Bath in 1786 was a city of some 30,000 inhabitants. Since Roman times it had been a health resort, noted for its mineral hot springs. In the eighteenth century it developed into Britain’s premier spa, offering in addition to its water a full program of amusements: gambling, music, theater, sport. Affluent visitors came from all over Europe. The 1780s were a period of robust growth. Edith Sitwell offers an elegant introduction to the eighteenth-century city in her Bath, London: National Trust, 1987. For a more scholarly treatment, read Peter Borsay, The Image of Georgian Bath, 1700-2000: Towns, Heritage, and History, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Walter W. Ison’s The Georgian Buildings of Bath from 1700 to 1830, London: Faber & Faber, 1990, is a rich source of architectural plans, illustrations, and maps.
Combe Park in Black Gold is a thinly fictional representation of Prior Park, one of Bath’s greatest landmarks. Robert Allen [1693-1764], a wealthy, self-made business man and organizer of Britain’s postal system, conceived a house in the Palladian style and placed it adjacent to his quarries of Bath stone. It was completed by the middle of the eighteenth century.
In the nineteenth century the wings of the house were much enlarged and the central building received the addition of an italianate stairway to the portico on the north front. Sir Harry’s tennis hall in Black Gold is on the site of a gymnasium, added to Prior Park in the 1830s.
The combe [rhymes with room] at Prior Park is a steep narrow valley extending from the ridge, a short distance above the country house, down to the Avon. In this valley Allen laid out an English landscape garden, then one of the finest in the country. It commands a splendid view of the city to the north.
Prior Park during Allen’s lifetime was the center of a lively social and cultural life. Among his many guests were the poet Alexander Pope and the novelist Henry Fielding. Following Allen’s death, his property passed to his niece, Gertrude, who sold the furnishings and leased out the buildings. In 1785 she moved back and was living there at the time of Black Gold.
Subsequently, Prior Park has had a checkered history, including two disastrous fires, the significant alteration of its interior spaces, and the neglect of the park. Since the 1830s its buildings have housed a Roman Catholic school, presently Prior Park College, which has beautifully restored the main building. Allen’s quarry lies buried beneath the cricket field. The National Trust owns the park and has undertaken to bring it back to its former glory.
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In the eighteenth century, despite sporadic condemnation by magistrates, bare-knuckle boxing became a popular sport and adopted the rules and other conventions that are found in the “battle” between Lord Jeff and Tom Futrell.
In the 1780s the sport also became fashionable and its champions, such as Dan Mendoza, were celebrities. Futrell did fight in the presence of the Prince of Wales and many other dignitaries. Victor in twenty matches, he was beaten by John Jackson, who resembles the fictional Lord Jeff in his quality of decent, modest gentleman, as well as in his physical strength and skillful style of fighting. The chief difference between them lay in their skin color and social condition.
Lord Jeff also bears a physical resemblance to Tom Molineaux, a freed American slave and a giant of heroic strength, who fought for the British championship in 1810. For a popular account of the sport, see Bohun Lynch, The Prize Ring, London: Country Life, 1925.
At the time of Black Gold there were 35,000 blacks living in London and several thousand more in Liverpool, Bristol, and Bath. Many were slaves, or fugitive slaves, or freed from slavery. Most worked as grooms or domestic servants, sometimes for distinguished personalities, such as Dr. Samuel Johnson. Despite the Common Law’s principle that a slave becomes free the moment he lands in Britain, the courts continued to treat slaves as property and affirm the right of owners to recover fugitives.
For an overview of the transatlantic slave trade, read Hugh Thomas, The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Slavery in Britain is discussed by Gretchen Gerzina, Black London: Life Before Emancipation, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995, and by James Walvin, Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery, London: HarperCollins, 1992.
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Gainsborough’s painting of Elizabeth Linley and her brother Tom (1768) is one of the treasures of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 1784 the painter sold it to John Sackville, the Third Duke of Dorset. Poetic license has placed it in Harriet’s apartment. In 1787 it was most likely in the ducal residence at Knole Park, Sevenoaks, Kent, unless its owner brought it with him to Paris, where he was British ambassador to the French court.
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Gambling was a scourge of eighteenth-century society. Mr. John Twycross and Richard Wetenall did in fact operate a gambling house on Alfred Street near the Upper Assembly Rooms. On April 11, 1787, the magistrates closed down the house and brought the two men to trial. They were convicted with great fanfare and initially fined 1800 pounds. Powerful hands worked on their behalf behind the scenes, and the fines were reduced to 550 pounds. Whether they resumed their profession is not known, but gambling continued unabated in Bath.