so far as
"society" was concerned. Bagnigge Wells, Merlin's Cave, the London Spa,
Marylebone Gardens, Cromwell's Gardens, Jenny's Whim, were all
tea-gardens, with recesses, and avenues, and alcoves for love-making and
tea-drinking, where an orchestra discoursed sweet music or an organ served
as a substitute. An intelligent foreigner, who had published an account of
his impressions of England, remarked: "The English take a great delight in
the public gardens, near the metropolis, where they assemble and drink tea
together in the open air. The number of these in the capital is amazing,
and the order, regularity, neatness, and even elegance of them are truly
admirable. They are, however, very rarely frequented by people of fashion;
but the middle and lower ranks go there often, and seem much delighted
with the music of an organ, which is usually played in an adjoining
building."

Vauxhall, the _Arabia Felix_ of the youth of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, was still a fashionable resort, "a very pandemonium of society
immorality," says a historian. This can well be believed if the many
stories current concerning "prince, duke, and noble, and much mob
besides," are accepted.

"_Here the 'prentice from Aldgate may ogle a toast!_
_Here his Worship must elbow the knight of the post!_
_For the wicket is free to the great and the small;--_
_Sing_ Tantarara--_Vauxhall! Vauxhall!_"

The first authentic notice of Vauxhall Gardens appears in the record of
the Duchy of Cornwall in 1615, when for two hundred years, through the
changes of successive ages, there was conducted a round of gaiety and
abandon unlike any other Anglo-Saxon institution. Open, generally, only
during the summer months, the entertainment varied from vocal and
instrumental music to acrobats, "burlettas," "promenades," and other
attractions of a more intellectual nature, and, it is to be feared,
likewise of a lesser as well.

The exhibition usually wound up with a display of fireworks, set off at
midnight. From 1830 to 1850 the gardens were at the very height of their
later festivity, but during the next decade they finally sank into
insignificance, and at last flickered out in favour of the more staid and
sad amusements of the later Victorian period.

As for the indoor pleasures of society at this time, there were the
theatre, the opera, and the concert-room. Dining at a popular restaurant
or a gigantic hotel had not been thought of. There