Leaving my seat I began to examine the inscriptions, and found
that they had not been placed there in memory of men belonging
to Bath or even Somerset. These monuments were erected to
persons from all counties in the three kingdoms, and from all
the big towns, those to Londoners being most numerous. Nor
were they of persons distinguished in any way. Here you
find John or Henry or Thomas Smith, or Brown, or Jones, or
Robinson, provision dealer, or merchant, of Clerkenwell, or
Bermondsey, or Bishopsgate Street Within or Without; also many
retired captains, majors, and colonels. There were hundreds
more whose professions or occupations in life were not stated.
There were also hundreds of memorials to ladies--widows and
spinsters. They were all, in fact, to persons who had come to
die in Bath after "taking the waters," and dying, they or
their friends had purchased immortality on the walls of the
abbey with a handful or two of gold. Here is one of several
inscriptions of the kind I took the trouble to copy: "His
early virtues, his cultivated talents, his serious piety,
inexpressibly endeared him to his friends and opened to them
many bright prospects of excellence and happiness. These
prospects have all faded," and so on for several long lines in
very big letters, occupying a good deal of space on the wall.
But what and who was he, and what connection had he with Bath?
He was a young man born in the West Indies who died in
Scotland, and later his mother, coming to Bath for her health,
"caused this inscription to be placed on the abbey walls"!
If this policy or tradition is still followed by the abbey
authorities, it will be necessary for them to build an annexe;
if it be no longer followed, would it be going too far to