'Mr. Keyse presented us with a little pamphlet, written by the late celebrated John Oakman, of lyric memory, descriptive of his situation, which a few years ago was but a waste piece of ground. "Here is now," said he, "an agreeable place, where before was but a mere wilderness piece of ground, and, in my opinion, it was a better plan to lay it out in this manner than any other wise, as the remoteness of any place of public entertainment from this secured to me in my retreat a comfortable piece of livelihood."
'We perfectly coincided in opinion with our worthy host, and, after paying for our liquor, got into our carriage, but not before we had tasted a comfortable glass of cherry brandy, for which Mr. Keyse is remarkable for preparing.'
I am not here writing a history of South London. Were this a history, Vauxhall Gardens would demand its own place, and a very large place. A garden which continued to be a favourite resort from the year 1660 or thereabouts until the year 1859, when it was finally abandoned, which occupies so large a part in the literature of that long period, must have its history told in length when a history is written of the place where it stood. In this place I desire to do no more than to take off my hat to this Queen of Gardens, and to recognise her importance. The history of Vauxhall is an old story; it has been told at greater or less length, over and over again. We seem to know all the anecdotes which have been copied from one writer by another, and all the literature and all the poetry about Vauxhall. The poetry is, indeed, very poor stuff. The best are the lines of Canning:
There oft returning from the green retreats
Where fair Vauxhallia decks her sylvan seats;
Where each spruce nymph, from City counters free,
Sips the frothed syllabub or fragrant tea:
While with sliced ham, scraped beef, and burnt champagne,
Her 'prentice lover soothes his amorous pain.
What a chain of anecdotes it is! We begin in 1661 with Evelyn, who treats the place with his accustomed brevity and coldness; we go on to Pepys, who records how the visitors picked cherries, and how the nightingales sang, and lets us understand how much he enjoyed his visits there, and how delightful he found the place, and how much after his own heart; we proceed to Congreve and Tom Brown, to Addison, to Fielding, to Horace Walpole. We all know the Dark Walk, and how the ladies were taken there, not unwillingly, to be frightened: we know the stage where they danced: we know the orchestra; we know the Chinese Room: we know Rowlandson's picture of the evening at Vauxhall with the Prince of Wales, putting on princely arrogance in the middle, and the Duchess of Devonshire and her friends apparently making fun of him; and in the side box, having supper, Goldsmith and Boswell, and Mrs. Traill, and Dr. Johnson; with Miss Linley singing; and we all know about the forty thousand coloured lamps festooned about the trees.
London was not London, life was not worth having, without Vauxhall. Like Mrs. Cornelys's masquerades and assemblies, Vauxhall was the great leveller of the eighteenth century. A man might be an earl or a prince: he would get no more enjoyment out of Vauxhall than a 'prentice who had a little money to spare. And the milliner going to Vauxhall with that 'prentice was quite as happy as any lady in the land could be.
When one thinks of Vauxhall and all it meant, one is carried away by admiration. To the City Miss who might belong to the City Assembly, but most likely did not, there was no such spectacle in the world as those avenues of trees with their thousands of coloured lamps; there was nothing that so much made her heart leap up as the sight of the dancing in the open air to the music of the orchestra in the high stand; there was nothing so delightful as to sit in an arbour dimly lighted, and to make a supper off cold chicken with a glass of punch afterwards—girls drank punch then—to look out upon the company, resplendent, men and women alike, in their dress, and ceremonious in their manners; to be told how the one was the young Lord Mellamour and the angel with him was a danseuse of Covent Garden: and that other gentleman behind them was the Rev. Dr. Scattertext of St. Bride's; and that the dashing young fellow in peach-coloured velvet was no other than Sixteen String Jack the highwayman. Vauxhall, in fact, for two hundred years, was nothing less than a national institution. All classes who could command a decent coat went to Vauxhall. The Prince of Wales went there—once or twice he was recognised and mobbed; all the great ladies went there; all the lesser ladies; all the ladies of the half world; all the citizens, from the Alderman to the 'prentice; all the adventurers; all the gallant highwaymen. There was a charming toleration about the visitors to Vauxhall. They were not in the least disturbed by the presence of the highwaymen, of the adventurers, or of the ladies corresponding to those gentlemen—not in the least; they walked together in the lanes and aisles of the place; they ate supper in the next arbour; they saw the young rakes carrying on openly and without the least disguise. The sober citizen saw it; his sober wife saw it; her daughter saw it. There were no complaints, save occasionally from the Surrey magistrates. The place and the behaviour of the people are typical of the eighteenth century, in which the maintenance of order was thrown upon the public, and there were no police. If things got very bad in a pleasure garden, the magistrates refused a license; if the visitors were robbed by highwaymen on their way to and from the place, guards were appointed by the managers. Vauxhall, however, was safer than most places, because most of the people came by boat. In common with all places of amusement in the eighteenth century, Vauxhall was late. The people seem to have been allowed to stay there nearly all night.
There is a passage quoted in Chambers's 'Book of Days,' which I should like to transfer with acknowledgments to this page. It is from the 'Connoisseur' of 1755, and discusses a Vauxhall slice of ham.
'When it was brought, our honest friend twirled the dish about three or four times, and surveyed it with a settled countenance. Then taking up a slice of the ham on the point of his fork, and dangling it to and fro, he asked the waiter how much there was of it. "A shilling's worth, sir," said the fellow. "Prithee," said the cit, "how much dost think it weighs?" "An ounce, sir." "Ah! a shilling an ounce, that is sixteen shillings per pound; a reasonable profit, truly! Let me see. Suppose, now, the whole ham weighs thirty pounds: at a shilling per ounce, that is sixteen shillings per pound. Why, your master makes exactly twenty-four pounds off of every ham; and if he buys them at the best hand, and salts and cures them himself, they don't stand him in ten shillings a-piece!"'
In 1841 there seemed every prospect that the gardens would be closed; they were not closed, however, but were reopened and continued open until the year 1859, where they were finally closed and the farewell night was celebrated.