Sonnet to Vauxhall
“The English Garden.” – Mason
The cold transparent ham is on my fork –
It hardly rains – and hark the bell! – ding-dingle –
Away! Three thousand feet at gravel work,
Mocking a Vauxhall shower! – Married and Single
Crush – rush; – Soak’d Silks with wet white Satin mingle.
Hengler! Madame! round whom all bright sparks lurk
Calls audibly on Mr and Mrs Pringle
To study the Sublime, &c – (vide Burke)
All Noses are upturn’d! – Whish-ish! – On high
The rocket rushes – trails – just steals in sight –
Then droops and melts in bubbles of blue light –
And Darkness reigns – Then balls flare up and die –
Wheels whiz – smack crackers – serpents twist – and then
Back to the cold transparent ham again!
This brilliantly razzmatazz sonnet by was first published in 1839 in Hood’s Own: Laughter from Year to Year, and its crackling energy is still contagious.
Vauxhall Gardens, on the south bank of the Thames in London, were described by John Evelyn as “a very pretty contriv’d plantation”. Founded in 1661, the gardens were relaunched in 1732 and the leisure industry gradually replaced the elevated concept of the garden as spiritual refreshment, espoused by the Hull-born author and garden designer William Mason among many others. (The English Garden is the title of Mason’s four-volume poem, which provides Hood with his ironical epigraph.)
The suppers served at Vauxhall were notorious for their costliness and for the mean servings of ham and beef. Hood’s readers would have appreciated the observation about the “cold transparent ham” – cut so thin you could see through it. A later, anonymous squib about the “Vauxhall Slice” bears out the observation:
The purse, and not the throat, to cram,
Was why the measure first was taken;
For by that way you save your ham,
And that’s the way to “save your bacon”.
But Hood’s social satire is a long way from a snarl: he relishes the ripoff as part of a deal in which his comic imagination is fed. He is one of the crowd himself, installed in a supper-box when the rain starts. Thomas Rowlandson captured the ugly vigour of it all in his famous illustrations; Hood’s laughter is gentler.
“It hardly rains,” we’re told. This is Vauxhall, after all, a place of fantasy. As the crowds converge on the sheltering booths, the sound of many feet crunching the gravel paths mocks the shower by making a lot more noise. “Soak’d silks and wet white satins” suggest the opposite of a shower: a downpour. Clingy, sticky, impractical clothes are marvellously evoked in that brief descriptive “dash”.
Is it a supper-bell that goes “ding dingle”, or is it a summons to attend to the firework display? Like a poetic Houdini, Hood ties himself in the improbable knots of the “dingle” rhyme, and escapes beautifully. Again, it’s one of the trade-offs in the comedy business: he exploits potential awkwardness and swings it into deftness. Dingle, single, mingle, Pringle are nicely matched (nicer than fork/work, at least). But wait a minute – who are these Pringles?
Thomas Pringle seems a possibility, though whether he had a wife I haven’t been able to discover. He was a poet, philanthropist and abolitionist, who may have met Hood on his way from South Africa to settle in London. (Hood mentions him in passing in an essay.) Or perhaps the Pringles are fictional, and simply turn up for the rhyme.
Madame Hengler is no mystery. She was firework-maker to Vauxhall, and Hood immortalised her in a comic ode: “Starry enchantress of the starry garden, / The Bard were bold indeed at thee to quiz / Whose squibs are far more popular than his.” Ah yes, we mustn’t forget the trademark puns. Hood comes up with a good one, flattering the firework-maker twofold by surrounding her with “bright sparks”.
The Pringles are “audibly” called on “to study the sublime, &c”. Hood’s adverb suggests that, previously, Madame Hengler made another kind of call (a social visit, most likely). I imagine a pair of newlywed lovebirds, scolded for paying more attention to each other than the celestial fireworks.
“To study the sublime” connects amusingly with the new line and the upturned Noses. Hood’s project, to thoroughly debunk “the sublime”, reaches its apogee with a view of the massed nostrils or the upwards-gazing crowd.
I looked for a version of the sonnet that included a full stop after Pringle or after Burke, but I couldn’t find one. It seems that Hood lets the syntactical paint run a little here.
There’s a scansion hiccup, too: to make the “Burke” line scan, “et cetera” has to be pronounced “et cet”. (At least, that’s my solution.) “Et cet” makes a nice little splutter, but now Hood brings on the serious pyrotechnic sound effects: “whish-ish” (echoing the earlier rhyme pair, “crush – rush”), “wheels whizz, smack crackers, serpents twist”. And what a fine description of the rocket he manages to produce, changing register with a series of five perfectly chosen verbs (lines 10 and 11). Hood captures the ephemeral quality of the fireworks and so captures a larger pathos.
“And then,” of course, playtime’s over. It’s as if Hood had turned round just for the space of 12 lines, still holding the slice of meat uneaten on his fork. “Back to the cold transparent ham again,” he sighs (but he still doesn’t eat it).
This sonnet is no squib: it’s a delicious, innovative little piece of impressionist painting. I love the dashes in the punctuation and in the movements of crowds and fireworks. I love the sounds and textures: the soak’d silks, the gravel-crunching feet, and the ambitious little rocket so quickly fizzling “into bubbles of blue light”. The Vauxhall sublime is mere entertainment, bought for a shilling and quickly consumed, and yet something like awe and beauty are delivered. Meanwhile, Mr and Mrs Pringle remain a mystery, named but anonymous, melting like the rocket’s “bubbles” into the crowd and time – unless you can help identify them?
