Vauxhall is alive. At one time it was thought dead, and people affirmed the fact to be an evidence of the improved state of the metropolis. (Moralists are too prone to be thankful for small mercies.) Had the fact been so, the inference was a fallacy; but we need not trouble ourselves about that, as the fact is otherwise. It is a mistake to suppose that progress is made only in one direction. Vauxhall is associated with the fast life of centuries. It was born in the general and fearful profligacy—the fearful price England paid for the Restoration. In 1661 Evelyn writes of it as a pretty contrived plantation. In 1665, in the diary of Pepys, we find entries of sundry visits to Fox-hall and the Spring Gardens, and “of the humours of the citizens pulling off cherries, and God knows what.” Again we are told, “to hear the nightingales and the birds, and here fiddlers, and there a harp, and here laughing, and there the people walking, is mighty diverting.” That respectable Secretary of the Admiralty also tells us of supper in an arbour, of ladies walking with their masks on, and his righteous soul was shocked to see “how rude some of the young gallants of the town are become,” and “the confidence of the vice of the age.” To Vauxhall Addison took Sir Roger de Coverley, and Goldsmith the Citizen of the World, who exclaimed, “Head of Confucius, this is fine! this unites rural beauty with courtly magnificence.” Here Fielding’s Amelia was enraptured with the extreme beauty and elegance of the place. Here Miss Burney gathered incidents for her once popular but now forgotten tales. And here Hogarth, for suggesting paintings, some of which still remain, was presented with a perpetual ticket of admission, and which was last used in 1836. Strange scenes have been done here. One of them is described by Horace Walpole, who graphically narrates how Lady Caroline Petersham stewed chickens over a lamp; and how Betty, the fruit girl, supped with them at a side table. All that is past. Dust and ashes are the fine lords and fine ladies who made Vauxhall the resort of folly and fashion—the fashion is gone, the folly remains. Yet never were there more funds subscribed for the conversion of the Jews, or more missionaries sent out to Timbuctoo.

Vauxhall is one of the delusions of London life. It lives on the past—a very common practice in this country, where real knowledge travels very slowly. When Smith comes up to London, his first Sunday he goes to hear the Rev. Mr. Flummery, thinking he is the popular preacher. Ah, Smith! Flummery has ceased to be a popular preacher these twenty years. “What a sweet girl is gone!” exclaims old Jones, as he hears of the death of an ancient flame. Jones forgets the sweet girl had become an old maid of seventy, and had not a tooth in her mouth or a lock of hair on her head but what was artificial. So with Vauxhall. It lives as many a man, or newspaper, or magazine, or institution, on its name. Judge for yourself if you won’t take my word. A cab will take you there from the Strand in half an hour, and for the very moderate sum of one shilling the gate will be unlocked and entrance effected. The specialty of the place is the blaze of lights from thousands of lamps. Supposing you to have got over the bewilderment created by their lustre, to eyes not accustomed to such “hall sof dazzling light,” you perceive a kind of square (the precise definition of it I leave to the mathematicians) with a dancing platform in the middle, a supper room on one side, and boxes all round, where refreshments and seats are supplied. Opposite to the supper-room is a lofty orchestra, glittering all over with many coloured lamps; further on and behind are walks, and trees, and a fountain, with gigantic horses snorting water through their nostrils, and a space for fireworks, the demand for which on the part of the pleasure seekers of the metropolis, if we may judge by the supply, is insatiable. Let us not forget also the Rotunda, a large building with pit, boxes, and gallery, chiefly devoted to horsemanship, neither worse nor better than what is usually seen at such places. The comic singing is a feature of the place. Popular comic songs are not very fresh, nor very witty nor refined, and require, when delivered in public, a good deal of elocution. The point must be apparent, and the emphasis clearly enunciated, but they are much the same here as elsewhere. When you have heard one or two of them, you have heard them all. So much by way of description. The people who come here are the people whose pleasures are of the lowest character; who are dependent on others; whose life is all outward rather than inward. They are not readers nor thinkers, you may be sure, but the class precisely to whom such places are as hurtful as they are attractive. If a man is to be known by the company he keeps, what are we to think of the habituÉs of Vauxhall? for after all life is, or ought to be, to us all a stern reality—a battle-field—a victory—not a pleasure garden, or a Vanity Fair; and even in London you may mix with better society than that of painted Traviatas or tipsy men. Smoking, dancing, drinking, is not all life; yet for such purposes Vauxhall solely exists. I much question, if London alone were concerned, so great is the rivalry in this particular style of amusement, whether Vauxhall would be a success; but the provincial element is amazingly strong. I account for that as follows. The railway system has done this for London. It has filled it with strangers. From the wilds of Connemara, from the distant Land’s End and remote John o’Groat’s, old and young, male and female, rich and poor, wise or foolish, come in shoals to see London and its sights. Now Vauxhall, and its illumination, and its slice of ham, have been the wonder of generations, and to Vauxhall away they rush. Their speech betrayeth them. Look at them. This party is from Lancashire. From the flowery fields of Somersetshire that party have come. Wales has sent her exciteable sons, and Scotland her reckless prodigals, for there are such even ayont the Tweed. Here we have some five or six—a father and mother, a daughter and her husband, and it may be a brother. Those giants were never reared within the sound of Bow bells, and to be impertinent to either the old lady or the young one were the height of folly. Their fashions are not ours, yet are they wondrous jolly; and, woe is me, the head of the family is exhibiting an agility as he bounds up and down as an elephant might, which is unbecoming his years. How is this? Why actually in a remote corner of the pocket, in the innermost depths of that ancient coat, there is a bottle of raw gin, which the old satyr puts to his own mouth, and then hands it to the rest of his party, by whom, in a similar manner, it is applied, till what is left would not hurt the conscience of a teetotaller to drink. It is well his “missus” is there to pilot him home, and the sooner he gets back to his Yorkshire wilds the better. Yet we have a sprinkling of town life. The reader must remember Vauxhall occupies altogether eleven acres of ground, and on one occasion upwards of 20,000 persons paid for admission. Look at that faded pair. Some forty years ago they were fast, as times went, and here they have come to have a peep at the old place, and to wonder how they cared so much about it then. There stands an old fogy of the Regency. Of what hideous debauch can he tell; and here stuffed, and painted, and bewigged, made up from top to toe, he has come to mourn, not to moralise, over the past. A sad sight is he; but sadder still are those pale-faced ones, of elaborate hair, and exquisitely fitting costumes and bewitching Balmorals, now dancing, now chaffing, now drinking, now uproariously merry, but all the time with wanton wiles seeking their human prey in the excitement of music, and laughter, and wine.