From the time I started reading 'historical novels', I knew about Bath. Virtually any work of fiction involving the middle or upper classes, set in Georgian England had them going there at some point. I pictured horse drawn carriages filling the streets, ladies in long gowns and men in stockings and braid-covered jackets parading up and down the cobbled pavements, meeting up in tea rooms or at balls. I always thought of Bath's buildings and social life, however, the starting point for all this wasn't in the 18th century, but very much earlier. The most distinguishing feature of Bath -- formerly known as Aquae Sulis -- is not its architecture but its hot spring. Seeing this was at the top of Bill's list and so we went there after leaving the Fashion Museum.
The Roman baths date back to 76 A.D. and archaeological findings indicate that around the hot spring was not just a series of rooms in which one bathed, sweated or got a massage, but also a temple and a market. It was a major social meeting place even back then.
Unfortunately we arrived just after a whole load of school children, making it a bit noisy and crowded. However, there were individual handsets like mobile phones. You dialed the numbers shown on the display, and a nicely audible recording provided information. For some of the displays, Bill Bryson had added his own comments; he seems to pop up often here. I was interested to note that he has rather an English accent, actually, and like me he says ‘quite’ a lot, though I could still detect a bit of Iowa in some of his words. He wasn't as funny as I hoped he might be, though.
There is a head of the Roman goddess Minerva on display and it’s in remarkably good condition. It was found accidentally during some modern construction work. These were apparently ‘her’ baths in Roman times. Bryson noted that she’s not very pretty or
approachable, in fact he didn’t think any of the Roman sculptures of women’s faces were very attractive. I have sometimes taken some comfort from some of the Roman women’s figures, however.
In early Roman times, men and women bathed together nude and got up to all sorts, apparently. Bryson said he couldn’t reconcile that activity within a spiritual setting, which the baths were. I think he’s letting his Christian background colour his perceptions. We’re talking pagan gods here. That said, even the Romans eventually outlawed communal bathing and eventually created stairs on two sides of a pool to provide separate ends for each gender.
As part of the temple there was a sacrificial altar, next to which was an augerer’s stone. Apparently the entrails of the slain animal were spread on this stone to be examined for information; the augerer then made predictions for the person who had offered the animal. I was reminded of my Dad’s fascination with Latin as the source of many English words; in fact I still have his book, Origins, about the etymology of words.
Bryson was quite taken with some of the curses, inscribed on pewter, quite of few of which have been found at the site of the temple. Apparently one's prayers to the gods and goddesses weren't so much about asking good things for oneself as wishing bad things on others, particularly on thieves who stole one's property. Bryson noted how personal were some of these curses and for what would seem today relatively minor losses:
Docemedis has lost 2 gloves. He asks that the person who has stolen them should lose his minds and his eyes in the temple where she [Minerva, presumably] appoints.
Though much of the site was rather ugly, a couple of the pools were really beautiful,
and others were quite interesting. Like in the fashion museum, one could see layer upon layer of history. The level of the water shown was as in Roman times.
The brown marks on the wall show the level during later eras, when there was the King and Queen’s Pools, also frequented by the aristocracy. Rings on the wall were placed by grateful, healed persons. Of course the hot baths were prescribed by doctors for various ailments, via immersion and ingestion. Apparently the water temperature was the most comfortable at the edges and so the rings were useful to help one avoid the hotter centre. Above this pool are the windows of the famous Pump Room.
Along with a few staff dressed in Roman drapery, there was steam rising off the green water of this large pool and it was really
beautiful. Particularly when one could see the spires of the elegant Bath Abbey above the enclosure.
They are all there next to one another, the baths, the abbey
and the restaurant.
Like the top of the Newcastle United Football club’s stadium in Newcastle (the local place of worship), the Abbey was to be visible from any number of places we walked. One was also aware of seeing the tree line behind the houses, as Bath sits in a valley at the bottom of which is the River Avon, which Bill said was River River, Avon being a Welsh word for river.
The first night we’d gone to an Indian restaurant and so I was hoping for something a bit less spicy the next evening. We ended up having burgers and kebabs at a quaint place called the Walrus and Carpenter, listening to Carly Simon’s Tapestry album and then something Bill later identified as Joy Division. It was a funny place with very small rooms on several levels. Great music, though.
On our first morning in Bath we set out to find the tourist area. I’m aware that one is supposed to be a ‘traveller’ not a ‘tourist’ these days; though ‘traveller’ here in Britain means Gypsy community in wagons with horses, no less, and has bad connotations throughout Europe, I gather. Be that as it may, we had 4 nights and 3 days to spend, so tourists we were.
We initially missed the tourist area by a wide mark due to avoiding icy paths, using a limited map and Bill’s rule about not asking directions. I did point out that a lot of people seemed to be going a particular way, but Bill said they were just going to Homebase. Our excursion took us up a steep hillside and back down, through many a street full of elegant, prosperous looking stone houses. The next morning, armed with another map, we went past Homebase like everyone else and got to the city centre in 10 minutes instead of an hour or so. Never mind, walking is good exercise.
The first place we went in was the Fashion Museum (formerly the Museum of Costume), which was in the Old Assembly Rooms. these will have been the social gathering place for certain people in Georgian times. I count myself very fortunate that Bill doesn’t mind looking at this sort of stuff. In fact, I think he has quite a good eye and if he said he liked something on display, I usually found it worth my while to have a second look. There were a reasonable number of men’s outfits on display and he had a good laugh at some of the stuff he wore in ‘his day’ – 60s/70s, I think. You'll no doubt recognise this dress:
Photographs without flash were permitted, but because of the glass cases many didn’t turn out well. After the relatively modern clothes from my life time (that's modern, OK?), the more historical displays began with some exquisitely feminine underclothing, camisoles and chemises and the like, from the turn of the last century.
Then there was a wall of gloves, the oldest of which were 400 years old, about the time Shakespeare was alive. The rich embroidery on the part around the wrist was tiny and detailed, small works of art, really. Turns out that ‘gauntlet’ can refer either to that wide cuff alone or to a whole glove, so one doesn’t have to deconstruct one’s glove to throw just part down. Though peoples’ fingers were no longer than they are today, the fingers of these gloves were very long. This was, like the practice of growing disgustingly long finger nails or wearing stupidly high heels, to demonstrate that the wearer did no manual work.
There was a room of dresses going back a couple of hundred years, placed along side of artifacts from the same period. I wasn’t that interested in the long full gowns with the odd silhouettes, but it was interesting to learn that the shape and weight of drinking glasses as we know them today was established during Elizabethan times. Before then, much heavier glasses were used; however, the levy of a tax on glass by weight changed the design to that of much like the present day.
Another thing I learned was about the Regency period, when empire waist dresses were fashionable and Jane Austen was writing. It ties in slightly with American history in that it is to do with the reign of King George III, during which the American Revolution took place. It is called the Regency period because George III was finally declared mad in 1811 and his son, George IV (what else?) ruled as regent until his father's death in 1820.
Though the Regency dresses had lots of interesting design details I was really interested in the dresses from the 20s and 30s. In fact, I liked looking at anything that had vertical lines and upper body interest.
This black lace evening dress with ribbon decoration from 1925 was my one of my two favourites. In trying to make out the name of the designer (Boue Soeurs, Paris) from my blurred photo, I discovered yet another museum I can see I'll be spending online time at. Just in case you are wondering, the dramatic gold dress is by Bruce Oldfield. We saw one of his exhibits years ago at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. I was amazed to learn that he was a Barnado's baby.
My other favourite was this knit outfit that appears to include a top a skirt, and some sort of cape; though it might have been a camisole and a long-sleeved garment, it was really hard to tell. I loved the detail at the shoulder and neckline. Unfortunately I was on overload by then and didn't get the name of the designer.
The only had two Vionnet dresses on display. They were lovely, but were some of her later work with a different silhouette than I've seen in the past. I think the Vionnet dresses shown in this Threads magazine article are far more interesting.
In addition to the clothing displays, the building itself was magnificent. The grand rooms were stock full of chandeliers (some of which were being cleaned) and large fireplaces.
We finished our visit with tea and a bun from the museum café, an impressive room in itself. More specifically, Bill selected a Bath bun and I followed suit. It was about the size of a hamburger bun, with a dimple in the centre, but the bread was slightly sweet. It was topped with raisins and a sprinkling of ‘rock’ sugar, some of which gathered in the dimple. I bit into a lump of solid sugar and I’m sure I made the face most people would if they’d bitten into a lemon. I am not a fan of sugar and therefore cannot recommend a Bath bun.
However, I would definitely recommend Bath's Fashion Museum!
Just a note to say we've been away this past weekend to Bath, land of the clinched jaw speech. Actually, they didn't talk that badly, Bill just likes to tease about their regional accent. We were walking around The Circus (which apparently always was more than just a word for round, though this is just a ring of terraced houses with a huge tree in the middle) and he noted where the coal chutes had been back in the old days days. He said that was the old joke about sex.
S: What joke?
B: That's what coal came in.
S: I don't get it.
B: Sex, coal was delivered in sex ... sacks.
Unfortunately, most of his humour is that sort of sideways stuff I don't get.
Raising the tone a bit (but not reliably much, if you're familiar with the esteemed author, now Chancellor of Durham University, a beautiful place), Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue has interesting explanations for the different regional accents.
Anyhow, Bath is a place I've long wanted to see. When Bill said he had a course in Bristol Monday through Thursday, it seemed a perfect opportunity to visit Bath (about 15-20 minutes by train from Bristol) over a long weekend. It was everything I'd hoped and more. Of course I took tons of pictures to share with you. Now, if I could just get the camera to cough up those pictures...
Remember me telling you about the time that Bill lost his camera at Mesa Verde? Actually, he managed to lose both his cameras on that trip. Fortunately they were both found.
I thought of that whole experience when I happened upon this young man's idea, which I think is brilliant.
I've discovered Delicious, a bookmarking thing that helps you never get around to housework by keeping track of everything you ever found vaguely interesting and thought you might want to go back to. You get to assign tags or categories to make it easier to retrieve the URLs. I highly recommend it for killing productivity.
One of my tags is 'blogideas'. Here are a few of the things I saved to share with you:
- If you like architecture (like we do), perhaps you'd like to take a test to see 'what kind of house are you'. I want to go back and spend more time to learn the words for what I'm drooling over. BTW I'm a Greek Revival, AKA Southern Colonial.
- If you like things in black and white, you'll like Two Kinds of People. I've not read very far, but so far I'm a summer, dog, long-hair. For all that I'd like to think I'm not easily pigeon-holed, she's doing a great job of it so far.
- If you (American) want to know how some Brits see you, follow this linked trail to a number of articles, starting with Delias. I found all this quite fascinating when I first came across. However, if you're a fan of Bill Bryson, you'll already have some insight into all this. I have much more to say about all this than time just now, so I expect I'll pick up the subject of courtesy in another post.
- If you (Brits) want to be more polite, try this one. I've always joked that Brits do snobbery better than anyone (except I'm not actually kidding); also that a remarkable few understand R.S.V.P. Maybe it's that innate anti-French thing.
- If you don't care about being rude, but don't want to act old, this is for you.
- If you have no intention of thinking about anything so serious, watch this. I think it might be the modern (or is it post-modern?) equivalent of the (not retro) original Lava Lamps.
We don't have a TV in the bedroom or the living room or the kitchen. In all of those places I would prefer that the attention be elsewhere than staring at a box. The other reason the TV isn't in any of the other rooms is that it is ugly and takes up a lot of space. The telly is relegated to the upstairs landing and my Grandmothers chaise lounge is parked in front of it, so it looks like I have my own movie viewing area, which is true. If Bill wants to watch something with me -- an even rarer occasion than my viewing -- he pulls an office chair out of the East wing.
This all by way of preface to saying that I miss a lot of the world's news. I know about the earthquake in Haiti, but probably not much about what Obama is doing. So, some time back when I stumbled on this article, I was surprised. We do, indeed, live in interesting times.
I wonder if there's money to be made, exporting MaxFactor cosmetics from Britain to the US? What do you think?
