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Title: Cremorne and the Later London Gardens


Author: Warwick Wroth



Release Date: August 21, 2013  [eBook #43526]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREMORNE AND THE LATER LONDON
GARDENS***

Transcribed from the 1907 Elliot Stock edition by David Price, email [email protected].  Many thanks to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Libraries for allowing their copy to be consulted in making this transcription.

CREMORNE
AND THE
LATER LONDON GARDENS

BY
WARWICK WROTH
ASSISTANT-KEEPER OF COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM;

AUTHOR OF
‘THE LONDON PLEASURE-GARDENS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY’

WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1907

p. vPREFACE

The open-air resorts described in this volume lack the romantic associations of the classic pleasure-gardens of the eighteenth century, and it is impossible to impart to Cremorne or the Surrey ‘Zoo’ the historic dignity of a Vauxhall or a Ranelagh.  Yet, if these places are undeserving of the detailed treatment that has been accorded to their prototypes, they may claim at least a brief and modest chronicle, which may seem the more necessary because it has mainly to be constructed, not from books, but from stray handbills and forgotten newspapers.  Already, indeed, we are growing accustomed to speak of the nineteenth century as the ‘last,’ and to recognize that the London of Dickens, and Thackeray—the London of the thirties, the forties, and even of the sixties—had a physiognomy of its own.

Such places of resort, for the most part, enjoyed no kind of fashionable vogue; they were frequented (if invidious distinctions must be made) by the lower middle classes and the ‘lower orders.’  Yet they offer some curious glimpses of manners and modes of recreation which may be worth considering.  I have endeavoured to describe some twenty of these places, selecting those which seem, in various ways, to be typical.  To the general reader this selection will be enough—though, I trust, not more than enough—but the London topographer who turns to the appendix and the notes will find a quite formidable list of tea-gardens and tavern-gardens, which, if my aim had been to omit nothing, I could have described in greater detail.

p. viI have taken some pains in compiling these lists, partly from topographical curiosity, partly from the conviction that their enumeration almost rises to the dignity of pointing a moral.  The main contrast is between the tavern and public-house of former days and the gin-palace, with whose aspect—externally, if not (in any sense of the word) internally—we are only too familiar.  A description that I have found in a London guide-book of 1846 of the tea and tavern gardens of that date has already an old-world air: ‘The amusements are innocent, the indulgence temperate; and a suitable mixture of female society renders it [our guide means them] both gay and pleasing.’  The public-house was then, as now, no inconspicuous feature of the Metropolis; yet in the earlier half of the nineteenth century it had, if not exactly gaiety and innocence, some characteristics which tended in that direction—its little gardens in summer, its tavern concerts in winter-time.  In the fifties, or earlier, many of these garden spaces—often, it is true, of Lilliputian dimensions—were marked out as building-ground, which was either sold to alien contractors or utilized by the proprietor of the tavern when he thought fit to erect thereon a roomier and more imposing edifice.  At the same period, or some years later, the increase of music-halls, of local theatres, and places of entertainment, rendered the tavern concert, with its unambitious glee-parties and comic singing, a superfluity.  The disappearance of the tavern concert may not be a matter of keen regret, but the abolition of the garden has altered—and for the worse—the whole character of the public-house.

In the garden a man might sit with a friend or chance acquaintance as long as his pleasure and a treacherous climate permitted.  In the gin-palace he practically cannot sit at all, but is huddled, sometimes with his wife and children, into a kind of pen, from which custom and a sort of shy politeness bid him depart at the earliest moment to make room for new-comers.  The London public-house has thus become a mere counter for the hurried consumption p. viiof drink; it has lost any convenience or merit it may once have had as an improvised club and a cheerful resort.

The proprietors of the larger houses seem, indeed, to have had a suspicion of this, for they sometimes offer, for the behoof of their wealthier customers, a comfortable lounge or smoking-saloon.  But this does not benefit the humbler classes, and it has often seemed to me that a good way of discouraging intemperance in a great city is not to attempt the heroic, unpopular, and impossible task of abolishing the traffic in drink, but to compel the owners of licensed houses to dispense their stock-in-trade under more rational and recreative conditions—to give us ‘clubs’ for ‘pubs,’ or, at any rate, cafés and café-restaurants.

We have our obvious models on the Continent in the large café, the beer-garden, and even in the small café.  The poor man would not be ‘robbed of his beer,’ nor would the change be quite ‘un-English,’ as the record of our little tavern gardens will show.  Even in London at this moment there is an (almost solitary) instance of a café-restaurant of this kind, in Leicester Square.

The one feature common to all these Continental places is the custom of sitting down at a table; there is no standing at a bar, or the rapid displacement of one customer by another.  The coffee, the liqueur, or the lager, is not only drained—shall I say, to its dregs?—but is spun out and husbanded to the utmost, and for an hour or so there is at least the semblance of the comfort and convenience of a club.

It is too late now to restore the little summer gardens, but it should be possible to convert our public-houses, not into coffee-palaces, which do not meet the general need, but into cafés, by which I mean places where varied drinks, strong or otherwise, would be obtainable, though under less absurd and demoralizing conditions than at present.  Every one should be made to sit down, should be waited on—by a waitress if we like—and the great bar itself should be dissolved, except as a counter for the attendants.  There p. viiicould be cafés both large and small—places that the London Baedeker would describe as (relatively) ‘expensive,’ and others to suit the pence of the people.  The café might even be musical, though perhaps a line would be drawn at the café chantant.  Probably many small places would not be able to conform to these conditions, and would have to be closed; but, in view of the diminished competition, the larger houses could be called upon without hardship to undertake the necessary reconstruction.

But I am converting this preface into a temperance pamphlet, and, before is it too late, I break off to ask a kindly consideration for a little volume which recalls, I think, some interesting and not uninstructive features of old London life.  In reading the proof-sheets I have had the kind help of my brother, Mr. A. E. Wroth.

WARWICK WROTH.

1907.

p. ixCONTENTS

p. xiLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

p. 1CREMORNE GARDENS

The old house by the river had often changed hands, but the new possessor, who was reputed to be a Baron, somewhat puzzled the quiet inhabitants of Chelsea.  Great oaks and elms surrounded the grounds, but through the fine iron gates, which were left half open, it was not difficult—as on this summer morning of 1830—to catch a glimpse of the owner, engaged, apparently, in the survey and measurement of his estate.  He was a man of over sixty, dressed in a faded military uniform of no known pattern, but which seemed to have done service in some company of sharpshooters in the days of Napoleon.  In the middle of the lawn was a table, on which a rifle reposed amid a litter of plans and papers.  But if the Baron had a gun it was not to shoot you, but one of the targets at the far end of the garden, and his successive bull’s-eyes certainly proclaimed the hand of a master.  A little intrusion he did not seem to mind, and as you advanced he only offered you a prospectus: ‘The Stadium, Cremorne House, Chelsea, established for the tuition and practice of skilful and manly exercises generally.’ [1]

The estate of Cremorne House (or Farm), which was afterwards to be developed into the notorious Cremorne Gardens, had once belonged to the pious Lady Huntingdon, and George Whitfield had prayed and discoursed within the house.  Later on, it passed to the Earl of Cremorne, then to his widow, a descendant of William Penn.  The last p. 2owner was Granville Penn. [2a]  The purchaser of 1830, in whom we are interested, was Charles Random de Berenger, who styled himself Baron de Beaufain, or, more often, the Baron de Berenger.  His name seemed French, but he boasted of ancient Prussian lineage, and long before this date had settled in London.  He was a skilful draughtsman, an inventor of peculiar guns [2b] and explosives, and believed to be the owner of innumerable patents, which had only brought him to a debtors’ prison.  In the summer of 1815 he had emerged from a term of imprisonment in the King’s Bench, for it was he who with consummate skill and audacity had carried through the great Stock Exchange hoax of 1814, in which Lord Cochrane and his friends were so painfully involved. [2c]  In fifteen years these things were nearly forgotten, and the Baron, who was a sportsman and a dead shot, found himself well supported when he opened his Cremorne Stadium in 1832.

The subscription was two or three guineas, and the members, under the Baron’s tuition, could shoot, box and fence, and practise ‘manly exercises generally’ in his beautiful grounds.  He also established, so to speak, a ‘Ladies’ Links,’ with its clubroom, ‘which Gentlemen cannot enter,’ unless (such is his quaint proviso) ‘by consent of the Ladies occupying such.’  In 1834 George Cruikshank made a design for a ‘Chelsea Stadium Shield,’ which was quite Homeric in its form, and showed every conceivable kind of sport and exercise, including pole-jumping and golf. [2d]

p. 3The Stadium flourished, or, rather, lingered on, till 1843, but only with the adventitious aid of occasional galas and balloon displays that already foreshadowed Cremorne. [3]

The transformation of this failing arena of British sport into the full-blooded pleasure-garden of Cremorne was effected by another Baron, though he was such only by the courtesy of Bow Street and Maiden Lane.  Renton Nicholson (for that was his name), like most of the managers of Cremorne, was a man who knew a thing or two.  He was born early in the century, and his boyhood was spent in the quiet village of Islington, where his two sisters kept a p. 4young ladies’ seminary.  His tastes early led him to the distractions of Sadler’s Wells, and at sixteen, [4a] when he became a pawnbroker’s assistant in Shadwell, he began to acquire his remarkable knowledge of the ‘flash’ life of London in all its grades.  About 1830 he opened a jeweller’s shop in the West End, which supplied the ‘swells’ of the day and their female friends, and by this time his London acquaintanceships were extensive and peculiar, consisting, as we are told, of shady journalists, players, tavern vocalists, and rooks of all shades from the welsher to the skittle sharp.  He knew the taste of his public, and in 1837 began to issue the scurrilous journal called The Town, for which Dr. Maginn and other lively contributors used to write.  After a minor experience of gambling-houses and doubtful premises of various kinds, he became (in 1841) proprietor of the Garrick’s Head in Bow Street, and here, in a room holding about 300 people, and fitted up like a law-court, he presided—as Lord Chief Baron Nicholson—over the judge and jury trials that were so attractive to the Londoner of the forties and fifties.  The causes that came before this tribunal were chiefly matrimonial—the crim. con. cases of the time—and were such that their obscenity and heartlessness (mitigated, it is true, by flashes of wit) often made the most hardened sinner shudder.  Nicholson presided over similar trials at those famous haunts, the Coal Hole and the Cyder Cellars, till his death in 1861.  He was impudent in manner, obese and sensual in appearance, yet a man of real talent and geniality, gone hopelessly upon the wrong track.  His apologists describe him as a sort of nineteenth-century Robin Hood, who plucked the aristocratic pigeon, but was ‘the soul of good nature’ to the poor Bohemian. [4b]

p. 5His connexion with Cremorne was brief, and his capital inadequate.  In 1843 he replaced the timid prospectus of De Berenger by flaming bills announcing a ‘Thousand Guineas Fête,’ which during three days (July 31, August 1 and 2), at one shilling admission, provided, among other diversions, a mock tournament, a pony-race, a performance by Tom Matthews the clown, and a pas de deux by T. Ireland and Fanny Matthews.

In 1845 De Berenger died, and this year Littlejohn (the refreshment caterer to the gardens) and Tom Matthews managed the place between them.  Charles Green, the balloonist, was called in, and began that long series of Cremorne ascents which a spice of eccentricity and danger always rendered popular.  For example, in September, Green went up with a lady and a leopard—the latter a magnificent animal, so perfectly subdued in the presence of his mistress or her ‘livery servant,’ as to lay (according to the bill) at her feet or crouch in her lap at command.  In August the balloon party consisted of Green, Lord George Beresford, and Tom Matthews, who preluded the ascent by singing his ‘Hot Codlings.’  The balloon went up at seven, and, after visiting the General Post Office and passing over Stamford Hill in perilous proximity to the New River Reservoir, landed its occupants, after a voyage of two hours, cold and shivering, on a marsh at Tottenham.

In 1846 (or more probably a few years later) Cremorne was purchased by Thomas Bartlett Simpson, who guided its destinies till the beginning of the sixties. [5]  Simpson had been head-waiter at the Albion, a well-known theatrical p. 6tavern that stood opposite Drury Lane Theatre in Russell Street, and was afterwards its lessee.  He was a shrewd man of business, and, according to George Augustus Sala, ‘a kindly and generous gentleman.’  Sala, who knew the gardens well from about 1850, tells us that, unlike the Vauxhall of the time, Cremorne was a real pleasaunce surrounded by magnificent trees, with well-kept lawns and lovely flowers, and melodious singing-birds.  Nothing was pleasanter in the summer-time than to saunter in at midday or in the early afternoon (for the gardens were not properly open till three or five), and find Mr. Simpson’s daughters there with their work-baskets—to say nothing of the pretty barmaids employed by the kindly and generous gentleman, who were busy, in their cotton frocks, arranging the bars, and paying, it is implied, no ordinary attention to Mr. G. A. Sala.

Five thousand pounds was spent in preparing for the opening of 1846, and a banqueting-hall and theatre were constructed, as well as some ‘delightful lavender bowers’ for the accommodation of the 1,500 persons who were likely to need a bowery seclusion.  The gardens were rapidly getting into shape, and we can now survey them almost as they appeared till their close in 1877.

They were about twelve acres, to which must be added, from 1850, the grounds of Ashburnham House on the west, in which flower-shows and other exhibitions were held.  Cremorne lay between the river and the King’s Road, Chelsea.  The grand entrance was in the King’s Road, where a big star illuminated the pay-box.  On a summer evening, if you did not mind the slow progress of the threepenny steamer from the City to Cremorne Pier, you entered by the river gate at the south-east corner of the gardens.  The grounds were well lit, but on entering there was not that sudden blaze of light that was the visitor’s great sensation when he came through the dark pay-entrance into the garden of Vauxhall.  The most conspicuous feature was the orchestra to the south-west of the gardens—a ‘monster p. 7pagoda,’ brilliantly lighted with hundreds of coloured lamps, and surrounded by a circular platform, prepared, it is said, to accommodate 4,000 dancers.  Here the dancing took place from 8.30 till 11 or later.  There was always a dignified master of the ceremonies (in 1846 Flexmore the pantomimist), but little introduction was required in that easygoing place.  There was a good band of fifty, for some years under Laurent, of the Adelaide Gallery Casino in the Strand. [7]  In the early part of the evening—at any rate, in the seventies—the dancing was left to the shop-girls and their friends: the gilded youth and the ‘smart’ female set of Cremorne began their waltzing later on, after the fireworks.

The gardens had a tendency to become congested with side-shows, flaring stalls and shooting-galleries, too much suggesting a fair; but, unlike Earl’s Court and the later Vauxhall, Cremorne remained a garden.  There was still the encircling fringe of ancient trees, and an avenue on the west stretching from north to south; on the east side was the broad lawn from which the balloon ascents took place.

Cremorne had the usual pleasure-garden equipment of fountains and statuary; refreshment-bars, boxes, and tables were placed at every coign of vantage, though the right place to go was the Cremorne House (or Hotel) dining-room, or the upper and lower tiers of supper-boxes in the south and south-western corner.  Here there was a half-crown supper, and, if you aspired no higher, the Cremorne sherry, that fine old wine, ‘free from acidity, and highly recommended to invalids.’  In the centre of the grounds was an American bowling-saloon, which made its appearance, together with American drinks, in ’48 or ’49.

On the west side was the circus; the theatre was in the south of the garden.  A smaller theatre, north of the lawn, was appropriated to a troupe of marionettes, introduced by Simpson in 1852.  They were great favourites of the public and of the proprietor, who liked ‘the little beggars who p. 8never came to the treasury on Saturday.’  Besides this, there was a maze and (as Vauxhall had its hermit) a gipsy’s tent and a ‘double-sighted youth.’  The admission to the gardens was one shilling, and the season tickets cost one guinea or two guineas.

Simpson’s management (i.e., till 1861) provided some special diversions, of which the most curious, perhaps, was an Aquatic Tournament or Naval Fête (1851).  About eleven at night a fortress (either St. Jean d’Acre or Gibraltar) on the river esplanade was vigorously attacked by a squadron consisting of fourteen steamers of the Citizen Company (whose ‘entire fleet’ was embarked in the enterprise), seconded by the hull of a retired Citizen steamer, which was laden with combustibles.  To this attack the land battery—its necessary smoke, fire, and noise supplied by Mortram and Duffell, the Cremorne fireworkers—made a suitable reply, and eventually the old hull was blown to pieces amid the cheers of the spectators.

The Italian Salamander, ‘Cristoforo Buono Core,’ was, later on, in 1858, another attraction of a fiery kind.  Like Chabert, the more famous Salamander of 1826, [8a] this man entered a burning furnace with apparent unconcern, and (as he informed an inquisitive spectator) ‘titt as fell as he cott,’ though the performance made him very ‘dursty.’

In contrast to these popular shows, the manager on Friday, July 9, 1858, gave an ‘Aristocratic Fête,’ arranged by a committee of gentlemen assisted by lady patronesses, who are said to have been very chary of issuing tickets to other ladies whom the gentlemen proposed to invite.  But the invitations mattered little, for the 9th turned out to be one of the wettest days of an English July, and the aristocratic ambitions of Cremorne were damped down for ever. [8b]

p. 9In the balloon ascents of Cremorne (as already remarked) there was often a dangerous element, usually a parachute descent.  Without dwelling on the ascents of balloonists like Lieutenant Gale and the celebrated Charles Green, who made his three hundredth and sixty-fifth voyage (of course including his ascents at Vauxhall and many other places) on August 2, 1847, we can notice only the Bouthellier, Poitevin, and Latour performances.

In August, 1852, [9a] a French aeronaut named Bouthellier ascended on a trapeze attached to the car of a balloon, and when the balloon was at a respectable height began to twist himself round ‘almost in a knot,’ then to untie himself, and finally to suspend his body as he hung, first by his neck, then by his heels.  The reporter tells us that this was done ‘to the evident mingled alarm and pleasure of the spectators,’ and the whole thing was considered to ‘redound greatly to the credit’ of Mr. Simpson.

In September of the same year (1852), Madame Poitevin, ‘in the character of Europa,’ ascended from Cremorne on the back of a heifer which was attached to her balloon.  This was nothing new to her or to the sight-seers of Paris, where she and her husband had made hundreds of ascents on the backs of horses, and even ‘a great many ascents with a bull.’  A pony ascent had been made by Green at Vauxhall in 1850, [9b] but the English magistrates drew the line at a heifer, and Simpson and his Europa were fined at the Ilford Sessions on September 7, 1852, for cruelty to animals.

This wretched exhibition was not, of course, repeated, but risky parachute feats were by no means to be abandoned.  On June 27, 1854, at about seven o’clock, Henri Latour, a balloonist of the age of fifty, went up lashed to a parachute which was formed like a horse, and suspended from W. H. Adams’s balloon.  As the balloon was rising an attempt was made (by means of a trigger-iron) to release the parachute, but it somehow got twisted, and its two guiding p. 10‘wings’ did not expand.  The descent of the balloon continued, and in the Tottenham marshes, which it had now rapidly reached, struck the earth, and the unhappy Latour was dragged over the ground and through the trees, and died a few days after of his injuries. [10a]

The programme of the theatre and the concert-room was less exciting.  The Cremorne theatricals never aimed much higher than the farce and the vaudeville, but there were some good ballets, in which (circa 1847–1851) the Deulins took part.  Under Simpson some of the old favourite comic singers were engaged—Sam Cowell in 1846, Robert Glindon in 1847 and 1850. [10b]  Herr Von Joel, who appeared in 1848, was ‘a peculiar old German’ [10c] who had made a sensation—which became a bore—at Vauxhall Gardens.  His business was to appear at unexpected moments and in unsuspected parts of the gardens, to yodel.  Swiss ditties, and to give imitations, on his walking-stick, of birds and feathered fowl.  In his later days he was a familiar figure at Evans’s Supper-Rooms, where he used to retail dubious cigars, and dispose of tickets for benefits which never came off.  J. W. Sharp (‘Jack Sharp’), who sang at Cremorne in 1850, was at one time the rage of the town, and his comic songs were in demand at Vauxhall and at such places as Evans’s and the Mogul in Drury Lane.  But he took to dissipated ways, lost his engagements, and died in the Dover Workhouse at the age of thirty-eight. [10d]

Simpson’s varied enterprises resulted in a substantial profit, even if he did not make (as he told the impecunious Baron Nicholson) the sum of £100,000 during his first years at Cremorne.  His patrons were people of all ranks, and of varying degrees of virtue.  But Cremorne was never able p. 11to parade in the newspapers that array of fashionable and distinguished personages who ‘last night’ visited Vauxhall.  It was not, for one thing, a place that ladies (in the strict sense of the word) were in the habit of visiting, unless, perhaps (as Mr. Sala puts it) ‘in disguise and on the sly,’ or, at any rate, under the safe conduct of a husband or brother.  Ladies of some sort were, no doubt, considerably in evidence there, though we are not to think of Cremorne as so entirely given over to ‘drink, dancing, and devilry’ as its sterner critics declared.  If it was a place for the man about town, it also attracted a number of worthy citizens and country cousins who went there for an evening’s pleasure with their wives and daughters, and were ‘not particular.’  A livelier element was imported by the medical students—a high-spirited race made responsible in those days for the sins of many non-medical youngsters—by Oxonians and Cantabs, by temporarily irresponsible clerks and shopmen, and ‘flash’ personages of various kinds.

In 1857 the Chelsea Vestry had presented the first of many annual petitions against the renewal of the licence, setting forth the inconvenience of the late hours of Cremorne, the immoral character of its female frequenters, and its detrimental influence generally on the morals (and house property) of the neighbourhood.  Such petitions, like the annual protests against old Bartholomew Fair, were a long time in taking effect, but, as Cremorne grew older, the rowdy and wanton element certainly increased, and finally, as we shall see, not undeservedly brought about its downfall.  In spite of all this, we know of more than one respected paterfamilias who has still somewhere a Cremorne programme or two, the relic of some pleasant and doubtless romantic evening in the sixties or seventies, when he imagined himself to be seeing something—if not too much—of ‘real life’ in London.  In the sixties some charming little folding programmes were issued, printed in colour, and presenting on every page a view of Cremorne.  Portions of the programme were ingeniously cut out, so that on the front page there was p. 12a view up the long walk, flanked by its trees and lamp-bearing goddesses, right to the great fountain.  Another page depicted the supper-table spread with its choice viands and ‘rarest vintages,’ and on another was a view of the circus, the supper-boxes, and the promenade enlivened by a peripatetic band—all for a shilling admission, and the patron, Her Majesty the Queen. [12a]

Time has cast a veil over the orgiastic features of Cremorne, and though this is just as well, some of its old frequenters may cherish the feeling that there are no ‘intrepid aeronauts’ now, no fireworks like Duffell’s, no gaily-lighted tiers of supper-boxes, and no waltzing on circular platforms with beauteous, if little known, damsels.

Simpson retired in 1861, [12b] and on July 30 there was a new manager, Edward Tyrrell Smith. [12c]  He has been denied, somehow, a place in the great Dictionary of National Biography, but one cannot turn over a programme of London amusements in the fifties or sixties without encountering the name of E. T. Smith—an interesting man, of boundless energy and resource, and a lucky, if wayward, speculator, who was everything by turns and nothing long.  He was the son of Admiral E. T. Smith, but his aspirations were not lofty, for he began life—he was born in 1804—as a Robin Redbreast, one of the old red-waistcoated Bow Street runners.  When the new police force was established Smith was too young for superannuation, so he was made an inspector.  But he soon tired of this, and after trying his hand as a sheriff’s bailiff or auctioneer, went into the wine trade.  In 1850 we find him landlord of a tavern in Red Lion Street, Holborn, attracting custom by dressing his p. 13barmaids in bloomer costume.  From about this date his speculative genius turned to the management of London theatres.  He took the Marylebone, then Drury Lane, where he made quite a lengthy stay, and even plunged into opera at Her Majesty’s.  One of his eccentricities was to present silver snuff-boxes and watches to his master-carpenters and property-men, each presentation taking place on the stage, accompanied by an appropriate speech.  He was lessee of the Lyceum, of the Surrey, of Astley’s (when Ada Menken appeared as Mazeppa), and he took Highbury Barn for one season.  He also founded the Alhambra in Leicester Square, making short work, for his purpose, of its instructive predecessor, the Panopticon.

He effected another transformation by turning Crockford’s gaming-house into the Wellington Restaurant, and opened a second restaurant—but this was a dismal failure—in the vaults of the Royal Exchange.  He further made a handsome profit out of a French bonnet-shop which he established at Brighton, under the alluring name of Clémentine.  He financed Baron Nicholson at the Coal Hole, became proprietor of the Sunday Times, and finally settled down in the metal trade.  If Smith had little money of his own, he had a marvellous talent for extracting it from others, for, with some managerial humbug in his doings, he was a good-natured man, with plenty of friends who believed in his speculative flair.  One of his early devices was ingenious.  He hired from a money-lender at the rate of £1 a day a £1,000 banknote, which he always carried in his pocket—not to spend, but to deposit when he made a purchase, and to inspire confidence generally.  He retired from Cremorne in 1869, and managed just to outlive the gardens, for he died in 1877, on November 26.

Smith began his enterprise with a startling novelty—a ‘female Blondin’ who undertook to cross the Thames.  Late on an August afternoon of 1861 thousands of spectators thronged the river banks and the esplanade of Cremorne, or waited in small boats to see this new heroine of p. 14Niagara.  A tight rope was stretched across the river at a height varying from 50 to 100 feet, and at last the female Blondin appeared.  She was a delicate-looking little woman, who called herself Madame Genvieve.  Her real name was Selina Young, and she was the granddaughter of James Bishop the showman.  One has seen the male Blondin making a careful inspection of his guy-lines and supports before starting on his perilous course.  His female imitator began her progress at once.  When she had traversed about two-thirds of the distance, she paused to rest on the narrow timber ledge of one of the main supports of the rope.  The rest was a long one, and it was soon felt that something was wrong when the attendants were seen tightening the remaining 600 or 700 feet of rope.  At last, after this trying pause—she had started three-quarters of an hour earlier, and it was now growing dusk and chilly—she moved a few feet forward; then she halted, and then moved again.  But the rope was now swaying like a garden swing, for the guy-lines had been cut—apparently by some scoundrel who wanted the leaden weights.  Attempts were being made to throw cords over the rope, when suddenly she let go her balance-pole.  It was a terrible moment, but with infinite pluck and presence of mind the female Blondin caught the rope with both hands, then a couple of weights suspended from it, and next the cords by which that part of the rope was steadied.  Descending by the grasp of a three-quarter-inch cord, she reached a boat, and was saved. [14a]  But the warning was disregarded, and the very next year the female Blondin was performing at Highbury Barn.  Here she fell from a rope which was damp and slippery, and was made a cripple for life. [14b]

p. 15Another sensation, though void of peril, of Smith’s management was the Cremorne tournament, which began on Wednesday, July 8, 1863, [15] and lasted two or three days.  It was suggested by the famous Eglinton tournament of August, 1839, which is said to have cost the Earl of Eglinton £80,000.  The Cremorne imitation was held, not in the park or tilt-yard of a castle, but in the large pavilion of the Ashburnham grounds, which was gay with flags and garlands and the escutcheons of medieval heroes.  The velvet and the gold lace may have been less costly, but the effect was equally impressive.  At Eglinton Castle the Queen of Beauty was the lovely Lady Seymour; the Marquis of Waterford was one of the knights, and Prince Louis Napoleon one of the squires.  The knights and squires of Cremorne came chiefly from the theatre and the circus, and the pages were ladies described by a journalist as ‘no strangers to the choreographic stage.’  The Queen of Beauty was Madame Caroline, a circus-rider well known at Vauxhall and elsewhere, who is believed to have resided in the New Cut.

The Scottish tournament was a fiasco, and was carried out under the cover of umbrellas and great-coats in the intervals of drenching rain which lasted for three days.  The opening day at Cremorne was bright and sunny, and the procession of 300 made its entrance in imposing style: heralds in their gaudy tabards, yeomen in Lincoln green, men-at-arms in glittering armour—a whole Ivanhoe in motion.  The tournament King, the Queen of Beauty, and their suite, were escorted to a tapestried tribune, and their gorgeous array contrasted strangely with the tall-hatted and coal-scuttle-bonneted spectators who occupied the seats on every side.  The heralds made the proclamation, and the jousting began.  First, there were trials of skill between knights of different countries all in armour, and mounted on chargers with emblazoned housings.  Some sports, like tilting at the ring and the quintain, followed, and then came p. 16the grand mêlée between the two companies of knights.  Finally, one of the combatants was unhorsed—pro forma—and his antagonist received the prize of valour from the Queen of Beauty.

Bands of music and facetious clowns, or rather ‘jesters,’ enlivened the proceedings, which were at first exciting and a fine spectacle, though they tended to grow monotonous. [16a]

Among the minor entertainments of Smith’s management was the exhibition, in 1867, of Natator, the man-frog.  This human frog was a young man of twenty, who was to be seen through the plate-glass front of a huge tank filled with 6 feet of water.  He imitated the motions of fish, stood on his head, ate a sponge-cake, or smoked a pipe.  A more rational exhibition was the appearance of the Beckwith family in 1869. [16b]

In his last year (1869) Smith exhibited the French ‘captive balloon’ in the Ashburnham grounds.  This balloon was made of linen and indiarubber, and held thirty people.  It was attached by a strong rope worked by an engine of 200 horse-power, and could be let out, so as to soar ‘in an aerial voyage over London,’ 2,000 feet.  The charge for an ascent was ten shillings, but a free admission was granted to a female inmate of the Fulham Workhouse, who chose to celebrate her hundredth birthday by a trip in the balloon, attended by the matron.  It was fortunately not on this occasion that the captive balloon, after the manner of its kind, escaped! [16c]

p. 17John Baum, who became lessee in 1870, had not the character of his predecessors, nor a hand strong enough to restrain the vagaries of his more troublesome clients.  But he was by no means incapable as an entertainment manager and when the gardens were opened they were found to be much improved, and a new theatre was built.  He developed the stage amusements, and produced some good ballets, such as Giselle, in 1870.  In 1875 there was a comic ballet by the Lauri family, and Offenbach’s Rose of Auvergne, with a ballet of 100, was given.  Auber’s Fra Diavolo was presented before a Bank Holiday audience in 1877. [17]  The orchestra was a capable one under Jules Riviere.  In 1872 the licence for dancing, the great attraction of Cremorne, was refused, but in 1874 the waltzing or, the ‘crystal platform’ was again as lively as ever.

The one great, but melancholy, sensation of Baum’s management was the episode of ‘Monsieur de Groof, the flying man.’  Vincent de Groof was a Belgian who had constructed a flying machine on which he made some ascents with doubtful success in his native land.  He came to England in 1874, and with some difficulty persuaded Baum to let him go through his dangerous performance at Cremorne.  Certainly the flying man made a good advertisement, and on the evening of June 29, 1874, there was a great concourse in the gardens.  The machine was suspended by a rope, 30 feet long, from the car of Simmons’s p. 18‘Czar’ balloon, and while the tedious process of inflation was going on the spectators had time to inspect a flying apparatus strange and wonderful.  It was constructed of cane and waterproof silk, and was made ‘in imitation of the bat’s wing and peacock’s tail.’  Evidently De Groof, like his inventive predecessor in Rasselas, had considered the structure of all volant animals, and found ‘the folding continuity of the bat’s wing most easily accommodated to the human form.’  His wings were 37 feet long from tip to tip, and his tail 18 feet long.  In the centre was fixed an upright wooden stand about 12 feet high, in which De Groof placed himself, working the wings and tail by means of three levers.  He ascended from Cremorne about eight, and as the balloon rose seemed like a big bird perched in his net framework.  He was meant to descend in the gardens, but the wind carried the balloon away to Brandon in Essex, where he made a perilous descent from the balloon, almost unseen, but apparently without injury.  The Cremorne habitué felt that he was cheated of a sight, and on July 9 the experiment had to be repeated.  At about half-past seven the machine was once more taken up by Simmons’s balloon, and this time there was no changing of the venue.  The balloon soared to a great height, but for fully half an hour continued to hover over the gardens.  Then the wind bore it rapidly away in the direction of St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea, till the machine was perilously near the church tower.  No one quite knew what happened at this moment.  Simmons seems to have called out, ‘I must cut you loose,’ and De Groof to have responded ‘Yes, and I can fall in the churchyard.’  Suddenly the rope was severed, the machine, without resistance to the air, was seen to collapse, and wind round and round in its descent, till it fell with a heavy thud near the kerbstone in Robert Street. [18]  A great crowd had collected, and De Groof was picked up in a terrible state, and taken into the Chelsea Infirmary to die.  The fate of the balloon was an anti-climax: it was carried away to Springfield p. 19in Essex, where it came down on the Great Eastern railway-line after a narrow escape from a passing train.  The whole affair caused great excitement in London, and the details were copied into papers like the Indian Mirror.  A sheet-ballad sold in the Chelsea streets drew the obvious morals, and appealed to the tender-hearted passer-by:

‘You feeling hearts, list to my story,
   It is a most heartrending tale;
And when the facts are laid before you
   To drop a tear you cannot fail.’ [19]

But we are nearing the last days of Cremorne.  At no period could the gardens be described as a place of quiet family resort, and under Smith in the sixties we begin to hear of rows and cases in the police courts.  In 1863, for instance, there was a ‘riot’ on the night of the Oaks day, and a number of men, apparently of decent position, stormed and wrecked one of the bars.  Six of them were caught, and fined from £20 to £50 apiece.  A scene of this kind was partly the fault of the manager, who had advertised his gardens as just the pleasure resort for a gentleman returning from the races.  One (undated) story of a Cremorne fracas, told by G. A. Sala, is rather amusing, and worth repeating nearly in his words.  ‘A gallant Captain and M.P.,’ who was engaged to a young lady of good position, began to repent of his promise.  To get out of it honourably he could devise no better plan than to disgrace himself at Cremorne.  One night, accordingly, he repaired to the gardens ‘with a few chosen boon companions,’ who, like himself, imbibed freely of the rare vintages in the supper-rooms.  The moment came when he was in a mood ‘to break things,’ and his first onslaught was on the glasses and decanters of a refreshment counter.  Then he charged the dancing platform, frightened the dancers, and scattered the musicians ‘like p. 20blossoms before a March blast.’  They tried to stop him, but he put the waiters hors de combat, and for some time made short work of the police.  The next morning the gallant Captain and M.P. found himself, at the police court, Westminster, provided with a sentence of fourteen days.  From his dungeon-cell in Holloway he wrote an abject letter to his impending father-in-law, deploring the degradation he had brought on himself and his friends, and relinquishing for ever all claims on the beloved daughter.  Next day the governor of the prison handed him a letter from the same father-in-law, which ran as follows: ‘Dear Jim,—Sorry to hear you have got yourself into such a scrape.  Never mind; boys will be boys!  Katie and I will call for you in an open carriage on Monday week, and the marriage will take place on the following morning at St. James’s, Piccadilly.’

These things were relatively trifles, and it was really not till the seventies—under Baum—that Cremorne became an impossible place.  The Westminster Police Court was now hardly ever without its drunk or disorderly case from the gardens.  Even the normal evenings at Cremorne were fairly fertile in incident, but a big crop followed the abnormal evenings—the night of some great event, the Derby, the Oaks, the return of the Prince from India, or—a new institution—the Bank Holiday.  At such times extra late hours were always granted, and they were those occasions when champagne is said to ‘flow like water.’  It was half-past ten, half-past eleven, twelve, and still the theatres and music-halls were sending down fresh visitors, and the cabs came rattling down the King’s high road.  The bars and boxes were so many hives of drinking mortals—men who had lost and men who had won, and the drinking quickly led to an almost indiscriminate pugnacity.  The wretched waiters, even, were assaulted, though the pugilist thought he amply atoned by a money payment ‘on the spot.’

The efforts of the half-hearted Chelsea Vestry of 1857 were renewed with more vigour (and with more justification) from 1870 onwards, and they had a valuable ally in Canon p. 21Cromwell, the principal of St. Mark’s Training College, which stood almost opposite the entrance of Cremorne.  One of the many unedifying illustrated papers of the seventies, the Day’s Doings, portrays the Canon in cap and gown ejecting two flashily dressed females from the gardens, and he and his docile students for the next six years are said to have given Mr. Baum a very rough time.  This opposition was not popular, and on one 5th of November the worthy Canon was paraded on a coster’s barrow in front of Cremorne as a guy.  The comic papers sneered at the petitions ‘signed by all the babies and children under ten,’ and issued a revised set of Cremorne Regulations.  All ladies were henceforward to have certificates of respectability from the Board of Guardians, though members of the London School Board were to be admitted free.  No fireworks, dancing, smoking, laughing, or flirting were allowed, but by an order from the Vestry you could obtain a coffee cobler or a cocoa cocktail.  Ridicule is sometimes a legitimate weapon against the Puritan, but in this case Canon Cromwell and the Vestry were hardly in the wrong.

The end came rather suddenly and in a curious way.  Towards the close of 1876 there was distributed in Chelsea a pamphlet in verse, entitled The Trial of John Fox, or Fox John, or the Horrors of Cremorne.  It was signed ‘A. B. Chelsea,’ but the author was soon discovered to be a Mr. Alfred Brandon, a worthy and evidently courageous man, who had long been known as minister of the Chelsea Baptist Chapel.  By trade Mr. Brandon was a tailor, and no doubt his coats were better than his poetry, which is, indeed, sad doggerel.  This pamphlet was an indictment of Cremorne as the ‘nursery of every kind of vice,’ and of its callous money-grubbing manager John Fox.  The jury decide against John Fox:

‘Our verdict this: the Fox has had his day.
Destroy his covert—let him run away.’

Mr. Baum is said to have been ‘stung by these cutting remarks’—‘remarks’ which, whether they stung or cut, p. 22constituted, from the legal point of view, a highly defamatory libel.  He doubtless went unwillingly into court, but in May, 1877, the libel action of Baum v. Brandon was heard in the Queen’s Bench before Sir Henry Hawkins.  Brandon pleaded, in the familiar way, first, that he had intended no allusion to Baum, and, secondly, that he had alluded to Baum, but that what he said was true, and, moreover, not malicious.  In court it was averred by Baum that Cremorne was most respectably conducted, and that the houses in the neighbourhood were most respectable.  Brandon, to justify the libel, called various witnesses, among whom were a Cremorne waiter and a woman from a reformatory, who both traced their downfall to the gardens.  The jury found for Baum, but awarded him a farthing damages, and each side had to pay its own costs.

At this time Baum was greatly in debt, and for the next few months was too ill to superintend his gardens personally.  None the less preparations were made for the licensing day in October.  Petitions were prepared, and counsel on both sides were engaged.  October 5, 1877, arrived, and the Cremorne case was called on.  To the astonishment of London, Baum’s counsel quietly announced that the lessee had withdrawn his application, and the licence of Cremorne Gardens lapsed for ever.

John Baum here vanishes from the scene, though we seem to catch a glimpse of him at the end of the eighties as a waiter at a North London tavern, discoursing freely to sympathetic customers on the great days when he owned Cremorne.

The owner of the land, Mrs. Simpson, lost no time in letting it in building plots, and most of the present rows of small houses made their appearance in the next year or two.  As early as 1880 Cremorne Gardens is described as ‘already the lawful prey of the Walfords and Cunninghams,’ and brought within ‘the range of practical antiquaries.’ [22]  But the gardens had first to be cleared, and the Cremorne p. 23sale took place on April 8, 1878, and the following days.  The buyers and sightseers who attended the auction found the place already in a neglected state—the grass uncut, and the canvas coverings and panoramic views rent and blown about by the winds of the last six months.  The sale began with the hotel and the effects of the sitting-rooms on the first floor known as the Gem, the Pearl, the Rose, and the Star.  Then the public supper-room on the ground-floor was taken in hand.  There was a great stock of wine and spirits—600 dozens—and a unique opportunity for buying claret cheap.  The grand ballroom with theatre combined, the theatre royal, and the marionette theatre, were next disposed of, and the circular dancing platform, about 360 feet in circumference, was sold in thirty-two sections, including the pagoda orchestra.

The elms and poplars and all the growing timber were then offered, besides numerous portable bay-trees in boxes and about 20,000 greenhouse plants.  The statuary, over and above the Cupids and Venuses and the ‘females supporting gas-burners,’ included some classic masterpieces like the Laocöon and the Dying Gladiator.  With the disposal of the large reflecting stars, ‘the stalactite rustic, enclosure of the Gypsey’s Cave,’ and a couple of balloons, Cremorne was completely stripped.

A walk round Cremorne at the present day is a little depressing, though less so than a visit to the squalid sites of Vauxhall and the Surrey Zoo.  The western boundary of the gardens is, approximately, the present Ashburnham Road (or Uverdale Road, if we include the Ashburnham annexe of Cremorne).  The eastern boundary was Cremorne Lane, now mainly represented by Dartrey Street.  The southern limit is the present Lots Road, and a public-house, the Cremorne Arms, is close to the former Cremorne Pier and the river entrance.  The Thames front is now covered with wharves and tall buildings.  The north boundary is still the King’s Road, the entrance being where the southern continuation of Edith Grove begins.  Stadium Street, Ashburnham p. 24Road, Cremorne Road, and the Cremorne Arms, recall the varying fortunes of the place.

In spite of the builders, a small portion of the gardens has always remained.  Forming a pleasant fringe to the King’s Road is the nursery-ground of Messrs. Wimsett and Son, which stretches from Ashburnham Road to the part of Edith Grove which represents the old entrance of Cremorne, and a grotto or bower surmounted by some of the plaster goddesses of Cremorne is still to be seen there. [24]

[A collection relating to Cremorne formed by the present writer; a collection in the British Museum (1880. c. 9).  Various details have been derived from two excellent articles, signed ‘T. E.,’ contributed to the West London Press for September 18 and October 2, 1896, and based on material in the Chelsea Public Library; also from an article by G. A. Sala in the Daily Telegraph for August 7, 1894; Blanchard in Era Almanack, 1871, etc.

Views: Of Cremorne House, various views in Chelsea Public Library (cf. Beaver’s Chelsea, pp. 155, 157).  Of the Stadium grounds, two fairly common lithographs published by Day and Haghe in 1831.  A Stadium bill (British Museum) has a lithographic view of the house and part of the grounds as a heading.  The Particulars . . . of the Stadium (London, 1834), contains views by G. Cruikshank.  Of Cremorne Gardens, many views in the illustrated papers; also a water-colour by T. H. Shepherd, 1852, showing orchestra, etc. (Chelsea Public Library), and another by Shepherd, 1852 (same collection); etchings by W. Greaves of Chelsea, etc.]

p. 25MANOR-HOUSE BATHS AND GARDENS, CHELSEA

Towards the end of the thirties there stood in the King’s Road, Chelsea, between the present Radnor Street and Shawfield Street, a deserted mansion known as the Manor-House.  It was spacious, if not lofty, and had apparently nothing to do with the two historical manor-houses of Chelsea. [25a]  For some years it had been unoccupied; its windows were broken, its railings rusty, and weeds luxuriated in its front-garden.

Behind the house there had once been a fine garden and orchard, and groves of fruit-trees still bore mulberries, apples, and pears, which were the natural prey of the Chelsea youth. [25b]  The mansion had some reputation as a haunted house, and at nightfall unearthly sounds were heard by passers-by, which possibly proceeded from the depredators of the orchard.  But one day in the autumn of 1837 some workmen were observed on the premises, and it became difficult to get access to the orchard.

The old Manor-House was, in truth, in process of transformation.  A certain Mr. Richard Smith, described as ‘a pleasant, portly gentleman,’ and said to have made money by an official connexion with Crockford’s Club, had taken the place in hand.  The suburbs—or, at least, the suburb p. 26of Chelsea—were destitute of public baths, and Mr. Smith proposed to supply the want by erecting on the site of the house, or near it, a capacious building.  His baths were opened in 1838, and the popular orchard was utilized as a garden promenade, which he provided with an orchestra and a room for concerts and dancing.  In imitation of the panoramas of the Surrey Zoological Gardens, the ‘Taking of Fort Bhurtpore’ was reproduced in the grounds, and the fireworks and crackers of Professor Tumour rendered the capture of the fortress by the English a lifelike spectacle.

The place was a good deal advertised in 1838 and 1839, and well puffed in papers like The Town; but it was not a success.  A frank critic, who was well acquainted with the ‘New Vauxhall,’ as the proprietor named it, says that the company ‘consisted chiefly of local sweethearts,’ who preferred to treat each other to apples and pears snatched from the branches rather than expend superfluous cash in shilling goblets of hot negus.  The concerts took place on three evenings in the week, and some ‘grand galas’ and ‘night fêtes’ were announced.  On certain days the boys from the Military School close by promenaded the grounds with their band; but neither the concerts nor the baths were acceptable, and in 1840 Smith discontinued the concerts, and built a small theatre on part of the orchard.  ‘The Royal Manor-House Theatre’ could hold an audience of 500 paying 2s. and 1s.  The Green Room was the emptied tank of the swimming-bath.  The first lessee was Charles Poole, previously manager of the Chichester Theatre, and the plays light one-act pieces.  Poole soon got into money difficulties, and Smith made a curious application to Edward Leman Blanchard, the well-known dramatic critic, for his assistance.  Blanchard was then hardly twenty, but he managed to keep the theatre open for nearly a year.  The company had not been quite disbanded, and contained good material.  Thus, Mr. A. Sidney (afterwards the well-known actor Alfred Wigan) was ready to sing sentimental songs p. 28between the acts.  Signor Plimmeri, a clever posturer and man-monkey, and Richard Flexmore (later the famous clown) were also available, and the younger members of the Smith family formed a troupe of four supernumeraries.  Blanchard produced a farce of his own—Angels and Lucifers—which ran for thirty-one representations, and himself appeared at one entrance as the hero and at another as the comic countryman.  The theatre apparently closed in 1841, [28a] and Smith proceeded in a businesslike way to build Radnor Street on the grounds, with a public-house (the Commercial Tavern, 119, King’s Road) at the corner, which is still standing. [28b]

p. 29[‘Some Managerial Memories,’ by E. L. Blanchard in the Theatre Annual for 1886, reprinted in Blanchard’s Life, i., p. 20 f.; Era Almanack, 1870, p. 18; newspaper advertisements, etc.; Bell’s Life, May 3, 1840.]

p. 30BATTY’S HIPPODROME AND SOYER’S SYMPOSIUM, KENSINGTON

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was indirectly responsible for the existence in Kensington of two short-lived institutions—a circus and a restaurant.  They are rather outside our subject, but, as having something of an open-air character, may be briefly described.

In the autumn of 1850 William Batty, a famous circus proprietor, acquired some land within five minutes’ walk of the new world-wonder, the ‘Crystal Palace,’ and erected thereon an elliptical-roofed pavilion which accommodated many thousands of spectators, and had a large arena open to the sky.

The Royal Hippodrome was opened in May, 1851, with a French troupe brought over from the Hippodrome at Paris.  The performances generally took place in the evening, and the lowest price of admission was sixpence.  Two brass bands of a rather blatant character enlivened the proceedings.  Favourite features of the entertainment were a Roman chariot race and a ‘triumphal race of the Roman Consuls,’ who were represented by the three brothers Debach, each guiding six horses.  Why Roman Consuls should race is not explained, and probably did not matter.  Another excitement of the evening was the Barbary Race of twelve unmounted horses, who dashed headlong to the goal with distended nostrils and eyes of fire.  Other attractions were balloon ascents [30] and F. Debach’s journey on the Arienne Ball up and down a narrow inclined plank.

p. 31The Hippodrome closed with the Exhibition, and only lived for one other season, in 1852.  Subsequently, and in the sixties, it was used as a riding-school.  The site lay nearly opposite the broad walk of Kensington Gardens, between part of Victoria Road and Victoria Walk and the present Palace Gate.  De Vere Gardens mainly occupy the site.

[Newspapers: John Bull, September, 1850, p. 582; Theatrical Journal, 1851; views of the Hippodrome in Illustrated London News for 1851.]

The founder of the restaurant, of which, it was hoped, the Great Exhibition would make the fortune, was Alexis Soyer, the former chef of the Reform Club, one of the best-known cooks—though by no means the greatest—of the classic ages of dining.  Soyer was a man of inventive genius and resource, but one who (as the author of the Art of Dining dryly remarked) ‘was more likely to earn immortality by his soup-kitchen than by his soup.’ [31]

In the early part of 1851 he took Gore House, the famous home of Lady Blessington at Kensington, and fantastic skill and showy decoration soon made the old-fashioned stucco-fronted building the wonder of a London as yet unfamiliar with palatial restaurants.  The newspapers and a prospectus printed on satin paper with green-tinted edges announced the advent of ‘Soyer’s Universal Symposium,’ a single ticket for which was to cost a guinea, and a family ticket—your family might consist of five—three guineas.  Every room in the house was provided with a seductive name: the Blessington Temple of the Muses; the Salle des Noces de Danae; the glittering Roscaille of Eternal Snow; the Bower of Ariadne; and the Celestial Hall of Golden Lilies.

The Grand Staircase had its walls painted with a ‘Macédoine p. 32of all Nations,’ a monstrous medley of animals, politicians, and artists, the chef d’œuvre of George Augustus Sala, who for a time acted as Soyer’s assistant.

The Cabinet de Toilette à la Pompadour (Lady Blessington’s boudoir) led to the Danae saloon, which was embossed in gold and silver with showers of ‘tears’ or ‘gems.’  The Bower of Ariadne was painted with vines and Italian landscapes, and the Celestial Hall was in the Chinese taste.

The garden—a delightful adjunct to a London restaurant—contained some fine trees, walnut and mulberry trees among them, which had been the pride of the good William Wilberforce when he lived in Gore House, before the coming of the gorgeous Countess.  The meadow or ‘park’ of the domain—really a grazing-meadow hired from a Kensington cow-keeper—was adroitly styled the Pré d’Orsay, and here was erected the Encampment of All Nations, which was the public dining-hall, 400 feet long, ‘with a monster tablecloth, 307 feet long, of British manufacture.’

The garden, reached by flights of steps from the back of the house, had natural beauties of its own—Lady Blessington’s great rose-tree and Wilberforce’s thick-foliaged trees, Soyer added fountains and statuary, a grotto of Ondine, a little pavilion of many-hued stalactites with a crystal roof, and a statue of Hebe dispensing ambrosial liquors through the shafts of the temple.  Here also stood the Baronial Hall, a building (not unsuggestive of Rosherville) 100 feet long, with a stained-glass roof.  It was hung with pictures by Soyer’s wife (Emma Jones), and with the more interesting crayon portraits by Count d’Orsay.  The American Bar and the Ethiopian Serenaders were perhaps more suited to Cremorne.

The Symposium opened on May 1, 1851, and the Metropolitan Sanitary Association and other festively inclined societies began to banquet in its halls.  The average attendance was 1,000 a day, and the takings amounted to £21,000; but none the less the great chef was £7,000 out of pocket, and the Symposium closed suddenly and for ever on October p. 3314, 1851.  There had, in fact, been many complaints of bad dinners and imperfect management.  It is not easy—or was not in those days—to provide simultaneously sightseers’ luncheons and dinners for epicures.  Even at this remote period, and without aspiring to the Bower of Ariadne, one is appalled at the idea of dining in an Encampment of All Nations at a table 307 feet long.  The roasting of a bullock whole, which took place in the Pré d’Orsay on May 31, no doubt brought many shillings to the treasury, but was reminiscent of Battersea Fields or of a Frost Fair on the Thames.

In February, 1852, the place was dismantled, and the Hall and the Encampment were sold by auction.  The Gore estate was purchased the same year by the Commissioners of the Exhibition, and the grounds in later years formed part of those of the Royal Horticultural Society. [33]

[Volant and Warren, Memoirs of Alexis Soyer; Davis’s Knightsbridge, p. 142; Walford, Old and New London, v., p. 118 f.; Illustrated London News, May 10 and 17, 1851 (views of the garden and the Baronial Hall); ‘Gore House,’ a water-colour by T. H. Shepherd, circa 1850, in Kensington Public Library; Timbs’s Clubs, quoting Sala’s account from Temple Bar Magazine.]

p. 34THE HIPPODROME, NOTTING HILL

This was a race-course of some two and a half miles in circuit.  In 1837 a Mr. John Whyte had turned his attention to the slopes of Notting Hill, and to the Portobello meadows west of Westbourne Grove, and prepared a course, not for golf, but for horse-racing and steeple-chasing, with the accompaniments of a training-ground and stables for about eighty horses.

The Hippodrome was opened on June 3, 1837.  The public were admitted for a shilling, and those who could not enter the carriage enclosure mounted a convenient hill from which a splendid view of the racing—also of much adjacent country—could be obtained.  No gambling-booths or drinking-booths were permitted, but iced champagne, or humbler beverages were to be obtained on this eminence.  Lord Chesterfield and Count d’Orsay were the first stewards, and the Grand Duke of Russia, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Brunswick, and many noble personages, condescended to visit this London Epsom, to which gay marquees and ‘splendid equipages’ lent éclat on a race-day.

These races were held for four years, and were duly recorded in Bell’s Life, with the usual details of horse, owner, and jockey.  Cups of fifty and a hundred guineas were offered.  The proceedings generally began at two, and on one occasion lasted till nine.

One drawback to the selectness of the Hippodrome (and the proprietor’s profits) was a path across the enclosure through which the public had a right-of-way.  The footpath people seem, as a rule, to have been orderly enough, p. 35but gipsies, ‘prigs,’ and hawkers did not neglect the opportunity of mingling with the nobility and gentry.  In March, 1838, an attempt was made in Parliament to block this footpath by a measure entitled the Notting Hill Enclosure Bill; but this harmless title was speedily perceived to conceal an attempt to legalize horse-racing in London.  ‘Strong public feeling’ (particularly strong in Bayswater and Notting Hill) was excited, and many reasons, wise and foolish, were urged against the measure.  One objection was that the young ladies in the boarding-schools of Kensington would be unable to take their usual walks abroad.  On the other hand—so different are points of view—a writer in the Sporting Magazine declared that the Hippodrome was ‘a necessary of London life, of the absolute need of which we were not aware until the possession of it taught us its permanent value.’  A reading of the Bill passed the Commons early in 1838 by a majority of 26, but by September the Notting Hill Enclosure Bill had been quietly dropped.  Next year the proprietor enclosed his course so as to exclude the obnoxious path, but at a considerable sacrifice of space.  The last race was run in June, 1841.  The proprietor had lost heavily, not so much, perhaps, through mismanagement as on account of a fatal defect in the course, which had a strong clay soil, and was so damp that it could only be used for training horses during part of the year.

In 1845 a Mr. J. Connop, described as ‘the lessee of the Hippodrome,’ made his appearance in the Insolvent Debtors’ Court.  He owed a trifle of £67,000, though, of course, there were the usual assets of £10,000, if only the property ‘be properly worked.’  The potent name of Ladbroke appears in these proceedings as the ground-landlord.

A good idea of the course can be gained from the accompanying plan, published in 1841.  It will be found that Ladbroke Terrace and Norland Square roughly define its lower limits.  Ladbroke Grove, Lansdown Road, and Clarendon Road now cut through it northwards.  The ‘hill for pedestrians’ p. 36is crowned by St. John’s Church (built 1845) in Lansdown Crescent and Ladbroke Grove.

Part of the course was preserved as late as 1852 with some rough turf and a few hedges, at which adventurous lady-riders practised their horses.

[Newspaper notices; Bell’s Life, John Bull, etc.; plan and view of the Hippodrome (W.); Walford, Old and New London, v., p. 182; Loftie’s Kensington, p. 267 f.]

p. 37THE ROYAL OAK, BAYSWATER

In the twenties this was still a rural inn, with sloping, red-tiled roof and dormer windows, standing quite alone. [37a]  A visitor coming from Paddington Green passed to it by a quiet field-path—the Bishop’s Walk, now Bishop’s Road—through a region of pleasant pastures and hedgerow elms.  A weeping ash and the sign of the Boscobel Oak stood on a green in front of the house, and there were benches for the wayfarer and a tea-garden.

In 1837, with the advent of the Great Western Railway, all these country surroundings began to disappear, and the fields were soon cut up for roads.  The house was now brought forward so as to stand nearer the road, and the tea-gardens were sold for building. [37b]  The present Royal Oak public-house, standing more forward than its predecessor, is 89, Bishop’s Road and No. 1, Porchester Road.

A Welsh landlord (apparently in the early twenties) named Davies paid a £50 rent, which he could not get back by catering for his few local customers, chiefly nurserymen.  At the present day the property is said to have changed hands for £24,000.

[Henry Walker, in the Bayswater Annual for 1885; also in the Paddington, Kensington, and Bayswater Chronicle for May 31, 1884, with a woodcut from a drawing of the Royal Oak in 1825.  Cf. Rutton in Home Counties Magazine, ii., p. 21.]

In the thirties and forties the Bayswater district was full of p. 38small tea-gardens, one of which, the Princess Royal, [38] ‘opposite Black Lion Lane, now called Queen’s Road,’ may be mentioned.  It was kept in the forties by James Bott, previously of the Archery Tavern, Bayswater.  Mr. Bott had a bowling-green and tea-rooms, an elegant fish-pond well stocked with gold and silver fish, and ‘an extensive archery ground, 185 feet long, and wide enough for two sets of targets.’  His advertisements hold out two special attractions—one that any gentleman fond of archery might practise there from nine o’clock in the morning till two in the afternoon for ten shillings a year; the other that the grounds led by the nearest way to the Kensal Green Cemetery.

p. 39CHALK FARM

This was a favourite tea-garden from the latter part of the eighteenth century till the fifties.  An inn, originally called the White House, had long existed near the foot of Primrose Hill, and probably first gained custom by its proximity to the hill, which (about 1797) is described [39] as a ‘very fashionable’ Sunday resort of the modern citizens, who usually ‘lead their children there to eat their cakes and partake of a little country air’—a truly idyllic performance.  Chalk Farm had also its more martial customers, for towards the close of the eighteenth century the St. Pancras Volunteers used to march thither to fire at a target at the foot of the hill for a silver cup.  The duels, moreover, for which a field adjoining the inn was notorious began at least as early as 1790, and lasted till the twenties.  As they are hardly to be reckoned among the amusements of the place, I need not record their painful details.  The famous interrupted duel of Tom Moore and Francis Jeffrey—when ‘Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by’—occurred in 1806.  Byron treats it as ludicrous, but the meeting was not without its pathos.  ‘What a beautiful morning it is!’ said Jeffrey, on seeing his opponent.  ‘Yes,’ answered Moore; ‘a morning made for better purposes.’  To which Jeffrey’s only response was ‘a sort of assenting sigh.’  Another famous duel took place on February 16, 1821, by moonlight, between John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, and Mr. Christie.  Scott was badly wounded, and was carried on a shutter to the tavern, where he died in a p. 40fortnight.  This was practically the last of the Chalk Farm duels, [40a] and, curiously enough, it is the London Magazine [40b] that about a year later furnishes a long and most philosophical account of the tea-drinking at this very garden.  What the writer notices is the seriousness of the ordinary frequenter of the garden, who drinks and smokes with no approach to the least flexibility of limb or feature.  There are three plain citizens sitting stolidly in one alcove without uttering a word.  In another box, over a glass of punch, are a prim tradesman and his wife and a sickly-looking little boy, who wants to play with the other children on the lawn, but who is not allowed to ‘wenture upon the nasty vet grass.’  The same observer also notes the occasionally successful efforts of the Cockney sportsmen to shoot wretched sparrows let out of a box at twenty yards’ distance.

In the thirties the aspect was more cheerful, with pony-races, rifle-shooting, [40c] and the contests of the Cumberland and Westmorland wrestlers for silver tankards and snuffboxes.

The tavern (the successor of an older building) was pulled down in 1853, and the present public-house—No. 89, Regent’s Park Road—was built.  The open fields which formerly led from this site to the slopes of Primrose Hill are now covered by houses at the back and front of the present building, and the row of tall houses in Primrose Hill Road would effectively shut out the view, even if the tavern had still preserved its garden.  A water-colour drawing of about 1830 shows Chalk Farm without any building intervening between itself and its grassy mount.  One side of the tavern is provided with many windows, and a veranda looks towards the hill, and close by is the flower-garden.  At the back of the house are fields and a road leading to the lower slopes.

[Authorities in Palmer’s St. Pancras, p. 287; Picture p. 41of London, 1802–1846; Miller’s St. Pancras, p. 201; Walford, Old and New London, v. 289 f.; newspapers.

Views: Water-colour, circa 1830, showing Primrose Hill and the tavern (W.); drawing by Matthews, 1834, Crace Cat., p. 671, No. 89; drawing by T. H. Shepherd, 1853, ibid., p. 569; Partington’s Views of London, ii. 181; a view in Dugdale’s England and Wales, and water-colour drawings from this.]

p. 42THE EEL-PIE (OR SLUICE) HOUSE, HIGHBURY

This tavern on the New River, between Highbury and Hornsey Wood House, was well known to Cockney visitors from early in the nineteenth century till its demolition about 1867. [42]

It was famous for its tea and hot rolls, but still more for its excellent pies made of eels, which were popularly supposed to be natives of Hugh Myddelton’s stream, though they came in reality from the coast of Holland.  Unambitious anglers of the Sadler’s Wells type frequented the river near here, and on popular holidays in the twenties and thirties ‘the lower order of citizens’ (as an Islington historian politely calls them) had breakfast at the Eel-Pie House on their way to gather ‘palms’ in Hornsey Wood or more distant regions.  The house had a pleasant garden till its latest days, but little in the way of gala nights or ballooning.

In the strenuous era of prize-fighting even this quiet place was not without its excitements.  Thus, we read that on one day in January, 1826, a wrestling-match was announced between Ned Savage and another.  Savage’s opponent (Mr. Pigg) was not forthcoming, and the ‘fancy coves,’ not to be disappointed, retired to a large room in the Sluice House, and soon formed a temporary ring with the forms and p. 43tables.  A dog-fight and a rat-killing match were then exhibited, and, something ‘of a more manly character’ being called for, a purse was collected, and Bill Webb of Newport Market and (an unnamed) Jack Tar were soon engaged.  ‘About twenty rounds were fought; both men received heavy punishment, and both showed fair game qualities.’  The sailor’s courage was particularly admired, but he, alas! had to strike his colours, and Bill Webb ‘pocketed the blunt.’

[Picture of London, 1802, and later dates; Cromwell’s Islington.  The Morning Chronicle, October 17, 1804, announces the sale of the ‘old Eel-Pie House’ (already evidently well known), together with ‘20 acres of rich meadow land’ adjoining.

There are several views showing in the foreground the wooden Sluice House standing over the river, and close behind it the Eel-Pie (or Sluice) House Tavern; in the distance, Hornsey Wood House (on the site of the present Finsbury Park).  There is a drawing by Mr. H. Fancourt of the Eel-Pie House Gardens, made in 1867, and kindly presented to the writer.]

p. 44WESTON’S RETREAT, KENTISH TOWN

This garden in the present Highgate Road had a brief existence circa 1858–1865, under the management of Edward Weston, the proprietor of Weston’s (afterwards the Royal) Music Hall in Holborn.  A good deal was crowded into a small space, for besides the choice flowers, shrubs, and fruit-trees, there was a conservatory, a cascade, a racquet-court, a small dancing-platform and orchestra, and a panorama 1,600 feet long, representing ‘the sea-girt island of Caprera, the home of the Italian Liberator’ (Garibaldi).  This encircled the garden, and was lit at night by variegated gas-jets, stated—but the garden illuminator always exaggerates—to be 100,000 in number.  The admission was usually only sixpence.

Some of the entertainers of the Polytechnic Institution were engaged to combine instruction with amusement, and Mr. A. Sylvester exhibited there his patent optical illusion called—though hardly by Mr. Weston’s patrons—the Kalospinthechromokrene. [44a]

There were complaints about the way in which this miniature Cremorne was conducted, and the Sunday opening was particularly objected to by its respectable neighbours.  It appears to be the unnamed ‘Retreat’ which James Greenwood in one of his books describes in scathing terms. [44b]  Thus, p. 45when the Midland Railway Company appeared on the scene, there were many who welcomed its purchase of Mr. Weston’s pleasure-garden.  In October, 1866, the trees, orchestra, gas-fittings, tea-cups, and everything belonging to the place, were sold off by auction.

The Retreat was in Fitzroy Place, the entrance being between the present houses numbered 93 and 97, Highgate Road.

[Article in St. Pancras Guardian for January 3, 1902, by ‘P.’ (Mr. R. B. Prosser); newspaper advertisements; Walford, Old and New London, v., p. 320; Greenwood’s Wilds of London.]

p. 46THE MERMAID, HACKNEY

A farthing token of the seventeenth century, issued ‘at the Maremaid Taverne in Hackeny,’ [46a] is a humble relic of the early days of this place, which stood on the west side of the High Street.

The assembly-room, connected with the tavern by a covered way, and the extensive grounds, were much frequented during the last century till the forties.  The grounds consisted of an upper and lower bowling-green—one of them sometimes used for archery—and an umbrageous ‘dark walk’ encompassing the kitchen-garden, which was on the west side of the brook which divided the grounds.

Ballooning was for many years a feature of the place, especially in the thirties. [46b]  In September, 1837, Mrs. Graham tried an experiment with two parachutes: one, a model of Garnerin’s, was found to oscillate greatly when released from the balloon; the other, Cocking’s parachute, descended slowly and steadily.  A month earlier (August 9, 1837) Mrs. Graham had delighted the frequenters of the Mermaid Tea-Gardens by an ascent in the ‘Royal Victoria,’ accompanied by Mrs. W. H. Adams and Miss Dean.  A lithograph of the time shows these ladies, ‘the only three female aeronauts that ever ascended alone,’ in their best dresses, cheerfully waving flags to the people below.

An ascent made by Sadler in his ‘G. P. W.’ (George, Prince of Wales) balloon on August 12, 1811, caused great local p. 47excitement.  Crowds poured in from Greenwich, Deptford, and Woolwich, and the road became so blocked that even ‘families of distinction could not approach within a mile of the tavern.’  Some fortunate parishioners ascended the tower of the church, and a jolly tar got astride of the Mermaid sign.  In front of the house an abnormal assemblage of fat men and still fatter women jostled and pushed and tumbled one over another in a way that delighted the coarse caricaturists of the period.  Sadler’s companion was a naval officer, Lieutenant (or Captain) Paget, who paid a hundred guineas for his seat in the car.  As the balloon rose, Mr. Paget was ‘for some minutes deprived of the power of expression and incapable of communicating his sensations’ to his fellow-traveller, but he did all that was necessary by keeping quiet and waving a flag to the spectators.  An hour and a quarter passed, and a descent was then made near Tilbury Fort, and the travellers, who had started at a quarter to three, returned to Hackney at a few minutes after nine. [47]

The old tavern was pulled down at the end of the thirties, and several houses were built on its site.  The assembly-room and gardens continued in existence for many years later, but are now also built over.

[Picture of London, 1802–1846; newspapers; Robinson’s Hackney (1842), i., p. 149 f.

There are several contemporary prints of Sadler’s ascent of August 12, 1811, one a coloured caricature published by Thomas Tegg, ‘Prime Bang-up at Hackney; or, A Peep at the Balloon.’  Rowlandson’s ‘Hackney Assembly, 1812 (1802)’ caricatures the dancing.]

p. 48THE ROSEMARY BRANCH, HOXTON

Early in the eighteenth century, in the days when the London archers shot at rovers [48a] in the Finsbury fields, there stood near Hoxton Bridge (at the meeting of the parishes of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, and St. Mary, Islington) an ‘honest ale-house’ named the Rosemary Branch, [48b] which was doubtless ofttimes visited by the thirsty archer for a mug of beer and a game of shovel-board.  The place has no history for many years, though in 1764 it emerges for a moment in a newspaper paragraph: [48c] ‘On Sunday night [August 5], about eight o’clock, as a Butcher and another man were fighting near the Rosemary Branch, the Butcher received an unlucky blow on the side of his ribs, which killed him on the spot.  The cause of the quarrel was this: Some boys having a skiff with which they were sailing in a pond near the aforesaid place, the Butcher endeavouring to take it from them, a well-dressed man that was passing expostulated with the man, and putting the question to him, how he should like to be served so if he was in the lads’ stead?  On which the Butcher struck the gentleman, who defended himself, and gave the deceased a blow on the temple, and another under his heart, of which he died.  His body was carried to Islington Churchyard for the Coroner to sit on it, and yesterday the said gentleman p. 49was examined before the sitting Justices at Hicks’s Hall touching the said affair, and admitted to bail.’

In 1783 the old inn was demolished, or was, at any rate, absorbed in the premises of some white-lead manufacturers, who erected (1786–1792) two mills—conspicuous as windmills—in the vicinity.  A new tavern was built in front of the mills, with small grounds—about three acres—attached to it.  The Rosemary Branch was now frequented as a tea-garden, one of the attractions being ‘the pond near the aforesaid place,’ which was used for boating and skating till, to the disgust of the Sunday visitors, it suddenly dried up about the year 1830.

John Cavanagh, the fives player (died 1819), whose exploits have been commemorated by William Hazlitt, sometimes found his way to the Rosemary Branch, though most of his matches took place in the neighbourhood at Copenhagen House.  By trade he was a house-painter, and one day, putting on his best clothes, he strolled up to the gardens for an afternoon holiday.  A stranger proposed to Cavanagh a match at fives for half a crown and a bottle of cider.  The match began—7, 8, 10, 13, 14 all.  Each game was hotly contested, but Cavanagh somehow just managed to win.  ‘I never played better in my life,’ said the stranger, ‘and yet I can’t win a game.  There, try that!  That is a stroke that Cavanagh could not take.’  Still the play went on, and in the twelfth game the stranger was 13 to his opponent’s 4.  He seemed, in fact, to be winning, when a new-comer among the bystanders exclaimed: ‘What! are you there, Cavanagh?’  The amateur fives player let the ball drop from his hand, and refused to play another stroke, for all this time he had only ‘been breaking his heart to beat Cavanagh.’ [49]

Early in the thirties, the proprietor, a Mr. McPherson, began to provide ‘gala nights’ for the inhabitants of the district, and advertised his ‘Branch’ as the Islington Vauxhall.  In 1835 he is said to have spent £4,000 on the p. 50place, but for some mysterious reason chose this moment for retiring from business.  In October, 1836, the gardens were offered for sale—three acres only, but provided with ‘elevated terrace-walks’ screened by trees, and with ground for rackets and skittles.  The place was taken by a new proprietor, who continued the fireworks and illuminations, and introduced (1837) Mrs. Graham and her balloon, in which she ascended with the gallant Colonel of the Honourable Lumber Troop.

A view of about the middle of the forties depicts the gardens as entirely surrounded by alcoves and trees, with two rope ascents and a pony race [50] going on in the arena simultaneously, like Barnum’s Circus.  An admiring youth, a lady in an ample shawl and hat, and two gentlemen posed in the manner of tailors’ models, occupy the foreground, while a crowd of onlookers stand in front of the circle of boxes.  Festoons of coloured lamps, a minute balloon, a small theatre, and an orchestra, are also symbolic of the attractions of the Islington Vauxhall.

p. 51Early in the fifties the spirited proprietor (William Barton) was advertising his ball-room and monster platform, and introduced Moffatt’s Equestrian Troupe and the Brothers Elliot, two clever acrobats from Batty’s Hippodrome. [51]  The Chinese Exhibition, transplanted from Hyde Park, was expounded by a native interpreter, ‘whose pleasing description of the manners and customs of these Eastern people was in itself highly instructive and amusing.’  John Hampton, a noted balloonist of the time, was also engaged for many ascents.

On July 27, 1853, the timber circus caught fire, and an ill-fated troupe of trained dogs and seven horses perished.  I do not suggest that these seven horses constituted the whole of the garden stud, but after this time we happen to hear little of the Rosemary Branch as an open-air resort.  It was always a place for visitors of humble rank, the admission being sixpence or a shilling.  A ticket of 1853 notifies that persons not ‘suitably attired’ will be excluded.  It was, moreover, announced that the M.C.’s (Messrs. Franconi and Hughes) ‘keep the strictest order,’ and a policeman or two hovered in the background.  All, therefore, should have gone well.

The successor of the Rosemary Branch is a public-house, the Rosemary Branch and Shepperton Distillery, No. 2, Shepperton Road, N., lying between Rosemary Street and Brunswick Place.  Houses now occupy the space behind the building.  In the background the tall chimney of the white-lead works (Messrs. Campion, Druce, No. 35, Southgate Road) has taken the place of the windmills.

[Tomlins’ Islington, p. 151; Cromwell’s Islington; Era Almanack, 1871, p. 6; Theatrical Journal for 1852; newspaper advertisements, and bills.

Views: Crace Catalogue, p. 599, No. 135 (water-colour by Storer); ibid., p. 599, No. 136, a woodcut showing the gardens with pony-racing, etc., 1846; an engraving (1812) of the white-lead mills taken from the garden of the Rosemary Branch shows the boating on the pond.]

p. 52SIR HUGH MYDDELTON’S HEAD

This was a picturesque old inn, built, it is said in 1614, standing by the water-side opposite the New River Head and Sadler’s Wells.  It is shown in Hogarth’s ‘Evening’ (1738)—a gable-ended, vine-clad house with the portrait of the great Sir Hugh as its pendent sign.  It will be remembered that this picture represents a portly dame, accompanied by an evidently ill-used husband and two crying children, passing by the tavern, wherein a merry drinking-party is seen through the open window.  Perhaps the mantling vine is not a natural feature of the place, but bitter Hogarthian symbolism—‘Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thy house.’  On the other hand, Clerkenwell has still its Vine Yard Walk, and twenty years ago in one or two of the gardens in a square near Sadler’s Wells, there might be found a vine which produced a passable grape.

The banks of the New River at this time—and, indeed, till near the middle of the nineteenth century—were lined with tall poplars and graceful willows, and were frequented by anglers, young and old.  Hood, in his Walton Redivivus (1826), describes Piscator fishing near the Myddelton’s Head without either basket or can, sitting there (as Lamb expresses it) like Hope, day after day, ‘speculating on traditionary gudgeons.’  The covering in of the New River in 1861–1862 ended the Sadler’s Wells angling for ever.

The house was the favourite haunt of the Sadler’s Wells company, and old Rosoman, the proprietor of the theatre; Maddox, the wonderful man who balanced a straw while p. 53dancing on the wire; Harlequin Bologna, Dibdin, and Jo. Grimaldi, smoked many a pipe in its long room or in an arbour in the garden.  In the fifties, a parlour denominated the ‘Crib’ was set apart for certain choice spirits, who, according to Mr. E. L. Blanchard, were so uncommonly select that they demanded ‘an introduction and a fee’ from all newcomers.

The tavern, having fallen into decay, was replaced in 1831 by a plain, ugly building, surmounted by a bust of Myddelton.  The ‘grounds,’ chiefly from the twenties to the fifties, formed a miniature tea-garden with ‘boxes,’ shrubs, and flowers.  They were improved in 1852 by Deacon, who succeeded Edward Wells as proprietor.  The house, which stood at the west end of Myddelton Place, close to Thomas Street and opposite Arlington Street, was swept away for the formation of Rosebery Avenue.

[Pinks’s Clerkenwell, pp. 406–408; Hone’s Every Day Book, 1826, p. 344; Partington’s Views of London, ii., p. 186 (showing the later tavern); Blanchard’s Life, i., p. 83 f.; Theatrical Journal, 1852, p. 237 (cf. p. 376); a drawing of the tavern by C. H. Matthews, 1849, in Crace Catalogue, No. 93, p. 594.]

p. 54THE PANARMONION GARDENS, KING’S CROSS

The formation of the pleasure-garden that we know as Earl’s Court out of the coal-yards of the North End Road has a parallel in the origin of some ephemeral gardens which arose at Battle Bridge (King’s Cross) on or near the site of mountainous heaps of dust and ashes.  The place was recalled by the ‘Literary Dustman’ when he sang:

‘My dawning genus fust did peep
   Near Battle Bridge, ’tis plain, sirs;
You recollect the cinder-heap
   Vot stood in Gray’s Inn Lane, sirs.’

Now, when these historic dust-heaps were carted off to Russia—the story is a true one—and utilized in rebuilding the walls of Moscow, they left a void which even the London builder could not immediately fill.  In the twenties there was still a large vacant space near the corner of Gray’s Inn Lane, bounded by (the present) Liverpool, Manchester, and Argyle Streets, and reaching nearly to the Euston Road.  This space became the property of a company which, in 1829, invited the public by prospectus to subscribe about £20,000 for its development. [54]  The worthy historian of Clerkenwell describes this company as the ‘Pandemomium’ (sic), but as a matter of fact it called itself the Panarmonion, and had nothing demoniac in its objects, p. 55but rather the laudable purpose of converting a dusty wilderness into a garden and temple of the Muses.  The promoter was a certain Signor Gesualdo Lanza, who presided over a school for acting and singing in the neighbourhood.  Lanza proposed to establish—and displayed in lithographic plans—a great ‘Panarmonion Institution,’ consisting of a theatre, a concert-hall, a ‘refectory,’ a reading-room, and even an hotel.  These buildings were to rise in a pleasaunce encircled by trees and alcoves, and adorned with a great fountain and cascade.

In March, 1830, the place was opened, but the dreams of the prospectus were never realized.  A shilling was charged for admission to the gardens, but it does not appear that they were ever properly laid out, and the only attraction was a tour of the grounds in a peculiar ‘Suspension Railway,’ the invention of Mr. H. Thorrington.  This railway consisted of a boat-shaped car suspended from a substantial level bar, along which it travelled on small wheels set in motion by a wheel in the car worked by hand. [55a]  For the more adventurous visitors, hobby-horses (rudimentary ‘cycles’) were likewise suspended from the bar, and worked in the same way as the boat.  The theatre, of which a noble elevation by ‘Stephen Geary, architect,’ [55b] had been shown in the prospectus, turned out to be a small and narrow building, originally erected for an auction-room, which Lanza opened in March, 1830, with an amateurish performance of the opera of Artaxerxes.  The enterprise was a failure from the first; the lease of the theatre was p. 56offered for sale in August, [56] and we hear no more of the gardens.

In May, 1832, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, of the Adelphi, and W. H. Williams, the comic actor and singer, tried their hands, and reopened the Panarmonion theatre as the ‘Royal Clarence,’ decorating it in the style of a Chinese pavilion.  It is claimed that many well-known actors learnt their art at this bijou theatre.  What is certain is that it often changed its name—being called, for instance, the Cabinet, and, in its latest days, the King’s Cross Theatre—and that both actors and audiences steadily deteriorated.  During the greater part of its existence its boards were trodden by stage-struck amateurs; at one time it was used as a tobacco manufactory; and in the eighties or nineties its entrance-front might be seen plastered with bills announcing a mission-service or a temperance meeting.  At last, early in 1897, Messrs. Reggiori, the proprietors of the neighbouring restaurant (Nos. 1 and 3, Euston Road) took the little theatre bodily into their premises, of which it now forms an additional dining-saloon.  The old entrance-front (in Liverpool Street) has been smartened up with stucco and stained-glass windows.

It seems likely that the vanished gardens gave a hint for the laying out of Argyle Square, which covers a considerable portion of their site.

[Prospectuses and lithographs of the Panarmonion; newspapers of 1829 and 1830; Clinch’s Marylebone, etc., p. 182 f.; Pinks’s Clerkenwell; Baker’s London Stage, ii., p. 260; Era Almanack, 1868, advt., p. vii; 1869, p. 34.  The annals of the theatre may also be sought in the pages of the Theatrical Journal.]

p. 57THE EAGLE AND GRECIAN SALOON

The Eagle tavern and Grecian theatre which stood till lately at the corner of the dreary City Road and Shepherdess Walk were developed out of a quiet eighteenth-century pleasure-garden known as the Shepherd and Shepherdess, which had its arbours, skittle-ground, and small assembly-room. [57a]  About 1822 a rather remarkable man, named Thomas Rouse (born in 1784), came into possession of the premises. [57b]  He is said to have begun life as a bricklayer; at any rate, he had a turn for building, and in later days indulged himself in saloons, pavilions, and Cockney gardening.  He rebuilt the tavern, or, at any rate, renamed it the Eagle, and from 1824 onwards the Eagle lawn was the scene of some of Green’s balloon ascents, and of annual tournaments of the Devon and Cornish wrestlers and single-stick players.  One of the earliest balloon ascents, on May 25, 1824, gave a melancholy advertisement to the place.  A balloonist named Thomas Harris ascended from the grounds, accompanied by a young lady named Sophia Stocks, who was described by the journalists as ‘an intrepid girl’ who entered the balloon ‘with but slight p. 58appearance of fear.’  The balloon took the direction of Croydon, but by its fall to the earth in Beddington Park, Harris was killed and his companion severely injured. [58a]

The coronation of William IV. in 1831 did not pass without influence on the Eagle, for in October the proprietor bought up the fittings of the Abbey entrance and robing-rooms and erected them as an entrance to his gardens, advertising them not only as the identical fittings, but as re-erected by ‘the identical mechanics.’  In this year, also, the famous Grecian Saloon came into existence.  It was furnished with an organ and ‘a superb self-acting piano’; also with a superb gas chandelier, and with classic paintings by Philip Phillips, a pupil of Clarkson Stanfield and ‘scene-painter to the Adelphi and Haymarket.’ [58b]

The Eagle reopened in the spring of 1832 with many of the attractions that long continued to characterize it.  In the garden was an orchestra of Oriental type, variously described as Moorish or Chinese, and the Pandean Band from Vauxhall Gardens was engaged to perform.  Dancing took place, generally once a week, in the ‘Grecian tent’ or in the assembly-room, and the gardens were adorned with Chinese lanterns, cosmoramas, fountains, and dripping rocks.  In the Saloon there were concerts and ‘vaudevilles’ every evening, with sacred music (in Lent) from Handel and Mozart.  The admission was no more than a shilling or sixpence, and it is pleasing to find that the ‘junior branches of families’ were admitted at threepence a head.  One has a tender feeling for these junior branches, some of whom must have sat there with their fathers and mothers p. 59rather wearily from 7.30 to near 11, enlivened at times by the conjurer and the lady on the elastic cord (Miss Hengler or Miss Clarke) but caring little for the excellent glees and the vocal efforts of Miss Fraser James—bright star though she was of the London tavern concerts [59a]—or for those of Miss Smith, ‘the little Pickle’ of Drury Lane, of whom the critics remarked that it was miraculous that so young a person should be able to sing so high and so low, and excel in such songs as the ‘Deep, Deep Sea’ and ‘The Wolf,’ which she was understood to sing in private.  How many people at this period visited the Eagle, or, indeed, any other place of open-air amusement, it is hard to determine; but the newspapers speak of 5,000 or 6,000 persons being present on one night in May, while others give the more modest total of 1,000 or 1,300 at sixpence each.  The frequenters of the Eagle were people of humble rank, and at this time we hear of no distinguished visitors, except, perhaps, Paganini, who, going there with his friends to amuse himself one August night in 1832, was considerably mobbed, the remarks on his appearance being doubtless gems of Cockney sarcasm.

A graphic sketch by ‘Boz’ brings back to us the evening when Mr. Samuel Wilkins, the journeyman carpenter of small dimensions, accompanied his sweetheart, Miss Jemima Evans, to the Eagle.  On their way from a distant suburb, they stopped at the Crown[59b] in Pentonville, to taste some p. 60excellent shrub in the little garden thereto attached, and finally arrived in the City Road.  The Eagle garden was gravelled and planted, the refreshment-boxes were painted, and variegated lamps shed their light on the heads of the company.  A Moorish band and military band were playing in the grounds; but the people were making for the concert-room, a place with an orchestra, ‘all paint, gilding, and plate glass.’  Here the audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and ‘everybody’—and this is a touch of the later Dickens—‘was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible.’  Mr. Wilkins ordered rum-and-water with a lemon for himself and ‘sherry-wine’ for the lady, with some sweet caraway-seed biscuits.  There was an overture on the organ and comic songs (let us add by the famous singers Henry Howell and Robert Glindon [60]), accompanied by the organ.

This must have been in 1835 or 1836, and Dickens would have been pleased at the all-embracing sympathies of the proprietor of the Eagle, who, a little later, organized so many charitable benefits.  Thus, there was a benefit for the Blind Hebrew Brethren in the East, and a ball ‘for our friends of the Hebrew nation.’  On another night, a benefit ‘to relieve decayed Druids and their wives and orphans,’ and yet another night ‘for clothing the children of the needy.’

The coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, like the previous coronation, gave a hint for new developments.  The Eagle now, and for some years, took to itself the sub-title of the Coronation Pleasure-Grounds, and this year, or at the p. 61close of 1837, the place assumed nearly the form that it retained till its closing years.  A covered promenade ran round the gardens; the great tavern at the corner of the City Road was erected, and a ball-room was completed.  The Saloon was remodelled, with a pit—part of it railed off for smokers—and tiers of boxes.  A new organ was set up by Parsons of Bloomsbury, and the old organ and self-acting piano were advertised for sale.  The architectural genius of Rouse was doubtless at the bottom of these changes, but he gave the credit to the professionals, and announced that the whole was ‘planned by P. Punnett, Esq., and surveyed by R. Warton.’

The new Saloon was opened on January 1, 1838—for the Eagle was a winter as well as a summer resort [61a]—with a concert and an appropriate address by Moncrieff the dramatist.  A programme of this year includes an overture by Weber, an air from Rossini, ‘Tell me where is Fancy bred,’ ‘All’s Well’ (duet), and ‘It’s all very well, Mr. Ferguson,’ one of several comic songs.

We approach the forties, when Rouse, like Phelps with Shakespeare at Sadler’s Wells, had the audacity to present a whole series of operas in the City Road.  If these representations were not brilliant, they were praiseworthy efforts, and a revelation to East Central London.  Rouse had a good band and chorus; an excellent tenor in Frazer from Covent Garden Theatre; C. Horn, the composer of ‘Cherry Ripe,’ Russell Grover, and various passable prima donnas. [61b]  Among the operas announced in the bills of the forties we find the Barber of Seville, the Crown Diamonds, Don Giovanni, La Gazza Ladra, and Sonnambula.  In these attempts to improve the musical taste of the neighbourhood, Rouse is reported to have lost £2,000 yearly, but as the tavern brought him in about £5,000 a year he could well afford the experiment.

At the Christmas of 1844, pantomime, which was to make p. 62the fame of the later Grecian theatre, found its place in the programme, and Richard Flexmore, a really agile, inventive, and humorous clown, made his appearance.  A more remarkable actor, who joined the Grecian company about this time, and remained with it for five years, was Frederick Robson, who was given parts in the farces and vaudevilles.  Robson’s great reputation dates from his performances at the Olympic from 1853 onwards, but at the Grecian he had already given an unmistakable taste of his quality.  His famous song ‘Villikins and his Dinah’ was first heard at the Eagle.  A man of strange physique, with a small body and a big head, he could do what he would with his audience—convulsing them with laughter by some outrageous drollery; thrilling them with ‘an electrical burst of passion or pathos, or holding them midway between terror and laughter as he performed some weirdly grotesque dance.’ [62a]  In burlesque and extravaganza he displayed such passionate intensity that he seemed to give promise of a second Kean—yet a Kean he never became.  A playgoer who saw him often has acutely suggested that ‘the very opportunity of exaggeration afforded by burlesque elicited the display of a quasi-tragic power which would have ceased if the condition of exaggeration were withdrawn.’ [62b]

March 1, 1851, was memorable at the Eagle as the last night of the proprietorship of old Thomas Rouse.  He died at Boulogne a year later (September 26, 1852).  During his twenty-seven years of management he had done much to deserve the title of ‘Bravo’ Rouse, with which his audiences were wont to hail him.  For one thing, he was never bored by his own entertainments, but used to sit, night after night, in a box or other conspicuous place—a symbol of order, armed with a big stick, which one fancies he would have used if necessary.

p. 63His successor was Benjamin Oliver Conquest [63] (born 1805) a comic actor of ability, endowed with plenty of animal spirits, which had carried him from the part of a coach-builder or (according to others) of a bootmaker in real life to the stage part of a witch in Macbeth, and finally supported him through a twenty-eight weeks’ repetition at the Pavilion Theatre of a song, ‘Billy Barlow,’ which made a sensation something like ‘Jim Crow.’

He inaugurated the first night of his management at the Eagle, March 31, 1851, by the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with an opening address by E. L. Blanchard.  On another night Blanchard’s burlesque, called Nobody in Town was produced with a part for Sam Cowell (1820–1866), the comic singer, famous for his clear articulation and finished style.  The great feature of Conquest’s management was the production of ballets, only surpassed by those of Her Majesty’s Theatre.  It happened that Mrs. Conquest, his wife, was a fine dancer and a singularly skilful teacher, who trained a long succession of pupils, including the graceful Kate Vaughan.  The Miss Conquests, moreover, his daughters Amelia, Laura, and Isabella, formed in themselves a small troupe of capable dancers.  In the gardens, too, the public dancing became more prominent, and a ‘monster platform’ was erected for the accommodation of 500 people.  The masked ball was also occasionally tried, an experiment, as Vauxhall had shown, likely to be fraught with rowdyism, though the Eagle sternly refused admittance to clowns, harlequins, and pantaloons.  One sensation of Conquest’s management was the ascent, in 1852, of Coxwell’s balloon, with the acrobats H. and E. Buislay suspended on a double trapeze from its car.

In the last years of the fifties, pantomime and drama, romantic and sensational, figure largely in the bills.  From 1857 George Conquest, the proprietor’s son, began to take a prominent part as actor and stage-manager, and finally made the Grecian pantomime one of the features of the p. 64minor stage.  In conjunction with H. Spry, the younger Conquest wrote or produced more than twenty-one pantomimes at this theatre, and was always to the fore in the performance itself.  Unsurpassed in daring feats of the trap and trapeze kind, he was no less remarkable for his wonderful make-up and changes.  In the Wood Demon (1873–1874), for instance, he presented the title-rôle as a tree, appearing next as a dwarf, an animated pear, and finally as an octopus.  He became sole proprietor on his father’s death (July 5, 1872), and built a new Grecian theatre, [64a] opened in October, 1877, with Harry Nicholls; George Conquest, junior, and Miss M. A. Victor in the company.

In 1879 Conquest sold the Eagle property to Mr. T. G. Clark, taking his farewell benefit on March 17.  He migrated to the Surrey Theatre, where, as lessee, he continued the traditions of the Grecian pantomimes.  He died on May 14, 1901.

Mr. Clark, the new proprietor, [64b] had made money in the marine-store business, and would have been better qualified to command the Channel Fleet than to manage the Eagle.  He had, it is true, been for a short time the lessee of the Adelphi, but he had no eye for theatrical business, and his new venture, chiefly in the regions of melodrama, was once more disastrous to his pocket.  Perhaps the failure was not entirely his own fault.  Tastes were changing, and the Eagle garden, with its public dancing—now that Cremorne had passed away—seemed something like a scandal or an anachronism.  In the time of the Conquests there had been complaints of the company that frequented the Eagle.  Such charges are too often exaggerated, because they are often made by well-meaning people who really know nothing at first hand of popular amusements, and who go to the p. 65garden or the music-hall to collect evidence, as it were, for the prosecution.  At the same time, there is generally something in complaints of the kind, nor are managers quite the immaculate beings that their counsel represent them to be when licences come on for renewal in October.  It is right to say that George Conquest seems to have done his best to keep out notoriously bad characters, and that he warned mere boys and girls off his monster platform and his concert-hall.

Mr. Clark’s difficulties and the belief, well founded or not, that the Eagle was an undesirable public influence formed the opportunity of ‘General’ Booth and the Salvation Army.  The Army wanted a barracks and a headquarters for their social and religious work.  That they should have obtained these—and largely by public subscription—few will complain.  But it is not quite clear that it was imperative to make an onslaught on the Eagle, being, as it was, a centre of amusement in the colourless life of the district.  A new theatre might well have arisen under a new Conquest, even if the garden and the dancing had to go.

In June, 1882, the Eagle was purchased by the Army.  In August the stage appliances were sold off, and the Army entered the citadel in triumph.  In September the public were admitted.  A great tent for religious services took the place of the monster platform—the pernicious spot on which, as Mr. Booth’s friends declared, so many ‘had danced their way to destruction.’  Curiously enough, though one object of the movement was to annihilate the Eagle tavern, that stronghold of beer-drinking and spirit-drinking, Mr. Booth discovered that the law compelled him to keep up the drinking licence, and beer is sold in the Eagle public-house at this very moment.  Unfortunately, also, for its funds, the Army got involved in litigation about alterations and repairs—a costly business which was carried up to the House of Lords.

At last the ancient domain of the Shepherd and Shepherdess p. 66was deserted even by the Salvation Army.  In September, 1899, the newspapers announced that the Eagle premises were in the hands of the house-breakers.  A few old frequenters hastened to revisit the place, and some others, no doubt, who had only heard of the Eagle as a somewhat low resort associated with that enigmatic song of their childhood, ‘Pop goes the Weasel,’ must have been surprised to find the buildings—rather handsome in their way—still in existence.  The Eagle garden presented itself to such visitors as a large paved square, which, judging from its two surviving trees, could never have been truthfully described as thickly wooded.  Conspicuous features were the large rotunda opposite the entrance, with its pit, now floored over, and the ‘new’ theatre (of 1877), adjoining Shepherdess Walk, practically unaltered, though dingy and dirt-begrimed beyond description.

The Oriental orchestra in the garden still showed traces of its gaudy colouring, and a melancholy brick wall displayed remnants of primitive grotto-work.  One could trace near the centre of the grounds the concrete-covered circle where many a light-hearted couple had danced before the days of the Conquests. [66]  The rows of alcoves, with the balcony for promenaders above them, were still there, though no longer brightly painted, but mostly boarded up and filled with headless Venuses and Cupids—pagan deities of the gardens who nourished circa A.D. 1838–1882.

Soon after this, the huge Eagle tavern, surmounted by its proud stone bird, was demolished, and a smaller public-house of neat red brick (opened August, 1900) now covers part of its site.  On the site of the theatre and its entrance, which faced Shepherdess Walk, and was adorned with two more stone eagles, we have now a police-station.  Though all the old buildings have been destroyed, much of the garden space is still unoccupied, and in due season a solitary tree puts forth its leaves.

p. 67[Newspaper notices, bills, and photographs taken at the time of the demolition of the Eagle (W.); Blanchard’s Life, by Clement Scott and Cecil Howard; Hollingshead’s Footlights and My Lifetime; Ritchie’s Night Side of London; Baker’s London Stage.] [67]

p. 68THE ALBERT SALOON AND ROYAL STANDARD PLEASURE-GARDENS

In his own Shepherdess Walk—a little to the north of the Eagle—the enterprising Thomas Rouse had a not unsuccessful imitator in the person of one Henry Bradley, the proprietor of the Royal Standard tavern and pleasure-gardens.  Some entertainments and concerts were given here in the early thirties, but the fame of the place, such as it was, belongs to the forties.

At the end of 1838 Bradley began to adorn his gardens somewhat in the manner of the Eagle, surrounding them with boxes, alcoves, and panoramic views, and building the new saloon for concerts and plays which became well known as the Albert Saloon.  He opened the gardens on Easter Monday, 1839, announcing that they would accommodate 10,000 persons, of whom 4,000 were sure of shelter from the rain.  Concerts, vaudevilles, and melodramas were for several years the staple of attraction, and the admission was usually not more than sixpence.  Tom Jones, a mimic and comic singer, was the manager, and something was done in the way of fireworks, ballooning, and weekly dances.

At the gardens of this period the mild attraction of a balloon ascent was often heightened by suspending from the car some living object—a pony, a donkey, or a man.  The balloonist Gypson, who ascended from the Standard gardens in 1839, varied this device by attaching to his night-balloon ‘a model of the late Royal Exchange.’  Unfortunately, as the balloon was rising, the ‘late Royal Exchange’ caught fire and was burnt to ashes in the grounds, p. 69though the aeronaut cut the rope and soared on high in safety.

As a minor theatre, the Albert Saloon never attained the well-deserved fame of its Grecian rival.  But it is fair to say that in one week of 1846 it presented the tragedy of Venice Preserved, the tragedy of Othello, and Cato—not, indeed, Addison’s, but ‘Cato; or, The Slave’s Revenge, a romantic drama.’  To relieve the tension of this trying time, the drama of the Jail Bird was enacted, and Jack Sheppard and Rookwood were at one time or another found to be the taste of the Albert audiences.

The Albert Saloon had also its pantomimes, and for several years the noted clown, Paul Herring, was in its company.  Herring had begun life, like other famous artists, by performing daily—and innumerable times daily—in Richardson’s show at Bartholomew Fair.  He came to the Albert Saloon in 1839, and was afterwards clown at the Victoria and other theatres.  In his later days he subsided into the lean and slippered pantaloon, a part that he played in the Drury Lane pantomime of 1877, the year before his death.

The glory of the Albert appears to have waned at the end of the forties, and the place was closed about 1857, and the Royal Standard, a public-house numbered 106, Shepherdess Walk is now its only representative. [69]

[The newspapers, and bills and posters of the Albert Saloon (W.); Colburn’s Kalendar, 1840, pp. 14, 163.]

p. 70NEW GLOBE PLEASURE-GROUNDS, MILE END ROAD

The New Globe tavern, No. 359, Mile End Road, was and is (though somewhat altered)—a substantial building, with a fine golden globe still keeping its balance on the roof.  From the twenties or thirties [70a] till the sixties it had some spacious grounds in the rear, entered from an archway beside the tavern.  These grounds contained fine trees, and were prettily laid out with many fountains, statues, and rustic boxes.  On the west of the grounds was the Regent’s Canal, and the whistling and puffing of the Eastern Counties Railway in the background were, for a time, looked on as amusing novelties.  Houses in Whitman Road and Longfellow Road (at the back of the tavern) now cover the site of these grounds.

In 1831 the Mile End New Globe Cricket Club was formed here, and in 1835 we hear of its beating the fashionable Montpelier Club. [70b]  The garden had its concerts and occasional ballets, and its ballooning, of which a tale is told by Henry Coxwell, aeronaut, who made a series of ascents from this place.  On a summer day in 1854 he received an unexpected summons for a balloon display.  It was the benefit night of Francis, the manager, and Coxwell was p. 71anxious to oblige.  But his balloon had just been oiled and it was a warm evening—too warm for the safety of the balloon.  Yet a balloon had been promised and fireworks.  About eight o’clock an anxious consultation took place in the gardens, and the concert, on Coxwell’s suggestion, was prolonged till it was pitch dark in the grounds.  The gardens were now crowded, and there were impatient cries for lighting up.  At last, after a little more delay, the reluctant balloonist was seen to enter—or rather to be pushed headlong into—the car.  But all went well: the balloon ascended, its occupant bowed and waved his flag, and in a burst of fireworks was quickly lost to view.  While all this was in progress a man, evidently suffering from a terrible cold, for he was greatly muffled up, and wearing whiskers—could they be false whiskers?—might have been seen anxiously skirting the edge of the crowd and making the best of his way to the Mile End Road.

Mr. Francis’s benefit was a success, but the next day there arrived at the New Globe a worthy farmer, bearing in a basket Coxwell’s duly ticketed balloon, which had descended in his field.  ‘Greatly obliged to you,’ said the proprietor.  ‘No lives lost, I hope?’  ‘No lives,’ said the farmer; ‘there was none to lose.  The fellow found by my man Joe was thought to have expired, yet all the life he ever had was out of him; but you know and I know that he never had any, mister.’  The farmer spoke the truth: the Globe balloonist was a dummy!

[Newspaper advertisements; Read’s Annals of Cricket; Coxwell’s My Life and Balloon Experiences.  There are three lithographs of the Globe and its gardens (circa 1839?) from drawings by H. M. Whichelo.—W.].

p. 72THE RED HOUSE, BATTERSEA

To picture the Red House and its surroundings, one must put out of sight the fine park of Battersea, and go back to the first fifty years of the nineteenth century.  At that time there stood near the riverside, facing the south end of the present Victoria (or Chelsea Suspension) Bridge, a picturesque tavern of red brick, with white pointings and green-painted shutters.  On a summer day the pleasantest place for alfresco refreshment was a small jetty in front of the tavern, beneath the elm-trees and the flagstaff that flew the colours of the house.  On the east side was a garden with spacious boxes and arbours.

The Red House was the favourite goal of many Thames races, but in the twenties, thirties, and forties its fame was chiefly due to its shooting-ground, an enclosure about 120 yards square, where the Red House Club and the crack shots of the Metropolis were accustomed to meet.  Pigeons were sold for the shooting at fifteen shillings a dozen, starlings at four shillings, and sparrows at two shillings.  When sportsmen like Mr. Bloodsworth and Mr. ‘O.’ were on the spot the execution was deadly.  Thus, in 1832, in the first match at 30 birds each, each shot 28; in the second, B. killed 25, O. 23; and in a third match B. killed his 25, and O. his 22.

At one time a half-witted man called Billy the Nutman drove his little trade near the Red House, and for a few pence would stand in the water while sportsmen of the baser sort took shots in his direction.  Here, at any rate, pigeon-shooting did not encourage humanity or a sense of humour.

p. 73A nicer habitué of the Red House was the raven Gyp, the treasure of the landlord, Mr. Wright. [73]  Gyp was not, indeed, universally beloved, especially by the prowling dogs of the neighbourhood, on whom he pounced with beak and claw.  He was, moreover, not inexpert in thieving, and had, in many hiding-places, deposited the spoons and pairs of spectacles snapped up in leisure moments.  He had also formed a coin collection by swooping down on the sixpences and shillings placed on the bar by customers paying their reckoning.  He was a talking bird, but indulged neither in fatuous endearments nor horrid oaths.  He was, in truth, a practical joker of the finest feather.  His human ‘What’s a clock?’ elicited an answer from many a Cockney oarsman as he passed the Red House; and his ‘Boat ahoy!  Our Rock, over!’ could be heard across the river.  Now, at the White House (opposite the Red) was stationed a ferryman named Rock, and even Mr. James Rock was sometimes deceived.  Twice on one day he had crossed to the Red House to answer the call of a non-existent passenger, but the third time he caught the raven in the act, and flung the handiest missile—a pewter pot—at the mischievous bird.  The landlord was enraged, though Gyp escaped; but it was probably owing to this incident that Gyp was removed to a Midland county, where, in the absence of Cockneys and ferrymen, he pined away and died.

The frequenters of the Red House were not all pigeon-shooters.  Around it extended the drear and marshy waste of Battersea Fields, abounding in plants many and curious, but also in strange specimens of humanity.  In the early years of the nineteenth century an informal fair was held at Easter in the Fields; in 1823 it was prohibited, but the spirit of fairing was not dead, and from 1835 onwards the fair became perpetual, and especially vigorous on the Day of Rest.  A Battersea missionary, the Rev. Thomas Kirk, states his recollections of this fair as follows: ‘If ever there was a place out of hell which surpassed Sodom and Gomorrah in p. 74ungodliness and abomination, this was it.’  ‘I have gone,’ he says, ‘to this sad spot in the afternoon and evening of the Lord’s Day, when there have been from 60 to 120 horses and donkeys racing, foot-racing, walking matches, flying boats, flying horses, roundabouts, theatres, comic actors, shameless dancers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, gamblers of every description, drinking-booths, stalls, hawkers, and vendors of all kinds of articles.’  It would be impossible to describe the ‘mingled shouts and noises and the unmentionable doings of this pandemonium on earth.’

This is graphic enough, but perhaps a trifle severe, for it will be noted that in the worthy missionary’s indictment the donkeys and the roundabouts are hardly less heinous counts than the gambling and the unmentionable doings.  However this may be, Battersea Fields for years not only outraged the notion of a quiet Sunday, but in the summertime attracted by thousands the choicest specimens of the p. 75loafer, the ‘gypsey,’ and the rowdy.  It might have been left to the local builder to cover the objectionable fields with bricks and mortar, but a better way was found.  In 1846 an Act of Parliament empowered the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to form a park in the Fields, and in 1850 the Red House and its shooting-ground were purchased by them for £10,000.  But the landlord (James Ireland) and the fair people had still two years to run.  Mr. Ireland, on his part, considerably forced the pace, and made his garden into a minor Vauxhall, where we hear of balloons and fireworks, a ballet, a circus, a dancing-platform, and a tight rope.  All this must have been on a humble scale, for sixpence and threepence were the highest charges.  It was in 1852 that Mr. John Garratt raced Mr. Hollyoak from the Old Swan to the Red House for £5, their boats being washing-tubs drawn by geese.  Nothing is new in ‘amusements,’ and even this silly contest was as old as 1844, when John Barry, the clown of Astley’s, had conducted (in full canonicals) a similar craft from Vauxhall to Westminster. [75]  As another attraction Ireland introduced the pedestrian Searles to perform the dismal feat of walking 1,000 miles in 1,000 consecutive hours.  Mr. Searles walked for six weeks, from July 7 to August 18 (1851), and an ox was roasted whole in the grounds to celebrate his achievement.  A monster loaf, a plum-pudding weighing a hundredweight, and a butt of Barclay’s best, were at the same time presented to the public.  A calf, a fat sheep, and a prime pig were promised for future Sundays.

The fair was suppressed by the magistrates in May, 1852, and from this time the formation of Battersea Park went slowly on till its formal opening on March 28, 1858.  It occupies 198 acres of the old Fields, and has absorbed, besides the Red House, some other places of resort—the Tivoli Gardens on the river front, and the Balloon tavern and gardens in the marshland.

p. 76[Bills and advertisements (W.); H. S. Simmonds, All about Battersea; Picture of London, 1841–1846; Colburn’s Kalendar, 1840; and Bell’s Life (for the pigeon-shooting); Walford, vi. 476 f.; Sexby’s Municipal Parks.]

There are several lithographs and water-colour drawings, all showing the front of the house and the jetty.  A similar view (an oil-painting) in Mr. Gardner’s collection is reproduced in Birch’s London on Thames, Plate XVII.

p. 77BRUNSWICK GARDENS (OR VAUXHALL PLEASURE-GARDENS), VAUXHALL

‘These beautiful grounds, once the resort of Royalty,’ were opened by a Mr. King in 1839, and flourished for a few years, till about 1845.  Their famous neighbour ‘Vauxhall’ was no longer what it had been, and in 1840 was actually closed for a year.  There was thus an opening for a ‘Minor Vauxhall’ with summer concerts à la Musard.

A band of from thirty to fifty performers was engaged under Blewitt as director and composer, and the grand gala concerts twice a week were hardly inferior to those of Vauxhall as it then was.  Operatic and dance music, and plenty of ballads and comic songs, formed the programme.  The comic singer was the popular Henry Howell; the other vocalists are not much known to fame—Mr. Hart and Mr. Frost, and two ladies, Mademoiselle Braehem and Miss Gieulien, who seem to have modelled their names on those of better-known musicians.  The concerts were followed by Darby’s fireworks and by ascents of Montgolfier balloons, which, ‘on reaching a certain height,’ discharged parachutes, and themselves descended quietly into the gardens, instead of wandering off to risky trees and ponds in remote English counties.  The admission was a shilling or sixpence, with refreshments, and in 1840 the experiment was tried of admitting ladies free.

‘The resort of Royalty’ to the gardens was legitimately inferred from the fact that the grounds were at the back of Brunswick House, the former residence of the Duke of p. 78Brunswick.  The local resident entered his pleasure-garden from the Wandsworth Road, and respectfully skirted the house and its private grounds till he reached a spacious lawn at the back.  This was bordered on two sides by rustic boxes and refreshment bars, and by an orchestra and assembly-room.  The pleasantest feature of the garden was a promenade platform erected on piles over the Thames.  Close by was the river entrance and the pier of the Vauxhall Hotel, at which the steamboats from Hungerford Market and the City landed visitors at about seven o’clock.

Brunswick House, an ugly but spacious brick mansion (No. 54, Wandsworth Road), is still standing, and is now used as a Club for the employés of the London and South-Western Railway.  The garden space is absorbed by yards and wharves.

[Bills and newspaper advertisements; a plan of the gardens, 1844; and a drawing.—W.]

p. 79FLORA GARDENS, CAMBERWELL

These gardens, entered from the Wyndham Road, Camberwell, had a brief but lively existence from 1849 till about 1857.  A central walk, adorned with fountains and lawns on either hand, led to a ball-room on the right, and on the left to a maze described as ‘the nearest to that of Hampton Court.’  This maze was intricate and verdant, and provided with a competent guide, while in the middle—in which respect it surpassed ‘that of Hampton Court’—it had a magic hermitage inhabited by a learned Chaldean astrologer.

Concerts and dancing took place every evening in the summer, the admission being sixpence.  On special occasions there were costume balls with a large band.  From 1851 to 1854 James Ellis, the former lessee of Cremorne, was manager.  He gave a ball à la Watteau, and in 1854 repeated Lord Chief Baron Nicholson’s ‘1,000 guineas fête,’ [79] which had the genuine, and slightly risky, Nicholson flavour.  It lasted three days, and included a steeplechase by lady jockeys, a Coventry procession by torchlight, with Lady Godiva and other characters sustained ‘by artists’ (presumably not R.A’s) ‘from the Royal Academy.’  There were also Arabian Nights’ entertainments, and a mock election for Camberwell, in which the candidates addressed the free and independent voters from the hustings.

On Sundays the Flora Gardens granted free admissions, and a representative of Paul Pry who visited the place in 1857 describes the local frequenters.  Polly P*rs*ns was, p. 80he tells us, quite up to the door in her summer turn-out, while that pretty, gazelle-like girl from the ‘Manor,’ Lizzie B., accompanied by her particularly especial friend Polly P*rk*r, amused themselves by firing at targets for nuts. [80]

[Plan of Gardens in 1855 (W.); bills, advertisements, etc. (W.); Theatrical Journal, 1851.]

p. 81MONTPELIER TEA GARDENS, WALWORTH

These gardens, attached to the Montpelier House tavern, came into existence in the later years of the eighteenth century.  William Hazlitt, the essayist (born in 1778), recalls with pleasure his ‘infant wanderings’ in this place, to which he used to be taken by his father. [81a]

In July, 1796, the newly formed Montpelier Club played their first match in their cricket ground at Montpelier Gardens; and on August 10 and 11 of that year the same ground was the scene of a match of a rather painful, if curious, character.  The game, like all the cricket of the period, had high stakes dependent on it—in this case 1,000 guineas—and the players were selected (by two noble lords) from the pensioners of Greenwich Hospital: eleven men with one leg against eleven with one arm.  The match began at ten, but about three a riotous crowd broke in, demolished the gates and fences, and stopped the proceedings till six o’clock, when play was resumed.  On the second day the elevens reappeared, being brought to the scene of action in three Greenwich stage-coaches, not without flags and music.  The match was played out, and the one-legged men beat the poor one-arms by 103. [81b]

p. 82In the first thirty years of the nineteenth century the place had considerable local reputation as a tea-garden, and was noted for its maze.  It did not become extinct till the end of the fifties.

In 1828 one of the attractions by day and by candle-light was the waxworks booth of the Messrs. Ewing, ‘consisting of 129 public characters, large as life.’  In this collection, omitting minor celebrities, were to be seen George IV. in his chair of state; the lamented Princess Charlotte; Guy Fawkes, who attempted to blow up the Parliament House; the Archbishop of York; Wallace, the hero of Scotland; ‘the unfortunate John Bellingham’; and Daniel Dancer, ‘the miserable miser,’ with his sister and servant.  There was, moreover, a likeness of the celebrated living skeleton, ‘procured at enormous expense and difficulty’ (presumably to the skeleton).  ‘Those who delight,’ said the bills, ‘in the wonders of the Creator will no doubt be highly gratified, without enduring that unpleasantness which some have complained of when viewing the being himself [i.e., the skeleton].’ [82]

The gardens were to the west of the present Walworth Road, a little to the south-west of Princes Street.  The Montpelier tavern and Walworth Palace of Varieties (No. 18, Montpelier Street) is on part of the site.

[Bills and newspaper notices; Picture of London, 1802–1830; W. W. Read’s Annals of Cricket.]

p. 83THE SURREY ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

A view here reproduced represents these once famous gardens as they appeared in the early thirties.  They were in existence, somewhat transformed, as late as 1877, but it is now difficult to imagine that they were situated in a populous region between the Kennington and Walworth Roads.

The ‘Zoo’ which found a home in a beautiful garden in the south of London was for some time no mean rival to the Zoo par excellence in Regent’s Park, while, as a place of public entertainment, the Surrey Gardens had something of the popularity of Cremorne, with which they were, in fact, nearly coeval.  But here the resemblance ends, for the Surrey Zoo had no dancing-platform, [83] no alcoholic drinks for more than thirteen years, and rarely furnished to the police-court reporter any copy worthy of his notice.  The gardens were generally closed at 10 p.m., and the addition in 1846 of two new constables to the permanent staff was advertised as an effective terror to evil-doers.  The gardens were by no means solely frequented by South Londoners, though they were far from the luxurious west, and on the wrong side of the Thames.  Fireworks, promenade concerts and ballooning were a bait for the shillings of the sightseer, but for more than twenty years at least these attractions never quite sophisticated the simple recreation afforded by the Zoological Garden.

The founder, and for many years the proprietor, of these gardens was Edward Cross, whose menagerie at Exeter p. 84Change was once a London sight and the abode of the famous elephant Chunee.  But Exeter Change, as old views of London clearly show, projected itself in an obstructive way across the pavement of the Strand, and in 1829 was removed for the formation of Burleigh Street.  Mr. Cross then moved his animals to a temporary home in the King’s Mews (the site of Trafalgar Square).  In the autumn of 1831 the menagerie found itself in South London.  The Manor-House, Walworth, had attached to it a fine garden of fifteen acres and a lake of three acres, [84] which was not only a picturesque feature, but, as we shall afterwards see, a valuable theatrical asset as ‘real water.’  The owner of the Manor-House had already spent several thousands on his grounds, and it was not difficult for Cross to make the necessary alterations.  The gardens were remodelled or laid out anew by Henry Phillips, author of Sylva Florifera, with flower-beds, walks, and undulating lawns, and an early guidebook to the gardens gives a list of its two hundred varieties of hardy trees.  Aviaries were soon put up for the singing birds, and swings and cages for the parrots.  The water-birds readily took to the little ponds, and the swans and herons were soon at home in the Great Lake, where they found an island haven overhung by drooping willows.  The lions and tigers were caged in a great circular conservatory of glass (something like the palm-house at Kew), 300 feet long, and constructed nearly in the centre of the grounds.  A still larger octagon building with enclosed paddocks was erected for the zebras, emus, and kangaroos.

The Companion to the gardens, issued in 1835, duly sets forth the catalogue of the animals and birds, and many numbers of the Mirror magazine give neat woodcuts of the ‘latest additions,’ at that time apparently rare or curious, though now sufficiently familiar.  The greatest popular successes were the three giraffes—the first ever seen in England—brought over in 1836 from Alexandria; the orang-outang; the Indian one-horned rhinoceros (1834); Nero, the lion who p. 85cost £800, and was stated to be twenty years old; and a gigantic tortoise, which small children used to ride.

The Zoological Garden was inaugurated under distinguished auspices, and the prospectus of 1831 proclaims as patrons the Queen, the Duchess of Kent, the Princess Victoria, and an imposing array of Dukes and Marquises.  The season tickets were a guinea, and the admission at the gates was from first to last one shilling.  In this prospectus nothing was said about popular amusements, and for several years nothing much was done in this direction beyond anniversary fêtes of the fancy fair description.  On such occasions performers like Ramo Samee, the sword-swallower, and Blackmore of Vauxhall made their appearance, Blackmore’s function being to cross the lake on a rope sixty feet high.

In 1837 the South London Horticultural Society, formed in the preceding year, held the first of many successful flower-shows in the gardens.  In the same year the first panorama was displayed—‘Vesuvius, with the town and port of Posilippo.’  The lake was, of course, the Bay of Naples, with feluccas and a miniature British frigate lying at anchor.  The painter of Vesuvius, as of many of the later panoramas, was George Danson, the scene-painter at Astley’s.  Danson was a clever artist in his way; his panoramic drawing was good, and his colouring well kept under, so that his productions would bear inspection by daylight.  At night-time the fireworker of the gardens, J. Southby, appeared on the scene, and Vesuvius was soon in eruption.  On the day when the first eruption was to take place the manager of the gardens—if Bell’s Life is not misleading us—solemnly warned the chief fireman of the City, in case he should send to Walworth engines that might be more needed elsewhere.

Vesuvius was repeated in 1838, and henceforth the Surrey Zoo was never without an exhibition of the kind.  It is a good rule always to see a panorama or a big model whenever one has the opportunity, but the reader will perhaps be contented if I set forth the chronology of the p. 86Surrey panoramas in a footnote. [86a]  However carefully painted the canvas might be, a subject was preferred that lent itself to treatment by gunpowder and fireworks.  Thus, Vesuvius was followed by Mount Hecla; Old London was burnt in the Great Fire of 1666; Gibraltar was besieged; Badajoz stormed ‘with effects of real ordnance’; and the taking of Sebastopol was truly terrific.

The city of Rome (covering five acres) was a favourite subject.  The scene showed the bridge over the Tiber, St. Peter’s, and the Castle of St. Angelo.  At night-time Southby’s fireworks legitimately reproduced the Roman Girandola of Easter Monday:

“At the Surrey Menagerie every one knows
(Because ’tis a place to which every one goes)
There’s a model of Rome: and as round it one struts
One sinks the remembrance of Newington Butts;
And having one’s shilling laid down at the portal,
One fancies oneself in the City Immortal.” [86b]

p. 87Quieter efforts were the Temples of Elora, and Edinburgh, a subject suggested by Prince Albert.

Balloon ascents, which had such a strange fascination for the frequenters of Vauxhall in the thirties and forties, and which were always an attraction at Cremorne, do not seem to have been a feature of the Surrey Gardens.  An ascent by Henry Coxwell, on September 7, 1854, was of some importance, as the balloonist for the first time gave a public exhibition of his methods of balloon-signalling in war.  His apparatus was attached to the car, and the signals were supposed to be addressed to the beleaguered fortress of Sebastopol.  Some pigeons were also taken up, and sent forth from the balloon with messages.

Two curiosities of ballooning are connected with these gardens.  In May, 1837, Mr. and Mrs. Graham took up in a parachute attached to their balloon a monkey named Signor Jacopo, attired in a scarlet coat and feathers.  The monkey descended in his parachute on Walworth Common, p. 88and, being duly labelled with ‘two pounds reward,’ was promptly returned to Mr. Cross.  In 1838 the appearance of the ‘Montgolfier’ balloon [88a] excited no ordinary interest.  It was a monstrous machine made of lawn varnished, and was said to be ‘of the height of the York Column, with a circumference nearly half that of the dome of St. Paul’s.’  It was announced to ascend on May 24, and people began to assemble in the grounds at noon.  By seven o’clock there were nearly 5,000 spectators, and, behind a huge tarpaulin, the balloon was supposed to be in process of inflation.  The balloon was attached to a platform in the middle of the lake, and its peculiarity was that it had to be inflated by chopped straw burnt in a brazier under the orifice of the bag.  The size of the furnace had been miscalculated, and after the balloon had twice been set on fire, the ‘intrepid aeronaut’ decided not to ascend.  Some of the spectators considered that, at any rate, the balloon could be punished, and ‘a well-directed volley of stones’ soon left the monster prostrate on the lake.  An attempt was made to drag it on shore and tear it in pieces, but at this moment the cord broke.  Some of the rowdier spirits now sought out the proprietor, hoping to duck him in one of his own ponds.  And when this failed, they attacked the glass panes of the lion’s conservatory.  But suddenly the police appeared and Vesuvius burst forth in all its fury, and when the fireworks were over the visitors quietly dispersed.

From 1839 to 1844 orchestral concerts, without vocalists, were one of the principal attractions.  A good band, under C. Godfrey, performed music of the promenade-concert type—operatic overtures, dance-music by Strauss and Musard, with an occasional ‘classical’ first part, when Handel and Beethoven had their turn.

In 1844 there was a change of proprietors.  Edward Cross retired, [88b] and was succeeded by William Tyler, who had been p. 89the secretary to the gardens.  Next year a gigantic and very ugly orchestra was erected for the accommodation of a band of 300 under Jullien, [89] who had made a name by his promenade concerts at Covent Garden and Drury Lane.  Post-horn gallops and polkas now enlivened the multitude, and in this ‘Concert monstre’ the brass too often got the better of the strings.  Some vocalists (Mlle. Lovarny and Miss Huddart) were also introduced (1848).  These concerts and the panoramas bring us to 1855, which was practically the last year of the old Zoo.  For Tyler then disposed of his property, and sold off the wild beasts.  The popular taste was no doubt changing, though Tyler had done his best, and lit up the glass conservatory so that (as his advertisements stated) the ‘matchless collection of carnivora could be viewed by gaslight.’

The gardens were now taken in hand by the Surrey Music-Hall Company, who had a working capital of over £30,000, and rented the gardens for £346.  The chairman of this company was Sir W. de Bathe, but Jullien had a considerable stake in the enterprise.  At a cost of £18,200 a music-hall (in the classical sense of the word) was erected near the lake, on the site of the circular conservatory.  This building, by Horace Jones, was on a great scale, and would hold an audience of 12,000 and an orchestra of 1,000.  Its general appearance was not ineffective, but a critic described its style as degenerate Italian relieved in the French taste.  It was opened on July, 15, 1856, with a performance of ‘The Messiah,’ with Jullien, Clara Novello, Sims Reeves, Miss Dolby, and Piatti.

In the autumn the new hall had a strange tenant in Mr. C. H. Spurgeon, who, finding Exeter Hall and his own chapel too small, hired the building for four Sundays for a payment of £15 each Sunday.  On the evening of p. 90October 19 there was an enormous congregation.  While Spurgeon was engaged in prayer an extraordinary panic occurred.  Some mischief-maker raised a shout of ‘Fire!’ or, according to another account, there was an agonized cry of ‘The roof!  The roof!’  A mad rush was made for the doors, some of which seem to have been locked to prevent people strolling in and out of the gardens.  Spurgeon kept calm, and, when the terror subsided, some of the congregation found their way back to the hall, but seven persons had been killed and about fifty injured in the crush.

The new company was soon in difficulties, and in August of 1857 the directors were behindhand with their rates.  At a meeting of the shareholders Jullien complained bitterly that, though a profit of £1,000 had been made, he was given no money to pay his band.  He had lost—as he put it—£2,000 by his unpaid salary, and £2,000 by his worthless shares.  In 1859 there was a more modest orchestra of sixty, and the Surrey Gardens Choir performed madrigals; but in the background there were proceedings in Chancery, and in April the gardens—now described as of ten acres—were advertised for sale.  In June, 1861, the music-hall was burnt out, and though in the following year a picture of the Bay of Naples was offered to the public, the life of the gardens was wellnigh extinct.  It happened that at this time (1862) the authorities of St. Thomas’s Hospital had to leave their old home in Southwark, and needed a temporary resting-place.  They had the music-hall rebuilt, and used it for the reception of patients until 1871.  Then the new hospital was opened on the Albert Embankment.

The gardens nearly outlasted the seventies.  In May 1872, an enterprising lessee, Frederick Strange, who had been manager and proprietor of the Alhambra, opened the gardens for concerts, operettas, and ballets. [90]  The grounds had become a wilderness, and had to be considerably ‘improved.’  The theatre was the old music-hall remodelled.  p. 91At the opening concert Mme. Marimon and other members of Mapleson’s opera company appeared, and Sims Reeves and Mme. Patey sang at one of the ballad concerts.  But in 1873 the entertainments were fashioned on those of Cremorne.  There were Derby and Oaks ‘Festivals’ in May, and that unfortunate nobleman, ‘Sir Roger Tichborne,’ was announced to appear in the theatre.  In September there was a gala with ‘50,000’ lamps for the benefit of Robert Duffell, who had for half a century illumined Vauxhall, Cremorne, and smaller public gardens.

In 1875 the lessees were Messrs. Poole and Stacey, who produced comic opera and ballet.  Captain Boyton this year exhibited the life-saving apparatus with which he had crossed the Channel.  In 1877 a new manager or lessee, John Reeves, offered for a sixpenny admission an open-air dancing-platform, a variety entertainment, and the sight of a Canadian ox of 400 stone.  The last regular entertainment took place in the theatre on August 14, 1877.

In March, 1878, the theatre was hired for a single performance, a boxing match between Rooke and Harrington.  A rough company of 800 people were got together, and the prize, a splendid silver vase valued at £100, was ostentatiously displayed to the audience.  An old ‘Surrey’ waiter who was present is said to have recognized in this noble trophy a capacious leaden vessel which had stood on one of the refreshment counters in the water-drinking days of the Zoological Gardens. [91]

p. 92[This account is mainly based on a large collection of bills, views, and newspaper matter formed by the writer.  Some interesting details in Bishop H. H. Montgomery’s Kennington, 1889, chap. xi.; Walford, Old and New London; Blanchard in Era Almanack, 1871, p. 4; Blanchard’s Life.

Views: Plan of the gardens prefixed to the Companion to the Royal Surrey Gardens, third edition, 1835.  Lithograph published by Havell in 1832 (W.).  Lithograph by Alvey, 1836.  Views in the Mirror, 1832.  Illustrated London News, July 19, 1856 (view of gardens in 1856).  The annual panoramas were regularly pictured in the Mirror and the Illustrated London News.]

p. 93LIST OF MINOR GARDENS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In this list, which, though long, is not exhaustive, it is not practicable to do more than indicate the site and the approximate date.  Many of these places were only small gardens attached to public-houses.

I.—CHELSEA, PIMLICO, ETC.

Black Lion, Chelsea.—Church Street (formerly Church Lane), at the corner of Paulton Street (circa 1820).

Admiral Keppel, Chelsea.—Now No. 77, Fulham Road.  The gardens lay between Marlborough Road and Keppel Street, and extended to Albert Place at the back of the tavern (1790–1856).

Marlborough (afterwards Wellington) Gardens and Cricket Ground.—West end of Cadogan Street.  The gardens and cricket field lay between Cadogan Street and Draycott Place, and part of the Guinness Trust Buildings in Marlborough Road are now on the site (circa 1794–1850, or later).

Six Bells, No. 197, King’s Road, Chelsea.—Still preserves a small garden and bowling-green.  (View in P. Norman’s London Vanished, etc., p. 264.)

The Swan, Chelsea.—Old Swan House (No. 20, Embankment Gardens) is on part of the site (circa 1780–1873).  (Blunt’s Chelsea, p. 116; cf. p. 119 for the older Swan (circa 1780) in Chelsea.)

Kensington.—Several small gardens: The King’s Arms (early nineteenth century); White Horse to circa 1850 (now Holland Arms, No. 1, St. Mary Abbot’s Terrace).

Hoop and Toy, Brompton.—Now No. 34, Thurloe Place, S.W. (circa 1833–1860).

p. 94King’s Arms, Pimlico.—Now No. 68, Ranelagh Road.  The gardens were near the river, between Claverton Street and Ranelagh Road (circa 1820–1850).

New Ranelagh Gardens, Pimlico.—See supra, p. 28.

The Gun, Pimlico.—The Buckingham Palace Hotel on part of the site (circa 1830–1857).

The Monster, St. George’s Row, Pimlico.—Now 2, Sutherland Terrace (circa 1820–1830 and later).

The Flask, Ebury Square.—See supra, p. 29.

Orange Tea-Gardens, Pimlico (with amateur theatre).—St. Barnabas’ Schools in Church Street, Pimlico Road, on site (circa 1830–1845).  These gardens were not identical (as incorrectly stated in London Pleasure-Gardens, p. 219) with those of Strombolo House, which is still standing, and now numbered 77 and 79, Pimlico Road.

Union Tea-Gardens.—Now No. 11, Pimlico Road, at the corner of Ranelagh Grove (circa 1802–1846).

II.—BAYSWATER, ETC.

Bott’s Archery Tavern, Bayswater Road.—Now No. 4, Bathurst Street.  Bathurst Street is on the site of the bowling-green (circa 1834–1839).

Princess Royal, Bayswater.—See supra, p. 38.

New Bagnigge Wells (or ‘Crown’ Gardens), Bayswater Road.—Now Crown Hotel (circa 1819–1840).

Bayswater Tea-Gardens, Lancaster Gate.—Circa 1790–1854.  (See London Pleasure-Gardens, p. 117.)

The Maze, Harrow Road.—Now No. 6, Chichester Place, Harrow Road (circa 1842).

Ranelagh Gardens, Paddington.—Circa 1846.

Jackson’s Racing Grounds and Hunting-School, Westbourne Green (1837–1840).

The Plough, Notting Hill.—Now No. 144, High Street, Notting Hill (circa 1834).

Yorkshire Stingo, Marylebone Road.—Circa 1770–1848.  (See London Pleasure-Gardens, p. 115.)

p. 95III.—NORTH LONDON.

For White Conduit House, Belvidere Tavern, Canonbury Tavern, Hornsey Wood House, Highbury Barn, and Kentish Town Assembly-House, see London Pleasure-Gardens, Group III.

Thatched House, Islington.—Now No. 119, Essex Road (circa 1810–1830, or later).

The Three Compasses, Hornsey, by the New River (1824 and later).  (Hone, Every-Day Book, ii., p. 1311; Sherington, Story of Hornsey, p. 43; Thorne’s Environs, s.v. Hornsey.)

Bull and Gate.—Now No. 389, Kentish Town Road (1801 and later).

Castle.—Now No. 147, Kentish Town Road.  Garden site in Castle Place and Castle Terrace (circa 1830–1851).

Hoxton Tea-Gardens, Britannia Saloon.—Now Britannia Theatre (1802–1841).

North Pole, New North Road.—Now No. 190 (circa 1840).

Edinburgh Castle, Mornington Road, N.W.—Has still a small garden and a museum formed by Mr. T. G. Middlebrook (before 1838).

Bedford Arms, High Street, Camden Town.—Now Bedford Palace of Varieties.  The gardens were between Arlington Street and High Street.  May Terrace was built on the bowling-green (circa 1824 and later).

Brecknock Arms.—Now No. 227, Camden Road (circa 1839–1870).

Mother Red Cap.—Now 174, High Street, Camden Town (from end of eighteenth century to early nineteenth century).

Southampton Arms.—Now No. 1, High Street, Camden Town (circa 1818–1849).

Abbey Tavern, St. John’s Wood.—Now No. 8, Violet Hill Abbey Gardens, N.W. (from circa 1844).

Eyre Arms, St. John’s Wood.—Now No. 1, Finchley Road.  The space behind the tavern and the adjoining Wellington Hall is now Hannay’s Riding-School (chiefly 1820 and 1830).

Swiss Cottage, St. John’s Wood.—Now 98, Finchley Road.  Has still a small garden (circa 1844).

p. 96Hampstead.—The Spaniards (see London Pleasure-Gardens, p. 184); Bull and Bush (still with a garden, recently celebrated in song—cf. Thorne’s Handbook of Environs of London, s.v. Hampstead); Jack Straw’s Castle.

IV.—CLERKENWELL.

Bagnigge Wells, 1759–1841.—See London Pleasure-Gardens, Group I.; also for some other gardens of early nineteenth century.

Cherry Gardens, Clerkenwell.—South-west corner of Bowling-Green Lane (eighteenth century to circa 1852).

Union Tavern.—Now 2, King’s Cross Road (circa 1844–1860).

V.—EAST LONDON.

Falcon Tavern.—East side of Bethnal Green (1830).

Pitt’s Head, Bethnal Green.—Circa 1820–1840.

Ben Jonson, Stepney.—Circa 1832.

Green Dragon, Stepney (1830).

Golden Eagle Tavern, Mile End Road.—Circa 1827.

Lusby’s Pleasure-Gardens, Mile End Road.—Now Paragon Theatre of Varieties, 95, Mile End Road (circa 1874–1877).

New Victoria Gardens, Mile End.—The Victoria Tavern, No. 110, Grove Road, Arbery Road, and Medhurst Road, mark the site (circa 1840–1850).

Red Cow, Dalston.—Circa 1801–1847.

VI.—SOUTH LONDON.

For Vauxhall Gardens (circa 1661–1859), Cumberland Gardens, etc., see London Pleasure-Gardens, Group VI.

Old King’s Arms, Southwark.—Now No. 68, Surrey Row—formerly Melancholy Walk (before 1852).  (See Rendle and Norman, Old Inns of Southwark.)

The Horns, Kennington.—Now No. 214, Kennington Park Road.  Gardens circa 1800–1824.

The Beehive, Walworth.—See supra, p. 81.

p. 97Victoria (or Royal Victoria) Gardens, Vauxhall.—Separated from Vauxhall Gardens by Miller’s Lane (now St. Oswald’s Place).  Tate Street and part of Neville Street on site.  Bounded on east by Vauxhall Street (circa 1837–1840).

Green Gate, Lambeth.—Now 114, Ethelred Street (circa 1710–1893).

Camberwell Grove House.—End of eighteenth century to circa 1846.

Nine Elms Tavern.—Now 33, Nine Elms Lane, S.W.  The garden site now occupied by the wharf of John Bryan and Co. (circa 1840).

Springfield Watercress and Pleasure-Grounds.—Near the Stag Turnpike, Wandsworth Road (circa 1860).  Fêtes, with dancing and illuminations.

Jamaica House, Bermondsey.—At the end of Cherry Garden Street, south of the Jamaica Road.  Visited by Pepys, 1667.  Gardens existed till circa 1858.

Cherry Gardens, Rotherhithe.—Part of Cherry Garden Street now on the site.  There is a Cherry-Tree public-house, No. 50, in that street.  Visited by Pepys, 1664.  Gardens existed till circa 1846.

Mention must also be made of a few other nineteenth-century gardens which, though not in London, were a good deal frequented by Londoners:

Rosherville Gardens, Gravesend.—Established 1837, and still in existence.

The North Woolwich Gardens (1851 to circa 1883).—Now represented by the Pavilion Hotel and the Royal Victoria Gardens, a public recreation-ground (Sexby’s Municipal Parks, p. 457).

Beulah Spa (circa 1831–1854), with its archery and entertainments of the ‘fancy fair’ kind, the site now partly occupied by the Beulah Spa ‘Hydro’ and its grounds.

Anerley Gardens.—Near the station, Anerley (circa 1841–1868).  (Thorne’s Environs, s.v. Anerley; Walford, Old and New London, vi. 314.)

p. 98INDEX

A

Abbey Tavern, 95

Acrotormentarian Society, 40

Adams, W. H., balloonist, 9

Adams, Mrs. W. H., 46

Adelaide Gallery Casino, 7

Adelphi Theatre, 64

Admiral Keppel, Chelsea, 93

Albert Saloon, 68, 69

Albion Tavern, 5

Alhambra, Leicester Square, 13

Amburgh, Van, 69

American drinks, 7

Anerley Gardens, 97

Angling, 42, 52

Aquatic tournament, Cremorne, 8

Arban, J., 90

Archery, 38, 48

Archery Tavern, Bayswater, 38, 94

‘Aristocratic Fête,’ Cremorne, 8

Ashburnham House, Chelsea, 6, 23

Assembly House, Kentish Town, 95

Aston Park, Birmingham, 14

Atkinson, Miss M. A., actress, 61

Audrian, 19

B

Bagnigge Wells, 96

Bagnigge Wells, New.  See New Bagnigge Wells

Baldwin, vocalist, 67

Balloon, the captive, 16

Balloon Tavern, 75

Ballooning, 3, 5, 9, 16, 17, 30, 46, 47, 50, 51, 57, 58, 63, 68, 70, 71, 77, 87, 88

‘Baron’ Nicholson.  See Nicholson.

Barrett, Oscar, 67

Barry, John, clown, 74, 75

Barton, William, 50

Bathe, Sir W. de, 89

Battersea, 72–76

Battersea Fields, 73–75

Battersea Park, 75

Battle Bridge, 54

Batty, William, circus proprietor, 15, 30

Batty’s Hippodrome, 30, 31

Baum, John, 17–22

Bayswater, 37, 38, 94

Bayswater Tea-Gardens, 94

Beaufoy, H., 47

Beckwith family, 16

Bedford Arms, 95

Beehive, Walworth, 81, 82

Belgian fête, Cremorne, 16

Bell public-house, King’s Cross, 55

Belvidere Tavern, 95

Ben Jonson Tavern, Stepney, 96

Berenger, Baron de, 1–5

Bermondsey, 97

Bethnal Green, 96

Beulah Spa, 97

Billy the Nutman, 72

Bishop, James, 14

Black Lion, Chelsea, 93

Blackmore, rope-walker, 85

Blanchard, E. L., 26, 28, 29, 63, 67

Blessington, Lady, 31, 32

Blewitt, musician, 77

Blondin, ‘the female,’ 13, 14

Boisset family, 19

Boleno, H., 67

Bologna, harlequin, 53

Booth, ‘General,’ 65

Borini, bandmaster, 7

Bosjesmans, the, 8

Bott, James, 38, 94

Bott’s Archery Tavern, 94

Bouthellier, 9

Bower Saloon, 58

Bowling saloon, American, 7

Boyton, Captain, 91

Bradley, Henry, manager, 68

Braehem, Mlle., 77

p. 99Brandon, Mr. Alfred, 21, 22

Brecknock Arms, 95

Britannia Saloon, 95

Brunswick Gardens, Vauxhall, 77, 78

Brunswick House, 77, 78

Buislay, H. and E., 63

Bull and Bush, Hampstead, 96

Bull and Gate, 95

Burnand’s Black-eyed Susan, 17

Byron, Lord, 39

C

Cabinet Theatre, 56

Camberwell, 79, 80, 97

Camberwell Grove House, 97

Campbell, Herbert, 67

Campbell, of Sadler’s Wells, 67

Canonbury Tavern, 95

Caroline, Mme., 15

Castle Gardens, 95

Cavanagh, John, fives-player, 49

Cave and Mackney, 10

Chabert, 8

Chalk Farm, 39–41

Chelsea, 93; and see Cremorne and Manor-House Baths

Chelsea manor-houses, 25

Chelsea Vestry, 11, 20

Cherry Gardens, Clerkenwell, 96

— Rotherhithe, 97

Chinese Exhibition, 51

Christie, Mr., 39

Clarence Theatre, the Royal, 56

Clark, T. G., 64, 65

Clarke, Miss, rope-dancer, 59

Clerkenwell, 52, 96

Coal Hole, the, 4

Cochrane, Lord, 2

Cocking’s parachute, 46

Compasses, the Three, 95

Concerts at Grecian Saloon, 58–61

Connop, J., 35

Conquest family, 63

Conquest, B. O., 63, 64, 66

Conquest, George, 63, 64, 65

Conquest, George, the younger, 64

Core, Cristoforo, 8

Coronation Pleasure-Grounds, 60

Coveney, Harriet, 67

Cowell, Sam, 10, 63

Coxwell, Henry, 63, 70, 87

Cremorne Gardens, 1–24; plan of, 6–8; sale of, 22, 23; site of, 23, 24

Cremorne House, 1, 2

Creole choristers, 10

Cricket, 70, 81

Crockford’s Club, 13, 25

Cromwell, the Rev. Canon, 21

Cross, Edward, 83, 88

Crown Tavern, Pentonville, 59

Crown Gardens, Bayswater, 94

Cruikshank, George, 2, 24

Cumberland Gardens, 96

Cushine, Thérèse, 67

Cyder Cellars, 4

D

Dancer, Daniel, miser, 82

Dancing at Cremorne, 7, 17

Danson, George, 85, 86

Darby, fireworker, 3, 77

Deacon, manager, 53

Dean, Miss, 46

Debach brothers, 30

Delamarne’s balloon, 17

Deulin, 10, 67

De Vere, conjurer, 19

Dickens, Charles, 59, 60, 82 n.

Dolby, Miss, 89

D’Orsay, Count, 32, 34

Doughty’s dogs, 19

Dowling, Isaac, 67

Duelling, 39, 40

Duffell, Robert, fireworker, 3, 8, 91

E

Eagle, the, City Road, 57–67

Edinburgh Castle, tavern, 95

Edwards, Lambert, 10

Eel-Pie House, Highbury, 42, 43

Eglinton Tournament, 15, 16

Elliot brothers, acrobats, 51

Ellis, James, manager, 5, 79

Evans’s Supper-Rooms, 10

Ewing’s waxworks, 82

Exeter Change, 83

Eyre Arms, 95

F

Falcon Tavern, Bethnal Green, 96

Fancourt, Mr. H., 43, 59

Finsbury Fields, 48

Fitzgerald, Percy, 22

Fitzwilliam, Mrs., 56

Fives-playing, 49

Flask Tavern, Ebury Square, 29

Flexmore, Richard, 7, 62

Flora Gardens, Camberwell, 79, 80

Flower-shows, 6, 8, 85

‘Flying man.’  See Groof

Forde, Miss, 67

Franconi, 8, 51

Frazer, Mr., vocalist, 61

Frost, Mr., vocalist, 77

p. 100G

Garibaldi, 44

Garnerin’s parachute, 46

Garratt, John, 75

Garrick’s Head, tavern, 4

Geary, Stephen, 55

‘Geneive,’ Mme., 14

Genvieve, Mme., 14

Gieulien, Miss, 77

Glindon, Robert, 10, 60

Globe Pleasure-Grounds, 70, 71

Godard’s balloon, 16, 17

Godfrey, C., bandmaster, 88, 89

Godfrey, D., bandmaster, 89

Golden Eagle Tavern, 96

Gore House, Kensington, 31–33

Graham, Mr., balloonist, 30, 87

Graham, Mrs., balloonist, 3, 30, 46, 50, 80, 87

Greaves, W., artist, 24

Grecian Saloon and Theatre, 57–67

Green, Charles, balloonist, 5, 9, 46, 57

Green Dragon, Stepney, 96

Green Gate, City Road, 59, 60

Green Gate, Lambeth, 97

Grimaldi, 53

Groof, Vincent de, 17–19

Grove House, Camberwell, 97

Grover, Russell, 61

Gun, the, Pimlico, 64

Gyp, the raven, 73

Gypson, balloonist, 68

H

Hackney, 46, 47

Hampstead, 95

Hampton, John, balloonist, 3, 30, 51

Handel, 88

Harrington, boxer, 91

Harris, Thomas, balloonist, 57, 58, 82

Harroway, musician, 67

Hart, Mr., vocalist, 77

Hawkins, Sir Henry, 22

Hazlitt, William, 81

Hengler, 29, 59

Herring, Paul, clown, 69

Highbury, 42

Highbury Barn, 13, 14, 95

Hippodrome, Batty’s, Kensington, 30, 31

Hippodrome, Notting Hill, 34–36

Hogarth’s ‘Evening,’ 52

Hollyoak, 75

Hoop and Toy, Brompton, 93

Horn, C., musician, 61

Horns, the, Kennington, 96

Hornsey, 95

Hornsey Wood House, 42, 43, 95

Howell, Henry, singer, 60, 77

Hoxton, 48

Hoxton Tea-Gardens, 95

Huddart, Miss, 89

Hunt, Henry, M.P., 57

Huntingdon, Lady, 1

I

Ireland, James, 75

Ireland, T., 5

Ironwork gates, Cremorne, 24; and see frontispiece

Isaacson, of Grecian Theatre, 7

Islington, 48, 95

‘Islington Vauxhall,’ 49

J

Jack Straw’s Castle, 96

Jackson’s racing-grounds, 94

Jamaica House, Bermondsey, 97

James, Miss Fraser (or Frazer), singer, 59; an illustration, p. 59

Jefferini, clown, 82

Jeffrey, Francis, 39

Joel, Herr von, 10

Jones, Emma, artist, 32

Jones, Horace, architect, 89

Jones, Tom, mimic, 68

Jullien, 89, 90

K

Kensington, 30–33, 93

Kentish Town, 44, 45

Kentish Town Assembly House, 95

King’s Arms, Kensington, 93

King’s Arms, Pimlico, 94

King’s Arms, the old, Southwark, 96

King’s Cross, 54–56

King’s Cross Theatre, 56

L

Lambeth, 97

Lanza, Gesualdo, 55, 56

Lanza, Rosalie, 56

Latour, Henri, 9, 10

Laurent, bandmaster, 7

Lauri family, 17

Leclercq family, 67

Leotard, 16

Littlejohn, manager, 5

Lovarny, Mlle., 89

Love, Miss, 10

Lumber Troop, 50

Lusby’s Pleasure-Gardens, 90

p. 101M

Mackney and Cave, 10

Maddox, equilibrist, 52

Maginn, Dr., 4

Manor-House, Walworth, 84

Manor-House Baths and Gardens, Chelsea, 25–29

Manor-House Theatre, Chelsea, 26

Marimon, Mme., 91

Marionettes at Cremorne, 7

Marlborough Gardens, Chelsea, 93

Marriott’s band, 7

Matthews, C. H., 41, 53

Matthews, Fanny, 5

Matthews, Tom, clown, 5

Maze, the, tavern, Harrow Road, 94

Mead, T., actor, 67

Mermaid Tavern, Hackney, 46, 47

Middlebrook, T. G., 95

Milano, harlequin, 67

Mile End, 70, 96

Millbank, 28

Moffatt’s circus, 51

Moncrieff, W. T., 67

Monster, the, Pimlico, 94

Montgolfier balloons, 16, 17, 77, 88

Montgomery, Charles, Grecian Theatre, 67

Montpelier Cricket Club, 70, 81

Montpelier Gardens, Walworth, 81, 82

Moore, T., the poet, 39

Mortram, fireworker, 8

Mother Red Cap, 95

Musard, 77

Myddelton, Sir Hugh, 52, 53

N

Napoleon, Prince Louis, 15

Natator, ‘man-frog,’ 16

New Bagnigge Wells, 94

New Globe Pleasure-Grounds, 70, 71

New Ranelagh, Millbank, 26–29

New River, 42, 52

New Victoria Gardens, Mile End, 96

Nicholls, Harry, 64

Nicholson, ‘Baron,’ 3–5, 13, 79

Nicholson, Renton.  See Nicholson, Baron

Nine Elms Tavern, 97

North Pole, 95

North Woolwich Gardens, 97

Notting Hill, 34–36, 94

Novello, Clara, 89

O

Old King’s Arms, Southwark, 96

Opera, 17, 55, 61

Orange Tea-Gardens, Pimlico, 94

P

Paganini, 59

Paget, Lieutenant, 49

Panarmonion Gardens, 54–56

Pandean Band, 58

Panoramas, Surrey Gardens, 85–87

Paragon Theatre, 96

Parkes, Miss C., 67

Parsons, organ-builder, 61

Patey, Madame, 91

Pavilion Theatre, 63

Penn, Granville, 2

Penn, William, 1

Pepper’s ghost, 44

Pereira, Mme., 16

Phillips, Henry, botanist, 84

Phillips, Philip, scene-painter, 58

Piatti, 89

Pigeon-shooting, 72

Pilton, James, 25

Pimlico, 29, 94

Pitt’s Head, 96

Plimmeri, Signor, 28

Plough, the, Notting Hill, 94

Poitevin, Mme., 9

Polytechnic Institution, 44

Poole, Charles, manager, 26

Poole and Stacey, managers, 91

Powell, Mrs.  See Geneive

Primrose Hill, 39

Princess Royal, Bayswater, 38

Pugilism, 42, 43

Punnett, P., 61

R

Racing, 34–36

Ramo Samee, 85

Random, Charles.  See Berenger

Ranelagh Gardens, Paddington, 94

Ranelagh, the New, Gardens, 26–29

Red Cow, Dalston, 96

Red House, Battersea, 72–76

Red Lion, Holborn, 12

Reeves, John, manager, 91

Reeves, Sims, 67, 89, 91

Rivière, Jules, 17

Robson, Frederick, 62

Rock, James, 73

Rooke, boxer, 91

Rosemary Branch, 48–51

Rosherville Gardens, 97

Rosoman, 52

Rouse, Thomas, 57–62

p. 102Rowlandson’s ‘Hackney Assembly,’ 47

Royal Oak, Bayswater, 37

Royal Standard Pleasure-Grounds, 68, 69

Russelli family, 80

S

Sadler, balloonist, 46, 47

Sadler’s Wells, 52, 53

St. John’s Wood, 95

St. Pancras Volunteers, 39

St. Thomas’s Hospital, 90

Sala, G. A., 6, 31, 32

Salamander, the Italian, 8

Salvation Army, 65, 66

Samee, Ramo, 85

Savage, Ned, wrestler, 42

Scott, John, 39

Searles, pedestrian, 75

Sharp, J. W., 10

Shepherd and Shepherdess Gardens, 57

Shepherd, T. H., artist, 24, 33, 41, 60

Sidney, A.  See Wigan, Alfred

Silvester.  See Sylvester

Simmons’s balloon, 17–19

Simpson, Thomas Bartlett, 5–12

Sir Hugh Myddelton’s Head, 52, 53

Six Bells, Chelsea, 93

‘Skeleton, the living,’ 82

Sloman, Charles, 67, 80

Sluice House, Highbury, 42, 43

Smith, Edward Tyrrell, 12–16

Smith, Miss, Grecian Theatre, 59

Smith, Richard, manager, 25–28

South London Horticultural Society, 85

Southampton Arms, 95

Southby, J., fireworker, 85

Southwark, 96

Soyer, Alexis, 31–33

Soyer, Madame, 32

Soyer’s symposium, 31–33

Spaniards, the, Hampstead, 96

Springfield Watercress Grounds, 97

Spry, H., 64

Spurgeon, C. H., 89

Stacey and Poole, managers, 91

Stacey, Walter, manager, 80

Stadium, Chelsea, 1–3, 24

Standard Pleasure-Grounds, 68, 69

Stanfield, Clarkson, 58

Stepney, 96

Stocks, Miss Sophia, 57, 58

Strange, Frederick, 90

Strombolo House, 94

Surrey Gardens.  See Surrey Zoological Gardens

Surrey Zoological Gardens, 55, 83, 92

Swiss Cottage, 95

Sylvester, A., 44

T

Thatched House, Islington, 95

Thorrington, H., 55

‘Tichborne, Sir Roger,’ 91

Tivoli Gardens, Battersea, 75

Tunstall, Miss, 67, 69

Turnour, fireworker, 26

Tyler, William, 88, 89

U

Union Tavern, Clerkenwell, 96

Union Tea-Gardens, 94

V

Van Amburgh, 69

Vaughan, Kate, 63

Vauxhall Gardens, 6–10, 29, 58, 96

Vauxhall Pleasure-Gardens, 77, 78

Vauxhall, the, Islington, 49

Vere.  See De Vere

Victor, Miss M. A., 64

Victoria Gardens, the New, Mile End, 96

Victoria Gardens, Vauxhall, 97

W

Walworth, 81, 82, 83 f.

Wandsworth Road, 78

Ward, James, artist, 4

Webb, Bill, pugilist, 43

Wellington Gardens, Chelsea, 93

Wellington Restaurant, 13

Weston, Edward, manager, 44

Weston’s Retreat, 44, 45

Whichelo, H. M., artist, 71

White Conduit House, 95

White Horse, Kensington, 93

Whitfield, George, 1

Whyte, John, 34

Wigan, Alfred, actor, 26

Wilberforce, William, 32

Williams, W. H., singer, 56

Wrestling, 40, 57, 69

Y

Yorkshire Stingo, 94

Young, Selina, 14

Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, London, E.C.

FOOTNOTES

[1]  The institution was being formed chiefly in 1831.  There is a prospectus dated May 28, 1831.

[2a]  On the owners of Cremorne House, built circa 1740, see Beaver, Chelsea, p. 156.

[2b]  A double-barrelled gun made according to the Baron’s patent for preventing accidents is shown in a table-case in the Chelsea Public Library.  It is inscribed, ‘Patent Gun Manufactory, Cremorne House, Chelsea.’

[2c]  The fullest account of this extraordinary affair is in Atlay’s Trial of Lord Cochrane, in which the evidence is carefully brought together and sifted.

[2d]  Cruikshank also illustrated a ‘Stadium’ prospectus which was published in the form of an attractive little book in 1834.

[3]  In 1836 fireworks by Duffell and Darby.  In 1837 a music and dancing licence was granted to ‘Charles Random.’  In 1837 and 1839 John Hampton’s balloon ascents and parachute experiments (cf. the Mirror, June 15, 1839).  A fête-champêtre and Mrs. Graham’s balloon, June 16, 1838.  ‘A fête-champêtre to the Foreign Ambassadors,’ July 21, 1838.  Admission 5s. to 10s. 6d.  Fête for the benefit of the Poles, 1840 (Bell’s Life, August 23, 1840).

[4a]  See note by Cecil Howard and Clement Scott in Blanchard’s Life.  Some details are differently given by Boase, Dict. Nat. Biog., art. ‘Nicholson.’  But I am not attempting a critical biography of this worthy.

[4b]  A portrait of Nicholson by James Ward, formerly hanging at the old Judge and Jury, Leicester Square, was sold at Puttick’s on February 7, 1899.

[5]  It is sometimes stated that Simpson bought the property in 1846, and put in James Ellis to act as manager.  But other accounts speak of Ellis as the real lessee, 1846–1849, and this seems to be correct, because, when Ellis became bankrupt in 1849, execution for £8,000 was levied upon Cremorne.  Ellis’s unsecured debts amounted to over £16,000, of which £250 was due to a confiding Cremorne waiter.  The rent of the gardens had been £582 per annum, and there was an unpaid gas-bill for £665.  Simpson was certainly proprietor from 1850 onwards to 1861.

[7]  In 1850 under Borini; in 1851 under Isaacson, of the Grecian Theatre.  In 1860, Marriott’s band.

[8a]  At White Conduit House.  See Wroth, London Pleasure-Gardens of the Eighteenth Century, p. 136.

[8b]  Among the miscellaneous amusements of this period are: 1849, circus from Astley’s; storming of Mooltan, military and pyrotechnic spectacle.  1850, dahlia show.  1851, Franconi’s circus; the Bosjesmans, the bushmen of South Africa.

[9a]  Theatrical Journal, 1852, p. 260.

[9b]  London Pleasure-Gardens, p. 321.

[10a]  Coxwell, My Life, second series, p. 13 f.; Boase, Biog. Dict., s.v. Latour.

[10b]  Creole choristers under Cave and Mackney in 1846.  Miss Love also sang in 1846.  In 1851 Lambert Edwards became popular as a comic singer.  He published a Cremorne Song-Book, which, both for matter and metre, is trying reading.

[10c]  Stuart and Park, Variety Stage, p. 20 f.

[10d]  Ibid., p. 18 f.

[12a]  The programmes in the seventies were generally of virginal white, with embossed edges.  They were scented by Rimmell, and some were printed in colours, with views of the gardens.  They were of the ordinary theatre-programme shape.

[12b]  He died in 1872.

[12c]  Boase’s Biog. Dict., s.v.; Blanchard’s Life, ii., p. 472 f.; Sala in Daily Telegraph, August 7, 1894; Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette, March 22, 1889.

[14a]  G. L. Banks, Blondin (1862), p. 85.

[14b]  A married woman named Powell, who called herself ‘Madame Geneive (sic), the Female Blondin,’ was killed by falling from the rope on July 20, 1863, at Aston Park, Birmingham.  The occasion was a Forester’s fête, and she was paid £15.  The incident was a particularly shocking one, for the rope is said to have been old and decayed, and the poor woman, for certain reasons, ought to have been anywhere at the time rather than on the tight-rope.

[15]  Under Ellis in 1849 there had been a less elaborate ‘Eglinton Tournament’ managed by Batty, of Astley’s.

[16a]  A good account in Illustrated London News for July 18, 1863, apparently by Sala; also Illustrated Times of same date.  In 1864 Smith gave a monster Belgian fête to the members of the Garde civique of Belgium.  On the afternoon of July 14, 1866, there was a pretty juvenile fête, during which a number of miniature balloons were sent up to please the children.

[16b]  Some other entertainments during Smith’s management were: 1861, the graceful gymnast Leotard on five trapezes, in the Ashburnham Hall.  March, 1863, dog-show in the Ashburnham Hall.  This hall was also used for trotting matches and for wrestling and sports on Good Friday, 1865.  1868, Madame Pereira, gymnast.

[16c]  G. Bryan, Chelsea (1869), p. 169; Walford, Old and New London, v. 86.  In July, 1864, Eugène Godard’s huge Montgolfier balloon ascended from Cremorne, and came down in the East Greenwich marshes.  It was heated by air, there being in the centre of the car a stove filled with rye-straw compressed into blocks.  An earlier London ascent of a Montgolfier balloon took place at the Surrey Zoological Gardens (see infra).  For Godard’s balloon, see Illustrated London News for July 30, 1864; Coxwell, My Life, second series, p. 207 f., with picture of the balloon.  In August, 1865, Delamarne’s sailing balloon, L’Espérance, was shown.  It was about 200 feet long, and had screw propellers and a rudder set in motion by machinery.

[17]  Burnand’s burlesque, Black-eyed Susan, was one of the entertainments under Baum.

[18]  Now Sydney Street.

[19]  Entertainments under Baum: Simmons’s balloon ascent, June 29, 1874; Audrian the dog-faced man, and his son, from a Russian forest, 1874; Boisset family, gymnasts, 1874; De Vere, conjuror, 1877; Doughty’s performing dogs, 1877.

[22]  Percy Fitzgerald in Gentleman’s Magazine, 1880, ‘Cremorne to Westminster.’

[24]  In October, 1904, this nursery was advertised for sale for building purposes, 100,000 feet and 900 feet frontage, but at the present moment (April, 1907) it has not yet been built over.  In the rear of Messrs. Wimsett’s, and also on the site of Cremorne, was the nursery-ground of W. J. Bull, but since 1897 this space—an acre and a half—has been covered with flats and other buildings.  The iron entrance-gates (see Frontispiece) now stand in Tetcott Street, on the premises of the Royal Chelsea Brewery (Welsh Ale Brewery, Limited), not far from the site of Cremorne.

[25a]  Blunt’s Chelsea, p. 19.

[25b]  About 1809 the Manor-House had been occupied by James Pilton, manufacturer of ornamental works for country residences (fences, summer-houses, etc.), and the grounds were neatly laid out as an open-air showroom, with a small menagerie and aviaries.  A view of the garden and house from the Gentleman’s Magazine is here reproduced.  See also Faulkner’s Chelsea, 1829, ii., p. 215.

[28a]  Blanchard says the theatre became absorbed in a building known as the Commercial Room (? the present Welsh Chapel in Radnor Street).  By an evident slip he speaks of ‘Rodney’ instead of Radnor Street.

[28b]  There were a number of minor gardens in Chelsea and Pimlico, in the latter district the Gun and the Monster being the best known.  Two others may be briefly noticed:

New Ranelagh and Minor Vauxhall, Millbank.—These gardens were near the river, and occupied a small space between the Belgrave Docks Wharf and Ranelagh Road.  Part of the engineering works of James Simpson and Co., Limited (101, Grosvenor Road, Pimlico), now covers the site.  They were advertised from about 1809.  In the summer months (1809, 1811) there were ‘grand galas’ and balls, with concerts, and fireworks by Signora Hengler, the fireworker to Vauxhall Gardens.  The admission tickets for the balls were neatly executed (see pp. 27, 28), but cost only 2s. 6d., and the dancers can hardly have been of the rank of the famous Chelsea ‘Ranelagh,’ which had come to an end in 1803.  In 1810 and 1811 the proprietors gave a silver cup for sailing matches.  The gardens retained some popularity till about 1829 (Picture of London; tickets, cuttings, etc., in the writer’s collection).

The Flask, Ebury Square.—An old tavern, of which there are various mentions in the eighteenth century (Crace, Catal., p. 311, No. 59; Beaver’s Chelsea, p. 307).  In the thirties it had a tea-garden with a colonnade overgrown by creepers running round two sides of the garden, and a fine fountain.  A skittle club played in the garden or in a covered pavilion adjoining.  The tavern seems to have been demolished about 1868, when Ebury Square was partly rebuilt.  There is an engraving of ‘The Flask Tavern,’ showing the garden, published in 1837 by J. Moore, from a drawing by H. Jones.

[30]  Hampton’s balloon, and Graham’s, which came into collision with the Exhibition, June 16, 1851 (Turnor’s Astra Castra, p. 220).

[31]  Soyer had superintended gratuitously various soup-kitchens for the poor of London, and established model kitchens at Scutari and in the Crimea during the war of 1855.  G. A. Sala says of him: ‘He was a vain man, but he was good and kind and charitable.’

[33]  The house (pulled down in 1857) was about 150 yards to the east of the Albert Hall.  The Imperial Institute and Imperial Institute Road are now on the site of the Horticultural Gardens.

[37a]  In 1828 Pickering Place and Terrace, close by, were built.

[37b]  Early in the thirties, before 1834.

[38]  Now 47, Hereford Road, Bayswater.

[39]  Modern Sabbath, 1797, p. 49.

[40a]  In 1824 a duel was interrupted by the police.

[40b]  August, 1822, p. 138 f.

[40c]  The Acrotormentarian Society.

[42]  The site is near the filter-beds of the New River Company.

The Eel-Pie (or Sluice) House Tavern has sometimes been confused with the Sluice House proper, a wooden building contiguous to it.  The New River Company had one of their sluices here, and the house was tenanted by two of their walksmen or inspectors; view in Hone’s Every Day Book, 1826, p. 696.

[44a]  Sylvester (or Silvester) was one of the claimants to the invention of the optical ghost illusion well known as ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ at the Polytechnic (Frost’s Lives of the Conjurors, pp. 314, 329).

[44b]  J. Greenwood’s chapter is headed ‘Johnson’s Retreat.’  It may be doubtful whether it is intended for Weston’s, or for some other similar resort in the north of London.

[46a]  Boyne’s Trade Tokens, ed. Williamson, ii., p. 817, No. 61.  An eighteenth-century proprietor named Holmes died in 1744.

[46b]  Green in 1823, 1832, etc.

[47]  On August 29, 1811, Sadler ascended from the Mermaid with Mr. H. Beaufoy; cf. Tyssen Library Catalogue (Hackney, 1888), pp. 6, 8, Journal of Aerial Voyage, etc.

[48a]  Stone pillars used as targets and called by various quaint names—Jehu, Old Absoly, Bob Peak, the Castle, etc.  They were placed in the fields at unequal distances, like the ‘holes’ in a golf-course, and the archers passed from one to another.

[48b]  It is marked in a Finsbury Fields map of 1737.

[48c]  London Evening Post, August 4 to 7, 1764.

[49]  Hazlitt’s Indian Jugglers.  Cavanagh declared that in this contest he played with his clenched fist.

[50]  There were already pony races for silver cups in August, 1836, when 2,000 people on one day visited the gardens (Bell’s Life).

[51]  Cf. Frost, Circus Life, p. 143.

[54]  According to Pinks (Clerkenwell, p. 501), the land was originally acquired in 1826 for £15,000, and walled in.

[55a]  Clinch, Marylebone, p. 183.

[55b]  Geary was the designer of the absurd statue of George IV.—the ‘Griffin’ of its day—that formerly stood at King’s Cross.  He also designed one of the first gin-palaces in London (his name still appears cut in conspicuous letters as the architect of the Bell public-house (built 1835), No. 259, Pentonville Road), but afterwards repented and was one of the enthusiastic teetotallers who welcomed J. B. Gough on his visit to England, and planned a bazaar for a temperance fête at the Surrey Gardens in 1851 (Miller’s St. Pancras, p. 69).

[56]  When Lanza became bankrupt.  He was the father of Rosalie Lanza, the operatic singer, and had some pupils who became well known.  See Boase, Biog. Dict., s.v. Lanza.

[57a]  Advertisement in the Morning Post, February 8, 1781; cf. Wroth, London Pleasure-Gardens, p. 86.

[57b]  I find Rouse first mentioned as landlord of the Eagle in 1824, but the Eagle tavern was already in existence in November 1822, when a dinner took place there to welcome Henry Hunt, M.P., on his release from prison (Jackson’s Oxford Journal, November 16, 1822).  A noisy crowd assembled in the neighbourhood and insisted on Hunt making a speech from the dining-room window.

[58a]  A letter from Harris written the day before his ascent, and enclosing a ticket to his balloon-makers to witness his ascent, is in the writer’s collection.

[58b]  He was the first proprietor (1837) of the Bower Saloon in Stangate Street, Westminster Bridge Road—a small theatre which nearly degenerated into a ‘penny gaff’ (Blanchard’s Life, p. 40, and bills of the Bower Saloon).  There is a fairly common lithograph, ‘The Bower, Duke’s Arms, Stangate Street,’ showing a sort of garden entrance.

[59a]  On this lady and some of the tavern-concert singers of the time there is a rather breezy article in The Town for August 18, 1838.

[59b]  Now No. 128, Pentonville Road.  Till about the seventies it had a garden space beside it, facing the road.  Another place in the City Road, the Green Gate Tavern (now No. 220), preserved almost up to the nineties a small garden with its boxes and ‘a few old trees that still, in spite of fog and smoke, struggled into life as the summer came round, and formed a pleasant contrast to the dingy neighbourhood by which they were surrounded’ (H. Fancourt in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, May 9, 1891).  In the early fifties the Green Gate had a concert-room and a stage.  A rough woodcut in the Paul Pry journal for 1854 shows a theatrical performance going on.  Tall-hatted gentlemen are seated in the stalls, but in the pit or ‘promenade’ behind the audience is of a coster character.  There is a water-colour drawing of the Green Gate by T. H. Sheperd, 1852, in the Crace Collection, Catalogue, p. 607, No. 4.

[60]  Glindon was famous for his ‘Biddy the Basket-woman’ and his ‘Literary Dustman.’

[61a]  It was generally open on Sundays for ‘promenading.’

[61b]  Miss M. A. Atkinson and others.

[62a]  H. Barton Baker, London Stage, ii., p. 30.

[62b]  Westland Marston, Our Recent Actors, ii., p. 261.  Mr. Sala says that off the stage he was shy and sensitive.

[63]  His real name was Benjamin Oliver.

[64a]  This was on the site of an older building in the Eagle grounds, known at one time as the Olympic Pavilion, and opened in 1840.

[64b]  He is said (Baker, London Stage) to have given £21,000 for the Eagle, but I believe the sum paid was nearer £14,000.

[66]  B. O. Conquest covered this space with a permanent platform.

[67]  Some Singers and Actors at the Eagle.—Miss Tunstall sang in 1838, etc.  Sims Reeves sang for a fortnight only—in 1839—at the garden concerts, under the name of Johnson.

Deulin ( = Isaac Dowling, d. 1860) made a reputation here as harlequin.

Thérèse Cushine (d. 1856), the dancer, appeared first at the (old) Garrick and afterwards at the Eagle.  She married Milano, the harlequin and ballet-master, who was at the Eagle circa 1847.

W. T. Moncrieff was one of the dramatic writers.  E. L. Blanchard’s Arcadia was produced here in 1841.  In this operetta Miss Forde, a charming ballad-singer, appeared as Phyllis.

Harriet Coveney, from circa 1840; Miss Carlotta Leclercq and other members of the Leclercq family; Harry Boleno, the pantomimist; Miss C. Parkes, columbine, 1851; T. Mead, the actor, 1859; Herbert Campbell (d. 1904) in pantomime in the seventies; Baldwin, baritone singer (from 1833) was chorus-master.

Charles Montgomery in 1851 succeeded Campbell (the Sadler’s Wells actor) as stage-manager.

The musical director (1838–1840) was Harroway.  C. Sloman, a comic singer and improvisatore, well known at the London gardens and tavern concerts, was concert director in 1860.  Oscar Barrett was musical director, 1877.

[69]  Site.—A triangular piece of ground, bounded on the north by part of Shaftesbury Street, on the south by part of Wenlock Street; on the east by Wallbrook Street (now Cropley Street), on the west by Shepherdess Walk.

Entertainments.—The singers were of the tavern-concert rank.  Miss Tunstall sang in 1843.  In 1841 (or 1840?) Herring made a hit in The Imp of the Devil’s Gorge pantomime (cf.  Blanchard’s Life, p. 479).  In 1849 he was clown in Sinbad the Sailor.  In 1840 Van Amburgh, the well-known lion-tamer of Vauxhall, etc., appeared with his lions and ‘colossal elephant.’  In 1837–1840, Devon and Cornwall wrestlers.

[70a]  The tavern is mentioned in Pigott’s Directory for 1827 as under John Gardner.  In 1839, and still in the fifties, the proprietor was Thomas Gardner.

[70b]  The Globe club was still active in 1840 (Colburn’s Kalendar, 1840, p. 164).

[73]  Wright was landlord, 1837–1838.

[75]  The woodcut on Ireland’s bill announcing the race was taken from an old block representing, not Garratt, but Barry.

[79]  See Cremorne, supra, p. 5.

[80]  In 1850 ‘the immortal Charles Sloman,’ the improvisatore, appeared; 1852, Mrs. Graham’s balloon; 1855, Walter Stacey, manager; the Russelli family performed.

[81a]  W. C. Hazlitt’s Four Generations, etc., pp. 57, 58.

[81b]  The Montpelier Club afterwards (from 1840, or earlier) had their ground at the Beehive, Walworth.  In 1844 the Beehive ground was required for building purposes, and the club obtained a lease (March, 1845) of the Oval, and in a year or two was merged in the Surrey County Club.  The Beehive public-house, now 62, Carter Street (on the east of the site of the Surrey Gardens), represents an old tavern (1779 or earlier), which had about five acres of ground attached to it, with a tea-garden.  In these gardens the balloon of the ill-fated Harris (see supra, p. 58) was exhibited in 1824 (cf. H. H. Montgomery’s Kennington, p. 169 f.).  The old Beehive tavern was a long, low building with a veranda.  In the garden was a maze and the original proprietor’s cottage, connected with the adjoining fields by a bridge over a stream.  Mr. Wemmick’s Walworth residence in Great Expectations—a toy-house with a bridge—may be reminiscent of this (cf. H. H. Montgomery’s Old Cricket and Cricketers, London [1890], p. 44 f.).

[82]  At one time, apparently in the forties, there was a theatre in the gardens, at which Jefferini (Jeffreys), the long-legged clown, performed (Blanchard’s Life, p. 51).

[83]  Except in its last year (1877).  A ball-room was built in 1850.

[84]  Marked in a map, 1814 (e.g.), as the Manor Farm Pond.

[86a]

[86b]  Cruikshank’s Comic Almanack, 1843.

[88a]  Cf. Cremorne, p. 16, supra.

[88b]  He died September, 1854.  A portrait of him, after a painting by Agasse, is reproduced in Callow’s Old London Taverns, p. 303.

[89]  Godfrey’s band also continued to perform in 1853, under C. and D. Godfrey.  The orchestra was replaced by another structure in 1848.  Jullien’s band was at the gardens 1845–1852, then 1856, 1857.

[90]  J. Arban, musical director.

[91]  Site.—The Gardens were soon built over, but the site can be made out with little difficulty.  There were three entrances: (1) (approached from the Walworth Road) in Manor Place; (2) and (3) (approached from the Kennington Park Road) in Penton Place and in New Street.  The Manor Place entrance was about where that street is now crossed by Penton Place.  The continuation of Manor Place is now on the site or boundary of the gardens.

The Penton Place entrance was about where that street is met by Amelia Street.

The New Street entrance was at the end of the street where it meets the continuation of Manor Place.

Part of Delverton Road, Suffield Road, Tarver Road, and Berryfield Road are also on the site.  The Surrey Gardens Hotel, at the corner of Delverton Road and Manor Place, alone commemorates the vanished Zoo.

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