The transformation of this failing arena of British sport into the full-blooded pleasure-garden of Cremorne was effected by another Baron, though he was such only by the courtesy of Bow Street and Maiden Lane. Renton Nicholson (for that was his name), like most of the managers of Cremorne, was a man who knew a thing or two. He was born early in the century, and his boyhood was spent in the quiet village of Islington, where his two sisters kept a young ladies’ seminary. His tastes early led him to the distractions of Sadler’s Wells, and at sixteen, [4a] when he became a pawnbroker’s assistant in Shadwell, he began to acquire his remarkable knowledge of the ‘flash’ life of London in all its grades. About 1830 he opened a jeweller’s shop in the West End, which supplied the ‘swells’ of the day and their female friends, and by this time his London acquaintanceships were extensive and peculiar, consisting, as we are told, of shady journalists, players, tavern vocalists, and rooks of all shades from the welsher to the skittle sharp. He knew the taste of his public, and in 1837 began to issue the scurrilous journal called The Town, for which Dr. Maginn and other lively contributors used to write. After a minor experience of gambling-houses and doubtful premises of various kinds, he became (in 1841) proprietor of the Garrick’s Head in Bow Street, and here, in a room holding about 300 people, and fitted up like a law-court, he presided—as Lord Chief Baron Nicholson—over the judge and jury trials that were so attractive to the Londoner of the forties and fifties. The causes that came before this tribunal were chiefly matrimonial—the crim. con. cases of the time—and were such that their obscenity and heartlessness (mitigated, it is true, by flashes of wit) often made the most hardened sinner shudder. Nicholson presided over similar trials at those famous haunts, the Coal Hole and the Cyder Cellars, till his death in 1861. He was impudent in manner, obese and sensual in appearance, yet a man of real talent and geniality, gone hopelessly upon the wrong track. His apologists describe him as a sort of nineteenth-century Robin Hood, who plucked the aristocratic pigeon, but was ‘the soul of good nature’ to the poor Bohemian. [4b]
His connexion with Cremorne was brief, and his capital inadequate. In 1843 he replaced the timid prospectus of De Berenger by flaming bills announcing a ‘Thousand Guineas Fête,’ which during three days (July 31, August 1 and 2), at one shilling admission, provided, among other diversions, a mock tournament, a pony-race, a performance by Tom Matthews the clown, and a pas de deux by T. Ireland and Fanny Matthews.
In 1845 De Berenger died, and this year Littlejohn (the refreshment caterer to the gardens) and Tom Matthews managed the place between them. Charles Green, the balloonist, was called in, and began that long series of Cremorne ascents which a spice of eccentricity and danger always rendered popular. For example, in September, Green went up with a lady and a leopard—the latter a magnificent animal, so perfectly subdued in the presence of his mistress or her ‘livery servant,’ as to lay (according to the bill) at her feet or crouch in her lap at command. In August the balloon party consisted of Green, Lord George Beresford, and Tom Matthews, who preluded the ascent by singing his ‘Hot Codlings.’ The balloon went up at seven, and, after visiting the General Post Office and passing over Stamford Hill in perilous proximity to the New River Reservoir, landed its occupants, after a voyage of two hours, cold and shivering, on a marsh at Tottenham.
In 1846 (or more probably a few years later) Cremorne was purchased by Thomas Bartlett Simpson, who guided its destinies till the beginning of the sixties. [5] Simpson had been head-waiter at the Albion, a well-known theatrical tavern that stood opposite Drury Lane Theatre in Russell Street, and was afterwards its lessee. He was a shrewd man of business, and, according to George Augustus Sala, ‘a kindly and generous gentleman.’ Sala, who knew the gardens well from about 1850, tells us that, unlike the Vauxhall of the time, Cremorne was a real pleasaunce surrounded by magnificent trees, with well-kept lawns and lovely flowers, and melodious singing-birds. Nothing was pleasanter in the summer-time than to saunter in at midday or in the early afternoon (for the gardens were not properly open till three or five), and find Mr. Simpson’s daughters there with their work-baskets—to say nothing of the pretty barmaids employed by the kindly and generous gentleman, who were busy, in their cotton frocks, arranging the bars, and paying, it is implied, no ordinary attention to Mr. G. A. Sala.
Five thousand pounds was spent in preparing for the opening of 1846, and a banqueting-hall and theatre were constructed, as well as some ‘delightful lavender bowers’ for the accommodation of the 1,500 persons who were likely to need a bowery seclusion. The gardens were rapidly getting into shape, and we can now survey them almost as they appeared till their close in 1877.
They were about twelve acres, to which must be added, from 1850, the grounds of Ashburnham House on the west, in which flower-shows and other exhibitions were held. Cremorne lay between the river and the King’s Road, Chelsea. The grand entrance was in the King’s Road, where a big star illuminated the pay-box. On a summer evening, if you did not mind the slow progress of the threepenny steamer from the City to Cremorne Pier, you entered by the river gate at the south-east corner of the gardens. The grounds were well lit, but on entering there was not that sudden blaze of light that was the visitor’s great sensation when he came through the dark pay-entrance into the garden of Vauxhall. The most conspicuous feature was the orchestra to the south-west of the gardens—a ‘monster pagoda,’ brilliantly lighted with hundreds of coloured lamps, and surrounded by a circular platform, prepared, it is said, to accommodate 4,000 dancers. Here the dancing took place from 8.30 till 11 or later. There was always a dignified master of the ceremonies (in 1846 Flexmore the pantomimist), but little introduction was required in that easygoing place. There was a good band of fifty, for some years under Laurent, of the Adelaide Gallery Casino in the Strand. [7] In the early part of the evening—at any rate, in the seventies—the dancing was left to the shop-girls and their friends: the gilded youth and the ‘smart’ female set of Cremorne began their waltzing later on, after the fireworks.
The gardens had a tendency to become congested with side-shows, flaring stalls and shooting-galleries, too much suggesting a fair; but, unlike Earl’s Court and the later Vauxhall, Cremorne remained a garden. There was still the encircling fringe of ancient trees, and an avenue on the west stretching from north to south; on the east side was the broad lawn from which the balloon ascents took place.
Cremorne had the usual pleasure-garden equipment of fountains and statuary; refreshment-bars, boxes, and tables were placed at every coign of vantage, though the right place to go was the Cremorne House (or Hotel) dining-room, or the upper and lower tiers of supper-boxes in the south and south-western corner. Here there was a half-crown supper, and, if you aspired no higher, the Cremorne sherry, that fine old wine, ‘free from acidity, and highly recommended to invalids.’ In the centre of the grounds was an American bowling-saloon, which made its appearance, together with American drinks, in ’48 or ’49.