Richard Nash, Esq., to whom the city of Bath owes so much of its present prosperity and importance, was born at Swansea, in Glamorganshire, in 1674. His father, whose principal income arose from a partnership in a glasshouse, sent him for education to Carmarthen school, and thence to Jesus College, Oxford, in order to prepare him for the study of the law.
The first method he took to distinguish himself at college was not by application to study, but by his assiduity in gallantry. Before he was seventeen he went through all the mazes and adventures of a college intrigue ; he offered marriage, which was accepted ; but the affair coming to the knowledge of his tutors, he was sent home from the university, with necessary advice to him and proper instructions to his father.
The army appearing the most suitable profession for displaying his inclination for gallantry, he purchased a pair of colors, and dressed to the utmost extent of his finances. Finding, however, that the company of the fair sex was not to be procured without expense, and that his scanty commission could never procure him the means of defraying it, he quitted the army, entered his name as a student in the Temple, and there went to the very summit of second rate luxury.
It had long been customary for the inns of court to entertain the monarch, on his accession to the crown, or on some such remarkable occasion, with a revel and a pageant. This ceremony was last exhibited in honor of King William, and Nash was chosen to conduct it. This he did so much to the satisfaction of the king that he made him an offer of knighthood. Nash, however, refused the honor, which, considering his excessive vanity, appears somewhat extraordinary. ” Please your majesty,” replied he, “if you intend to make me a knight, I wish it may be one of your poor knights of Windsor, and then I shall have a fortune at least competent to the support of my title.”
Though Nash acquired no riches by his office, yet he gained many friends, or, what are more easily obtained, many acquaintances, who often answer the end as well. Besides his assurance, ha had in reality some merit and some virtues. An instance of his humanity is related in the Spectator, though his name is not mentioned. When he was to give in his account to the masters of the Temple, among other articles, he charged, for making one man happy, ten pounds. Being questioned as to the meaning of so strange an item, he acknowledged that, happening to overhear a poor man declare to his wife and a large family of children that ten pounds would make him happy, he could not avoid trying the experiment. He added, that if they did not choose to acquiesce in his charge, he was ready to refund the money. The master, struck with such an uncommon instance of good nature, publicly thanked him for his benevolence, and desired that the sum might be doubled as a proof of their satisfaction.
Nash, as he often played tricks with others, received occasionally very severe retaliations. Being at York, and having lost all his money, some of his companions agreed to equip him with fifty guineas, provided he would stand at the great door of the minster in a blanket as the people were coming out of church. To this proposal he readily agreed, but the dean, passing by, unfortunately knew him, “What!” cried the divine, “Mr. Nash in masquerade !” “Only a Yorkshire penance, Mr. Dean, for keeping bad company,” replied Nash, pointing to his companions. Some time afterwards he won a wager of still greater consequence by riding naked through a village upon a cow.
Nash was now thirty years old, without fortune or useful talents to acquire one. He had hitherto led a life of expedients, and was by profession a gamester, alternately exposed to the vicissitudes of rapture and anguish. About this time the city of Bath became frequented by people of distinction. Several physicians of eminence had praised the salubrity of the wells, and the amusements were put under the direction of a master of the ceremonies. Still the amusements of the place were neither elegant nor conducted with delicacy. The city was mean and contemptible, the pump-house was without a director, and to add to all this, one of the greatest physicians of the age, in resentment of some affronts he had received there, conceived a design of ruining the city by writing against the efficacy of its waters. He accordingly published a pamphlet by which he said, “he would cast a toad into the spring.”
Such was the state of things when Nash first visited Bath; and hearing of the threat of the physician, he humorously assured the people that he would charm away the poison of the doctor’s toad, as the venom of the tarantula was usually charmed, that is, by music. He was, therefore, immediately empowered to set up the force of a band of music against the poison of the doctor’s reptile ; the concourse of people very sensibly increased, Nash triumphed, and the sovereignty of the city was decreed him by all ranks.
After his appointment to be master of the ceremonies, an office for which nature seemed to have particularly qualified him, we behold him directing pleasures which none had better learned to share. We see a kingdom beginning with him, and sending off Tunbridge as one of its colonies. He established regulations for the balls, which he would not suffer to continue a moment after eleven o’clock, lest invalids might commit irregularities which would counteract the effect of the water. Even the royal family had not influence enough to make him deviate from any of his rules. The princess Amelia, once applying to him for one dance more after he had given the signal to withdraw, he assured her royal highness that the established rules of Bath resembled the rules of Lycurgus, which would admit of no alteration, without an utter subversion of all his authority.
He was not less strict with regard to the dresses in which ladies and gentlemen were to appear. He had the strongest aversion to a white apron, and absolutely excluded all who ventured to appear at the assembly dressed in that manner. But he found more difficulty in attacking the irregularities of the gentlemen; and, for some time, strove but in vain to prohibit the use of swords. At length, a duel, which took place between two gamesters, in which one of them was run through the body, helped to promote his peaceable intentions. He undertook to prohibit the wearing of swords at Bath; and, whenever he heard of a challenge given, he instantly had both parties arrested. The gentlemen’s boots also made a desperate stand against him. The country squires were by no means submissive to his usurpations ; and probably, his authority alone would never have carried him through, had he not enforced it with ridicule. In a short time, few ventured to appear at the assemblies at Bath in a riding dress ; and, whenever any gentleman, through ignorance or haste, appeared in the room in boots, Nash would make up to him, and bowing in an arch manner, would tell him he had forgotten his horse. By such means he at length obtained a complete victory.
Nash’s equipage was sumptuous. He usually travelled to Tunbridge in a post chariot and six grays, with out-riders, footmen, French horns, and every other appendage of expensive parade. He always wore a white hat, and assigned as a reason for this singularity, that he did it purely to secure it from being stolen. His dress was tawdry, though not perfectly genteel: he might be considered as a beau of several generations ; and, in his appearance, he in some measure mixed the fashions of the preceding age with those of the period in which he lived.
It may be asked, what finances were to support all this finery, and whence he procured the treasures that gave him such frequent opportunities of displaying his benevolence or his vanity ? For these he was indebted to his talents as a gamester, which alone enabled him, at this period, to keep up so genteel an appearance. When he first figured at Bath, there were few laws against this destructive amusement. The gaming table, was the constant resource of despair and indigence, and frequently the ruin of affluent fortunes. Whithersoever people of fashion resorted, needy adventurers were generally found in waiting. With these, Bath swarmed; and, among this class, was Nash in the beginning, only with this difference, that he wanted the corrupt heart too commonly attending a life of expedients ; for he was generous, humane and honorable, even though by profession a gamester. When the earl of Townshend, the father of the present marquis, was a youth, he was passionately fond of play, and was never better pleased than in having Nash for his antagonist. Nash saw, with concern, his lordship’s foible, and undertook to cure him, though by a very painful remedy. Conscious of his own superior skill, he determined to engage him in single play for a very considerable sum. His lordship, in proportion as he lost his game, lost his temper too ; and, as he approached the gulf, seemed more eager for ruin. He lost his estate ; some writings were put into the winner’s possession; his very equipage was deposited as a last stake, and he lost that also. But when the generous gamester found his imprudent antagonist sufficiently punished for his temerity, he returned the whole, only stipulating that he should be paid five thousand pounds, whenever he thought proper to make the demand. He never made any such demand during his lordship’s life ; but, some time afterwards, his affairs being on the wane, he demanded the money of his lordship’s heirs, by whom it was paid without hesitation.
Though gaming first introduced Nash into polite company, this alone could scarcely “have carried him forward without the assistance of a genteel address, much vivacity, some humor, and some wit. In the early part of his life he had professedly enlisted himself into the service of the fair sex. Nature had by no means formed Nash for a beau gasçon; his person was clumsy, and peculiarly irregular; yet, even with those disadvantages, he made love, became an universal admirer of the sex, and was universally admired. But Nash did not long continue an universal gallant. In the earlier years of his reign, he entirely desisted from his attempts to deceive the sex, in order to become the honest protector of their innocence, a guardian of their reputation, and a friend to their virtue. This character he bore for many years, and supported it with integrity, assiduity and success.
Whatever might have been Nash’s excellencies or failings, there was one quality in which few surpassed him. This was his excessive humanity. None felt pity more strongly, and none made greater efforts to relieve distress. Before gaming was suppressed, and while he was in the meridian of his life and fortune, his benefactions were generally found to equal his other expenses. The money he acquired without pain he gave away without reluctance ; and, when unable to relieve a wretch who sued for assistance, he was often seen to shod tears. A gentleman, of broken fortune, one day standing behind his chair, as he was playing a game at picquet for two hundred pounds, and observing with what indifference he won the money, could not forbear whispering to another, who stood by, “Heaven, how happy would all that money make me!”, Nash, overhearing him, clapped the money into his hand, and cried, “Go, and be happy.”
About this period, every season brought some accession of honor to Mr. Nash, and the corporation of Bath found that he was absolutely necessary for promoting the welfare of the city. They erected a full length statue of him in the pump-room, between the busts of Pope and Newton. It was on this occasion that the earl of Chesterfield wrote that severe but witty epigram, the last lines of which were so deservedly admired, and ran thus :
The statue placed the busts between,
Adds to the satire strength ;
Wisdom and wit are little seen,
But folly at full length.
The example of the corporation was followed by all his acquaintance of inferior rank. He was treated, in every respect, like a great man: he had his levee, his flatterers, his buffoons, his good-natured creatures, and even his dedicators. A trifling, ill-supported vanity was his foible ; and, while he enjoyed the homage of the vulgar, and the familiarity of the great, he felt no pain for the unpromising view of poverty that lay before him. If a cringing wretch called him “his honor,” he was pleased ; internally conscious that he had the justest pretensions to the title. If a beggar called him “my lord,” he was happy; and generally sent the flatterer away happy too.
The success Nash sometimes met with led him, when late in life, to mistake his true character. He was really agreeable, but he chose to be thought a wit: he therefore indulged his inclination, and never cared how rude he was, provided he was thought comical. His usual way, when he said any thing clever, was to strengthen it with an oath ; and to make up its want of sentiment by asseveration and grimace. He used to tell surprising stories of his activity when young. “Here I stand, gentlemen,” he would say, “that could once leap forty-two feet upon level ground, at three standing jumps, backward or forward. One, two, three, dart like an arrow out of a bow. But I am old now. I remember I once leaped for three hundred guineas, with Count Klopstock, the great leaper, leaping master to the prince of Passau ; you must all have heard of him. First he began with the running jump, and a most damnable bounce it was, that’s certain. Every body concluded that he had the match; when, only taking off my hat, stripping off neither coat, shoes nor stockings, mind me, I fetched a run, and went beyond him, one foot, throe inches and three quarters, measured, upon my soul, by Captain Pateley’s own standard.”
In the torrent of insipidity, which he was in the habit of uttering, there were sometimes found very severe satire, strokes of true wit, and lines of humor. He rallied very successfully ; for he never felt the joke of another, and drove home his own without pity. With his superiors he was familiar and blunt; the inferiority of his station secured him from their resentment; but the same bluntness, which they laughed at, was, by his equals, regarded as insolence. Though no great wit, he had the art of sometimes saying rude things with decency, and of rendering them pleasing by an. uncommon turn. Most of them, however, were of a contrary description.
One day in the Grove, at Bath, he joined – some ladies, and asked one of them, who was crooked, whence she came. “Straight from London,” replied she ; “Confound me, madam,” exclaimed Nash, “then you must have been damnably warped by the way.” She had soon, however, an opportunity to be revenged. Sitting, the following evening, in one of the rooms, he once more joined her company, and, with a sneer and a bow, asked her if she knew her catechism, and could tell the name of Tobit’s dog. “His name, sir, was Nash,” replied the lady, “and an impudent dog he was.” This anecdote is introduced into a celebrated romance ; and the reader may be assured that the fact happened as recorded.
Being once asked by queen Anne, why he would not accept the honor of knighthood, he replied, “Lest Sir William Read, the mountebank, who had just been knighted, should call him brother.”
Nash used sometimes to visit the great Dr. Clarke. The divine was one day conversing with Locke and two or three more of his learned and intimate companions, with that freedom, gaiety and cheerfulness which is ever the result of innocence. In the midst of their mirth and laughter, the doctor, looking out of the window, saw Nash’s chariot stop at the door. “Boys, boys,” cried the philosopher to bis friends, “let us now be wise, for here is a fool coming.”
He was one day complaining to the earl of Chesterfield of his bad luck at play, in the following manner: “would you thing it, my lord, that d, d bitch, fortune, no later than last night, tricked me out of five hundred. Is it not surprising that my luck should never turn, that I should thus eternally be mauled?”
“I don’t wonder at your losing money,” returned his lordship, “but all the world is surprised where you get it to lose.”
Doctor Cheyne, when Nash was once ill, wrote a prescription for him, which was made up accordingly. The next day the doctor calling to see his patient, found him up, and well; on which he asked, if he had followed his prescription ? ” Followed your prescription ?” cried Nash, “no: Egad, if I had, I should have broken my neck, for I flung it out of a two pair of stairs’ window.”
It would have been well, had he confined himself to such sallies ; but as he grew old, he grew insolent, and seemed in some measure insensible of the pain his attempts at wit gave others. On asking a lady to dance a minuet, if she refused, he would often demand if she had bandy legs. He would endeavor to ridicule natural defects ; he forgot the deference due to birth and quality, and mistook the manner of settling rank and precedence on many occasions.
The evening of his life began to grow cloudy, and Nash was no longer the gay, thoughtless, idly industrious creature he had once been. His fortune was gone, and he had nothing but poverty in prospect. To embitter his hopes, he found himself abandoned by the great, whom he had long endeavored to serve ; and was obliged to fly for protection to those of humbler stations, whom he had once affected to despise. He now began to want that charity he never refused to any, and to find that a life of dissipation and gaiety is ever teminated by misery and regret.
The weakness and infirmities of exhausted nature; the admonitions of the grave, who aggravated his follies into vices; the ingratitude of his dependants, who had formerly flattered his fortunes; but, particularly, the contempt of the great, who quite forgot him in his wants, all concurred to prey upon his spirits, and sour his temper; and the poor man of pleasure might have terminated his life very tragically, had not the corporation of Bath resolved to grant him an allowance of ten guineas a month. This bounty served to keep him from actual necessity; though far too inconsiderable to enable him to support the character of a gentleman: so that he, who had been accustomed in the early part of his life to affluence and prodigality, must comparatively have pined on this pittance in actual indigence.
In this variety of uneasiness his health began to fail. He had received from nature a robust constitution, which even intemperance could scarcely impair. His aversion to physic was frequently a subject of raillery between him and Dr. Cheyne, who was a man of some wit. When Cheyne recommended his vegetable diet, Nash would swear, that his design was to send half the world grazing, like Nebuchadnezzar. “Aye,” the doctor would reply, “Nebuchadnezzar was never such an infidel as thou art. It was but last week, gentlemen, that I attended this fellow in a fit of sickness; there I found him rolling up his eyes to heaven, and’ crying for mercy. He would then swallow my drugs like breast milk: yet you now hear how the old dog blasphemes the faculty.” What Cheyne said in jest was strictly true. Nash dreaded the approach of death more than the generality of mankind; and was generally very devout while it threatened him. Though he was somewhat the libertine in action, none believed and trembled more than he for a mind, neither schooled by philosophy, nor encouraged by conscious innocence, is ever timid at the appearance of danger. At length, on the 3d of February, 1761, he expired at his house in St. John’s Court, Bath, aged upwards of 87 years; and was interred, at the expense of the corporation, in the abbey church of that city.
From: N. H. Whitaker: Biographical Sketches of Eccentric Characters. (1832)