18th C
The city was so popular when the Gainsborough family moved several years later to The Circus (called then The King's Circus just as the main hot water bath was known as The King's Bath) that people like the Rev. Edmund Nelson, father of the illustrious Horatio, made the ardouous cross-country journey from Norfolk to spend most of his winters in the spa town. Lord Nelson's sister, Susannah, was apprenticed to a milliner in Bath and another sister, Anne, died there after dancing all night at a ball and catching a chill when leaving.
Nelson himself chose to convalesce at Bath in 1780 after returning from service in Jamaica where he became seriously ill through drinking water contaminated by the poisonous Machineel tree. Bath doctors "physicked" him four times daily, and he travelled by sedan chair to The King's Bath to drink the waters three times each day. The standard prescription required a patient to drink from three to six pints of the foul-tasting water daily. If you visit Bath today you can taste it for yourself from a fountain in the Pump Room above the Baths. Nelson was so ill that chairmen were engaged to carry him to and from his sick bed. He survived and went on to enjoy popularity as the country's most famous naval hero.
However, the family's close connection with the spa town continued for many years. Nelson's father died in Bath and the hero's long-suffering wife Fanny was at the old man's deathbed. Nelson, however, refused to return to attend his father's funeral, preferring to remain with his mistress, the glamorous Emma Hamilton, at Merton, the house he had bought for her in Surrey.
In the autumn of 1763 Gainsborough moved the family out of the "smoke" at Abbey House to take up residence in a detached house now known as Lansdown Lodge, situated high above the town on Lansdown Road, This attractive building offered a garden, splendid views across the city below and a healthier atmosphere for the girls, all for £30 a year. Leaving Margaret there, Gainsborough went back down the hill each day to work in Abbey House where he kept his studio and exhibition room, while letting out the remainder of the house, the shop to his sister the milliner and other rooms to lodgers, bringing in a welcome extra income. The Gainsboroughs continued to let out rooms in their own house when they moved here to 17 The Circus three years later.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
LIVING WITH MRS THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH IN THE CIRCUS, BATH, 18TH /21ST C By VIVIENNE RAE-ELLIS The following is a work in progress, to be published here in instalments. The manuscript has not been submitted to any publisher. References and bibliography will be published following the final chapter. 1) go to the Manuscript below right.. 2) Start from the top entry.. 3) Read down through the manuscript
The Circus
About Me
- Vivienne Rae-Ellis FRGS
- I am an ex-pat Tasmanian author who has lived in England since 1987. I have had eleven books published in seventeen editions by publishers who include Faber&Faber, Heinemann, Hamish Hamilton, Robert Hale, University Of Melbourne, University of Yale, Angus Robertson and the Australian Institute Of Aboriginal Studies. Subjects include biographies of three famous Australians: Trucanini, the last Aboriginal Tasmanian to live and die on the island; Louisa Anne Meredith, Australia's first resident female author, and George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of the Aborigines in the 1830's. Published work includes books for adults and for children based on the history of Australia; the paranormal;and Public Libraries.
