[252] The Florida Gardens are described as a place of entertainment in the Modern Sabbath, published in 1797, but they were already in the possession of the Duchess of Gloucester in September 1797. Cp. a newspaper paragraph of 25 September, 1797, in “Public Gardens” Collection in Guildhall Library: “Florida Gardens, at present in the possession of the Duchess of Gloucester, were fitted up in an elegant manner as a place of resort by the late Mr. Wilder [a successor of Hiem?] but did not answer the purpose for which they were intended.”

[253] These checks in copper and lead resemble the tradesmen’s halfpenny tokens of the end of the eighteenth century, and are usually described as tokens: see descriptions in Sharpe’s Catalogue, p. 89; Atkins, p. 193. Miss Banks, in the MS. catalogue of her tokens (p. 210) now in the Department of Coins, British Museum, says respecting the leaden check: “One shilling was paid on going in, and this ticket given in exchange which would count for sixpence if the person chose liquor.”

[254] Smith’s Book for a Rainy Day: the description strictly applies to the year 1795; A Modern Sabbath, chap. ix. (1797), implies that the place was more refined than Smith’s description would suggest.

[255] Blewitt lived in Bermondsey Square, where he died in 1805.

[256] Cp. “X” in The Musical Times for October 1, 1893, p. 588.

[257] It is possibly worth while to record the names of some of the forgotten performers at Bermondsey Spa. Circ. 1785–1788 the vocalists were Mr. Birkett, Mr. C. Blewitt, Mr. Burling (or Birling), Mr. Harriss; Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Byrn, Mrs. Piercy; Miss Stephenson, Miss Pay, Miss Cemmitt; Mme. Floranze. In 1792 the leader of the band was Mr. Peile, and the vocalists were Mr. Burton, Mr. Milward, Mrs. Freeman, and Mrs. Peile.

Among the burlettas (1785–1788) were “The Quack Doctor,” “The Fop,” and “The Auctioneer.”

[258] The fireworks in 1792 were by Rossi and Tessier, of Ranelagh. On 25 September, 1792, “by particular desire, the Battle of the Fiery Dragons, and the line comet to come from the Rock of Gibraltar and cause the Dragons to engage.”

[259] This entertainment was probably first introduced in 1786, in which year (2 September) the Public Advertiser announces “the representation of the storming of a fort which with the fortifications cover (sic) 3 acres of ground, the rock being fifty feet high and 200 feet long.” From about 1789 to 1792 it was advertised as a representation of the Siege of Gibraltar. The writer of A Modern Sabbath (1797) gives further details. “On the north-east side of the gardens is a very fine lawn consisting of about three acres, and in a field parted from this lawn by a sunk fence is a building with turrets, resembling a fortress or castle.” At each side of this fortress at unequal distances were two buildings, from which on public nights bombshells, &c., were thrown. The fire was returned and the whole exhibited the “picturesque prospect of a siege.”

[260] Gent. Mag. 1800, pt. i. p. 284. Keyse’s house was a large wooden-fronted building, consisting of square divisions in imitation of scantlings of stone (J. T. Smith). The entrance to the Gardens was next to the house, beneath a semi-circular awning.

[261] Hughson’s London, vol. v. (1808), p. 60. The Picture of London for 1802 mentions in the “Almanack of Pleasures” under July 17, “A silver cup run for at Spa Gardens, Bermondsey, by gentlemen’s ponies.”

[262] Blanchard in Era Almanack, 1870, p. 18 (followed by Walford). Brayley and Mantell (Surrey, iii. 200, 201) say the Gardens were closed about 1805. Lambert in his London (iv. 140) published in 1806, speaks of the Spa as still open, but the passage may have been written a year or more before the date of publication.

[263] Picture of London, eds. 1802, 1829; Tallis’s Illustrated London, ed. Gaspey.

[264] In the Era Almanack, 1871, p. 6, it is stated that the gardens “disappeared in 1869.” Walford, vi. 138, says they ceased to exist in 1881.

[265] “The principal site of Finch’s Grotto Gardens appears to have been a triangular piece of ground forming the western side of St. George’s Street, Southwark, and bounded on the south by the road called Dirty Lane and on the north by a vinegar yard in Lombard Street, and the extremity of St. Saviour’s Parish.” Wilkinson, Londina. A way from Falcon Stairs through Bandy Leg Walk (now Guildford Street) led directly to the place, and Williams, Finch’s successor, made an entrance from St. George’s Fields. Those who came by water landed at Mason’s Stairs.

[266] Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, act. ii.

[267] The Dukes of York and Gloucester, brothers of George III., are, however, said to have visited the gardens many times.

[268] List of performers under Finch and Williams:—Messrs. Oldfield (or Offield?, 1765), Lauder, Dearle, Baker, Barnshaw of Covent Garden Theatre, Moore, Tom Lowe, Kear (sang at Marylebone 1754, and at Sadler’s Wells in 1771 and later), Nepecker, Clarke, Thomas and A. Smith from the Richmond Theatre, Weston from Drury Lane (1772), Aitken and Murphin, Master Adams, Master Suett (in 1771, from Ranelagh, supposed to be Dick Suett the actor), Master Green, and Master Lyon. The female singers were Mrs. Forbes, Reed, Smith, Taylor, Clark, and Dorman, and Misses Garvey, Thomas (in August 1765), Carli, Moyse, Snow, Dowson (sang at Sadler’s Wells 1775), Cantrell, Marshall, and Oakes. The instrumentalists included Cocklin and Smart, violins; Hudson, organ; Palmer, flute.

[269] “Linco’s Travels” was also performed at the Patagonian Theatre, Exeter Change. Humphreys’s Memoirs of Decastro, 237.

[270] A programme of a benefit night for 12 September, 1771 (under Williams), may be inserted as a specimen:—

“Act i.—An Overture. A favourite song from the opera of Pharnaces: ‘Swift wing’d vengeance nerves my arm,’ by Mr. A. Smith, set by Mr. Bates. A favourite Scotch air by Miss Dowson, words and music by Mr. A. Smith. An overture by Abel. The Act to conclude with a celebrated song from Anacreon, set by Mr. Starling [Sterling?] Goodwin, by Mr. A. Smith. Act ii.—‘The soldier tired of war’s alarm,’ by Miss Dowson. A new song, ‘O what a charming thing is a battle,’ by Mr. Barnshaw. An overture in Otho, Handel. ‘Sweet Echo,’ by a young gentleman from Italy. Trumpet Concerto by Master Green, pupil of Mr. Jones. The celebrated song of the ‘British Wives,’ by Mr. A. Smith. A new song by Miss Dowson. Concerto on the violin by Mr. Smart. The Act to conclude with ‘Russel’s triumph,’ by Mr. A. Smith, by particular desire. To which will be added an entertainment called ‘The Gamester,’ to be sung by Mr. A. Smith, Mr. Barnshaw, Miss Dowson, and Mrs. Dorman, with a hornpipe in the character of a sailor, by Mr. Rawlins from the Opera House in the Haymarket. At the end of the hornpipe Mr. A. Smith will sing the celebrated song of ‘The storm or the danger of the sea,’ in character. After which will be displayed a Grand Transparent Painting.”

[271] In 1827 this stone was used as a step in the yard of the house of a Mrs. Stevens near the site of the Gardens, the verses being then almost illegible (Wilkinson).

[272] Nichols’s Lambeth, 1786 (in vol. ii. of Bibl. Topog. Brit. p. 77, ff.); Michaelis’s Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, 35–37.

[273] Prologue to Mrs. Centlivre’s Busybody.

[274] Chappell (Popular Music in the Olden Time, ii. 727, 728) gives words and music.

[275] The gardens were closed on the Sundays of 1752.

[276] Gent. Mag. 1740, 525.

[277] Walpole’s Letters, ed. Cunningham, ii. 32, 24 June, 1746. Bad company was not unknown in the earlier days of the gardens: see Welsted’s Epistle on False Fame, 1732:—

[278] The Complete Letter-writer, Edinburgh, 1773, quoted in Notes and Queries, 7th ser. ii. 469.

[279] Twelve songs by Lewis Granom, as sung at Cuper’s Gardens by Miss Maria Bennett, published London, 24 November, 1752.

[280] The fireworks at Cuper’s in 1751 are described in the London Daily Advertiser for 10 September, 1751.

[281] ‘The Inspector,’ No. 448, in the London Daily Advertiser for 6 August, 1752. The details that follow are derived from the same journal for 4 August, 1752, where they are related of “one of the public gardens on the other side of the water.” Possibly Vauxhall is intended, but if not literally true of Cuper’s Gardens, they seem sufficiently applicable to them.

[282] Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Croker, chap. xli. p. 366.

[283] Nollekens, ii. 201.

[284] The Folly was occasionally moored off the Bank side (Wheatley, London Past and Present, “The Folly”).

[285] Amusements Serious and Comical, part ii. “The Thames.”

[286] Pepys (Diary, 13 April, 1668) jots down in his daily expenditure a shilling spent “in the Folly.” From the circumstance that he makes no special comment on the place it may perhaps be inferred that he was already acquainted with it from previous visits.

[287] Tom D’Urfey, A Touch of the Times, 1719.

[288] Walford, iii. 290, 291.

[289] Walford’s statement (Old and New London, vi. 388) that they adjoined Cuper’s Gardens is not quite accurate. Four strips of land belonging to four different proprietors are marked in the map in Strype’s Stow (1720) as lying between the Belvedere Gardens and Cuper’s Gardens.

[290] The proprietor, William Hagley, issued a halfpenny token “at ye Restoration in St. George’s Feilds.” Boyne’s Trade Tokens of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Williamson, p. 1036, No. 357.

[291] Advertisement in the Country Journal or the Craftsman, 31 March, 1733, where the celebrated “Purging Spring” and the Chalybeate Spring “lately discovered” are mentioned, “at Mr. Lewis’s, commonly called the Restauration Gardens in St. George’s Fields.”

[292] The water was also to be obtained at a corkcutter’s under Exeter Change in the Strand.

[293] Loudon’s Arboretum et frut. Brit. vol. i. p. 75. Nichols, Parish of Lambeth, p. 84, says “about the year 1777.”

[294] Notes and Queries, 7th series, xi. p. 87 (communication from Lieut.-Col. Capel Coape).

[295] This appears from the evidence brought forward in the prosecution of Grist; see The Whitehall Evening Post for May 7 to May 10, 1796 (referring to May 7).

[296] Newspapers cited by E. M. Borrajo in Notes and Queries, 7th ser. xi. 138.

[297] “The English translator of Lamotte’s Life says she fell from the leads of her house, nigh the Temple of Flora, endeavouring to escape seizure for debt, and was taken up so much hurt that she died in consequence. Another report runs that she was flung out of window.... Where the Temple of Flora was, or is, one knows not” (Carlyle, Diamond Necklace, note near end). The Temple of Flora alluded to was certainly in London, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the popular resort now described is the place in question.

[298] At the period when the gardens were open “The Asylum” (i.e. Female Orphan Asylum) stood where Christ Church now stands.

[299] Cp. Wilkinson, Londina Illust. vol. ii. “Pantheon Theatre.”

[300] Allen (History of Lambeth, 319) states that the Apollo Gardens were suppressed about 1791, but this is certainly erroneous, as the gardens were frequently advertised in 1792. Kearsley’s Strangers’ Guide to London (1793?) mentions the place as “the resort of company in the evenings,” and says that music was occasionally performed there. The Temple of Apollo was described about 1796–7 in A Modern Sabbath as already becoming ruinous, and it is there stated that Claggett, the proprietor, had become bankrupt. A newspaper paragraph of December 1796 refers to a field opposite the Asylum, close by “the ditch that encircles that place of late infamous resort, the Apollo Gardens.”

[301] This was probably the orchestra that seems to have stood in the centre of the gardens and not that in the concert room.

[302] Cp. a token of 1651 (“At the Dogg and Ducke in Southwarke,” type, Spaniel with Duck in mouth) in Boyne’s Trade Tokens, ed. Williamson, p. 1022, there assigned to The Dog and Duck in Deadman’s Place, Southwark, by Mr. Philip Norman, who, however, suggests the possibility of its belonging to the Dog and Duck in St. George’s Fields. A specimen is in the British Museum.

[303] The ponds are marked in Rocque’s Map, circ. 1745. The duck-hunting probably took place at an early period, not later than circ. 1750.

[304] Newspaper cutting of 1731 (W. Coll.): see also The Country Journal or the Craftsman for 12 Aug. 1732; also 26 Aug. 1732.

[305] Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 10 July, 1771, Letter viii. in Johnson’s Works (ed. Murphy), xii. 338.

[306] A specimen in British Museum (from Miss Banks’s Coll.). Silver, size 1·25 inch; Obverse: Lazarius Riverius.—Non omnibus dormio.—Miseris succurrere disco. Bearded head of Rivière, to left; beneath head, the number “18” incised. Reverse: The original Spaw in St. George’s Fields so memorable in the Plague, 1665.—For the proprieters (sic) T. Townshend Alchemist to his Majesty, 1760. Another specimen described in C. A. Rudolph’s Numismata (relating to medical men), 1862, p. 45, has the words “Robert Baker, Esq., Twickenham,” evidently the subscriber’s name, engraved on the edge.

[307] The water continued to be advertised in newspapers of 1771–1779. Hedger afterwards put in his nephew Mills (or Miles) to conduct the house which is said to have yielded Hedger £1,000 a year, but evidently himself remained the moving spirit.

[308] On the “Maid of the Oaks,” see Baker’s Biog. Dram.

[309] The Dog and Duck may have been more respectably conducted for a time. On 28 May, 1792, a charity dinner of the Parish of St. Thomas, Southwark, was held there (engraved invitation ticket in W. Coll.).

[310] The Dog and Duck and the Apollo Gardens were for a time within the Rules of the King’s Bench Debtors’ Prison (De Castro’s Memoirs, pp. 126, 134).

[311] In De Castro’s Memoirs (1824) it is stated that he died “about two years ago,” which indicates the year 1822, or possibly the year 1810 (for part of the Memoirs were apparently written circ. 1812) as the date of his death. He was certainly alive, however, during part of the year 1810.

[312] Lambeth Wells are marked in the map of 1755 in Stow’s Survey.

[313] They were of smaller extent than the Cumberland Gardens, their river-side neighbour situated a little further south.

[314] One account calls him Nathan Hart.

[315] “Riley’s Gardens, Vauxhall,” mentioned in Trusler’s London Adviser, 1786, are doubtless identical with Reilly’s Cumberland Gardens.

[316] In the Picture of London for 1829 the Cumberland Gardens are named in the list of places of London amusement, but it is probable that this entry has been inadvertently copied from a previous edition (1823) of the work. Cp. Allen, Lambeth (1827), p. 379.

[317] Timbs (Curiosities of London, 1868, p. 18) says that Price’s Candle Manufactory occupied the site, but in the Post Office Directory map of 1858 the “Phœnix Gas Works” are marked immediately south of Vauxhall Bridge and the Candle Works still further south, i.e., beyond the Vauxhall Creek which formed the southern boundary of the gardens.

[318] In the advertisements the name Vauxhall Gardens first appears in 1786, but many years before that date the place was often popularly known as Vauxhall Gardens.

[319] The place was at first generally called The New Spring Garden. Cunningham (Handbook of London, s.v. “Vauxhall Gardens”) and other modern writers suppose that it was called New to distinguish it from the old Spring Garden at Charing Cross, and this view seems to receive some countenance from a passage in Evelyn’s Fumifugium, 1661, quoted by Cunningham. It must be borne in mind, however, that there existed at Vauxhall shortly after the Restoration, two Spring Gardens which seem to have been distinguished as the Old and New. This appears very distinctly from the following passage in Pepys, under date 29 May, 1662:—“Thence home and with my wife and the two maids and the boy took the boat, and to Foxhall, where I had not been a great while. To the Old Spring Garden, and there walked long, and the wenches gathered pinks. Here we staid, and seeing that we could not have anything to eate but very dear, and with long stay, we went forth again without any notice taken of us, and so we might have done if we had had anything. Thence to the new one, where I never was before, which much exceeds the other; and here we also walked, and the boy crept through the hedge and gathered abundance of roses, and after a long walk, passed out of doors as we did in the other place.”

Somewhat earlier (2 July, 1661), Evelyn in his Diary has the entry “I went to see the New Spring Garden at Lambeth, a pretty contrived plantation.” This probably, if not quite certainly (for compare the mention in Evelyn’s Fumifugium noticed above), refers to Vauxhall Gardens. Monconys, the French traveller (1663), briefly describes “Les Jardins du Printemps” at Lambeth, but it can hardly be made out whether he is alluding to the garden called by Pepys the Old Spring Garden at Vauxhall or to the New Spring Garden, i.e., Vauxhall Gardens (cp. Tanswell’s Lambeth, p. 181). The supposed site of the Old Spring Garden at Vauxhall (or Lambeth) is indicated in a map in Manning and Bray’s Surrey, iii. p. 526 (cp. Walford, vi. 340). The statement of Aubrey and Sir John Hawkins, usually accepted by modern writers, that Sir Samuel Morland occupied in 1675 a house on the site of Vauxhall Gardens, is evidently erroneous (cp. Vauxhall Papers, No. 4, p. 28).

[320] Swift to Stella, 17 May, 1711.

[321] The Spectator, 20 May, 1712, No. 383. As notices of the Spring Garden are rare at this period, the following advertisement may be worth quoting:—“Lost in Fox Hall, Spring Garden, on the 29th past a little Spaniel Dog, Liver Coloured and white long Ears, a Peak down his Forehead, a small Spot on each knee” (The Postman, May 3–6, 1712). The pleasant walks of the Spring Garden are referred to in 1714 in Thoresby’s Diary, ii. 215.

[322] A New Guide to London (1726). Guildhall Library, London.

[323] Lockman in his Sketch of the Spring Gardens (1753?) praises Jonathan Tyers for having reformed the morals of the Spring Garden when he became proprietor in 1728.

[324] Several of the Vauxhall season tickets were designed for Tyers by Hogarth. They are engraved in Nichols’s Lambeth, pl. xv. p. 100, and in Wilkinson’s Londina lllustrata. A good though not complete collection of Vauxhall tickets is in the British Museum, including the series of silver tickets brought together by Mr. Edward Hawkins. Tyers presented Hogarth as a return for his services with a gold ticket, inscribed in perpetuam beneficii memoriam, which was a free pass to the gardens for ever. Mrs. Hogarth had it after her husband’s death, and in 1856 it was in the possession of Mr. F. Gye who bought it for £20 (cp. Nightingale in The Numismatic Chronicle, vol. xviii (1856), p. 97). In 1737 the season tickets admitting two persons cost one guinea; in 1742 they were twenty-five shillings; in 1748, two guineas.

[325] In honour of Frederick, Tyers constructed the “Prince’s Pavilion” at the western end of the Gardens facing the orchestra.

[326] This description is adapted from the Scots Magazine for July 1739.

[327] The lamps about the middle of the eighteenth century were about 1,000–1,500 in number; they afterwards greatly exceeded this total.

[328] Smollett’s Humphry Clinker.

[329] Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, Letter lxxi.

[330] The cascade was varied in the course of years. In 1783 the background was a mountain view with palm trees.

[331] The Connoisseur, 15 May, 1755.

[332] From A description of Vauxhall Gardens, London, S. Hooper, 1762.

[333] Further details as to the form of the Gardens may be seen in the guides of Lockman and “Hooper.” Mr. Austin Dobson (Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 1st series) gives the best modern account of the Vauxhall geography.

[334] From about 1827 the entrance chiefly used by the public was the “coach-entrance” at the corner of Kennington Lane.

[335] This has been attributed to Roubillac, but Mr. Dobson thinks that it was probably by Henry Cheere who made such leaden statues for gardens. The statue was cleared in 1779 of the bushes that had grown round it, and it was still in the gardens in 1817.

[336] In 1818 it was removed to the house of Dr. Jonathan Tyers Barrett in Duke Street, Westminster; it was described lately (1894) as being in the possession of Mr. Alfred Littleton.

[337] On Lowe, see supra, p. 50, p. 101 f., and p. 243.

[338] As to the introduction of the covered walk see infra, § 4.

[339] Trusler’s London Adviser, p. 163.

[340] Notes and Queries, 6th ser. ix. (1884), p. 208.

[341] Evelina, Letter xlvi. Cp. The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine for September 1773, p. 529, which gives a plate showing “the Macaroney Beaus and Bells in an Uproar, or the last Evening at Vauxhall Gardens” (W. Coll.).

[342] The Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 29 June, 1772.

[343] The Vauxhall Affray, or the Macaronies defeated, London, 1773; Westminster Magazine for September 1773, p. 558; The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine for August 1773, where there is a copper-plate showing the parson fighting the footman (W. Coll.).

[344] British Magazine, 6 August, 1782.

[345] Westminster Magazine, May 1775.

[346] Middlesex Journal, July 23–25, 1775.

[347] On the gala nights the charge was three shillings.

[348] A burlesque account in the Bon Ton Magazine, June 1791, with plate (W. Coll.).

[349] Her husband, Mr. Mountain, was leader at Vauxhall from 1792.

[350] On Mrs. Bland, see supra, p. 137 (White Conduit House).

[351] Miss Tunstall, another singer, was in repute at the gardens about 1820.

[352] Sketches from St. George’s Fields (1821), 2nd ser. p. 216.

[353] In 1806 the opening of the gardens on Saturdays was discontinued on account of the disorderly persons staying on late into Sunday morning. From about this time the gardens were for a long period usually open on three days of the week only.

[354] Already in 1769 an awning or other covering was placed over one of the walks, and “covered walks” are afterwards alluded to. The permanent colonnade was not erected till 1810.

[355] Some accounts say £28,000.

[356] Admission, three shillings and sixpence.

[357] This Prince’s Gallery was burnt down in 1800.

[358] Among the curious characters of Vauxhall Gardens must be noticed a youth named Joseph Leeming, who called himself “the Aeriel” and “the Paragon of Perfection,” and offered himself for inspection to artists and surgeons as a model of bodily perfection. On 2 July, 1825, and on subsequent occasions he mingled with the other visitors at Vauxhall and created excitement by his extraordinary Spanish costume and by distributing three or four hundred “Challenges” to the people in front of the orchestra. One of these curious challenges is in my collection. It is a small card printed with the words “The Aeriel (sic) challenges the whole world to find a man that can in any way compete with him as such. No.—.” (cp. Hone’s Every Day Book, i. p. 1456, ff.).

[359] An earlier balloon ascent from Vauxhall Gardens by Garnerin in 1802 may be noted.

[360] A detailed account of the voyage is given in Monck Mason’s Aeronautica, London, 1838.

[361] The publication came to an end on 23 August, 1841. It consisted of sixteen parts, sixpence each. A set of these is in my collection. Mr. H. A. Rogers, of Stroud Green, has recently undertaken an interesting facsimile reprint of this scarce little journal.

[362] This part of Tyers Street was formerly called Brunel Street.

[363] Punch for 21 August, 1869, “The Lament of the Colonnade.”