the Eagle, for in October the proprietor bought up the fittings of the
Abbey entrance and robing-rooms and erected them as an entrance to his
gardens, advertising them not only as the identical fittings, but as
re-erected by ‘the identical mechanics.’ In this year, also, the famous
Grecian Saloon came into existence. It was furnished with an organ and
‘a superb self-acting piano’; also with a superb gas chandelier, and with
classic paintings by Philip Phillips, a pupil of Clarkson Stanfield and
‘scene-painter to the Adelphi and Haymarket.’ {58b}
The Eagle reopened in the spring of 1832 with many of the attractions
that long continued to characterize it. In the garden was an orchestra
of Oriental type, variously described as Moorish or Chinese, and the
Pandean Band from Vauxhall Gardens was engaged to perform. Dancing took
place, generally once a week, in the ‘Grecian tent’ or in the
assembly-room, and the gardens were adorned with Chinese lanterns,
cosmoramas, fountains, and dripping rocks. In the Saloon there were
concerts and ‘vaudevilles’ every evening, with sacred music (in Lent)
from Handel and Mozart. The admission was no more than a shilling or
sixpence, and it is pleasing to find that the ‘junior branches of
families’ were admitted at threepence a head. One has a tender feeling
for these junior branches, some of whom must have sat there with their
fathers and mothers rather wearily from 7.30 to near 11, enlivened at
times by the conjurer and the lady on the elastic cord (Miss Hengler or
Miss Clarke) but caring little for the excellent glees and the vocal
efforts of Miss Fraser James—bright star though she was of the London
tavern concerts {59a}—or for those of Miss Smith, ‘the little Pickle’ of
Drury Lane, of whom the critics remarked that it was miraculous that so
young a person should be able to sing so high and so low, and excel in
such songs as the ‘Deep, Deep Sea’ and ‘The Wolf,’ which she was
understood to sing in private. How many people at this period visited
the Eagle, or, indeed, any other place of open-air amusement, it is hard
to determine; but the newspapers speak of 5,000 or 6,000 persons being
present on one night in May, while others give the more modest total of
1,000 or 1,300 at sixpence each. The frequenters of the Eagle were
people of humble rank, and at this time we hear of no distinguished
visitors, except, perhaps, Paganini, who, going there with his friends to
amuse himself one August night in 1832, was considerably mobbed, the
remarks on his appearance being doubtless gems of Cockney sarcasm.
[Picture: A Tavern-Concert Singer, Miss Frazer (or Fraser) James, circa
1838]
A graphic sketch by ‘Boz’ brings back to us the evening when Mr. Samuel
Wilkins, the journeyman carpenter of small dimensions, accompanied his
sweetheart, Miss Jemima Evans, to the Eagle. On their way from a distant
suburb, they stopped at the Crown{59b} in Pentonville, to taste some
excellent shrub in the little garden thereto attached, and finally
arrived in the City Road. The Eagle garden was gravelled and planted,
the refreshment-boxes were painted, and variegated lamps shed their light
on the heads of the company. A Moorish band and military band were
playing in the grounds; but the people were making for the concert-room,
a place with an orchestra, ‘all paint, gilding, and plate glass.’ Here
the audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and
‘everybody’—and this is a touch of the later Dickens—‘was eating and
drinking as comfortably as possible.’ Mr. Wilkins ordered rum-and-water
with a lemon for himself and ‘sherry-wine’ for the lady, with some sweet
caraway-seed biscuits. There was an overture on the organ and comic
songs (let us add by the famous singers Henry Howell and Robert Glindon
{60}), accompanied by the organ.
This must have been in 1835 or 1836, and Dickens would have been pleased
at the all-embracing sympathies of the proprietor of the Eagle, who, a
little later, organized so many charitable benefits. Thus, there was a
benefit for the Blind Hebrew Brethren in the East, and a ball ‘for our
friends of the Hebrew nation.’ On another night, a benefit ‘to relieve
decayed Druids and their wives and orphans,’ and yet another night ‘for
clothing the children of the needy.’
The coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, like the previous coronation,
gave a hint for new developments. The Eagle now, and for some years,
took to itself the sub-title of the Coronation Pleasure-Grounds, and this
year, or at the close of 1837, the place assumed nearly the form that it
retained till its closing years. A covered promenade ran round the
gardens; the great tavern at the corner of the City Road was erected, and
a ball-room was completed. The Saloon was remodelled, with a pit—part of
it railed off for smokers—and tiers of boxes. A new organ was set up by
Parsons of Bloomsbury, and the old organ and self-acting piano were
advertised for sale. The architectural genius of Rouse was doubtless at
the bottom of these changes, but he gave the credit to the professionals,
and announced that the whole was ‘planned by P. Punnett, Esq., and
surveyed by R. Warton.’
The new Saloon was opened on January 1, 1838—for the Eagle was a winter
as well as a summer resort {61a}—with a concert and an appropriate
address by Moncrieff the dramatist. A programme of this year includes an
overture by Weber, an air from Rossini, ‘Tell me where is Fancy bred,’
‘All’s Well’ (duet), and ‘It’s all very well, Mr. Ferguson,’ one of
several comic songs.
We approach the forties, when Rouse, like Phelps with Shakespeare at
Sadler’s Wells, had the audacity to present a whole series of operas in
the City Road. If these representations were not brilliant, they were
praiseworthy efforts, and a revelation to East Central London. Rouse had
a good band and chorus; an excellent tenor in Frazer from Covent Garden
Theatre; C. Horn, the composer of ‘Cherry Ripe,’ Russell Grover, and
various passable prima donnas. {61b} Among the operas announced in the
bills of the forties we find the _Barber of Seville_, the _Crown
Diamonds_, _Don Giovanni_, _La Gazza Ladra_, and _Sonnambula_. In these
attempts to improve the musical taste of the neighbourhood, Rouse is
reported to have lost £2,000 yearly, but as the tavern brought him in
about £5,000 a year he could well afford the experiment.
At the Christmas of 1844, pantomime, which was to make the fame of the
later Grecian theatre, found its place in the programme, and Richard
Flexmore, a really agile, inventive, and humorous clown, made his
appearance. A more remarkable actor, who joined the Grecian company
about this time, and remained with it for five years, was Frederick
Robson, who was given parts in the farces and vaudevilles. Robson’s
great reputation dates from his performances at the Olympic from 1853
onwards, but at the Grecian he had already given an unmistakable taste of
his quality. His famous song ‘Villikins and his Dinah’ was first heard
at the Eagle. A man of strange physique, with a small body and a big
head, he could do what he would with his audience—convulsing them with
laughter by some outrageous drollery; thrilling them with ‘an electrical
burst of passion or pathos, or holding them midway between terror and
laughter as he performed some weirdly grotesque dance.’ {62a} In
burlesque and extravaganza he displayed such passionate intensity that he
seemed to give promise of a second Kean—yet a Kean he never became. A
playgoer who saw him often has acutely suggested that ‘the very
opportunity of exaggeration afforded by burlesque elicited the display of
a quasi-tragic power which would have ceased if the condition of
exaggeration were withdrawn.’ {62b}
March 1, 1851, was memorable at the Eagle as the last night of the
proprietorship of old Thomas Rouse. He died at Boulogne a year later
(September 26, 1852). During his twenty-seven years of management he had
done much to deserve the title of ‘Bravo’ Rouse, with which his audiences
were wont to hail him. For one thing, he was never bored by his own
entertainments, but used to sit, night after night, in a box or other
conspicuous place—a symbol of order, armed with a big stick, which one
fancies he would have used if necessary.
His successor was Benjamin Oliver Conquest {63} (born 1805) a comic actor
of ability, endowed with plenty of animal spirits, which had carried him
from the part of a coach-builder or (according to others) of a bootmaker
in real life to the stage part of a witch in _Macbeth_, and finally
supported him through a twenty-eight weeks’ repetition at the Pavilion
Theatre of a song, ‘Billy Barlow,’ which made a sensation something like
‘Jim Crow.’
He inaugurated the first night of his management at the Eagle, March 31,
1851, by the production of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, with an opening
address by E. L. Blanchard. On another night Blanchard’s burlesque,
called _Nobody in Town_ was produced with a part for Sam Cowell
(1820–1866), the comic singer, famous for his clear articulation and
finished style. The great feature of Conquest’s management was the
production of ballets, only surpassed by those of Her Majesty’s Theatre.
It happened that Mrs. Conquest, his wife, was a fine dancer and a
singularly skilful teacher, who trained a long succession of pupils,
including the graceful Kate Vaughan. The Miss Conquests, moreover, his
daughters Amelia, Laura, and Isabella, formed in themselves a small
troupe of capable dancers. In the gardens, too, the public dancing
became more prominent, and a ‘monster platform’ was erected for the
accommodation of 500 people. The masked ball was also occasionally
tried, an experiment, as Vauxhall had shown, likely to be fraught with
rowdyism, though the Eagle sternly refused admittance to clowns,
harlequins, and pantaloons. One sensation of Conquest’s management was
the ascent, in 1852, of Coxwell’s balloon, with the acrobats H. and E.
Buislay suspended on a double trapeze from its car.
In the last years of the fifties, pantomime and drama, romantic and
sensational, figure largely in the bills. From 1857 George Conquest, the
proprietor’s son, began to take a prominent part as actor and
stage-manager, and finally made the Grecian pantomime one of the features
of the minor stage. In conjunction with H. Spry, the younger Conquest
wrote or produced more than twenty-one pantomimes at this theatre, and
was always to the fore in the performance itself. Unsurpassed in daring
feats of the trap and trapeze kind, he was no less remarkable for his
wonderful make-up and changes. In the _Wood Demon_ (1873–1874), for
instance, he presented the title-rôle as a tree, appearing next as a
dwarf, an animated pear, and finally as an octopus. He became sole
proprietor on his father’s death (July 5, 1872), and built a new Grecian
theatre, {64a} opened in October, 1877, with Harry Nicholls; George
Conquest, junior, and Miss M. A. Victor in the company.
In 1879 Conquest sold the Eagle property to Mr. T. G. Clark, taking his
farewell benefit on March 17. He migrated to the Surrey Theatre, where,
as lessee, he continued the traditions of the Grecian pantomimes. He
died on May 14, 1901.
Mr. Clark, the new proprietor, {64b} had made money in the marine-store
business, and would have been better qualified to command the Channel
Fleet than to manage the Eagle. He had, it is true, been for a short
time the lessee of the Adelphi, but he had no eye for theatrical
business, and his new venture, chiefly in the regions of melodrama, was
once more disastrous to his pocket. Perhaps the failure was not entirely
his own fault. Tastes were changing, and the Eagle garden, with its
public dancing—now that Cremorne had passed away—seemed something like a
scandal or an anachronism. In the time of the Conquests there had been
complaints of the company that frequented the Eagle. Such charges are
too often exaggerated, because they are often made by well-meaning people
who really know nothing _at first hand_ of popular amusements, and who go
to the garden or the music-hall to collect evidence, as it were, for the
prosecution. At the same time, there is generally something in
complaints of the kind, nor are managers quite the immaculate beings that
their counsel represent them to be when licences come on for renewal in
October. It is right to say that George Conquest seems to have done his
best to keep out notoriously bad characters, and that he warned mere boys
and girls off his monster platform and his concert-hall.
Mr. Clark’s difficulties and the belief, well founded or not, that the
Eagle was an undesirable public influence formed the opportunity of
‘General’ Booth and the Salvation Army. The Army wanted a barracks and a
headquarters for their social and religious work. That they should have
obtained these—and largely by public subscription—few will complain. But
it is not quite clear that it was imperative to make an onslaught on the
Eagle, being, as it was, a centre of amusement in the colourless life of
the district. A new theatre might well have arisen under a new Conquest,
even if the garden and the dancing had to go.
In June, 1882, the Eagle was purchased by the Army. In August the stage
appliances were sold off, and the Army entered the citadel in triumph.
In September the public were admitted. A great tent for religious
services took the place of the monster platform—the pernicious spot on
which, as Mr. Booth’s friends declared, so many ‘had danced their way to
destruction.’ Curiously enough, though one object of the movement was to
annihilate the Eagle tavern, that stronghold of beer-drinking and
spirit-drinking, Mr. Booth discovered that the law compelled him to keep
up the drinking licence, and beer is sold in the Eagle public-house at
this very moment. Unfortunately, also, for its funds, the Army got
involved in litigation about alterations and repairs—a costly business
which was carried up to the House of Lords.
At last the ancient domain of the Shepherd and Shepherdess was deserted
even by the Salvation Army. In September, 1899, the newspapers announced
that the Eagle premises were in the hands of the house-breakers. A few
old frequenters hastened to revisit the place, and some others, no doubt,
who had only heard of the Eagle as a somewhat low resort associated with
that enigmatic song of their childhood, ‘Pop goes the Weasel,’ must have
been surprised to find the buildings—rather handsome in their way—still
in existence. The Eagle garden presented itself to such visitors as a
large paved square, which, judging from its two surviving trees, could
never have been truthfully described as thickly wooded. Conspicuous
features were the large rotunda opposite the entrance, with its pit, now
floored over, and the ‘new’ theatre (of 1877), adjoining Shepherdess
Walk, practically unaltered, though dingy and dirt-begrimed beyond
description.
The Oriental orchestra in the garden still showed traces of its gaudy
colouring, and a melancholy brick wall displayed remnants of primitive
grotto-work. One could trace near the centre of the grounds the
concrete-covered circle where many a light-hearted couple had danced
before the days of the Conquests. {66} The rows of alcoves, with the
balcony for promenaders above them, were still there, though no longer
brightly painted, but mostly boarded up and filled with headless Venuses
and Cupids—pagan deities of the gardens who nourished _circa_ A.D.
1838–1882.
Soon after this, the huge Eagle tavern, surmounted by its proud stone
bird, was demolished, and a smaller public-house of neat red brick
(opened August, 1900) now covers part of its site. On the site of the
theatre and its entrance, which faced Shepherdess Walk, and was adorned
with two more stone eagles, we have now a police-station. Though all the
old buildings have been destroyed, much of the garden space is still
unoccupied, and in due season a solitary tree puts forth its leaves.
[Newspaper notices, bills, and photographs taken at the time of the
demolition of the Eagle (W.); Blanchard’s _Life_, by Clement Scott and
Cecil Howard; Hollingshead’s _Footlights_ and _My Lifetime_; Ritchie’s
_Night Side of London_; Baker’s _London Stage_.] {67}
[Picture: Pleasure-Gardens, Eagle Tavern, circa 1838]
THE ALBERT SALOON AND ROYAL STANDARD PLEASURE-GARDENS
IN his own Shepherdess Walk—a little to the north of the Eagle—the
enterprising Thomas Rouse had a not unsuccessful imitator in the person
of one Henry Bradley, the proprietor of the Royal Standard tavern and
pleasure-gardens. Some entertainments and concerts were given here in
the early thirties, but the fame of the place, such as it was, belongs to
the forties.
At the end of 1838 Bradley began to adorn his gardens somewhat in the
manner of the Eagle, surrounding them with boxes, alcoves, and panoramic
views, and building the new saloon for concerts and plays which became
well known as the Albert Saloon. He opened the gardens on Easter Monday,
1839, announcing that they would accommodate 10,000 persons, of whom
4,000 were sure of shelter from the rain. Concerts, vaudevilles, and
melodramas were for several years the staple of attraction, and the
admission was usually not more than sixpence. Tom Jones, a mimic and
comic singer, was the manager, and something was done in the way of
fireworks, ballooning, and weekly dances.
At the gardens of this period the mild attraction of a balloon ascent was
often heightened by suspending from the car some living object—a pony, a
donkey, or a man. The balloonist Gypson, who ascended from the Standard
gardens in 1839, varied this device by attaching to his night-balloon ‘a
model of the late Royal Exchange.’ Unfortunately, as the balloon was
rising, the ‘late Royal Exchange’ caught fire and was burnt to ashes in
the grounds, though the aeronaut cut the rope and soared on high in
safety.
As a minor theatre, the Albert Saloon never attained the well-deserved
fame of its Grecian rival. But it is fair to say that in one week of
1846 it presented the tragedy of _Venice Preserved_, the tragedy of
_Othello_, and _Cato_—not, indeed, Addison’s, but ‘_Cato_; _or_, _The
Slave’s Revenge_, a romantic drama.’ To relieve the tension of this
trying time, the drama of the _Jail Bird_ was enacted, and Jack Sheppard
and Rookwood were at one time or another found to be the taste of the
Albert audiences.
The Albert Saloon had also its pantomimes, and for several years the
noted clown, Paul Herring, was in its company. Herring had begun life,
like other famous artists, by performing daily—and innumerable times
daily—in Richardson’s show at Bartholomew Fair. He came to the Albert
Saloon in 1839, and was afterwards clown at the Victoria and other
theatres. In his later days he subsided into the lean and slippered
pantaloon, a part that he played in the Drury Lane pantomime of 1877, the
year before his death.
The glory of the Albert appears to have waned at the end of the forties,
and the place was closed about 1857, and the Royal Standard, a
public-house numbered 106, Shepherdess Walk is now its only
representative. {69}
[The newspapers, and bills and posters of the Albert Saloon (W.);
Colburn’s _Kalendar_, 1840, pp. 14, 163.]
NEW GLOBE PLEASURE-GROUNDS, MILE END ROAD
THE New Globe tavern, No. 359, Mile End Road, was and is (though somewhat
altered)—a substantial building, with a fine golden globe still keeping
its balance on the roof. From the twenties or thirties {70a} till the
sixties it had some spacious grounds in the rear, entered from an archway
beside the tavern. These grounds contained fine trees, and were prettily
laid out with many fountains, statues, and rustic boxes. On the west of
the grounds was the Regent’s Canal, and the whistling and puffing of the
Eastern Counties Railway in the background were, for a time, looked on as
amusing novelties. Houses in Whitman Road and Longfellow Road (at the
back of the tavern) now cover the site of these grounds.
In 1831 the Mile End New Globe Cricket Club was formed here, and in 1835
we hear of its beating the fashionable Montpelier Club. {70b} The garden
had its concerts and occasional ballets, and its ballooning, of which a
tale is told by Henry Coxwell, aeronaut, who made a series of ascents
from this place. On a summer day in 1854 he received an unexpected
summons for a balloon display. It was the benefit night of Francis, the
manager, and Coxwell was anxious to oblige. But his balloon had just
been oiled and it was a warm evening—too warm for the safety of the
balloon. Yet a balloon had been promised and fireworks. About eight
o’clock an anxious consultation took place in the gardens, and the
concert, on Coxwell’s suggestion, was prolonged till it was pitch dark in
the grounds. The gardens were now crowded, and there were impatient
cries for lighting up. At last, after a little more delay, the reluctant
balloonist was seen to enter—or rather to be pushed headlong into—the
car. But all went well: the balloon ascended, its occupant bowed and
waved his flag, and in a burst of fireworks was quickly lost to view.
While all this was in progress a man, evidently suffering from a terrible
cold, for he was greatly muffled up, and wearing whiskers—could they be
false whiskers?—might have been seen anxiously skirting the edge of the
crowd and making the best of his way to the Mile End Road.
Mr. Francis’s benefit was a success, but the next day there arrived at
the New Globe a worthy farmer, bearing in a basket Coxwell’s duly
ticketed balloon, which had descended in his field. ‘Greatly obliged to
you,’ said the proprietor. ‘No lives lost, I hope?’ ‘No lives,’ said
the farmer; ‘there was none to lose. The fellow found by my man Joe was
thought to have expired, yet all the life he ever had was out of him; but
_you know_ and _I know_ that he never had any, mister.’ The farmer spoke
the truth: _the Globe balloonist was a dummy_!
[Newspaper advertisements; Read’s _Annals of Cricket_; Coxwell’s _My Life
and Balloon Experiences_. There are three lithographs of the Globe and
its gardens (_circa_ 1839?) from drawings by H. M. Whichelo.—W.].
[Picture: New Globe Tavern Pleasure-Grounds. From a lithograph after H.
M. Whichelo, circa 1846]
THE RED HOUSE, BATTERSEA
TO picture the Red House and its surroundings, one must put out of sight
the fine park of Battersea, and go back to the first fifty years of the
nineteenth century. At that time there stood near the riverside, facing
the south end of the present Victoria (or Chelsea Suspension) Bridge, a
picturesque tavern of red brick, with white pointings and green-painted
shutters. On a summer day the pleasantest place for alfresco refreshment
was a small jetty in front of the tavern, beneath the elm-trees and the
flagstaff that flew the colours of the house. On the east side was a
garden with spacious boxes and arbours.
The Red House was the favourite goal of many Thames races, but in the
twenties, thirties, and forties its fame was chiefly due to its
shooting-ground, an enclosure about 120 yards square, where the Red House
Club and the crack shots of the Metropolis were accustomed to meet.
Pigeons were sold for the shooting at fifteen shillings a dozen,
starlings at four shillings, and sparrows at two shillings. When
sportsmen like Mr. Bloodsworth and Mr. ‘O.’ were on the spot the
execution was deadly. Thus, in 1832, in the first match at 30 birds
each, each shot 28; in the second, B. killed 25, O. 23; and in a third
match B. killed his 25, and O. his 22.
At one time a half-witted man called Billy the Nutman drove his little
trade near the Red House, and for a few pence would stand in the water
while sportsmen of the baser sort took shots in his direction. Here, at
any rate, pigeon-shooting did not encourage humanity or a sense of
humour.