11/5/2014
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| Royal Crescent |
You can order entrees and they'll serve it to you piping hot. Loved the names of the entrees. "Poor knights of Windsor" is French toast with berry compote. Poor knights ate French toast? Wow.
I ordered the Eggs Royale--two poached eggs (free range, at that!) with smoked salmon and crumpets and Hollandaise sauce. Yummy. The eggs were sooo runny, just my style. Angel had the haddock with poached eggs, but she doesn't really eat poached eggs so I ended up having 3 poached eggs.
"When I was a lad, I ate four dozen eggs..." - Gaston singing in Beauty & the Beast
I guess I still have a ways to go?
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| Eggs Royale |
In the cold food buffet part there's a big bowl of fresh blueberries. Yay!!!! They were so plump, juicy and delicious--Angel and I had 3 big bowls of the berries to start off the day just right. I felt so pumped up with antioxidants ^.^ They had 4 different types of homemade honey to complement the plain yogurt. Now, I'm not normally a yogurt gal, but I got suckered into the Vanilla Bean Honey. Never seen that before, so gotta try it, right? Good God, I went to heaven. The honey paired with yogurt is one of the yummiest things I've had this trip--and that's saying something, as everyday's a culinary sensation on the taste buds. I kept getting up to get more of the honey and yogurt, and I seriously ate a hole into my stomach this morning.
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| Vanilla Bean Honey, Yogurt & Fresh Blueberries |
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| Poached Eggs with Haddock |
After breakfast, we took a leisurely stroll to the Jane Austen Centre, which is literally a minute away from our hotel. Angel had written down that the center opens at 9:30am, so we thought we'd be there right when it opens to take advantage of the day. Well, we got there, and it turns out that starting November 1st, they reverted to winter hours. So it opens 11am to 4:30pm. Say what??? Double grrr >.<
So we went to the Fashion Museum, which is housed in the Assembly Rooms:
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| Assembly Rooms |
I thought the museum would only take an hour--ok, maybe max 2--but as it turns out, the Fashion Museum in Bath has one of the best collections of fashion through the ages...in the world. They have so many articles of clothing in their catalogue that they can keep changing the mannequins. So you might come here once an year and never see the same dress repeated! For 2014, their special exhibit concentrates on Georgian dress, the period of the four kings all named George, spanning from 1714 to the 1830, 7 years before Queen Victoria ascended to the throne. The Regency era (of which Jane Austen made famous) is when the Prince Regent (Regent, Regency, get it?) ruled England for his father, the Mad King George who lost America.
We bought the Saver ticket that combines the Fashion Museum with the Roman Baths to save a bit of money. They have another saver ticket that combines the Fashion Museum with Number 1 Royal Crescent, but if you do the math, the Roman Baths combo saves you more. I wish they had a combo that combines all 3 attractions, but alas, they don't offer this.
King George I ascended the throne under precarious circumstances. He was never supposed to be king, as he was something like 52nd in line for the throne. However, an act was passed that effectively barred Roman Catholics from ascending to the throne, so that wiped out the 51 Roman Catholics before George. Lucky George was a Protestant. As he was never supposed to become king, he wasn't very popular in the first years of his reign. But with the help of the first Prime Minister of Britain and the cabinet, England flourished economically and this (money) gradually won over King George's doubters.
Women's fashion in George I's time was usually a dress that opened in the front to show the petticoat skirts. Saffron yellow was a very in vogue color:
Baby loves saffron yellow and mustard shades, so she kept snapping pictures of the dress on display. I think it's atrocious, but then again, it's because the shades look atrocious next to my yellow skin. :T
To wear any color back in those days meant you had money to afford the dyed fabrics. Men wore embroidered jackets that weren't very form fitting but very opulent in terms of the metallic threading and luxurious fabrics.
By George II's time, damasks (which I adore) and finely woven floral prints were popular. Spitalfield's in London became known for their botanically accurate silk-woven floral fabrics.
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| Ruby Red Damask with Petticoat underneath |
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| Known as the "Sack Back Dress," look at how intricate the floral silk is |
Court dress (that is, the dress you go to royal balls and functions in) was still very much traditional dress. So women had to get their hair powdered and done up, and wear these obnoxiously wide skirts:
When Handel had a concert, they expressly gave notice to women to please not wear hoops to the concert hall. Handel was extremely popular and they wanted to fit as many people into the concert hall as possible.
George III's reign saw stripes and different textures juxtaposed against one another (like damask fabric with colorful silk-woven flowers on top) in fashion.
Then Prince Regent (or "Prinny") comes along with his flamboyant, larger-than-life styles and all Angel got out of that was "He was fat." This is the era of Jane Austen, where the women wore delicate, flowing muslins in shades of white, ivory and other light pastel colors. The Napoleanic Wars were going on, so all news of French fashion was cut off. For a decade, British women were in limbo about the latest trends and so they turned to nature and classicism, with the draping of the dresses very reminiscent of Grecian times.
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| Baby went gaga for the Jane Austen time period dresses |
And yet again, another act by the British government to protect their own trade:
After you exit the Georgian exhibit, you can see displays of dresses from Queen Victoria's era and onwards. It's not as comprehensive as the Georgian exhibit, but it does serve to tell the changing of fashion very quickly. Empress Josephine, Napolean's wife, loved wearing shawls. Shawls were the "It" item of her day, much like how nowadays, there's an "It" bag every year. But Boney didn't like her shawls because he considered it to be too modest. On one occasion, he tore them away from her person, but she just calmly restored herself with another shawl.
The sleeves go from puffy cap short-sleeves to long-sleeved leg o' muttons, then to a narrow silhouette. The skirts went out and in, out and in, depending on which decade. It also changed based on the new advances in petticoat technology. Empress Eugenie was one of the first to wear a cage petticoat and that silhouette quickly became de rigueur. Then the bustle came in, with horsehair padding (horsehair?!). Then crinolettes, which were lighter and allowed more movement.
One of Queen Victoria's many mourning dresses was on display (she wore mourning clothes for the rest of her life after the death of her husband when she was 42). Baby never knew she'd become quite large in her old age. Angel had seen Young Victoria and that's the image she associates with the queen. Although, Baby, you grew up watching The Great Mouse Detective!
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| Queen Victoria's mourning dress |
The fashion house of Bellville Sassoon, of which David Sassoon is a part of, donated their collection of sketches to the Fashion Museum. They designed a lot of Princess Diana's clothes for her society engagements. Some of those dresses--and a lot of their sketches and sample fabrics--were on display.
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| Princess Diana's evening dress, 1987 |
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| Princess Diana's dresses. On left: her honeymoon outfit worn on her wedding day, 1981 On right: Tartan dress worn in 1983 to the Highland Games |
Princess Diana was very much vocal about what she wanted to wear. Below are letters thanking Bellville Sassoon for making her clothes, and she specifically thanks them for altering the designs to her tastes:
The Fashion Museum is housed in the Assembly Rooms, where the well-to-do would congregate in the evenings with dancing, gossiping, gambling:
There might be concerts in this hall:
Baby loved, loved, loved this fireplace. It's very much her style, with the mint paint and white overlay:
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| Hallway to the Assembly Rooms |
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| Foyer of Assembly Rooms |
By the time we emerged from the Fashion Museum, it was already 1:30pm. The audioguide is free so we listened to everything, which means that we were in the museum for 3 hours. Yikes. We were seriously behind schedule.
We walked to the Royal Crescent and along the way, we passed by The Circus. John Wood the Elder designed this beautiful circle of houses in the 1700s, and he, along with his son John Wood the Younger, designed the Royal Crescent to be an extension of The Circus.
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| The Circus |
During John Wood the Elder and the Youngers' time in Bath, the city transformed from a medieval city to a prospering tourist city where people of genteel breeding would come to "take the waters," gossip, and look at what other people were wearing (fashion gazing). The Roman Baths were discovered and excavated during this time, and people thought very much like the Romans did--that the hot spring water would restore their health. So a lot of sick people flocked here...though they did have to have the money to lodge here. Bath real estate is not cheap. A docent at the Number 1 Royal Crescent museum told us that a house on the Royal Crescent recently sold for 3 million pounds. Mind, it was an entire house (some have been converted into apartments) on sale, and for the historical value alone... there's only 30 houses on the Royal Crescent, so I guess you'd have to be pretty darn lucky to nab one if it ever goes on the market. Another house near the Royal Crescent sold for 4.5 million pounds. Hot damn.
The Duke of York once stayed at Number 1 Royal Crescent, but the museum has displayed the home as if the first owner on record still lived here. Henry Sanford was a wealthy Irish landowner but due to his poor health, he chose to spend his retiring years in Bath, where he was able to gossip to his heart's content, write about the scandalous on-goings of his neighbors, and enjoy the social activities of the Season (Oct. thru May). Many of his diaries have been preserved. On one occasion, he wrote about a party his neighbor threw. There were many rules on social etiquette at the time, and the hostess decreed that any man who did not want to dance would need to get out of her house. The men ignored this and proceeded to ruin the party by throwing her glasses on the ground. Not nice!
The museum has a special exhibit ongoing right now called A Portrait of a Lady? Ruin and Reputation in the Georgian Era. It ends in December 2014, and I thought that alone was worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, there's a no photography allowed in the museum and the exhibit. Booooo.
The exhibit's a look at how women were portrayed in the Georgian era. It's hilarious now, but it is very sobering to think of how women were treated back then and just how much the women's suffrage movement has done for us. Back then, women were considered property that belonged to their husbands. They had no right to vote or own land, so if they married, all their possessions were considered that of their husbands'. So the only way to move up in the world was to sleep your way to the top. You either marry, which women of genteel breeding did, or you beguile men so that they confer wealth and status to you. Of course, this could backfire. If you didn't beguile a man enough, you might just grow old, lose your beauty and die a pauper. Worse, a diseased pauper, as pox ran rampant.
Many prostitutes and courtesans resorted to using heavy makeup to cover up pox marks and any signs of disease. This led to a proposal in the 1700s (by a man, obviously) to ban women from the right to use all cosmetics, as cosmetics allowed women to cover up their flaws. The bill was not passed and did not become law. Nevertheless, cosmetics fell out of fashion with men because they were so afraid of being beguiled by a diseased woman. If you wore heavy makeup, you were considered a woman of loose morals. Indeed, the Countess of Coventry's husband admonished her on many an occasion about wearing too much makeup. She did not heed her husband and died at the age of 27 due to blood poisoning. The white lead she used to apply on her face was poisonous. Many women died from white lead, but as French women say "Better dead than fat," I'm sure the women of this era have something to say along those lines.
There's a book on display called "Harris's List." This book was essentially a telephone book published for men. The book lists all the Covent Garden whores, and details their individual peculiarities and tendencies. One entry was for a prostitute who likes brandy a tad too much, warning gents about this, if he should dare procure her services. Hmmmm....
There were many prints of milkmaids and serving girls on display, something akin to the Playboy of our times. Men liked to buy prints (think lithographs) of maids. As maids were so far down the serving chain, gentlemen did not see much of them, so there's a kind of forbidden fantasy that stemmed from this. Because the wages were so low, some maids did serve their masters in "different" ways to get more income. This is time period where serving maids became synonymous with women of loose morals.
A series of prints depict famous women who bettered their lot in life by sleeping around, such as Emma Hamilton and Kitty Fischer. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was of course mentioned, as was her sister, Henrietta Ponsonby, another woman of notorious repute for her gambling and her affairs.
Of the regular portion of the Number 1 Royal Crescent museum, there are docents in every room to explain what certain special items are in the rooms. In the Parlour, the docent remarked that we're very lucky to be in Bath right now when it's not raining. *Knock on wood* It hasn't rained yesterday or today, and the docent says that this is very unusual weather for Bath. It usually rains everyday, so a lot of Bath residents are bewildered. Sooo happy and feeling so lucky that it's not raining!
In Henry Sanford's study, there's an early model spark generator that was supposed to have restorative powers. You tape one end of it to a portion of the body that ails you (like a sore shoulder) and then you churn the wheel. Churning the wheel creates electricity and when enough has been generated, it'll send a spark to the tape--kinda like an electrical shock. This was supposed to help heal you, and I guess this is still used in some form of Western medicine?
In the dining room, you can see how the table and service ware were set in the 1700s. There's a chamber pot to the side, as there were no bathroom in those days. Men did not leave the room if they wanted to pee--they merely went over to the chamber pot and did their business. Yuck. Imagine smelling that while you're eating. *shudder*
We walked through the lady's room, complete with a "jib" door (kinda like the hidden doors in castles) for servants to use to service their masters. There was a very unique table on display. It had a screen in front of it. Women would sit sewing near the fire, as it's warmer than the rest of the room. However, to sit so close to the fire, your makeup might melt off, so the screen's there to protect your makeup from melting off. Nifty, hunh?
The gentleman's room had a potions kit on the dresser. Henry Sanford was in poor health for most of his later life. Like many people back in those days, he had his own potions kit and played doctor for himself for minor health issues. There was no need to summon the doctor--just mix up your own cocktail and drink it. There's a blue bottle labeled "Poisons." Blue bottle = poison back in those days. Later, the poison bottles would have ridges, to serve as yet another warning that this bottle contains poison. It was very natural in Henry Sanford's time to mix up your own concoction and add a drop of poison to it and drink it. Poison in a drop or two was thought to have restorative powers. Go figure. :T
We went down to the kitchens, where we saw a turnspit contraption. Keep in mind, dog lovers, that slavery still existed during this time period. If humans are slaves, then who in their right minds would give any thought to animal welfare? A turnspit contraption is basically where you put a dog into a hamster wheel and make him run the whole day. A series of wheels and pulleys makes it so that when the dog runs, the spit on the fire rotates, therefore roasting the hunkin' piece of meat the master will eat for dinner. Angel got a real kick out of this and she's been calling me a turnspit dog ever since. :P
The docents were really lovely and gave in-depth answers for all the questions that popped into our heads. So by the time we left here, it was already 3:30pm. *sigh* Will we ever be on schedule? We still had one more museum to hit--The Roman Baths.
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| Bath Abbey - view from inside the Roman Baths |
I thought it'd be a 10 minute walk through the colonnades of the pool. Wrong. Again. The audioguide doesn't tell you this in the beginning, but it turns out that the audioguide is a good 2.5 hours long. We were ushered out in the end, as the museum closes at 5:30pm, so we had to rush through some rooms. We were the last ones to leave the museum--a lot of people didn't take advantage of the free audioguide, and just walked through the whole museum. I hate that >.< If you're already here, why not stop and learn more about the place???
The Roman Baths was built when the Romans conquered Britain around 40-60 AD. The Romans discovered the hot springs at Bath and called the city "Aquae Sulis." Back in Italy, the Romans were used to their lush pools and spas, and wanted to recreate some comforts of their hometown in this new land. They built a temple to worship the goddess Minerva here and you can see the foundations where the temple once stood. In the 1700s, they found a gilt bronze head of Minerva, which is on display as well. There's over 6 coats of bronze on the statue, because once one layer wears off (due to constant polishing, the gilt will wear off--a lady at the Jubilee antiques market taught us this), they'd just add another layer.
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| Roman Baths |
The Romans worshiped Minerva and they also asked her for help on many things. Below are reproductions of some lead tablets found in the Roman Baths:
These lead tablets were known as "Curses" and were usually written to Minerva detailing some grievance and a plea to curse whoever had done the person wrong. One man, for example, wrote on a tablet, pleading Minerva to curse whoever stole his clothes from the public baths.
Since they first started excavating the Roman Baths, they've found over 12500 coins littering the bottom of the pools. These coins are thought to have been tossed into the pools as offerings to the goddess Minerva, to bless them in health and everything else. There's a graph detailing how many coins were found in the times of each of the Roman emperors, so you can see when, perhaps, there were more Romans stationed in Bath (as initially, it was the Roman soldiers who first settled here) or when they felt more in need of Minerva's help:
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| Roman Coins |
There are lead pipes poking out of the ground and this is where the water flows through. There's signs that say don't touch the water as it's untreated and potentially dangerous, but of course, we saw people touching the water. These are original lead pipes and may still contain radioactivity from WWII (Bath was bombed in WWII). There's also infectious diseases and amoeba in the water.
At the end of the audiotour, you have the opportunity to try the spa water and drink to your health (treated, of course!). There's quotes on the wall from people through the centuries, commenting on the taste of Bath spa water. Some like it, some don't. We're of the "don't" variety. It's just too mineral-y for us.
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| Angel just really doesn't like the taste of spa water |
Just look at the ingredients list!
The Pump Room was closed but the lights were on and boy, the sight was grand. They used the Pump Room in Persuasion. *Gaaah* I wanna see Persuasion right now!
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| The Pump Room |
Oh! And a Primark right across the Roman Baths! And it was almost empty--a sight we've never seen in the London Primarks.
The maid came by around 7pm for turndown service, offering biscuits, tea and milk. I've only stayed in one other hotel that offered this service, and it's quite nice--I'm feeling rather pampered. The skim milk in the tiny containers is delicious!
Dinner was a prawn mayo & cheese croissant. The prawn mayo we bought at Waitrose.
As I'm writing this blog entry, there's loud firecrackers (or fireworks?) popping outside in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day. I first learned of Guy Fawkes from Sherlock, when Sherlock says, "Remember, remember the fifth of November." Ah, what tv can teach you ^.^ Dad just emailed today that Benedict Cumberbatch is engaged, as we're not much for internet surfing while traveling. Ha I was just thinking of him!
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