THE PLEASURE GARDENS
It is somewhat remarkable that two books should have appeared almost at
the same time on the Pleasure Gardens of London--that of Messrs. Warwick
and Edgar Wroth, and that of Mr. H. A. Rogers. I refer the reader who
desires exact and special knowledge on the subject to these two books.
For my own part I have only to speak of two or three of these gardens,
and shall confine myself to certain sources of information neither so
exact nor so detailed as those from which Messrs. Warwick and Wroth have
drawn the material for their excellent work.
The Pleasure Gardens grew out of the old Bear Baiting Gardens. The
London citizen loved sport first and above all things: next, he loved
the country: to sit under the shade of trees in the summer: to walk upon
the soft sward; to smell the flowers: to rest his eyes upon country
scenes. He has always yearned for the country while he remained in town.
With these things he desired, as a concomitant of the entertainment,
good eating, good drinking, the merry sound of music not softly but
loudly played: the voices of those who sang: and a platform or floor for
dancing. All these things he could get in Paris Gardens so long as that
place existed, together with its bears and dogs. When the bears
disappeared, what followed? The Gardens continued without the bears.
There were also the Mulberry Gardens on the site of Buckingham House,
and the Spring Gardens at Charing Cross. In the month of July 1661
Evelyn visited the new garden of Foxhall, afterwards Vauxhall, and in
June 1665, the year of the Plague, Pepys spent the evening at the same
place, for the first time, and with great delight.
[Illustration: VAUXHALL GARDENS
(_From the Engraving by J. S. Müller_)]
The Pleasure Garden apart from the sport of Bear and Bull Baiting was
then beginning. Before long it became a necessity of life--at least, of
the gregarious and social life of which the eighteenth century was so
fond. Many things are said about that century, now so nearly removed
from us by the space of another century, but we cannot say that it was
not social, and that it was not gregarious. It had its coffee houses:
its clubs: its taverns: its coteries: its societies: it loved the
theatre: the opera: the concert: the oratorio: the masquerade: the
Assembly: the card-room: but most of all the eighteenth century loved
its Pleasure Gardens. It took every opportunity of getting away from the
quiet house to crowds and noise and the scene of merriment.
[Illustration: VAUXHALL JUBILEE ADMISSION TICKET]
Many things were required to make a Pleasure Garden. There must be,
first, abundance of trees--at first cherry trees, but these afterwards
disappeared: if possible, there should be avenues of trees: aisles and
dark walks of trees. There must be, next, an ornamental water with a
fountain and a bridge: there must be a row of rustic bowers or retreats
in which tea and supper could be served: there must be a platform for
open-air dancing and promenading: there must be card-rooms: there must
be a long room for dancing and for promenading, with a gallery for the
orchestra and the singers. Add to these things a crowd every night
including all classes and conditions of men and women. The eighteenth
century was by no means a leveller of distinctions, but all classes met
together without levelling. Distinctions were preserved: each party kept
to itself: the nobleman wore his star and sash: he did not pretend to be
on a level with the people around him: they liked him to keep up the
dignity of aristocratic separation: he brought Ladies to the Gardens,
sometimes in domino, sometimes not. They were not expected to speak to
the ladies outside their set: they danced together in the minuets:
after the minuets they withdrew. The main point about the company of the
Gardens was that each party was separate and kept separate. In the Park,
either in the morning or the afternoon, it was not difficult to make
acquaintances. The reason was that in the Park were only to be found in
the morning or the afternoon those people who were not engaged in
earning their livelihood. Accordingly, all professional men--lawyers,
physicians, attorneys, surgeons, artists, architects, literary people:
all those engaged in trade, from the greatest merchant to the smallest
shopkeeper, were excluded: they were occupied elsewhere. Therefore, the
servants and footmen not being allowed in the Park, but compelled to
wait outside, the people of position had the place to themselves, and
access was easy. In the Gardens it was different: all could enter who
paid the shilling for an entrance fee. Among them were the gentlemen in
the red coat who bore His Majesty's Commission: the young fellows about
town, a noisy disreputable band with noisy and disreputable companions:
the plain citizen with his wife and daughter, the young fellow who was
courting her: the young tradesman taking a holiday for once: the
highwayman: the common pickpocket, and whole troops of the customary
courtesan. All were here enjoying together--but separated into tiny
groups of two or three--the strings of coloured lamps, the blare of the
orchestra, the songs, the dances, and the supper. As for the last, it
seems to have been always a cold collation: it generally consisted of
chicken and a thin slice of ham, with a bowl of punch and a bottle of
Port. There was no affectation of fine or polite behaviour; everybody
behaved exactly as he pleased: the citizen was not _gêné_ by the
presence of the great lady: he prattled his vulgar commonplaces without
being abashed: nor did the great lady put on 'side,' or behave among her
own company with any affectation of dignity or reserve in the presence
of the mercer of Ludgate Hill in the next box. Perhaps the recognition
of rank made them all behave more naturally. After all, the mercer had
his own rank. He could look forward to becoming Alderman, Sheriff, and
Lord Mayor: he understood very well that he was already a good way up
the ladder: the social precedence which belongs to the possession of
money and the employment of many servants had already placed him in
front of a vast crowd of inferiors: he was perfectly satisfied with his
own position, although he could certainly never become a noble earl or
wear a star upon his breast, or hope to consort on equal terms with the
jewelled lady in silks which he knew (professionally) to be beyond all
price, with her rouged face and high-dressed head, who laughed so loud
and talked so fast with the noble lords her companions, one of whom was
blind drunk and the other was a little mincing beau who walked on his
toes with bent knees and carried his hat under his arm, and spoke under
his breath as if every word was to be listened to. Do you think the
honest mercer was indignant at the manners of the great? Not he: he
called for another bowl of punch and tied his handkerchief over his wig
to keep off the damp. In the box on the other side of the citizen from
Ludgate Hill was a party also taking supper and punch, with plenty of
the latter. They were under the lead of an extremely fine gentleman: his
white coat was covered with gold lace: his hat was laced in the same
way: his waistcoat was of flowered silk: his ruffles were of white
lace--lace of Valenciennes. The ladies with him were dressed with a
corresponding splendour. Everybody knew that the gentleman was a
highwayman: his face was perfectly well known: he had been going on so
long that his time must soon be up. In a few months at most he would
take that fatal journey in the cart to Tyburn, there to meet the end
common to his kind. A good many people in the Gardens knew, besides,
that the ladies with him--ladies of St. Giles in the Fields--were
dressed from the stores of a receiving house for stolen goods. Perhaps
the consciousness of this cheap and easy way of getting one's clothes
made the ladies so buoyantly and extravagantly happy, with their
sprightly sallies and their high-bred courtesy of adjectives. But the
mercer troubled himself not at all about them.
The toleration of the mercer ought to endear his memory to us. For in
all public assemblies there are things which must be tolerated. Less
wise, we shut up the Assembly. We cannot keep out the Lady of the
Camellias from the Pleasure Garden. Therefore we shut up the place. In
the eighteenth century this lady was told that everybody must behave
with a certain amount of restraint: we have improved upon that manner:
we cut off our nose to spite our face: we shut up the lovely Garden
because we cannot keep her out.
For the same reason we have practically forbidden the youth of the lower
middle class to practise the laudable, innocent, and delightful
diversion of dancing. Not a single place, except certain so-called
clubs, where the young people can now go to dance. Why? Because the
magistrates in their wisdom have concluded that vice free and unchecked
out of doors is better for the people than vice fettered and restrained
by the necessity of behaving decently, and compelled to hide itself
under the semblance of virtue. The Pleasure Gardens were shut up one
after the other for that reason. When will they return? And in what
form?
The Gardens of South London were not so celebrated as those of the
North. Against Ranelagh, Cremorne, Marylebone, Bagnigge Wells, the White
Conduit House--the South can only point to Vauxhall as a national
institution. They were, however, of considerable note in their time, and
were greatly frequented. They lay in a half circle, like pearls on a
chain, all round South London. There were the Lambeth Wells, the Marble
Hall, and the Cumberland Gardens at Vauxhall, besides Vauxhall itself;
the Black Prince, Newington Butts; the Temple of Flora, the Temple of
Apollo, the Flora Tea Gardens, the Restoration Spring Gardens, the Dog
and Duck, the Folly on the Thames; Cuper's Gardens; Finch's Grotto, the
Bermondsey Spa, and St. Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe. No doubt there were
others, but these were the principal Gardens.
Cuper's Gardens lay exactly opposite to Somerset House. When Waterloo
Bridge and Waterloo Bridge Road were constructed the latter passed right
through the former site of the Gardens. St. John's Church marks the
southern limit of the Gardens. They were opened about the year 1678 by
one Cuper, gardener to the Earl of Arundel. He begged such of the
statues belonging to his master as were mutilated, and decorated the new
gardens with them. Aubrey mentions them as belonging to Jesus College,
Oxford; he calls them Cupid's gardens, and speaks of the arbours and
walks of the place. There was a tavern connected with the gardens by the
riverside, and fireworks were exhibited. These gardens continued until
1753, when they were suppressed as a nuisance. Cunningham quotes the
prologue to Mrs. Centlivre's 'Busy Body.'
The Fleet Street sempstress, toast of Temple sparks,
That runs spruce neckcloths for attorneys' clerks,
At Cupid's Gardens will her hours regale,
Sing 'Fair Dorinda,' and drink bottled ale.
[Illustration: THE DOG AND DUCK, BETHLEM]
In the 'Sunday Ramble' (1794) the Dog and Duck is one of the last places
visited in the course of that very remarkable Sunday 'out,' which began
at four o'clock in the morning and ended at one o'clock next morning,
such was the zeal of the ramblers. The place was a tavern in St.
George's Fields. On its site now stands Bethlehem Hospital. It was first
built for the accommodation of those who came to this spot in order to
drink the waters of a spring supposed to possess wonderful properties,
especially in the case of cutaneous disorders and scrofula. The spring,
like so many other medicinal springs, has long since been forgotten.
Where is Beulah Spa? Who remembereth Hampstead Spa? Yet in its day the
spring in St. George's Wells had no small reputation. It was especially
in vogue between 1744 and 1770. Dr. Johnson advised Mrs. Thrale to try
it. When the Spa declined, the tavern looked out for other attractions;
it found them by day in certain ponds on the Fields close to the tavern:
these ponds especially on Sunday were used for the magnificent sport of
hunting the duck by dogs. All the ponds around London, especially those
lying on the east side of Tottenham Court Road, were used for this
sport. The gallant sportsmen, their hunt over, naturally felt thirsty:
they were easily persuaded to stay for the evening when on week days
there was music, with dancing, singing, supper, and more drink, and on
Sundays the organ, with a choice company of the most well-bred gentlemen
and ladies of similar breeding and taste.
Like Ranelagh and Bagnigge Wells, and indeed all the Pleasure Gardens,
the Dog and Duck was a favourite place for breakfasts. The fashion of
the public breakfast, now so completely forgotten, was brought to London
from Bath, Tunbridge Wells, and Epsom. Tea and coffee were served at
breakfast. After breakfast the people stayed on at the gardens, very
often all day and half the night at the Dog and Duck. There was a
bowling green for fine weather, there was also a swimming bath--I
believe, the only one south of the Thames. About three or four in the
afternoon there was dinner, with a bottle or several bottles of wine.
One of the ponds not then employed for duck-hunting was in the garden,
and served as an ornamental water, with alcoves or bowers round it; a
band played at intervals during the day. In the long room there was an
organ, with an excellent organist. In the evening, there was generally a
concert; the Dog and Duck maintained its own poet and its own composer.
All this sounds very innocent and Arcadian, but in truth the place was
acquiring a most evil reputation. In 1787 it was closed on Sunday, and
in 1799 it was suppressed. In the 'Sunday Ramble' (1794) the Dog and
Duck is open, but the Ramble may have taken place before 1787. Let us
see what is going on. Remember that it is Sunday evening. But there is
not the least trace of any respect for the day, and the place--to speak
the truth--is full of the vilest company in the world, whose histories
are described in the greedy fulness and with the hypocritical
indignation against the wickedness of the people which were common among
such writers a hundred years ago. I suppose they would not venture to
set down what they did, but for the pretence of indignation. Thus, there
is a certain City merchant, once a Quaker and formerly a bankrupt, but
now rich and flourishing again. His companion is an ex-orange-girl, his
mistress. Observe that the writer is certainly airing some City scandal
of the day, and that his readers know perfectly well who was meant.
There is a certain Nan Sheldon, who seems to have been a lady of some
conversational powers with a considerable fund of information about the
shady side of town life. There is also present a young lady described as
the mistress of the 'Rev. Dr. D----s, of St. G.' Here, no doubt, we have
a piece of contemporary humour which enables us to have a slap at the
Church. There is other company of the like kind, but this specimen must
suffice. As to the men, they are chiefly 'prentices and shopmen. At the
Dog and Duck the license to sell drink had been withdrawn. The manager,
however, met the difficulty by engaging a free vintner, _i.e._ a member
of the Vintners' Company, for whom no license was required. He
therefore came to sell the drink to the visitors. It is a curious
illustration of City privileges. Leaving the Dog and Duck, the Ramblers
visited the Temple of Flora, dropped a tear over the Apollo Gardens,
deserted and falling into ruins, and visited the Flora Tea Garden. The
company here was more respectable, in consequence of some separation
among the ladies; it was not, however, very orderly, and political
argument ran high.
From this Tea Garden they drove to the Bermondsey Spa Gardens. Let me
extract this account of this place, which was once so popular:
'We found the entrance presents a vista between trees, hung with lamps,
blue, red, green, and white; nor is the walk in which they are hung
inferior (length excepted) to the grand walk in Vauxhall Gardens. Nearly
at the upper end of the walk is a large room, hung round with paintings,
many of them in an elegant and the rest in a singular taste. At the
upper end of the room is a painting of a butcher's shop, so finely
executed by the landlord that a stranger to the place would cheapen a
fillet of veal or a buttock of beef, a shoulder of mutton or a leg of
pork, without hesitation, if there were not other pictures in the room
to take off his attention. But these paintings are not seen on a Sunday.
'The accommodations at this place on a Sunday are very good, and the
charges reasonable, and the captain, who is very intimate with Mr.
Keyse, declares that there is no place in the vicinity of London can
afford a more agreeable evening's entertainment.
'This elegant place of entertainment is situate in the lower road,
between the Borough of Southwark and Deptford. The proprietor calls it
_one_, but it is nearer two miles from London Bridge, and the same
distance from that of Black-Friars. The proprietor is Mr. Thomas Keyse,
who has been at great expense, and exerted himself in a very
extraordinary manner, for the entertainment of the public; and his
labours have been amply repaid.
'It is easy to paint the elegance of this place, situated in a spot
where elegance, among people who talk of _taste_, would be little
expected. But Mr. Keyse's good humour, his unaffected easiness of
behaviour, and his _genuine_ taste for the polite arts, have secured him
universal approbation.
'The gardens, with an adjacent field, consist of not less than four
acres.
'On the north-east side of the gardens is a very fine lawn, consisting
of about three acres, and in a field, parted from this lawn by a sunk
fence, is a building with turrets, resembling a fortress, or castle. The
turrets are in the ancient style of building. At each side of this
fortress, at unequal distances, are two buildings, from which, on public
nights, bomb shells, &c., are thrown at the fortress; the fire is
returned, and the whole exhibits a very picturesque, and therefore a
horrid, prospect of a siege.
'After walking a round or two in the gardens we retired into the
parlour, where we were very agreeably entertained by the proprietor,
who, contrary to his own rule, favoured us with a sight of his curious
museum, for, it being Sunday, he never shows to any one these articles;
but, the captain never having seen them, I wished him to be gratified
with such an agreeable sight.
'Mr. Keyse presented us with a little pamphlet, written by the late
celebrated John Oakman, of lyric memory, descriptive of his situation,
which a few years ago was but a waste piece of ground. "Here is now,"
said he, "an agreeable place, where before was but a mere wilderness
piece of ground, and, in my opinion, it was a better plan to lay it out
in this manner than any other wise, as the remoteness of any place of
public entertainment from this secured to me in my retreat a comfortable
piece of livelihood."
'We perfectly coincided in opinion with our worthy host, and, after
paying for our liquor, got into our carriage, but not before we had
tasted a comfortable glass of cherry brandy, for which Mr. Keyse is
remarkable for preparing.'
I am not here writing a history of South London. Were this a history,
Vauxhall Gardens would demand its own place, and a very large place. A
garden which continued to be a favourite resort from the year 1660 or
thereabouts until the year 1859, when it was finally abandoned, which
occupies so large a part in the literature of that long period, must
have its history told in length when a history is written of the place
where it stood. In this place I desire to do no more than to take off my
hat to this Queen of Gardens, and to recognise her importance. The
history of Vauxhall is an old story; it has been told at greater or less
length, over and over again. We seem to know all the anecdotes which
have been copied from one writer by another, and all the literature and
all the poetry about Vauxhall. The poetry is, indeed, very poor stuff.
The best are the lines of Canning:
There oft returning from the green retreats
Where fair Vauxhallia decks her sylvan seats;
Where each spruce nymph, from City counters free,
Sips the frothed syllabub or fragrant tea:
While with sliced ham, scraped beef, and burnt champagne,
Her 'prentice lover soothes his amorous pain.
What a chain of anecdotes it is! We begin in 1661 with Evelyn, who
treats the place with his accustomed brevity and coldness; we go on to
Pepys, who records how the visitors picked cherries, and how the
nightingales sang, and lets us understand how much he enjoyed his visits
there, and how delightful he found the place, and how much after his own
heart; we proceed to Congreve and Tom Brown, to Addison, to Fielding, to
Horace Walpole. We all know the Dark Walk, and how the ladies were taken
there, not unwillingly, to be frightened: we know the stage where they
danced: we know the orchestra; we know the Chinese Room: we know
Rowlandson's picture of the evening at Vauxhall with the Prince of
Wales, putting on princely arrogance in the middle, and the Duchess of
Devonshire and her friends apparently making fun of him; and in the side
box, having supper, Goldsmith and Boswell, and Mrs. Traill, and Dr.
Johnson; with Miss Linley singing; and we all know about the forty
thousand coloured lamps festooned about the trees.
London was not London, life was not worth having, without Vauxhall. Like
Mrs. Cornelys's masquerades and assemblies, Vauxhall was the great
leveller of the eighteenth century. A man might be an earl or a prince:
he would get no more enjoyment out of Vauxhall than a 'prentice who had
a little money to spare. And the milliner going to Vauxhall with that
'prentice was quite as happy as any lady in the land could be.
When one thinks of Vauxhall and all it meant, one is carried away by
admiration. To the City Miss who might belong to the City Assembly, but
most likely did not, there was no such spectacle in the world as those
avenues of trees with their thousands of coloured lamps; there was
nothing that so much made her heart leap up as the sight of the dancing
in the open air to the music of the orchestra in the high stand; there
was nothing so delightful as to sit in an arbour dimly lighted, and to
make a supper off cold chicken with a glass of punch afterwards--girls
drank punch then--to look out upon the company, resplendent, men and
women alike, in their dress, and ceremonious in their manners; to be
told how the one was the young Lord Mellamour and the angel with him was
a danseuse of Covent Garden: and that other gentleman behind them was
the Rev. Dr. Scattertext of St. Bride's; and that the dashing young
fellow in peach-coloured velvet was no other than Sixteen String Jack
the highwayman. Vauxhall, in fact, for two hundred years, was nothing
less than a national institution. All classes who could command a
decent coat went to Vauxhall. The Prince of Wales went there--once or
twice he was recognised and mobbed; all the great ladies went there; all
the lesser ladies; all the ladies of the half world; all the citizens,
from the Alderman to the 'prentice; all the adventurers; all the gallant
highwaymen. There was a charming toleration about the visitors to
Vauxhall. They were not in the least disturbed by the presence of the
highwaymen, of the adventurers, or of the ladies corresponding to those
gentlemen--not in the least; they walked together in the lanes and
aisles of the place; they ate supper in the next arbour; they saw the
young rakes carrying on openly and without the least disguise. The sober
citizen saw it; his sober wife saw it; her daughter saw it. There were
no complaints, save occasionally from the Surrey magistrates. The place
and the behaviour of the people are typical of the eighteenth century,
in which the maintenance of order was thrown upon the public, and there
were no police. If things got very bad in a pleasure garden, the
magistrates refused a license; if the visitors were robbed by highwaymen
on their way to and from the place, guards were appointed by the
managers. Vauxhall, however, was safer than most places, because most of
the people came by boat. In common with all places of amusement in the
eighteenth century, Vauxhall was late. The people seem to have been
allowed to stay there nearly all night.
There is a passage quoted in Chambers's 'Book of Days,' which I should
like to transfer with acknowledgments to this page. It is from the
'Connoisseur' of 1755, and discusses a Vauxhall slice of ham.
'When it was brought, our honest friend twirled the dish about three or
four times, and surveyed it with a settled countenance. Then taking up a
slice of the ham on the point of his fork, and dangling it to and fro,
he asked the waiter how much there was of it. "A shilling's worth, sir,"
said the fellow. "Prithee," said the cit, "how much dost think it
weighs?" "An ounce, sir." "Ah! a shilling an ounce, that is sixteen
shillings per pound; a reasonable profit, truly! Let me see. Suppose,
now, the whole ham weighs thirty pounds: at a shilling per ounce, that
is sixteen shillings per pound. Why, your master makes exactly
twenty-four pounds off of every ham; and if he buys them at the best
hand, and salts and cures them himself, they don't stand him in ten
shillings a-piece!"'
In 1841 there seemed every prospect that the gardens would be closed;
they were not closed, however, but were reopened and continued open
until the year 1859, where they were finally closed and the farewell
night was celebrated.
The scare, however, in 1841 produced in June a brief history of Vauxhall
Gardens in one of the morning papers--I do not know which--I have it as
a cutting only. It is as follows:
'Vauxhall Gardens are announced for public sale under Gye and Hughes's
bankruptcy, and their past celebrity deserves a notice, if only as a
memento of the pleasure the old and young have experienced in their
delightful retreats, while their hundredfold associations, such as the
journey of Sir Roger de Coverley to the gardens, old Jonathan Tyers, and
the paintings in the pavilions by Hayman and Hogarth, create an interest
seldom to be met with. The gardens derive their name from the manor of
Vauxhall, or Faukeshall, but the tradition that the property belonged to
Guy Fawkes is erroneous. The premises were in 1615 the property of Jane
Vaux, and the mansion was then called Stockdens. The gardens appear to
have been originally planted with trees and laid out into walks for the
pleasure of a private gentleman, Sir Samuel Moreland, who displayed in
his house and gardens many whimsical proofs of his skill in mechanics.
It is said these gardens were planted in the reign of Charles I.; nor is
it improbable, since, according to Aubrey, they were well known in 1667,
when Sir Samuel Moreland, the proprietor, added a public room to them,
"the inside of which," he says, "is all looking-glass and fountains and
very pleasant to behold, and which is much visited by strangers." The
time when they were first opened for the entertainment of the public is
involved in some uncertainty; their celebrity is, however, established
to be upwards of a century and a half old. In the reign of Queen Anne
they appear to have been a place of great public resort, for in the
"Spectator," No. 383, dated May 20, 1712, Addison has introduced Sir
Roger de Coverley as accompanying him in a voyage from Temple-stairs to
Vauxhall, then called Spring Gardens. He says: "We made the best of our
way to Foxhall;" and describes the gardens as "exceedingly pleasant at
this time of the year. When I considered the fragrancy of the walks and
bowers with the choirs of birds that sung upon the trees and the tribe
of people that walked under their shades, I could not but look on this
place as a sort of Mohammedan Paradise." Masks were then worn, at least
by some visitors, for Addison talks of "a mask tapping Sir Roger on the
shoulder and inviting him to drink a bottle of mead with her." A glass
of Burton ale and a slice of hung beef formed the supper of the party.
The place, however, resembled a tea-garden of our days till the year
1730, when Mr. Jonathan Tyers took a lease of the premises, and shortly
afterwards opened Vauxhall with a _Ridotto al Fresco_. The novelty of
the term attracted great numbers, and Mr. Tyers was so successful in
occasional repetitions as to be induced to open the gardens every
evening during the summer. Hogarth at this time had lodgings at
Lambeth-terrace, and, becoming intimate with Tyers, was induced to
embellish the gardens with his designs, in which he was joined by
Hayman. The house which he occupied is still shown, and a vine pointed
out which he planted. Tyers's improvements consisted of sweeps of
pavilions and saloons, in which these paintings were placed. He also
erected an orchestra, engaged a band of music, and placed a fine statue
of Handel by Roubiliac in a conspicuous part of the gardens. Mr.
Cunningham dates the appearance of this statue, which was Roubiliac's
earliest work, at 1732. Mr. Tyers afterwards purchased the whole of the
estate, which is copyhold of inheritance, and held of the Prince of
Wales, as lord of Kennington manor, in right of his Duchy of Cornwall.
The gardens were originally opened daily (Sunday excepted), and till the
year 1792 the admission was 1_s._; it was then raised to 2_s._;
including tea and coffee; in 1809 several improvements were made, lamps
added, &c., the price was raised to 3_s._ 6_d._, and the gardens were
only opened three nights in the week; in 1821 the price was again raised
to 4_s._ Upon the death of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the gardens became the
property of Mr. Bryant Barrett, who married the granddaughter of the
original proprietor. They next descended to Mr. Barrett's sons, and from
them by right of purchase to the late proprietors. Mr. Thomas Tyers, a
son of the famous Jonathan Tyers, and author of "Biographical Sketches
of Johnson," and "Political Conferences," who died on February 1, 1787,
contributed many poetic trifles to the gardens. The representation of
the _Ridotto al Fresco_ is thus described by one of the newspapers of
June 21, 1732: "On Wednesday, at the _Ridotto al Fresco_ at Vauxhall,
there was not one half of the company as was expected, being no more
than 203 persons, amongst whom were several persons of distinction, but
more ladies than gentlemen, and the whole was managed with great order
and decency; a detachment of 100 of the Foot Guards being posted round
the gardens. A waiter belonging to the house having got drunk put on a
dress and went to _fresco_ with the rest of the company, but being
discovered he was immediately turned out of doors." The season of 1739
was for three months, and the admittance was by silver tickets. The
proprietors then announced that "1,000 tickets would only be delivered
at 25_s._ each, the silver of every ticket to be worth 3_s._ 2_d._, and
to admit two persons every evening (Sunday excepted) during the
season." It appears that these silver tickets were struck after designs
by Hogarth, and a plate of some of them shows the following:--Mr. John
Hinton, 212, 1794; on the reverse side the figure of Calliope. Mr. Wood,
63, 1750; on the reverse side three boys playing with a lyre, and the
motto "_Jocosæ conveniunt Lyræ._" Mr. R. Frankling, 70; on the reverse
side figure of Euterpe. Mr. Samuel Lewes, 87; on the reverse side the
figure of Erato. Mr. Carey, 11; on the reverse side the figure of
Thalia. This plate also exhibits the gold ticket, a perpetual admission
given to Hogarth by Jonathan Tyers, in gratitude for his advice and
assistance in decorating the gardens. After his decease it remained in
the hands of Mrs. Hogarth, his widow, who bequeathed it to her relation,
Mrs. Mary Lewis, who subsequently left it to Mr. P. F. Hart, who in his
will, in 1823, bequeathed it to Mr. John Tuck. It is hardly necessary to
say that the ticket is after Hogarth's own design. The face of it
presents the word "Hogarth," in a bold hand, beneath which is "_In
perpetuam beneficii memoriam._" On the reverse there are two figures,
surrounded with the motto, "_Virtus voluptas felices una._" It also
appears that Roubiliac furnished a statue of Milton for the gardens.
Among the singers Beard and Lowe were early favourites; then came
Dignum, Mrs. Weichsel, Mrs. Billington, Signora Storace, Incledon, Mrs.
Bland, &c. In later years, Misses Tunstall, Noel, Melville, and
Williams; Stephens, Love, Madame Cornega, and Madame Vestris; Mr.
Braham, Mr. Sinclair, Mr. Robinson, and Signor de Begnis, &c., with
Signor Spagnoletti as leader.'