David E Coke was formerly curator of Gainsborough's House Trust, Sudbury, and Director of Pallant House Gallery Trust, Chichester. Alan Borg is a former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Imperial War Museum.
In this magnificent, prize-winning volume David Coke and Alan Borg provide a lavishly illustrated and comprehensive history of the Vauxhall Gardens from its early beginnings as the Spring Gardens in the 1660s to its closure and demolition in 1859. The authors note that their work is the first major study in fifty-five years; they intend that their ‘updated antiquarian approach’ will provide a sound basis for further interpretative research. The tremendous extent and depth of their work is beautifully evidenced in the wealth of material they have uncovered from collections on both sides of the Atlantic, all listed in appendices and endnotes, demonstrating immaculate scholarship. They have brought this enormous amount of detailed research together to give a lively, fascinating and thoroughly coherent account of the amazing Vauxhall Gardens.
The approach is broadly chronological, with the first chapter devoted to the origins of the Spring Gardens, a wooded region in a rural hamlet on the south bank of the Thames. Samuel Pepys visited often, noting on 28 May 1667 that ‘it was cheap going thither … to hear a nightingale, and here fiddles, and there a harp, and here laughing and there fine people walking, is mighty divertising’. Londoners found a ‘universal withdrawing room from the city’, an escape from the filthy, chaotic, violent place that London was at this time. Pepys also reveals that he went to the Gardens to meet the prostitutes who plied their trade there, a continuing aspect throughout the 200 years and one that prompted Sir Roger de Coverley to remark that he would be a more frequent visitor if there were ‘more nightingales and fewer strumpets’.
The main focus of the study relates the story of Vauxhall from 1729 when a young ambitious entrepreneur, Jonathan Tyers, took the lease and started its complete transformation into pleasure gardens. The heyday of Vauxhall was during his time of ownership until his death in 1767. He wanted his pleasure gardens to be a ‘rational, elegant, and innocent space’, a civilized and civilizing environment, open to all classes of persons from royalty to the working classes, without a hierarchy, for all who could afford the entry fee of one shilling. Tyers set about creating the first and most famous of the pleasure gardens and one that was to be widely imitated. He transformed the woodland into spaces for performance and display, with specially designed pavilions, grottoes and serpentine walks. In 1735 he opened the Orchestra, an octagonal building for the performance of music and song in the open air. He built rows of supper boxes where people could enjoy seeing and being seen, listening to the music and eating and drinking. At Vauxhall's nearest competitor, ‘the prudish and abstemious’ Ranelagh Gardens, only tea and coffee were provided. Here at Vauxhall Tyers introduced mass catering. An astounding 100,000 visited each year and up to 7,000 meals could be served in a night. Ham, beef and chickens would be served cold with custards, the ham famously sliced ‘as thin as cobwebs’. Tyers appears as an enlightened and dynamic business entrepreneur, watching his profit margins, relentlessly promoting the gardens and continually introducing new attractions and entertainments. He created a magical environment with thousands of oil lamps, lit simultaneously from ingenious tapers throughout the gardens.
Above all, the authors reveal Tyers as a major patron of the arts, creating the first public art gallery and providing the finest cultural experiences. He was a friend of William Hogarth, who introduced him to a number of brilliant artists, engravers, designers and musicians, many of whom undertook commissions for Vauxhall. The paintings of Francis Hayman and Hogarth for the supper boxes, the designs of Gravelot and Moser, and the sculpture of Louis Francois Roubiliac, show the nature of English rococo, informal, elegant and relaxed, depicting English scenes and activities, and quite unlike the courtly extravagance of French rococo. Roubiliac's marble statue of George Frederic Handel in his nightcap and slippers personifies the significance and beauty of these developments in British art. Handel, Boyce and Arne took the opportunity to compose music to be played at Vauxhall, and Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks was attended by 12,000 people at the rehearsal alone. As the authors say, Vauxhall was anarchic, tumultuous, youthful, thrilling, kaleidoscopic, startlingly modern and new, providing an experience totally foreign to visitors’ everyday lives. The final two chapters document and explain the gradual decline of Vauxhall up to its demolition in 1859.
David Coke and Alan Borg have produced in this splendid volume an important resource, beautifully presented and illustrated. It makes a worthy contribution to studies of the cultural developments of this period.
