Wife of Bath

“ What ayleth suche an olde man for to chide?”
But the Wife of Bath does not quote Solomon for the proverb, as we find him referred to on [14] p. 20. Again, in a subsequent stanza, p. 21, we are strongly reminded of the lines where the Wife of Bath thus describes her conduct after she had married her fifth husband ”

“ There is a good wife of beside Bath, with a red face and ten pounds’ weight of kerchiefs on her head; a great traveller and a great talker she is—we can hear her chattering right across the square; it is a pity she is so deaf. ”

“ Wife for a Month (A) , a drama by Beaumont and Fletcher (1624) . The “wife” is Evanthê (3 syl.) , the chaste wife of Valerio, pursued by Frederick, the licentious brother of Alphonso, king of Naples. She repels his base advances, and, to punish her, he offers to give her to any one for one month, at the end of which time whoever accepts her is to die. No one appears, and the lady is restored to her husband.
Wife of Bath, one of the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas à Becket.--Chaucer. Canterbury Tales (1388) . ”

“ I was not now at Redriff, where if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea captain or other might have talked with me upon the honourable terms of matrimony; but I was at Bath, where men find a mistress sometimes, but very rarely look for a wife; and consequently all the particular acquaintances a woman can expect there must have some tendency that way.
I had spent the first season well enough; for though I had contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to Bath for his diversion, yet I had entered into no felonious treaty. ”

“ A maid was stationed at the door, near which stood the fatal bath; but the husband returning with precipitation, suddenly forced it open, in spite of her feeble opposition, and discovered his wife in the arms of Equitan. The prince, under the first impulse of surprize and remorse, started from the bed, and, heedlessly plunging into the boiling bath, was instantly suffocated or scalded to death. ”

“ Thus shall ye speak and beguile them, for there can no man swear and lie half so boldly as a woman. I say not this concerning wives that be wise, unless it be when they have forgotten themselves. A wise wife, if she knoweth her own good, shall make him believe the chough is mad, and take her own maid to witness. ”

“ His wife was hardly formed for popularity, but she was highly respected. She was not exactly open-handed, but she had a great idea of the claims of family ties, and a keen sense of justice as between herself and others. The couple were unusually devoted to each other. The only crook in their lot appeared to be the constant gout attacks from which the husband suffered, and the necessity for frequent visits to Bath: visits, by the way, which had helped to give to their niece, Jane Austen, such good opportunities for studying the Bath varieties of human nature. ”

“ But the perverseness of forty families cannot interfere with the destiny of a young lady who is to be a heroine: the wind will blow a hero to her.
Mr. Allen, the principal squire in Mr. Morland’s Wiltshire parish of Fullerton, is ordered to Bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution; and his wife, a good-humoured woman, fond of Miss Morland, and probably aware that, if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad, invites the happy Catherine to accompany her.
Catherine was in luck, for Bath was the queen of the old watering-places ”

“ Ten years had thus passed, when the cousin, whose marriage was mentioned at the beginning of this story, was ordered to Bath by her physician. She entreated Mary to accompany her, who, after some persuasion, consented. It was a formidable journey in those days, and they were to stay some months. They found a pleasant lodging. Mary, with some reluctance, was drawn into society, and occasionally accompanied her [pg 354] cousin to the Assemblies, which were then in high vogue.
General Pollexfen was absent from Bath when his wife arrived there. ”

“ It may be here added, as a sample of one or two other ladies of the last century, that after Lord Bath was a widower, and had been made childless by the loss of his gallant son, unattached ladies made offers of marriage to him, he being one of the wealthiest men of the day. ”

“ The Bath season was England's carnival, when cares and ceremonial alike were thrown to the winds, when the pleasure of the moment was the only ambition worth pursuing, and when even the prudish found a fearful joy in playing hide-and-seek with vice.
But although the fairest women in the land flocked to Bath, by common consent not one of them all was so beautiful and bewitching as Elizabeth Ann Linley, the girl-nightingale, whose voice entranced the ear daily at the Assembly Rooms concerts as her loveliness feasted the eye. ”

“ Longueville, to Lady Betty for maintenance. I am an orphan, and often very lonely. The world of Bath is new to me. I know nothing of the ways of fine people such as I meet here. But I have some trinkets which were my mother's, and I would gladly sell them, if only," and she clasped her hands as if praying for a favour to be conferred—"if only I could gain what I most covet—lessons in music. I have a violin. I bought it with the money I received for a pearl-brooch. The necklace which matches this brooch is still mine. Its price would pay for many lessons. ”

“ Another resident of whom I saw much at Bath was my mother's cousin, Miss Harriet Dumbleton (her mother was a Leycester) —an old maiden lady, who lived in the most primitive manner, really scarcely allowing herself enough to eat, because, like St. Elizabeth, though she had a very good fortune, she had given everything she had to the poor. She would even sell her furniture, books, and pictures, to give away the money they realised. ”

“ The élite left the City of the West, or if they remained, there were no public assemblies at which they might display their jewels and varied costumes.
It is needless to say that Lady Betty took her departure, as it was considered "the mode" to do so; and report said young Lord Basingstoke had made it evident that he had no serious intentions, by leaving Bath some time before the vivacious little widow deserted No. 6, North Parade. ”

“ But there are some who by force of an indomitable will and the highest gifts of intellect and culture leave behind them a name which to all time shall be honoured, and Bath may think herself favoured that in the long list of distinguished men and women who have frequented that fair city and Queen of the West, she may write in letters of gold the names of William Herschel and his sister Caroline.
[1] DUELLING ON CLAVERTON DOWN.
In the year 1778 many foreign nobles made Bath their residence. ”

“ It was a much safer place for a gentleman in his predicament:—he might there be important at comparatively little expense.—Two material advantages of Bath over London had of course been given all their weight, its more convenient distance from Kellynch, only fifty miles, and Lady Russell's spending some part of every winter there; and to the very great satisfaction of Lady Russell, whose first views on the projected change had been for Bath, Sir Walter and Elizabeth were induced to believe that they should lose neither consequence nor enjoyment by settling there. ”

“ Bath House was the world in little. It seemed years since she had left Warkworth Manor. She found that world a somewhat mean and sordid place. She still loved the gaiety and sumptuousness of her new life, for it appealed to inherited instincts. But she had not found a responsive spirit. The young married women were absorbed in their children or their [Pg 125] flirtations. The girls were superficially read, “accomplished,” conceited, insincere, with not an aspiration above getting a husband of fortune. Lady Mary, alarmed at last, was become cool and spiteful. Lady Hunsdon was almost an enemy. ”

“ I hear you are to give your beautiful ward"—Lady Betty's friends always took care to call Griselda a ward, not a niece—"to Sir Maxwell Danby. He has a fine place, upon my word," said an old beau, who posed as a young one. "He has a fine place, and a pretty fortune. I congratulate you, madam, and the young lady. For my part, I always have reckoned her the belle of Bath this season." ”

“ Nor would such a woman be the rage now at Bath or anywhere else.
Lady Miller was of a higher order of womanhood. She created a literary circle in a beautiful villa at Batheaston, inviting her friends to contribute poems and deposit them in a vase from Frascati.
It may seem to us ridiculous that successful contributors should be crowned by Lady Miller with all due solemnity with myrtle wreaths. But there is surely the same spirit abroad at the close of the nineteenth as marked the last years of the eighteenth century. The pretenders are not dead. They have not vanished out of the land. ”

“ How do you know that your husband and children are still living at Bath? It is a long journey from Newcastle to Bath, and when you arrive there you may find that your husband has broken up his home and gone away, no one might be able to tell you where, for you must consider as beyond all question that your husband and sister have long ago supposed you dead. They may have left England for all you know. How can you tell but that they may be residing abroad? The newspaper paragraphs stating your case were very plentifully published: that you know ”

“ Royal visits to Bath were as yet few and far between, indeed the only royal personages who had visited Bath before the Princess were Queen Anne (before she came to the throne) with her husband Prince George of Denmark.33 Princess Amelia was received by the Mayor and Corporation in full state, and a hundred young men on horseback met her coach at the North Gate and formed an escort to her lodgings. ”

“ I cannot take up with all the new young ladies who come to Bath, and least of all those who are talked of as much as she is. She is the greatest flirt imaginable: that foolish old beau, Sir Walter Elliot, and half the men of Bath are running after her."
"No, indeed, dear madam; you have been misinformed, and I must defend her," said Elizabeth with more earnestness. "She is not in the least a flirt, and though men may run after her, they receive no encouragement to do so. But if you do not like her, there is no more to be said. ”

“ Allen, or any body else. I really believe I shall always be talking of Bath, when I am at home again—I do like it so very much. If I could but have papa and mamma, and the rest of them here, I suppose I should be too happy! James's coming (my eldest brother) is quite delightful—and especially as it turns out, that the very family we are just got so intimate with, are his intimate friends already. Oh! who can ever be tired of Bath?"
"Not those who bring such fresh feelings of every sort to it, as you do. ”

“ I expected every now and then to hear of drunken saints beating seven or eight wives all at once, and perhaps even to have seen the unusual spectacle of a house full of women and children rushing screaming into the street with one intoxicated husband and father in pursuit. Everywhere else in the world wife-beating is a pastime more or less indulged in coram publico. In London, at any rate, men so arrange their chastisements that you can hear the screams from the street and see the wife run out of the front door on to the pavement. ”

“ But not only was her figure familiar in the bath-room, there was another place where she constantly took up her position, and where she could not persuade her son to follow her, and that place was the chapel which had been built by Selina, Countess of Huntingdon.
Mrs. Travers was at this time greatly exercised in mind about her son. Since his health had improved, he had entered more into the gaieties of the city of Bath, and made friends of whom she could not approve. The Pump Room was a place where many idlers and votaries of fashion found a convenient resort after the morning bath ”

“ The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that affair I took the diversion of going to the Bath, for as I was still far from being old, so my humour, which was always gay, continued so to an extreme; and being now, as it were, a woman of fortune though I was a woman without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in my way that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before.
The Bath is a place of gallantry enough; expensive, and full of snares. ”

“ She resumed her place at the table, frowning at Bill with the prescience of an experienced wife who feels in her bones that her husband has made a precious mess of something or other which has not yet come to light. "Let me see," she said. "Oh, yes. Your father and I have decided, Maude, that no girl has any chance of finding a good husband nowadays unless she has a proper place to receive her callers—a place where she will look her best. ”

“ Her opinion was given with so much thought, and yet so much decision, that Maude glowed with pride and with pleasure. There was knowledge and authority behind the words of this unaccountable woman.
‘How sweet you are!’ she cried. ‘I feel that what you say is true. I feel that that is what a wife should be to her husband. Please God, I will be so to Frank!’
‘And one other piece of advice before I leave you,’ said Violet Wright. ‘Don’t ever take your husband for granted. Don’t ever accept his kiss or caress as a routine thing. ”