BATH.
March 10, 1904.
Dearest Gracie*1 Thank you very much for your letter just received and your sympathy and enquiries. I cannot say that I feel anything the matter with myself. I sleep well and have a fairly good appetite, considering that Mater and the doctor insist on my being ill and keep me cribbed, cabined and confined within doors, though the sunshine is most tempting. Happily we have very nice rooms, first floor, airy, warm and light, with three windows overlooking some garden ground belonging to a Roman Catholic Establishment across the way with a really fine church, steeple and clock which we can read from the window. Bath is not a very attractive place except in an architectural point of view, the Squares, Crescents and Circus in the upper part being truly noble, the works of a really accomplished local architect. In the lower part of the town near where we are the streets are too narrow, the houses very high and dingy, crowded with good shops, and the traffic quite extraordinary. The people are very ordinary looking, rather under sized and anything but good-looking. I do not know whether you have read Jane Austen's novels, in one of them I find the plainness of Bath females mentioned! The lodging house into which we first went is that in which Fanny Burney staid[sic], with the Thrale's, last century. It is perhaps mentioned in one of her novels, but it is so long since I read them that I cannot remember. There is here a really beautiful Museum of paintings and onjects[sic] of art that belonged to a very wealthy gentleman of

XVIII century who left it to the City. The collection of china, that from the English potteries in a complete series, Worcester. Swansea, Derby, Wedgwood, Chelsea, Lowestoft, Liverpool, &c. &c. &c. and the Sevres, Dresden, Italian, Limoges, &c .&c .&c. are superb. and of fabulous value. There is also magnificent gold and silver plate, gorgeous bindings of books, seals, cameos, ivories, glass and other wares. All the objects are carefully ticketed and enclosed in glazed cases just as in the "South Kensington" (I beg pardon, "Albert and Victoria") Museum. Few people in Bath seem to know anything about it, though it is situated in a most convenient part of the city and is open free from 10 to 4 daily. There is close to where we live an excellent Library Institution of which I have been for some years an honorary member. It contains an excellent Library and all the books, herbarium and entomological collection of your great uncle, the Rev[eren]d Leonard Blomefield, whose widow (the eldest Miss Hawthorn that was) lives here. Grannie seems really to be rallying wonderfully, if not really recovering, but it will be some time before she could be removed. Mrs Taylor has come to take charge of her. Charlie*2 has been twice to see us, once with Sophie, as has Uncle Leonard. With Mater's best love, ever your affec[tiona]te father, | Jos.D.Hooker.