In 1764, the chief singers were Vernon and Miss Brent, who belong rather to our next period. Miss Wright’s “Thro’ the wood, laddie,” was popular in 1765.
Jonathan Tyers died on 1 July, 1767. He had amassed a large fortune and owned the estate of Denbies at Dorking, where he laid out a curious garden containing a hermitage, called the Temple of Death, and a gloomy valley of the Shadow of Death. In spite of these lugubrious surroundings this “Master-builder of Delight” retained his love for Vauxhall till the last, and shortly before his death had himself carried into the Grove to take a parting look at the Spring Gardens.
He was succeeded at Vauxhall by his two sons, Thomas and Jonathan. ‘Tom’ Tyers, as he was called by Dr. Johnson, with whom he was a favourite, had been bred to the law, but he was too eccentric and vivacious to confine himself to practice. “He, therefore (says Boswell), ran about the world with a pleasant carelessness,” amusing everybody by his desultory talk and abundance of anecdote. He furnished many songs for the gardens, but in 1785, sold his interest to his brother Jonathan’s family. Jonathan was manager of Vauxhall from 1785 till his death in 1792.
§ 3. 1768–1790.
During this period the character of the entertainments of Vauxhall and the arrangement of the gardens themselves, underwent no very material changes,[338] and people of all ranks frequented the place as of old. The singers, however, were more numerous, and there seems to have been a general tendency to stay late. In 1783, the concert began at eight and ended at eleven, and a London guide-book of 1786,[339] states that the company at that time seldom left the garden till two in the morning, if the weather was fine.
From about 1772–1778, a good deal of rowdyism appears to have disturbed the harmony of Vauxhall, though it must be said that the company under old Tyers had not always been distinguished for urbanity. The rude treatment to which Fielding’s Amelia was subjected at the gardens (circ. 1752), can hardly have been an isolated occurrence, and in the summer of 1748 a party of ladies, apparently of good position, used to crow like cocks when visiting Vauxhall, while their friends of the male sex responded with an ass’s bray. One Mrs. Woolaston, attained special proficiency in her imitations.[340]
At this time (1772–1778), it was the custom to violently emphasize the importance of the last night of the season. Young Branghton, in Evelina (circ. 1778), declares that the last night at Vauxhall is the best of any; “there’s always a riot—and there the folks run about—and then there’s such squealing and squalling! and there all the lamps are broke, and the women run skimper scamper.”[341]
From the newspapers we learn that on the 4th of September, 1774, “upwards of fifteen foolish Bucks who had amused themselves by breaking the lamps at Vauxhall, were put into the cage there by the proprietors, to answer for the damage done. They broke almost every lamp about the orchestra, and pulled the door leading up to it off the hinges.”
