Bath was first in importance among the provincial theatres. The audience, indeed, was very largely composed of the London “fashionables,” who came to drink the waters; no “sack-backs,” therefore, “all over silver trimmings,” were allowed to interfere with her determination, for, although in her petulant moments she was wont to declare that she preferred the country, and had been treated so cruelly in London she never would play there again, in her heart she was resolved to rule supreme on those boards she had once trod with Garrick. “I now made an engagement at Bath,” she says in her _Memoranda_. “There my talents and industry were encouraged by the greatest indulgence, and, I may say, with some admiration. Tragedies which had been almost banished, again resumed their proper interest; but still I had the mortification of being obliged to personate many subordinate characters in comedy, the first being, by contract, in the possession of another lady. To this I was obliged to submit, or to forfeit a portion of my salary, _which was only three pounds a week_. Tragedies were now becoming more and more fashionable. This was favourable to my cast of powers; and, whilst I laboured hard, I began to earn a distinct and flattering reputation. Hard labour, indeed, it was! for, after the rehearsal at Bath, and on a Monday morning, I had to go and act at Bristol on the evening of the same day, and reaching Bath again, after a drive of twelve miles, I was obliged to represent some fatiguing part there on the Tuesday evening. When I recollect all this labour of mind and body, I wonder that I had strength and courage to support it, interrupted as I was by the care of a mother, and by the childish sports of my little ones, who were often most unwillingly hushed to silence for interrupting their mother’s studies.” From the pages of Horace Walpole, Mrs. Montagu, and Fanny Burney, we can bring the Pan-tiles of Tunbridge Wells or the parade at Bath, with their periwigs, powder-patches, and scandal, distinctly before us. Let us stand for a moment on the parade, and watch the noteworthy people, muses, poets, statesmen, who have assembled there, in 1778, to drink the water. Royal dukes and princesses might be seen sauntering about, playing whist and E. O. in the evening, and taking “three glasses of water, a toasted roll, a Bath cake, and a cold walk in the mornings.” Next to them, the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire, loveliest of the lovely, gayest of the gay, attracts most notice. Her dazzling beauty, and those eyes the Irish labourer at the Fox Election said he could light his pipe at, are said to have taken away the readiness of hand and happiness of touch of the young painter “reported to have some talent,” named Gainsborough, while painting her this year at Bath.