BOOK REVIEW: Literary Walks In Bath

By Robert W. Morrell

Literary Walks In Bath, Eleven Excursions in the Company of Eminent Authors. Andrew Swift & Kirsten Elliott. Bath, Akeman Press, 2012. xii & 320pp. Illustrated. Paperback. ISBN 978-9560989-3-1. £15.00. 

Last year I spent a week on holiday in Bath, a picturesque and historic Somerset city whose roots reach back to pre-Roman times, but achieved national, if not international, fame in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a spa town, the water of which was reputed to be particularly efficacious, a belief that attracted to the city the great and good, and the not so great and good, all anxious to partake of its water, or be seen in the company of the famous in British society. As well as this side of Bath’s story there is its rich literary heritage, and it is this side of the town’s story on which the authors concentrate. 

Both authors are well qualified to write on the town for they have long experience in conducting walking tours of the city, as well as authoring several other books on it, or aspects of it. Reading this book left me wishing that I had it when I stayed in Bath as it would have made my time there much more rewarding. However, this said, what has it to do with Thomas Paine, who, to my knowledge, never visited it? Well while there is nothing in the book that indicates he ever did, what it also brings to the fore in chapter seven, which is entitled, ‘The Rhythm of Tom Paine’s Bones’, are details of the interest in and reaction locally to Paine’s ideas, as is indicated in the chapter’s sub-heading, “Radicalism and Repression in Pitt’s ‘Reign of Terror'”. 

What the chapter relates offers is a tour of the places in the city associated with individuals known for their support either for Paine and/or his ideas. It commences with Henry Hunt, who in 1817 is said to have addressed between twelve and twenty thousand people at a gathering in Orange Grove, though the Bath Chronicle put the figure at five hundred, the purpose of the meeting being to agitate for universal suffrage. 

The military, so the authors note, kept a watchful eye on the crowd but did not, as they also point out, act as they did at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester two years later. Others who were to address meetings in the bath included Henry Vincent the Chartist, who also called for universal suffrage. The authors offer an account of the life of Paine that extends over two pages and includes a portrait of him. This leads to a discussion on Paine’s critic Hannah More, who has a commemorative plaque on a building in Great Pulteney Street, where she had lived. Her attacks on Paine’s ideas are covered in reasonable detail, in the course of which the author’s support for Paine becomes evident, although they make the mistake of calling his book Rights of Man, The Rights of Man. They go on to notice the city prison in Grove Street “where many of Paine’s supporters, and others fighting for their rights ended up”. Details are also given of the numerous occasions near Bath where locals hung or burned Paine in effigy, while membership of the Loyal Bath Association which had a membership of seven thousand, although, they note, that many of those who signed up had done so at the behest of their employers and for them not to have done so would have entailed their dismissal and denunciation to the authorities. 

John Thelwall, who had assisted in the formation of the London Corresponding Society is buried in Bath and details are given as to how to find his grave. The chapter, a truly fascinating and informative read, even if you do not visit the city, also offers an explanation for the chapter’s title, it comes from a song, described as “stirring”, by Graham Moore, “The Rhythm of Tom Paine’s Bones”, though they add the thinking behind the song’s title “is a convoluted and bizarre one. They will by citing a tribute by Robert Ingersoll to Paine and the words of Graham Moore that Paine can still provide inspiration for those fighting new threats to the Rights of Man. 

Those interested in radicals and radicalism will also find the previous chapter: ‘Rebels and Romantics, Catharine Macaulay, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley & Percy Bysshe Shelley’, a productive read. Of those in the title the least known is Catharine Macaulay, and the authors devote considerable coverage to this remarkable woman, a republican, supporter of the American colonists in their struggle for independence, who writing to Washington on events in France, in which she referred to “all friends of Liberty on this side of the Atlantic are now rejoicing for an event which in all probability had been accelerated by the American Revolution”. Mary Wollstonecroft wrote of Catharine Macaulay that she had been the woman of the greatest abilities undoubtedly this country had ever produced. 

Literary Walks in Bath is not a dull repetition of the common place, but a scintillating tour of the city’s literary heritage, and in many respects of Britain’s, doing so in eleven detailed chapters. The authors have as well as a detailed knowledge of their city but an in-depth literary knowledge. They write well and are not beyond humorous anecdotes. It’s a wonderful book from which I emerged with a greater increase in my knowledge on aspects of Britain’s literary heritage than I had before I read it. Do I have any criticism, strangely yes. I would have liked an index.