THE THE TRIUMPH OF PLEASURE FOUNDLING MUSEUM GARDENS 1729-1786 ‘all in a Moment, as if by Magic, every Object was made CREDITS visible, I should rather say illustrious, by a thousand Front cover: Fig. 13: Anon., A Perspective View of the Grand Detail from J. S. Muller after S. Wale, The Walk in Vauxhall Gardens, and the Orchestra, Lights finely disposed, which were kindled at one and the Triumphal Arches, Mr Handel’s Statue &c. in the from the Gentleman’s Magazine, xxxv (August South Walk of Vauxhall Gardens, c.1840, printed 1765), Private Collection same Signal; and my Ears and my Eyes, Head and Heart, from original 1751 plates, Private Collection Fig. 14: Miss Thornton at Vauxhall, 1778, Private were captivated at once ... I must avow, I found my Fig. 1: Token, Vauxhall Season Collection Ticket © The Foundling Museum Fig. 15: Detail from J. Maurer, A Perspective View whole Soul, as it were, dissolv’d in Pleasure ... Fig. 2: Detail from [Sutton Nicholls], Vaux-Hall, of Vaux-Hall Garden, 1744, Private Collection Spring-Gardens, engraving, 1737, Private Fig. 16: Issac Cruikshank after G.M. Woodward, Collection My whole Discourse, while there, was a Rhapsody of Joy A Country Farmer & Waiter at Vauxhall, etching, Figs. 3 & 4: Chinese porcelain Punch Bowl, c.1790 hand-coloured, Private Collection and Wonder. Assure yourself such an Assemblage of © The Foundling Museum Fig. 17: Detail from [Sutton Nicholls], Vaux- Beauties never, but in the Dreams of the Poets, ever met Fig.5: Louis François Roubiliac, Jonathan Tyers, Hall, Spring-Gardens, 1737, Private Collection before – and I scarce yet believe the bewitching Scene c.1738 © Victoria and Albert Museum, Fig. 6: Louis François Roubiliac, George Frideric was real ---’ Handel, 1739 © Coram in the care of the Supported by The Monument Trust, with Foundling Museum additional support from The Finnis Scott Foundation, Sheepdrove Trust, the Idlewild Fig. 7: Louis François Roubiliac, , Henry Fielding, The Champion, 1742 Trust and The Triumph of Pleasure Supporters c.1741 © National Portrait Gallery, London Group. Fig. 8: J.S. Muller after Samuel Wale, A General Prospect of Vaux Hall Gardens, 1751, Private Collection Exhibition design: Fig.9: Photo of ‘Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’ Joe Ewart and Hugh Durrant for Society small park as it is today Brochure/graphic design: Fig. 10: Detail from J.S. Muller after Samuel Joe Ewart for Society Wale, Vauxhall Gardens shewing the Grand Walk at the entrance of the Garden, and the Orchestra, with the Musick Playing, 1751, Private Collection THE Fig. 11: Detail from J.S. Muller after Canaletto, A View of the Grand South Walk in Vaux Hall FOUNDLING Gardens, with the Triumphal Arches, Mr. Handel’s MUSEUM Statue, &c., 1751, Private Collection

Fig. 12: Francis Hayman, See-Saw, c.1742 © , 40 London 2012 London WC1N 1AZ FOREWORD

This exhibition would not have been possible without the public collections and private individuals who have generously loaned works to the show. They have enabled us to reveal the history of Vauxhall Gardens in the eighteenth century, and the role played by Jonathan Tyers, William Hogarth and in developing the first mass audience for the arts in England. The Triumph of Pleasure is also testament to the exhaustive research of curator, David Coke. We are deeply grateful to him for his expertise and commitment to the project.

We would like to thank The Monument Trust for their generous support of this exhibition, along with The Finnis Scott Foundation, Sheepdrove Trust, the Idlewild Trust, the members of The Triumph of Pleasure Supporters Group and Artfinder.

Finally, we would like to thank Patrick and Mavis Walker, long-term and devoted friends of the Foundling Museum, who supported the production of this exhibition guide.

Caro Howell, Director

Fig. 1 VAUXHALL GARDENS AT THE FOUNDLING MUSEUM

In 2006, an unusual Chinese export porcelain punchbowl was acquired by the Foundling Museum. The bowl is decorated with two eighteenth-century London views, both derived from engravings of the 1750s. On one side is the Foundling Hospital and on the other is its apparently irreconcilable antithesis, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

This contradictory combination of London’s great childcare charity and its most successful commercial entertainment seems at first to be eccentric. In fact, there are good reasons to link the two and it is these reasons, as well as the success of Vauxhall Gardens, that this exhibition celebrates.

Two of the great creative artists of the eighteenth century are the linchpins that inextricably couple the two establishments; the painter and printmaker William Hogarth (1697-1764) and the composer and musician George Frideric Handel (1685-1759).

One of Hogarth’s great missions in life was to create exhibition spaces for his own and his contemporaries’ work. When he heard the plans of his old friend Jonathan Tyers (1702-1767) to create a public pleasure garden, he realised its potential for displaying modern British art. In the process, Hogarth also appears to have been responsible for turning Tyers into a serial patron of the visual arts, possibly the greatest patron of new British art of the whole Georgian era. A few years later, Hogarth caught wind of a huge new building project only two and a half miles away from Vauxhall, to create a home for foundling babies. Since this building would be open to the public, Hogarth’s involvement was inevitable. His gift to the Foundling Hospital of his great portrait of its founder, Captain , was an example that his peers eagerly followed. The works of art given to the Hospital by the leading professional artists of the 1740s became one of the great public attractions of the day. The Collection remains internationally significant today.

Figs. 3 & 4

 Fig. 2 VAUXHALL GARDENS

Figs. 5, 6 & 7

Handel came to both projects after they had started, but to great effect. At the Foundling Hospital, he mounted benefit concerts which were responsible for funding the completion of the Chapel, with its organ. The Chapel was not only a useful and beautiful adjunct to the Hospital, but also the ideal space in which to perform his own choral works and oratorios. Handel’s involvement at Vauxhall is more difficult to pin down, but involved he certainly was. By the mid 1730s he was directing the music and supplying many of his own compositions. The huge and continuing popularity of Handel’s music was in great part due to its repeated performance at Vauxhall to audiences of up to 100,000 every season. Tyers and Handel became friends and Tyers used some of his profits to support the composer. He also erected a remarkable full length marble portrait sculpture of Handel, which quickly became the Fig. 8 Garden’s presiding deity. This statue can be seen at the Victoria & Albert Museum. First opened to the public in 1661, the New Spring Gardens, as the site was then known, was Numerous other artists less familiar to us today were also connected with both sites. They little more than a country tavern set in a large piece of wooded ground, amongst the market included the painters Francis Hayman and , the designers George Michael gardens and orchards of South . Moser and Richard Yeo, the draughtsman Samuel Wale, the landscapist Richard Wilson, the engravers Ravenet, Grignion, Rooker and Muller, the translator and poet John Lockman and The New Spring Gardens became hugely popular with Londoners. They were frequented by the many regular musicians and singers who performed at both the Hospital and the Gardens. buskers, strolling musicians and acrobats, as well as by working girls, who found it an ideal spot for attracting customers. The combination of refreshments, entertainments and Besides the punchbowl, the Foundling Museum’s collections include a second direct link with appealing company attracted young men who had the leisure or social position to be able to the Gardens; an expensive Vauxhall season ticket for 1737. This was not, as might be imagined, spend a few hours away from home or their duties. given by a wealthy donor. On the contrary, it was left at the Hospital with a baby, by its desperate mother. Its function was as a unique means of identification, should she ever be in When Jonathan Tyers, a young tradesman from Bermondsey, took on the lease in 1729, both a position to reclaim her child. The majority of the tokens left by mothers are small everyday the tavern and garden were showing their age. Tyers saw great potential in the site. It was objects, so how one mother acquired something as valuable as a Vauxhall season ticket is not close to London and Westminster, but outside their controlling jurisdiction and already well- known. The possibility that it was given to her by her seducer should not be ignored, but is known and popular. It was near the Thames, London’s great highway, so easily accessible for probably romantic fiction. The name of the ticket's original owner, inscribed on the reverse, is guests and suppliers. It was owned by the Prince of Wales as part of his Duchy of Cornwall Richard Arnold, who could possibly be the brother of George Arnold, asuccessful merchant, estates, providing a useful royal connection. Finally, its reputation for loose morals made it alderman and a Governor of the Foundling Hospital. ripe for the wholesale reform and redevelopment envisaged by Tyers. SIGHTS

The Scene so new, with Pleasure and Surprise Feasted awhile our ravished Ears and Eyes. A Trip to Vauxhall, 1737

Vauxhall Gardens appealed first to the sense of sight. Even on the journey there, visitors were watching others doing the same, looking out for suitable companions and celebrity spotting. The 1737 satirical pamphlet, A Trip to Vauxhall, is headed with a quotation from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, which can be translated as ‘They come to observe, and they come that they themselves might be observed’. To be observed at their best, a person needed to be beautifully dressed and coiffed, in the right company and set against a flattering background. There was no better place for this than Vauxhall.

For the first time visitor, the impact of seeing the brilliant milling crowds in the Grove must Fig. 9 have been startling. The short walk from the waterside was drab and entry to the Gardens was down a long gloomy corridor through the proprietor’s house. But emerging at the other end, Over the next two decades, Tyers created at Vauxhall an ‘Elysium’ or ‘Paradise’, as it was often the visitor was met by the revelation of the crowd’s colourful costumes, waiters dashing about called. In other words, an enclosed garden where visitors felt transported to an exotic place and energetic musicians, all set against exotic Gothic, classical and ‘oriental’ buildings and the apart; a place where the outside world ceased to exist. Every aspect of the Gardens helped sparkling decorations in every supper-box. The sensation was truly novel and thrilling. create this impression, from the anticipatory journey there, to the sights and sounds, tastes and smells to be experienced on arrival. The overriding pleasure that visitors gained from the Gardens was sensory. Compared to the malodorous and cacophonous streets of London, where the senses had to be blunted to avoid being constantly offended, Vauxhall was indeed a garden. Visitors could allow all their senses the freedom to open up, to accept the refreshing stimuli and to let down their habitual guard and relax. A visit to Vauxhall was certainly an escape from daily realities, but it was by no means divorced from life itself. In fact, at its best, it was a re-affirmation of all the good things that life had to offer.

Vauxhall Gardens became the archetypal English commercial pleasure garden, imitated, but never bettered, either in London and the rest of Great Britain, or overseas from Europe to the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. In terms of how it made people feel, Vauxhall’s closest parallel in modern times is not any of its direct successors – music halls, circuses, seaside piers, park bandstands – but that other ‘dream factory’; 1920s and ’30s Hollywood.

Outlived by many of its foreign namesakes, Vauxhall finally closed in 1859. Many factors combined to make this inevitable, the main one being the value of the land. Three hundred ‘artisans’ houses’ were built on the site in the 1860s and ’70s, only to be demolished a century later in slum clearance schemes, making way for today’s small park, recently re-christened ‘Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’. Fig. 10 Fig. 11 optical illusions more life-like. The decorations in the covered dining booths or ‘supper- boxes’, painted by Francis Hayman and his workshop, benefited from this effect. Instead of looking at a painting, viewers thought they were actually gazing through a window at a real event. A notice in The Connoisseur of 1755 tells us that ‘they have touched up all the pictures, which were damaged last season by the fingering of those curious Connoisseurs, who could not be satisfied without feeling whether the figures were alive’.

Although Vauxhall Gardens in the nineteenth century is well known for its spectacular entertainments, Tyers was experimenting with many visual effects in the eighteenth century as well. One piece of theatrical showmanship retained the love of the public for over seventy years. Launched in 1752, the famous ‘Cascade’ was a mechanical ‘waterfall’, created with thousands of strips of tin fixed to rollers, against a painted backcloth. When this was operated after dark, it looked and sounded like a natural cataract, with ‘water’ rushing downwards between rocks and foaming at the bottom. The backdrop of trees being blown in a storm and a full moon emerging from behind scudding clouds was illuminated from behind. Theatrical lamps were used to light the cascade for the fifteen minutes of the show and many visitors were convinced that they had seen a real waterfall in action. It was only something about the speed of the lower section of the fall that made Erasmus Darwin ‘discover it’s not being natural’ during his visit in 1756. Fig. 12

The Gardens gave the impression of aristocratic grandeur. Impressive vistas stretched down long gravelled and lawned avenues, cut through dense woodland to distant sculptures, paintings and classical colonnades, and encircled the Grove with its central ‘Temple of Music’. SOUNDS Such things were normally reserved for royalty and the richest of the aristocracy, but here everybody could enjoy the sense of privilege. Yet the grandeur was never overpowering, Each Night they flock both great and small always inclusive and tempered by the human scale of the buildings. To hear the Musick at Vaux Hall. Anonymous poem, 1738 Tyers was an idealist and an egalitarian. The Gardens may have had all the trappings of an aristocratic estate, but they were available to anybody who could afford the one shilling The hum of conversation, the clink of tableware and the song of native birds, especially the entrance fee and respectable enough clothing to pass muster with the gatekeeper. What famous nightingales, would have been heard from the earliest days of the Gardens’ existence. Tyers created, by means of a thoroughly modern and subtle combination of art, design, music In the seventeenth century this was occasionally overlaid with an informal mix of music, as and refreshments, was a utopian dream-world for Londoners. In this the took visitors sang, played, or paid eager musicians to perform their favourite airs. the part of Lethe, the river of oblivion, which visitors had to cross in order to leave their everyday world behind, for the exotic and aspirational shores of Vauxhall. As soon as Tyers took over the proprietorship this musical anarchy ceased. Tyers employed a regular band of British musicians. They played in an outdoor bandstand or ‘Orchestra’ in During daylight hours, Vauxhall was more or less respectable, where families with young the middle of the Grove, with a great organ to swell the sound housed in a building of its own. children could enjoy a risk-free promenade in the park-like surroundings. After dark, the Visitors were presented with a pre-arranged music programme, in which concertos, overtures, Gardens were transformed. Not only did some less respectable elements of society make it military music and dances alternated with pastoral, romantic and patriotic songs. It was the their night-time haunt, but under the illumination of the thousands of oil-lamps hung on fashion to promenade around the Gardens during the instrumental pieces, but to return to trees, lamp posts and buildings, the whole place took on a totally different look. The bright, the Orchestra and listen with rapt attention to the singers, some of whom gained a huge artificial, flickering oil lamps made deceptions, whether personal or artistic, credible, and popular following. PLAN OF THE GROVE AT VAUXHALL, c.1750

N  A Proprietor’s House B Entrance C Prince’s Pavilion D Rotunda E Pillared Saloon F Orchestra 15 ⌃ D E G Organ 36 Turkish Tent  H A I Handel Statue

27 25 38    18/92⌃ 22 Numerals refer to works’ numbers within the exhibition  20 21/62 ⌃ B ⌃ 17 ⌃ 61 ⌃ 64 ⌃

⌃69 32  F GH C

31 42  68 ⌃ ⌃ 91 ⌃ 67 ⌃ 26 33  I  experience of music on the river. Each afternoon Tyers’ own musicians would rehearse that evening’s concert on the ‘stately barge’ that he provided to ferry them over the river. This became one of the recognised highlights of Vauxhall’s ever-present publicity.

The typical sounds of the Gardens also altered after dark. As the evening progressed, the songs grew more daring and the music softer, to be rudely interrupted by the whistle blasts that organised the lighting of the lamps, and the hand-bell that presaged the thunderous roar of the Cascade. The increasingly volatile clientele would make rowdy contributions too. In the late 1750s Fig. 13 the proprietors were called upon to prevent the conduct of ‘loose women and their male Most of the music performed at the Gardens was newly written, some of it especially for the companions’, whose yells issuing from the Vauxhall band. It was, without question, some of the best to be heard anywhere. The visceral dark walks were said to be as terrifying as impact of really good music, beautifully performed, was breath-taking and for many people, Fig. 14 the Hounds of Hell. These hell-raising bucks it was a first-time experience. Fanny Burney’s heroine Evelina (1778), seduced by the novel scared young ladies so much that they drove experience of outdoor music, recounts that during her visit, ‘There was a concert, in the course them away from their friends and ‘into those recesses where dangerous terrors were wantonly of which, a hautbois concerto was so charmingly played, that I could have thought myself inflicted.’ At the same period, W. B. Boulton, in his Amusements of Old London, writes that upon enchanted ground ... The Hautboy in the open air is heavenly.’ Henry Fielding’s equally during the one or two seasons before the accession of George III in 1760, ‘Parties of well- delighted heroine Amelia (1752), on her first visit, thought she had been transported to dressed ladies prided themselves on their proficiency in imitating the crowing of cocks at paradise: ‘The delicious Sweetness of the Place, the enchanting Charms of the Music, and the Vauxhall, one, Mrs Woolaston, being reckoned particularly distinguished in that pleasing Satisfaction which appears in every One’s Countenance, carried my Soul almost to Heaven in mimicry. The gentlemen of the party were accustomed to respond antiphonally with the not its Ideas. I could not have, indeed, imagined there had been any thing like this in the world.’ inappropriate burden of the braying of asses.’ Tyers’ constables were quickly set to stop any such nuisance. Vauxhall banished the formality of the theatre and concert hall. The audience was free to listen to the music in whatever way they wished; whether in front of the Orchestra, at some These ‘Vauxhall squeaks’ were not the worst that the Gardens’ neighbours had to endure. distant point in the garden, from a supper-box over refreshments or, indeed, not at all. Also In the nineteenth century, they suffered fireworks, military bands and life-like reconstructions banished was the exclusivity of the exotic and expensive Italian singers employed by the of the Battle of Waterloo, complete with artillery bombardments and rifle fire. By this time, London theatres, and their incomprehensible foreign songs. the birds had sensibly flown to more serene surroundings – less easy for the unfortunate local residents. They regularly had to put up with the sounds of war, as well as noisy drunks After the formal concert closed, some of the early anarchy returned. Small groups of brass- and prostitutes making their circuitous way to bed. Inevitably this added fuel to the increasing players, brought to the Gardens by wealthy visitors, would play to their patrons. These same protests that greeted the proprietors’ annual application to magistrates for the renewal of performers sometimes played during the river-crossing, giving other passengers the novel their licence. TASTES AND SMELLS

Each Profession, ev’ry trade Here enjoy refreshing shade, Empty is the cobbler’s stall, He’s gone with tinker to Vauxhall, Here they drink, and there they cram Chicken, pasty, beef and ham, Women squeak and men drunk fall, Sweet enjoyment of Vauxhall. Anonymous poem, c.1780

The miserly food served at Vauxhall was a great talking point for visitors and the satirical press. Seen as a fine practical joke at the expense of high society, that same society nevertheless was happily complicit in the joke. Tyers’ kitchens sold tiny cold roast chickens, no bigger than a fist, for half-a-crown – half a day’s wages for a skilled craftsman. The food for which the Gardens became notorious though, was the ham. Priced at one shilling an ounce, slices were served so gossamer-thin, they were said to taste only of the knife that had sliced them. Vauxhall’s refreshments provided all of Tyers’ substantial profits and some of his publicity. They were also a source of pride for anyone holding a dinner party at the Gardens. A host would happily spend huge sums on a scanty meal in the knowledge that his guests, be they business colleagues or potential lovers, owed him something substantial in return.

The Yorkshire-cooked and Westphalian-cured ham served at Vauxhall eventually became an everyday expression for extreme thinness. Even those people who had never been to the Gardens spoke of their worn shoe-soles as ‘Vauxhallian’ or, if they were out to dinner and only wanted a small helping of meat, would ask for it to be carved ‘Vauxhally’. Contemporary comic poets also took up the theme, led by Thomas Hood, who wrote: Never trouble Ham House, or its inmates at all, For a ghost that may be but a sham, But seek in a sandwich that’s cut at Vauxhall For the true apparition of Ham.

The slices were so thin they were likened to leaves of parsley, or even to ‘sliced cobwebs’. Even the Vauxhall waiters were allowed to joke about the portions. There are stories of a waiter who would mime catching slices of ham like butterflies that were blown off the plate on the lightest breeze.

The food at the Gardens was all served cold and prepared in the kitchens of the proprietor’s house. The first aroma to hit visitors on arrival was the tempting smell of roast chicken, roast

 Fig. 15 FEELINGS

The Concert fine the Evening clear The Company so good Tho’ some no doubt you think there are No better than they should A few may trip a few may fall Yet no discredit to Vaux hall. Anonymous poem, 1738

Vauxhall excited responses that were both physical and emotional. Visitors felt excitement, happiness, pride, pleasure and sometimes a frisson of anxiety, even fear. As with any great musical or dramatic work, Tyers ensured that the audience’s experience was never monotonous and that emotional extremes were balanced. Fig. 16 Fig. 17 beef, baking pastries and bread. Visitors were encouraged by the gate-keepers to order their After sunset, the great theatrical highlight of the evening was signalled by a blast from the dinner at the bar as they entered, fresh from the appetite-whetting river-crossing. It was not proprietor’s whistle. The ‘shock and awe’ of this special effect continued to amaze visitors obligatory to dine at the Gardens but, excepting the poorer promenaders, most considered right up to the Gardens’ last evening in 1859. On the first whistle dozens of servants ran to it to be an integral part of the evening. This was partly so they could display their wealth and their appointed posts throughout the Gardens. On the second whistle, each servant would generosity, and partly to be able to talk about it with their friends later. As far as Tyers was touch a match to a quick-burning fuse that lit several lamps at once. In the time it takes to concerned, the Vauxhall supper performed several functions; it earned him a good income, read this paragraph, over a thousand oil-lamps were illuminated in the Grove, creating the allowing him to keep the price of admission to a minimum; it encouraged visitors to stay for brightest outdoor artificial lighting anyone had ever seen. Even a commentator as sophisticated longer than they might otherwise; and it encouraged the sociability of the company. as the novelist Henry Fielding admits to a real exhilaration at this moment. In his 1742 article in The Champion he says ‘all in a moment, as if by Magic, every Object was made visible, I Although the characteristic aroma of the Gardens included an enticing element of roasting should say illustrious, by a thousand Lights finely disposed, which were kindled at one and and baking, it also had a significant constituent of less pleasant scents. The whale-oil in the the same Signal; and my Ears and my Eyes, Head and Heart, were captivated at once’. On lamps must have been a major ingredient, both before and after they were lit, and this acrid completing his exploration of the Gardens, Fielding concludes: ‘I must avow, I found my whole scent would be lightly seasoned with sour wine and urine. However, even this rich mix would Soul, as it were, dissolved in Pleasure. … My whole Discourse, while there, was a Rhapsody of have been a huge improvement on what most people had to put up with every day in the Joy and Wonder. Assure yourself, such an Assemblage of Beauties never, but in the Dreams streets of London. Consequently, comment was never made, excepting Christopher Smart, of the Poets, ever met before – and I scarce yet believe the bewitching Scene was real.’ the resident poet, who wrote of the ‘sordid huts’ which housed the public toilets, malodorous and revolting in spite of incense burners. For all those who felt such pleasure, there must have been visitors whose joy was tempered by fear and anxiety; of the river-crossing, of the dark, of the immoral or abusive behaviour of It is impossible to talk about the tastes of the Gardens without mentioning another sort of other visitors and of criminals. Pickpockets were a constant thorn in the side of Tyers and in taste; aesthetic judgement. Tyers hoped that by encouraging an easy association with the response he created the first organised public police force in England. However, it appears finer things in life, his visitors would be moved to improve their own living and working that Tyers was well aware of the need for some apparent dangers, if only to heighten the joy environments. He also hoped to refine the less fortunate in his audience, through contact and pleasure to be found in the music, art, company and gardens. The equivalent today would with the more polite and fashionable elements of society. Tyers’ own phrase, ‘elegant be the so-called ‘safe danger’ of theme-parks and rides. innocence’, encapsulates his vision, the Garden’s ‘brand’ and the quality he wanted visitors to absorb and take away with them. Even for the most timid of Tyers’ patrons, the novelty of walking out-of-doors at night, viewing works of art in illuminated alcoves and accompanied by music, must have seemed Vauxhall was a combination of happiness and pleasure. The less positive feelings brought on by extraordinary. Before Vauxhall, the night was a time to stay at home, securely locked indoors. the discomfort of the journey, the British climate and an anxiety about immoral and criminal People on the streets after dark were objects of suspicion and fear, but the Gardens helped to behaviour, would have tempered the pleasures of light-hearted art and design, high-quality reclaim the night for ordinary Londoners. Indeed, in its constant fight against criminal gangs, in music and vivacious company. The magic of Vauxhall was that it not only survived all the its revolutionary lighting and in its populating of the night-time streets, Vauxhall must, for a negative aspects, but actually exploited them, as a foil to sharpen the positive experiences. time at least, have been an agent in reducing the fear of crime in the city. Tyers’ Vauxhall was an all-embracing sensual experience, which seduced his visitors, whoever they were and whatever their circumstances. They quitted the Gardens at the end of the The music programmes at Vauxhall were devised in order to heighten emotions and evening elated, with their senses tingling and feeling more alive than ever before. It made manipulate the audience’s behaviour. Dramatic organ or brass concertos were followed by them feel good and like any addictive stimulant, they just could not help returning for more. energetic dances to reduce the tension. An oboe sonata might follow a pastoral love-ballad; then a rousing military tune would lead on to some solemn instrumental piece. The concert David Coke would close with a finale, often comical or satirical, involving three or more of the regular singers. The audience would be encouraged to join in the choruses before making their way I would like to acknowledge the vital assistance of my wife, Karen, and of my friends Jonathan and home, still humming the tune. Fulvia Newdick in the preparation of this essay. I would also like to thank Dr Tim Jones for alerting me to Erasmus Darwin’s letter about the Cascade. In contemporary commentaries about the Gardens, music makes many appearances, often in the guise of matchmaker. The soft strains of music reaching into the farthest corners of the Dark Walks were apparently a strong incentive to courtship and more. According to the anonymous author of the Toupee letters in The Scots Magazine I (1739), ‘the inchanting harmony produces a pleasure scarce to be equalled by nature, not easy to be conceived in imagination; – and I cannot help confessing that, according to what I can judge from my own experience, the breast must be a stranger to the soft passion that feels not a tender bias to love, and a powerful one indeed if any object of affection chance to be near’. And any young lady driven to the point of swooning by the effects of the music was sure to be supported by some neighbouring Florizel, on the lookout for just such an opportunity. David Coke’s research into Vauxhall Gardens is ongoing. If you have any information, photographs or artefacts relating to the Gardens that you think might be of interest, do contact David via his Tyers was aware of another, more pragmatic effect that music had on his audience. A poem of website: www.vauxhallgardens.com 1750 called ‘On seeing a Miser at a Concert at Spring-Gardens’ provides the startling evidence: Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To calm the Tyrant, and relieve th’Oppress’d; But Vauxhall Concert’s more attractive Pow’r, Unlock’d Sir Richard’s Pocket at Threescore, FURTHER READING O! strange Effect of Musick’s matchless Force, David Coke and Alan Borg, Vauxhall Gardens: a History (Yale University Press, 2011) To extort Ten Shillings from a Miser’s Purse. Penelope J. Corfield, Vauxhall and the Invention of the Urban Pleasure Gardens (History & Social Action Publications, 2008) Among the other senses, touch also formed a part of the Vauxhall experience and occurs in commentaries. There was always the intimate contact between amorous partners. However, Sarah Jane Downing, The English Pleasure Garden 1660-1860 (Oxford, Shire Publications, 2009) there was constant accidental or intentional physical contact between strangers, either promenading around the Gardens, in the crowd in front of the Orchestra or Cascade, or even in the supper-boxes, where the limited space made unwonted intimate contact almost inevitable.