What a chain of anecdotes it is! We begin in 1661 with Evelyn, who treats the place with his accustomed brevity and coldness; we go on to Pepys, who records how the visitors picked cherries, and how the nightingales sang, and lets us understand how much he enjoyed his visits there, and how delightful he found the place, and how much after his own heart; we proceed to Congreve and Tom Brown, to Addison, to Fielding, to Horace Walpole. We all know the Dark Walk, and how the ladies were taken there, not unwillingly, to be frightened: we know the stage where they danced: we know the orchestra; we know the Chinese Room: we know Rowlandson's picture of the evening at Vauxhall with the Prince of Wales, putting on princely arrogance in the middle, and the Duchess of Devonshire and her friends apparently making fun of him; and in the side box, having supper, Goldsmith and Boswell, and Mrs. Traill, and Dr. Johnson; with Miss Linley singing; and we all know about the forty thousand coloured lamps festooned about the trees.
London was not London, life was not worth having, without Vauxhall. Like Mrs. Cornelys's masquerades and assemblies, Vauxhall was the great leveller of the eighteenth century. A man might be an earl or a prince: he would get no more enjoyment out of Vauxhall than a 'prentice who had a little money to spare. And the milliner going to Vauxhall with that 'prentice was quite as happy as any lady in the land could be.
When one thinks of Vauxhall and all it meant, one is carried away by admiration. To the City Miss who might belong to the City Assembly, but most likely did not, there was no such spectacle in the world as those avenues of trees with their thousands of coloured lamps; there was nothing that so much made her heart leap up as the sight of the dancing in the open air to the music of the orchestra in the high stand; there was nothing so delightful as to sit in an arbour dimly lighted, and to make a supper off cold chicken with a glass of punch afterwards--girls drank punch then--to look out upon the company, resplendent, men and women alike, in their dress, and ceremonious in their manners; to be told how the one was the young Lord Mellamour and the angel with him was a danseuse of Covent Garden: and that other gentleman behind them was the Rev. Dr. Scattertext of St. Bride's; and that the dashing young fellow in peach-coloured velvet was no other than Sixteen String Jack the highwayman. Vauxhall, in fact, for two hundred years, was nothing less than a national institution. All classes who could command a decent coat went to Vauxhall. The Prince of Wales went there--once or twice he was recognised and mobbed; all the great ladies went there; all the lesser ladies; all the ladies of the half world; all the citizens, from the Alderman to the 'prentice; all the adventurers; all the gallant highwaymen. There was a charming toleration about the visitors to Vauxhall. They were not in the least disturbed by the presence of the highwaymen, of the adventurers, or of the ladies corresponding to those gentlemen--not in the least; they walked together in the lanes and aisles of the place; they ate supper in the next arbour; they saw the young rakes carrying on openly and without the least disguise. The sober citizen saw it; his sober wife saw it; her daughter saw it. There were no complaints, save occasionally from the Surrey magistrates. The place and the behaviour of the people are typical of the eighteenth century, in which the maintenance of order was thrown upon the public, and there were no police. If things got very bad in a pleasure garden, the magistrates refused a license; if the visitors were robbed by highwaymen on their way to and from the place, guards were appointed by the managers. Vauxhall, however, was safer than most places, because most of the people came by boat. In common with all places of amusement in the eighteenth century, Vauxhall was late. The people seem to have been allowed to stay there nearly all night.