The Somerset reporter. [volume] (Skowhegan, Me.) 1868-1909, 1897-08-19
PLEASURE IN LONDON
EARL'S COURT is THE SUCCESSOR OF
VAUxhALL GARDENS.

Tts Various Expeditions, Credited TO Dif-
ferent Countries. Are Only Pretenses
The Great Thing, the Only Thing. Is
the Place Itself
Mrs. Elizabeth Robins Pennell con.
tributes to The Century an article on
play In London" After speaking Of
Vauxhall Gardens and Cremorne Mrs.
Pencil says.
Everybody knows what the old gar
den was like-Thackeray has seen to
that-with the hundred thousand lamps
always lighted, the fddlers who made
ravishing 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
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 Thackerav' s
day "a kind of Mohammedan paradise. "
But what every body does not know so
well is that London still has its garden,
called by another name, to be sure, ig-
nOred by Murray and Baedeker and offer
Ing another programme, Mime. Saquis
and hermits gone from it apparently
fOreyermore, but precisely the same in
principle and practice.
Nauxhall 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
Earl court has its exhibition-an ex-
hibition only by courtesy, only out of
Difference to the present fashion of gath
ering our knowledge OF pretending to
while we play. One year it was called
Italian, and there We're macaroni and
chianti i'll the restaurants, and nice
new pasteboard forum Another year
1t was German, and the air was heavy
with the fragrance of schnitzel and
wurst. Then it was American, for a
change, and cowboys and red Indians
staggered across the scene, and soda
water and maple sugar figured on the
menu, Now it happens to be Indian,
!
time this is published it will be some
thing else, and it really matters very
little. The exhibition attributed to any
nation would be as gay. Nobody cares
save, perhaps, a few tradesmen and
mummers, who smell the commercial
battle from affair 1t is an open secret
that the semblanee Of show is there
4 II Tn,
In passing have turned it into a big
bazaar, 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
one may ape the continental and drink
tea or coffee at little tables-but most
ly tea, i'll capacious pots-to the accom-
paniment of thick slabs of cake; where
one may be still more un- English and
! eat ones dinner outdoors-not like a
wild beast i'll a cage, as in the old
"box' at Vauxhall, but i'll company,
on low, broad yeranda, where there
are side shows more diyertinR than
/ Pepys ever dreamed Of; where one may
! loaf away the summer evening, listen
j ing 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 Mr.. Henry
James has lamented was not to be
found in London, and SO long as it is
open one need not, rs he thought, give
] up the idea OF going to sit somewhere il
thn 1 30,
a band of music. " Only the amusement
must be shared with so big crowd
that one Will have to scramble for a
chair, engage Il dinner table full 10
/ hours beforehand, and struggle to get
home by underground or bus as furi-
ously as the mob fights to push into the
pit of popular theater
To provide the Englishman with a
crowd, to give him the chance to use
his elbows, is to convince him that he
is enjoying himself And the old gar
den s questionable features, its jewellers,
its jockeys and courtesus and gam
blers-where are they? Where are the
SHOWS of yesteryear2 All gone with
other times and other morals. The
WOTiu VI Earl court anu hensluStOu
has taken the exhibition under its pro-
lection, and there sits in stately SPLEEN
dor magnificent example of respecta.
bility, within an Enclosure humorously
called the Welcome club. because ad-
mission is refused to all but the elect
Where the west end condesoeDds to
spend its afternoons and evenings there
surely every one may venture i'll safety
by night as by day. Indeed there is a
strong domestic element about the ex-
hibitioE. 1t is place for the family.
playground for the decorous