Vauxhall is alive. At one time it was thought dead, and people affirmed
the fact to be an evidence of the improved state of the metropolis.
(Moralists are too prone to be thankful for small mercies.) Had the fact
been so, the inference was a fallacy; but we need not trouble ourselves
about that, as the fact is otherwise. It is a mistake to suppose that
progress is made only in one direction. Vauxhall is associated with the
fast life of centuries. It was born in the general and fearful
profligacy--the fearful price England paid for the Restoration. In 1661
Evelyn writes of it as a pretty contrived plantation. In 1665, in the
diary of Pepys, we find entries of sundry visits to Fox-hall and the
Spring Gardens, and "of the humours of the citizens pulling off cherries,
and God knows what." Again we are told, "to hear the nightingales and
the birds, and here fiddlers, and there a harp, and here laughing, and
there the people walking, is mighty diverting." That respectable
Secretary of the Admiralty also tells us of supper in an arbour, of
ladies walking with their masks on, and his righteous soul was shocked to
see "how rude some of the young gallants of the town are become," and
"the confidence of the vice of the age." To Vauxhall Addison took Sir
Roger de Coverley, and Goldsmith the Citizen of the World, who exclaimed,
"Head of Confucius, this is fine! this unites rural beauty with courtly
magnificence." Here Fielding's Amelia was enraptured with the extreme
beauty and elegance of the place. Here Miss Burney gathered incidents
for her once popular but now forgotten tales. And here Hogarth, for
suggesting paintings, some of which still remain, was presented with a
perpetual ticket of admission, and which was last used in 1836. Strange
scenes have been done here. One of them is described by Horace Walpole,
who graphically narrates how Lady Caroline Petersham stewed chickens over
a lamp; and how Betty, the fruit girl, supped with them at a side table.
All that is past. Dust and ashes are the fine lords and fine ladies who
made Vauxhall the resort of folly and fashion--the fashion is gone, the
folly remains. Yet never were there more funds subscribed for the
conversion of the Jews, or more missionaries sent out to Timbuctoo.
Vauxhall is one of the delusions of London life. It lives on the past--a
very common practice in this country, where real knowledge travels very
slowly. When Smith comes up to London, his first Sunday he goes to hear
the Rev. Mr. Flummery, thinking he is the popular preacher. Ah, Smith!
Flummery has ceased to be a popular preacher these twenty years. "What a
sweet girl is gone!" exclaims old Jones, as he hears of the death of an
ancient flame. Jones forgets the sweet girl had become an old maid of
seventy, and had not a tooth in her mouth or a lock of hair on her head
but what was artificial. So with Vauxhall. It lives as many a man, or
newspaper, or magazine, or institution, on its name. Judge for yourself
if you won't take my word. A cab will take you there from the Strand in
half an hour, and for the very moderate sum of one shilling the gate will
be unlocked and entrance effected. The specialty of the place is the
blaze of lights from thousands of lamps. Supposing you to have got over
the bewilderment created by their lustre, to eyes not accustomed to such
"hall sof dazzling light," you perceive a kind of square (the precise
definition of it I leave to the mathematicians) with a dancing platform
in the middle, a supper room on one side, and boxes all round, where
refreshments and seats are supplied. Opposite to the supper-room is a
lofty orchestra, glittering all over with many coloured lamps; further on
and behind are walks, and trees, and a fountain, with gigantic horses
snorting water through their nostrils, and a space for fireworks, the
demand for which on the part of the pleasure seekers of the metropolis,
if we may judge by the supply, is insatiable. Let us not forget also the
Rotunda, a large building with pit, boxes, and gallery, chiefly devoted
to horsemanship, neither worse nor better than what is usually seen at
such places. The comic singing is a feature of the place. Popular comic
songs are not very fresh, nor very witty nor refined, and require, when
delivered in public, a good deal of elocution. The point must be
apparent, and the emphasis clearly enunciated, but they are much the same
here as elsewhere. When you have heard one or two of them, you have
heard them all. So much by way of description. The people who come here
are the people whose pleasures are of the lowest character; who are
dependent on others; whose life is all outward rather than inward. They
are not readers nor thinkers, you may be sure, but the class precisely to
whom such places are as hurtful as they are attractive. If a man is to
be known by the company he keeps, what are we to think of the habitues of
Vauxhall? for after all life is, or ought to be, to us all a stern
reality--a battle-field--a victory--not a pleasure garden, or a Vanity
Fair; and even in London you may mix with better society than that of
painted Traviatas or tipsy men. Smoking, dancing, drinking, is not all
life; yet for such purposes Vauxhall solely exists. I much question, if
London alone were concerned, so great is the rivalry in this particular
style of amusement, whether Vauxhall would be a success; but the
provincial element is amazingly strong. I account for that as follows.
The railway system has done this for London. It has filled it with
strangers. From the wilds of Connemara, from the distant Land's End and
remote John o'Groat's, old and young, male and female, rich and poor,
wise or foolish, come in shoals to see London and its sights. Now
Vauxhall, and its illumination, and its slice of ham, have been the
wonder of generations, and to Vauxhall away they rush. Their speech
betrayeth them. Look at them. This party is from Lancashire. From the
flowery fields of Somersetshire that party have come. Wales has sent her
exciteable sons, and Scotland her reckless prodigals, for there are such
even ayont the Tweed. Here we have some five or six--a father and
mother, a daughter and her husband, and it may be a brother. Those
giants were never reared within the sound of Bow bells, and to be
impertinent to either the old lady or the young one were the height of
folly. Their fashions are not ours, yet are they wondrous jolly; and,
woe is me, the head of the family is exhibiting an agility as he bounds
up and down as an elephant might, which is unbecoming his years. How is
this? Why actually in a remote corner of the pocket, in the innermost
depths of that ancient coat, there is a bottle of raw gin, which the old
satyr puts to his own mouth, and then hands it to the rest of his party,
by whom, in a similar manner, it is applied, till what is left would not
hurt the conscience of a teetotaller to drink. It is well his "missus"
is there to pilot him home, and the sooner he gets back to his Yorkshire
wilds the better. Yet we have a sprinkling of town life. The reader
must remember Vauxhall occupies altogether eleven acres of ground, and on
one occasion upwards of 20,000 persons paid for admission. Look at that
faded pair. Some forty years ago they were fast, as times went, and here
they have come to have a peep at the old place, and to wonder how they
cared so much about it then. There stands an old fogy of the Regency.
Of what hideous debauch can he tell; and here stuffed, and painted, and
bewigged, made up from top to toe, he has come to mourn, not to moralise,
over the past. A sad sight is he; but sadder still are those pale-faced
ones, of elaborate hair, and exquisitely fitting costumes and bewitching
Balmorals, now dancing, now chaffing, now drinking, now uproariously
merry, but all the time with wanton wiles seeking their human prey in the
excitement of music, and laughter, and wine.