Is good and gracious, true and fair and wise.
XIII
A Diorama at Florence—Vauxhall Gardens—Causes of their end in 1855—Fête at Cremorne—The Coliseum—Rinks and roller-skating—Aquariums—Zazel and Mr. Watts—Nelly Farren—The rise of the Music Hall—A visit to Evans’—Paddy Green as a collector—The Opera in old days—Taglioni and Cerito—Paul Bedford—Mr. Toole—His joke upon Sir Henry Irving—The Exhibition of 1851—Houdin, the Prince of Conjurers—Theatre at Rome—Old days at Töplitz—A libel upon the Queen.
About the first public entertainment which I remember was a diorama of the Church of Santa Croce at Florence which I was taken to see when quite a child. It made a great impression upon my mind, and the recollection of the delight it gave me still lingers in my memory. The effect was beautiful and greatly enhanced by some extremely fine music which exactly simulated the swelling strains of an organ.
I suppose there are not many people alive who remember Vauxhall Gardens, an historic place of amusement to which I went several times—and very delightful I thought it. This, of course, was almost in the last days of prosperity which this once fashionable resort enjoyed, for towards the end it had become but a feeble and, I fear, none too reputable shadow of its former self.
VAUXHALL AND CREMORNE
Well do I recollect the ham sandwiches for which Vauxhall, or rather its expert carver, was famed. Rumour indeed declared that so great was this official’s talent for cutting transparent slices of ham that, if put upon his mettle, he could cut from one single ham sufficient slices to cover the whole gardens, which were by no means inextensive in area. It was a pleasant place with its music and coloured lights, and, above all, the many memories of the eighteenth century which clung about the old gardens. Some of the decorative paintings were by Hogarth, and the artistic taste of another age could clearly be discerned, though time and the weather had done their work in the way of spoiling a good deal which would otherwise have been artistic and interesting. To such an extent was this the case, that when the pictures came to be sold (there were, I think, two sales, the last in 1859) ridiculously small prices were realised, though many were the work of well-known and highly gifted painters.
Vauxhall Gardens were finally closed about 1855. I fancy that a succession of unfavourable and rainy seasons greatly contributed to their end, for in spite of the added interest of balloon ascents and other sensational performances the public declined to be attracted. So bad was the weather one season that the management, with considerable sense of humour, sent out men bearing huge umbrellas upon which the attractions of Vauxhall as an open-air pleasure resort were vividly set forth.
At Cremorne, which lasted well into the ’seventies (when its reputation became such as to call forth loud Puritanical protests which eventually caused its closure), fashionable fêtes used sometimes to be held, when the gardens presented much the same appearance as Vauxhall in its palmy days. I went to some of these fêtes, but not to the last, on which occasion, I believe, considerable disorder prevailed on account of a number of the usual frequenters of Cremorne obtaining admission and squirting ink at the ladies’ dresses as a sign of their displeasure at the intrusion of another society than their own. In consequence of this no more of these fêtes were held, the gardens being entirely abandoned to the class which eventually caused their end.
As a girl I used often to go with my sister to the Coliseum, a pseudo-classical building erected in 1824 from the designs of Decimus Burton. The buildings and grounds covered about an acre, and in addition to the main attraction, which was always a panorama, there were various other sights to be seen, such as to-day would be termed “side shows,” the chief of these being, I remember, a stalactite cavern. In 1844 the directorate made the first attempt to introduce roller-skating (or rather “wheel-skating,” as it was then called) upon a floor of boards; this, however, proved an unsuitable surface, and the new amusement did not at all take the public fancy and had a very short vogue. Some thirty years later, however, it was revived, under more favourable and more modern conditions with extraordinary and, for a time, almost frenzied success. In the middle ’seventies, indeed, the mania for roller-skating suddenly caught hold of every class, and rinks, some improvised and some specially built, sprang up in almost every town of any importance; whilst London, and more especially fashionable London, went mad about the new amusement. The craze, however, did not last as long as many speculators had confidently anticipated, and a great deal of money was eventually lost by those who, convinced of the permanency of the roller-skating rage, had invested or rather risked their money in the construction of rinks. The mania indeed died out as suddenly as it had originated, though some years ago skating on artificial ice secured a certain amount of popular support.