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Updated: May 31, 2025
The first speech was made by Madame Duval, who said, "It's quite a shocking thing to see ladies come to so genteel a place as Ranelagh with hats on; it has a monstrous vulgar look: I can't think what they wear them for. There is no such a thing to be seen in Paris."
Occasional variety was provided by regattas and shooting-matches, and balloon-ascents, and displays of diving. No doubt Ranelagh was at its best and gayest when the scene of a masquerade. But unfortunately those entertainments had their sinister side. Fielding impeaches them in "Amelia" by their results, and the novelist was not alone in his criticism.
He was particularly fond of masquerades, which were then exceedingly popular, and got up at Ranelagh with great expense and magnificence.
'I have never known him but as a great man, said Captain Cadurcis; 'but he was so frank and simple with me from the very first, that I cannot believe that it is not two years since we first met. 'Ah! I shall never forget that night at Ranelagh, said Venetia, half with a smile and half with a sigh. 'How interesting he looked!
As for the orchestra, the vocal music especially, it is well for the performers that they cannot be heard distinctly." But Smollett does not leave Ranelagh at that. Lydia also visited the place and was enraptured with everything.
Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, sees with her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka, holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; or else, again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in the name, and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer or restaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe's absence, certain damning bills which fall into Caroline's hands.
An earlier victim from Gaul thus records his experience of Ranelagh: 'On s'ennui avec de la mauvaise musique, du thé et du beurre. So true is it that the cheerfulness you find anywhere is the cheerfulness you have brought with you. However, despite the Frenchman, good music and singing were at times to be heard at Ranelagh.
Accordingly, after I had spent the evening with him at Ranelagh, I went away about two o'clock in the morning, leaving my companion, with directions to restore to my lord his house, furniture, plate, and everything he had given me since our last accommodation; so far was I, upon this occasion, or at any other time of my life, from embezzling any part of his fortune.
Let us make a party, and return and sup. I like a supper; nothing in the world more charming than a supper, A lobster salad, and champagne and chat. That is life, and delightful. Why, really, my dear madam, you eat nothing. You will never be able to endure the fatigues of a Ranelagh campaign on the sustenance of a pâté. Pole, my good fellow, will you take a glass of wine?
'Tis true I have seen Ranelagh and Marylebone Belsize, and Spring Gardens, and seen Folly on the Thames to say nothing of the chief Continental Tivolis, Spas, Lustgartens, and other places of resort of the Great; but fiddlers are fiddlers, and coloured lamps are coloured lamps, all the world over, I apprehend; and my children have as much delight in gazing on these spangled follies now as I had when I and the eighteenth century were young.
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