Part 6

THE New Globe tavern, No. 359, Mile End Road, was and is (though somewhat altered)—a substantial building, with a fine golden globe still keeping its balance on the roof. From the twenties or thirties {70a} till the sixties it had some spacious grounds in the rear, entered from an archway beside the tavern. These grounds contained fine trees, and were prettily laid out with many fountains, statues, and rustic boxes. On the west of the grounds was the Regent’s Canal, and the whistling and puffing of the Eastern Counties Railway in the background were, for a time, looked on as amusing novelties. Houses in Whitman Road and Longfellow Road (at the back of the tavern) now cover the site of these grounds.

In 1831 the Mile End New Globe Cricket Club was formed here, and in 1835 we hear of its beating the fashionable Montpelier Club. {70b} The garden had its concerts and occasional ballets, and its ballooning, of which a tale is told by Henry Coxwell, aeronaut, who made a series of ascents from this place. On a summer day in 1854 he received an unexpected summons for a balloon display. It was the benefit night of Francis, the manager, and Coxwell was anxious to oblige. But his balloon had just been oiled and it was a warm evening—too warm for the safety of the balloon. Yet a balloon had been promised and fireworks. About eight o’clock an anxious consultation took place in the gardens, and the concert, on Coxwell’s suggestion, was prolonged till it was pitch dark in the grounds. The gardens were now crowded, and there were impatient cries for lighting up. At last, after a little more delay, the reluctant balloonist was seen to enter—or rather to be pushed headlong into—the car. But all went well: the balloon ascended, its occupant bowed and waved his flag, and in a burst of fireworks was quickly lost to view. While all this was in progress a man, evidently suffering from a terrible cold, for he was greatly muffled up, and wearing whiskers—could they be false whiskers?—might have been seen anxiously skirting the edge of the crowd and making the best of his way to the Mile End Road.

Mr. Francis’s benefit was a success, but the next day there arrived at the New Globe a worthy farmer, bearing in a basket Coxwell’s duly ticketed balloon, which had descended in his field. ‘Greatly obliged to you,’ said the proprietor. ‘No lives lost, I hope?’ ‘No lives,’ said the farmer; ‘there was none to lose. The fellow found by my man Joe was thought to have expired, yet all the life he ever had was out of him; but _you know_ and _I know_ that he never had any, mister.’ The farmer spoke the truth: _the Globe balloonist was a dummy_!

[Newspaper advertisements; Read’s _Annals of Cricket_; Coxwell’s _My Life and Balloon Experiences_. There are three lithographs of the Globe and its gardens (_circa_ 1839?) from drawings by H. M. Whichelo.—W.].

[Picture: New Globe Tavern Pleasure-Grounds. From a lithograph after H. M. Whichelo, circa 1846]

THE RED HOUSE, BATTERSEA

TO picture the Red House and its surroundings, one must put out of sight the fine park of Battersea, and go back to the first fifty years of the nineteenth century. At that time there stood near the riverside, facing the south end of the present Victoria (or Chelsea Suspension) Bridge, a picturesque tavern of red brick, with white pointings and green-painted shutters. On a summer day the pleasantest place for alfresco refreshment was a small jetty in front of the tavern, beneath the elm-trees and the flagstaff that flew the colours of the house. On the east side was a garden with spacious boxes and arbours.

The Red House was the favourite goal of many Thames races, but in the twenties, thirties, and forties its fame was chiefly due to its shooting-ground, an enclosure about 120 yards square, where the Red House Club and the crack shots of the Metropolis were accustomed to meet. Pigeons were sold for the shooting at fifteen shillings a dozen, starlings at four shillings, and sparrows at two shillings. When sportsmen like Mr. Bloodsworth and Mr. ‘O.’ were on the spot the execution was deadly. Thus, in 1832, in the first match at 30 birds each, each shot 28; in the second, B. killed 25, O. 23; and in a third match B. killed his 25, and O. his 22.

At one time a half-witted man called Billy the Nutman drove his little trade near the Red House, and for a few pence would stand in the water while sportsmen of the baser sort took shots in his direction. Here, at any rate, pigeon-shooting did not encourage humanity or a sense of humour.

A nicer habitué of the Red House was the raven Gyp, the treasure of the landlord, Mr. Wright. {73} Gyp was not, indeed, universally beloved, especially by the prowling dogs of the neighbourhood, on whom he pounced with beak and claw. He was, moreover, not inexpert in thieving, and had, in many hiding-places, deposited the spoons and pairs of spectacles snapped up in leisure moments. He had also formed a coin collection by swooping down on the sixpences and shillings placed on the bar by customers paying their reckoning. He was a talking bird, but indulged neither in fatuous endearments nor horrid oaths. He was, in truth, a practical joker of the finest feather. His human ‘What’s a clock?’ elicited an answer from many a Cockney oarsman as he passed the Red House; and his ‘Boat ahoy! Our Rock, over!’ could be heard across the river. Now, at the White House (opposite the Red) was stationed a ferryman named Rock, and even Mr. James Rock was sometimes deceived. Twice on one day he had crossed to the Red House to answer the call of a non-existent passenger, but the third time he caught the raven in the act, and flung the handiest missile—a pewter pot—at the mischievous bird. The landlord was enraged, though Gyp escaped; but it was probably owing to this incident that Gyp was removed to a Midland county, where, in the absence of Cockneys and ferrymen, he pined away and died.

[Picture: The Red House, Battersea. From a view published by J. Rorke, circa 1845]

The frequenters of the Red House were not all pigeon-shooters. Around it extended the drear and marshy waste of Battersea Fields, abounding in plants many and curious, but also in strange specimens of humanity. In the early years of the nineteenth century an informal fair was held at Easter in the Fields; in 1823 it was prohibited, but the spirit of fairing was not dead, and from 1835 onwards the fair became perpetual, and especially vigorous on the Day of Rest. A Battersea missionary, the Rev. Thomas Kirk, states his recollections of this fair as follows: ‘If ever there was a place out of hell which surpassed Sodom and Gomorrah in ungodliness and abomination, this was it.’ ‘I have gone,’ he says, ‘to this sad spot in the afternoon and evening of the Lord’s Day, when there have been from 60 to 120 horses and donkeys racing, foot-racing, walking matches, flying boats, flying horses, roundabouts, theatres, comic actors, shameless dancers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, gamblers of every description, drinking-booths, stalls, hawkers, and vendors of all kinds of articles.’ It would be impossible to describe the ‘mingled shouts and noises and the unmentionable doings of this pandemonium on earth.’

[Picture: Barry, the Clown, on the Thames. (Cf. Red House, Battersea.)]

This is graphic enough, but perhaps a trifle severe, for it will be noted that in the worthy missionary’s indictment the donkeys and the roundabouts are hardly less heinous counts than the gambling and the unmentionable doings. However this may be, Battersea Fields for years not only outraged the notion of a quiet Sunday, but in the summertime attracted by thousands the choicest specimens of the loafer, the ‘gypsey,’ and the rowdy. It might have been left to the local builder to cover the objectionable fields with bricks and mortar, but a better way was found. In 1846 an Act of Parliament empowered the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to form a park in the Fields, and in 1850 the Red House and its shooting-ground were purchased by them for £10,000. But the landlord (James Ireland) and the fair people had still two years to run. Mr. Ireland, on his part, considerably forced the pace, and made his garden into a minor Vauxhall, where we hear of balloons and fireworks, a ballet, a circus, a dancing-platform, and a tight rope. All this must have been on a humble scale, for sixpence and threepence were the highest charges. It was in 1852 that Mr. John Garratt raced Mr. Hollyoak from the Old Swan to the Red House for £5, their boats being washing-tubs drawn by geese. Nothing is new in ‘amusements,’ and even this silly contest was as old as 1844, when John Barry, the clown of Astley’s, had conducted (in full canonicals) a similar craft from Vauxhall to Westminster. {75} As another attraction Ireland introduced the pedestrian Searles to perform the dismal feat of walking 1,000 miles in 1,000 consecutive hours. Mr. Searles walked for six weeks, from July 7 to August 18 (1851), and an ox was roasted whole in the grounds to celebrate his achievement. A monster loaf, a plum-pudding weighing a hundredweight, and a butt of Barclay’s best, were at the same time presented to the public. A calf, a fat sheep, and a prime pig were promised for future Sundays.

The fair was suppressed by the magistrates in May, 1852, and from this time the formation of Battersea Park went slowly on till its formal opening on March 28, 1858. It occupies 198 acres of the old Fields, and has absorbed, besides the Red House, some other places of resort—the Tivoli Gardens on the river front, and the Balloon tavern and gardens in the marshland.

[Bills and advertisements (W.); H. S. Simmonds, _All about Battersea_; _Picture of London_, 1841–1846; Colburn’s _Kalendar_, 1840; and _Bell’s Life_ (for the pigeon-shooting); Walford, vi. 476 _f._; Sexby’s _Municipal Parks_.]

There are several lithographs and water-colour drawings, all showing the front of the house and the jetty. A similar view (an oil-painting) in Mr. Gardner’s collection is reproduced in Birch’s _London on Thames_, Plate XVII.

BRUNSWICK GARDENS (OR VAUXHALL PLEASURE-GARDENS), VAUXHALL

‘THESE beautiful grounds, once the resort of Royalty,’ were opened by a Mr. King in 1839, and flourished for a few years, till about 1845. Their famous neighbour ‘Vauxhall’ was no longer what it had been, and in 1840 was actually closed for a year. There was thus an opening for a ‘Minor Vauxhall’ with summer concerts _à la Musard_.

A band of from thirty to fifty performers was engaged under Blewitt as director and composer, and the grand gala concerts twice a week were hardly inferior to those of Vauxhall as it then was. Operatic and dance music, and plenty of ballads and comic songs, formed the programme. The comic singer was the popular Henry Howell; the other vocalists are not much known to fame—Mr. Hart and Mr. Frost, and two ladies, Mademoiselle Braehem and Miss Gieulien, who seem to have modelled their names on those of better-known musicians. The concerts were followed by Darby’s fireworks and by ascents of Montgolfier balloons, which, ‘on reaching a certain height,’ discharged parachutes, and themselves descended quietly into the gardens, instead of wandering off to risky trees and ponds in remote English counties. The admission was a shilling or sixpence, with refreshments, and in 1840 the experiment was tried of admitting ladies free.

‘The resort of Royalty’ to the gardens was legitimately inferred from the fact that the grounds were at the back of Brunswick House, the former residence of the Duke of Brunswick. The local resident entered his pleasure-garden from the Wandsworth Road, and respectfully skirted the house and its private grounds till he reached a spacious lawn at the back. This was bordered on two sides by rustic boxes and refreshment bars, and by an orchestra and assembly-room. The pleasantest feature of the garden was a promenade platform erected on piles over the Thames. Close by was the river entrance and the pier of the Vauxhall Hotel, at which the steamboats from Hungerford Market and the City landed visitors at about seven o’clock.

Brunswick House, an ugly but spacious brick mansion (No. 54, Wandsworth Road), is still standing, and is now used as a Club for the employés of the London and South-Western Railway. The garden space is absorbed by yards and wharves.

[Bills and newspaper advertisements; a plan of the gardens, 1844; and a drawing.—W.]

FLORA GARDENS, CAMBERWELL

THESE gardens, entered from the Wyndham Road, Camberwell, had a brief but lively existence from 1849 till about 1857. A central walk, adorned with fountains and lawns on either hand, led to a ball-room on the right, and on the left to a maze described as ‘the nearest to that of Hampton Court.’ This maze was intricate and verdant, and provided with a competent guide, while in the middle—in which respect it surpassed ‘that of Hampton Court’—it had a magic hermitage inhabited by a learned Chaldean astrologer.

Concerts and dancing took place every evening in the summer, the admission being sixpence. On special occasions there were costume balls with a large band. From 1851 to 1854 James Ellis, the former lessee of Cremorne, was manager. He gave a ball _à la Watteau_, and in 1854 repeated Lord Chief Baron Nicholson’s ‘1,000 guineas fête,’ {79} which had the genuine, and slightly risky, Nicholson flavour. It lasted three days, and included a steeplechase by lady jockeys, a Coventry procession by torchlight, with Lady Godiva and other characters sustained ‘by artists’ (presumably not R.A’s) ‘from the Royal Academy.’ There were also Arabian Nights’ entertainments, and a mock election for Camberwell, in which the candidates addressed the free and independent voters from the hustings.

On Sundays the Flora Gardens granted free admissions, and a representative of _Paul Pry_ who visited the place in 1857 describes the local frequenters. Polly P*rs*ns was, he tells us, quite up to the door in her summer turn-out, while that pretty, gazelle-like girl from the ‘Manor,’ Lizzie B., accompanied by her particularly especial friend Polly P*rk*r, amused themselves by firing at targets for nuts. {80}

[Plan of Gardens in 1855 (W.); bills, advertisements, etc. (W.); _Theatrical Journal_, 1851.]

MONTPELIER TEA GARDENS, WALWORTH

THESE gardens, attached to the Montpelier House tavern, came into existence in the later years of the eighteenth century. William Hazlitt, the essayist (born in 1778), recalls with pleasure his ‘infant wanderings’ in this place, to which he used to be taken by his father. {81a}

In July, 1796, the newly formed Montpelier Club played their first match in their cricket ground at Montpelier Gardens; and on August 10 and 11 of that year the same ground was the scene of a match of a rather painful, if curious, character. The game, like all the cricket of the period, had high stakes dependent on it—in this case 1,000 guineas—and the players were selected (by two noble lords) from the pensioners of Greenwich Hospital: eleven men with one leg against eleven with one arm. The match began at ten, but about three a riotous crowd broke in, demolished the gates and fences, and stopped the proceedings till six o’clock, when play was resumed. On the second day the elevens reappeared, being brought to the scene of action in three Greenwich stage-coaches, not without flags and music. The match was played out, and the one-legged men beat the poor one-arms by 103. {81b}

In the first thirty years of the nineteenth century the place had considerable local reputation as a tea-garden, and was noted for its maze. It did not become extinct till the end of the fifties.

In 1828 one of the attractions by day and by candle-light was the waxworks booth of the Messrs. Ewing, ‘consisting of 129 public characters, large as life.’ In this collection, omitting minor celebrities, were to be seen George IV. in his chair of state; the lamented Princess Charlotte; Guy Fawkes, who attempted to blow up the Parliament House; the Archbishop of York; Wallace, the hero of Scotland; ‘the unfortunate John Bellingham’; and Daniel Dancer, ‘the miserable miser,’ with his sister and servant. There was, moreover, a likeness of the celebrated living skeleton, ‘procured at enormous expense and difficulty’ (presumably to the skeleton). ‘Those who delight,’ said the bills, ‘in the wonders of the Creator will no doubt be highly gratified, without enduring that unpleasantness which some have complained of when viewing the being himself [_i.e._, the skeleton].’ {82}

The gardens were to the west of the present Walworth Road, a little to the south-west of Princes Street. The Montpelier tavern and Walworth Palace of Varieties (No. 18, Montpelier Street) is on part of the site.

[Bills and newspaper notices; _Picture of London_, 1802–1830; W. W. Read’s _Annals of Cricket_.]

THE SURREY ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

A VIEW here reproduced represents these once famous gardens as they appeared in the early thirties. They were in existence, somewhat transformed, as late as 1877, but it is now difficult to imagine that they were situated in a populous region between the Kennington and Walworth Roads.

The ‘Zoo’ which found a home in a beautiful garden in the south of London was for some time no mean rival to the Zoo _par excellence_ in Regent’s Park, while, as a place of public entertainment, the Surrey Gardens had something of the popularity of Cremorne, with which they were, in fact, nearly coeval. But here the resemblance ends, for the Surrey Zoo had no dancing-platform, {83} no alcoholic drinks for more than thirteen years, and rarely furnished to the police-court reporter any copy worthy of his notice. The gardens were generally closed at 10 p.m., and the addition in 1846 of two new constables to the permanent staff was advertised as an effective terror to evil-doers. The gardens were by no means solely frequented by South Londoners, though they were far from the luxurious west, and on the wrong side of the Thames. Fireworks, promenade concerts and ballooning were a bait for the shillings of the sightseer, but for more than twenty years at least these attractions never quite sophisticated the simple recreation afforded by the Zoological Garden.

[Picture: A South-East View in the Surrey Zoological Gardens. After a lithograph published by Havell, 1832]

The founder, and for many years the proprietor, of these gardens was Edward Cross, whose menagerie at Exeter Change was once a London sight and the abode of the famous elephant Chunee. But Exeter Change, as old views of London clearly show, projected itself in an obstructive way across the pavement of the Strand, and in 1829 was removed for the formation of Burleigh Street. Mr. Cross then moved his animals to a temporary home in the King’s Mews (the site of Trafalgar Square). In the autumn of 1831 the menagerie found itself in South London. The Manor-House, Walworth, had attached to it a fine garden of fifteen acres and a lake of three acres, {84} which was not only a picturesque feature, but, as we shall afterwards see, a valuable theatrical asset as ‘real water.’ The owner of the Manor-House had already spent several thousands on his grounds, and it was not difficult for Cross to make the necessary alterations. The gardens were remodelled or laid out anew by Henry Phillips, author of _Sylva Florifera_, with flower-beds, walks, and undulating lawns, and an early guidebook to the gardens gives a list of its two hundred varieties of hardy trees. Aviaries were soon put up for the singing birds, and swings and cages for the parrots. The water-birds readily took to the little ponds, and the swans and herons were soon at home in the Great Lake, where they found an island haven overhung by drooping willows. The lions and tigers were caged in a great circular conservatory of glass (something like the palm-house at Kew), 300 feet long, and constructed nearly in the centre of the grounds. A still larger octagon building with enclosed paddocks was erected for the zebras, emus, and kangaroos.

The _Companion_ to the gardens, issued in 1835, duly sets forth the catalogue of the animals and birds, and many numbers of the _Mirror_ magazine give neat woodcuts of the ‘latest additions,’ at that time apparently rare or curious, though now sufficiently familiar. The greatest popular successes were the three giraffes—the first ever seen in England—brought over in 1836 from Alexandria; the orang-outang; the Indian one-horned rhinoceros (1834); Nero, the lion who cost £800, and was stated to be twenty years old; and a gigantic tortoise, which small children used to ride.

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.

[Picture: Stirring up the Great Fire of London (Surrey Zoo). After George Cruikshank, 1844]