The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century

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.

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

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 lady328 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 Philosopher329—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

The concert was then resumed, and some hungry citizens and their families had already taken their seats in the supper boxes. During supper the citizen331 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

	s.	d.
Burgundy, a bottle	6	0
Champagne	8	0
Frontiniac	6	0
Claret	5	0
Old hock, with or without sugar	5	0
Two pound of ice		6
Rhenish and sugar	2	6
Mountain	2	6
Red port	2	0
Sherry	2	0
Cyder	1	0
Table beer, a quart mug		4
A chicken	2	6
A dish of ham	1	0
A dish of beef	1	0
Salad		6
A cruet of oil		4
Orange or lemon		3
Sugar for a bottle		6
Ditto for a pint		3
A slice of bread		1
Ditto of butter		2
Ditto of cheese		2
A tart	1	0
A custard		4
A cheese cake		4
A heart cake		2
A Shrewsbury cake		2
A quart of Arrack	8	0

When Tyers leased the gardens in 1728 there was in the dwelling-house a “Ham Room,” so that this famous Vauxhall viand must have been already in request. The thinness of the slices was proverbial. A journal of 1762, for instance, complains that you could read the newspaper through a slice of Tyers’s ham or beef. A certain carver, hardly perhaps mythical, readily obtained employment from the proprietor when he promised to cut a ham so thin that the slices would cover the whole garden like a carpet of red and white.

The chickens were of diminutive size. Mr. Rose, the old citizen in The Connoisseur (15 May, 1755), found them no bigger than a sparrow and exclaimed at every mouthful: “There goes twopence—there goes threepence—there goes a groat... why it would not have cost me above fourpence halfpenny to have spent my evening at Sot’s Hole.”

Chicken, ham and beef remained the staple of Vauxhall fare, but from about 1822 onwards the chicken cost four shillings instead of the half-crown, at which the old citizen had grumbled. Ham remained steady at one shilling a plate, and was cut no thicker. Thackeray speaks of “the twinkling boxes in which the happy feasters made believe to eat slices of almost invisible ham.”

In 1774 the same liquors were in demand, at the same prices as in 1762. In 1822 the claret sold was half a guinea a bottle and Frontiniac had risen from six shillings to ten shillings and sixpence a bottle. By this time, arrack—the famous rack punch that Jos. Sedley drank so freely—had risen from eight to twelve shillings a quart. In 1859 it was ten shillings a bowl, and rum and whisky, and of course, Guinness and Bass had taken their places in the bill. About 1802 Vauxhall Nectar was a common summer beverage. It was “a mixture of rum and syrup with an addition of benzoic acid or flowers of benjamin” and was taken with water.

Having thus given a general sketch of the company and amusements at Vauxhall, we must say something of the gardens themselves and of the character of the musical entertainments.

A General Prospect of Vaux Hall Gardens.

Shewing at one View the disposition of the whole Gardens.

Vue Detaillee des Jardins de Vaux Hall.

GENERAL PROSPECT OF VAUXHALL GARDENS, 1751.

The gardens333 occupied about twelve acres and were laid out in gravel walks flanked by a number of fine trees. On passing through the principal entrance, that connected with the manager’s house334 at the western end of the gardens, the visitor beheld the Grand (or Great) Walk, planted on each side with elms and extending about nine hundred feet, the whole length of the garden, to the eastern boundary fence, beyond which could be seen pleasant meadows with the hay-makers at their task. At the eastern end of this walk there was a gilded statue of Aurora, afterwards (before 1762) replaced by a Grand Gothic Obelisk bearing the inscription Spectator fastidiosus sibi molestus. This latter erection would hardly have borne inspection by daylight, for, like much of the ‘architecture’ of Vauxhall, it consisted merely of a number of boards covered with painted canvas.

Parallel to the Grand Walk was the South Walk with its three triumphal arches through which could be seen a painting of the ruins of Palmyra.

A third avenue, the Grand Cross Walk, also containing a painted representation of ruins, passed through the garden from side to side, intersecting the Grand Walk at right angles. This cross walk was terminated on the right by the Lovers’ (or Druid’s) Walk, and to the left were the Wildernesses and the Rural Downs.

The lofty trees of the Lovers’ Walk formed a verdant canopy in which the nightingales of Spring Gardens, the blackbirds, and the thrushes were wont to build. This was the principal of the Dark Walks so often mentioned in the annals of Vauxhall. In 1759 complaints were made of the loose characters who frequented these walks, and in 1763 Tyers was compelled to rail them off. When Vauxhall opened for the season in 1764 some young fellows, about fifty in number, tore up the railings in order to lay the walks open.

The Rural Downs, at least in the earlier days of Vauxhall, were covered with turf and interspersed with firs, cypresses and cedars. On one of the little eminences was a leaden statue of Milton335 seated, listening to music, and at night-time the great Bard was illuminated by lamps. Here were also the Musical Bushes where a subterraneous band used to play fairy music till about the middle of the eighteenth century when this romantic entertainment ceased, “the natural damp of the earth being found prejudicial to the instruments.”

The Wildernesses were formed by lofty trees and were (about 1753) the verdant abode of various “feathered minstrels, who in the most delightful season of the year ravish the ears of the company with their harmony.”

The orchestra, open in the front, stood, facing the west, in the centre of what was called The Grove, a quadrangle of about five acres formed by the Grand, Cross, and South Walks and by the remaining side of the garden.

On each side of this quadrangle were the supper-boxes and pavilions, placed in long rows or arranged in a semi-circular sweep. These were decorated, about 1742, with paintings chiefly by Francis Hayman. Hogarth allowed his “Four Times of the Day” to be copied by Hayman for the boxes, and is said to have given Tyers the idea of brightening Vauxhall with paintings. It is doubtful if any of the pictures in the boxes can be traced directly to his hand, though an undoubted Hogarth, “Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn” was presented by the artist to Tyers and hung in the Rotunda. The pictures in the boxes chiefly represented scenes in popular comedies and a number of common sports and pastimes such as the play of seesaw, the play of cricket, the humorous diversion of sliding on the ice, leap-frog, and the country dance round the maypole. Some of the larger boxes, denominated temples and pavilions, were more elaborately designed and decorated. Such were the Temple of Comus (in the semi-circle of boxes on the left of the garden) and the Turkish Tent behind the orchestra.

Roubillac’s celebrated marble statue of Handel, as Orpheus, stood in various positions in the gardens (sometimes under cover) from 1738 to 1818.336

The principal structure was the Rotunda, entered through a colonnade to the left of the Grand Walk. It was a circular building, seventy feet in diameter, elegantly fitted up and containing an orchestra in which the band performed on wet evenings. When first opened it was known as the New Music Room or the Great Room, and in early days was nicknamed the Umbrella from the shape of the roof. With the Rotunda was connected a long room, known as the Saloon, or the Picture Room. This projected into the gardens, parallel to the Grove.

Under Tyers’s management the concert began at five or six and lasted till nine or ten. It consisted of sixteen pieces, songs alternating with sonatas and concertos. An overture on the organ, always formed part of the entertainment. Not much is known of the instrumental music, for the Vauxhall advertisements, until late in the eighteenth century, never gave the details of the programme. Arne, and Dr. John Worgan, (the Vauxhall organist) were the composers during this period. Valentine Snow, serjeant-trumpeter to the king, was a favourite about 1745, and Burney remarks that “his silver sounds in the open air, by having room to expand, never arrived at the ears of the audience in a manner too powerful or piercing.”

The songs consisted chiefly of sentimental ballads, and of a few more sprightly ditties, such as Miss Stevenson’s song “You tell me I’m handsome”:—

All this has been told me by twenty before,
But he that would win me must flatter me more.

The verse is highly conventional, but sometimes shows a glimmering of poetic form that raises it somewhat above the level of our own drawing-room ballads. The average Vauxhall song seems to our ears sufficiently thin and trivial, but on the lips of Lowe or Mrs. Weichsell, may easily have been successful. Of the popularity of the songs at the time, there can be no question. The magazines, especially The London Magazine, regularly published the words, and often the music, of “A new song sung at Vauxhall,” and the contemporary collections of Vauxhall songs, such as The Warbler published at a shilling in 1756, were numerous.

In the period 1745–1767, when the singers were few in number, the chief male vocalist was Thomas Lowe, who possessed an inexhaustible répertoire of Delias and Strephons which he sang with great applause from 1745 till about 1763, when he entered on the management of the Marylebone Gardens.337 Mrs. Arne sang for a few years from 1745, and Miss Stevenson frequently circ. 1748–1758. Miss Isabella Burchell, better known as the Mrs. Vincent of Marylebone Gardens, sang at Vauxhall from 1751 to 1760. She was originally a milk-girl employed on Tyers’s estate in Surrey, and it was through his instrumentality that she obtained instruction in music.

In 1764, the chief singers were Vernon and Miss Brent, who belong rather to our next period. Miss Wright’s “Thro’ the wood, laddie,” was popular in 1765.

Jonathan Tyers died on 1 July, 1767. He had amassed a large fortune and owned the estate of Denbies at Dorking, where he laid out a curious garden containing a hermitage, called the Temple of Death, and a gloomy valley of the Shadow of Death. In spite of these lugubrious surroundings this “Master-builder of Delight” retained his love for Vauxhall till the last, and shortly before his death had himself carried into the Grove to take a parting look at the Spring Gardens.

He was succeeded at Vauxhall by his two sons, Thomas and Jonathan. ‘Tom’ Tyers, as he was called by Dr. Johnson, with whom he was a favourite, had been bred to the law, but he was too eccentric and vivacious to confine himself to practice. “He, therefore (says Boswell), ran about the world with a pleasant carelessness,” amusing everybody by his desultory talk and abundance of anecdote. He furnished many songs for the gardens, but in 1785, sold his interest to his brother Jonathan’s family. Jonathan was manager of Vauxhall from 1785 till his death in 1792.

§ 3. 1768–1790

During this period the character of the entertainments of Vauxhall and the arrangement of the gardens themselves, underwent no very material changes,338 and people of all ranks frequented the place as of old. The singers, however, were more numerous, and there seems to have been a general tendency to stay late. In 1783, the concert began at eight and ended at eleven, and a London guide-book of 1786,339 states that the company at that time seldom left the garden till two in the morning, if the weather was fine.

From about 1772–1778, a good deal of rowdyism appears to have disturbed the harmony of Vauxhall, though it must be said that the company under old Tyers had not always been distinguished for urbanity. The rude treatment to which Fielding’s Amelia was subjected at the gardens (circ. 1752), can hardly have been an isolated occurrence, and in the summer of 1748 a party of ladies, apparently of good position, used to crow like cocks when visiting Vauxhall, while their friends of the male sex responded with an ass’s bray. One Mrs. Woolaston, attained special proficiency in her imitations.340

At this time (1772–1778), it was the custom to violently emphasize the importance of the last night of the season. Young Branghton, in Evelina (circ. 1778), declares that the last night at Vauxhall is the best of any; “there’s always a riot—and there the folks run about—and then there’s such squealing and squalling! and there all the lamps are broke, and the women run skimper scamper.”341

From the newspapers we learn that on the 4th of September, 1774, “upwards of fifteen foolish Bucks who had amused themselves by breaking the lamps at Vauxhall, were put into the cage there by the proprietors, to answer for the damage done. They broke almost every lamp about the orchestra, and pulled the door leading up to it off the hinges.”

The Dark Walk and Long Alleys were also not without their terrors. Evelina, who had unwittingly strayed thither, was surrounded by a circle of impudent young men, and the Branghton girls were also detained, though they had gone more with their eyes open. “Lord, Polly,” says the eldest, “suppose we were to take a turn in the Dark Walks?” “Ay, do,” answered she, “and then we’ll hide ourselves, and then Mr. Brown will think we are lost.” A quarrel in public between two angry gentlemen was also a not uncommon incident, and the affair sometimes assumed the heroic proportions of a Vauxhall “Affray.” For example, one day in June 1772 two gentlemen, Captain Allen and Mr. Kelly, created a scene. The words “scoundrel” and “rascal” were heard, and Allen who had a sword would have overpowered Kelly who had only his cane, if the bystanders had not interposed.342 But the Vauxhall Affray par excellence, was the affair of Bate, “the fighting parson,” and Mr. Fitzgerald.343 The Rev. Sir Henry Bate Dudley, Bart. (as he afterwards was) was at Vauxhall on the evening of 23 July, 1773, in company with Mrs. Hartley and some friends. A party of gentlemen sat down near them, and made a deliberate attempt to stare the beautiful actress out of countenance. Captain Crofts and Mr. George Robert Fitzgerald were among the offenders, or at any rate took their part. Bate expostulated loudly with Crofts, and a crowd gathered round. The next day Bate and Crofts met at the Turk’s Head Coffee House in the Strand, where matters were being peaceably adjusted, when Fitzgerald appeared on the scene insisting on satisfaction for his friend Captain Miles, who wanted to box the parson. Bate declared that he had offered no insult to Miles, but ultimately the party adjourned to the front dining-room of the Spread Eagle Tavern close by, and there in fifteen minutes Bate had completely beaten Miles. A few days afterwards Bate discovered that the supposed Captain Miles was Fitzgerald’s footman, esteemed an expert bruiser. Bate published an account of the affair in the papers, and Fitzgerald’s conduct was generally condemned, though he tried to make out that the footman had only pretended to be beaten. A further quarrel arising out of this incident led to a meeting between Fitzgerald and a Captain Scawen in Flanders. As a finishing touch to our picture of the Vauxhall manners of the period, we must recall an evening in August 1782, when the Prince of Wales and a party of gay friends visited the gardens. When the music was over the Prince was recognised by the company, and being surrounded, crushed, and pursued, had to beat a hasty retreat. The ladies followed the Prince, the gentlemen pursued the ladies; the curious and the mischievous increased the tumult, and in a few minutes the boxes were deserted, the lame overthrown, and the well-dressed demolished.344

On May 10, 1769, a Ridotto al fresco was given at which not less than ten thousand people are said to have been present. The Rotunda was lit with nearly five thousand glass lamps, and a platform under an awning was laid down in the gardens for dancing. The fancy dresses were not numerous, and Walpole, who was there with his friend Conway, only walked twice round, and was glad to get out of the mob and go home. Some years later, on 29 May, 1786, there was another Ridotto to celebrate (approximately) the Jubilee of Vauxhall Gardens. Fourteen thousand additional lamps were displayed, and most of the company appeared in dominoes, as at the original Ridotto of 1732.

During this period (1768–1790) the principal tenor was Vernon, who had taken Lowe’s place in 1764. His répertoire appears to have been somewhat less conventional than that of his predecessor, and his gay and energetic manner rendered him popular in such songs as the “English Padlock,” the “Crying and Laughing” Song, and “Cupid’s recruiting Sergeant.” He was a constant singer at Vauxhall till the end of the season of 1781. In 1783 Arrowsmith, a young tenor, pupil of Michael Arne, aspired with some success to take Vernon’s place. He sang till 1785, but in the summer of next year (1786) a more celebrated tenor, Charles Incledon, then only twenty-two, made his appearance, and sang till 1790.

The principal female singers were Mrs. Baddeley (about 1768); Mrs. Weichsell (1769–1784); Miss Jameson (1770–1774); Miss Wewitzer (circ. 1773); Mrs. Hudson (1773–1776); Mrs. Wrighten (1773–1786); Mrs. Kennedy (1782–1785); Miss Leary (1786–1789); Mrs. Martyr, the actress (1786–1789). Of these vocalists, Mrs. Baddeley and Mrs. Kennedy were the well-known actresses. The latter possessed a powerful voice, and often assumed male parts at Covent Garden. Mrs. Wrighten had a vivacious manner and a bewitching smile, and her “Hunting Song” was popular. Mrs. Weichsell, the mother of Mrs. Billington the actress, was an especial favourite at the gardens. A magazine poet of 1775345 celebrates her among the best Vauxhall singers.—

Sweet Weichsell who warbles her wood-note so wild,
That the birds are all hushed as they sit on each spray,
And the trees nod applause as she chaunts the sweet lay.

In 1774 James Hook was appointed organist and composer, and remained at Vauxhall Gardens till 1820, exerting his facile, if not very distinguished powers, as a music-writer. In 1775 Catches and Glees were for the first time introduced into the concert. On an evening of July of this year Lord Sandwich and a party of friends amused themselves by starting some Catches and Glees of their own, which they sang from their box near the orchestra. General Haile, who sat in the next box, then requested a young lady who was with him to sing a song, which the band obligingly accompanied, to the great delight of the audience.346 A favourite catch, “They say there is an echo here,” was performed in 1780, by two sets of singers and musicians, the stanzas of the principal band being answered by an invisible band of voices and wind instruments stationed over the Prince’s box at the bottom of the garden.

In 1783 Barthelemon led the orchestra, and a band of drums and fifes, horns and clarionets, was introduced to perambulate the gardens after the regular concert. These supplementary bands generally formed part of the later Vauxhall entertainments.

§ 4. 1791–1821

In 1792 the ordinary admission was raised from one shilling to two shillings, and Grand Galas and Masquerades became features of Vauxhall.347 On 31 May, 1792, there was a successful masked ball, and the gardens were a blaze of light. Amid a crowd of Haymakers, Punches, Chimney Sweeps, and Sailors, Munden, the actor, attracted attention in the character of a deaf old man.

People of all classes took part in these masqueradings. Deputy Gubbins went as a very fat Apollo, and his spouse, a portly matron, as Diana with a huge quiver. Master Gubbins was Cupid. But these characters were misunderstood by the newspaper-reporter, who described the Deputy as the Fat Knight, accompanied by his lady as Mother Quickly, and by the hope of all the Gubbinses as an awkward Toxophilite.348

The “Dashalls” and “Tallyhos” sometimes caused trouble, and a newspaper of 1812, describes how at a ball of this year, a crowd of masks followed “Mr. Cockadoodle Coates” with crowing and exclamations of “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo.”

An imposing festival took place on 20 June, 1813, to celebrate the Battle of Vittoria and Wellington’s victories. The Prince of Wales, and all the Royal Dukes were present at the banquet.

During this period (1791–1821) some capable vocalists made their appearance at Vauxhall; Darley (who had already sung at the gardens in 1789); Mrs. Franklin (who had previously appeared as Miss Leary); Mrs. Mountain,349 the actress (1793); the well-known Charles Dignum (1794) and Mrs. Bland350 the popular ballad-singer (1802). Dignum and Mrs. Bland remained Vauxhall favourites for some years.351

Fireworks, which had long before been usual at Cuper’s Gardens, Marylebone Gardens, and Ranelagh, were not introduced at Vauxhall till 1798. From about 1813, they became a permanent institution. In 1816, Mme. Saqui of Paris appeared at Vauxhall, and was the principal attraction for several seasons. A mast about sixty feet high was erected on the firework platform at the eastern end of the gardens, and from its top depended an inclined rope 350 feet long. At twelve o’clock a lady of muscular and masculine appearance, bedecked with spangles and waving plumes, might be seen ascending this rope to the platform, amid a glare of blue flame. Her appearance was almost supernatural:—

Amid the blaze of meteors seen on high,
Etherial Saqui seems to tread the sky;352

Having now reached the highest point, she made her descent in a shower of Chinese Fire, and “in the face of a tempest of fireworks.” This exciting performance became a necessity at Vauxhall, and Saqui’s feats were afterwards reproduced by Longuemare and Blackmore.

At this period (circ. 1817) the newspapers describe the orchestra as a “pagoda of lustre,” and the covered walks as arches of fire. The songs, and the music, and the fireworks were the attractions till about one o’clock, when the ordinary visitors withdrew. But the noisy and the dissipated sometimes kept up the fun with reels and waltzes till nearly four in the morning.353

We have now wandered far from the old Spring Garden of Jonathan Tyers and the later history of Vauxhall must, in the present volume, be very briefly summarised.

In the gardens themselves, some important changes had already been effected. In 1786, a Supper Room had been added to the left of the Rotunda, and in 1810–11 many of the trees in the Grove were cut down, and part of the Grand Walk and two sides of the Grove were covered in by a vaulted colonnade supported by cast-iron pillars. This colonnade was brilliantly lit with lamps, and was convenient in the wet weather that was proverbial at Vauxhall, but it greatly tended to destroy what Walpole calls, “the gardenhood” of the place.354 The last of the old trees of Tyers’s period is said to have survived till 1805.

In 1821 Vauxhall Gardens passed out of the possession of the Tyers family. After the death of Jonathan Tyers the younger in 1792, his place was taken as proprietor and manager by his son-in-law Bryan Barrett, who died in 1809. Barrett’s son, George Rogers Barrett then acted as manager of the gardens for many years. In 1821, the property was purchased from the Barrett family for £30,000355 by T. Bish (the lottery-office keeper), F. Gye, and R. Hughes.

§ 5. 1822–1859

The gardens opened356 for the season of 1822 on June 3rd, and for the first time received the appellation of The Royal Gardens, Vauxhall. This change in the name was made with the approval of George IV. who as Prince of Wales had been a regular frequenter of the gardens and had received from a grateful management public recognition of his patronage. In 1791, a gallery had been constructed in the gardens and named after him.357 This was the shrine of an allegorical transparency portraying him leaning against a horse held by Britannia. Minerva bore his helmet; Providence fixed his spurs, and Fame blew a trumpet and crowned him with laurel. The good-natured Darley came to the front of the orchestra (August 1792) and sang in his best manner, “The Prince of the People”:—

Endow’d with each virtue, the dignified Youth,
 Ere Reason enlighten’d his mind,
Burst forth on the world in example and truth,
 The boast and delight of Mankind.

The gardens had now (1822) completely assumed their nineteenth-century aspect and Vauxhall, lit with “20,000 additional lamps,” began to supply a constant succession of variety entertainments.

The Rotunda was decorated as an Indian Garden Room, and at a later date was fitted up with seats and boxes and used for the equestrian performances. In the Saloon (or Picture Room) adjoining, where historical pictures by Hayman were still hanging, was an exhibition called by the erudite managers Heptaplasiesoptron. On plates of glass ingeniously distributed manifold reflections were produced of revolving pillars, palm-trees, twining serpents, coloured lamps and a fountain.

The old Cascade had been abolished about 1816, and a stage for rope-dancing occupied its site (1822). A Submarine Cavern and a new exhibition of Waterworks appear to have covered the Rural Downs.

At the eastern end of the garden was a building of wood and canvas representing a Hermit’s Cottage, wherein might be seen—all in transparency—the Hermit himself pursuing his studies by the aid of a lamp, a blazing fire and a brightly-shining moon. At this end of the gardens was the Firework Tower, where the fireworkers Hengler, Mortram and Southby were now (1822) at work, preparing for the ascent of Longuemare, which was to take place at twelve o’clock à la Saqui.

The South Walk (so much of it at least as remained uncovered) was now known as the Firework Walk, and the three Triumphal Arches had disappeared.

The Dark Walk of Vauxhall now began at the Submarine Cavern, passed along the left hand and eastern boundaries of the garden and terminated at the right hand end of the Grand Cross Walk, the last branch of it being thus identical with the Lovers’ Walk of old days. The Cross Walk was now usually denominated the Chinese Walk from its being lit with Chinese lanterns. Four cosmoramas had taken the place of its Ruins.

The boxes and pavilions containing Hayman’s paintings remained much as of old. Among other noteworthy features of the later Vauxhall was the gilded cockle-shell sounding-board over the orchestra (from 1824); a new avenue called the Italian Walk (from about 1836), and the Neptune Fountain.

In 1822 Ramo Samee, the Indian juggler and sword-swallower, made his appearance, and next year a Shadow Pantomime and Grey’s Fantoccini were introduced. From this period, Vauxhall was enlivened or vulgarised by the performance of comic songs. Mallinson (circ. 1823), W. H. Williams (from 1824), and J. W. Sharp (from 1846) being some of the best-known singers.

In 1826 the admission was raised to four shillings, on account of the engagement of Braham and Miss Stephens and of Mme. Vestris, whose “Cherry Ripe” was popular. In 1827 the space in front of the firework tower was cleared of shrubs, and a representation of the Battle of Waterloo took place there. Cooke’s stud and a thousand horse and foot soldiers engaged in this action. The “Waterloo” ground afterwards (1834) became the Polar Regions, and subsequently the space was covered by other scenic displays, including (1847) a view of Venice with “imitation water.”

In 1828 Ducrow’s stud was engaged, and in the next year ballets became a feature.

In 1830–1832 the musical director was Sir Henry Bishop, who composed operettas for the gardens, such as “The Sedan Chair,” “The Bottle of Champagne,” and the “Magic Fan.” In the last-named Mrs. Waylett and Paul Bedford took part. George Robinson, the alto, made Bishop’s “My Pretty Jane” popular. On August 2, 1833, when a one shilling night was tried, upwards of 27,000 people paid for admission.

The 19th of August, 1833, is notable in the Vauxhall annals as the benefit night of old Simpson, for more than thirty-six years Master of the Ceremonies at the gardens, and himself one of the sights and institutions. He was a man of short stature and his plain face was pitted with the smallpox, but his manner and dress made ample amends. He wore a shirt with an enormous frill, a coat of antique cut, and black silk knee-breeches and hose. In his uplifted left hand he carried his tasselled and silver-headed cane, and with his right raised his hat to every one he met, as a welcome to the Royal Property. His habitual attitude has been immortalised by Cruikshank and he was exhibited (from 1833) in the gardens in coloured lamps—an immense effigy, forty-five feet high. Simpson’s Vauxhall Addresses and his letters to newspaper editors were masterpieces of florid humility. To the editor of The Times he wrote to say that he had given directions that the illustrious editor’s “much-beloved family” were to be admitted “to any number” at the Vauxhall Juvenile Fêtes—a communication which amused Thomas Barnes who had no children. Simpson died, almost in office, on 25 December, 1835, after expressing a wish that the managers of the Royal Gardens would dispose as they deemed fit of his “humble body.” Thackeray calls him “the gentle Simpson, that kind, smiling idiot.”358

In 1836 the gardens were open in the day-time, but Vauxhall by daylight, as “Boz” observed, is “a porter-pot without porter; the House of Commons without the Speaker; a gas-lamp without gas.” Ballooning was the chief feature of these afternoon fêtes.359 On 7 November, 1836, Charles Green, accompanied by Monck Mason and Robert Hollond, M.P., ascended from the gardens at 1.30 P.M. in the balloon, afterwards named “the Nassau,” and descended next morning near Weilburg in the Duchy of Nassau after a voyage occupying eighteen hours.360 On 24 July, 1837, Green, Edward Spencer, and Robert Cocking ascended in a balloon with a parachute attached, and Cocking in descending in the parachute was killed.

In 1839 the proprietorship of Gye and Hughes came to an end, and Vauxhall was closed in 1840. The gardens were again open in July 1841 with Alfred Bunn as stage-manager. During this season Bunn and “Alfred Crowquill” published at the gardens their amusing series of Vauxhall Papers, “a daily journal published nightly, every other evening, three times a week.”361 The Ravel Family and Ducrow’s horsemanship were among the attractions of this season, which came to an end on 8 September, when the announcement was made that Vauxhall would “positively close its doors for ever.”

On 9 September (1841) the gardens were offered for sale by auction, but were bought in at 20,000 pounds. The furniture and fittings were, however, disposed of at this time, notably, twenty-four of the paintings by Hayman, which realised sums from £1 10s. to £9 15s. Four busts of the celebrated Simpson were sold for half-a-crown apiece.

From 1842 till the final closing of the gardens, galas, masquerades, and a great variety of entertainments were advertised in bold letters of many colours, but Vauxhall was now rapidly declining. In 1845, Musard conducted Promenade Concerts, and in that year and during most of the years following, Mr. Robert Wardell was the lessee. In 1846, gas lamps took the place of the oil lamps, and about this time the musicians in the orchestra ceased to wear the cocked hats that had long been their characteristic head-dress. In 1849, there was a Grand Venetian Carnival, and 60,000 lamps were advertised.

In October 1853, when the annual license for the Royal Gardens was applied for, great complaints were made of the nuisance caused by the bals masqués which lasted from 11 P.M. till 5 or 6 A.M., and were frequented by many disreputable characters. The license was renewed on the somewhat easy conditions that the fireworks should not be let off after eleven, and that the gardens should close at three in the morning. In 1858, Mr. R. Duffell was the director. Monster galas were announced, and the gardens were opened on Sundays for a promenade.

Monday, 25 July, 1859, witnessed the last entertainment at Vauxhall Gardens. One of the vocalists at the concert then given was Mr. Russell Grover, who died lately, in April 1896. After the concert and the equestrian performances in the Rotunda, dancing was continued till past midnight: the fireworks displayed the device Farewell for Ever, and Vauxhall was closed.

On 22 August following, the auctioneer ascended his rostrum in the gardens at noon and announced that the site had been let for building, and that all the property on the premises must be sold. Three “deal painted tables with turned legs,” made for the gardens in 1754, went for nine shillings each. The dancing platform realised fifty guineas, the ballet theatre seventeen guineas, and the orchestra ninety-nine pounds. The pictures that still remained in the supper boxes were purchased by Edward Tyrrell Smith, who placed them in the Banqueting Hall at Cremorne. The whole sale realised about £800.

The builders soon went to work upon the twelve acres of Vauxhall Gardens, and in 1864 the church of St. Peter, Vauxhall, erected on part of the site, was consecrated. Numerous streets of small houses have for many years completely obliterated all traces of the gardens, the boundaries of which, it is, however, interesting to trace. The western boundary is marked by the present Goding Street, and the eastern by St. Oswald’s Place. Leopold Street and a small portion of Vauxhall Walk define their northern limit, and Upper Kennington Lane marks their southern extent. The space within these boundaries is occupied by Gye Street, Italian Walk, Burnett Street, Auckland Street, Glynn Street, and part of Tyers Street,362 and also by St. Peter’s Church and the Lambeth District School of Art.

As late as 1869 “the Supper Colonnade of Vauxhall” was advertised to be sold cheap,363 and with this prosaic detail of our own time, we must perforce take leave of the pleasure gardens of a past century.

Authorities and Views

The literary and pictorial matter available for a history of Vauxhall Gardens is almost inexhaustible and, except in a monograph, it would be impossible to set forth a detailed list of authorities and views. The present sketch is primarily based on the materials furnished by an extensive collection in the writer’s possession, consisting of views, portraits, songs, bills, and cuttings from newspapers and magazines, and covering the period 1732–1859. Among many other authorities that have been consulted, the following may be mentioned:—Pepys’s Diary: A Sketch of the Spring Garden, Vauxhall (by John Lockman, 1753?); A Description of Vauxhall Gardens, London, S. Hooper, 1762 (Guildhall Library, London); Kearsley’s Stranger’s Guide (1793?); Sale Catalogues of Vauxhall Gardens, 1818 (Brit. Mus.) and 1841 (W. Coll.); A Brief Historical and Descriptive Account of the Royal Gardens, Vauxhall, 1822; The Vauxhall Papers, 1841; the histories of Lambeth and Surrey; W. H. Husk in Grove’s Dict. of Music, art. “Vauxhall Gardens”; Austin Dobson’s Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 1st ser. p. 230, ff.; Cunningham’s Handbook of London; Wheatley’s London Past and Present; Walford, vi. 447, ff.; Blanchard in Era Almanack for 1870, p. 9, ff.

Footnotes

1 Some of the rarer items of the collection which it seemed desirable to cite as authorities are marked W. or W. Coll.

2 Several London pleasure gardens were in existence before the Restoration, the Mulberry Garden on the site of Buckingham Palace and the Spring Gardens at Charing Cross being well-known instances. But in the present volume only such seventeenth-century gardens as survived till the succeeding century are noticed.

3 The English Grotto.

4 Cp. The Idler, No. 15, July 1758.

5 At Vauxhall fireworks were not introduced till 1798, but illuminations were always a feature of the gardens.

6 Bermondsey Spa and Finch’s Grotto, above mentioned, might be classed among the spas and springs, but their amusements resembled those of Vauxhall.

7 Islington Wells, a song of all the virtues of those old waters newly found out. London, 1684 (Brit. Mus.), cp. A morning ramble; or Islington Wells burlesqt. London, 1684 (Cunningham, London, 1850, s.v. “Islington”).

8 London Gazette, 24 September, 1685.

9 Nearly all modern writers—Mr. Pinks is an exception—have in some way or other confused Sadler’s Wells with New Tunbridge Wells (Islington Spa). The mistake may have first arisen from the circumstance that Sadler, in his printed prospectus concerning the discovery of the wells on his premises, describes them as “Sadler’s New Tunbridge Wells near Islington.” The sub-title of New Tunbridge Wells never, however, took root at Sadler’s, though it was soon permanently adopted (as is stated in our text) by the rival Islington Wells, i.e. Islington Spa.

10 The following details are mainly derived from Islington Wells, or the Threepenny Academy, 1691, and from Edward Ward’s Walk to Islington, 1699, fol. (Ward’s Works, ii. 63, ff. ed. 1709).

11 Ward describes the gambling places as an outhouse with sheds and a hovel adjoining.

12 Islington Wells, or the Threepenny Academy.

13 Cp. E. Ward, “The Infallible Predictor” (Works, ii. p. 355, ed. 1709).

14 An advertisement of 23 May, 1712 (Percival’s Sadler’s Wells announces the performances from six to ten in the morning and from four till eight in the evening of two wonderful posture-makers, a man and a child of nine, to take place in the dancing-room of New Tunbridge Wells.

15 Extract from family correspondence communicated by C. L. S. to Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vi. 1894, p. 69.

16 In 1760 the breakfasting was ninepence, the afternoon tea sixpence, and the coffee eightpence. No stronger beverages were sold.

17 A serious attempt seems to have been made to keep this rule. The London Daily Advertiser for 25 June, 1752, records that a beautiful though notorious woman, who had appeared at the dancing at New Tunbridge on June 24, was, on being recognised by the company, turned out by a constable.

18 Dr. Russel, who analysed the water about 1733, says that it had a taste of iron and (unless mixed with common water) was apt to make the drinker giddy or sleepy. This was the experience of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who, however, expatiates on the benefit she had derived from the Spa.

19 This was between the main part of the Spa gardens and St. John’s Street Road; cp. Wallis’s Plan, 1808.

20 A band had played in the morning under Holland’s management (advertisement in the Public Advertiser, 5 May, 1775).

21 Malcolm, Lond. rediv. iii. 230, 231.

22 The orchestra connected with it was pulled down in 1827; Cromwell’s Clerkenwell, p. 357.

23 No. 6, Eliza Place, stood on the site of the old entrance (Pinks).

24 Mr. Philip Norman, writing in Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vi. 1894, p. 457, says:—“I have seen (in the cellar of No. 6, Spa Cottages, behind the house at the corner of Lloyd’s Row) grotto work with stone pilasters and on each side steps descending. Here, I believe, was the chalybeate spring. For many years it has ceased to flow.”

25 Daily Telegraph, 1 August, 1895.

26 A newspaper paragraph of April 1752, mentions the little summer house at the Ducking Pond House in Spa Fields, as being lately stripped of its chairs and tables by some pitiful rogues.

27 In The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine for January 1773 (p. 162) is the notice:—
“Pantheons: The Nobility’s, Oxford Road; the Mobility’s, Spawfields.”

28 The organ appears, about 1772, to have been silenced on Sundays, at least for a time. A correspondent in The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser for 20 June, 1772, refers to the Middlesex Justices who will not suffer the organs to be played at the Little Pantheon, White Conduit House, Bagnigge Wells, &c.

29 May Day, or the Origin of Garlands, a poem published in 1720. The Field Spy, published in 1714 (Rogers, Views of Pleasure Gardens of London, p. 46), speaks of the spring and garden as if a good deal frequented in 1714.

30 A rare bronze ticket of oblong form, incised with the words, “London Spaw No. 19,” is in the possession of Mr. W. T. Ready, the London coin dealer. It may belong to about the middle of the last century.

31 Rosoman Street was called after Mr. Rosoman, who about 1756 built the west side, which was then called Rosoman Row. Rosoman, who acted at the New Wells in 1744, was the well-known proprietor of Sadler’s Wells. Pinks (Clerkenwell) states that the houses numbered (in his time) 5 to 8 occupied the site of the Wells.

32 The New Wells seem to have been already established in 1737. The earliest advertisement quoted in Pinks is of 1738, but there are earlier advertisements (W. Coll.), May to August 1737, in one of which reference is made to the alterations in the theatre that season.

33 Daily Post, 3 July, 1742 (quoted in Gent. Mag. 1813, pt. ii. p. 561).

34 Doran’s London in Jacobite Times, ii. pp. 148, 149.

35 The English Grotto has escaped the minute research of Mr. Pinks, and his continuator Mr. Woods (cp. however, Daniel, Merrie England, i. chap. ii. p. 33). It is practically known only from the following views:—

(1) A view of the English Grotto, near the New River Head. Chatelain del. et sculp. 1760. Crace, Cat. p. 591, No. 60 (cp. engraving (circ. 1760), without artist’s name, in W. Coll.).

(2) The Grotto, near the New River Head, 1760. A drawing in Indian ink. Crace, Cat. p. 590, No. 59.

(3) A water-colour copy of No. 1 by R. B. Schnebellie. Crace, Cat. p. 591, No. 61.

36 The continuator of Pinks (p. 740) quotes advertisements of 1769, without, however, specifying the newspapers referred to. J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, p. 70, refers to the Grotto Garden as being kept by Jackson in 1779. Pinks (p. 169) mentions the fountain and Grotto in 1780, and describes the site.

37 Rockhoutt = Rockholt House in Essex.

38 The legs referred to are those of Sir Thomas Robinson, the principal proprietor of Ranelagh, nicknamed Long Sir Thomas.

39 The New Wells, Clerkenwell.

40 Cuper’s Gardens, Lambeth.

41 Newspaper advertisement in “Public Gardens” collection in Guildhall Library, London.

42 Advertisement in Daily Advertiser, 8 July, 1745.

43 Sadler originally advertised the place as “Sadler’s New Tunbridge Wells,” but it soon became known simply as Sadler’s Wells. On the confusion with the neighbouring New Tunbridge Wells (Islington Spa), see Islington Spa, supra, note 3.

44 About 1800 the forgotten well was accidentally re-discovered between the stage door and the New River.

45 A poem by William Garbott, entitled the New River, published probably about 1725.

46 A new song on Sadler’s Wells, set by Mr. Brett, 1740.

47 The Sadler’s Wells anglers are mentioned in the Field Spy, a poem of 1714. The New River remained open until 1861–62 when it was covered in.

48 A newspaper cutting in “Public Gardens” collection in Guildhall Library, records the death on 2 February, 1786, of Mrs. Bennet, of Merlin’s Cave, Spa Fields, who was the successor of her uncle, Mr. Hood.

49 A view of the Merlin’s Cave at Richmond forms the frontispiece of Gent. Mag. 1735; on the cave, see Walford’s Greater London, ii. 345, ff

50 A square stone bearing the inscription given below was, about 1760, over an old gateway in the wall to the north of the Long Room, and was still there in 1843. In 1850 it was to be seen in Coppice Row, now Farringdon Road.
S T
THIS IS BAGNIGGE
HOUSE NEARE
THE PINDER A
WAKEFEILDE
1680.
The Pinder a Wakefielde (the modern representative of which stands near the old site in Gray’s Inn Road) was a tavern; and some writers have inferred from the above inscription that Bagnigge Wells itself was a place of entertainment as early as 1680.

51 Over one of the chimney-pieces of the room was the garter of the order of St. George, in relief, and over another the bust of a woman in Roman dress, popularly supposed to represent Nell Gwynne. This bust was let into a circular cavity of the wall, bordered with festoons of fruit and flowers moulded in delft earth and coloured after nature. Owing to the number of visitors promenading in the Long Room to the hindrance of the waiters, the room was, before 1797, divided into two, though we are told that the “former elegance” remained.

52 The organ and its organist (under Davis), Charley Griffith, are shown in an engraving “The Bagnigge Organfist” (undated). “Published for the benefit of decayed musicians.”

53 Picture of London, 1802.

54 “Bagnigge Wells,” a song in the London Magazine, June, 1759.

55 Colman’s prologue to Garrick’s Bon Ton, 1775.

56 This is made sufficiently clear in the Sunday Ramble (1774, &c.); in the poem cited in the next note, and in Trusler’s London Adviser (1786).

57 Bagnigge Wells, an anonymous poem (1779).

58 The life of John Rann, otherwise Sixteen Strings Jack, reprinted London, 1884; C. Whibley in The New Review, 1896, p. 222; cp. also the print “The Road to Ruin.”

59 Sale Catalogue, 1813. (Copy in Brit. Mus.)

60 A few years before 1891, these figures were in the possession of Dr. Lonsdale of Carlisle (Wheatley’s London P. and P.).

61 The temple (behind the Long Room) and the grotto to the north of it, were, as formerly, in the garden east of the Fleet. The western garden, previous to its curtailment, contained the rustic cottage nearly opposite the grotto, and the pond with its swan and Cupid fountain about the middle of the garden.

62 For New Year’s day 1751, new fireworks in the Chinese manner were announced to take place at the Sir John Oldcastle (Pinks, p. 738). This was a special subscription entertainment. The regular open-air amusements appear to have come to an end in 1746.

63 The Well at Battle Bridge (i.e. St. Chad’s) is mentioned with four other London Wells in the Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine for January 1773, p. 162. A Mr. Salter was part proprietor of the Well for many years previous to 1798. His mind became deranged and on 17 July, 1798, he was found drowned in a pond in the garden of St. Chad’s (The Courier for 18 July, 1798).

64 Coull’s St. Pancras, p. 22.

65 In the minutes of a Vestry Meeting in St. Giles’s parish, held in 1676, it is recorded that a meeting is appointed with the parishioners in St. Andrew’s, Holborn, about the Bowling Green in Gray’s Inn Fields and the houses near thereabouts built (F. Miller’s St. Pancras, p. 77).

66 Malcolm’s Manners and Customs of London (1811), p. 209.

67 Barras’s advertisement is quoted in Palmer’s St. Pancras, p. 310.

68 It was generally known as the Bowling Green House, but the sign of the inn appears to have been the Three Tuns, for in a plan of the new road from Paddington to Islington (London Mag. 1756), the place is marked as the Three Tuns Ale House and the Three Tuns Bowling Green.

69 Malcolm in Gent. Mag. 1813, pt. 2, pp. 427–429. The Bowling Green House is marked in Horwood’s Plan C, 1799; in a map of 1806 in Lambert’s London, vol. iv., and in Wallis’s plan of 1808.

70 Walford, v. 304, cites a newspaper advertisement of September 1718, announcing that “there is a strange and wonderful fruit growing at the Adam and Eve at Tottenham Court, called a Calabath, which is five feet and a half round, where any person may see the same gratis.”

71 Cunningham’s Handbook of London (1850), “Tottenham Court Road”; see also Paxton’s History of St. Giles’ Hospital and Parish (cited in F. Miller’s St. Pancras, p. 161), where similar fines for drinking at Tottenham Court are recorded for the year 1644.

72 His first ascent was on 15 September, 1784. This was the first ascent in England, but it may be noted that Mr. J. Tytler had made an ascent from Edinburgh on 27 August, 1784.

73 The Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser, Saturday, 14 May, 1785.

74 See Horwood’s Plan, 1793.

75 See Wallis’s Plan, 1808.

76 Thus the grounds must at that time have covered the space now occupied by Eden Street and Seaton (formerly Henry) Street.

77 There may be some exaggeration in this description (based on Wilkinson), for in the Picture of London, 1802, p. 370, the Adam and Eve is enumerated among the tea-gardens frequented by the middle classes, and is described as somewhat similar to the Jew’s Harp, with a small organ in the room upstairs where tea, wine and punch are served.

78 Walford, v. 305.

79 Stow’s Survey, p. 7 (ed. Thoms).

80 At a depth of four feet was a bottom of “lettice” work under which the water was five feet deep.

81 Watts’s building operations do not appear to have been completed till about 1811 or later (cp. Hughson’s London, iv. (1811), p. 414).

82 Peerless Pool is mentioned in The Picture of London, 1829 (p. 370), as one of the principal public baths of London. Cunningham, Handbook of London, 1850, speaks of it as a then existing public bath. Mr. Hyde Clark writing in Notes and Queries (7th Series, viii. 214, 215) for 14 September, 1889, says that “it continued to be used as a bath until comparatively late years.” I am informed that after the death of Joseph Watts, the Bath was carried on by his widow, Mrs. Watts, and by the sons, Thomas Watts of the British Museum and his brother. It seems to have been built over at some time between 1850 and 1860.

83 The grounds originally extended on the north-east to a tavern called The Fountain, which was frequented by tea-parties:—
And there they sit so pleasant and cool,
And see in and out the folks walk about,
And gentlemen angling in Peerless Pool.

(Lines in Hone, loc. cit.). There is now a public house called The Old Fountain at the east end of Baldwin Street. The Shepherd and Shepherdess (q.v.) was close by on the other side of the City Road.

84 Cp. Lewis’s Islington, p. 31, note 6, referring to August 1758.

85 For the connexion of the Salvation Army with the Eagle, and for some details as to the history of the Eagle tavern and gardens see The Times for 1882 (Palmer’s Index, under “Salvation Army,” June to September). On the Eagle see also Dickens, Sketches by Boz (Miss Evans and the Eagle); Hollingshead’s My Lifetime, i. p. 25, ff.; Ritchie’s Night-side of London (1858); Stuart and Park, The Variety Stage, p. 35, ff. &c.; Era Almanack, 1869, p. 80; H. Barton Baker’s The London Stage, ii. p. 254, ff.; and a view of the garden in Rogers’s Views of Pleasure Gardens of London, p. 57.

86 The Post Man, Oct. 3 to 6, 1702, has the advertisement “At Milend the garden and house called the Jews Spring Garden is to be let. Enquire at Capt. Bendal’s at Milend” (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. ii. 463). Mr. Alexander Andrews (ib. 2nd ser. viii. 422) has shown that this Jews’ Spring Garden is in all probability to be identified with the Spring Garden marked in a map of Stepney parish of 1702.

87 Rayner, Master of the Spring Garden at Stepney, died April 3, 1743, aged 70 (London Daily Post for 6 April, 1743).

88 Low Life (1764), “Stepney Spring Gardens.”

89 Dodsley’s London (1761), s.v. “Stepney.” There are modern streets known as Garden Street and Spring Garden Place, but these are some distance south of the Mile End Road, not far from St. Dunstan’s, Stepney.

90 See Crace, Cat., p. 616, No. 80.

91 “The back entrance was from the fields, beyond which, north, was a narrow winding passage, with garden palings on each side, leading into High Street” (Smith’s Book for a Rainy Day, p. 39).

92 Pulled down in 1791. Devonshire Mews was built on the site.

93 These lines, often erroneously attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, occur in Pope’s The Basset-table, an Eclogue. The allusion in the second line is to Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham.

94 Gough issued, 1738–9, silver tickets at 12s. each, admitting two persons for the season. In 1740 the silver season-ticket, admitting two, cost £1 1s. There are extant silver (or rather base silver) season tickets of 1766 (Wilkinson, Londina, vol. ii., last plate, No. 19) and of 1767 (Brit. Mus.). These later tickets, admitting two, cost £1 11s. 6d., or two guineas. There are copper tickets of 1770 (specimen in Brit. Mus.). In 1774 the ticket for two cost two guineas.

95 The use of the old spelling which occurs in all the advertisements and contemporary notices must be conceded.

96 J. T. Smith and several modern writers state that Trusler was proprietor in 1751. It would appear, however, from the newspapers that in 1754 John Sherratt was proprietor, and in May 1755 Mr. Beard was stated to have “lately taken the Gardens.” Trusler was undoubtedly manager from 1756–1763. He died before October 1766.

97 Cp. Vocal Melody, Book iii. A favourite collection of songs and dialogues sung by Master Arne and Miss Faulkner at Marybone Gardens, set by Mr. Arne. Published 15 August, 1751, by J. Walsh, Catherine Street, Strand.

98 The name is variously spelt; usually Falkner.

99 See Trusler’s Memoirs, p. 63, ff.; cp. Dict. Nat. Biog., art. “Dunk, George Montagu, second Earl of Halifax,” 1716–1771.

100 The Servant Mistress, a burletta translated from the Italian. Price 6d., printed at Marybone Gardens.

101 Hone’s Year Book, pp. 500–503.

102 Trusler’s Memoirs, p. 57.

103 Two men were executed 15 June, 1763, at Tyburn for robbing, in Marybone Fields, the waiters belonging to Marybone Gardens.

104 Indenture between Robert Long and Thomas Lowe, dated 30 August, 1763. The lease was for fourteen years. Trusler ceased to reside at the Gardens in 1764 when he went to Boyle Street, Saville Row, and Miss Trusler carried on business as a confectioner.

105 The vocalists 1763–1767, besides Lowe, were—1763, Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Lampe, Miss Catley, Miss Hyat, Miss Smith, Miss Plenius (1763?), and Mr. Squibb (Sig. Storace and Miss Catley had benefits); 1764, Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Lampe, Miss Moyse, Miss Hyat, Mr. Squibb; 1765, Mrs. Vincent, Mrs. Collett, Miss Davis, Mrs. Taylor, Mr. Legg; 1766, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Raworth, Mrs. Vincent, Miss Davis; 1767, Mrs. Gibbons.

106 The vocalists in 1768 were Reynoldson, Taylor, Phillips, Miss Davis, Miss Froud.

107 Performers in 1769: Pinto, leader; Hook; Park, hautboy. Vocalists, Mrs. Forbes, Miss Brent, Mr. Herryman, Mr. Reynoldson.

108 Performers, 1770: Barthelemon (violin); Hook; Reinhold, Charles Bannister; Mrs. Thompson; Mrs. Barthelemon; Mrs. Dorman. It is well known that Thomas Chatterton the poet wrote a burletta called The Revenge, which he sold to the management of Marybone Gardens for five guineas. It was not published till 1795, when it was issued as The Revenge, a burletta acted at Marybone Gardens, MDCCLXX. In the Marybone Gardens’ advertisements of 1770 (and of later dates) no burletta bearing the name of The Revenge appears, and the writer of the article “Chatterton” in Dict. Nat. Biog. thinks that the burletta must have been performed at some time subsequent to 1770, the year of Chatterton’s death. In The Revenge as published, the dramatis personæ are Jupiter, Mr. Reinhold; Bacchus, Mr. Bannister; Cupid, Master Cheney; Juno, Mrs. Thompson. Reinhold, Bannister, and Mrs. Thompson sang at the Gardens 1770–1773, and Cheney in 1770. I may add that a burletta called The Madman, performed at the Gardens in 1770, has a plot quite distinct from that of The Revenge.

109 Performers, 1771: Hook; solo violin, Mons. Reeves; Charles Bannister; Mrs. Thompson; Miss Esser; Miss Harper (afterwards Mrs. John Bannister); Miss Thomas; and Miss Catley who sang “The Soldier tired of War’s Alarms”; “Sweet Echo,” from Comus (the echo “sung by a young gentleman”), &c.

110 According to J. T. Smith (Rainy Day, p. 52, n.), Torré was a print-seller in partnership with Mr. Thane, and lived in Market Lane, Haymarket. Other fireworkers at the Gardens at this period were Clitherow (1772); Clanfield (1772 and 1773); Caillot of Ranelagh (1773, 1775, 1776).

111 Performers, 1772: Hook, organ; Charles Bannister, Culver, Reinhold, Mrs. Calvert, Mrs. Forbes, Mrs. Foster, Mrs. Cartwright and Mrs. Thompson.

112 On his own benefit night in July 1772, Torré gave a representation of Hercules delivering Theseus from Hell, in addition to the Forge of Vulcan.

113 Performers, 1773: Charles Bannister; Reinhold; Phillips; Barthelemon (leader); Miss Wilde; Mrs. Thompson; Mrs. Barthelemon. “Mr. Dibdin, of Drury Lane Theatre,” was announced to sing in Barthelemon’s “La Zingara, or the Gipsy” on Barthelemon’s benefit night.

114 Also on 13 June, 1774.

115 Performers, 1774: Fisher (violin), Dubellamy, Reinhold; Mons. Rodell, “musician to the King of Portugal,” German flute; Miss Wewitzer, Miss Trelawny, Miss Wilde.

116 A large printed bill referring to this entertainment is in the possession of Mr. H. A. Rogers, and is reproduced in his Views of Pleasure Gardens of London, p. 30.

117 Nollekens, i. 33, chap. ii.

118 At a bazaar held in the Portman Rooms, Baker Street, in 1887 (Nov. 22–26), for the benefit of the charities of Marylebone Church, an ingenious reproduction was attempted, under the direction of Mr. Thomas Harris, the architect, of the latticed alcoves, lamp-hung trees, &c., of the old Marybone Gardens (see A Booke of ye olde Marybone Gardens, 1887 (sold at the bazaar); Daily Telegraph for 23 November, 1887).

119 An account of the robbery and murder in 1808 of Mr. William Joachim in the Marylebone Fields mentions that he was on his way home to Lisson Grove, after a visit to the Jew’s Harp Tavern to see the skittle-playing (F. Miller’s St. Pancras, p. 238).

120 Wheatley, London Past and Present, s.v. “Yorkshire Stingo,” states on the authority of Cooke’s Old London Bridge, p. 7, that a bridge designed by the celebrated Thomas Paine, being the second cast-iron bridge ever constructed, was brought to London in 1790 and set up in the bowling-green of the Yorkshire Stingo; it was afterwards taken back to Rotherham (where it had been made in 1789) and broken up in 1791.

121 The Picture of London, 1802, p. 370, mentions the Yorkshire Stingo as a house many years celebrated for rustic sports on May Day.

122 Newspaper cuttings in W. Coll.; cp. Hollingshead’s My Lifetime, i. 24, and see also Stuart and Park, The Variety Stage, p. 38, who mention Cave and Glindon as the comic vocalists. The saloon, which was in the rear of the tavern, had a small but capable orchestra directed by Love, afterwards leader at the Princess’s Theatre under Charles Kean. Miss Tunstall of Vauxhall was at one time a singer there.

123 Pulled down about 1895.

124 Woodward’s Eccentric Excursions, p. 18.

125 Before 1702.

126 The Country Journal, or the Craftsman, 7 March, 1729–30. If an allusion in a pamphlet of 1735—A seasonable examination of the pleas and pretensions of... Playhouses erected in defiance of Royal Licence (London, printed for T. Cooper, 1735)—may be relied on, Pancras Wells had about that time some kind of (unlicensed) theatrical or “variety” entertainments resembling those of Sadler’s Wells.

127 According to Roffe (St. Pancras), Pancras Wells occupied the south side of Church Hill from its base to its summit. Palmer in his St. Pancras, published in 1870, says the Well “is now enclosed in the garden of a private house, neglected and passed out of mind.”

128 It is shown in the bird’s-eye view of Pancras Wells of 1730. In April 1731, James Dalton, a notorious footpad, robbed a linenpedlar at night near the Adam and Eve after drinking with him at the tavern (Pinks’s Clerkenwell, p. 549).

129 The Connoisseur, 1754, No. 26.

130 Five of these pier-glasses were stolen from the long room in 1778 (London Evening Post, 11–14 July, 1778).

131 Advertisement of 1786 quoted in Clinch’s Marylebone and St. Pancras, p. 157.

132 There are advertisements of the Adam and Eve issued (at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century?) by G. Swinnerton, Junr. and Co., and by George Lambert (quoted in Walford, vol. v. p. 338). The Picture of London, 1805, mentions the Adam and Eve Tea-gardens, bowling-green, &c., but the conversion of the gardens into the cemetery (authorised by Act of Parliament in 1803) appears to have been already carried out in 1804.

133 There is a mention of the inn in 1725: the Assembly Rooms were certainly in existence in 1750, and perhaps at an earlier date. The original sign of the inn appears to have been the Black Bull; see Notes and Queries, 1st ser. viii. p. 293; W. Elliot’s Some Account of Kentish Town (1821), p. 65.

134 The new or altered building contained the circular structure shown in so many views of the place.

135 The White Conduit meadow long continued in use as a cricket ground. About 1784 and subsequently a club composed of gentlemen and men of rank played its matches there. Among the players were the Duke of Dorset, Lord Winchilsea, Lord Talbot, Col. Tarleton, and Thomas Lord, who afterwards established the Marylebone Cricket Club.

136 A poem by W. W[oty] printed in the London Chronicle, 1760, vol. vii. p. 531.

137 “White Conduit Loaves” was a London cry till about 1825.

138 Forster’s Life of Goldsmith; cp. Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, Letter 122.

139 “An Awkward Position,” a painting by A. Solomon, depicts the situation. This was exhibited in the Royal Academy, and reproduced in the Illustrated London News, 14 June, 1851.

140 Ashton, The Fleet, p. 66.

141 Bartholomew sold his interest in White Conduit House 25 March, 1795.

142 About 1772 these performances were prohibited on Sundays.

143 See a bill in the London Sections Collection, Guildhall Library, and cp. Rogers’s Views of Pleasure Gardens of London, p. 55; also G. Cruikshank’s Ivan Ivanitz Chabert, a print published 13 March, 1818. Hone’s Every Day Book, ii. p. 771, ff.

144 Born 1769, died 1838.

145 Till May of 1829 the old building was still standing.

146 Hone’s Every Day Book, ii. p. 1204.

147 Cp. the White Conduit concert described in the Sketches by Boz (“The Mistaken Milliner,” cap. viii.).

148 The Variety Stage, by Stuart and Park, p. 8; 103.

149 The place appears to be referred to as early as 1633 as “the bowling place in Islington Fields” (Pinks, p. 710).

150 Mrs. Dobney died at about the age of ninety on 15 March, 1760.

151 Pinks states that Price had been starring at the Three Hats, Islington, prior to his performance at Dobney’s in 1767 (cp. Memoirs of J. de Castro (1824), p. 29, who says that Price, Thomas Johnson, and old Sampson exhibited at the Three Hats). This may have been the case, though from 1758 to the spring of 1767, Thomas Johnson was certainly the chief equestrian performer at the “Three Hats.”

152 London Evening Post, August 1776. The Pantheon is the tea-house in Exmouth Street.

153 Tomlins in his Perambulation of Islington, published in 1858, but written in part about 1849, describes Prospect House as still existing behind Winchester Place, though the bowling green (he says) had been already covered by Winchester Place.

154 Busby’s Folly is first mentioned in 1664 as a meeting-place of the Society of Bull Feathers Hall, a fraternity of Odd Fellows. It is supposed to have derived its name from Christopher Busby, landlord of the White Lion Inn, Islington, in 1668.

155 Prologue written and spoken by Mr. Gibson before the Orphan at the New Theatre in the Haymarket on 31 May, 1762 (Owen’s Weekly Chronicle or Universal Journal, June 5 to 12, 1762). The “wonder of a Chelsea field” mentioned in this prologue is evidently Coan, the dwarf (called “the jovial pigmy”), who attracted visitors to the Dwarf’s Tavern in Chelsea Fields (see infra, Star and Garter, Chelsea).

156 According to Nelson and Lewis, the house facing to the south at the northern termination of Colebrooke Row, was occupied about 1772 by the Rev. John Rule, who there kept a school, of some repute, for gentlemen’s sons. The Castle Inn was the adjoining house and a house next to the Castle was supposed by a doubtful tradition (cp. J. Knight, art. “Cibber” in Dict. Nat. Biog.) to be that in which Colley Cibber died 12 December, 1757 (see Nelson and Lewis). The old house with a red-tiled roof, still existing, though divided into the dwelling houses Nos. 56 and 57 Colebrooke Row, was apparently the Castle Inn. The southern end of Colebrooke Row was built in the present century. The Row also now extends a little farther to the north than when Nelson wrote, so that Rule’s house is not now at the extreme northern end of the Row.

157 Sampson’s Riding School at Islington is mentioned in the Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine for January 1773, p. 162, together with Astley’s and Hughes’s.

158 They were probably in existence before this date, but are not marked in the survey of Islington of 1735. An advertisement in The Morning Herald of 22 April, 1786, announces the sale of the ground-rents of an Islington copyhold estate. This estate, situated “in the Lower Street, opposite Cross Street, Islington, and extending down to Frog Lane,” comprised a brick mansion and garden, four dwelling-houses and gardens, and the Barley Mow Tea House and Gardens. A plan of the estate was to be seen at Mr. Spurrier’s, the auctioneer’s, Copthall Court, Throgmorton Street. The estate was therefore between the present Essex Road, where it is touched by Cross Street, and Popham Road.

159 See the survey of roads in Islington parish in 1735 (Nelson’s Islington, p. 20).

160 Hone, Every Day Book, i. p. 860. Tomlins (Islington, 204, 205) discovered that in 1753 it was occupied by a currier, and supposes, therefore, that it was not a place of entertainment till after that date. The meeting of the Highbury Society there before 1740 seems however to bear out Hone’s assertion that Copenhagen House was already an inn in the first half of the eighteenth century.

161 Map in Gibson’s edition of Camden’s Britannia, 1695.

162 Hone, however, shows (op. cit. 860) that there is some reason for supposing that Copenhagen House was not in existence until after 1624.

163 On the Highbury Society, see note infra under Highbury Barn.

164 The graphic account in Hone (op. cit. 862) is worth reading, though too long for quotation here.

165 Hazlitt’s memoir is published in the Examiner for February 17, 1819; most of it is reprinted in Hone’s Every Day Book, i. 865, ff.

166 Picture of London, 1823 and 1829; Hone’s Every Day Book, i. 859, 870.

167 The hay-harvest is referred to in Nelson’s Islington, 1811, 74. A view of 1809, published by Cundee in the Juvenile Tourist, 1810, shows cockney visitors playing in the hay.

168 Plan in Lewis’s Islington.

169 J. Hollingshead’s My Lifetime, i. 13. The cricket ground was between Copenhagen House and Maiden Lane.

170 Tomlins, Perambulation of Islington, p. 205.

171 F. Miller, St. Pancras, 269.

172 Highbury Barn, i.e., the grange or farm of Highbury Manor, is mentioned by that name at an early period, and there are extant various leases of it of the fifteenth century, granted by the Prior and Convent of St. John of Jerusalem (e.g. “our certain grange, situate upon the site of our manor of Highbury called Highbury Barn”—see Tomlins’s Perambulation of Islington). The name Highbury Barn is, therefore, much older than the date of the incorporation of the large barn of Highbury Farm with the Highbury Tavern premises.

173 The site of the Prior’s house was occupied by a private residence called Highbury House built in 1781 and immediately opposite the Highbury Barn Tavern.

174 The Highbury Society, formed by Protestant Dissenters to commemorate the abandonment of the Schism Bill at the end of the reign of Anne, met at first at Copenhagen House, but about 1740 assembled at Highbury Barn. The members beguiled their pilgrimage from Moorfields to Highbury by bowling a ball of ivory at objects in their path. This society was dissolved about 1833.

175 The younger Willoughby was certainly proprietor in 1792 and later, and Lewis says he succeeded his father on the death of the latter in December 1785. In May 1789 Highbury House (Nichols, Canonbury, p. 31, note) opposite the Tavern was sold by auction, as were also Highbury Tea House with gardens and bowling-green and two good messuages adjoining, together with many fields in the neighbourhood. This sale does not, however, necessarily imply any change in the management of Highbury Barn, which may at that time have been only rented by Willoughby from the owner of Highbury House and the adjoining property.

176 A few years previous to 1811 Willoughby cultivated at one end of the gardens a small plantation of hops, and afterwards erected a brewery on the premises. Highbury Barn was sometimes called “Willoughby’s Tea Gardens” (Picture of London, 1802).

177 Lysons, Nelson and Lewis all identify the moated house called in the Survey of 1611 “The Devil’s House” or the “Lower House” with the old Tallington or Tollington Manor House. In the survey of the roads of Islington (Nelson’s Islington, p. 20), however, both Tallington House and Devil’s House are separately marked, the two being divided by Heame Lane, a lane running at right angles to Tallington (Devil’s) Lane. This Tallington House must therefore have been an eighteenth-century residence and not the old Manor House.

178 Nelson (Islington), writing about 1811, says that about thirty or forty years before his time (1776?) the landlord’s name was Fawcett.

179 This seems to be implied by Nelson (Islington, 1811), who says that in his time the old “house had been fitted up in the modern taste.”

180 Lewis’s Islington, 1841, mentions the house as still existing, and it is described as still standing in Tomlins’s Perambulation of Islington, a work published in 1858, but in part written nine years before the date of publication.

181 Tea-drinking on Sunday at Little Hornsey is mentioned in the Connoisseur, No. 68, May 15, 1755, and Hornsey Wood is referred to in The Idler, No. 15, July 1758, in a way which implies that its reputation as a place of Sunday recreation was already well established. It appears from a passage in Low Life, referred to in the next note, that in or before 1764 the sign of the tavern was The Horns. The place was, however, usually known as Hornsey Wood House, and in its latest days as Hornsey Wood Tavern.

182 Low Life (1764), p. 46.

183 Mr. Rose, the “citizen at Vauxhall,” described in the Connoisseur, May 1755, No. 68, used to grumble when his wife and daughters went “to Little Hornsey to drink tea.”

184 Newspaper cutting, 1753 (W. Coll.).

185 See Boyne’s Trade Tokens, ed. Williamson, ii. p. 818. This token is undated. The only dated token of Hampstead is one of 1670.

186 The “Mirmillo” of Garth’s Dispensary.

187 The modern public-house in Well Walk called the Wells Tavern, though at one period, (before 1840) bearing the sign of the Green Man, is probably on the site of the original tavern.

188 Sion Chapel (the exact site of which is unknown) is of course distinct from the Episcopal Chapel into which the Great Room was converted in 1733.

189 Baker’s comedy, Hampstead Heath, London, 1706.

190 The Country Journal, or the Craftsman for 16 October, 1736, has the notice:—“On Sunday between seven and eight in the evening one Mr. Thomas Lane, a farrier of Hampstead, going home from the Spaniards upon the Heath near the house called Mother Huff’s,” was attacked and robbed and stripped naked by three men who jumped out of the bushes.

191 Lysons’s Magna Britannia, vol. iii. 1724, p. 44.

192 This lady had made an earlier appearance at Cuper’s Gardens; see Welsted’s Epistle on False Fame.

193 The spring at this time was adjacent to the Great Room, and was in this position, i.e. on the opposite side to the existing fountain, at any rate as late as 1806.

194 In Bickham’s Musical Entertainer (1733, &c.).

195 Evelina (1778), letter li.

196 The house, No. 17 in Well Walk, which is just behind the existing fountain, has a shallow well supposed to contain the source of the original spring.

197 MS. History of Middlesex, 1752, quoted by Park.

198 A Modern Sabbath, 1797, p. 53; see also Woodward’s Eccentric Excursions, 13.

199 Dickens, Pickwick Papers, cap. xlvi.

200 Cp. The Idler, No. 15, July 1758.

201 Lysons, Environs, ii. 527.

202 Evelyn (Diary, 2 June, 1676) describes the gardens as very large and woody, but ill kept.

203 E.g. “Galloway Races” in 1725 and 1729.

204 Ambulator, 1774; Dodsley’s London, 1761.

205 From the manuscript history of Middlesex quoted by Park (Hampstead), the spring would appear to have been discovered about 1742; the date on the reservoir containing the water was, however, 1714, and Walford (v. 245) states that the spring was known before 1600. But there is no evidence that Kilburn Wells was a place of entertainment earlier than about 1742, though the Bell tavern dated from about 1600.

206 Richard Owen Cambridge, Dialogue between a master and his servant (1752). “Kupers” = Cuper’s Gardens, Lambeth.

207 Picture of London, 1802 and 1829.

208 Gibson, View of the Gardens near London, Dec. 1691.

209 Lord Ranelagh’s house remained standing till 1805, and was used in connexion with the Ranelagh entertainments.

210 Robinson lived at Prospect Place adjoining the gardens. He died on 3 March, 1777.

211 Cp. Walpole’s letter to Mann of 26 May, 1742: “The building and disposition of the gardens cost sixteen thousand pounds.”

212 Walpole to Mann, 26 May, 1742.

213 Walpole to Conway, 29 June, 1744.

214 Walpole to Montagu, 26 May, 1748.

215 Gray to Chute, July 1745 (Gray’s Works, ed. Gosse, ii. 125, ff.).

216 Works, ed. Gosse, ii. 139.

217 See especially Kearsley’s Strangers’ Guide (1793?).

218 This was the number about 1793.

219 Burney says that the first organist was Keeble, who was succeeded by Butler. Burney himself was organist in 1770.

220 Boswell, Life, chap. xxvi. p. 236, ed. Croker.

221 Life, 1777–1778, chap. lxi. p. 561, ed. Croker.

222 In the early days, sometimes one shilling and two shillings, including the breakfast and the morning concert. On special nights when fireworks were displayed, the price was raised to three shillings or more. Tickets costing from half a guinea to two guineas were issued for the masquerades.

223 Sometimes it was advertised as open “every evening.” People were allowed to walk in the gardens and view the Rotunda during the day-time for one shilling.

224 “Harlequin in Ranelagh,” London Magazine, May 1774.

225 Cp. Gent. Mag. 1764, p. 247.

226 Ranelagh House: a satire, 1747.

227 London Magazine, 1774.

228 Other early vocalists were:—Mrs. Storer (1751); Miss Young (1755); Miss Formantel (Ten favourite songs sung by Miss Formantel at Ranelagh, music by Mr. Oswald, published July 1758).

229 According to a statement of Burney’s (note in Croker’s ed. of Boswell’s Johnson, p. 143, anno “1763”), the salt-box song was sung by Beard accompanied on that instrument by Brent, the fencing master, while Skeggs played on the broomstick as bassoon. Croker assigns the composition, and apparently the first performance, of the Ode to 1769, and states that the first edition (which he himself had seen) of it bears the date 1749, a date which he considered to be a misprint for 1769. But the date 1769 is, as some later writers have seen, clearly erroneous, and the composition—and possibly the first performance at Ranelagh—must be assigned to 1759. The published edition of the Ode, in the British Museum, is dated (May) 1763, and the Ode was undoubtedly performed at Ranelagh on 10 June of that year (1763). (See Annual Register; Lloyd’s Evening Post, 8–16 June, 1763.)

230 Cp. Six new English songs composed by Ferdinando Tenducci, and to be sung by him at Ranelagh. Sold by the author at his lodging in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden, 1763 (W. Coll.).
Other performers at this period were:—1762: Champness, Hudson, Miss Thomas, Miss Brent. 1763: Dearle, Miss Wright, Miss Brent. 1765 (?): the elder Fawcett.

231 Gent. Mag. 1767, p. 277.

232 Walpole’s Letters, ed. Cunningham, ii. 150, ff. (Walpole to Mann, 3 May, 1749).

233 It is to be feared that this advertisement was an invention of the editor’s, but it would have had little point for his readers had it not been actually based on familiar incidents of the Ranelagh masquerades.

234 Mrs. Baddeley also sang there in 1772.

235 An impetus to the fireworks seems to have been first given by Angelo, father of Henry Angelo, who directed the displays in 1766. In 1771 the fireworkers were Clitherow and Caillot.

236 The admission ticket for the Regatta Ball (Lake scene) was prepared by Cipriani and Bartolozzi.

237 Evening Mail, Feb. 15–17, 1792.

238 Newspaper cutting [W. Coll.] assigned to 28 June (referring to 27 June), 1793. Mr. Vizetelly (Chevalier D’Eon, p. 322) states that D’Eon fenced at Ranelagh in 1794. The managers of Ranelagh had given the Chevalier, who was then in money difficulties, a benefit night in 1791 (24 June).

239 Another great fête of this period (June 1802 or 1803?) was the Ball given by the Spanish Ambassador.

240 The European Magazine, October 1802, and several newspapers of the time.

241 The name was spelt Strumbels, Strombels and Strumbello. Davis (Knightsbridge) calls it Stromboli House.

242 O’Keefe’s Recollections.

243 Davis’s Knightsbridge. Strumbelo is marked in the map of 1789 in Fores’s New Guide.

244 The Star and Garter was at the end of Five Fields Row. In Faulkner’s time (Chelsea, ii. p. 354), about 1829, the house, no longer used as a tavern, was Mr. Homden’s Academy.

245 On the Cherokee Chiefs, see Forster’s Goldsmith, bk. iii. chap. vi. (ann. 1762).

246 John Coan, “the unparalleled Norfolk Dwarf,” died there 16 March 1764 (Daily Advertiser, 17 March, 1764).

247 The Dwarf’s Tavern according to Faulkner (Chelsea, ii. 354), was situated in Chelsea Fields “on the spot which was afterwards called Spring Gardens, between Ebury Street and Belgrave Terrace,” and which was subsequently (a few years before 1829) occupied by Ackerman’s Waterproof Cloth Manufactory. This Spring Garden is the place usually marked in the maps (e.g., Horwood’s Plan, B. 1795) as the New Spring Gardens, Chelsea, and was a place of public entertainment, as may be inferred from a newspaper advertisement of January 1792: “J. Louis, of New Spring Gardens, Chelsea, having fitted up likewise the above house (i.e. York Coffee House) in Norris Street, Haymarket, for the winter, serves dinners and suppers there.”
This Spring Garden was distinct from the Spring Gardens, Knightsbridge, a place frequented by Pepys, and perhaps identical with the World’s End, Knightsbridge (see Davis’s Knightsbridge, p. 149, ff.). The Knightsbridge Spring Gardens (which stood about where William Street joins Lowndes Square) ceased to be a place of entertainment before 1773, in which year the house belonging to them was occupied by Dr. C. Kelly, who had his anatomical museum there. Walford (v. 18) engraves from a drawing in the Crace Collection a view of the “Spring Gardens,” which he assigns to the Knightsbridge Spring Gardens, but it is possibly a representation of the Chelsea Spring Gardens.

248 O’Keefe’s Recollections, vol. i. p. 88: “1762. At Cromwell House, Brompton, once the seat of Oliver, was also a tea-garden concert.”

249 The price appears on the (undated) pewter and brass admission tickets to Cromwell’s Gardens. The British Museum has four specimens in pewter, with Cromwell’s head; and one of the brass tickets.

250 The Sunday Rambler visits the gardens between 7.30 and 9 p.m.

251 I follow the Modern Sabbath, ed. 1797, in stating that Cromwell’s Gardens were identical with the Florida Gardens. In the second edition of the Sunday Ramble (1776) Cromwell’s Gardens at Brompton are described under that name, and in the 1797 ed. (A Modern Sabbath) almost the same description is repeated, and it is expressly stated that the name of the place had been changed from Cromwell’s to Florida Gardens. On the other hand, Faulkner describes the Florida Gardens as having been originally a nursery garden kept by “Hyam” (he is called Hiem in the advertisements) and converted by him (for the first time, it is implied) into a place of public amusement. Faulkner after describing Hale House, mentions Cromwell’s Gardens as a separate place of amusement earlier than the Florida Gardens. The contemporary authority of the Modern Sabbath seems, however, preferable; especially as Faulkner does not appear to be able to state the precise site of Cromwell’s Gardens. A further complication may perhaps be thought to be introduced by the passage in O’Keefe (cited in Note 1) where Cromwell’s Gardens are described as “at Cromwell House” (i.e. Hale House). But the inhabitants of Cromwell House from 1754 to 1794, or later, are well known to have been people of substance, and the gardens proper of Hale House could hardly have been employed as a tea-garden. The Florida Gardens (afterwards occupied by Canning’s Gloucester Lodge) were (as stated above) adjacent to Hale House, and may possibly at one time have belonged to its owners, and have been let out partly as a tea-garden and partly as a nursery. The writer of the Modern Sabbath in fact remarks that Cromwell’s Gardens is supposed to have taken its name from the ground being formerly the patrimonial estate of the Protector who once had a palace here upon the site of which is a handsome seat (i.e. Hale House). The change of name from Cromwell to Florida took place (as appears from the various editions of a Sunday Ramble) at some time between 1776 and 1797. I suggest that the change took place about 1780, because Lysons (who, however, does not mention Cromwell’s Gardens) says that the place was “much puffed in the daily papers between the years 1780 and 1790 by the name of Florida Gardens.” In any case they certainly were advertised by Hiem as the Florida Gardens as early as 1781.

252 The Florida Gardens are described as a place of entertainment in the Modern Sabbath, published in 1797, but they were already in the possession of the Duchess of Gloucester in September 1797. Cp. a newspaper paragraph of 25 September, 1797, in “Public Gardens” Collection in Guildhall Library: “Florida Gardens, at present in the possession of the Duchess of Gloucester, were fitted up in an elegant manner as a place of resort by the late Mr. Wilder [a successor of Hiem?] but did not answer the purpose for which they were intended.”

253 These checks in copper and lead resemble the tradesmen’s halfpenny tokens of the end of the eighteenth century, and are usually described as tokens: see descriptions in Sharpe’s Catalogue, p. 89; Atkins, p. 193. Miss Banks, in the MS. catalogue of her tokens (p. 210) now in the Department of Coins, British Museum, says respecting the leaden check: “One shilling was paid on going in, and this ticket given in exchange which would count for sixpence if the person chose liquor.”

254 Smith’s Book for a Rainy Day: the description strictly applies to the year 1795; A Modern Sabbath, chap. ix. (1797), implies that the place was more refined than Smith’s description would suggest.

255 Blewitt lived in Bermondsey Square, where he died in 1805.

256 Cp. “X” in The Musical Times for October 1, 1893, p. 588.

257 It is possibly worth while to record the names of some of the forgotten performers at Bermondsey Spa. Circ. 1785–1788 the vocalists were Mr. Birkett, Mr. C. Blewitt, Mr. Burling (or Birling), Mr. Harriss; Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Byrn, Mrs. Piercy; Miss Stephenson, Miss Pay, Miss Cemmitt; Mme. Floranze. In 1792 the leader of the band was Mr. Peile, and the vocalists were Mr. Burton, Mr. Milward, Mrs. Freeman, and Mrs. Peile.
Among the burlettas (1785–1788) were “The Quack Doctor,” “The Fop,” and “The Auctioneer.”

258 The fireworks in 1792 were by Rossi and Tessier, of Ranelagh. On 25 September, 1792, “by particular desire, the Battle of the Fiery Dragons, and the line comet to come from the Rock of Gibraltar and cause the Dragons to engage.”

259 This entertainment was probably first introduced in 1786, in which year (2 September) the Public Advertiser announces “the representation of the storming of a fort which with the fortifications cover (sic) 3 acres of ground, the rock being fifty feet high and 200 feet long.” From about 1789 to 1792 it was advertised as a representation of the Siege of Gibraltar. The writer of A Modern Sabbath (1797) gives further details. “On the north-east side of the gardens is a very fine lawn consisting of about three acres, and in a field parted from this lawn by a sunk fence is a building with turrets, resembling a fortress or castle.” At each side of this fortress at unequal distances were two buildings, from which on public nights bombshells, &c., were thrown. The fire was returned and the whole exhibited the “picturesque prospect of a siege.”

260 Gent. Mag. 1800, pt. i. p. 284. Keyse’s house was a large wooden-fronted building, consisting of square divisions in imitation of scantlings of stone (J. T. Smith). The entrance to the Gardens was next to the house, beneath a semi-circular awning.

261 Hughson’s London, vol. v. (1808), p. 60. The Picture of London for 1802 mentions in the “Almanack of Pleasures” under July 17, “A silver cup run for at Spa Gardens, Bermondsey, by gentlemen’s ponies.”

262 Blanchard in Era Almanack, 1870, p. 18 (followed by Walford). Brayley and Mantell (Surrey, iii. 200, 201) say the Gardens were closed about 1805. Lambert in his London (iv. 140) published in 1806, speaks of the Spa as still open, but the passage may have been written a year or more before the date of publication.

263 Picture of London, eds. 1802, 1829; Tallis’s Illustrated London, ed. Gaspey.

264 In the Era Almanack, 1871, p. 6, it is stated that the gardens “disappeared in 1869.” Walford, vi. 138, says they ceased to exist in 1881.

265 “The principal site of Finch’s Grotto Gardens appears to have been a triangular piece of ground forming the western side of St. George’s Street, Southwark, and bounded on the south by the road called Dirty Lane and on the north by a vinegar yard in Lombard Street, and the extremity of St. Saviour’s Parish.” Wilkinson, Londina. A way from Falcon Stairs through Bandy Leg Walk (now Guildford Street) led directly to the place, and Williams, Finch’s successor, made an entrance from St. George’s Fields. Those who came by water landed at Mason’s Stairs.

266 Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, act. ii.

267 The Dukes of York and Gloucester, brothers of George III., are, however, said to have visited the gardens many times.

268 List of performers under Finch and Williams:—Messrs. Oldfield (or Offield?, 1765), Lauder, Dearle, Baker, Barnshaw of Covent Garden Theatre, Moore, Tom Lowe, Kear (sang at Marylebone 1754, and at Sadler’s Wells in 1771 and later), Nepecker, Clarke, Thomas and A. Smith from the Richmond Theatre, Weston from Drury Lane (1772), Aitken and Murphin, Master Adams, Master Suett (in 1771, from Ranelagh, supposed to be Dick Suett the actor), Master Green, and Master Lyon. The female singers were Mrs. Forbes, Reed, Smith, Taylor, Clark, and Dorman, and Misses Garvey, Thomas (in August 1765), Carli, Moyse, Snow, Dowson (sang at Sadler’s Wells 1775), Cantrell, Marshall, and Oakes. The instrumentalists included Cocklin and Smart, violins; Hudson, organ; Palmer, flute.

269 “Linco’s Travels” was also performed at the Patagonian Theatre, Exeter Change. Humphreys’s Memoirs of Decastro, 237.

270 A programme of a benefit night for 12 September, 1771 (under Williams), may be inserted as a specimen:—
“Act i.—An Overture. A favourite song from the opera of Pharnaces: ‘Swift wing’d vengeance nerves my arm,’ by Mr. A. Smith, set by Mr. Bates. A favourite Scotch air by Miss Dowson, words and music by Mr. A. Smith. An overture by Abel. The Act to conclude with a celebrated song from Anacreon, set by Mr. Starling [Sterling?] Goodwin, by Mr. A. Smith. Act ii.—‘The soldier tired of war’s alarm,’ by Miss Dowson. A new song, ‘O what a charming thing is a battle,’ by Mr. Barnshaw. An overture in Otho, Handel. ‘Sweet Echo,’ by a young gentleman from Italy. Trumpet Concerto by Master Green, pupil of Mr. Jones. The celebrated song of the ‘British Wives,’ by Mr. A. Smith. A new song by Miss Dowson. Concerto on the violin by Mr. Smart. The Act to conclude with ‘Russel’s triumph,’ by Mr. A. Smith, by particular desire. To which will be added an entertainment called ‘The Gamester,’ to be sung by Mr. A. Smith, Mr. Barnshaw, Miss Dowson, and Mrs. Dorman, with a hornpipe in the character of a sailor, by Mr. Rawlins from the Opera House in the Haymarket. At the end of the hornpipe Mr. A. Smith will sing the celebrated song of ‘The storm or the danger of the sea,’ in character. After which will be displayed a Grand Transparent Painting.”

271 In 1827 this stone was used as a step in the yard of the house of a Mrs. Stevens near the site of the Gardens, the verses being then almost illegible (Wilkinson).

272 Nichols’s Lambeth, 1786 (in vol. ii. of Bibl. Topog. Brit. p. 77, ff.); Michaelis’s Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, 35–37.

273 Prologue to Mrs. Centlivre’s Busybody.

274 Chappell (Popular Music in the Olden Time, ii. 727, 728) gives words and music.

275 The gardens were closed on the Sundays of 1752.

276 Gent. Mag. 1740, 525.

277 Walpole’s Letters, ed. Cunningham, ii. 32, 24 June, 1746. Bad company was not unknown in the earlier days of the gardens: see Welsted’s Epistle on False Fame, 1732:—
“For Cupid’s Bowers she hires the willing scull...
While here a ’prentice, there a captain bites.”

278 The Complete Letter-writer, Edinburgh, 1773, quoted in Notes and Queries, 7th ser. ii. 469.

279 Twelve songs by Lewis Granom, as sung at Cuper’s Gardens by Miss Maria Bennett, published London, 24 November, 1752.

280 The fireworks at Cuper’s in 1751 are described in the London Daily Advertiser for 10 September, 1751.

281 ‘The Inspector,’ No. 448, in the London Daily Advertiser for 6 August, 1752. The details that follow are derived from the same journal for 4 August, 1752, where they are related of “one of the public gardens on the other side of the water.” Possibly Vauxhall is intended, but if not literally true of Cuper’s Gardens, they seem sufficiently applicable to them.

282 Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Croker, chap. xli. p. 366.

283 Nollekens, ii. 201.

284 The Folly was occasionally moored off the Bank side (Wheatley, London Past and Present, “The Folly”).

285 Amusements Serious and Comical, part ii. “The Thames.”

286 Pepys (Diary, 13 April, 1668) jots down in his daily expenditure a shilling spent “in the Folly.” From the circumstance that he makes no special comment on the place it may perhaps be inferred that he was already acquainted with it from previous visits.

287 Tom D’Urfey, A Touch of the Times, 1719.

288 Walford, iii. 290, 291.

289 Walford’s statement (Old and New London, vi. 388) that they adjoined Cuper’s Gardens is not quite accurate. Four strips of land belonging to four different proprietors are marked in the map in Strype’s Stow (1720) as lying between the Belvedere Gardens and Cuper’s Gardens.

290 The proprietor, William Hagley, issued a halfpenny token “at ye Restoration in St. George’s Feilds.” Boyne’s Trade Tokens of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Williamson, p. 1036, No. 357.

291 Advertisement in the Country Journal or the Craftsman, 31 March, 1733, where the celebrated “Purging Spring” and the Chalybeate Spring “lately discovered” are mentioned, “at Mr. Lewis’s, commonly called the Restauration Gardens in St. George’s Fields.”

292 The water was also to be obtained at a corkcutter’s under Exeter Change in the Strand.

293 Loudon’s Arboretum et frut. Brit. vol. i. p. 75. Nichols, Parish of Lambeth, p. 84, says “about the year 1777.”

294 Notes and Queries, 7th series, xi. p. 87 (communication from Lieut.-Col. Capel Coape).

295 This appears from the evidence brought forward in the prosecution of Grist; see The Whitehall Evening Post for May 7 to May 10, 1796 (referring to May 7).

296 Newspapers cited by E. M. Borrajo in Notes and Queries, 7th ser. xi. 138.

297 “The English translator of Lamotte’s Life says she fell from the leads of her house, nigh the Temple of Flora, endeavouring to escape seizure for debt, and was taken up so much hurt that she died in consequence. Another report runs that she was flung out of window.... Where the Temple of Flora was, or is, one knows not” (Carlyle, Diamond Necklace, note near end). The Temple of Flora alluded to was certainly in London, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the popular resort now described is the place in question.

298 At the period when the gardens were open “The Asylum” (i.e. Female Orphan Asylum) stood where Christ Church now stands.

299 Cp. Wilkinson, Londina Illust. vol. ii. “Pantheon Theatre.”

300 Allen (History of Lambeth, 319) states that the Apollo Gardens were suppressed about 1791, but this is certainly erroneous, as the gardens were frequently advertised in 1792. Kearsley’s Strangers’ Guide to London (1793?) mentions the place as “the resort of company in the evenings,” and says that music was occasionally performed there. The Temple of Apollo was described about 1796–7 in A Modern Sabbath as already becoming ruinous, and it is there stated that Claggett, the proprietor, had become bankrupt. A newspaper paragraph of December 1796 refers to a field opposite the Asylum, close by “the ditch that encircles that place of late infamous resort, the Apollo Gardens.”

301 This was probably the orchestra that seems to have stood in the centre of the gardens and not that in the concert room.

302 Cp. a token of 1651 (“At the Dogg and Ducke in Southwarke,” type, Spaniel with Duck in mouth) in Boyne’s Trade Tokens, ed. Williamson, p. 1022, there assigned to The Dog and Duck in Deadman’s Place, Southwark, by Mr. Philip Norman, who, however, suggests the possibility of its belonging to the Dog and Duck in St. George’s Fields. A specimen is in the British Museum.

303 The ponds are marked in Rocque’s Map, circ. 1745. The duck-hunting probably took place at an early period, not later than circ. 1750.

304 Newspaper cutting of 1731 (W. Coll.): see also The Country Journal or the Craftsman for 12 Aug. 1732; also 26 Aug. 1732.

305 Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 10 July, 1771, Letter viii. in Johnson’s Works (ed. Murphy), xii. 338.

306 A specimen in British Museum (from Miss Banks’s Coll.). Silver, size 1·25 inch; Obverse: Lazarius Riverius.—Non omnibus dormio.—Miseris succurrere disco. Bearded head of Rivière, to left; beneath head, the number “18” incised. Reverse: The original Spaw in St. George’s Fields so memorable in the Plague, 1665.—For the proprieters (sic) T. Townshend Alchemist to his Majesty, 1760. Another specimen described in C. A. Rudolph’s Numismata (relating to medical men), 1862, p. 45, has the words “Robert Baker, Esq., Twickenham,” evidently the subscriber’s name, engraved on the edge.

307 The water continued to be advertised in newspapers of 1771–1779. Hedger afterwards put in his nephew Mills (or Miles) to conduct the house which is said to have yielded Hedger £1,000 a year, but evidently himself remained the moving spirit.

308 On the “Maid of the Oaks,” see Baker’s Biog. Dram.

309 The Dog and Duck may have been more respectably conducted for a time. On 28 May, 1792, a charity dinner of the Parish of St. Thomas, Southwark, was held there (engraved invitation ticket in W. Coll.).

310 The Dog and Duck and the Apollo Gardens were for a time within the Rules of the King’s Bench Debtors’ Prison (De Castro’s Memoirs, pp. 126, 134).

311 In De Castro’s Memoirs (1824) it is stated that he died “about two years ago,” which indicates the year 1822, or possibly the year 1810 (for part of the Memoirs were apparently written circ. 1812) as the date of his death. He was certainly alive, however, during part of the year 1810.

312 Lambeth Wells are marked in the map of 1755 in Stow’s Survey.

313 They were of smaller extent than the Cumberland Gardens, their river-side neighbour situated a little further south.

314 One account calls him Nathan Hart.

315 “Riley’s Gardens, Vauxhall,” mentioned in Trusler’s London Adviser, 1786, are doubtless identical with Reilly’s Cumberland Gardens.

316 In the Picture of London for 1829 the Cumberland Gardens are named in the list of places of London amusement, but it is probable that this entry has been inadvertently copied from a previous edition (1823) of the work. Cp. Allen, Lambeth (1827), p. 379.

317 Timbs (Curiosities of London, 1868, p. 18) says that Price’s Candle Manufactory occupied the site, but in the Post Office Directory map of 1858 the “Phœnix Gas Works” are marked immediately south of Vauxhall Bridge and the Candle Works still further south, i.e., beyond the Vauxhall Creek which formed the southern boundary of the gardens.

318 In the advertisements the name Vauxhall Gardens first appears in 1786, but many years before that date the place was often popularly known as Vauxhall Gardens.

319 The place was at first generally called The New Spring Garden. Cunningham (Handbook of London, s.v. “Vauxhall Gardens”) and other modern writers suppose that it was called New to distinguish it from the old Spring Garden at Charing Cross, and this view seems to receive some countenance from a passage in Evelyn’s Fumifugium, 1661, quoted by Cunningham. It must be borne in mind, however, that there existed at Vauxhall shortly after the Restoration, two Spring Gardens which seem to have been distinguished as the Old and New. This appears very distinctly from the following passage in Pepys, under date 29 May, 1662:—“Thence home and with my wife and the two maids and the boy took the boat, and to Foxhall, where I had not been a great while. To the Old Spring Garden, and there walked long, and the wenches gathered pinks. Here we staid, and seeing that we could not have anything to eate but very dear, and with long stay, we went forth again without any notice taken of us, and so we might have done if we had had anything. Thence to the new one, where I never was before, which much exceeds the other; and here we also walked, and the boy crept through the hedge and gathered abundance of roses, and after a long walk, passed out of doors as we did in the other place.”
Somewhat earlier (2 July, 1661), Evelyn in his Diary has the entry “I went to see the New Spring Garden at Lambeth, a pretty contrived plantation.” This probably, if not quite certainly (for compare the mention in Evelyn’s Fumifugium noticed above), refers to Vauxhall Gardens. Monconys, the French traveller (1663), briefly describes “Les Jardins du Printemps” at Lambeth, but it can hardly be made out whether he is alluding to the garden called by Pepys the Old Spring Garden at Vauxhall or to the New Spring Garden, i.e., Vauxhall Gardens (cp. Tanswell’s Lambeth, p. 181). The supposed site of the Old Spring Garden at Vauxhall (or Lambeth) is indicated in a map in Manning and Bray’s Surrey, iii. p. 526 (cp. Walford, vi. 340). The statement of Aubrey and Sir John Hawkins, usually accepted by modern writers, that Sir Samuel Morland occupied in 1675 a house on the site of Vauxhall Gardens, is evidently erroneous (cp. Vauxhall Papers, No. 4, p. 28).

320 Swift to Stella, 17 May, 1711.

321 The Spectator, 20 May, 1712, No. 383. As notices of the Spring Garden are rare at this period, the following advertisement may be worth quoting:—“Lost in Fox Hall, Spring Garden, on the 29th past a little Spaniel Dog, Liver Coloured and white long Ears, a Peak down his Forehead, a small Spot on each knee” (The Postman, May 3–6, 1712). The pleasant walks of the Spring Garden are referred to in 1714 in Thoresby’s Diary, ii. 215.

322 A New Guide to London (1726). Guildhall Library, London.

323 Lockman in his Sketch of the Spring Gardens (1753?) praises Jonathan Tyers for having reformed the morals of the Spring Garden when he became proprietor in 1728.

324 Several of the Vauxhall season tickets were designed for Tyers by Hogarth. They are engraved in Nichols’s Lambeth, pl. xv. p. 100, and in Wilkinson’s Londina lllustrata. A good though not complete collection of Vauxhall tickets is in the British Museum, including the series of silver tickets brought together by Mr. Edward Hawkins. Tyers presented Hogarth as a return for his services with a gold ticket, inscribed in perpetuam beneficii memoriam, which was a free pass to the gardens for ever. Mrs. Hogarth had it after her husband’s death, and in 1856 it was in the possession of Mr. F. Gye who bought it for £20 (cp. Nightingale in The Numismatic Chronicle, vol. xviii (1856), p. 97). In 1737 the season tickets admitting two persons cost one guinea; in 1742 they were twenty-five shillings; in 1748, two guineas.

325 In honour of Frederick, Tyers constructed the “Prince’s Pavilion” at the western end of the Gardens facing the orchestra.

326 This description is adapted from the Scots Magazine for July 1739.

327 The lamps about the middle of the eighteenth century were about 1,000–1,500 in number; they afterwards greatly exceeded this total.

328 Smollett’s Humphry Clinker.

329 Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, Letter lxxi.

330 The cascade was varied in the course of years. In 1783 the background was a mountain view with palm trees.

331 The Connoisseur, 15 May, 1755.

332 From A description of Vauxhall Gardens, London, S. Hooper, 1762.

333 Further details as to the form of the Gardens may be seen in the guides of Lockman and “Hooper.” Mr. Austin Dobson (Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 1st series) gives the best modern account of the Vauxhall geography.

334 From about 1827 the entrance chiefly used by the public was the “coach-entrance” at the corner of Kennington Lane.

335 This has been attributed to Roubillac, but Mr. Dobson thinks that it was probably by Henry Cheere who made such leaden statues for gardens. The statue was cleared in 1779 of the bushes that had grown round it, and it was still in the gardens in 1817.

336 In 1818 it was removed to the house of Dr. Jonathan Tyers Barrett in Duke Street, Westminster; it was described lately (1894) as being in the possession of Mr. Alfred Littleton.

337 On Lowe, see supra, p. 50, p. 101 f., and p. 243.

338 As to the introduction of the covered walk see infra, § 4.

339 Trusler’s London Adviser, p. 163.

340 Notes and Queries, 6th ser. ix. (1884), p. 208.

341 Evelina, Letter xlvi. Cp. The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine for September 1773, p. 529, which gives a plate showing “the Macaroney Beaus and Bells in an Uproar, or the last Evening at Vauxhall Gardens” (W. Coll.).

342 The Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 29 June, 1772.

343 The Vauxhall Affray, or the Macaronies defeated, London, 1773; Westminster Magazine for September 1773, p. 558; The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine for August 1773, where there is a copper-plate showing the parson fighting the footman (W. Coll.).

344 British Magazine, 6 August, 1782.

345 Westminster Magazine, May 1775.

346 Middlesex Journal, July 23–25, 1775.

347 On the gala nights the charge was three shillings.

348 A burlesque account in the Bon Ton Magazine, June 1791, with plate (W. Coll.).

349 Her husband, Mr. Mountain, was leader at Vauxhall from 1792.

350 On Mrs. Bland, see supra, p. 137 (White Conduit House).

351 Miss Tunstall, another singer, was in repute at the gardens about 1820.

352 Sketches from St. George’s Fields (1821), 2nd ser. p. 216.

353 In 1806 the opening of the gardens on Saturdays was discontinued on account of the disorderly persons staying on late into Sunday morning. From about this time the gardens were for a long period usually open on three days of the week only.

354 Already in 1769 an awning or other covering was placed over one of the walks, and “covered walks” are afterwards alluded to. The permanent colonnade was not erected till 1810.

355 Some accounts say £28,000.

356 Admission, three shillings and sixpence.

357 This Prince’s Gallery was burnt down in 1800.

358 Among the curious characters of Vauxhall Gardens must be noticed a youth named Joseph Leeming, who called himself “the Aeriel” and “the Paragon of Perfection,” and offered himself for inspection to artists and surgeons as a model of bodily perfection. On 2 July, 1825, and on subsequent occasions he mingled with the other visitors at Vauxhall and created excitement by his extraordinary Spanish costume and by distributing three or four hundred “Challenges” to the people in front of the orchestra. One of these curious challenges is in my collection. It is a small card printed with the words “The Aeriel (sic) challenges the whole world to find a man that can in any way compete with him as such. No.—.” (cp. Hone’s Every Day Book, i. p. 1456, ff.).

359 An earlier balloon ascent from Vauxhall Gardens by Garnerin in 1802 may be noted.

360 A detailed account of the voyage is given in Monck Mason’s Aeronautica, London, 1838.

361 The publication came to an end on 23 August, 1841. It consisted of sixteen parts, sixpence each. A set of these is in my collection. Mr. H. A. Rogers, of Stroud Green, has recently undertaken an interesting facsimile reprint of this scarce little journal.

362 This part of Tyers Street was formerly called Brunel Street.

363 Punch for 21 August, 1869, “The Lament of the Colonnade.”