Part 12

After Vauxhall follows, as a matter of course, a visit to the equally popular Ranelagh. Like most people, the traveller had expected it to resemble its rival, and until he actually entered the Great Room, was grievously disappointed. 'But,' he continues, 'it is impossible to describe, or indeed to conceive, the effect it had on me, when, coming out of the gloom of the garden, I suddenly entered a round building, illuminated by many hundred lamps, the splendour and beauty of which surpassed everything of the kind I had ever seen before. Everything seemed here to be round; above, there was a gallery, divided into boxes, and in one part of it an organ with a beautiful choir, from which issued both instrumental and vocal music. All around, under this gallery, are handsome painted boxes for those who wish to take refreshments. The floor was covered with mats; in the middle of which are four high black pillars, within which are neat fire-places for preparing tea, coffee, and punch; and all around also there are placed tables, set out with all kinds of refreshments. Within [he means 'without'] these four pillars, in a kind of magic rotundo, all the _beau-monde_ of London move perpetually round and round.' This, as may be seen by a glance at Parr's print of 1751 after Canaletto, or the better-known plate in Stowe's 'Survey' of 1754, is a fairly faithful description of the Ranelagh of Walpole and Chesterfield. After a modest _consommation_, which, to his astonishment, he finds is covered by the half-crown he paid at the door, he mounts to the upper regions. 'I now went up into the gallery, and seated myself in one of the boxes there: and from thence, becoming, all at once, a grave and moralizing spectator, I looked down on the concourse of people who were still moving round and round in the fairy circle; and then I could easily distinguish several stars, and other orders of knighthood; French queues and bags contrasted with plain English heads of hair, or professional wigs; old age and youth, nobility and commonalty, all passing each other in the motley swarm. An Englishman who joined me, during this my reverie, pointed out to me, on my inquiring, princes, and lords with their dazzling stars; with which they eclipsed the less brilliant part of the company.' His next experiences are Of the House of Commons. Here he had like to have been disappointed from his unhappy ignorance of an enlightened native formula. Having made his way to Westminster Hall, a 'very genteel man in black' informed him he must be introduced by a member, an announcement which caused him to retire 'much chagrined.' Something unintelligible was mumbled behind him about a bottle of wine, but it fell on alien ears. As soon as he returned home, his intelligent landlady solved the difficulty, sending him back next day with the needful _douceur_, upon which the 'genteel man,' with much venal urbanity, handed him into a select seat in the Strangers' Gallery. The building itself strikes him as rather mean, and not a little resembling a chapel. But the Speaker and the mace; the members going and coming, some cracking nuts and eating oranges, others in their greatcoats and with boots and spurs; the cries of 'Hear,' and 'Order,' and 'Question,' speedily absorb him. On his first visit he is fortunate. The debate turns on the reward to Admiral Rodney for his victory over De Grasse at Guadaloupe, and he hears Fox, Burke, and Rigby speak. 'This same celebrated Charles Fox,' he says, 'is a short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy complexion, and dark; and in general he is badly dressed. There certainly is something Jewish in his looks. But upon the whole, he is not an ill-made nor an ill-looking man: and there are many strong marks of sagacity and fire in his eyes.... Burke is a well-made, tall, upright man, but looks elderly and broken. Rigby is excessively corpulent, and has a jolly rubicund face.'

Pastor Moritz repeated his visits to the Parliament House, frankly confessing that he preferred this entertainment to most others; and, indeed, it was a shilling cheaper than the pit of a theatre. When, after his tour in the country, he came back to London, he seems at once to have gravitated to Westminster, for he gives an account of the discussion on the Barré pension which followed the death of Lord Rockingham in July. He heard Fox, with great eloquence, vindicate his resignation; he heard Horace Walpole's friend, General Conway; he heard Burke, in a passion, insisting upon the respect of the house; he heard the youthful Pitt, then scarcely looking more than one-and-twenty, rivet universal attention. A little earlier he had been privileged to witness that most English of sights, the Westminster election in Covent Garden, with its boisterous _finale_. 'When the whole was over, the rampant spirit of liberty, and the wild impatience of a genuine English mob, were exhibited in perfection. In a very few minutes the whole scaffolding, benches, and chairs, and everything else, was completely destroyed; and the mat with which it had been covered torn into ten thousand long strips or pieces, or strings; with which they _encircled_ or inclosed multitudes of people of all ranks. These they hurried along with them, and everything else that came in their way, as trophies of joy; and thus, in the midst of exultation and triumph, they paraded through many of the most populous streets of London.'

To the British Museum he paid a flying visit of little more than an hour, with a miscellaneous and 'personally conducted' party,--a visit scarcely favourable to minute impressions. But of the Haymarket Theatre, to which he went twice (Covent Garden and Drury Lane being closed as usual for the summer months), he gives a fairly detailed account. Foote's 'Nabob' was the play on the first night; that on the second, the 'English Merchant,' adapted by the elder Colman from the 'Ecossaise' of Voltaire. With this latter he was already familiar in its German dress, having seen it at Hamburg. On both occasions the performance wound up with O'Keeffe's once-famous ballad farce of 'The Agreeable Surprise.' That excellent bur-letta singer, John Edwin, took the part of 'Lingo' the schoolmaster (which he had created), * to the entire satisfaction of Moritz, who thought him, with his '_Amo, amas_, I love a lass,' etc., and his musical voice, 'one of the best actors of all that he had seen,' notwithstanding that Jack Palmer (Lamb and Goldsmith's Palmer!) acted the Nabob.

* There is a print of Edwin in this character after a picture by Alefounder. He was also a favourite 'Croaker' in the 'Good Natur'd Man.'

But if he was pleased with the acting, he was not equally impressed by the audience. The ceaseless clamour of the upper gallery and the steady hail of missiles were anything but agreeable. 'Often and often whilst I sat here [i.e. in the pit], did a rotten orange, or pieces of the peel of an orange, fly past me, or past some of my neighbours, and once one of them actually hit my hat, without my daring to look round, for fear another might then hit me on my face.' Another passage connected with this part of the entertainment illustrates the old fashion of sending the lackeys to keep their masters' places: 'In the boxes, quite in a corner, sat several servants, who were said to be placed there, to keep the seats for the families they served, till they should arrive; they seemed to sit remarkably close and still, the reason of which, I was told, was their apprehension of being pelted, for, if one of them dares but to look out of the box, he is immediately saluted with a shower of orange peel from the gallery.'

Over the descriptions of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey we must pass silently, in order to accompany the tourist on his road to Derbyshire, to the 'natural curiosities' of which, after some hesitation, he felt himself most at tracted. Equipped with a road-book, he set out by stage-coach from the White Hart (in the Strand) for Richmond, intending thence to pursue his journey on foot. According to his own account, he must have travelled in just such' another vehicle as that depicted in Hogarth's 'Country Inn-Yard,' and have shared the curiosity, so often felt by admirers of that veracious picture, and afterwards amply gratified in his own case, as to the method by which passengers managed to 'fasten themselves securely on the roof.' Luckily the coach met neither highwayman nor footpad. At Richmond he alighted, and is properly enthusiastic, almost dithyrambic, over 'one of the first situations in the world.' He even got up to see the sun rise from Richmond Hill, with the usual fate of such premature adventurers, a clouded sky. Then he set out on foot by Windsor to Oxford. But he speedily discovered that, in a horse-riding age, a pedestrian was a person of very inferior respectability; and though--modelling himself upon the Vicar of Wakefield--he was careful to invite the landlords to drink with him, he found himself generally treated with pity or contempt, which, when he sat down under a hedge to read Milton, almost changed into a doubt of his sanity. At most of the inns they declined to give him house-room, though, finally, he was allowed to enter 'one of those kitchens which I had so often read of in Fielding's fine novels,' where, just as in those novels, presently arrives a showy post-chaise to set the servile establishment in a bustle, although the occupants called for nothing but two pots of beer. After a vain attempt to obtain a night's lodging at Nuneham, he picks up a travelling companion in the shape of a young parson, who had been preaching at Dorchester and was returning to Oxford. His new ally takes him to the time-honoured Mitre, where he finds a great number of clergymen, all with their gowns and bands on, sitting round a large table, each with his pot of beer before him.' A not very edifying theological discussion ensues, which is too long to quote, and poor Parson Moritz is so well entertained that he has a splitting headache next morning. His further fortunes cannot be detailed here. From Oxford he goes to Stratford-on-Avon, then to Lichfield and Derby, and so to his destination, 'the great cavern near Castleton, in the high Peake of Derbyshire,' which he describes at length. He returns by Nottingham and Leicester, whence, still enthusiastic, but a little weary of his humiliations on foot, he takes coach to Northampton, mounting to the top, in company with a farmer, a young man and 'a black-a-moor.' This eminence proving as perilous as it looked, he creeps into the basket, in spite of the warnings of the black. 'As long as we went up hill, it was easy and pleasant. And, having had little or no sleep the night before, I was almost asleep among the trunks and the packages; but how was the case altered when we came to go down hill; then all the trunks and parcels began, as it were, to dance around me, and everything in the basket seemed to be alive; and I every moment received from them such violent blows, that I thought my last hour was come. I now found that what the black had told me was no exaggeration; but all my complaints were useless. I was obliged to suffer this torture nearly an hour, till we came to another hill again, when, quite shaken to pieces and sadly bruised, I again crept to the top of the coach, and took possession of my former seat.' No wonder he concludes his part of his experiences with a solemn warning to travellers to take inside places in English post coaches. With his return to London his narrative practically ends. But the rapid sketch here given of it affords no sufficient hint of the abundance of _naïf_ detail, of simple enthusiasm and kindly wonderment, which characterize its pages. To complete the impression given, we should be able to suppose the writer resting contentedly from a solitary literary effort, and ending tranquil days as a kind of German Dr. Primrose, telling grandchildren, such as Chodowiecki drew, how he once saw Goldsmith's monument in the great Abbey by the Thames, and heard Pitt speak in the Parliament House at Westminster. But this is to reckon without the all-recording pages of the 'Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie,' and that harsh resolvent, Fact. For the future of Pastor Charles P. Moritz was not at all in this wise. Besides his letters to his 'dearest Gedike,' he wrote many other works, including a 'psychological romance' and 'Travels in Italy;' became a Fine-Art Professor; married late in life, but not happily; left no family; and, last of all, had been dead two years when the translation which has formed the subject of these pages was first introduced to English readers.

XX. OLD VAUXHALL GARDENS.

```'In gay Vauxhall now saunter beaux and belles,

```And happier cits resort to Sadler's Wells.'=

|THUS sings one of Sylvanus Urban's poets, describing the pleasures of Spring in the London of George the Second. In the epithet 'happier'--an epithet probably suggested by the not very profound observation that the middle classes as a rule took their pleasure less sadly than mere persons of quality--there is 'the least little touch of spleen.' But the social distinction implied between the fashionable gardens on the Surrey side of the water and the more popular place of entertainment from which the tired dyer and his melting wife are trudging wearily in Hogarth's 'Evening' is practically preserved in the advertisements to be found, between May and August, in the newspapers of the time. Sadler's Wells is specific in its attractions,--its burletta or its rope-dancer: Vauxhall, on the contrary, with a disdainful reticence,--a _superbia quosita mentis_ befitting the 'genuine and only Jarley,'--shortly sets forth that its 'Evening Entertainments' will begin on such a date; that the price of admission is one shilling; and that the doors will open at five. After this notification it continued, at rare intervals, to repeat that the gardens were at the service of the public; but made no more definite sign. Obviously the thing to do was to go. With the help of a few old pamphlets and descriptions, it is proposed to invite the reader to make that expedition, and to revive, if it may be, some memory of a place, the traces of which are strewn broadcast over the literature of the last century. It is true that Vauxhall Gardens survived to a date much later than this. But it was Vauxhall 'with a difference,' and the Vauxhall here intended is Vauxhall in its prime, between 1750 and 1790,--the Vauxhall of Horace Walpole and the 'Connoisseur,'--of Beau Tibbs and the pawnbroker's widow,--of Fielding's 'Amelia' and Fanny Burney's 'Evelina.'

In 1750, the customary approach to this earthly paradise was still along that silent highway of the Thames over which, nearly forty years before, Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator had been rowed by the wooden-legged waterman who had fought at La Hogue. There was, indeed, a bridge built or being built at Westminster; but more than half a century was to elapse before there was another at Vauxhall. This little preliminary boating-party, especially to the accompaniment of French horns, must have been one of the delights of the journey, although, if we are to believe a Gallic poet who addressed a copy of verses upon 'Le Vauxhall de Londres' to M. de Fontenelle, '_le trajet du fleuve fatal_' was not without its terrors to would-be visitors. Goldsmith's Mrs. Tibbs, at all events, had 'a natural aversion to the water,' and when Mr. Matthew Bramble went, he went by coach for fear of cold, while the younger and bolder spirits of his party took ship from Ranelagh in 'a wherry, so light and slender' that, says poetical Miss Lydia Melford, they looked like 'fairies sailing in a nutshell.' They were four in the boat, she nevertheless adds, beside the oarsman; and if this paper were to be illustrated by fancy pictures the artist's attention might be particularly invited to that very fantastic fairy, Mrs. Tabitha Bramble, who, we are told, 'with her rumpt gown and petticoat, her scanty curls, her lappet-head, deep triple ruffles and high stays,' was (in Lady Griskin's opinion) 'twenty good years behind the fashion.' What the waterman charged, the fair Lydia does not tell us; but he probably asked more than usual for so exceptional a cargo. Meanwhile, the old rates shown in the 'Court and City Registers' of the time are moderate enough. From Whitehall Stairs, the favourite starting-place, the cost of a pair of oars was sixpence; from the Temple eightpence. For sculls you paid no more than half.

When, after passing Lambeth Palace on the left,--and possibly receiving from neighbouring boats some of those flowers of rhetoric to which Johnson once so triumphantly retorted,--you reached Vauxhall Stairs, your experiences were still, in all probability, those of Lydia Melford and her friends. There would be the same crush of wherries and confusion of tongues at the landing-place, and the same crowd of mudlarks and loafers would come rushing into the water to offer their unsolicited (but not gratuitous) services. Once free of these, a few steps would bring you to the unimposing entrance of the garden,--a gate or wicket in the front of an ordinary-looking house. Here you either exhibited your ticket, or paid your shilling; hurried, not without a throb of anticipation, down a darkened passage; and then, if you were as young and unsophisticated as Fanny Bolton in 'Pendennis,' probably uttered an involuntary exclamation of wonder as, with a sudden sound of muffled music, the many-lighted inclosure burst upon your view. There seems to be no doubt as to the surprise, heightened of course by the mean approach, and the genuine fascination of this first impression. The tall elms and sycamores, with the coloured lamps braced to the tree-trunks or twinkling through the leaves, the long ranges of alcoves with their inviting supper-tables, the brightly-shining temples and pavilions, the fading vistas and the ever-changing groups of pleasure-seekers, must have combined to form a whole which fully justified the enthusiasm of contemporaries, even if it did not, in the florid language of the old guide-books, exactly 'furnish the pen of a sublime and poetic genius with inexhaustible scenes of luxuriant fancy.'

The general disposition of the gardens was extremely simple and, in Miss Burney's opinion, even 'formal.' Opposite you, as you entered, was the Grand Walk, extending the entire length of the inclosure for a distance of 900 feet, and terminated, at the farther end, by a gilded statue of Aurora, apparently 'tip-toe on the mountain tops.' For this was afterwards substituted 'a Grand Gothic obelisk,' at the corners of which were painted a number of slaves chained, and over them the inscription:=

`````Spectator

`````Fastidiosus

`````Sibi Molestus=

Beyond the end of this walk was a sunk-fence or _ha-ha_ which separated the gardens from the hayfields then adjoining it. Parallel to the Grand Walk ran the South Walk with its triumphal arches; next to this again was the covered alley known indifferently as the Druid's or Lovers' Walk, made rather for 'whispering lovers' than for 'talking age;' and last came a fourth walk open at the top. Other walks, the chief of which was the Cross Walk, traversed the garden from side to side; and in the quadrangle formed by the Grand Walk, the Cross Walk, the South Walk, and the remaining side of the grounds, was a space of about five acres. This, which lay to the right of the entrance, was known as the Grove.

The chief feature of the Grove was its open-air orchestra, at first no more than a modest structure bearing the unambitious title of the 'rustic music-house.' But about 1758, this made way for a much more ornate building 'in the Gothic manner,' having, like its predecessor, pavilions beneath for the accommodation of supper-parties. Above, it contained a magnificent organ, in front of which, encircling an open space for the singers, were ranged the seats and desks of the musicians. This second orchestra, which was lavishly ornamented with niches and carvings, was surmounted by the ostrich plumes of the Prince of Wales. The decorations were modelled in a composition said to be known only to the 'ingenious architect,' a carpenter named Maidman, and the whole was painted 'white and bloom colour.' Immediately behind the orchestra was a building described as 'a Turkish tent,' with a carved blue and gold dome supported on eight internal Ionic, and twelve external Doric columns. This was profusely embellished, both within and without, by rich festoons of flowers. A good idea of the orchestra in its renovated form may be gathered from a little plate by Wale, in which the supper-tables are shown laid out in front. These for a long time were covered with red baize, an arrangement that added greatly to the general effect, which was further enhanced by arches of coloured lamps and other contrivances. There is a tinted design by Rowlandson--one indeed of his most popular efforts--depicting a motley group in front of the orchestra during the performance of Mrs. Weichsell, and numbering among the crowd of listeners the Prince of Wales, 'Perdita,' the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Duncannon, and other distinguished personages. In a supper-box at the side are Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, and Mrs. Thrale.

The musical performances in the orchestra generally began at six. At first they were wholly instrumental, and confined to 'sonatas and concertos.' In time, however, songs were added to the programme; and later still these were diversified by catches and glees, which generally came in the middle and at the end of the sixteen pieces to which the entertainment was restricted. Before the introduction of glees and catches, it was the practice to wind up with a duet or trio, accompanied by a chorus. In the old Vauxhall song-books may be studied the species of lyric which was trilled or quavered nightly from the Gothic aviary in the Grove. There is not much variety in these hymns to 'Jem of Aberdovey' or 'Kate of Aberdare, and the prevailing tone is abjectly sentimental. A favourite form was the 'Rondeau,' a much more rudimentary production than the little French plaything now known by that name, and characterized chiefly by its immoderate use of the refrain.=

````'Tarry awhile with me, my Love,

````O tarry awhile with me.'=

This is the artless burden of one of the 'celebrated Roundelays' sung at Vauxhall by the celebrated Mrs. Bland (_blandior Orpheo!_) to the music of the equally celebrated Mr. James Hook; and the 'young Shepherd by Love sore opprest, When the Maid of his heart he fondly addrest,' can scarcely be acquitted of needless iteration. But the music was often of a much higher kind, and the beautiful Shakespearean songs of Dr. Arne, 'When daisies pied,' and 'Where the bee sucks,' or 'Water parted' from the same composer's Opera of 'Artaxerxes,' alternated occasionally with the more popular ditties which delighted the average listener. Hook (the father of Theodore Hook), who was organist for upward of forty years, and Arne, who often conducted, were the most assiduous composers. Among the female singers were many vocal celebrities of the last century,--Mrs. Vincent and Miss Brent (of whom Goldsmith writes in 'The Bee' and 'The Citizen of the World'); the before-named Mrs. Weichsell, fair mother of the fairer Mrs. Billington; Mrs. Mountain; and for men, Lowe, Denman, Vernon, the 'great Dignum,' and the famous tenor Beard, whose name, together with that of one of his gentler colleagues, survives in Churchill's hectoring couplets:=

```'Where tyrants rule, and slaves with joy obey,

```Let slavish minstrels pour th' enervate lay;

```To Britons far more noble pleasures spring,

```In native notes whilst Beard and Vincent sing.'=