Soaking Up Bath

Each morning the vacationing elite of 18th century England gathered at the elegant, chandelier-bedecked Pump Room in this ancient spa city to sip the supposedly curative waters of England’s only hot mineral spring. Always eager to step back in time, my wife, Sandy, and I, on an excursion to Bath last December, stopped by for a little midmorning sip.

Not much has changed in the succeeding centuries, or so we concluded. The Pump Room remains a sumptuous gathering spot. In keeping with tradition, patrons are serenaded by a tuxedoed string trio while being served a morning snack--pastry, perhaps, and hot chocolate--and, yes, a small glass of tinny-tasting hot mineral water.

The water is served from a bubbling stone fountain by an attendant in period dress. In times past, an ailing visitor might have downed several glasses in a morning; I felt quite healthy, and one was enough for me, thank you.

One of Europe’s prettiest old cities, Bath owes its popularity as a prime tourist attraction to two disparate architectural treasures: the Roman Baths, in use from the 1st to 4th centuries and restored in the late 19th, and the handsome streets and buildings that constitute a living museum of 18th century urban design.

The baths often are called the finest Roman ruins in Britain. The base and pavement of the Great Bath are original, surrounded by an eye-pleasing restoration of related structures. The site and its museum incorporate materials unearthed during excavations that began during the city’s 18th century architectural renaissance.

This “Georgian” Bath--the style evolved during the reigns of George I, II and III--is a triumph of order and precision, with streets and squares engineered for maximum attractiveness and buildings designed with classical proportions and details. Entire neighborhoods have been assiduously restored and preserved. When a horse-drawn carriage clip-clops past, you can easily imagine you’re a part of the social whirl satirized by Jane Austen in her first novel, “Northanger Abbey,” set primarily in Bath. Read it before you go or at least while you’re there.

Nowadays Bath, awash in tourists in summer, is most often seen on a day trip from London. We were lucky to have an uncrowded four days to get to know the city more intimately, as visitors in Austen’s day did. For them the height of the season was January to March, so in December we felt quite in fashion.

In a Georgian mode, we made a point of booking into a Georgian-style hotel, the Queensberry. But when it came time to dine, we sought out restaurants featuring fully contemporary British menus.

Though the city’s population is about 85,000--it is both an artists’ colony and a retirement haven for the genteel middle class--it seems small. We walked easily from Upper Town (the Georgian quarter) to Lower Town (the Roman Baths) and back--diverted, I’ll confess, almost as much by the fine shops and tempting cafes as by the history and architecture.

In the middle of all the Georgiana, Bath has made an effort to restore its brightly colored Victorian storefronts--an eye-dazzling contrast to pale Georgian stone--and the city prides itself on the uniqueness of its many specialty shops and antiques dealers. We toted home a crock of fine Stilton from Paxton & Whitfield, a “cheese monger” since 1797.

Bath also was a prominent religious center in the Middle Ages, its great Abbey Church and the baths a magnet for body and soul.

The multiple levels of historic Bath can be explored in a variety of ways. As Austen fans who were prompted to reread her novels by the spate of movies they’ve inspired lately, we chose to see the city in her footsteps, visiting the landmarks that played so prominent a role in the society she knew.

In cultural terms, Bath was second only to London in Austen’s lifetime (1775-1817). She lived in Bath from 1801 to 1806, and her father died there in retirement. She surely sought out the hot springs baths (to see them, if not to take a dip), though it was left to the Victorian generation to excavate the Roman Baths. Various commercial baths continued to draw the ailing and the curious until as recently as 1978, when public health concerns ended the practice.

These days there’s no bathing in the baths of Bath. But this should be remedied next year with completion of the Bath Spa, a $28-million project that will incorporate two historic baths. The new spa will be linked to the Roman Baths by the grand, colonnaded Bath Street. After viewing the Roman ruins, visitors will be able to enjoy a relaxing soak that would make the Romans envious.

In December, the project was only a massive hole in the ground. We were told excavation had gone slowly because of archeological studies. The plan calls for the spa to open in fall 2001.

For a proper introduction to 18th century Bath, we headed for the Jane Austen Centre at 40 Gay St. in the Georgian heart of the city. Opened just last year, it details her various stays in the spa resort. Poor Jane--she really didn’t like Bath’s frivolous social life and felt confined by the city, preferring the Austen country home.

At the center, we purchased tickets (about $5.60 each) to join a 90-minute walking tour of Austen’s Bath. Perhaps the rain squall moments before our departure time dissuaded others; we were the only ones on the tour. With Wales-born grade-school teacher Judith Lacey as our guide, we strolled down the dripping narrow lanes of Lower Town, noting places where Austen or the characters in her novels lived and shopped.

As it happens, Bath remains a tempting venue in which to set a novel. Along these same streets, I picked up a pair of diverting contemporary British mysteries, “The Bath Detective,” by Christopher Lee, and “Funeral Music,” by Morag Joss, in which the authors make good use of the Pump Room, the Roman Baths and more.

At one grand Georgian townhouse, we peered through a narrow window into a blue-tiled “powder room.” Not a retreat for women, as might be thought, but a room where wigs were powdered.

At 13 Queen Square, we paused in front of one of the houses, now a law office, in which Austen once stayed with her family. In her day the square was kept as an open space, a green. The Victorians planted the towering trees that now dominate it, Lacey said, adding that some staunch preservationists want the trees removed for authenticity.

The Austen tour, like Austen’s works, is full of insights into Georgian-era life--the Sunday promenades, the evening balls, the obsession with correct manners--at a time that roughly coincides with the American Revolution.

To fully appreciate this graceful style, visit the Building of Bath Museum on the Paragon, yet another street of Georgian design. And go early in your stay. “We provide a foundation for your visit to Bath,” an attendant said. “The whole of the city is an extension of the museum.”

The museum acquainted us with John Wood (1704-54) and his son, John Wood the Younger (1728-81), who are largely credited with creating Bath’s Georgian splendor. Their building designs, often incorporating porticoes, pedestals and pillars, had roots in the classical civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome as adapted by Venetian architect Andrea Palladio two centuries earlier. (The style is also called Palladian.)

The senior Wood’s genius was to design civic spaces on a grand but elegant scale, building new streets, squares and parks in harmonious formal arrangements. He was essentially a developer, and his investors enthusiastically--and profitably--supported his vision of a Bath worthy of ancient Rome. He also designed handsome individual buildings, and his son carried on with the emphasis on architecture.

The Woods’ finest monuments include Queen Square, where what looks to be the facade of a grand palace actually conceals seven modest apartments, and the King’s Circus, reputedly Britain’s first traffic circle (perhaps patterned after the Colosseum in Rome).

Their crowning achievement may be the Royal Crescent, a magnificent curve of attached townhouses laid out on a rise to take advantage of a sweeping bucolic vista of fields and hills.

The middle of the Royal Crescent is occupied today by a small hotel furnished in period decor. No. 1 Royal Crescent is a museum offering escorted tours of a townhouse as it might have looked in the Woods’ day.

In the evenings Bath society gathered in the glittering Assembly Rooms for dancing, cards and gambling. Even today, the stately columned ballroom is the site of public and private festivities. One floor down is the not-to-be-missed Museum of Costume, which traces the often odd dress of the British royal court for four centuries. Here I learned why wealthy men and woman wore all that frilly neck and wrist lace that you see in their portraits. Lace was readily washable, an exhibit explained, and it protected the rest of the sometimes very expensive garment from being soiled by body oils.

Over the centuries much of the original baths fell into ruin, but the springs kept gushing, and new baths were built atop them. The still-intact King’s Bath, which dates to the 11th century, was very popular in the Georgian period. A leak in 1878 led to the discovery of the astonishing ruins beneath.

Today, visitors can tour the excavated baths at their leisure, stepping into a subterranean archeological realm that vividly recalls the Roman past. The Great Bath, a shallow soaking pool ringed by columns and open to the sky, captures the reflection of the abbey tower high above. Elsewhere, electronic screens re-create the baths as they might have looked from the spot on which you stand.

“A Roman soldier might have sat on the stone bench on your left,” the audio headset I had rented informed me, “his aching muscles soothed by the gentle massage of hot water.” That I understood perfectly. After hours of historical sightseeing, I kept wishing I could slip into the steaming water as that Roman soldier did, and then the Georgians. On my next visit, after Bath reclaims its heritage as a functioning spa, I’m sure I will.

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GUIDEBOOK

The Royal Treatments

Getting there: American, United, British, Air New Zealand and Virgin Atlantic fly nonstop from Los Angeles to London. Current round-trip fares start at $505, rising to $858 for summer bookings.

Bath is about 90 minutes by express train from London’s Paddington Station. Departures are almost hourly. Weekend fares are the least expensive, a one-way second-class ticket costing about $32.

Where to stay: You can sleep in a John Wood creation at the Royal Crescent Hotel, where rooms start at $320; telephone 011-44-1225-823-333.

The elegant Queensberry Hotel, tel. 011-44-1225-447-928, is built around a 1772 Georgian townhouse. A room for two runs $215 to $300.

Also in the Georgian style: the Francis on Queen Square, tel. 011-44-1225-424-257, with doubles starting at $198, and Dukes’ Hotel on Great Pulteney Street, tel. 011-44-1225-463-512, starting at $112.

Where to eat: Dinner, including salad and dessert, ran between $35 and $45 per person at these restaurants, which feature contemporary British cuisine:

The Olive Tree in the Queensberry Hotel, local tel. 447-928; the Circus Restaurant, 34 Brock St., tel. 318-918; and Woods Restaurant, 9-12 Alfred St., tel. 314-812.

For more information: British Tourist Authority, 551 5th Ave., Suite 701, New York, NY 10176-0799; tel. (800) 462-2748, Internet https: //www.btausa.com. Information on the new spa is at https://www.bathspa.co.uk.