Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/106

Nash the gaming tables he was soon indebted for a handsome addition to his income, and his addiction to gambling drew him to Bath in 1705.

Bath had been rendered fashionable as a health resort by Queen Anne's visit in 1703. But the wealthy and leisured people who visited the springs found no arrangements made for their comfort or amusement. Dancing was conducted on the bowling green; there was no assembly, and no code of etiquette, nor of dress; men smoked in the presence of the ladies who met for tea and cards in a canvas booth; gentlemen appeared at the dance in top-boots, and ladies in white aprons; the lodgings, for which exorbitant prices were charged, were mean and dirty; the sedan chairmen were rude and uncontrolled; there was no machinery for introductions; the gentlemen habitually wore swords, and duels were frequent. In 1704 Captain Webster, a gamester, had endeavoured to improve matters by establishing a series of subscription balls at the town-hall; but Webster was killed in a duel shortly after Nash's arrival. Nash soon resolved to correct the provincial tone of the place, and, as an agreeable and ingenious person of organising capacity, he obtained a paramount influence among the visitors. He readily obtained the goodwill of the corporation, and engaged a good band of music; he then set on foot a subscription of a guinea, subsequently raised to two guineas, per annum, provided an assembly house, drew up a code of rules, and caused them to be posted in the pump-room, which was henceforth put under the care of an officer called 'the pumper.' The company consequently increased; new houses of a more ambitious type began to be built, and in 1706 Nash raised 18,000l by subscription for repairing the roads in the neighbourhood of the city. He also conducted a successful crusade against the practice of habitually wearing swords, against duelling, against informalities of dress, promiscuous smoking, the barbarities of the chairmen, and the exorbitant charges of the lodging-house keepers. His command of the band gave him control of the hours for the balls and assemblies, and his judicious regulations were despotically enforced. Royalty in the person of the Princess Amelia was compelled to submit to his authority, and deviations from his code by persons of inferior rank were severely dealt with. It is related how on one occasion the Duchess of Queensbery came one night to the assembly in a white apron. Nash, on perceiving this infringement of his rules, promptly approached her grace, and, with every gesture of profound respect, untied her apron, and threw it among the ladies' women on the back benches, observing that such a garment was proper only for Abigails. By such displays Nash arrived at the position of unquestioned autocrat of Bath and 'arbiter elegantiarum.' He became formally known as master of the ceremonies, and informally as king of Bath. The corporation hung his portrait, by Hoare, in the pump-room, between the busts of and, a proceeding which occasioned Chesterfield's epigram:

This picture plac'd the busts between, Gives satyr all his strength; Wisdom and wit are little seen, But folly at full length.

(The various reasons given for disputing Chesterfield's authorship in 1741 are quite inconclusive. See Notes and Queries, 5th ser. xi. 857).

Nash now had his levée, his flatterers, his buffoons, and even his dedicators. His vanity was proportionately large; he habitually travelled in a post chariot, drawn by six greys, with outriders, footmen, and French horns; his dress was covered with the most expensive embroidery and lace; he always wore an immense cream-coloured beaver hat, and assigned as a reason for this singularity that he did so to secure it from being stolen. In 1737 his reputation suffered considerably by his failure to recover the commission due to him on winnings at the gaming tables from Walter Wiltshire, lessee of the Assembly Rooms, the court deciding that the compact was immoral. In 1738, however, Nash took a leading part in the welcome given by the city to Frederick, prince of Wales, in memory of whose visit he erected an obelisk, for which, after some correspondence, he induced Pope, who had described him as an impudent fellow, to write the inscription.

In addition to being a sleeping partner in Wiltshire's, and very possibly in other gambling-houses in the city, Nash was himself a regular frequenter of the gaming tables, at which he made large sums, until by the act of 1740 severe penalties were enacted against all games of chance. He managed to evade the law for a time by the invention of new games, among which one called E O became the favourite; but in 1745 a more stringent law was passed. His income now became very precarious, and as a new generation sprang up, to which Nash was a stranger, his splendour gradually faded. Embittered by neglect, he lost the remainder of his popularity, and about 1758 the corporation voted him an allowance of 10l. a month. He long occupied a house in St. John's Court, known