During our recent trip to Bath, I had booked brunch in the Pump Room as a special treat. The Pump Room is spectacular and the brunch, accompanied by a pianist, was delicious.
The Pump Room appears in many different works of literature including Jane Austen, Tobias Smollett and Georgette Heyer. The
novelist Jane Austen was very familiar with the Pump Room, and used it
as a setting in her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. It was the
place where "every creature in Bath was to be seen in the room at
different periods of the fashionable hours".
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| Thomas Rowlandson The Pump Room | | | | |
In Northanger Abbey the Pump Room plays an important role in the development of the relationships between Catherine Morland and Mr Tilney. "With more than usual eagerness did Catherine hasten to the Pump-room the next day, secure within herself of seeing Mr. Tilney there before the morning were over, and ready to meet him with a smile; – but no smile was demanded – Mr. Tilney did not appear. Every creature in Bath, except himself, was to be seen in the room at different periods of the fashionable hours; crowds of people were every moment passing in and out, up the steps and down; people whom nobody cared about, and nobody wanted to see; and he only was absent. “What a delightful place Bath is,” said Mrs. Allen as they sat down near the great clock, after parading the room till they were tired; “and how pleasant it would be if we had any acquaintance here.”It was fabulous to follow in the footsteps of so many literary giants.
