The record-union., 1897-07-16
PLAY IN LONDON.
EarIs Court is the Successor OF
VauxhalI Garden.


VauxhaI Garden.
Mrs. Elizabeth Robins Pennel1 con-
tributes to the July Century" an article
on Play in London" for which Joseph
Pennell has made many drawings. After
speaking of Vauxhall Gardens and Gre
morne. Mrs. Pennell says:
Everybody knows what the old gar
den was like-Thackera-r has seen to
that-with the hundred thousand lamps
always lighted, the fddlers who made
rayishing melodies, the singers, the
dancers, the Nine. Saquis on the slack
rope ascending to the stars, the hermit
IN the Illuminated hermitage, the dark
walks so favorable to lovers, the pots
OF stout, the dinners and suppers-in a
word, the sort of combination of cafe,
| music hall. restaurant and Fourth OF
July that nowhere else has been brought
to such perfection; that to sir Roger had
seemed, long before Thackerays day, "a
kind of Mahometan paradise" But
What everybody does not know so well
is that London still has its garden, called
by another name, to be sure ignored by
Murray and Baedeker, and offering am
other programme-Mme Saquis and
hermits gone from it apparently for
evermore-but precisely the same in
principle and practice.
Vauxhall has vanished: Cremorne
sends UP no more rockets skyward to
fill the night with beauty; the Crystal
Palace is only for the suburb and the
country cousin; but every summer
Earls Court has it's exhibition-an exhi-
bition only by courtesy, only out of def
erence to the present fashion of gather
ing our knowledge, or pretending to,
while we play. One year it was called
Italian, and there were macaroni and
Chianti in the restaurants, and a nice
new pasteboard Forum. Another year it
was German. and the air was heavy
with the fragrance of SchwitZel and
Wurst. Then it was American, for
change, and cowboys and Red Indians
staggered across the scene, and soda
water and maplesugar figured on the
menu. Now it happens to be Indian,
with a fine Oriental flavor; but by the
time this is published it will be some-
thing else, and it really matters very lit
tie. The exhibition, attributed to any
nation, would be as gay. Nobody cares,
save, perhaps, a few tradeSmen ana
mummers, who smell the commercial
battle from afar. 1t is an open secret
that the semblance of a show is there
merely to court avoidance; the years, in
passing have turned it into a big ba-
zar, but not even in this guise can it
prove the chief attraction.
No; the great thing, the only thing
that counts, is the garden. where one
may walk under pleasant trees: where
nc tho Continental and drink
tea or coffee at little tables-but mostly
tea, in capacious pots-to the accom-
paniment of thick slabs of cake; where
one may be more nu- English, and eat
ONES dinner outdoors-not like a wild
beast in a cage, as in the old box at
Vauxhall, but in company, on slow,
broad veranda, where there are side
shows more diverting than Pepys ever
dreamed of; where one may loaf away
the summer evening, listening to music
which is at least as good as the honest
Briton likes it. For the truth is. the
garden furnishes just that form OF
amusement which Henry James has Ia
mented was not to be found in London;
and SO long as it is open one need not, as
he thought, give up the idea of going
to sit somewhere in the open air,to eat
an ice, and listen to a band of music.
Only the amusement must be shared
with SO big a crowd that one will have
to scramble for a chair, engage DIM
ner-table full twelve hours beforehand,
and struggle to get home by under
ground or bus as furiously as the mob
fights to push into the pit of popular
theater.
To provide the Englishmen with
crowd, to give him the chance to use
his elbows, is to convince him that he is
enjoying himself And the old gardens $
questionable features, it's revelers, IT'S
Jockeys and courtezans and gamblers,
where are they? All gone. with other
times and other morals. The world OF
Farl's Court and Kensington has taken
the exhibition under it's protection and
there sits in stately splendor, magnih-
cent example of respectability, within
an inclosure humorously called the Wei
come Club, because admission is refused
to all but the eclat. Where the west
End condescends to spend its afternoons
and evenings, there, surely every one
may venture in safety by night as by
day. Indeed, there is a strong domestic
clement about the exhibition; 1t is a
place for the family, playground for
the decorous.