BATH

Which?	Northanger Abbey & Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818)
What?	Splendid English city, setting for a send-up of Georgian high society

THE CRESCENT’S honeyed stone glows in the afternoon sunlight, a radiant architectural swoosh between the neat green lawn and cloudless blue sky. A long procession of Ionic columns and sash windows sweeps away in perfect symmetry, while the footsteps of the slowly strolling curious – faces up-turned, mouths agape – slap on worn-smooth slabs. Such splendour! But look behind the flawless facade and this elegant terrace tells a different story. Round the other side it’s an untidy irregularity of annexes and add-ons. A Queen Anne front, a Mary-Anne back. A public face concealing darker truths …

‘Oh! Who can ever be tired of Bath?’ Who indeed. In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s playful satire on the Gothic novel, heroine Catherine Morland speaks of the allure of the Somerset city in the early 19th century – an allure that continues to this day. In England, there is nowhere else quite like it; nowhere as perfectly, homogeneously preserved. To walk along its sweeping crescents and golden streets now is almost to step straight back into Austen’s pages, minus the bonnets and breeches.

Bath nestles within a loop of the River Avon, on the southern edge of the rolling-green Cotswold Hills. The city owes its situation and success to its hot springs, unique in Britain, and first developed by the Romans who built an elaborate bathing complex here, which they called Aquae Sulis. Though the Roman temple fell into disuse, and was eventually forgotten – until its rediscovery in 1775 – these healing waters continued to be sought after. From the 17th century, following a succession of royal visits, Bath became the resort du jour, with society’s finest coming here for ‘the season’ to bathe, drink, see, be seen, gossip and matchmake. Befitting its status, the city was given a stylish Georgian facelift, with father-and-son architects John Wood the Elder (1704–1754) and Younger (1728–1782) remodelling the city, using the local golden limestone. Between them they designed many splendid streets and edifices: Queen Square, the perfect Palladian ring of The Circus, the grand Assembly Rooms, the Royal Crescent’s curve of 30 classical townhouses. By the time Jane Austen moved to Bath in 1801, living here until 1806, it was the most coherent and majestic of cityscapes, even if its fashionability was beginning to wane.

Austen herself wasn’t especially enamoured with Bath. She was a creature of the countryside and found the city’s superficiality and ostentation overbearing. But it provided rich creative pickings. An entire city obsessed with manners and class was a useful backdrop for her brand of quick-witted, acerbic social commentary. Two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which were first published in one volume in 1818 shortly after Austen’s death, are partly set in the city. They offer not only a picture of Bath, but of English high society during the Regency era.

Balls and parties were an integral part of fashionable life. Jane herself, as well as Northanger’s Catherine and Persuasion’s Anne Elliot, attended gatherings at Bath’s Assembly Rooms, opened in 1771, where four public rooms – the Octagon, Ball Room, Card Room and Tea Room – allowed for all sorts of socialising. The huge 18th-century crystal chandeliers, under which Austen’s envoys would have danced and whispered, still dazzle from the soaring ceilings; now the building also houses the Fashion Museum, where you can try on Georgian hats and dresses.

The Pump Room was another must in Austen’s time. The beau monde would visit this colonnaded building by Bath Abbey to take either the curative waters or afternoon tea, to listen to the orchestra and to ‘parade up and down for an hour, looking at everybody and speaking to no one’. It was during preparatory investigations into the construction of the Pump Room that the remains of the Roman complex were rediscovered. Today, part of this grand meeting place is the excellent Roman Baths museum, where you can descend into an underbelly of ancient pools, temples and hypocausts. However, in the Pump Room’s fine main hall, you can still eat cake and finger sandwiches, and you can still sip the medicinal, if foul-tasting, mineral waters from the King’s Spring.

One of the real beauties of Bath is that so much is so unchanged. And not just the landmark buildings but the layout of the streets themselves. For instance, Austen has her players shopping on lively Milsom Street, still one of the city’s premier retail rows; look up above the modern shop fronts to the tops of the buildings and you’re transported back in time. Austen’s characters also promenade Great Pulteney Street – still the city’s most impressive Georgian avenue – and take carriages up to the ‘lofty, dignified situation’ of Camden Place, a little-touristed terrace affording excellent views if you can bear the stiff walk up.

Northanger’s Catherine hastens to the Royal Crescent ‘to breathe the fresh air of better company’ (today many go to visit No. 1, now a museum furnished in 18th-century style). Meanwhile, at the close of Persuasion, Anne and her Captain Wentworth reconcile along the tree-lined Gravel Walk, which still connects the Royal Crescent with Queen Square.

Bath has become synonymous with Austen. Despite the destructive Bath Blitz of April 1942 and the so-called ‘Sack of Bath’ in the 1960s, when ill-thought urban development saw some heritage lost, the Georgian spirit of the city remains. It’s easy to envisage the streets filled with ladies in their white gloves and empire-line dresses, and gents in their tailcoats and cravats. Come during the annual autumn Jane Austen Festival and you don’t even need to imagine, as Catherine Morland and Anne Elliot-alikes really do flood the streets, their slippers and gauze gowns grazing the cobbles – Austen’s creations come to life.