A Letter from Bath

Walking in the footsteps of Jane Austen

{Bath, England}

Here’s the thing: I was expecting balls.

This is my second time visiting Bath in as many years. I stayed for a week in the Widcombe neighborhood last year, and I’ve been Bath-adjacent for the past six weeks. And yet, in all that time I haven’t attended a single ball. I haven’t even been invited to one, honestly.

Part of me is glad - I’m not traveling with a ball gown, after all.

But it would certainly be nice to get an invitation.

I’ve tried to follow the rules that Beau Nash, the famous 18th-century Master of Ceremonies of Bath…the man who MADE Bath into what it is today…posted on the doors of the Assembly Rooms:

RULES to be observed at BATH.

1. THAT a visit of ceremony at first coming and another at going away, are all that are expected or desired, by ladies of quality and fashion,-- except impertinents. 

   (Actually, I don’t know what that means.)

2. THAT Ladies coming to the Ball appoint a Time for their Footmen coming to wait on them Home, to prevent Disturbances and Invoconveniences to Themselves and Others.

Ok, I’m going to stop there, because the next eleven items concern proper manners at the ball, and we’ve already established that I don’t get invited to those. There’s only so much a modern-day lady of quality and fashion can do.

More quality than fashion, it has to be said.

I love Bath.

It was the city I was most looking forward to visiting on my first trip to England in 2022, and it turned out to be the city that I loved the most. It was also the city that I was the most anxious to return to when I came back to England this year.

Bath is England’s great Georgian city. Lying in the gently sloping valley of the River Avon, its streets are lined with elegant, symmetrical 18th-century homes and storefronts constructed of Bath limestone - a creamy stone that turns the color of honey in certain lights. It is architecturally interesting, delightfully bookish, loaded with history, and surrounded by some of England’s loveliest countryside. It is right up my alley.

(I know I should say it’s “right up my street”, because I’m in England…but then again I should also try to pronounce Bath with an English accent. My experience tells me, though, that it is virtually impossible for an American to do this without sounding ridiculous, and so I stick with the American version. Besides, the guys on the train say “Baf”, so I think there is room for a whole range of pronunciations. I’m sure Beau Nash would have a different opinion, but I’ve given up on him until I get invited to a ball.)

Now, I am mostly kidding about balls…but if I did want to attend one, I’ve come at the right time of year. My stay near Bath this year coincides with the annual Jane Austen festival. The festival is kind of a big deal, with over 3,500 Jane Austen enthusiasts from around the world descending on Bath for ten days. Jane’s first completed novel, Northanger Abbey, and her last one, Persuasion, are both partly set in Bath - and the author herself lived here on and off through much of her twenties. Jane didn’t really like Bath, honestly. She was more of a country girl. Nevertheless, when you consider her history with the city, and think about the backdrop provided by its beautiful Georgian architecture, it’s hard to deny that Bath is the perfect location for her large yearly party.

I’m not attending the festival. I am, however, very much looking forward to watching the opening day Regency Costumed Promenade, in which around 800 Jane-ites don period dress and parade through the streets of Bath.

It breaks my heart a little bit, therefore, when I come down with food poisoning on the night before the Promenade, and have to spend the entire day in bed. I am taken out in the most English way possible: by a bad scone. Bad clotted cream, to be more specific. To be honest, part of me knows when I am eating the crusty cream that I am making a bad decision, and yet I tell myself that I just don’t know enough about English cream, and that the café certainly wouldn’t serve cream that had gone bad to a customer. I was so, so wrong. I will trust my instincts next time.

Anyway, I don’t get to see the Promenade.

The Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street

Which bums me out, because it turns out to be a beautifully sunny day, and the Promenade’s route goes past some of the most interesting sights in Bath - starting at the picture-perfect Holburne Museum at the eastern end of Great Pulteney Street. A few days later, when I am back on my feet, I walk the route myself.

Great Pulteney Street is Bath's grandest thoroughfare. It is difficult to get a picture of it today, with street signs and pesky cars everywhere - but this is what it looked like when Jane Austen lived nearby. You can see the Holburne Museum at the very end.

It wasn’t the Holburne Museum, then - it was Sydney Hotel, and the park that surrounded the building hotel was called Sydney Gardens. Jane Austen lived across the street from the Sydney Hotel, at 4 Syndey Place, and walked through Sydney Gardens every morning - pretending, presumably, that she was in her beloved countryside, and not stuck in Bath.

Great Pulteney Street looks much the same today as it did in the 18th century. Open and wide, and lined with identical, symmetrical, honey-colored row houses, it must be England’s Regency-est street. Walking from the Holburne Museum down to elegant, diamond-shaped Laura Place at the other end (where Sir Walter Eliot’s fancy cousin Lady Dalrymple lives in Persuasion), it’s easy to imagine Jane Austen and her contemporaries promenading the evening away - walking, observing and gossiping in hushed tones.

Just past Laura Place is Pulteney Bridge, designed by the great English architect Robert Adam. Inspired by the Rialto Bridge in Venice, and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Robert Adam lined the elegant bridge with little shops on either side. Today, they are filled with art galleries and bakeries, a lovely florist and several cafés. I walk across the bridge, turn left and head towards the heart of the city. Along the way, I pass a fountain depicting Rebecca at the well, with the inscription WATER IS BEST at the base. I turn the corner and walk into the paved churchyard of Bath Abbey.

As I walk into the courtyard, a young musician pushes a full upright piano by me on a rolling dolly. A few minutes later, he is set up in the square next door, and the crescendoing notes of Coldplay fill the air. Not to play favorites, but street musicians in Bath are the best. They tend towards piano and classical or acoustic guitar, which is a very welcome change from the Andrew Lloyd Weber ballads and Andrea Bocelli knock-offs that seem to be more common elsewhere in England.

To my right is the famous Pump Room, the social center of Regency Bath. On the pediment above the door are inscribed the same words that I saw on Rebecca’s well: WATER IS BEST, this time in Latin.

Next to the Pump Room is the location where in 1816 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin rented a room in a now-demolished boarding house. She attended local classes and worked on a book that she had started while she was in Switzerland earlier that year. In December, she married Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the following year she finished the book, which she titled Frankenstein.

Side note: Jane Austen gets all of the fanfare, but the list of authors who have called Bath home is seemingly endless: Ann Radcliffe, Fanny Burney, Tobias Smollett, L.P. Hartley and Angela Carter lived here. Edward Bulwer-Lytton of “It was a dark and stormy night” fame stayed here, as did Samuel Johnson. England’s great 18th-century female historian Catherine Macaulay lived here (until she ran away with a 21-year-old physician’s apprentice at the age of 47), and Alexander Pope lived here part-time, at Ralph Allen’s grand Prior Park estate on the hill.

Ahead of me looms the unusual facade of Bath Abbey. A series of strange little angels climb up ladders on either side of a wall of stained glass. They represent Jacob’s Ladder, of course…but it’s a quirky and uncommon motif. I learn later that the 15th-century Bishop of Bath was contemplating tearing down the Norman cathedral that stood on the site of Bath Abbey when a vision came to him in a dream of a cathedral with angels climbing up and down the facade.

What more does one need? The existing cathedral was demolished and Bath Abbey as we know it today was built.

At the opposite end of the courtyard is a small colonnade and through that are the Roman Baths that give Bath its name. Dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva, the baths are almost 2,000 years old. Bath wasn’t Bath at that point, but a small Roman settlement called Aquae Sulis - named, of course, for the goddess. The baths are fabulous (and have a wonderful audio tour narrated by Bill Bryson), but I have wandered off of the promenade path, and so I turn right and head toward the Circus and the Royal Crescent on my way to the final destination, the Assembly Rooms.

The townhouses of the Circus feature a frieze of Masonic symbols.

I walk the short distance up Gay Street - where Sir Walter Eliot deigns to set up rooms in Persuasion - and into the great circle of the Circus. The Circus and The Royal Crescent, just blocks apart, are two of Bath’s masterpieces of Georgian architecture, the first designed by the architect John Wood (The Elder), and the second by his son John Wood (The Younger). The Royal Crescent is probably the more famous of the two, but I prefer the Circus. Like Great Pulteney Street, it is difficult to get a good photo of, but if you could look down on it from above you would see a great circle of townhouses, with a grassy lawn in the center. A cluster of massive trees dominates the lawn.

John Wood (The Elder), who was interested in Paganism and believed that Bath was at one time a Druidic hot spot, designed the Circus to the exact dimensions of nearby Stonehenge. A frieze above the doorway lines the entire length of the row houses, made up of 500 Masonic symbols, no two the same.

Legend has it that the road that leads from the Circus to the Royal Crescent is a ley-line, and that the circle of the Circus represents the sun and the Crescent, the moon. It’s all very mystical.

Also, it’s England, so the buildings are haunted.

The Royal Crescent

I finally make my way to the Assembly Rooms - the building where Jane Austen danced, and where Beau Nash posted his Rules of Bath…and it is closed. Closed for a private event. The Assembly Rooms are owned by the National Trust, and, being a member, I have tried to get in on three separate occasions. Each time, it has been closed for a private event. It is frustrating. Almost as frustrating as trying to get an invitation to a ball. I give them a break just this one time, since it is Jane Austen Festival time, but I fear I may never get in.

I start to head back downtown, but along the way I pass Persephone Books, and I’m never, ever going to walk past Persephone Books without stopping in. As I browse, an American woman comes in in full Regency dress. We make small talk about the festival and I tell her my story of woe about the sketchy scone and the Promenade. She says that she has to catch a plane back to the States that evening, but that if I want to use her tickets to a period-dress reception the following day at the Assembly Rooms, I am welcome to them.

I know that this is as close as I will ever come to attending a ball in Bath.

And yet, I have to decline the offer. When one is traveling for several months at a time out of a carry-on suitcase, one hardly has space for the kind of costume required for such an event.

Still, it’s a kind offer, and it makes me smile. I pick out a few books and head back downtown, looking forward to an evening of good reading. After all, the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid, right?

I’m pretty sure a very wise woman wrote that once, anyway…

XO