A permanent attraction was the Gallery of Paintings, an oblong room described as being about the same size as W. M. Turner’s studio in Queen Anne’s Street. Here were exhibited Keyse’s pictorial reproductions of a Butcher’s Shop and a Greengrocer’s Stall and many other paintings, including a Vesuvius, and a candle that looked as if it were really lighted.
On the whole, the Bermondsey Spa appears to have been a respectable, though hardly fashionable, resort, which brought its proprietor a moderate income and supplied harmless, if not very exalted, means of recreation.
It being not unnecessary to provide for the safe convoy of the visitors after nightfall, Keyse inserted the following advertisement in the newspapers:—“The Spa Gardens, in Grange Road, Bermondsey, one mile [the distance is rather understated] from London Bridge; for the security of the public the road is lighted and watched by patroles every night, at the sole expense of the proprietor.” The lighting and patrolling were probably somewhat mythical, but no doubt the announcement served to reassure the timid.
J. T. Smith, the author of A Book for a Rainy Day, has left a graphic description of a visit that he paid on a bright July evening of 1795. The popularity of the gardens was then waning, and on entering he found no one there but three idle waiters. A board with a ruffled hand within a sky-blue painted sleeve directed him to the staircase which led “To the Gallery of Paintings,” and he made a solitary tour of the room.
The rest of the visit may be described in Smith’s own words. “Stepping back to study the picture of the ‘Greenstall,’ I ask your pardon,’ said I, for I had trodden upon some one’s toes. ‘Sir, it is granted,’ replied a little, thick-set man, with a round face, arch look, and closely-curled wig, surmounted by a small three-cornered hat put very knowingly on one side, not unlike Hogarth’s head in his print of the ‘Gates of Calais.’ ‘You are an artist, I presume; I noticed you from the end of the gallery, when you first stepped back to look at my best picture. I painted all the objects in this room from nature and still life.’ ‘Your Greengrocer’s Shop,’ said I, ‘is inimitable; the drops of water on that savoy appear as if they had just fallen from the element. Van Huysum could not have pencilled them with greater delicacy.’ ‘What do you think,’ said he, ‘of my Butcher’s Shop?’ ‘Your pluck is bleeding fresh, and your sweetbread is in a clean plate.’ ‘How do you like my bull’s eye?’ ‘Why, it would be a most excellent one for Adams or Dollond to lecture upon. Your knuckle of veal is the finest I ever saw.’ ‘It’s young meat,’ replied he; ‘anyone who is a judge of meat can tell that from the blueness of its bone.’ ‘What a beautiful white you have used on the fat of that Southdown leg! or is it Bagshot?’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘my solitary visitor, it is Bagshot: and as for my white, that is the best Nottingham, which you or any artist can procure at Stone & Puncheon’s, in Bishopsgate Street Within.’ ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds,’ continued Mr. Keyse, ‘paid me two visits. On the second, he asked me what white I had used; and when I told him, he observed, ‘It’s very extraordinary, sir, how it keeps so bright. I use the same.’ ‘Not at all, sir,’ I rejoined: ‘the doors of this gallery are open day and night; and the admission of fresh air, together with the great expansion of light from the sashes above, will never suffer the white to turn yellow. Have you not observed, Sir Joshua, how white the posts and rails on the public roads are, though they have not been repainted for years; that arises from constant air and bleaching.’ ‘Come,’ said Mr. Keyse, putting his hand upon my shoulder, ‘the bell rings, not for prayers, nor for dinner, but for the song.’
“As soon as we had reached the orchestra, the singer curtsied to us, for we were the only persons in the gardens. ‘This is sad work,’ said he, ‘but the woman must sing, according to our contract.’ I recollect that the singer was handsome, most dashingly dressed, immensely plumed, and villainously rouged; she smiled as she sang, but it was not the bewitching smile of Mrs. Wrighten, then applauded by thousands at Vauxhall Gardens. As soon as the Spa lady had ended her song, Keyse, after joining me in applause, apologised for doing so, by observing that as he never suffered his servants to applaud, and as the people in the road (whose ears were close to the cracks in the paling to hear the song) would make a bad report if they had not heard more than the clapping of one pair of hands, he had in this instance expressed his reluctant feelings. As the lady retired from the front of the orchestra, she, to keep herself in practice, curtsied to me with as much respect as she would had Colonel Topham been the patron of a gala-night. ‘This is too bad,’ again observed Mr. Keyse, ‘and I am sure you cannot expect fireworks!’ However, he politely asked me to partake of a bottle of Lisbon, which upon my refusing, he pressed me to accept of a catalogue of his pictures.”
Keyse died in his house at the Gardens on 8 February, 1800[260] and his pictures were subsequently sold by auction. His successors in the management of the Bermondsey Spa failed to make it pay,[261] and it was closed about 1804.[262] The Site, now in Spa Road, was afterwards built upon.
[Lysons’s Environs, vol. i. (1792), p. 558; Smith’s Book for a Rainy Day, p. 135, ff. under “1795”; G. W. Phillips’s History and Antiquities of Bermondsey, 1841, pp. 84, 85; Dict. Nat. Biog. art. “Keyse”; Walford, vi. 128, 129; Histories of Surrey; E. L. Blanchard in the Era Almanack for 1870, p. 18; Rendle and Norman’s Inns of Old Southwark, pp. 394–396; A Modern Sabbath (1797), chap. ix.; Kearsley’s Strangers’ Guide to London (1793?); Fores’s New Guide (1789), preface, p. vi.; Picture of London, 1802, p. 370, where “the pictures of the late Mr. Keys” are mentioned; “Public Gardens” Coll. in Guildhall Library, London; Description of some of the Paintings in the Perpetual Exhibition at Bermondsey Spa, Horselydown (circ. 1785?) 8vo. (W. Coll.). Song-books (words only) of Bermondsey Spa, W. Coll.]
VIEWS.
A pen and ink sketch of Bermondsey Spa and a portrait of Keyse were in J. H. Burn’s Collection, and at his sale at Puttick’s were bought by Mr. Gardner (Notes and Queries, 6th ser. i. 506).