The Zoological Garden was inaugurated under distinguished auspices, and the prospectus of 1831 proclaims as patrons the Queen, the Duchess of Kent, the Princess Victoria, and an imposing array of Dukes and Marquises. The season tickets were a guinea, and the admission at the gates was from first to last one shilling. In this prospectus nothing was said about popular amusements, and for several years nothing much was done in this direction beyond anniversary fêtes of the fancy fair description. On such occasions performers like Ramo Samee, the sword-swallower, and Blackmore of Vauxhall made their appearance, Blackmore’s function being to cross the lake on a rope sixty feet high.
In 1837 the South London Horticultural Society, formed in the preceding year, held the first of many successful flower-shows in the gardens. In the same year the first panorama was displayed—‘Vesuvius, with the town and port of Posilippo.’ The lake was, of course, the Bay of Naples, with feluccas and a miniature British frigate lying at anchor. The painter of Vesuvius, as of many of the later panoramas, was George Danson, the scene-painter at Astley’s. Danson was a clever artist in his way; his panoramic drawing was good, and his colouring well kept under, so that his productions would bear inspection by daylight. At night-time the fireworker of the gardens, J. Southby, appeared on the scene, and Vesuvius was soon in eruption. On the day when the first eruption was to take place the manager of the gardens—if Bell’s Life is not misleading us—solemnly warned the chief fireman of the City, in case he should send to Walworth engines that might be more needed elsewhere.
Vesuvius was repeated in 1838, and henceforth the Surrey Zoo was never without an exhibition of the kind. It is a good rule always to see a panorama or a big model whenever one has the opportunity, but the reader will perhaps be contented if I set forth the chronology of the Surrey panoramas in a footnote. [86a] However carefully painted the canvas might be, a subject was preferred that lent itself to treatment by gunpowder and fireworks. Thus, Vesuvius was followed by Mount Hecla; Old London was burnt in the Great Fire of 1666; Gibraltar was besieged; Badajoz stormed ‘with effects of real ordnance’; and the taking of Sebastopol was truly terrific.
The city of Rome (covering five acres) was a favourite subject. The scene showed the bridge over the Tiber, St. Peter’s, and the Castle of St. Angelo. At night-time Southby’s fireworks legitimately reproduced the Roman Girandola of Easter Monday:
“At the Surrey Menagerie every one knows
(Because ’tis a place to which every one goes)
There’s a model of Rome: and as round it one struts
One sinks the remembrance of Newington Butts;
And having one’s shilling laid down at the portal,
One fancies oneself in the City Immortal.” [86b]
Quieter efforts were the Temples of Elora, and Edinburgh, a subject suggested by Prince Albert.
Balloon ascents, which had such a strange fascination for the frequenters of Vauxhall in the thirties and forties, and which were always an attraction at Cremorne, do not seem to have been a feature of the Surrey Gardens. An ascent by Henry Coxwell, on September 7, 1854, was of some importance, as the balloonist for the first time gave a public exhibition of his methods of balloon-signalling in war. His apparatus was attached to the car, and the signals were supposed to be addressed to the beleaguered fortress of Sebastopol. Some pigeons were also taken up, and sent forth from the balloon with messages.
Two curiosities of ballooning are connected with these gardens. In May, 1837, Mr. and Mrs. Graham took up in a parachute attached to their balloon a monkey named Signor Jacopo, attired in a scarlet coat and feathers. The monkey descended in his parachute on Walworth Common, and, being duly labelled with ‘two pounds reward,’ was promptly returned to Mr. Cross. In 1838 the appearance of the ‘Montgolfier’ balloon [88a] excited no ordinary interest. It was a monstrous machine made of lawn varnished, and was said to be ‘of the height of the York Column, with a circumference nearly half that of the dome of St. Paul’s.’ It was announced to ascend on May 24, and people began to assemble in the grounds at noon. By seven o’clock there were nearly 5,000 spectators, and, behind a huge tarpaulin, the balloon was supposed to be in process of inflation. The balloon was attached to a platform in the middle of the lake, and its peculiarity was that it had to be inflated by chopped straw burnt in a brazier under the orifice of the bag. The size of the furnace had been miscalculated, and after the balloon had twice been set on fire, the ‘intrepid aeronaut’ decided not to ascend. Some of the spectators considered that, at any rate, the balloon could be punished, and ‘a well-directed volley of stones’ soon left the monster prostrate on the lake. An attempt was made to drag it on shore and tear it in pieces, but at this moment the cord broke. Some of the rowdier spirits now sought out the proprietor, hoping to duck him in one of his own ponds. And when this failed, they attacked the glass panes of the lion’s conservatory. But suddenly the police appeared and Vesuvius burst forth in all its fury, and when the fireworks were over the visitors quietly dispersed.
From 1839 to 1844 orchestral concerts, without vocalists, were one of the principal attractions. A good band, under C. Godfrey, performed music of the promenade-concert type—operatic overtures, dance-music by Strauss and Musard, with an occasional ‘classical’ first part, when Handel and Beethoven had their turn.