CHAPTER XVI
THE PLEASURE GARDENS
It is somewhat remarkable that two books should have appeared almost at the same time on the Pleasure Gardens of London—that of Messrs. Warwick and Edgar Wroth, and that of Mr. H. A. Rogers. I refer the reader who desires exact and special knowledge on the subject to these two books. For my own part I have only to speak of two or three of these gardens, and shall confine myself to certain sources of information neither so exact nor so detailed as those from which Messrs. Warwick and Wroth have drawn the material for their excellent work.
The Pleasure Gardens grew out of the old Bear Baiting Gardens. The London citizen loved sport first and above all things: next, he loved the country: to sit under the shade of trees in the summer: to walk upon the soft sward; to smell the flowers: to rest his eyes upon country scenes. He has always yearned for the country while he remained in town. With these things he desired, as a concomitant of the entertainment, good eating, good drinking, the merry sound of music not softly but loudly played: the voices of those who sang: and a platform or floor for dancing. All these things he could get in Paris Gardens so long as that place existed, together with its bears and dogs. When the bears disappeared, what followed? The Gardens continued without the bears. There were also the Mulberry Gardens on the site of Buckingham House, and the Spring Gardens at Charing Cross. In the month of July 1661 Evelyn visited the new garden of Foxhall, afterwards Vauxhall, and in June 1665, the year of the Plague, Pepys spent the evening at the same place, for the first time, and with great delight.
VAUXHALL GARDENS
(From the Engraving by J. S. Müller)
The Pleasure Garden apart from the sport of Bear and Bull Baiting was then beginning. Before long it became a necessity of life—at least, of the gregarious and social life of which the eighteenth century was so fond. Many things are said about that century, now so nearly removed from us by the space of another century, but we cannot say that it was not social, and that it was not gregarious. It had its coffee houses: its clubs: its taverns: its coteries: its societies: it loved the theatre: the opera: the concert: the oratorio: the masquerade: the Assembly: the card-room: but most of all the eighteenth century loved its Pleasure Gardens. It took every opportunity of getting away from the quiet house to crowds and noise and the scene of merriment.
