Henry Newman

Eighteenth Century Piety

W.K. Lowther Clarke. SPCK, 1945.

June 6th, 1740...I have informed myself of the character of the entertainments at Marybone...The company...is not half so much as in Vauxhall, seldom above 300 or 400 in an evening, and rarely any quality among them. Their terms of admittance and for eatables and drinkables in the evening are the same as at Vauxhall. But I am told they make the most of their company at breakfast there in the morning when they give nothing to be admitted but pay 1s. for the coffee and tea they drink and 18d. if they have chocolate. But they have no music in the morning except the French horn. In the evening everyone pays a shilling for admittance and eats or drinks, or not, as he pleases, as they do at Vauxhall. There is a grotto in the neighbourhood which they say is worth seeing and that 1s. is given to see the shell work of it...

Henry Newman was Secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; Marylebone Gardens was a few minutes walk from the SPCK's offices. He seems to have felt reassured about its moral character. Over the next 16 years it evidently went downhill, the Rev. Dr. John Trusler describing it as 'a vortex of dissipation.'