From this Tea Garden they drove to the Bermondsey Spa Gardens. Let me extract this account of this place, which was once so popular:
'We found the entrance presents a vista between trees, hung with lamps, blue, red, green, and white; nor is the walk in which they are hung inferior (length excepted) to the grand walk in Vauxhall Gardens. Nearly at the upper end of the walk is a large room, hung round with paintings, many of them in an elegant and the rest in a singular taste. At the upper end of the room is a painting of a butcher's shop, so finely executed by the landlord that a stranger to the place would cheapen a fillet of veal or a buttock of beef, a shoulder of mutton or a leg of pork, without hesitation, if there were not other pictures in the room to take off his attention. But these paintings are not seen on a Sunday.
'The accommodations at this place on a Sunday are very good, and the charges reasonable, and the captain, who is very intimate with Mr. Keyse, declares that there is no place in the vicinity of London can afford a more agreeable evening's entertainment.
'This elegant place of entertainment is situate in the lower road, between the Borough of Southwark and Deptford. The proprietor calls it _one_, but it is nearer two miles from London Bridge, and the same distance from that of Black-Friars. The proprietor is Mr. Thomas Keyse, who has been at great expense, and exerted himself in a very extraordinary manner, for the entertainment of the public; and his labours have been amply repaid.
'It is easy to paint the elegance of this place, situated in a spot where elegance, among people who talk of _taste_, would be little expected. But Mr. Keyse's good humour, his unaffected easiness of behaviour, and his _genuine_ taste for the polite arts, have secured him universal approbation.
'The gardens, with an adjacent field, consist of not less than four acres.
'On the north-east side of the gardens is a very fine lawn, consisting of about three acres, and in a field, parted from this lawn by a sunk fence, is a building with turrets, resembling a fortress, or castle. The turrets are in the ancient style of building. At each side of this fortress, at unequal distances, are two buildings, from which, on public nights, bomb shells, &c., are thrown at the fortress; the fire is returned, and the whole exhibits a very picturesque, and therefore a horrid, prospect of a siege.