The Eagle tavern and Grecian theatre which stood till lately at the corner of the dreary City Road and Shepherdess Walk were developed out of a quiet eighteenth-century pleasure-garden known as the Shepherd and Shepherdess, which had its arbours, skittle-ground, and small assembly-room. [57a] About 1822 a rather remarkable man, named Thomas Rouse (born in 1784), came into possession of the premises. [57b] He is said to have begun life as a bricklayer; at any rate, he had a turn for building, and in later days indulged himself in saloons, pavilions, and Cockney gardening. He rebuilt the tavern, or, at any rate, renamed it the Eagle, and from 1824 onwards the Eagle lawn was the scene of some of Green’s balloon ascents, and of annual tournaments of the Devon and Cornish wrestlers and single-stick players. One of the earliest balloon ascents, on May 25, 1824, gave a melancholy advertisement to the place. A balloonist named Thomas Harris ascended from the grounds, accompanied by a young lady named Sophia Stocks, who was described by the journalists as ‘an intrepid girl’ who entered the balloon ‘with but slight appearance of fear.’ The balloon took the direction of Croydon, but by its fall to the earth in Beddington Park, Harris was killed and his companion severely injured. [58a]

The coronation of William IV. in 1831 did not pass without influence on the Eagle, for in October the proprietor bought up the fittings of the Abbey entrance and robing-rooms and erected them as an entrance to his gardens, advertising them not only as the identical fittings, but as re-erected by ‘the identical mechanics.’ In this year, also, the famous Grecian Saloon came into existence. It was furnished with an organ and ‘a superb self-acting piano’; also with a superb gas chandelier, and with classic paintings by Philip Phillips, a pupil of Clarkson Stanfield and ‘scene-painter to the Adelphi and Haymarket.’ [58b]

The Eagle reopened in the spring of 1832 with many of the attractions that long continued to characterize it. In the garden was an orchestra of Oriental type, variously described as Moorish or Chinese, and the Pandean Band from Vauxhall Gardens was engaged to perform. Dancing took place, generally once a week, in the ‘Grecian tent’ or in the assembly-room, and the gardens were adorned with Chinese lanterns, cosmoramas, fountains, and dripping rocks. In the Saloon there were concerts and ‘vaudevilles’ every evening, with sacred music (in Lent) from Handel and Mozart. The admission was no more than a shilling or sixpence, and it is pleasing to find that the ‘junior branches of families’ were admitted at threepence a head. One has a tender feeling for these junior branches, some of whom must have sat there with their fathers and mothers rather wearily from 7.30 to near 11, enlivened at times by the conjurer and the lady on the elastic cord (Miss Hengler or Miss Clarke) but caring little for the excellent glees and the vocal efforts of Miss Fraser James—bright star though she was of the London tavern concerts [59a]—or for those of Miss Smith, ‘the little Pickle’ of Drury Lane, of whom the critics remarked that it was miraculous that so young a person should be able to sing so high and so low, and excel in such songs as the ‘Deep, Deep Sea’ and ‘The Wolf,’ which she was understood to sing in private. How many people at this period visited the Eagle, or, indeed, any other place of open-air amusement, it is hard to determine; but the newspapers speak of 5,000 or 6,000 persons being present on one night in May, while others give the more modest total of 1,000 or 1,300 at sixpence each. The frequenters of the Eagle were people of humble rank, and at this time we hear of no distinguished visitors, except, perhaps, Paganini, who, going there with his friends to amuse himself one August night in 1832, was considerably mobbed, the remarks on his appearance being doubtless gems of Cockney sarcasm.

A Tavern-Concert Singer, Miss Frazer (or Fraser) James, circa 1838

A graphic sketch by ‘Boz’ brings back to us the evening when Mr. Samuel Wilkins, the journeyman carpenter of small dimensions, accompanied his sweetheart, Miss Jemima Evans, to the Eagle. On their way from a distant suburb, they stopped at the Crown[59b] in Pentonville, to taste some excellent shrub in the little garden thereto attached, and finally arrived in the City Road. The Eagle garden was gravelled and planted, the refreshment-boxes were painted, and variegated lamps shed their light on the heads of the company. A Moorish band and military band were playing in the grounds; but the people were making for the concert-room, a place with an orchestra, ‘all paint, gilding, and plate glass.’ Here the audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and ‘everybody’—and this is a touch of the later Dickens—‘was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible.’ Mr. Wilkins ordered rum-and-water with a lemon for himself and ‘sherry-wine’ for the lady, with some sweet caraway-seed biscuits. There was an overture on the organ and comic songs (let us add by the famous singers Henry Howell and Robert Glindon [60]), accompanied by the organ.

This must have been in 1835 or 1836, and Dickens would have been pleased at the all-embracing sympathies of the proprietor of the Eagle, who, a little later, organized so many charitable benefits. Thus, there was a benefit for the Blind Hebrew Brethren in the East, and a ball ‘for our friends of the Hebrew nation.’ On another night, a benefit ‘to relieve decayed Druids and their wives and orphans,’ and yet another night ‘for clothing the children of the needy.’

The coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, like the previous coronation, gave a hint for new developments. The Eagle now, and for some years, took to itself the sub-title of the Coronation Pleasure-Grounds, and this year, or at the close of 1837, the place assumed nearly the form that it retained till its closing years. A covered promenade ran round the gardens; the great tavern at the corner of the City Road was erected, and a ball-room was completed. The Saloon was remodelled, with a pit—part of it railed off for smokers—and tiers of boxes. A new organ was set up by Parsons of Bloomsbury, and the old organ and self-acting piano were advertised for sale. The architectural genius of Rouse was doubtless at the bottom of these changes, but he gave the credit to the professionals, and announced that the whole was ‘planned by P. Punnett, Esq., and surveyed by R. Warton.’

The new Saloon was opened on January 1, 1838—for the Eagle was a winter as well as a summer resort [61a]—with a concert and an appropriate address by Moncrieff the dramatist. A programme of this year includes an overture by Weber, an air from Rossini, ‘Tell me where is Fancy bred,’ ‘All’s Well’ (duet), and ‘It’s all very well, Mr. Ferguson,’ one of several comic songs.

We approach the forties, when Rouse, like Phelps with Shakespeare at Sadler’s Wells, had the audacity to present a whole series of operas in the City Road. If these representations were not brilliant, they were praiseworthy efforts, and a revelation to East Central London. Rouse had a good band and chorus; an excellent tenor in Frazer from Covent Garden Theatre; C. Horn, the composer of ‘Cherry Ripe,’ Russell Grover, and various passable prima donnas. [61b] Among the operas announced in the bills of the forties we find the Barber of Seville, the Crown Diamonds, Don Giovanni, La Gazza Ladra, and Sonnambula. In these attempts to improve the musical taste of the neighbourhood, Rouse is reported to have lost £2,000 yearly, but as the tavern brought him in about £5,000 a year he could well afford the experiment.

At the Christmas of 1844, pantomime, which was to make the fame of the later Grecian theatre, found its place in the programme, and Richard Flexmore, a really agile, inventive, and humorous clown, made his appearance. A more remarkable actor, who joined the Grecian company about this time, and remained with it for five years, was Frederick Robson, who was given parts in the farces and vaudevilles. Robson’s great reputation dates from his performances at the Olympic from 1853 onwards, but at the Grecian he had already given an unmistakable taste of his quality. His famous song ‘Villikins and his Dinah’ was first heard at the Eagle. A man of strange physique, with a small body and a big head, he could do what he would with his audience—convulsing them with laughter by some outrageous drollery; thrilling them with ‘an electrical burst of passion or pathos, or holding them midway between terror and laughter as he performed some weirdly grotesque dance.’ [62a] In burlesque and extravaganza he displayed such passionate intensity that he seemed to give promise of a second Kean—yet a Kean he never became. A playgoer who saw him often has acutely suggested that ‘the very opportunity of exaggeration afforded by burlesque elicited the display of a quasi-tragic power which would have ceased if the condition of exaggeration were withdrawn.’ [62b]

March 1, 1851, was memorable at the Eagle as the last night of the proprietorship of old Thomas Rouse. He died at Boulogne a year later (September 26, 1852). During his twenty-seven years of management he had done much to deserve the title of ‘Bravo’ Rouse, with which his audiences were wont to hail him. For one thing, he was never bored by his own entertainments, but used to sit, night after night, in a box or other conspicuous place—a symbol of order, armed with a big stick, which one fancies he would have used if necessary.His successor was Benjamin Oliver Conquest [63] (born 1805) a comic actor of ability, endowed with plenty of animal spirits, which had carried him from the part of a coach-builder or (according to others) of a bootmaker in real life to the stage part of a witch in Macbeth, and finally supported him through a twenty-eight weeks’ repetition at the Pavilion Theatre of a song, ‘Billy Barlow,’ which made a sensation something like ‘Jim Crow.’

He inaugurated the first night of his management at the Eagle, March 31, 1851, by the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with an opening address by E. L. Blanchard. On another night Blanchard’s burlesque, called Nobody in Town was produced with a part for Sam Cowell (1820–1866), the comic singer, famous for his clear articulation and finished style. The great feature of Conquest’s management was the production of ballets, only surpassed by those of Her Majesty’s Theatre. It happened that Mrs. Conquest, his wife, was a fine dancer and a singularly skilful teacher, who trained a long succession of pupils, including the graceful Kate Vaughan. The Miss Conquests, moreover, his daughters Amelia, Laura, and Isabella, formed in themselves a small troupe of capable dancers. In the gardens, too, the public dancing became more prominent, and a ‘monster platform’ was erected for the accommodation of 500 people. The masked ball was also occasionally tried, an experiment, as Vauxhall had shown, likely to be fraught with rowdyism, though the Eagle sternly refused admittance to clowns, harlequins, and pantaloons. One sensation of Conquest’s management was the ascent, in 1852, of Coxwell’s balloon, with the acrobats H. and E. Buislay suspended on a double trapeze from its car.

In the last years of the fifties, pantomime and drama, romantic and sensational, figure largely in the bills. From 1857 George Conquest, the proprietor’s son, began to take a prominent part as actor and stage-manager, and finally made the Grecian pantomime one of the features of the minor stage. In conjunction with H. Spry, the younger Conquest wrote or produced more than twenty-one pantomimes at this theatre, and was always to the fore in the performance itself. Unsurpassed in daring feats of the trap and trapeze kind, he was no less remarkable for his wonderful make-up and changes. In the Wood Demon (1873–1874), for instance, he presented the title-rÔle as a tree, appearing next as a dwarf, an animated pear, and finally as an octopus. He became sole proprietor on his father’s death (July 5, 1872), and built a new Grecian theatre, [64a] opened in October, 1877, with Harry Nicholls; George Conquest, junior, and Miss M. A. Victor in the company.

In 1879 Conquest sold the Eagle property to Mr. T. G. Clark, taking his farewell benefit on March 17. He migrated to the Surrey Theatre, where, as lessee, he continued the traditions of the Grecian pantomimes. He died on May 14, 1901.

Mr. Clark, the new proprietor, [64b] had made money in the marine-store business, and would have been better qualified to command the Channel Fleet than to manage the Eagle. He had, it is true, been for a short time the lessee of the Adelphi, but he had no eye for theatrical business, and his new venture, chiefly in the regions of melodrama, was once more disastrous to his pocket. Perhaps the failure was not entirely his own fault. Tastes were changing, and the Eagle garden, with its public dancing—now that Cremorne had passed away—seemed something like a scandal or an anachronism. In the time of the Conquests there had been complaints of the company that frequented the Eagle. Such charges are too often exaggerated, because they are often made by well-meaning people who really know nothing at first hand of popular amusements, and who go to the garden or the music-hall to collect evidence, as it were, for the prosecution. At the same time, there is generally something in complaints of the kind, nor are managers quite the immaculate beings that their counsel represent them to be when licences come on for renewal in October. It is right to say that George Conquest seems to have done his best to keep out notoriously bad characters, and that he warned mere boys and girls off his monster platform and his concert-hall.

Mr. Clark’s difficulties and the belief, well founded or not, that the Eagle was an undesirable public influence formed the opportunity of ‘General’ Booth and the Salvation Army. The Army wanted a barracks and a headquarters for their social and religious work. That they should have obtained these—and largely by public subscription—few will complain. But it is not quite clear that it was imperative to make an onslaught on the Eagle, being, as it was, a centre of amusement in the colourless life of the district. A new theatre might well have arisen under a new Conquest, even if the garden and the dancing had to go.

In June, 1882, the Eagle was purchased by the Army. In August the stage appliances were sold off, and the Army entered the citadel in triumph. In September the public were admitted. A great tent for religious services took the place of the monster platform—the pernicious spot on which, as Mr. Booth’s friends declared, so many ‘had danced their way to destruction.’ Curiously enough, though one object of the movement was to annihilate the Eagle tavern, that stronghold of beer-drinking and spirit-drinking, Mr. Booth discovered that the law compelled him to keep up the drinking licence, and beer is sold in the Eagle public-house at this very moment. Unfortunately, also, for its funds, the Army got involved in litigation about alterations and repairs—a costly business which was carried up to the House of Lords.

At last the ancient domain of the Shepherd and Shepherdess was deserted even by the Salvation Army. In September, 1899, the newspapers announced that the Eagle premises were in the hands of the house-breakers. A few old frequenters hastened to revisit the place, and some others, no doubt, who had only heard of the Eagle as a somewhat low resort associated with that enigmatic song of their childhood, ‘Pop goes the Weasel,’ must have been surprised to find the buildings—rather handsome in their way—still in existence. The Eagle garden presented itself to such visitors as a large paved square, which, judging from its two surviving trees, could never have been truthfully described as thickly wooded. Conspicuous features were the large rotunda opposite the entrance, with its pit, now floored over, and the ‘new’ theatre (of 1877), adjoining Shepherdess Walk, practically unaltered, though dingy and dirt-begrimed beyond description.

The Oriental orchestra in the garden still showed traces of its gaudy colouring, and a melancholy brick wall displayed remnants of primitive grotto-work. One could trace near the centre of the grounds the concrete-covered circle where many a light-hearted couple had danced before the days of the Conquests. [66] The rows of alcoves, with the balcony for promenaders above them, were still there, though no longer brightly painted, but mostly boarded up and filled with headless Venuses and Cupids—pagan deities of the gardens who nourished circa A.D. 1838–1882.

Soon after this, the huge Eagle tavern, surmounted by its proud stone bird, was demolished, and a smaller public-house of neat red brick (opened August, 1900) now covers part of its site. On the site of the theatre and its entrance, which faced Shepherdess Walk, and was adorned with two more stone eagles, we have now a police-station. Though all the old buildings have been destroyed, much of the garden space is still unoccupied, and in due season a solitary tree puts forth its leaves.[Newspaper notices, bills, and photographs taken at the time of the demolition of the Eagle (W.); Blanchard’s Life, by Clement Scott and Cecil Howard; Hollingshead’s Footlights and My Lifetime; Ritchie’s Night Side of London; Baker’s London Stage.] [67]

Pleasure-Gardens, Eagle Tavern, circa 1838