[Footnote A: _Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century_, by Warwick
Wroth, F.S.A., assisted by Arthur Edgar Wroth. London: Macmillan and
Co.]
This is an honest book, disfigured by no fine writing or woeful
attempts to make us dance round may-poles with our ancestors. Terribly
is our good language abused by the swell-mob of stylists, for whom it
is certainly not enough that Chatham's language is their mother's
tongue. May the Devil fly away with these artists; though no sooner
had he done so than we should be 'wae' for auld Nicky-ben. Mr. Wroth,
of the British Museum, and his brother, Mr. Arthur Wroth, are above
such vulgar pranks, and never strain after the picturesque, but in the
plain garb of honest men carry us about to the sixty-four gardens
where the eighteenth-century Londoner, his wife and family--the John
Gilpins of the day--might take their pleasure either sadly, as indeed
best befits our pilgrim state, or uproariously to deaden the ear to
the still small voice of conscience--the pangs of slighted love, the
law's delay, the sluggish step of Fortune, the stealthy strides of
approaching poverty, or any other of the familiar incidents of our
mortal life. The sixty-two illustrations which adorn the book are as
honest as the letterpress. There is a most delightful Morland
depicting a very stout family indeed regaling itself _sub tegmine
fagi_. It is called a 'Tea Party.' A voluminous mother holds in her
roomy lap a very fat baby, whose back and neck are full upon you as
you stare into the picture. And what a jolly back and innocent neck it
is! Enough to make every right-minded woman cry out with pleasure.
Then there is the highly respectable father stirring his cup and
watching with placid content a gentleman in lace and ruffles attending
to the wife, whilst the two elder children play with a wheezy dog.
In these pages we can see for ourselves the British public--God rest
its soul!--enjoying itself. This honest book is full of _la
bourgeoisie_. The rips and the painted ladies occasionally, it is
true, make their appearance, but they are reduced to their proper
proportions. The Adam and Eve Tea Gardens, St. Pancras, have a
somewhat rakish sound, calculated to arrest the jaded attention of the
debauchee, but what has Mr. Wroth to tell us about them?
'About the beginning of the present century it could still be
described as an agreeable retreat, "with enchanting prospects"; and
the gardens were laid out with arbours, flowers, and shrubs. Cows
were kept for making syllabubs, and on summer afternoons a regular
company met to play bowls and trap-ball in an adjacent field. One
proprietor fitted out a mimic squadron of frigates in the garden,
and the long-room was used a good deal for beanfeasts and
tea-drinking parties' (p. 127).
What a pleasant place! Syllabubs! How sweet they sound! Nobody
worried then about diphtheria; they only died of it. Mimic frigates,
too! What patriotism! These gardens are as much lost as those of the
Hesperides. A cemetery swallowed them up--the cemetery which adjoins
the old St. Pancras Churchyard. The Tavern, shorn of its amenities, a
mere drink-shop, survived as far down the century as 1874, soon after
which date it also disappeared. Hornsey Wood House has a name not
unknown in the simple annals of tea-drinking. It is now part of
Finsbury Park, but in the middle of the last century its long-room 'on
popular holydays, such as Whit Sunday, might be seen crowded as early
as nine or ten in the morning with a motley assemblage eating rolls
and butter and drinking tea at an extravagant price.' 'Hone remembered
the old Hornsey Wood House as it stood embowered, and seeming a part
of the wood. It was at that time kept by two sisters--Mrs. Lloyd and
Mrs. Collier--and these aged dames were usually to be found before
their door on a seat between two venerable oaks, wherein swarms of
bees hived themselves.'
What a picture is this of these vanished dames! Somewhere, I trust,
they are at peace.
'And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes,
Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia,
Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore.'
A more raffish place was the Dog and Duck in St. George's Fields,
which boasted mineral springs, good for gout, stone, king's evil, sore
eyes, and inveterate cancers. Considering its virtue, the water was a
cheap liquor, for a dozen bottles could be had at the spa for a
shilling. The Dog and Duck, though at last it exhibited depraved
tastes, was at one time well conducted. Miss Talbot writes about it to
Mrs. Carter, and Dr. Johnson advised his Thralia to try the waters. It
was no mean place, but boasted a breakfast-room, a bowling-green, and
a swimming-bath 200 feet long and 100 feet (nearly) broad. Mr. Wroth
narrates the history of its fall with philosophical composure. In the
hands of one Hedger the decencies were disregarded, and thieves made
merry where once Miss Talbot sipped bohea. One of its frequenters,
Charlotte Shaftoe, is said to have betrayed seven of her intimates to
the gallows. Few visitors' lists could stand such a strain as Miss
Shaftoe put upon hers. In 1799 the Dog and Duck was suppressed, and
Bethlehem Hospital now reigns in its stead. 'The Peerless Pool' has a
Stevensonian sound. It was a dangerous pond behind Old Street, long
known as 'The Parlous or Perilous Pond' 'because divers youth by
swimming therein have been drowned.' In 1743 a London jeweller called
Kemp took it in hand, turned it into a pleasure bath, and renamed it,
happily enough, 'The Peerless Pool.' It was a fine open-air bath, 170
feet long, more than 100 feet broad, and from 3 to 5 feet deep. 'It
was nearly surrounded by trees, and the descent was by marble steps to
a fine gravel bottom, through which the springs that supplied the pool
came bubbling up.' Mr. Kemp likewise constructed a fish-pond. The
enterprise met with success, and anglers, bathers, and at due seasons
skaters, flocked to 'The Peerless Pool.' Hone describes how every
Thursday and Saturday the boys from the Bluecoat School were wont to
plunge into its depths. You ask its fate. It has been built over.
Peerless Street, the second main turning on the left of the City Road
just beyond Old Street in coming from the City, is all that is left to
remind anyone of the once Parlous Pool, unless, indeed, it still
occasionally creeps into a cellar and drowns cockroaches instead of
divers youths. The Three Hats, Highbury Barn, Hampstead Wells, are not
places to be lightly passed over. In Mr. Wroth's book you may read
about them and trace their fortunes--their fallen fortunes. After all,
they have only shared the fate of empires.
Of the most famous London gardens--Marylebone, Ranelagh, and, greatest
of them all, Vauxhall--Mr. Wroth writes at, of course, a becoming
length. Marylebone Gardens, when at their largest, comprised about 8
acres. Beaumont Street, part of Devonshire Street and of Devonshire
Place and Upper Wimpole Street, now occupy their site. Music was the
main feature of Marylebone. A band played in the evening. Vocalists at
different times drew crowds. Masquerades and fireworks appeared later
in the history of the gardens, which usually were open three nights of
the week. Dr. Johnson's turbulent behaviour, on the occasion of one of
his frequent visits, will easily be remembered. Marylebone, at no
period, says Mr. Wroth, attained the vogue of Ranelagh or the
universal popularity of Vauxhall. In 1776 the gardens were closed, and
two years later the builders began to lay out streets. Ranelagh is,
perhaps, the greatest achievement of the eighteenth century. Its
Rotunda, built in 1741, is compared by Mr. Wroth to the reading-room
of the British Museum. No need to give its dimensions; only look at
the print, and you will understand what Johnson meant when he declared
that the _coup d'oeil_ of Ranelagh was the finest thing he had ever
seen. The ordinary charge for admission was half a crown, which
secured you tea or coffee and bread-and-butter. The gardens were
usually open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the amusements were
music, tea-drinking, walking, and talking. Mr. Wroth quotes a
Frenchman, who, after visiting Ranelagh in 1800, calls it 'le plus
insipide lieu d'amusement que l'on ait pu imaginer,' and even hints at
Dante's Purgatory. An earlier victim from Gaul thus records his
experience of Ranelagh: 'On s'ennui avec de la mauvaise musique, du
thé et du beurre.' So true is it that the cheerfulness you find
anywhere is the cheerfulness you have brought with you. However,
despite the Frenchman, good music and singing were at times to be
heard at Ranelagh. The nineteenth century would have nothing to do
with Ranelagh, and in 1805 it was pulled down. The site now belongs to
Chelsea Hospital. Cuper's Gardens lacked the respectability of
Marylebone and the style of Ranelagh, but they had their vogue during
the same century. They were finely situated on the south side of the
Thames opposite Somerset House. Cuper easily got altered into Cupid;
and when on the death of Ephraim Evans in 1740 the business came to be
carried on by his widow, a comely dame who knew a thing or two, it
proved to be indeed a going concern. But the new Licensing Bill of
1752 destroyed Cupid's Garden, and Mrs. Evans was left lamenting and
wholly uncompensated. Of Vauxhall Mr. Wroth treats at much length, and
this part of his book is especially rich in illustrations. Every lover
of Old London and old times and old prints should add Mr. Wroth's book
to his library.