“The season is over! every body is gone out of town,” etc., write the correspondents of provincial and continental newspapers—“every body”—that is to say, every body with the exception of two millions of men, who make rather a considerable noise in the northern, southern, and eastern towns of London. But of course they are “nobodies”; they are merely merchants, tradesmen, manufacturers, clerks, agents, public functionaries, judges, physicians, barristers, teachers, journalists, publishers, printers, musicians, actors, clergymen, labourers, beggars, thieves, foreigners, and other members of the “vile rabble.” Every body else left the metropolis immediately after the Parliament was prorogued by the Queen, and the Royal Italian Opera was prorogued by Signora Grisi. The West-end is now a city of the dead. The deserted streets and the shuttered windows proclaim that all who are not exactly “nobodies,” are shooting in Scotland or gaping on the Rhine; that they suffer from the blues in Italy, or that the trout suffer from them in Sweden. But Vauxhall is still open, partly because the weather is so uncommonly mild for the season; partly because there are a good many foreigners in London; but chiefly because Vauxhall has come to be vulgar—and very vulgar too—a haunt of milliners and democrats, “by birth and education.”
Vauxhall was born in the Regency, in one of the wicked nights of dissolute Prince George. A wealthy speculator was its father; a prince was its godfather, and all the fashion and beauty of England stood round its cradle. In those days Vauxhall was very exclusive and expensive. At present, it is open to all ranks and classes, and half a guinea will frank a fourth-rate milliner and sweetheart through the whole evening.
A Londoner wants a great deal for his money, or he wants little—take it which way you please. The programme of Vauxhall is an immense carte for the eye and the ear: music, singing, horsemanship, illuminations, dancing, rope-dancing, acting, comic songs, hermits, gipsies, and fireworks, on the most “stunning” scale. It is easier to read the Kölner Zeitung than the play-bill of Vauxhall.
With respect to the quantity of sights, it is most difficult to satisfy an English public. They have “a capacious swallow” for sights, and require them in large masses as they do the meat which graces their tables. As to quality, that is a minor consideration; and to give the English public its due, it is the most grateful of all publics.
The entrance to Vauxhall is dismally dark and prison-like. Dr. Keif objects to the place.
“It’s a trap,” says he; “the real road to ruin! I am sure the Chevalier Bunsen and that fellow Buol-Schauenstein lie in ambush in some of those dark holes; they will pounce upon me, and seize me, and take me back to Germany, where they have no brown stout, and where I must needs get famous, or die with ennui. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate!”
Just at that moment a German refugee goes by. He bids us good evening, and is lost in the darkness.
“Ah!” says the Doctor, “that boy has been sentenced to be shot in the Grand Duchy of Baden. I believe they shot him in effigy. He’s an imp of fame, and if he dares go in why should’nt I dare it. Let us go in!”
The dismal aspect of the entrance is the result of artistic speculation; it is a piece of theatrical claptrap. For all of a sudden we emerge from the darkness of the passage into a dazzling sea of light, which almost blinds one. All the arbours, avenues, grottos and galleries of the gardens are covered with lamps; the trees are lighted to the very tops; each leaf has its coloured lady-bird of a gas-light. Where the deuce did those people ever get those lamps! And how did they ever get them lighted! It must be confessed that the manager has done his duty. If you can show him a single leaf without its lamp, he will surely jump into the Thames or hang himself on the branch which was thus shamefully neglected.
Dr. Keif, who is disposed to find fault with everything, and who just now protested that the entrance to Vauxhall was a trap expressly constructed for the apprehension of political refugees, asserts that the illumination is enough to spoil the temper of any one. “Look at those English madcaps!” says he. “In other parts of the town I walk for hours before I find a human being smoking a cigar, and offering an opportunity to light my own weed; and here I stand as the donkey in the midst of three hundred thousand bundles of hay. Which of these lamps shall I select for the lighting of my cigar?”