So, whatever Bath
may have been to pampered Romans, who over-ate themselves, it had little
importance to the stout, healthy middle ages, and it was not till the
reign of Charles II. that it began to look up. Doctors and touters--the
two were often one in those days--thronged there, and fools were found
in plenty to follow them. At last the blessed countenance of portly Anne
smiled on the pig styes of King Bladud. In 1703 she went to Bath, and
from that time 'people of distinction' flocked there. The assemblage was
not perhaps very brilliant or very refined. The visitors danced on the
green, and played privately at hazard. A few sharpers found their way
down from London; and at last the Duke of Beaufort instituted an M.C. in
the person of Captain Webster--Nash's predecessor--whose main act of
glory was in setting up gambling as a public amusement. It remained for
Nash to make the place what it afterwards was, when Chesterfield could
lounge in the Pump-room and take snuff with the Beau; when Sarah of
Marlborough, Lord and Lady Hervey, the Duke of Wharton, Congreve, and
all the little-great of the day thronged thither rather to kill time
with less ceremony than in London, than to cure complaints more or less
imaginary.
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