M. R. Mitford.
-MARY RUSSELL MITFORD-
As for the pieces actually produced about this period, they were chiefly adaptations from novels. Thus, we find ‘Esmeralda’ and ‘Quasimodo,’ two plays from Victor Hugo’s ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame;’ ‘Lucillo,’ from ‘The Pilgrims of the Rhine,’ by Lytton; Bulwer, indeed, was continually being dramatised; ‘Paul Clifford’ and ‘Rienzi,’ among others, making their appearance on the stage. For other plays there were ‘Zampa’ or ‘The Corsair,’ due to Byron; ‘The Waterman,’ ‘The Irish Tutor,’ ‘My Poll and my Partner Joe,’ with T. P. Cooke, at the Surrey Theatre. The comedy of the time is very well illustrated by Lytton’s ‘Money,’ stagey and unreal. The scenery, dresses, and general mise-en-scène would now be considered contemptible.
T. P. COOKE IN ‘BLACK-EYED SUSAN’
Apart from the Italian Opera, music was very well supported. There were concerts in great numbers: the Philharmonic, the Vocal Society, and the Royal Academy of Music gave their concerts at the King’s Ancient Concert Rooms, Hanover Square. Willis’s Rooms were also used for music; and the Cecilia Society gave its concerts in Moorgate Street.
Yours truly Walter Scott
-SIR WALTER SCOTT-
There were many other shows, apart from the well-known sights of town. Madame Tussaud’s Gallery in Baker Street, the Hippodrome at Bayswater, the Colosseum, the Diorama in Regent’s Park, the Panorama in Leicester Square—where you could see ‘Peru and the Andes, or the Village engulfed by the Avalanche’—and the Panorama in Regent Street attracted the less frivolous and those who came to town for the improvement of their minds. For Londoners themselves there were the Vauxhall Gardens first and foremost—the most delightful places of amusement that London ever possessed except, perhaps, Belsize. Everybody went to Vauxhall; those who were respectable and those who were not. Far more beautiful than the electric lights in the Gardens of the ‘Colonies’ were the two hundred thousand variegated oil lamps, festooned among the trees of Vauxhall; there was to be found music, singing, acting, and dancing. Hither came the gallant and golden youth from the West End; here were seen sober and honest merchants with their wives and daughters; here were ladies of doubtful reputation and ladies about whose reputation there could be no doubt; here there were painted arbours where they brought you the famous Vauxhall ham—‘sliced cobwebs;’ the famous Vauxhall beef—‘book muslin, pickled and boiled;’ and the famous Vauxhall punch—Heavens! how the honest folk did drink that punch!