Street, Southwark, near St. George’s Fields,[265] derived their name
from Thomas Finch, a Herald Painter, who, having inherited from a
relation a house and garden, opened both for the entertainment of
the public in the spring of 1760. The garden possessed some lofty
trees, and was planted with evergreens and shrubs. In the centre was
a medicinal spring over which Finch constructed a grotto, wherein a
fountain played over artificial embankments and formed “a natural and
beautiful cascade.” The spring enjoyed some local celebrity, and was
recommended to his patients by a doctor named Townshend, who resided in
the Haymarket and afterwards in St. George’s Fields. In our own time
Dr. Rendle has described the water as “merely the filtered soakage of
a supersaturated soil,” which could be obtained almost anywhere in
Southwark.
A subscription ticket of a guinea entitled the holder to such benefits,
as Finch’s spring conferred and gave admission to the evening
entertainments that were introduced from about 1764. The ordinary
admission was a shilling, raised on special nights to two shillings.
The gardens were open on Sunday when sixpence was charged, though the
visitor was entitled for his money to tea, half a pint of wine, cakes,
jelly or cyder.
[Illustration: ADMISSION TICKET, FINCH’S GROTTO.]
An orchestra containing an organ by Pike, of Bloomsbury, stood in the
garden, and there was another orchestra attached to a large octagonal
music-room decorated with paintings and festoons of flowers. This
Octagon Room was used for occasional balls and for the promenade and
concert on wet evenings.
The place appears to have been respectably conducted, but there is
little evidence that it was ever a modish resort, in spite of the
assertion of the country-bred Mrs. Hardcastle[266] that no one could
“have a manner that has never seen the Pantheon, the Grotto Gardens,
the Borough and such places where the nobility chiefly resort.”[267]
The vocal and instrumental concerts which took place every evening
in the season (May-September) were of a creditable though not very
ambitious character. About fifteen hundred persons are said to have
been present on some of the Freemasons’ nights and on the benefit
nights of the performers.
[Illustration: _M^{rs}. Baddely._]
Numerous singers and instrumentalists were engaged,[268] of whom the
best known are Robert Hudson the organist, Miss Snow and Thomas Lowe.
Sophia Snow, the daughter of Valentine Snow, sergeant trumpeter to the
King, married Robert Baddeley the comedian, who introduced her to the
stage at Drury Lane in 1765. As Mrs. Baddeley, she became notorious for
her beauty and intrigues. She had some powers as an actress in genteel
comedy and her melodious voice made her popular at Ranelagh (from 1770)
and Vauxhall.
Lowe was the well-known tenor singer of Vauxhall and lessee of
Marylebone Gardens from 1763 to 1768. Becoming bankrupt in 1768, he
was glad to accept engagements at the humbler Finch’s Grotto. He was
announced to sing in August 1769, and appeared under the designation of
Brother Lowe at one of the Freemasons’ Concerts at the Grotto.
Finch died on October 23, 1770, and his successor, a Mr. Williams,
advertised the place as Williams’s Grotto Gardens. The concerts were
continued and among the musical entertainments were Bates’s “The
Gamester” (1771) and Barnshaw’s “Linco’s Travels.”[269]
The programmes of entertainments under Finch and Williams included
concertos on the organ, pieces for horns and clarionets, Handel’s
Coronation Anthem, an Ode to Summer with music by Brewster, and songs,
such as “Thro’ the Wood, Laddie”; “Water parted from the Sea”; “Oh
what a charming thing is a Battle”; “British Wives”; “O’er Mountains
and Moorlands”; “Cupid’s Recruiting Sergeant” (with drum and fife
accompaniment); “Swift Wing’d Vengeance,” from Bates’s Pharnaces;
“Shepherds cease your soft complainings;” a satirical song on Garrick’s
Stratford Jubilee; “Hark, hark, the joy inspiring horn”; “The Season of
Love,” sung by Mr. Dearle, (1765):--
Bright Sol is return’d and the Winter is o’er,
O come then, Philander, with Sylvia away.[270]
Fireworks were occasionally displayed, and when a ball was given,
the place was illuminated at a cost of about five pounds, and horns
and clarionets played till twelve in the garden. In 1771 and 1772 a
grand transparent painting forty feet wide and thirty high, with
illuminations, was displayed. Over the centre arch of this masterpiece
was a medallion of Neptune supported by Tritons: on each side were
two fountains “with serpents jetting water, representing different
coloured crystal.” On one wing was Neptune drawn by sea-horses; on the
other, Venus rising from the sea; and the back arches showed a distant
prospect of the sea. In June 1771 a representation was given “of the
famous Fall of Water call’d Pystill Rhiader near the seat of Sir Watkin
Williams Wynne, Bart., in Denbighshire.”
Apparently these entertainments failed to pay the proprietor and in
1773 (?) he pulled down the grotto over the spring and rooted up the
shrubs to form a skittle ground in connection with the tavern, which
still continued to be carried on.
About 1777 the “messuages and lands known as the Grotto Gardens” were
purchased for the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, part of the
ground being used for the erection of a workhouse and part for a Burial
Ground (consecrated in 1780). In 1799 the Workhouse was sold to Mr.
John Harris, hat manufacturer, and M.P. for Southwark in 1830, who used
it as his manufactory and residence. Some relics of the old Grotto were
to be found many years after the closing of the Gardens, notably the
Octagon Room, which was converted into a mill and at one time used as
the armoury of the Southwark Volunteers.
In 1824 “a very large and old mulberry tree” was standing at the
end of a long range of wooden tea-rooms formerly belonging to the
gardens and converted into inferior cottages. Behind the cottages was
a water-course derived from Loman’s Pond dividing them from a field,
once part of the gardens, though only occupied at that time by dust and
rubbish.
The tavern attached to the Gardens continued to be carried on under
the sign of the Grotto till 28 May, 1795, when it was destroyed
by fire. The new tavern erected in its place bore the sign of The
Goldsmith’s Arms, and afterwards of the “Old Grotto new reviv’d.”
In the front of this house was inserted a stone bearing the
inscription:--
Here Herbs did grow
And Flowers sweet,
But now ’tis call’d
Saint George’s Street.[271]
This building was removed for the formation of the present Southwark
Bridge Road in 1825 and a public house named The Goldsmith’s
Arms--still standing--was built on the western side of the new road,
more upon the site of the old Grotto Gardens. The main site of the
gardens is now occupied by the large red-brick building, which forms
the headquarters of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade.
[Wilkinson’s _Londina Illustrata_, vol. ii., “Finch’s Grotto
Gardens”; Manning and Bray’s _Surrey_, iii. 591; Brayley and
Mantell’s _Surrey_, v. 371; Rendle and Norman’s _Inns of Old
Southwark_, 360–364; Walford, vi. 64; newspaper cuttings, W.
Coll.]
VIEWS.
The only view is one of the second tavern published in
Wilkinson’s _Londina Illustrata_, 1825:--
“South-east view of the Grotto, now the Goldsmith’s Arms in the
Parish of St. George’s, Southwark.” This shows the inscription:
“Here Herbs did grow.”
CUPER’S GARDENS
Cuper’s Gardens, a notable resort during the first half of the last
century, owe their name and origin to Boyder Cuper, who rented, in the
parish of Lambeth on the south side of the Thames opposite Somerset
House, a narrow strip of meadow land surrounded by water-courses.
About 1691 or earlier he opened the place as a pleasure garden with
agreeable walks and arbours and some good bowling-greens. As an old
servant of the Howard family he obtained the gift of some of the
statues that had been removed when Arundel House in the Strand was
pulled down. These, though mutilated and headless, appeared to the
proprietor to give classic distinction to his garden, and they remained
there till 1717, when his successor, a John Cuper, sold these ‘Arundel
Marbles’ for £75.[272]
During the first twenty or thirty years of the last century, Cuper’s
was a good deal frequented in the summer-time. A tavern by the
waterside, called The Feathers, was connected with the grounds.
It is not certain that music and dancing were provided at this period,
and the company appears to have consisted chiefly of young attorneys’
clerks and Fleet Street sempstresses, with a few City dames, escorted
by their husbands’ ’prentices, who (perhaps after paying a visit
to the floating ‘Folly’) sat in the arbours singing, laughing, and
regaling themselves with bottle-ale.[273]
The place was popularly known as Cupid’s Gardens, and is even thus
denominated in maps of the last century. This name is preserved in the
traditional song, once very popular, “’Twas down in Cupid’s Garden”:--
’Twas down in Cupid’s Garden
For pleasure I did go,
To see the fairest flowers
That in that garden grow:
The first it was the jessamine,
The lily, pink and rose,
And surely they’re the fairest flowers
That in that garden grows.[274]
In 1738 the tavern and gardens were taken by Ephraim Evans, a publican
who had kept the Hercules Pillars opposite St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet
Street. During his tenancy (1738–1740) he improved the gardens and
erected an orchestra in which was set up an organ by Bridge. A band
played from six till ten and Jones, the blind Welsh harper, was engaged
to perform selections from Handel and Corelli. The admission was then
and thenceforward one shilling, and the gardens were opened on Sunday
free of charge.[275] It was announced that care would be taken to keep
out bad company and that no servant in livery would be admitted to walk
in the garden.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE SAVOY, SOMERSET HOUSE AND THE
WATER ENTRANCE TO CUPER’S GARDEN.
_From a picture in the Collection of_
THE REV^D. PHILIP DUVAL, D.D. & F.A.S.]
There was a back way to the gardens leading from St. George’s Fields,
and watchmen were appointed “to guard those who go over the fields late
at night.” The favourite approach, however, was by water, and the
visitors landed at Cuper’s Stairs, a few yards east of the present
Waterloo Bridge. The season lasted from April or May till the beginning
of September.
Evans died on 14 October, 1740,[276] but the tavern and gardens were
carried on by his widow. It was under the spirited management of
the widow Evans that Cuper’s Gardens especially flourished, and her
advertisements figure frequently in the newspapers (1741–1759). ‘The
Widow,’ as she was called, presided at the bar during the evening and
complimentary visitors described her as “a woman of discretion” and
“a well-looking comely person.” By providing good music and elaborate
fireworks, she attracted a good deal of fashionable patronage. The
Prince and Princess of Wales visited the place and some of Horace
Walpole’s friends,[277] Lord Bath and Lord Sandys, for instance, both
of whom had their pockets picked there. The well-dressed sharper was,
in fact, by no means unknown at Cuper’s. One night in 1743 a man was
caught stealing from a young lady a purse containing four guineas, and
while being taken by a constable to Lambeth was rescued by a gang of
thieves in St. George’s Fields. On the whole, Cuper’s was looked upon
as a decidedly rakish place at which a prudent young lady was not to be
seen alone with a gentleman.[278]
For the evening concert of 16 June, 1741, Mrs. Evans announced “a new
grand concerto for the organ by the author, Mr. Henry Burgess, junior,
of whom it may be said without ostentation that he is of as promising
a genius and as neat a performer as any of the age.” Composers better
known to fame than Mr. Henry Burgess, junior, were also represented.
The programme, for instance, of one July evening in 1741 consisted
of “The Overture in Saul, with several grand choruses composed by
Mr. Handel”; the eighth concerto of Corelli; a hautboy concerto by
Sig. Hasse; “Blow, blow thou wintry wind,” and other favourite songs
composed by the ingenious Mr. Arne, and the whole concluded with a
new grand piece of music, an original composition by Handel, called
‘Portobello,’ in honour of the popular hero, Admiral Vernon, “who took
Portobello with six ships only.” On other occasions there were vocal
performances (1748–1750) by Signora Sibilla and by Master Mattocks.
The Signora was Sibilla Gronamann, daughter of a German pastor and the
first wife of Thomas Pinto, the violinist. She died in or before 1766.
Mattocks, who had “a sweet and soft voice,” was afterwards an operatic
actor at Covent Garden. Mrs. Mattocks sang at the gardens in 1750.
After the concert, at half-past nine or ten, a gun gave the signal for
the fireworks for which the place was renowned.
On 18 July, 1741, the Fire Music from Handel’s opera, “Atalanta,”
was given, the fireworks consisting of wheels, fountains, large
sky-rockets, “with an addition of the fire-pump, &c., made by the
ingenious Mr. Worman, who originally projected it for the opera” when
performed in 1736. The _Daily Advertiser_ for 28 June, 1743,
announced that “this night will be burnt the Gorgon’s head ... in
history said to have snakes on her hair and to kill men by her looks,
such a thing as was never known to be done in England before.” For
another night (4 September, 1749) the entertainment was announced to
conclude with “a curious and magnificent firework, which has given
great satisfaction to the nobility, wherein Neptune will be drawn on
the canal by sea-horses and set fire to an Archimedan (_sic_) worm
and return to the Grotto.”
In 1746 (August 14) there was a special display to celebrate “the
glorious victory obtained over the rebels” by the Duke of Cumberland,
consisting of emblematic figures and magnificent fireworks, with
“triumphant arches burning in various colours.” In 1749 (May) there
was a miniature reproduction with transparencies and fireworks of
the Allegorical Temple that had been displayed in the Green Park on
27 April, 1749, to commemorate the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. At the
opening of the gardens on April 30 for the season of 1750, the edifice
from which the fireworks were displayed was altered “into an exact
model of that at the Hague, made on account of the General Peace.”
The season of 1752, practically the last at Cuper’s, lasted from
May till near the end of September. The principal vocalist was Miss
Maria Bennett.[279] The fireworks and scenic effects were novel and
elaborate. A song commemorating the Prince of Wales’s birthday was
“shown curiously in fireworks in the front of the machine.” The
fireworks building, when the curtain was withdrawn, disclosed a
perspective view of the city of Rhodes--sea, buildings, and landscape,
with a model of the Colossus, from under which Neptune issued forth
and set fire to a grand pyramid in the middle of the canal. Dolphins
spouted water; water-wheels and rockets threw up air-balloons and suns
blazed on the summit of the building.
On one occasion the crowd near the fireworks was so great that a
gentleman took up his position in a tree, and when St. George and the
Dragon came to a close engagement and the clockwork began to move the
arms of St. George to pierce the Dragon, he let go his hands to clap
like the rest and fell headlong upon the bystanders.[280]
The ‘Inspector’ of the _London Daily Advertiser_ took his friend
the old Major, to Cupid’s Gardens (as they were still called) on a
pleasant August evening in this year. The Major was delighted with all
he saw. “Now I like this. I am always pleased when I see other people
happy: the folks that are rambling about among the trees there; the
jovial countenances of them delight me ... here’s all the festivity and
all the harmless indulgence of a country wake.”[281]
The country wake element was in evidence late in the evening, and
constables stationed at the gate had occasionally to interfere. One
night, for instance, a pretty young woman, accompanied by a friend,
promenaded the gardens dressed as a man wearing a long sword. No small
sensation was caused in the miscellaneous company, which included a
physician, a templar, a berouged old lady and her granddaughter, and
the sedate wife of a Cheapside fur-seller. “A spirited young thing with
a lively air and smart cock of her hat” passed by. “Gad,” said she, as
she tripped along, “I don’t see there’s anything in it; give us their
cloathes and we shall look as sharp and as rakish as they do.” “What an
air! what a gate! what a tread the baggage has!” exclaimed another.
But the days of Cuper’s were numbered. In the early part of 1752 the
statute-book had been dignified by the addition of 25 George II., cap.
36, entitled, “An Act for the better preventing thefts and robberies
and for regulating places of public entertainment and punishing
persons keeping disorderly houses.” By section 2 of this enactment
it was required that every house, room, garden, or other place kept
for public dancing or music, &c., within the cities of London and
Westminster, or twenty miles thereof, should be under a licence. The
Act took effect from December 1, 1752, and the necessary licence for
the season of 1753 was refused to the management of Cuper’s Gardens.
The widow Evans complained bitterly that she was denied the liberty of
opening her gardens, a misfortune attributed by her to the malicious
representations of ill-meaning persons, but which was really owing,
no doubt, to the circumstance that Cuper’s was degenerating into the
place which Pennant says he remembered as the scene of low dissipation.
Meanwhile Mrs. Evans threw open the grounds (June 1753) as a tea-garden
in connection with the Feathers, and the walks were “kept in pleasant
order.”
In the summer of 1755 entertainments of the old character were revived,
but they were advertised as fifteen private evening concerts and
fireworks, open only to subscribers, a one guinea ticket admitting two
persons. It is to be suspected that the subscription was mythical, and
was a mere device to evade the Act. However, a band was engaged, and
on June 23 loyal visitors to Cuper’s commemorated the accession of
King George to the throne by a concert and fireworks. Clitherow, who
had been the engineer of Cuper’s fireworks from 1750 (or earlier), was
again employed, but had to publish in the newspapers a lame apology for
the failure of the Engagement on the Water on the night of August 2
(1755), a failure which he explained was not due to his want of skill
but “owing to part of the machinery for moving the shipping being
clogg’d by some unaccountable accident, and the powder in the ships
having unfortunately got a little damp.”
From 1756–1759 Cuper’s Gardens were again used as the tea-garden
of the Feathers. There was no longer a Band of Musick but (as the
advertisements express it) “there still remains some harmony from the
sweet enchanting sounds of rural warblers.”
The last recorded entertainment at the place was a special concert
given on August 30, 1759 by “a select number of gentlemen for their
own private diversion,” who had “composed an ode alluding to the late
decisive action of Prince Ferdinand.” Any lady or gentleman inspired
by Prussian glory was admitted to this entertainment on payment of a
shilling.
For several years the gardens remained unoccupied, but from about 1768
three acres of them were leased to the firm of Beaufoy, the producers
of British wines and vinegar. The orchestra, or rather the edifice
used from 1750 for the fireworks, was utilised for the distillery. Dr.
Johnson once passed by the gardens: “Beauclerk, I, and Langton, and
Lady Sydney Beauclerk, mother to our friend, were one day driving in
a coach by Cuper’s Gardens which were then unoccupied. I, in sport,
proposed that Beauclerk, and Langton, and myself, should take them, and
we amused ourselves with scheming how we should all do our parts. Lady
Sydney grew angry and said, ‘An old man should not put such things in
young people’s heads.’ She had no notion of a joke, sir; had come late
into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding.”[282]
[Illustration: PLAN OF CUPER’S GARDENS.]
J. T. Smith[283] tells us that he walked over the place when occupied
by the Beaufoys, and saw many of the old lamp-irons along the paling
of the gardens, humble reminders of the days when the walks of Cuper’s
Gardens were “beautifully illuminated with lamp-trees in a grand taste,
disposed in proper order.” In 1814 part of the ground was required
for making the south approach to Waterloo Bridge. The “fireworks”
building and the rest of Messrs. Beaufoys’ works were then taken down
and the Waterloo Road, sixty feet in width, was cut through the three
acres, thus passing through the centre of Cuper’s Gardens which had
extended up to the site of the present St. John’s Church (built in
1823) opposite Waterloo Station.
The Royal Infirmary for Children and Women erected in 1823 on the
eastern side of the Waterloo Road stands on (or rather _over_) the
centre of the site of the gardens. The Feathers was used during the
building of the bridge for the pay-table of the labourers, and when it
was taken down (about 1818?) its site was occupied by a timber-yard,
close to the eastern side of the first land-arch of the Waterloo Bridge.
The public-house now called the Feathers, standing near the Bridge and
rising two stories above the level of the Waterloo Road was built by
the proprietor of the old Feathers in 1818.
[Wilkinson’s _Londina Illustrata_, vol. ii. “Cuper’s Gardens,”
Public Gardens Coll. in Guildhall Library, London (newspaper
cuttings, &c.); Charles Howard’s _Historical Anecdotes of the
Howard Family_ (1769), 98, ff.; Pennant’s _Account of London_,
3rd ed. 1793, 32–34; _Musical Times_, February 1894, 84, ff.;
Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 603; E. Hatton’s _New View of
London_, 1708, ii. 785; Lysons’s _Environs_, 1792, i. 319, 320;
Walford, vi. 388, 389; _The Observator_, March 10, 1702-3;
newspaper cuttings, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
1. View of the Savoy, Somerset House, and the water entrance
to Cuper’s Gardens, engraved by W. M. Fellows, 1808, in J. T.
Smith’s _Antiquities of Westminster_, from a painting (done
in 1770, according to Crace, _Cat._ 188, No. 219) by Samuel
Scott.
2. Woodcuts in Walford, vi. 391, showing entrance to the gardens
(the back entrance) and the “orchestra” during the demolition
of the buildings; cp. _ib._ 390. Walford also mentions,
_ib._ p. 388, a view showing the grove, statues, and
alcoves, of the gardens.
3. Water-colour drawings of Beaufoys’ and Cuper’s in 1798 and in
1809 (Crace, _Cat._ 648, Nos. 49, 50).
4. Wilkinson, _Lond. Illust._ (1825), vol. ii. gives three
views, Pl. 155, view of the Great Room as occupied for Beaufoys’
manufactory, with a plan of the gardens; Pl. 156, another
similar view; Pl. 157, view of the old Feathers Tavern.
“THE FOLLY” ON THE THAMES
Close by Cuper’s Stairs (where the visitors to Cuper’s Gardens landed)
and opposite Somerset House, there was generally moored during the
summer months a sort of castellated house-boat, notorious as The
Folly.[284]
It consisted of a strong barge on which was a deck platform, surrounded
by a balustrade, and contained a saloon provided with large windows and
divided into boxes and compartments. At each of the four angles of the
deck was a turret, giving the whole something of the appearance of a
floating castle.