A Pleasure Dome (not necessarily Kubla Khan's) |
What does a pleasure dome look like, once it’s been decreed? In “Kubla Khan”, Coleridge suggests that caves of ice may be a prominent feature, which sounds more impressive than comfortable; but he’s on more conventional ground in describing “gardens bright with sinuous rills, / Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree” and “forests ancient as the hills, / Enfolding sunny spots of greenery”. Surely, nothing is more pleasing than to wander woods or parkland as a long summer’s day gives reluctant way to night, and to see its canopy jewelled with coloured lanterns. Just a grove or so away, friends laugh and dance to a hurdy-gurdy. It doesn’t happen often enough.
Vauxhaull Gardens in its Prime |
Perhaps it used to happen more, though. I first heard of Vauxhall
Gardens when I read Vanity Fair as a
student (until then, Vauxhall was just a type of car). The idea of a garden
that you could wander round elegantly, listening to music and happening upon
charms and splendours at every turn, was enchanting. For Thackeray it was
nostalgic, too. He was writing in the 1840s, at which time Vauxhall – after
more than a century of such splendours – had recently gone bankrupt. It was briefly revived at the time of the novel’s writing, but this turned out
to be no more than a post-mortem
spasm, and it would close again, this time for ever, within the decade.
Vauxhall wasn’t alone. Robert, the younger boy in E.
Nesbit’s The Story of the Amulet, at
one point compares the city of Tyre (which he and his siblings have visited by
magic) to Rosherville, on the grounds that “it’s the place to spend a happy day”.
By 1906 Kipling had already made Tyre the epitome of a city whose glories were past
(“Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/ Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!”), and perhaps Nesbit
had that melancholy association in mind in evoking Rosherville Gardens.
But what or where is Rosherville? Ah, you make me sad by
asking that question. It was another pleasure garden, in some ways the
successor to Vauxhall, and Robert’s remark echoes its slogan.
I will quote (via Wikipedia) Robert Hiscock’s A History of Gravesend (1976) on Rosherville’s attractions:
Rosherville Gardens |
They were a place of surpassing
beauty and a favourite resort of Londoners. Adorned with small Greek temples
and statuary set in the cliffs, there were terraces, and archery lawn, Bijou
theatre, and Baronial Hall for refreshments, and at one time a lake. At night
the gardens were illuminated with thousands of coloured lights and there were
fireworks displays and dancing.
Rosherville was hugely popular in the third quarter of the
late nineteenth century, but then went into steady decline, and closed in 1901.
As with Vauxhall, it enjoyed a short revival during the time Nesbit was writing
her book, and closed for the last time a few years later, in 1911.
Then there’s Joan Aiken’s Black Hearts in Battersea (1965). Battersea Castle in that book is
the location for the annual gift of mince-pies to King James III by the Duke of
Battersea, during which trumpeters play the Battersea Fanfare. But this simple
ceremony too disguises a reference to a lost pleasure garden. Lost to us, if
not to Aiken’s original readers.
Battersea Funfair |
You see, Aiken’s Battersea Castle is situated just south of
the Thames, next to Chelsea Bridge, the position occupied (in our own world) by
Battersea Park. In 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain, a funfair was
created in the park, which was hugely popular with Londoners throughout the
fifties and sixties. When Aiken wrote her book, I think that many readers would
have picked up on the Battersea Fanfare as a punning reference to Battersea
Funfair.
Sadly, there was a fatal accident involving the funfair’s Big
Dipper in 1972, and it closed a couple of years later. Since then, the
existence of the place has slowly faded from the public mind, and it’s now gone the way of
Rosherville and Vauxhall, Tyre and Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome. The best
pleasure gardens are always in the past.
Gardens are in any case places of ephemerality. Seasons
change, fruit grows and rots, buds blossom and blow – and gardens themselves
have a natural course.
Great enimy to it,
and to all the rest,
That in the Gardin of Adonis springs,
Is wicked Tyme, who, with his scyth addrest,
Does mow the flowring herbes and goodly
things,
And all their glory to the ground downe
flings.
Where they do wither and are fowly mard:
He flyes about, and with his flaggy winges
Beates downe both
leaves and buds without regard.
Melancholy words there from Spenser, but let me bring it back to
children’s literature by recommending the party at the end of Tove Jansson’s Finn Family Moomintroll (1948). Jansson
loved parties, and this woodland one is just the kind I’d love to
attend.
So, if you’re thinking of holding a party like that any time soon, an
invitation would be much appreciated.
3 comments:
Gorgeous post, and I too would love to attend that Moominvalley party, with all its delicious scents (you can smell them, can't you?) and fireflies and music.
Was it the Vauxhall garden that Leon Garfield wrote about? And don't forget the lovely garden park the Hemulen makes in Tove Jansson's story "The Hemulen Who Loved Silence."
My ignorance of Leon Garfield is one of my many weak spots, but I'd be surprised if he didn't have that same garden in mind.
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