Visit
page one, two,
three, four,
five, six,
seven, eight,
nine, ten,
eleven
Finally
Brompton had its Florida Gardens just west of Gloucester
Road, on the south side of the present Cromwell road, a
rural retreat with clipped hedges, terraces, and shady walks,
"well adapted for gallantry and intrigue," where
Mr. Hiem grew cherries, strawberries, and flowers, supplied
"fresh fruit every hour in the day, ice creams, wine,
cyder, tea and coffee," also "Berne Veckley, an
elegant succedaneum for bread and butter, and eat by the
noblesse of Switzerland."
It
was among the delights of such places as these which we
have endeavoured to visit in the spirit that former generations
of Londoners took their modest pleasures and the life of
a couple of centuries of London displayed itself. As a conclusion
to our inquiry it may be of interest to speculate for a
moment on the causes of their decline. It would be easy
to account for the disappearance of the old London pleasure
gardens by pointing to the necessities in the matter of
building sites of a town which, since the first vogue of
the alfresco entertainment, has grown into a province -
a province of bricks and mortar.
But
such a proposition would be merely plausible, because it
is certain that the London tea garden was moribund before
cheap corn created a vast population, and easy communications
distributed it in very unequal patches over a country where
most interests of beauty or enjoyment have been sacrificed
to the exigencies of an industrial commercialism. The decline
of the London al fresco, we believe, followed a change in
the taste of the people themselves, that taste itself an
inevitable consequence of an increasing population and an
increasing prosperity. The simple pleasures which satisfied
the London of Charles the Second left the London of George
the Third unmoved, and the pleasure-seeking citizen of the
London of William the Fourth had a soul altogether above
the placid joys of the London of George the Third. If you
seek conviction on the point, read Pepys and Horace Walpole,
Harry Angelo, Pierce Egan and Captain Gronow, and compare
the different accounts of the pleasures of the town by each
of those recording angels.
It
is quite easy to trace this change of taste in the records
of any of the old places of amusement we have been considering.
There was always the increasing splendour of Vauxhall to
be reckoned with by the managers of them all, a sort of
bull amongst tea gardens, against which every frog as time
went on found it necessary to distend itself, and usually
burst in the process. And so we find the harmless dissipations
of the teapot and muffin gradually supplanted by fare of
a headier character, and the simple pleasures of the organ
in the Long Room, the ballad-singer, and the prim decorum
of the promenade yielding to joys of a fiercer kind and
forgathering of a different character, a change which led
often to presentations by grand juries and contests with
magistrates, and a change invariably ominous of the end.
At Bagnigge Wells the Long Room became a concert-room, where
serio-comics gave" turns" much as they do at the
Pavilion to-day, and balloon ascents in the garden became
necessary to tickle the jaded palates of spectators surfeited
by promenades among clipped hedges and fountains.
For
years before White Conduit House had closed its gates, forgotten
and unregretted, it had run through the whole changes of
a variety entertainment and the amusements of a country
fair. The fish-pond had been drained and filled in to make
room for a dancing saloon dedicated to Apollo, the healthy
joys of the early place, with its cricket and white bread,
had been exchanged for cheap fireworks, tight ropes, and
conjurers like Mr. Chabert, who swallowed arsenic, oxalic
acid, boiling oil and molten lead, and "entered a large
heated oven supported on four pillars and there cooked a
leg of lamb and a rump steak," which he obligingly
divided among the spectators.
Grand
galas there and elsewhere rendered necessary the attendance
of vigilant officers to prevent the entry of "persons
in dishabille." At the delightful and decorous Marylebone,
conjurers' entertainments and" Forges of Vulcan"
in pasteboard and red-fire took the place of Acis and Galatea
and "Where the bee sucks," and fetes champetres,
"which consisted of nothing more than a few tawdry
festoons and extra lamps," only moved more sophisticated
audiences to resent the extra charge of five shillings by
breaking the lamps and demolishing the scenery. The careers
of the less famous gardens of the south and the west were
almost invariably concluded in even less reputable circumstances,
where the conduct of the raffish audiences attracted by
their debased pleasures brought upon them the interference
of the authorities.
There
were others, of course, which were merely absorbed by the
advancing wilderness of London, which planted gasometers
in their pleasant parterres and dried up their springs for
ever. Of these the elegists are topographers and antiquarians
like Mr. Hone and Mr. J. T. Smith, who witnessed and regretted
their departed glories. There is an almost touching description,
for instance, by Mr. Smith of his visit to Bermondsey Spa
in the days of its decline: Smith himself the only visitor,
with his solemn banter of the artist proprietor's pictures
of savoy cabbages and knuckles of veal, and the prima donna
in silks and rouge singing her solo according to contract
and bowing her thanks for the applause of the audience of
one.
Hone
will tell you of the forlorn aspect of St. Chad's Wells
when its waters remained undrunk and its patrons had sought
their pleasure elsewhere; of the "scene which the unaccustomed
eye might take for the pleasure-ground of Giant Despair;"
of "trees standing as if not meant to vegetate, and
nameless weeds straggling weakly upon unweeded borders."
Such, however, were only the lamentations on the short period
of the decline of a phase of social life which had fulfilled
a purpose and had amused a large proportion of the inhabitants
of London for two hundred years. It is pleasant sometimes
to think about the London al fresco in its prime, and the
delight and enthusiasm of Londoners in the simple pleasures
it afforded, an enthusiasm which surely inspired the poet
who sang the beauties of the New River in those haunting
lines:
"Farewell, sweet vale, how much thou dost excel
Arno or Andalusia."
It is pleasant at times, as we say, to call their forgotten
pleasures to mind, to trace their forgotten boundaries,
and to hope perhaps for their resurrection in a translated
form. We may remember, if we choose, that London has received
and is receiving, in exchange, parks and open spaces on
a splendid scale, generously, and even royally administered
in every respect except that of provision for its hunger
and thirst. Mr. Pepys we feel convinced, could he revisit
his beloved town, would not be enthusiastic about the buns
and ginger-beer of, say, Regent's Park, or think that he
had made in those viands a good exchange for Shere's Spanish
olio at the Mulberry Garden. There are signs, however, that
the taste for the alfresco amongst Londoners is not extinct;
the success of such enterprises as the concerts at the Imperial
Institute, at Earl's Court and elsewhere, the breakfasting
in Battersea Park connected with the fashionable cycling
of a few years ago, even the much abused Summer Club of
Kensington Gardens, may be taken as signs of the times.
End
of Article.