Chapter II: The Days He Lived in (3)

My friend Sir Roger De Coverley, when we last met together at the club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy with me, assuring me, at the same time, that he had not been at a play these twenty years. “The last I saw,” said Sir Roger, “was the Committee, which I should not have gone to neither, had I not been told beforehand that it was a good Church of England comedy.” He then proceeded to inquire of me who this distressed mother was; and upon hearing that she was Hector’s widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a school boy he had read his life at the end of the dictionary. My friend asked me, in the next place, if there would not be some danger in coming home late, lest the Mohocks should be abroad. “I assure you,” says he, “I thought I had fallen into their hands last night; for I observed two or three lusty black men that followed me half way up Fleet Street, and mended their pace behind me, in proportion as I put on to get away from them. You must know,” said the Knight with a smile, “I fancied they had a mind to hunt me; for I remember an honest gentleman in my neighborhood, who was served such a trick in King Charles the Second’s time; for which reason he has not ventured himself in town ever since. I might have shown them very good sport, had this been their design; for as I am an old fox hunter, I should have turned and dodged, and have played them a thousand tricks they had never seen in their lives before.” Sir Roger added, that if these gentlemen had any such intention, they did not succeed very well in it; “for I threw them out,” says he, “at the end of Norfolk Street, where I doubled the corner and got shelter in my lodgings before they could imagine what had become of me, however,” says the knight, “if Captain Sentry will make one with us tomorrow night, and you will both call on me about four o’clock, that we may be at the house before it is full, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you, for John tells me he has got the fore wheels mended.”

The Captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. Sir Roger’s servants, and among the rest my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken plants, to attend their master on this occasion. When he had placed him in the coach, with myself at his left hand, the Captain before him, and his butler at the head of his footmen in the rear, we convoyed him in safety to the play house, where, after having marched up the entry in good order, the Captain and I went in with him, and seated him betwixt us in the pit. As soon as the house was full, and the candles were lighted, my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure, which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment, I could not but fancy to myself as the old man hearing a cluster of them praise Orestes, struck in with them, and told them, that he thought his friend Pylades was a very sensible man; as they were afterwards applauding Pyrrhus Sir Roger put in a second time: “And let me tell you,” says he, “though he speaks but little, I like the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of them.” Captain Sentry seeing two or three wags, who sat near us, lean with an attentive ear toward Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should smoke the knight, plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear, that lasted till the opening of the fifth act. The knight was wonderfully attentive to the account which Orestes gives of Pyrrhus’s death; and at the conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody piece of work that he was glad it was not done upon the stage. Seeing afterwards Orestes in his raving fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took occasion to moralize (in his way) upon an evil conscience; adding that Orestes in his madness, looked as if he saw something.

As we were the first that came into the house, so we were the last that went out of it; being resolved to have a clear passage for our old friend, whom we did not care to venture among the justling of the crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his entertainment, and we guarded him to his lodging in the same manner that we brought him to the playhouse; being highly pleased, for my own part, not only with the performance of the excellent piece which had been presented, but with the satisfaction which it had given the old man.

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_Note._ Much as the simple knight seemed to have been pleased with the play, _The Distrest Mother_ was a dull version by Ambrose Philips of Racine’s _Andromaque_. Fielding made a burlesque of it in his _Covent Garden Tragedy_, 1712. The _Committee_, to which Sir Roger refers, had a sub-title by which it was better known, _The Faithful Irishman_. It was written by Robert Howard, Dryden’s brother-in-law, and first produced in 1665.

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A country cousin could no more pass a week in London in those days without going to Vauxhall, than could a countryman stay any length of time in New York without finding his way to Coney Island. The earliest mention of the place is in Evelyn’s diary, 2nd July, 1661, when he went to see the “New Spring Garden at Lambeth; a pretty contrived plantation where sometimes they would have music and sit upon barges on the water.” Charles II, who missed nothing in the line of gaiety, had built for him “a fine room, the inside all of looking glass, and fountains very pleasant to behold,” which, the grave Morland, his Master Mechanic reports, was for the reception of “the King and his ladies.”

Later, little improvements were made and there was an artificial cascade, a water mill, a bridge with a mail coach passing over it, a cottage scene with animated figures drinking and smoking by machinery. Samuel Pepys, who missed nothing, says, “July 27, 1688--So over the water with my wife and Deb and Mercer, to Spring Garden, and there ate and walked, and observed how rude some of the young gallants of the town are become, to go into people’s arbors, where there are not men, and almost gore the women--which troubled me to see the vice and confidence of the age.” Tom Brown, a little later, speaks of the close walks and wildernesses, which “are so intricate, that the most experienced mothers have often lost themselves looking for their daughters.”

In the days of Sir Roger, the fashionable way of going to the gardens was by water, and an evening there, with a glass of ale and a slice of hung beef was the usual course. Walpole, in a letter of 1750, gives an interesting account of a Vauxhall party: “I had a card from Lady Petersham to go with her to Vauxhall. I went accordingly to her house and found her and the little Asche, or the Pollard Ashe as they call her; they had just finished their last layer of red, and looked as handsome as crimson could make them.... We marched to our barge, with a boat of French horns attending, and little Ashe singing. We paraded some time up the river and at last debarked at Vauxhall.... Here we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny Whim’s (a tavern between Chelsea and Pimlico). At last we assembled in our booth, Lady Caroline in the front, with the visor of her hat erect, and looking gloriously handsome. She had fetched my brother Orford from the next box, where he was enjoying himself with his _petite partie_, to help us to mince the chickens. We minced seven chickens in a china dish, which Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with three pats of butter and a flagon of water, stirring and rattling and laughing, and we, every minute, expecting the dish to fly about our ears. She had brought Betty the fruit girl, with hampers of strawberries and cherries, from Roger’s, and made her wait on table and then made her sit by herself at a little table.... In short, the air of our party was sufficient, as you will easily imagine, to take up the whole attention of the gardens; so much so, that from eleven o’clock to half an hour after one, we had the whole concourse round our booth. At last they came into the little garden of each booth on the sides of ours, till Harry Vane took up a bumper, and drank their healths, and was proceeding to treat them with greater freedom. It was three o’clock before we got home.”

Oliver Goldsmith in his “Beau Tibbs at Vauxhall” makes his hero say, significantly, “As for virgins, it is true they are a fruit that don’t much abound in our gardens here: but if ladies, as plenty as apples in autumn, and as complying as any _houri_ of them all, can content you, I fancy we have no need to go to heaven for paradise.”

SIR ROGER AT VAUXHALL GARDENS.

SPECTATOR NO. 383, MAY, 1712--ADDISON.

As I was sitting in my chamber, and thinking on a subject for my next _Spectator_, I heard two or three irregular bounces at my landlady’s door, and, upon the opening of it, a loud cheerful voice inquiring whether the philosopher was at home. The child who went to the door answered very innocently, that he did not lodge there. I immediately recollected that it was my good friend Sir Roger’s voice; and that I had promised to go with him on the water to Spring-garden, in case it proved a good evening. The knight put me in mind of my promise from the bottom of the staircase, but told me, that if I was speculating, he would stay below till I had done. Upon my coming down, I found all the children of the family got about my old friend, and my landlady herself, who is a notable prating gossip, engaged in a conference with him; being mightily pleased with his stroking her little boy upon the head, and bidding him be a good child, and mind his book.

We were no sooner come to the Temple-stairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking toward it, “You must know,” said Sir Roger, “I never make use of anybody to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has been wounded in the Queen’s service. If I was a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg.”

My old friend, after having seated himself and trimmed the boat with his coachman, who, being a very sober man, always serves for ballast on these occasions, we made the best of our way for Vauxhall. Sir Roger obliged the waterman to give us the history of his right leg; and, hearing that he had left it at La Hogne, with many particulars which passed in that glorious action, the knight, in the triumph of his heart, made several reflections as to the greatness of the British nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we could never be in danger of popery so long as we took care of our fleet; that the Thames was the noblest river in Europe; that London bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the seven wonders of the world; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman.

After some short pause, the old knight, turning about his head twice or thrice, to take a survey of this great metropolis, bid me observe how thick the city was with churches, and that there was scarce a single steeple on this side Temple-bar. “A most heathenish sight!” says Sir Roger: “there is no religion at this end of the town. The fifty new churches will very much mend the prospect: but church-work is slow, church-work is slow.”

I do not remember I have anywhere mentioned, in Sir Roger’s character, his custom of saluting everybody that passes by him with a good-morrow or good-night. This the old man does out of the overflowings of his humanity, though at the same time it renders him so popular among all his country neighbours, that it is thought to have gone a good way in making him once or twice knight of the shire. He cannot forbear this exercise of benevolence even in town, when he meets with any one in his morning or evening walk. It broke from him to several boats that passed by upon the water; but to the knight’s great surprise, as he gave the good-night to two or three of the young fellows a little before our landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us what queer old put we had in the boat, and whether he was not ashamed to go a-wenching at his years; with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first; but, at length assuming a face of magistracy, told us, “That if we were a Middlesex justice, he would make such vagrants know that her Majesty’s subjects were no more to be abused by water than by land.”

We were now arrived at Spring-garden, which is exquisitely pleasant at this time of the year. When I consider the fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choirs of birds that sung upon the trees, and the loose tribe of people that walked under the shades, I could not but look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan paradise. Sir Roger told me it put him in mind of a little coppice by his house in the country, which his chaplain used to call an aviary of nightingales. “You must understand,” says the knight, “there is nothing in the world that pleases a man in love so much as your nightingales. Ah, Mr. Spectator! the many moonlight nights that I have walked by myself, and thought on the Widow by the music of the nightingale!” He here fetched a deep sigh, and was falling into a fit of musing, when a mask, who came behind him, gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder, and asked him if he would drink a bo mead with her. But the knight, being startled by so unexpected a familiarity, and displeased to be interrupted in his thoughts of the Widow, told her, _She was a wanton baggage_, and bid her go about her business.

We concluded our walk with a glass of Burton ale, and a slice of hung beef. When we had done eating, ourselves, the knight called a waiter to him, and bid him carry the remainder to the waterman that had but one leg. I perceived that the fellow stared upon him at the oddness of the message, and was going to be saucy; upon which I ratified the knight’s commands with a peremptory look.

As we were going out of the garden, my old friend thinking himself obliged, as a member of the _quorus_, to animadvert upon the morals of the place, told the mistress of the house, who sat at the bar, that he should be a better customer to her garden, “if there were more nightingales and fewer improper persons.”

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Transcriber’s note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation and italicization were standardized.

Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following change:

Page 3: “smear acros his” “smear across his”
Page 4: “Rabelias, like Scarron” “Rabelais, like Scarron”
Page 4: “bagnois on occasion” “baignoires on occasion”
Page 5: “He was irresistible” “He was as irresistible”
Page 7: “under Secretary of State” “Under Secretary of State”
Page 7: “collector of Elizivirs and” “collector of Elzevirs and”
Page 14: “Hilare Belloc, H. M.” “Hilaire Belloc, H. M.”
Page 22: “sawyers dstroying saw” “sawyers destroying saw”
Page 24: “at Brook’s gambling” “at Brooks’ gambling”
Page 27: “atention to the narratives” “attention to the narratives”
Page 27: “a letter writer by” “a letter written by”
Page 31: “Thomas Incl of London” “Thomas Inkle of London”
Page 35: “formation af a company” “formation of a company”
Page 37: “would quickly lesson” “would quickly lessen”
Page 40: “tried to get beneath” “tries to get beneath”
Page 42: “Hockley-inthe-Hole; where” “Hockley-in-the-Hole; where”
Page 64: “figures in St. Dustan’s” “figures in St. Dunstan’s”
Page 66: “pleasuse had been” “pleasure had been”
Page 76: “Acordingly they got” “Accordingly they got”
Page 76: “himself than a Sarcacen” “himself than a Saracen”
Page 77: “so the Mohawks made” “so the Mohocks made”
Page 78: “only to repair thmselves” “only to repair themselves”
Page 81: “applauding Pyrrhu Sir” “applauding Pyrrhus Sir”
Page 81: “gives of Pyrrhu’s death” “gives of Pyrrhus’s death”
Page 86: “work that any” “work than any”