took place. During the season of 1697 there was a “consort” every
Wednesday of “vocal and instrumental musick, consisting of about thirty
instruments and voices, after the manner of the musick-meeting in York
Buildings, the price only excepted,” each person to pay for coming in
but one shilling. These concerts began originally at 2.30 p.m., but
afterwards at six, when no person was admitted in a mask.
About 1700 these shilling concerts seem to have been discontinued, but
the Wells remained in some repute till about 1736, when they found a
rival in the spring of the Dog and Duck, and the attendance fell off.
In 1740 the owner was named Keefe. About 1750, under his successor
Ireland, a musical society under the direction of Sterling Goodwin,
organist of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, gave a monthly concert there.
At the same period Erasmus King, once coachman to Dr. Desaguliers,
read lectures there and exhibited experiments in natural philosophy
(admission sixpence). There were gala dancing-days in 1747, and in 1752
(June 27), when a “penny wedding in the Scotch manner was celebrated
for the benefit of a young couple.”
At a later date (after 1755?[312]) the place was condemned as a
nuisance, and the magistrates refused the dancing licence. The Great
Room was then used for Methodist services, and the music-gallery for
the pulpit, but the preacher (we are told) being disturbed greatly in
his enthusiastic harangues was obliged to quit, and the premises were
afterwards built on, or devoted to various purposes, with the exception
of the dwelling-house, which (before 1786) was turned into a tavern,
under the sign of the Fountain. The present Fountain public-house,
erected on the site of the older Fountain in 1829, is No. 105 Lambeth
Walk, nearly opposite Old Paradise Street (formerly Paradise Row). The
Wells themselves, though long closed, were still in existence in 1829,
but a house was subsequently built over them.
Brayley and Mantell (_Surrey_, iii. 400) writing about 1841, say
that part of the grounds continued “long within memory” to be used as a
tea-garden.
[Nichols’s _Parish of Lambeth_ (1786), p. 65, ff.; _Gent. Mag._
1813, pt. 2, p. 556; Manning and Bray, _Surrey_, iii. 468;
Brayley and Mantell, _Surrey_, iii. 399, ff.; Allen’s _Lambeth_,
p. 346, ff.; Walford, vi. 389].
MARBLE HALL, VAUXHALL
Marble Hall was situated on the Thames, at the spot afterwards occupied
by the southern abutment of Vauxhall Bridge. Part of the road to the
bridge now occupies the site.
Joseph Crosier, the proprietor in 1740, “enlarged, beautified and
illuminated” the gardens,[313] and built a Long Room facing the river,
which was opened in May 1740, and used for dancing during the spring
and summer.
From _circ._ 1752–1756 the proprietor was Naphthali Hart,[314]
teacher of music and dancing, who held assemblies at Marble Hall in
the season, devoting his energies in the winter to Hart’s Academy,
Essex House, Essex Street, Strand, where (as his advertisements state)
“grown gentlemen are taught to dance a minuet and country dances in the
modern taste, and in a short time.” “Likewise gentlemen are taught to
play on any instrument, the use of the small Sword and Spedroon.” “At
the same place is taught musick, fencing, French, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, High German, Low Dutch, Navigation, or any other part of
the Mathematicks.” “A sprightly youth is wanted as an apprentice.”
In the spring of 1756 Marble Hall was opened as a coffee house and
tavern, but little appears to be known of it after this date, though it
was in existence till about August 1813, when the abutment of Vauxhall
Bridge on the Surrey side was begun.
[Advertisements in “Public Gardens” collection in Guildhall
Library, London; Manning and Bray, _Surrey_, iii. 484, and
map, p. 526; Allen’s _Lambeth_, 368; Walford, vi. 339.]
THE CUMBERLAND TEA-GARDENS AND TAVERN, VAUXHALL
(ORIGINALLY SMITH’S TEA-GARDENS)
These small gardens, about one acre and a half in extent, were
pleasantly situated on the south bank of the Thames, immediately
to the south of Vauxhall Bridge (built 1811–1816). Under the name
of Smith’s Tea-Gardens they were probably in existence some years
previous to 1779. “A Fête Champêtre, or Grand Rural Masked Ball,” with
illuminations in the garden and the rooms, was advertised to take place
on 22 May, 1779, at 10 P.M., the subscription tickets being
one guinea.
About May 1784 the gardens were taken by Luke Reilly, landlord of the
Freemasons’ Tavern in Great Queen Street, who changed the name to the
Cumberland (or Royal Cumberland) Gardens.[315] At this time they were
open in the afternoon and evening, and visitors to Vauxhall Gardens
sometimes had refreshments there in the arbours and tea-room while
waiting for Vauxhall to open; or adjourned thither for supper when
tired of the larger garden.
In August 1796 a silver cup given by the proprietor was competed for on
the river by sailing boats. In 1797 a ten years’ lease of the gardens
and tavern was advertised to be sold for £1,000.
From 1800 to 1825 the gardens were much frequented by dwellers in the
south of London. Between three and four o’clock in the morning of
May 25, 1825, the tavern was discovered to be on fire. The engines
of Vauxhall Gardens and of the various Insurance Offices came on the
scene, but the fire raged for more than an hour, and the tavern and the
ball-room adjoining were completely destroyed and the plantation and
garden greatly injured. In October of the same year the property on the
premises was sold by the lessors under an execution and at that time
the gardens were, it would seem, finally closed.[316]
[Illustration: WATERSIDE ENTRANCE TO CUMBERLAND GARDENS.]
The South Lambeth Water Works occupied the site for many years and
the Phœnix Works of the South Metropolitan Gas Company are now on the
spot.[317]
[Newspaper cuttings in W. Coll.; Walford, vi. 389, 449; Timbs,
_Curiosities of London_ (1868), p. 18, and _Club Life_, ii. 261;
_Picture of London_, 1802, 1823 and 1829; the _Courier_ for 25
and 26 May, 1825; Allen, _Lambeth_, p. 379.]
VIEWS.
“Cumberland Gardens, &c.” A view by moonlight of the waterside
entrance to the gardens. Undated (_circ._ 1800?). W. Coll.
The gardens are well marked in Horwood’s _Plan_, D. 1799.
VAUXHALL GARDENS
§ 1. 1661–1728
These, the most famous of all the London pleasure gardens, were known
in their earliest days as the New Spring Garden at Vauxhall, and
continued till late in the eighteenth century to be advertised as
Spring Gardens.[318]
The Spring Garden was opened to the public shortly after the
Restoration, probably in 1661.[319] It was a prettily contrived
plantation, laid out with walks and arbours: the nightingale sang in
the trees; wild roses could be gathered in the hedges, and cherries
in the orchard. The Rotunda, the Orchestra, and the Triumphal Arches,
distinctive features of the later Vauxhall, were then non-existent,
and the proprietor’s house from which refreshments were supplied was
probably the only building that broke the charm of its rural isolation.
It was a pleasant place to walk in, and the visitor might spend what
he pleased, for nothing was charged for admission. It soon became one
of the favourite haunts of Pepys, who first visited it on 29 May 1662.
On hot summer days, he would take water to Foxhall with Deb and Mercer
and his wife, to stroll in the garden alleys, and eat a lobster or a
syllabub. On one day in May (29, 1666) he found two handsome ladies
calling on Mrs. Pepys. He was burdened with Admiralty business--“but,
Lord! to see how my nature could not refrain from the temptation, but I
must invite them to go to Foxhall, to Spring Gardens.”
In a few years the Spring Garden became well known. Fine people came
thither to divert themselves and the citizen also spent his holiday
there, “pulling off cherries [says Pepys] and God knows what.” The
song of the birds was charming, but from about 1667 more sophisticated
harmony was furnished by a harp, some fiddles, and a Jew’s trump.
About this time the rude behaviour of the gallants of the town began
to be noted at the Spring Garden. Gentlemen like “young Newport” and
Harry Killigrew, “a rogue newly come back out of France, but still in
disgrace at our Court,” would thrust themselves into the supper-arbours
and almost seize on the ladies, “perhaps civil ladies,” as Pepys
conjectures. “Their mad talk [he adds] did make my heart ake,” though
he himself, at a later time, was found at the gardens eating and
drinking with Mrs. Knipp, “it being darkish.”
During the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, the Spring
Garden, if less perturbed by the Killigrews and Newports, was not
a little notorious as a rendezvous for fashionable gallantry and
intrigue. “’Tis infallibly some intrigue that brings them to Spring
Garden” says Lady Fancyful in ‘The Provoked Wife’ (1697), and Tom Brown
(_Amusements_, 1700, p. 54) declares that in the close walks
of the gardens “both sexes meet, and mutually serve one another as
guides to lose their way, and the windings and turnings in the little
Wildernesses are so intricate, that the most experienced mothers have
often lost themselves in looking for their daughters.” It is not hard
to picture Mrs. Frail “with a man alone” at Spring Garden; Hippolita
eating a cheese-cake or a syllabub “with cousin,” and the gallant of
Sedley’s ‘Bellamira’ (1687) passing off on Thisbe the fine compliments
that he had already tried on “the flame-coloured Petticoat in New
Spring Garden.”
On the evening of 17 May, 1711, Swift (it is interesting to note)
visited the gardens with Lady Kerry and Miss Pratt, “to hear the
nightingales.”[320] The visit of Addison’s Sir Roger in the spring of
1712 is classical.[321] “We were now arrived at Spring Garden, which
is exquisitely pleasant at this time of year. When I considered the
fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choirs of birds that sung
upon the trees, and the loose tribe of people that walked under their
shades, I could not but look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan
Paradise.” You must understand, says the Knight, there is nothing in
the world that pleases a man in love so much as your nightingale. “He
here fetched a deep sigh, and was falling into a fit of musing, when
a mask, who came behind him, gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder,
and asked him if he would drink a bottle of mead with her.” The old
Knight bid the baggage begone, and retired with his friend for a glass
of Burton and a slice of hung beef. He told the waiter to carry the
remainder to the one-legged waterman who had rowed him to Foxhall, and,
as he left the garden animadverted upon the morals of the place in his
famous utterance on the paucity of nightingales.
In 1726 the Spring Garden is singled out as one of the London
sights,[322] but it would seem that it had fallen into disrepute,
and that fresh attractions and a management less lax were now
demanded.[323]
§ 2. 1732–1767.
In 1728 Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the true founder of Vauxhall Gardens,
obtained from Elizabeth Masters a lease of the Spring Gardens for
thirty years at an annual rent of £250, and by subsequent purchases
(in 1752 and 1758) became the actual owner of the estate. He greatly
altered and improved the gardens, and on Wednesday 7 June 1732 opened
Vauxhall with a Ridotto al fresco. The visitors came between nine and
eleven in the evening, most of them wearing dominoes and lawyers’
gowns, and the company did not separate till three or four the next
morning. The later Vauxhall numbered its visitors by thousands, but at
this fête only about four hundred people were present, and the guard of
a hundred soldiers stationed in the gardens, with bayonets fixed, was
an unnecessary precaution. Good order prevailed, though a tipsy waiter
put on a masquerading dress, and a pickpocket stole fifty guineas from
a visitor, “but the rogue was taken in the fact.” A guinea ticket gave
admission to this entertainment, which was repeated several times
during the summer.
From about 1737 the Spring Gardens began to present certain features
that long remained characteristic. The admission at the gate was one
shilling, the regular charge till 1792, and silver tickets were issued
admitting two persons for the season, which began in April or May.[324]
An orchestra containing an organ was erected in the garden, and the
concert about this time lasted from five or six till nine. About 1758
this orchestra was replaced by a more elaborate ‘Gothic’ structure
“painted white and bloom colour” and having a dome surmounted by a
plume of feathers. The concert was at first instrumental, but in 1745
Tyers added vocal music, and engaged Mrs. Arne, the elder Reinhold, and
the famous tenor, Thomas Lowe, who remained the principal singer at
Vauxhall till about 1763.
[Illustration: VAUXHALL TICKET BY HOGARTH (AMPHION ON DOLPHIN).]
On the opening day of the season of 1737 “there was (we read) a
prodigious deal of good company present,” and by the end of the season
Pinchbeck was advertising his New Vauxhall Fan with a view of the
walks, the orchestra, the grand pavilion, and the organ.
The proprietor was fortunate in the patronage of Frederick Prince of
Wales, who had attended the opening Ridotto and often visited Vauxhall
till his death in 1751.[325] On 6 July, 1737, for instance, His Royal
Highness with several ladies of distinction and noblemen of his
household came from Kew by water to the Gardens, with music attending.
The Prince walked in the Grove, commanded several airs and retired
after supping in the Great Room.
Of fashionable patronage Vauxhall had, indeed, no lack till a very
late period of its existence; but the place was never exclusive or
select, and at no other London resort could the humours of every class
of the community be watched with greater interest or amusement. “Even
Bishops (we are assured) have been seen in this Recess without injuring
their Character.” To us, some of its entertainments seem insipid and
the manners and morals of its frequenters occasionally questionable,
but the charm of the place for our forefathers must have been real,
or Vauxhall would hardly have found a place in our literature and
social history. The old accounts speak of Spring Gardens not only with
naïve astonishment, but with positive affection. “The whole place”
(to borrow the remark, and the spelling, of a last century writer)
“is a realisation of Elizium.” One of the paintings in the gardens
represented “Two Mahometans gazing in wonder at the beauties of the
place.” Farmer Colin, after his week’s trip in town (1741) returned to
his wife full of the wonderful Spring Gardens:--
Oh, Mary! soft in feature,
I’ve been at dear Vauxhall;
No paradise is sweeter,
Not that they Eden call.
Methought, when first I entered,
Such splendours round me shone,
Into a world I ventured,
Where rose another sun:
While music, never cloying,
As skylarks sweet, I hear:
The sounds I’m still enjoying,
They’ll always soothe my ear.
The account of _England’s Gazetteer_ of 1751 is naturally more prosaic,
but takes the exalted tone that characterises the old descriptions of
the gardens:--“This (Foxhall) is the place where are those called
Spring Gardens, laid out in so grand a taste that they are frequented
in the three summer months by most of the nobility and gentry then
in and near London; and are often honoured with some of the royal
family, who are here entertained, with the sweet song of numbers of
nightingales, in concert with the best band of musick in England.
Here are fine pavilions, shady groves, and most delightful walks,
illuminated by above one thousand lamps, so disposed that they all take
fire together, almost as quick as lightning, and dart such a sudden
blaze as is perfectly surprising. Here are among others, two curious
statues of Apollo the god, and Mr. Handel the master of musick; and
in the centre of the area, where the walks terminate, is erected the
temple for the musicians, which is encompassed all round with handsome
seats, decorated with pleasant paintings, on subjects most happily
adapted to the season, place and company.”
The usual approach to the gardens until about 1750, when it became
possible to go by coach, was by water. At Westminster and Whitehall
Stairs barges and boats were always in waiting during the evening.
Sir John, from Fenchurch Street, with his lady and large family, came
on board attended by a footman bearing provisions for the voyage. The
girls chatter about the last city-ball, and Miss Kitty, by her mamma’s
command, sings the new song her master has taught her. Presently, “my
lady grows sick” and has recourse to the citron wine and the drops. At
the Temple Stairs a number of young fellows, Templars and others, hurry
into the boats, and Mr. William, the prentice, takes the water with
Miss Suckey, his master’s daughter. The deepness of their design is an
inexhaustible fount of merriment, for _she_ is supposed to be gone
next door to drink tea, and _he_ to meet an uncle coming from the
country.[326]
[Illustration: VAUXHALL TICKET BY HOGARTH (“SUMMER”).]
More refined would be the party of Mr. Horatio Walpole, in a barge,
“with a boat of French horns attending,” or (at a later date) of
Miss Lydia Melford, who describes how “at nine o’clock in a charming
moonlight evening we embarked at Ranelagh for Vauxhall, in a wherry
so light and slender that we looked like so many fairies sailing in
a nutshell.” The pleasure of the voyage was marred by the scene on
landing, for, although the worthy beadles of the gardens were present
at the waterside to preserve order, there was at all periods on landing
at Vauxhall Stairs “a terrible confusion of wherries,” “a crowd of
people bawling, and swearing, and quarrelling,” and a parcel of ugly
fellows running out into the water to pull you violently ashore. But
you paid your shilling at the gate, or showed your silver ticket, and
then passed down a dark passage into the full blaze of the gardens, lit
with their thousand lamps.[327] This was the great moment, as every
Vauxhall visitor from first to last, has testified. An impressionable
young lady[328] found herself dazzled and confounded by the variety of
the scene:--“Image to yourself ... a spacious garden, part laid out in
delightful walks, bounded with high hedges and trees, and paved with
gravel; part exhibiting a wonderful assemblage of the most picturesque
and striking objects, pavilions, lodges, groves, grottos, lawns,
temples, and cascades; porticos, colonnades, and rotundas; adorned
with pillars, statues, and paintings; the whole illuminated with an
infinite number of lamps, disposed in different figures of suns, stars
and constellations; the place crowded with the gayest company, ranging
through those blissful shades, or supping in different lodges on cold
collations, enlivened with mirth, freedom and good humour, and animated
by an excellent band of music.” Among the vocal performers you might
perhaps have the happiness to hear the celebrated Mrs.---- whose voice
was so loud and shrill that it would make your head ache “through
excess of pleasure.”
Goldsmith’s Chinese Philosopher[329]--for foreigners always visited
Vauxhall and even imitated it in Paris and at the Hague--received
a similar impression on entering the gardens with Mr. Tibbs, the
second-rate beau, and the pawnbroker’s widow. “The lights everywhere
glimmering through the scarcely moving trees; the full-bodied concert
bursting on the stillness of the night; the natural concert of the
birds in the more retired part of the grove vying with that which was
formed by art; the company gaily dressed, looking satisfaction, and the
tables spread with various delicacies.”
For an hour or two the promenade and the concert were sufficiently
amusing, and the crowd gathered before the orchestra, when Lowe or Miss
Stevenson came forward with a new song. Music is the food of love,
and the Vauxhall songs were (as Mr. Dobson has remarked) “abjectly
sentimental.” Incidents like the following described by an amorous
advertiser in the _London Chronicle_ for 5 August, 1758, must have
been not uncommon at the gardens:--“A young lady who was at Vauxhall
on Thursday night last in company with two gentlemen, could not but
observe a young gentleman in blue and a gold laced hat, who being near
her by the orchestra during the performance, especially the last
song, gazed upon her with the utmost attention. He earnestly hopes (if
unmarried) she will favour him with a line directed to A. D. at the bar
of the Temple Exchange Coffee-house, Temple Bar, to inform him whether
fortune, family and character may not entitle him upon a further
knowledge, to hope an interest in her heart.”
At nine o’clock a bell rang, and the company hurried to the north side
of the gardens to get a view of the Cascade. A curtain being drawn
aside disclosed a landscape scene illuminated by concealed lights.
In the foreground was a miller’s house and a waterfall. “The exact
appearance of water” was seen flowing down a declivity and turning the
wheel of a mill: the water rose up in foam at the bottom, and then
glided away. This simple exhibition was a favourite at Vauxhall, though
it lasted but a few minutes and was spoken of contemptuously in _The
Connoisseur_ and other journals as the “tin cascade.”[330]
[Illustration: THE CITIZEN AT VAUXHALL, 1755.]
The concert was then resumed, and some hungry citizens and their
families had already taken their seats in the supper boxes. During
supper the citizen[331] expressed his wonder at the number of the
lamps, and said that it must cost a great deal of money every night to
light them all. The eldest Miss declared that for her part she liked
the dark walk best of all because it was _solentary_. Little Miss
thought the last song pretty, and said she would buy it if she could
but remember the tune: and the old lady observed that there was a great
deal of good company indeed, but the gentlemen were so rude that they
perfectly put her out of countenance by staring at her through their
spy-glasses. The more fashionable visitors arrived later and had their
supper after the concert, often hiring a little band of French horns
to play to them. An interesting supper-party might have been seen at
the gardens on a June night in 1750, Horace Walpole, Lady Caroline
Petersham and “the little Ashe, or the Pollard Ashe as they call her.”
In the front of their box--one of the best boxes, of course, near the
orchestra and in full view of the company--sat Lady Caroline “with the
vizor of her hat erect, and looking gloriously jolly and handsome.”
“She had fetched (says Walpole) my brother Orford from the next box,
where he was enjoying himself with his _petite partie_, to help
us to mince chickens. We minced seven chickens into a china dish,
which Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp, with three pats of butter and
a flagon of water, stirring and rattling and laughing, and we every
minute expecting the dish to fly about our ears. She had brought
Betty, the fruit girl, with hampers of strawberries and cherries from
Rogers’s, and made her wait upon us, and then made her sup by us at a
little table.... In short the whole air of our party was sufficient, as
you will easily imagine, to take up the whole attention of the Gardens;
so much so, that from eleven o’clock till half an hour after one we
had the whole concourse round our booth; at last, they came into the
little gardens of each booth on the side of ours, till Harry Vane took
up a bumper and drank their healths, and was proceeding to treat them
with still greater freedoms. It was three o’clock before we got home”
(Walpole to Montague, 23 June, 1750).
At this point it seems appropriate to furnish some details of the
Vauxhall commissariat, and we cannot do better than transcribe an
actual Bill of Provisions sold in the gardens about the year 1762.[332]