Cremorne and the later London gardens

by Warwick William Wroth

Simpson’s varied enterprises resulted in a substantial profit, even if he did not make (as he told the impecunious Baron Nicholson) the sum of £100,000 during his first years at Cremorne. His patrons were people of all ranks, and of varying degrees of virtue. But Cremorne was never able to parade in the newspapers that array of fashionable and distinguished personages who ‘last night’ visited Vauxhall. It was not, for one thing, a place that ladies (in the strict sense of the word) were in the habit of visiting, unless, perhaps (as Mr. Sala puts it) ‘in disguise and on the sly,’ or, at any rate, under the safe conduct of a husband or brother. Ladies of some sort were, no doubt, considerably in evidence there, though we are not to think of Cremorne as so entirely given over to ‘drink, dancing, and devilry’ as its sterner critics declared. If it was a place for the man about town, it also attracted a number of worthy citizens and country cousins who went there for an evening’s pleasure with their wives and daughters, and were ‘not particular.’ A livelier element was imported by the medical students—a high-spirited race made responsible in those days for the sins of many non-medical youngsters—by Oxonians and Cantabs, by temporarily irresponsible clerks and shopmen, and ‘flash’ personages of various kinds.

In 1857 the Chelsea Vestry had presented the first of many annual petitions against the renewal of the licence, setting forth the inconvenience of the late hours of Cremorne, the immoral character of its female frequenters, and its detrimental influence generally on the morals (and house property) of the neighbourhood. Such petitions, like the annual protests against old Bartholomew Fair, were a long time in taking effect, but, as Cremorne grew older, the rowdy and wanton element certainly increased, and finally, as we shall see, not undeservedly brought about its downfall. In spite of all this, we know of more than one respected paterfamilias who has still somewhere a Cremorne programme or two, the relic of some pleasant and doubtless romantic evening in the sixties or seventies, when he imagined himself to be seeing something—if not too much—of ‘real life’ in London. In the sixties some charming little folding programmes were issued, printed in colour, and presenting on every page a view of Cremorne. Portions of the programme were ingeniously cut out, so that on the front page there was a view up the long walk, flanked by its trees and lamp-bearing goddesses, right to the great fountain. Another page depicted the supper-table spread with its choice viands and ‘rarest vintages,’ and on another was a view of the circus, the supper-boxes, and the promenade enlivened by a peripatetic band—all for a shilling admission, and the patron, Her Majesty the Queen. [12a]

Time has cast a veil over the orgiastic features of Cremorne, and though this is just as well, some of its old frequenters may cherish the feeling that there are no ‘intrepid aeronauts’ now, no fireworks like Duffell’s, no gaily-lighted tiers of supper-boxes, and no waltzing on circular platforms with beauteous, if little known, damsels.

Simpson retired in 1861, [12b] and on July 30 there was a new manager, Edward Tyrrell Smith. [12c] He has been denied, somehow, a place in the great Dictionary of National Biography, but one cannot turn over a programme of London amusements in the fifties or sixties without encountering the name of E. T. Smith—an interesting man, of boundless energy and resource, and a lucky, if wayward, speculator, who was everything by turns and nothing long. He was the son of Admiral E. T. Smith, but his aspirations were not lofty, for he began life—he was born in 1804—as a Robin Redbreast, one of the old red-waistcoated Bow Street runners. When the new police force was established Smith was too young for superannuation, so he was made an inspector. But he soon tired of this, and after trying his hand as a sheriff’s bailiff or auctioneer, went into the wine trade. In 1850 we find him landlord of a tavern in Red Lion Street, Holborn, attracting custom by dressing his barmaids in bloomer costume. From about this date his speculative genius turned to the management of London theatres. He took the Marylebone, then Drury Lane, where he made quite a lengthy stay, and even plunged into opera at Her Majesty’s. One of his eccentricities was to present silver snuff-boxes and watches to his master-carpenters and property-men, each presentation taking place on the stage, accompanied by an appropriate speech. He was lessee of the Lyceum, of the Surrey, of Astley’s (when Ada Menken appeared as Mazeppa), and he took Highbury Barn for one season. He also founded the Alhambra in Leicester Square, making short work, for his purpose, of its instructive predecessor, the Panopticon.

He effected another transformation by turning Crockford’s gaming-house into the Wellington Restaurant, and opened a second restaurant—but this was a dismal failure—in the vaults of the Royal Exchange. He further made a handsome profit out of a French bonnet-shop which he established at Brighton, under the alluring name of Clémentine. He financed Baron Nicholson at the Coal Hole, became proprietor of the Sunday Times, and finally settled down in the metal trade. If Smith had little money of his own, he had a marvellous talent for extracting it from others, for, with some managerial humbug in his doings, he was a good-natured man, with plenty of friends who believed in his speculative flair. One of his early devices was ingenious. He hired from a money-lender at the rate of £1 a day a £1,000 banknote, which he always carried in his pocket—not to spend, but to deposit when he made a purchase, and to inspire confidence generally. He retired from Cremorne in 1869, and managed just to outlive the gardens, for he died in 1877, on November 26.

Smith began his enterprise with a startling novelty—a ‘female Blondin’ who undertook to cross the Thames. Late on an August afternoon of 1861 thousands of spectators thronged the river banks and the esplanade of Cremorne, or waited in small boats to see this new heroine of Niagara. A tight rope was stretched across the river at a height varying from 50 to 100 feet, and at last the female Blondin appeared. She was a delicate-looking little woman, who called herself Madame Genvieve. Her real name was Selina Young, and she was the granddaughter of James Bishop the showman. One has seen the male Blondin making a careful inspection of his guy-lines and supports before starting on his perilous course. His female imitator began her progress at once. When she had traversed about two-thirds of the distance, she paused to rest on the narrow timber ledge of one of the main supports of the rope. The rest was a long one, and it was soon felt that something was wrong when the attendants were seen tightening the remaining 600 or 700 feet of rope. At last, after this trying pause—she had started three-quarters of an hour earlier, and it was now growing dusk and chilly—she moved a few feet forward; then she halted, and then moved again. But the rope was now swaying like a garden swing, for the guy-lines had been cut—apparently by some scoundrel who wanted the leaden weights. Attempts were being made to throw cords over the rope, when suddenly she let go her balance-pole. It was a terrible moment, but with infinite pluck and presence of mind the female Blondin caught the rope with both hands, then a couple of weights suspended from it, and next the cords by which that part of the rope was steadied. Descending by the grasp of a three-quarter-inch cord, she reached a boat, and was saved. [14a] But the warning was disregarded, and the very next year the female Blondin was performing at Highbury Barn. Here she fell from a rope which was damp and slippery, and was made a cripple for life. [14b]

Another sensation, though void of peril, of Smith’s management was the Cremorne tournament, which began on Wednesday, July 8, 1863, [15] and lasted two or three days. It was suggested by the famous Eglinton tournament of August, 1839, which is said to have cost the Earl of Eglinton £80,000. The Cremorne imitation was held, not in the park or tilt-yard of a castle, but in the large pavilion of the Ashburnham grounds, which was gay with flags and garlands and the escutcheons of medieval heroes. The velvet and the gold lace may have been less costly, but the effect was equally impressive. At Eglinton Castle the Queen of Beauty was the lovely Lady Seymour; the Marquis of Waterford was one of the knights, and Prince Louis Napoleon one of the squires. The knights and squires of Cremorne came chiefly from the theatre and the circus, and the pages were ladies described by a journalist as ‘no strangers to the choreographic stage.’ The Queen of Beauty was Madame Caroline, a circus-rider well known at Vauxhall and elsewhere, who is believed to have resided in the New Cut.

The Scottish tournament was a fiasco, and was carried out under the cover of umbrellas and great-coats in the intervals of drenching rain which lasted for three days. The opening day at Cremorne was bright and sunny, and the procession of 300 made its entrance in imposing style: heralds in their gaudy tabards, yeomen in Lincoln green, men-at-arms in glittering armour—a whole Ivanhoe in motion. The tournament King, the Queen of Beauty, and their suite, were escorted to a tapestried tribune, and their gorgeous array contrasted strangely with the tall-hatted and coal-scuttle-bonneted spectators who occupied the seats on every side. The heralds made the proclamation, and the jousting began. First, there were trials of skill between knights of different countries all in armour, and mounted on chargers with emblazoned housings. Some sports, like tilting at the ring and the quintain, followed, and then came the grand mêlée between the two companies of knights. Finally, one of the combatants was unhorsed—pro forma—and his antagonist received the prize of valour from the Queen of Beauty.

Bands of music and facetious clowns, or rather ‘jesters,’ enlivened the proceedings, which were at first exciting and a fine spectacle, though they tended to grow monotonous. [16a]