THE ROTUNDA AT RENELAGH, circ. 1751.
Johnson declared that “the coup d’œil” of Ranelagh was “the finest thing he had ever seen.”[220] When Johnson first entered Ranelagh and its brilliant circle, it gave, as he told Boswell,[221] “an expansion and gay sensation” to his mind, such as he had never experienced anywhere else. Miss Lydia Melford, in Humphry Clinker, wrote about Ranelagh to her ‘dear Willis’ with an enthusiasm less restrained, and without Dr. Johnson’s moralising comment:—“Alas, Sir, these are only struggles for happiness.” “Ranelagh (she writes) looks like the enchanted palace of a genio, adorned with the most exquisite performances of painting, carving, and gilding, enlightened with a thousand golden lamps that emulate the noonday sun; crowded with the great, the rich, the gay, the happy and the fair; glittering with cloth of gold and silver, lace, embroidery, and precious stones. While these exulting sons and daughters of felicity tread this round of pleasure, or regale in different parties, and separate lodges, with fine imperial tea and other delicious refreshments, their ears are entertained with the most ravishing delights of music, both instrumental and vocal.”
§ 3. The entertainments and the company.
The usual charge for admission was half a crown,[222] which always included the ‘regale’ of tea, coffee and bread and butter. Foote called Ranelagh the Bread and Butter Manufactory, and, except on ball nights, no other refreshments seem to have been procurable.
The place was usually open on three days in the week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.[223] The regular season for the evening concerts and garden-promenade began at Easter, but the Rotunda was often open in February, or earlier, for the dances. In the early days of Ranelagh the public breakfastings and the morning concerts at twelve were a constant feature. About 1754 the proprietors of Ranelagh were refused a license for music, and the breakfasting took place that year without concerts: these breakfasts and morning concerts do not appear to have been subsequently renewed.
The evening concerts (from May 1742, onwards) generally began, at 6.30 or 7. Between the Acts the company walked in the gardens to the music of horns and clarinets, and a garden-orchestra was erected about 1764. The gardens were illuminated, but fireworks did not become a prominent feature till about 1767.
The gardens themselves were somewhat formally laid out. There were several gravel walks, shaded by elms and yews; a flower-garden, and “a beautiful octagon grass plat.” The principal walk led from the south end of Ranelagh House to the bottom of the gardens, where there was a circular Temple of Pan. At night the walks were prettily lit with lamps attached to the trees. There was also a canal with a Temple indifferently described as the Chinese House and the Venetian Temple.
The Chinese House, the Rotunda, & the Company in Masquerade in Renelagh Gardens
In its earliest as well as in its latest days masquerades attracted many to the Rotunda and the gardens, but the chief diversion was the promenade in the Rotunda. A guide-book of 1793 states that “walking round the Rotundo” was “one of the pleasures of the place.” We hear much at all periods of “the circular labour” of the company and “the ring of folly.”[224] Matthew Bramble found one half of the company “following one another’s tails in an eternal circle like asses in an olive mill while the other half are drinking hot water under the denomination of tea.” Mr. Bramble exacted much from places of amusement, but it is to be suspected from other testimonies that there was an atmosphere of dulness, a note of ennui, about the ordinary diversions of this fashionable rendezvous. “There’s your famous Ranelagh (says ‘Evelina’) that you make such a fuss about; why what a dull place is that!” A Frenchman describing Ranelagh about 1800—foreigners were always expected to visit it—calls it “le plus insipide lieu d’amusement que l’on ait pu imaginer,” and even hints at Dante’s Purgatory. Another Frenchman writing much earlier, circ. 1749, briefly comments “on s’ennuie avec de la mauvaise musique, du thé et du beurre.”