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Posts Tagged ‘Regency Bath’

Hint: You Don’t Have To Dine in the Pump Room to Try the Mineral Water

Posted in jane austen, tagged , on October 3, 2008| 2 Comments »

The water from King Spring is no longer free

The water from King's Spring is no longer free

I am attending a conference this weekend (no, not the JASNA meeting in Chicago – drat). When I get back I will be publishing a series of posts about Bath in honor of Austenprose’s Gothic Northanger Abbey Month. Stay tuned for visits to Bath and its environs all month long. Meanwhile, feel free to visit the modern Pump Room in the link below.

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Assembly Rooms, Bath

Posted in Bath, jane austen, tagged , , , , on August 17, 2008| 6 Comments »

Catherine too made some purchases herself, and when all these matters were arranged, the important evening came which was to usher her into the Upper Rooms. Her hair was cut and dressed by the best hand, her clothes put on with care, and both Mrs. Allen and her maid declared she looked quite as she should do. With such encouragement, Catherine hoped at least to pass uncensured through the crowd. As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it. – Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen fans are familiar with the assembly room scenes in Northanger Abbey, where Catherine Meets Mr. Tilney (1986 film). In the recent 2007 ITV NA production, Catherine and Mrs. Allen encounter a crush in the Upper Assembly Rooms, and they had to push through the throng to make it to the ballroom where Catherine had difficulty seeing the dancers. Although they were surrounded by people, no one talked to Catherine or Mrs. Allen because they had received no proper introductions. Henry Tilney fixed the problem by asking the Master of Ceremonies to formally introduce him to Catherine and her escort.
The Upper Assembly Rooms (top) as Jane knew them remained essentially unchanged during Constance Hill’s day, but by the time she wrote her 1923 biography of Jane, the Lower Rooms no longer existed. Miss Hill wrote in Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends:

The portion that remains of the lower rooms

The old Assembly or Lower Rooms no longer exist, having been destroyed by fire many years ago. The author of a Bath Guide which appeared early in the century, speaks of them as situated “on the Walks leading from the Grove to the Parades,” and as containing “a ball-room ninety feet long, as well as two tea-rooms, a card-room,” and “an apartment devoted to the games of chess and backgammon”; and tells us that they were “superbly furnished with chandeliers, girandoles, &c.” – For Constance’s delightful description of a gathering in the Assembly Rooms, please click on this link.

The Upper Assembly Rooms’ irreplaceable crystal chandeliers were taken down and kept in safe storage during World War II. This foresight paid off, for the rooms were bombed by the Germans in 1942. They were restored in 1988-1991, almost fifty years later, by R. Wilkinson & Sons of London. The process of lowering them and cleaning them is laborious and precise, as the photograph below attests.

According to the Fashion Museum in Bath’s website, “The chandeliers in the three rooms are each an average height of eight feet and they are made of Whitefriars crystal from the Whitefriars Glassworks in London.” The  ballroom chandeliers were originally lit by forty candles each.

For more information about the Assembly Rooms and their crystal chandeliers, click on the posts below:

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Public Bathing in Bath: Georgian Style

Posted in Bath, jane austen, Northanger Abbey, Regency Customs, Regency Life, Regency World, tagged , , on July 13, 2008| 12 Comments »

I had always wondered about this hot bath scene in 1986’s Northanger Abbey (click on the link to watch a 2-minute YouTube video) and how accurate it was. I was particularly curious to know if men and women truly mingled in the hot baths, and what kind of items were placed on the floating objects that the bathers held. While Jane Austen did not write this scene in her novel, the scene in the film lent a note of authenticity to Catherine Morland’s visit to Bath.

In Aristocrats, Stella Tillyard writes a full description of  these 18th century bathers:

In the eighteenth century pride of place went to the Pump Room, where warm mineral water was sold by the glass, and the King’s Bath. This giant communal cistern was right under the windows of the Pump Room, open to the gaze of all. Patients sat in the bath with hot water right up to their necks. Men were enveloped in brown linen suits. Women wore petticoats and jackets of the same material. They sat side by side in a hot, faintly sulphurous mist.

Limp cotton handkerchiefs caught the sweat which dribbled down the bathers’ faces; afterwards they were tucked away in the brims of patients’ hats. Lightweight bowls of copper floated perilously on the water. Inside them vials of oil and sweet smelling pomanders bobbed up and down. On a cold morning the bathers in their caps and hats looked to the curious onlookers pressed against the glass above them like perspiring mushrooms rising into the thick gaseous air (p 35-36).


More links:

Image and two details: Cruikshank, Public Bathing in Bath or Stewing Alive, 1825

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