THE ABBEY
The Abbey is the very centre of Bath. Round it cluster the Municipal Offices, the Baths, and the Pump Room, and along the broad pavements invalids are drawn in Bath chairs—one of the five articles with which the name of the City is indissolubly linked. When Bath chairs, Bath chaps, Bath stone, and Bath buns are no longer so distinguished, then will come the final crash. One need not insist so greatly upon Bath Olivers, because they are not in every one’s mouth, either literally or figuratively; although, to be sure, they are much more exclusively a local product than “Bath” buns; while “Bath” bricks are not made at Bath, but at Bridgewater.
The surroundings of Bath Abbey are strikingly Continental in appearance, for that great church stands in a flagged place, instead of being set in a green and shady close, as usually is the case in England. Its surroundings have always been thronged, from the time when the Flying Machines crawled, to when the last of the mail coaches drew up in front of the “White Lion,” in the Market Place hard by, or at the “White Hart,” which stood until 1866, where the “Grand Pump Room” Hotel now rises. The story of the Abbey is too long for these pages; but it is remarkable at once for being one of the very latest Gothic buildings in the country; for its possessing windows so large and so many that it has been called the “Lantern of England;” for its central tower, which is not square, being eleven feet narrower on its north and south sides than those to the east and west; and for the prodigious number of small marble and stone memorial tablets on its interior walls—tablets so many that they gave rise to the famous epigram by Quin:—
“These walls, so full of monument and bust,
Shew how Bath waters serve to lay the dust.”
BATH ABBEY: THE WEST FRONT.
Quite distinguished dust it is, too. Noblemen and dames of high degree; Admirals of the Blue, the White, the Red; legal, and military, and clerical dignitaries, and all manner of Civil servants, mostly of the mid-eighteenth century, and chiefly hailing from India and the Colonies, as described with much pomp and circumstance on their cenotaphs which so thickly cover the walls, and spoil the architectural effect. “The Bath,” was the solace of their kind, returning from the Tropics with nutmeg livers, gout, and autocratic ways. At “the Bath” they resided on half-pay, drank the waters, supported the local doctors, quarrelled with their neighbours, and consistently damned all “new-fangled notions,” until death laid them by the heels.There must have been—if we are capable of believing their epitaphs—some paragons of all the virtues in those times, and Bath seems to have claimed them all. Here, for instance, is Alicia, Countess of Erroll, “in whom was combined every virtue that could adorn human nature.” She died young; the world is too wicked for such.
“JACOB’S LADDER”
Bath Abbey is remarkable in one respect far above all the minsters and cathedrals of England. As you stand facing the great West Front, which looks so grim and grey upon the stony courtyard that stretches before it, you see, flanking the immense west window, two heavy piers, terminating in turrets. On these piers are carved the singular representations of “Jacob’s Ladder” that have given the Abbey a fame even beyond the merit of its architecture. From near the ground-level, almost to the turrets, this curious carving stretches, battered long years ago by the fury of an age which prided itself on its enmity to “superstitious images,” and reduced by the further neglect of more than two hundred years to an almost shapeless mass. The origin of this curious decoration is found in the vision of Bishop Oliver King, who restored the then ruined Abbey in 1499. In this vision, by which he was induced to undertake the great work, he saw angels ascending and descending a ladder, and heard a voice say, “Let an Olive establish a Crown, and let a King restore the Church.” He interpreted this as a Divine injunction to himself to repair the Abbey, and accordingly commenced the work; dying, however, before it was completed. The “ladders” have sculptured angels on them, while on the wall above the arch of the great window is represented a great concourse of adoring angels, with a figure of God in glory in their midst. Many of the figures have their heads knocked off; but the whole of this sculpture is shortly to be restored.
