It must not be thought that the post was in any way a sinecure. It would be difficult to enumerate all the varied activities by which the debonair gamester converted the humdrum West Country town into the most fashionable centre of eighteenth-century life in England. He superintended the improving of the roads leading to the city, had the streets lighted, regulated the charges of the sedan-chair men, had ballrooms and hospitals built, and contrived suitable shelters around the famous baths. Always an expert in such matters as rank, precedence, and urbane decorum, he transformed the city of Bath into a modish and exquisite resort for gaming, foppery, and gallantry. When Beau Nash first took up office his sense of the correct was considerably exercised by a certain grossness of manners which prevailed at that time. It seems that in those days men were not at all ashamed to appear at polite gatherings in their jack boots and the ladies in their aprons. As a counterstroke to such unseemly practices, Nash composed the following satirical rhyme: Come, trollops and slatterns, Cockt hats and white aprons, This best our modesty suits; For why should not we In dress be as free As Hogs-Norton ’squires in boots. Nor was this his only method of displaying his displeasure. If Nash’s eye so much as caught a glimpse of heavy footwear in an assembly-room, he would hurry across to the offender and with a low bow inquire of him “if he had not forgotten his horse.” Recalcitrant dames he would treat still more severely: on one occasion even going so far as to remove with his own hands, from the person of the Duchess of Queensbury, an apron of point lace which was said to be worth 500 guineas. It was indeed a prim and elegant life that Nash inaugurated, a life in which periwigged men of fashion, immaculate in all but their morals, strutted and minuetted before exquisitely patched and powdered ladies. They met at the pump-room, where they were diverted by the conversation of the “gay, the witty, and the forward”; they met at Spring Gardens, where on summer mornings they would tread a cotillion together on the smooth lawns between the painted flower-beds; they met again as they made a tour “through the milliners and toymen, to stop at Mr. Gill’s, the pastry-cook, to take a jelly, a tart, or a small basin of vermicelli.” Each night they attended a ball opened with the minuet danced by a lady and gentleman “of the highest rank present” and followed by country dances “wherein the ladies according to their quality stood up first.” At an appointed hour Nash would raise two fingers as a sign that it was time for the music to cease, and then, after a short interval for the dancers to cool, the company would take their departure.