton Down, in the cold light of a November
dawn.
The Vicomte du Barre came to Bath in the
summer of 1778 with his wife and sister, and a
Captain Rice, an Irish Jacobite whose
grandfather had served in the French army. They
took a lease on No. 8 Royal Crescent, and
arranged lavish card parties in the house,
hoping to profit from the gambling mania that
gripped the city at that time. But one night
they quarrelled over the sharing of £600 that
they had won from a Colonel Champion, who lived
at No. 29 Royal Crescent. Rice threw down his
glove, the challenge was accepted and both men
hastily appointed seconds and made their way to
Claverton Down, where pistols were primed. Du
Barre fired first, and wounded his friend in the
thigh. Rice's aim was more deadly; the Frenchman
was hit in the chest, and died a few moments
later.
Rice was subsequently tried at Taunton, but
was acquitted and went to Spain. For the Vicomte,
there was only a cold resting place in the
churchyard at Bathampton.
FREDERICK AUGUSTUS, Duke of York (1763 1827)
1 and 16 Royal Crescent
George Ill's second son, Frederick Augustus,
Duke of York, enjoys a modest measure of
immortality because he inspired a nursery rhyme:
'The grand old Duke of York He had ten
thousand men; He marched them up to the top of a
hill, And he marched them down again'.
After an undistinguished military career he
became commander in chief of the army, and was
involved in an unsavoury scandal when his
mistress, Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, was accused of
taking bribes to procure through the Duke
promotions for senior army officers. He was
eventually exonerated, but relieved of his
command for two years. Nevertheless, he did much
to improve the army's standards of efficiency.
He visited Bath in 1795, when he attended the
opening of the new Pump Room, and was presented
with the Freedom of the city. In the following
year he stayed at No. 1 Royal Crescent; the Bath
Chronicle announced that 'the Duke of York has
engaged the first house in the Crescent, late
Mr. Sandford's, as his residence'.
On subsequent visits the Duke lodged at No.
16 Royal Crescent, now part of the Royal
Crescent Hotel, where a suite has been named
after him. Like his brother the Prince Regent,
later George IV, he was a man who loved the good
things of life, and he would certainly have
enjoyed the luxury of the modern accommodation
that bears his name. His coat of arms can be
seen over the archway at the east end of
Northumberland Place.
Who
was the Hon. Charles Hamilton?
Dr Monica Baly spotlights a forgotten figure
in the history of The Royal Crescent
Readers may recall that in the winter of 1988
we published 'The Building of the Royal
Crescent', in which we produced part of the
contract between the Hon. Charles Hamilton of
Painshill Surrey and the builder Sam Kirkham
made on 21st June 1773. Charles was precise in
his requirements including the detailed layout
of the two 'Necessarys' in the garden.
Who was the Hon Charles Hamilton who also
brought property in Lansdown with a garden that
stretched down to the back of the Royal
Crescent? A recent lecture on his life and work
revealed that Charles Hamilton is as worthy of a
plaque as some of his neighbours who are thus
remembered.
He was the 14th son of the Earl of Abercom
and during the Grand Tour he studied art and
garden design in Italy. On return he acquired an
estate at Painshill in Surrey to which he
devoted years landscaping and creating a garden
of different moods with long views across
Surrey, complete with grottos, a Gothic temple,
a Chinese arched bridge and a ruined Abbey.
Today this beautiful C18th Park is being
restored to its former glory by the Painshill
Park Trust with the Prince of Wales as the
patron.
In his day Charles Hamilton was known for his
garden designs rather like Capability Brown,
with whom he did not necessarily agree. When he
came to Bath at the age of 69, having given up
Painshill, he continued gardening, growing rare
plants and vines on the Lansdown slope (what is
now Northampton Street). There is evidence that
he advised on gardens and estates around Bath
including Beckford and Bowood, and it is
interesting to ponder the layout of the garden
at the back of No 14 under his masterly hand. He
died aged 82 years, still gardening.
Lecture given by Mavis Collier, archivist to
the Painshill Park Trust to the History of Bath
Research Group.
HARGOOD, Admiral Sir William (1762 1839)
9 Royal Crescent
Admiral Hargood retired to Bath after a
distinguished naval career that spanned almost
sixty years, and lived at No. 9 Royal Crescent
from 1834 until his death in 1839. At the time
of Trafalgar he was a captain commanding the
Belleisle, a 74 gun ship of the line under
Nelson's flag.
Hargood was promoted admiral on July 22nd
1831, and two months later, on the occasion of
William IV's coronation, he was awarded the KCB.
He had served as a lieutenant with the King then
Prince William Henry on the frigate Hebe in
1785, and afterwards they had corresponded
regularly; the award was a gesture of friendship
from one old salt to another, but richly
deserved, nonetheless. After a three year spell
as commander in chief at Plymouth, Sir William
spent five years of retirement in Bath, and died
at No. 9 Royal Crescent on 11th September, 1839.
He was buried in Bath Abbey, and his portrait
hangs in the famous Painted Hall at Greenwich.
Frederic Harrison (1829 – 1921) , 10 Royal
Crescent
By Mike Daw
Freedom and the Crescent –Revisited
Professor Vogeler and her husband in the
vaults of the Victoria Art Gallery, viewing the
portrait of Harrison painted by Margaret
Cooksley, 1844-1902
In November 1921 an illustrious resident of
the Crescent, Frederic Harrison, who lived at
No. 10, was presented with the Freedom of the
City of Bath at the Guildhall. Shortly
afterwards the usual bronze plaque was fixed to
the house recording his time there, from 1912
until his death in 1923.
Harrison was a true 'man of letters' of his
day and indeed an intellectual giant. He
published several of his most important works
while he lived here. The titles give a flavour
of some of his specialisations Positivism, its
Aims and Ideals and The Philosophy of Common
Sense and The Positive Evolution of Religion. As
a barrister he was a member of two Royal
Commissions and for a time was Professor of
jurisprudence and International Law at Lincoln's
Inn Hall. He was an admirer of Comte's
positivist philosophy and was a contemporary and
friend of George Saintsbury, who lived at No. 1.
On his ninetieth birthday in 1919 he was paid
a remarkable tribute. An appreciative address
was presented to him in his library, on the
first floor of No. 10, signed by the Prime
Minister Lloyd George, by the leaders of both
the Liberal and Labour Parties and by many
prominent figures in the Church, the professions
and the arts.
In this country his name and contribution
fell into semi obscurity, despite a lengthy
entry in the National Dictionary of Biography.
However in far off California, in the State
University at Fullerton, Professor Martha
Vogeler and her husband were in the latter part
of the twentieth century developing a deep
interest in Harrison. This culminated in her
definitive biography Frederic Harrison, The
Vocations of a Positivist which shone new light
on the man as 'one of the most vital and
engaging of his age'.
Coming right up to date, in September 2001
Professor Vogeler brought Harrison's surviving
descendants (above) to Bath and revisited the room that
had been the setting for the presentation of the
Address.
They kindly presented the present owner,
Michael Daw, with specially printed copies of
Harrison's response to being made a Freeman of
the City and a wonderfully detailed description
of the way his library had been furnished.
Michael had arranged for a private showing of
Harrison's portrait, now in the vaults of the
Victoria Art Gallery, and presented the
descendants with a digital reproduction of the
painting. John and Barbara Walker from the upper
floors of
No. 10 joined in what became quite an event:
John has the distinction of having actually read
some of the great man's works. Harrison's great
granddaughter Christian and his great great
grandson Matthew were thrilled by the visit and
a jolly time was had by all.
HAYGRATH, Dr John (1740 – 1827)
15 Royal Crescent
In 1798 a distinguished physician took up
residence at No. 15 Royal Crescent, next door to
the centre house. He was Dr. John Haygarth, and
he occupied the house for two years. For more
than thirty years before that he had served as
physician to Chester Infirmary, and he was in
his late fifties when he came to Bath.
In those days the attention paid in hospital
to such elementary precautions as isolation,
ventilation and scrupulous cleanliness was
negligible. John Haygarth was the first English
doctor to appreciate their crucial importance,
and to apply them rigorously. He conceived the
idea, which is now universal, of separately
treating fever patients in isolated wards, and
Chester Infirmary adopted the principle in 1783.
It seems incredible to us now, when we take
hygiene in hospitals for granted, that these
basic health requirements were hardly recognised
two hundred years ago. Dr. Haygarth was a
pioneer in their implementation, and he is
remembered in medical history for the vital
contribution he made to the advancement of
public health.
GEORGE DURANT KERSLEY OBE, TD, DL, FRCP, Hon DSc
20 Royal Crescent
George Kersley was a pioneer in rheumatology
when it was still a 'Cinderella' subject in
modern medicine. The eldest son of an eminent
Bath family at an early age he saw the
sufferings of the visitors to Bath who came to
'take the waters'. When he completed his
training at St Bartholomew's he resolved to take
a research post at the Mineral Water Hospital
(later the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic
Diseases), this was a brave decision since with
his ability, good looks and charm he could have
found a post in a fashionable consultancy in
London.
During the war Kersley set up the Army School
of Occupational Therapy at Taunton and worked as
an adviser to the Army on the training of
recruits and the rehabilitation of the wounded
from the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Royal
National Hospital had been badly damaged in the
'Baedeker' raids and the patients were dispersed
in temporary huts, which is how I first knew
this hospital and George Kersley. With the
coming of the National Health Service there was
an attempt to close the hospital which George
Kersley fought off. There then started a long
battle the 'Save the Min' particularly during
the time of the Hospital Plan under Enoch
Powell. George Kersley was indefatigable and
fought off five successive Ministers of Health
and against all odds the 'Min' survived and is
now a refurbished Trust Hospital.
As a consultant George Kersley interested
himself in research and was a founder member of
both the Empire Rheumatism Council (Now the
Arthritis and Rheumatism Council for Research)
and the British Association for Physical
Medicine. It was largely due to George Kersley's
efforts that this speciality gained recognition
from the Royal College of Physicians. George was
always a fighter.
In 1979 he was elected Mayor of Bath and was
also a founder member and chairman of the Bath
Tattoo for which he was appointed an OBE, he was
active on the Bath City Council, chairing its
committees for the Arts, Libraries, Youth and
the Spa, and he was still fighting for the
restoration of Bath as a Spa City at the time of
his death.
Since living in the Crescent George Kersley
has been an active supporter of the Royal
Crescent Society and a doughty campaigner in
times of trouble.
There was a well attended service of
thanksgiving for the life of George Kersley in
Bath Abbey on October 4th followed by a
reception in the Guildhall which was a happy
occasion of which George would, have approved.
LAMBALLE, Marie Therese Princesse de (1749 1792)
1 Royal Crescent
In 1786 an important visitor from France
lodged at No. 1 Royal Crescent. She was Marie
Therese Louise de Savoie Carignon, Princesse de
Lamballe, friend and lady in waiting to Queen
Marie Antoinette. According to the Bath
Chronicle of 27th September 1786, she arrived
with a large retinue of servants, and her
personal physician. She was a pale, slim lady
with curly, fair hair and a prominent nose. She
was abnormally sensitive; if she suffered the
slightest shock, she would collapse into a faint
that often lasted for two hours. The smell of
violets made her disastrously ill, and the sight
of shellfish, even in a painting, sent her into
a nervous fit.
She came back to England in 1791, when the
French Revolution was at its height, hoping to
persuade the British royal family to help Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette to escape from France.
But when she returned to Paris she died
horribly, as the Revolution reached its bloody
climax in the September Massacres of 1782.
LINLEY, Elizabeth (later Mrs. Sheridan) (1754
1792)
11 Royal Crescent
She was beautiful, and she sang like an
angel. Gainsborough and Reynolds painted her
portrait; two men fought duels over her; and
George Ill, if we are to believe Horace Walpole,
'ogled her at an oratorio'.
Elizabeth Linley was a member of a very
talented musical family. Her father, Thomas
Linley, arranged concerts in Bath, gave music
lessons, and played the harpsichord expertly.
Thomas, her brother, was an accomplished
violinist who visited Italy as a child prodigy,
and won the friendship and approbation of
Mozart: he died tragically in a boating accident
when he was twenty two. And Mary, her sister,
was also a talented singer. The family had lived
in Bath for many years first at Abbey Green,
then at Pierrepont Place, close to the Doric
archway that links Orchard Street and Pierrepont
Street (there is a bronze tablet here), and
finally at No. 11 Royal Crescent.
Elizabeth's beauty naturally attracted
several suitors. But eventually two men emerged
as chief contenders in the inevitable race for
her favours. One was Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
the future playwright, whose father taught
elocution in Bath; the other was a married man,
Captain Thomas Mathews. Sheridan showed his
resourcefulness by persuading the lady to elope
with him to France from No. 11 the Crescent; but
when they returned to England, Captain Mathews
was simmering with hostility, and lost no time
in publishing a strongly worded attack on
Sheridan in the Bath Chronicle. The two men
fought twice with swords, in London and at
Kingsdown near Bath, and in the second encounter
Sheridan was seriously wounded.
The passionate scenario appeared to have a
happy ending when Elizabeth ultimately married
Sheridan at Marylebone Church in 1773. But two
or three years later, the embryo playwright
emerged into the limelight; his two great
comedies, The Rivals and The School for Scandal,
were staged successfully, and he became the
proprietor of the Drury Lane theatre. Later, he
was elected MP for Stafford, and achieved some
notoriety as a politician and a close friend of
the Prince of Wales. Poor Elizabeth found it
difficult to cope with her changed
circumstances, and with Sheridan's infidelity.
She contracted tuberculosis and died in 1792, at
the tragically early age of thirty eight.
The bronze tablet on the facade of No. 11
Royal Crescent commemorates her famous elopement
in 1772.
MONTAGU, Elizabeth (1720 1800)
16 Royal Crescent
Because of her penchant for literary
causeries, and for her dedicated efforts to
replace cards with conversation, Mrs. Montagu
became known as 'Queen of the Bluestockings'.
She was a celebrated hostess in the eighteenth
century who gave genteel parties at her London
home and at Bath, where the emphasis was on
intellectual talk. Conversation, in Mrs.
Montagu's view, was infinitely preferable to
gambling with cards or dice, which she heartily
disliked.
Her husband was Edward Montagu, a wealthy man
who +s a grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich;
they were devoted to each other, but they led
individual lives, and Mrs. Montagu found a great
deal of fulfilment in Bath, where she lived in
several houses in Orange Court, Edgar Buildings,
Gay Street, Queen's Parade, the Circus and Royal
Crescent. She entertained frequently, and Fanny
Burney, Mrs. Thrale, Lady Huntingdon,
Christopher Anstey and Lord Lyttleton, among
others, enjoyed her hospitality, and the
conversation that she so assiduously engendered.
The house she occupied in Royal Crescent
appears to have been No. 16. She refers to it in
one of her letters as 'the centre house', and
goes on to say 'the beautiful situation of the
Crescent cannot be understood by any comparison
with anything in any town whatsoever'.
NOBLE, Lady Celia (1870 1962)
22 Royal
Crescent
Lady Celia Noble lived at No. 22 Royal
Crescent for many years, and died there in 1962
at the age of ninety two. She was a grand
daughter of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the
celebrated engineer who built the Great Western
Railway and designed the revolutionary steamship
Great Eastern.Her father, Arthur James, was an
assistant master at Eton, and her mother was
Brunel's daughter, Florence. After her marriage
to Saxton Noble, who later succeeded to a
baronetcy, she became well known as a hostess in
musical and artistic circles in London, and
after she came to Bath she continued, for many
years, to arrange concerts of chamber music at
her home in the Crescent. Princess Marie Louise,
a grand daughter of Queen Victoria, stayed with
her whenever she came to Bath, and Queen Mary,
consort of George V, visited her frequently
during the last war. Her salon was the last of a
line that stretched back to Mrs. Montagu in the
eighteenth century.
PITMAN, Sir Isaac (1813 1897)
17 Royal Crescent
The invention of shorthand is usually
credited to Sir Isaac Pitman, although Samuel
Taylor had published An Essay intended to
establish . . . a universal system of
Stenography as early as 1786. Pitman adapted
Taylor's principle, and produced a much more
practical and sophisticated method. He invented
a system of phonography, or writing by sound, in
1837, and finally produced the famous shorthand
system that is always linked with his name.
As a young man, he was dismissed from his job
as a schoolmaster at Wotton under Edge in
Gloucestershire, because he joined the 'New
Church' founded by Emmanuel. Swedenborg. Soon
afterwards, in 1839, he came to Bath, and lived
at No. 5 Nelson Place for four years. He loved
the city, and at that time he wrote: 'Of the
many beautiful cities in this fair country, Bath
is unquestionably the most beautiful'. Much
later in his life he took a house in the Royal
Crescent (No. 12), and seven years later, in
1896, he moved to No. 17, where a bronze tablet
commemorates his tenancy. He died there, at the
age of eighty four, on 22nd January, 1897.
Throughout his long life he was a man of
regular habits and unshakeable convictions. A
London newspaper described him as 'teetotaller,
vegetarian, Swedenborgian, anti vaccinationist,
non smoker, spelling reformer, and inventor of
phonography. At 84 he was still working hard at
his desk at 6.30 every morning, summer and
winter'. And there can be no doubt that his
rigorous self discipline brought him happiness
and fulfilment; the day before he died, he wrote
a brief note to the Rev. Gordon Drummond,
Minister of the New Church at Bath, in which he
said 'To those who ask how Isaac Pitman died,
say, Peacefully, and with no more concern than
in passing from one room to another, to take up
some further employment.'
Portrait by Sir A.S. Cope, National Portrait
Gallery, London
SAGE,
Fanny (c.1762 1835)
20 Royal Crescent
In 1778 a young woman called Fanny Sage came
to stay in Bath with her uncle, the Rev. Thomas
Sedgwick Whalley, DD. Dr. Whalley lived at No.
20 Royal Crescent; and when he heard that his
sister, Mrs. Sage, had died, he immediately
offered her daughter the hospitality of his
comfortable home.
Fanny stayed at No. 20 for something like ten
years. She was an attractive young woman who
sang well and played the harpsichord expertly.
Romney painted a full length portrait of her.
She became well known in the city, and her charm
and personality, allied to her beauty, earned
her the unofficial title of 'Queen of Bath'.
Later Fanny married, and spent most of her
time abroad. In 1828 she was widowed, and living
in France at La Fleche on the Loire. Her
remaining years were spent in complete obscurity
recollecting, perhaps, those halcyon days in
Bath when she was the toast of the city.
Bath's No. 1 Sage
George Saintsbury (1846 - 1933), 1A Royal
Crescent
John Walker celebrates the critic who retired
to write of a life devoted to books and wine
During the 1920s and early '30s many tourists
visited the Crescent not only to see its
renowned architecture but in the hope of
glimpsing another attraction with an 18th
century appeal the bent, somewhat shuffling
figure of George Saintsbury who, with his white
beard and black skull cup, looked more worn and
venerable than the surrounding buildings.
His home in what was then part of 1, Royal
Crescent, and is now la, was a familiar address
not only to gawking passers by but to the many
writers, including Rudyard Kipling, who came to
pay court and seek his advice. Saintsbury was
the most influential literary critic of his
time, perhaps of any time, and the best read man
of his age and, perhaps, of any age.
His influence is still apparent, although not
so much in literature. He was the godfather of
today's colour supplement and Sunday newspaper
wine writers, thanks to his much read and copied
Notes on a Cellar Book, which was written at No
la, and is 'a little, genial perfect work of
art', according to The Observer. His love of
good food and splendid wines led to the
formation of the Saintsbury Club to honour him
and to indulge in both.
Saintsbury's life was long enough for him,
when young, to have been excited by Swinburne's
first poems and, when old, to have been asked to
review T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which he
sensibly declined to do. He came to the Crescent
after his retirement from Edinburgh University,
where he had been
Professor of English Literature, notable for
his vast and erudite works on prosody and
English criticism, and reverted to what he had
done before he entered academic life, which was
literary and political journalism.
While living at No. 1 he wrote his three
Scrap Books, published between 1922 and 1924,
which are autobiographical jottings on whatever
took his fancy. They are an acquired taste.
My copy of his first volume has a scribbled
note from an admirer, saying that Saintsbury was
'a man to honour'. George Orwell, who called
Saintsbury 1 probably the most widely read man
in Europe', wrote of it in The Road to Wigan
Pier 'it takes a lot of guts to be openly such a
skunk as that'. Orwell was no doubt thinking of
such asides in the Scrap Books as: 'I know
something of history, and I have never heard or
read of any class tyrant, aristocrat,
capitalist, slave holder, buccaneer, middle
class shopkeeper so absolutely and exclusively
governed by selfishness as Trades Union
"Labour".' And: 'The two commandments of
"Labour" are: Nobody else shall have anything
that I have not. Somebody else shall pay for
everything I have.' Saintsbury's written and
conversational style was convoluted. A student
once noted a typical sentence in a lecture:
'...but while none, save these, of men living,
had done, or could have done, such things, there
was much here which whether either could have
done it or not neither had done.'
Who could guess what he is writing about in
this typical passage from A Scrap Book? 'But
personally I do not know anything which has,
during my own lifetime, experienced so severe
and so prolonged a decadence as the article
which was sold by that admirable person who out
Cleoned Cleon (0 for him to be in England now!);
which, becoming alive, supplied the loyal
subjects of Queen Niphleseth; which formed, in
another sense, the subject of one of the
pleasantest essays of Charles Lamb; and which
was judiciously selected by King Valoroso as the
solid of his breakfast to the Prince of Crim
Tartary.' His subject is pork sausages! (He
regarded beef sausages as always an
abomination.)
He died at the age of 87 in 1933, having
lived an immensely productive life until the
very end. He had retired to Bath because of its
associations with the 18th century. He was
seeking, he said, 'rest and refreshment'. He
found them both in the Royal Crescent.
THICKNESSE, Philip (1719 1792)
9 Royal Crescent
He was a soldier of fortune, an irascible
eccentric and, if he himself is to be believed,
the man who persuaded Gainsborough to come to
Bath. Ill tempered and aggressive, with an
inordinate capacity for making enemies, he
longed for wealth and recognition, and was
prepared to follow almost any path that would
lead him to either.
Thicknesse settled in Bath in 1749. During
his second marriage he lived in East Anglia,
where he had purchased the governorship of the
Landguard Fort at Harwich. He met Gainsborough
in Ipswich, and claims to have convinced the
struggling young painter that he could improve
his prospects considerably by going to Bath. The
advice was sound, and Gainsborough took it; he
arrived in the city in 1759, and soon achieved
great success as a portrait painter.
Accompanied by his third wife, Thicknesse
returned to Bath in 1768, and bought a house at
No. 9 Royal Crescent. Six years later, he
quarrelled with Gainsborough, and after the
artist had left Bath for London, he moved to a
cottage behind Lansdown Place called St.
Catherine's Hermitage. He wrote extensively at
this time, still quarrelled regularly, and
travelled in Europe whenever he could. Among his
literary effusions were three volumes of
revealing memoirs, and The New Prose Bath Guide,
a factual description of the city which he hoped
might rival Anstey's best seller in popularity.
It was not a great success; but it bears the
unmistakable stamp of his eccentricity, and can
still be read with enjoyment today.
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