The Pleasure Gardens

I love reading Christopher Fowler's posts about London, I always learn something new.

I was especially pleased to see this post here this morning: VAUXHALL

In my first novel, "I Am a Muse", one of the main character has a club night called "The Pleasure Gardens", inspired by the 18th and 19th Century pleasure gardens and their extravagant setting. Here's a short extract taken from the chapter in which Constance Blackwell walks around the club. 

"It was almost midnight and the place was buzzing. The second band of the night had finished their set and the light had gone down a notch in the main room in order to show off the large illuminated fountain at the centre of the ‘square’.

Like a beautiful deluxe beehive coerced into action by an overflow of honey, The Gardens were inhabited by a thriving crowd constantly on the move.

 The punters were throwing deconstructed shadows onto the walls as they walked past each other, circled around each other, studied and greeted each other. All of them had made a real effort to fit the non-dress code in one way or the other and this made for a striking ensemble of people who all somehow looked like they had escaped from some film set or stepped out of a time machine. Everybody looked bold and interesting in their own way.

In the ‘Banquet and Tea’ area, people were sitting on benches, chatting, flirting and drinking cocktails or tea. The music in there was muted, ethereal and light so as not to prevent people from hearing each other. Some had already succumbed to the cakes and were tucking in, some others were picking at the fruits laid out on the enormous fruit bowls by the long banquet tables while carrying on their conversations. Later, there would be some poetry readings.

The clubbers among the crowd were dancing the night away to sexy electro in the ‘ballroom’, seemingly oblivious to the extravagantly coiffed metal characters sculpted by the guest artist of the night. Rebecca Duval’s pieces were silent and immobile yet elegant creatures dressed in Marie-Antoinette inspired costumes.

Her creations were scattered within the venue like indulgent sentinels looking on as the crowd grew bigger, more colourful, more daring while time was suspended in an undefined era."
"I Am a Muse"

'Vauxhall Fete', a satirical illustration by Cruikshank, 1813