This month, Andrew Swift takes us on a tour of the city’s hidden nooks and quiet places – perfect for that romantic tête-à-tête.
Celebrating Valentine’s Day with declarations of undying love is nothing new. Sending cards filled with fulsome poetry was already standard practice in the 18th century. The best known Valentine’s Day rhyme – ‘The rose is red, the violet’s blue, The honey’s sweet, and so are you’ – appeared in 1784. A rather more dubious effort – ‘written by Strephon, on Valentine’s Day, to Chloe, his lovely Valentine’ – appeared in the Bath Chronicle in 1765:
This is the Day (by Custom taught)
Each by t’other Sex are sought.
Evr’y Bird selects his Mate,
Ev’ry Maiden tries her Fate;
Thanks to Fortune, you’re my Lot,
All the rest I value not.
Given Bath’s reputation as a city of courtship and seduction, where young ladies were brought to meet eligible suitors and dashing blades came in search of wealthy heiresses, such protestations were not confined to Valentine’s Day.
In the early 18th century, mixed bathing provided plenty of opportunities for amorous encounters. In 1700, the scurrilous writer Ned Ward claimed that the Cross Bath was ‘more famed for pleasure than cures. Here is performed all the wanton dalliances imaginable: celebrated beauties, panting breasts and curious shapes almost exposed to public view; languishing eyes, darting killing glances, tempting amorous postures, attended by soft music, enough to tempt a vestal to forbidden pleasure.’
Under Beau Nash, things became more decorous. It was at the balls in Bath’s assembly rooms, under the flickering glare of the chandeliers, that glances and words were exchanged amid jostling crowds and in the brief moments of physical intimacy afforded by boisterous country dances. While this may have been a good way to meet, it was hardly the ideal setting for getting to know someone better. For that, more secluded spots were needed – such as the ‘comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk’ which Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot seek out at the end of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
This is where Bath’s pleasure gardens came into their own. They may have had lots of activity and plenty of crowds, but they also had plenty of hidden arbours, bosky walks and sylvan retreats which could have been – and probably were – designed especially for romantic assignations.
Bath’s first pleasure gardens – attached to its first assembly rooms – were Harrison’s Walks, which survive today as Parade Gardens. Before North Parade Bridge was built, they extended south along a riverside walk to South Parade, where there was a secluded arbour known as Delia’s Grotto. Delia was a name used – like Chloe or Phyllis – in 18th-century poetry for a beloved woman. There was nothing fictional, however, about Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Elizabeth Linley – the celebrated lovers who chose this spot for clandestine liaisons as they planned their elopement to France in 1772. Amazingly, the arbour still survives, on the patio of a restaurant, and can seen from across the river.
There were several other pleasure gardens in Bath, including one in Widcombe which offered cold-water bathing and for a time was known as Cupid’s Garden. Although this sounds intriguing, little more is known about it – but, given what Ned Ward had to say about the Cross Bath, that may be just as well.
Bath’s most famous pleasure gardens were Sydney Gardens, which we can still enjoy today, albeit with none of the diversions which so captivated its early visitors. Among the most popular attractions were the swings – not for children but for grown-ups. And some of what was associated with them was very grown up indeed. As anyone familiar with Fragonard’s painting, The Happy Accidents of the Swing, will be aware, in the 18th century, whenever there was a young lady gliding through the air on a swing there was likely to be a young man gazing up at her in admiration. A poem published in the Bath Chronicle in 1795 to celebrate the opening of the gardens included lines ensuring that any young ladies who fancied a swing knew what they were letting themselves in for:
But if to matrimony you aspire,
|Ascend the swing, some amorous youth you’ll fire:
Shewn to advantage thus, your heighten’d charms
Will surely tempt some Lover to your arms.
This was a bit racy even for the broad-minded Georgians, and, although Sydney Gardens was open seven days a week, with all its other attractions up and running, notices made clear that there would be ‘no swinging on Sundays’.
That still left plenty of other options, though, in particular an ingenious labyrinth, which was celebrated in an even more toe-curlingly bad poem printed in the Chronicle a year later:
Then take a puzzle in the verdant maze,
Turning and twisting many different ways,
But with some fair one, form’d to make a wife,
Wish ourselves Hymen-rivetted for life.
Although this seems somewhat unclear, it is plainly not something you would have found at the average vicarage tea party. At the centre of the labyrinth was a Merlin swing – a precursor of the swingboat – along with four small wooden shelters – ideal for tête-à-tête assignations. The exit from the labyrinth was via a ‘romantic subterranean passage’ leading to a large grotto, with shady nooks galore.
The labyrinth disappeared in the 1850s, when two houses were built on the site, but the grotto almost certainly survived and was re-erected in the grounds of Vellore House on Sydney Road – now the Bath Spa Hotel – where it can still be seen today.
Jane Austen lived at 4 Sydney Place, right opposite the entrance to Sydney Gardens, for four years, and we know, from her letters, that she watched a firework display there. But as to whether she penetrated the recesses of the labyrinth or was ever tempted to try the swings out for size, we have no idea. Her two Bath novels, in which she describes other aspects of social life in the city so penetratingly, include no mention of its pleasure gardens. But, if those poems in the Chronicle accurately reflect the shenanigans that went on there, perhaps that is not too surprising.
Recommended reading: No Swinging on Sundays: The Story of Bath’s Lost Pleasure Gardens by Kirsten Elliott is available now from bookshops or direct from www.akemanpress.com
Andrew Swift’s books on walking in around Bath can be found at www.akemanpress.com