Activities at early American public pleasure gardens after the Revolution offered visitors more than the obvious inspiration from the symbols of their newly won independence which sat and grew and even exploded on the grounds around them. Statues, paintings, flowers, and fireworks were visible affirmations of the inspiring new republican way of life.
There were also symbols in the garden that were not explicit, but understood by the patron's knowledge of the symbolism a variety of activities implied. Throughout the 18th century many garden guests recognized that activities in gardens represented deeper lessons of everyday life. Many garden games were emblems for moral living.
Before the Revolution, symbols of garden statues and games often focused on the dangers of sex and folly. To ensure that their guests understood the deeper implications of their leisure pastimes, owners of London's oldest commercial public pleasure grounds at Vauxhall Gardens decorated the grounds there with paintings containing short morality poems below each picture.
London's Vauxhall Gardens by Samuel Wale c 1751Vauxhall Gardens was one of England's oldest public pleasure grounds, a leading venues for public entertainment in London from the mid 17th century to the mid 19th century. Originally known as New Spring Gardens, the garden is thought to have opened just before the Restoration of 1660, on property owned disbursed by the will of widow Jane Vaux around 1615. The first written reference to the garden was made by Samuel Pepys in 1662. The Gardens consisted of 12 acres of trees & shrubs with attractive walks. In the early years, entrance was free with food & drink being sold to support the venture.
1809 Thomas Rowlandson. Vauxhall GardensThe London site became Vauxhall Gardens in 1785, and a general fee was charged to gain admission to its many attractions, with additional charges for food, drink, and incidentals. Its fiercest competition in 18th century London was the newer Ranelagh Gardens.
The Rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens by T. Bowles in 1754.In 1741, the Ranelagh House and grounds were purchased by an entertainment syndicate led by the owner of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which opened the public pleasure garden the following year. Ranelagh was considered by contemporaries more fashionable than its older rival Vauxhall Gardens. The entrance charge was 2 shillings & sixpence, compared to 1 shilling at Vauxhall. Horace Walpole, whose opinions often changed, wrote soon after the gardens opened, "It has totally beat Vauxhall... You can't set your foot without treading on a Prince, or Duke of Cumberland."
Both commercial public pleasure gardens drew enormous crowds of all sorts, with Vauxhall's paths particularly being noted for romantic assignations, both private and commercial. Tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, concerts, and fireworks provided additional amusement. As a display platform for the newest in architecture, a rococo "Turkish tent" became one of Vauxhall Gardens' structures, and the chinoiserie design style was a feature of several buildings at both of London's most popular public pleasure gardens.
Over half of the paintings conspicuously hanging at various points around the Vauxhall Gardens depicted games & recreations that were enjoyed in the commercial garden. The verses beneath the paintings both described the individual game and offered a rule for life or a moral to be drawn from it. You could go to the garden & misbehave, but those pesky poems about proper moral behavior were always hanging nearby to remind you of the error of your ways.
Obviously visitors could gain from the experience of garden pastimes directly by participating in them and more importantly, indirectly, by acknowledging the accepted moral inherent in the game. Even the most moral or infirm non-participants could share in the moral insight of the emblems.
Emblem verses warned of the vanities of many worldly pursuits and of the precariousness of the game of life. Most 18th century colonials understood that even the simple, innocent amusements offered at American gardens were more than just frivolous pastimes.
Although there were warnings about the immoratity of it, both men and women enjoyed playing cards in colonial British America, especially in the Southern colonies. Virginians George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both recorded in their journals losing small wagers to female card players. In the mostly rural South, colonials enjoyed playing cards at home, in taverns, and at public pleasure gardens.
Cards and gaming went hand in hand. Gambling was such a probem in the colonial South, that the Virginia General Assembly set a ten shilling fine for gaming with cards or dice at their first session in 1619. Unlawful games included bear baiting, bowling, cards, cockfighting, and dice.
In Virginia, gambling was a gentleman's privilege, as laws forbade servants, apprentices, laborers, and students from playing, at least in public. Legislators, who were the gentry of course, designed statutes to outlaw "unlawful, crafty, and deceitful Gaming, and the inordinate haunting of Alehouses and Tipling Places."
But British American colonials, male and female, at home and in their pleasure gardens would not give up their cards or their wagers. They played games called whist, piquet, ombre, commerce, loo, ace of hearts, faro, slam, all-fours, put, and cribbage. 
When no one was around or when they could not stand the available company, they played cards alone. And they often concentrated on building a house of cards to test the steadiness of their hands and their balancing skills. William Byrd wtote that he "killed the Time, by that great help to disagreeable Society, a Pack of Cards."
Jean-Baptiste-Simeion Chardin (1699-1779). House of Cards. c 1736.As the elder Charles Carroll in Annapolis, Maryland, probably knew when he urged his son to visit the public gardens in London, even the simple task of building a house of cards could be instructive to a youth such as his son, who had been away from home for years receiving a "proper education."
An eighteenth-century English versifier wrote,
"Whilst innocently Youth their hours beguile
And joy to raise with Cards the wondrous pile,
A Breath a Start, makes the whole fabrick vain,
And All lies flat, to be began again:
Ambition thus erects in riper Years,
Wild Schemes of Pow'r, & Wealth, & endless cares;
Some change takes place, the labour'd plan retards,
All drops--Illusion All--an House of Cards."
The young and the adventurous also participated in more active games such as Blind Man's Bluff in public pleasure gardens, but often these apparently innocent, carefree pastimes were seen as symbols for amorous intrigues in the 18th century. Men and women played blind man's bluff together, and the blindfold was a good excuse for an occasional indescretion.
One anonymous Englishman noted,
"Intent on Mirth alone the Rural Train
Pass the gay vernal hours in rest from Pain:
The buxom Youth hoodwink'd each other find,
And innocently laugh to cheat the Blind.
Thoughtless in Sport they urge the wanton Play,
Nor heed the latent Pow'r that reigns in May;
Beware ye tender Maids, your glowing Hearts,
For Love tho' blind is not without its Darts."
Garden visitors, especially the young, the lonely, and the tipsy, occasionally played children's games in public pleasure gardens. Men and women enjoyed hopscotch, hide and seek, prisoner's base, hoop rolling, and ring tossing. There was no cost involved in playing these games, and wagers were more often sexual than monetary. A kiss was often payment for a loss. And the sexual encounters and the titillating lessons in the games of the young kept even bystanders intrigued by the goings on.
Eighteenth-century gentlemen saw a learning experince inherent in a the simple children's game of Leapfrog,
"While blooming Health bestows its warm supply
The active Youth their Limbs elestic try
By turns they yield the pliant Back prepare
By turn they spring and seem to move the Air
Hence learn in Life with Similar address
Prudent to bend or resolute to press
Your force examine ere you chuse your part
The World is Leap Frog play'd with greater Art."
Battledore and Shuttlecock was very popular in 18th century London commercial gardens. Bandying cork and feather back & forth also flourished in 18th eighteenth century British American colonial public and private pleasure gardens as well.
Englishman John Newbery wrote,
"The great E. Play.
Shuttle-Cock.
The Shuttle Cock struck
Does backward rebound;
But, it it be miss'd
It falls to the Ground.
Moral.
Thus chequer'd in Life,
As Fortune does flow;
Her Smiles lift us high,
Her Frowns sink us low."
Even the simple straddling exercise of See-Sawing inspired some obviously male (surely a strong proponent of a double-standard of behavior) versifier to create a moral on the dangers of virginity lost,
"When at the top of her adventrous Flight.
The frolick Damsel tumbles from her Height:
Tho her warm Blush bespeaks a present Pain
It soon goes off she falls to rise again:
But when the Nymph with Prudence unprepar'd
By pleasure swayed--forsakes her Honours Guard;
That slip once made, no Wisdom can restore.
She falls indeed!--and falls to rise no more"
More complicated symbolism, not associated with traditional emblems, was also common in early American gardens after the Revolution, especially in the new French gardens popping up around New York City. Joseph Delacroix was famous in New York City for staging reportedly "stupendous emblematic spectacles" in his public pleasure garden. Occasionally the complicated symbolism prompted questions in New York City newspapers,
"Now Monsieur De la Croix, pray explain,
What did your emblematic worship mean?"
Masonic symbols often appeared in Delacroix's fireworks spectaculars. He presented a special celebration for St. John's Day in 1799 for the members and supporters of the Grand Masonic Lodge of New York City. At his New Vauxhall Garden he offered a fireworks display of Masonic emblems. He once again exhibited Masonic fireworks set against a painted backdrop representing the Temple of Solomon again in 1802 and 1803 to celebrate St. John's Day.
Freemasonry, still alive and well, is a fraternal organization that uses the metaphors of stonemasons' tools and implements, against the allegorical backdrop of the building of King Solomon's Temple, to convey "a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols."
A poem known as the "Regius Manuscript" has been dated to approximately 1390, and is the oldest known Masonic text. There were Masonic lodges in Scotland as early as the late 16th century & references to lodges in England followed in the mid-17th century.
During the British American colonial period, the Grand Lodge of England was founded on 24 June 1717, when 4 existing London lodges met for a joint dinner. The 18th century English penchant for organization and control led to this pleasant dinner get-together rapidly expanding into a regulatory body, which most English lodges joined. The Grand Lodges of Ireland & Scotland were formed in 1725 & 1736 respectively. Freemasonry was exported to the British American colonies by the 1730s – with the chartering offspring "daughter" lodges (a strange term for a meeting place that allowed no women) and the organizing various provincial grand lodges.
George Washington by William Joseph Williams (1759-1829)After the American Revolution, independent grand lodges formed themselves within each state. Some talked of organizing an over-arching "Grand Lodge of the United States," with George Washington (who was a member of a Virginia lodge) as the first Grand Master, but the idea was rejected. The various state grand lodges did not wish to diminish their authority by agreeing to such a body. It was the familiar American battle between centralized governance & state's rights.
Not to be outdone by his fellow countryman & his greatest competitor, New York City garden owner Joseph Corré offered in fireworks "a new representation of the five points of Masonry" hoping to attract the numerous members of the city's Masonic lodges just prior to St. John's Day in 1800.
Not one to rest on his laurels, garden owner Delacroix continued to develop fireworks programs as inspiring symbols for his commercial garden partons' immediate amusement and continuing moral education. In 1800, Delacroix presented Augustus Von Kotzebue's tragedy Pizzaro in fireworks and followed that spectacular presentation with a fireworks play called Tit for Tat; or, the Fire Worker's Pleasure Day. The stage represented a fireworks laboratory with "all the apparatus necessary for that art." The action centered around the good journeyman and the evil master fireworks maker who was finally revealed to be the devil. Not a presentation that might appeal to the master, but there were many more workers than bosses in the new republic.
In newly democratic America, garden owners targeted their morality spectaculars at everyman, not just the gentry. Garden entrepeneurs aimed their emblems, symbols, and spectaculars to the common working man--the mechanics and the Masons. This focus allowed the public pleasure garden proprietor in the new nation to exhibit his egalitarian ideologies and to attract a larger paying audience to his commercial garden.
Emblem Books
Emblem books are a style of illustrated book developed in Europe and Britain during the 16th & 17th centuries. The emblems are usually a combination of a visual image and accompanying text intended to inspire readers to reflect on a general moral lesson derived from experiencing both picture and text together. Emblem books were meant to inspire people from all social strata to lead a more moral life.
There are great online resources for emblem books. To learn more about emblems see the English Emblem Book Project at Pennsylvania State University. Their fine project posts emblem books from their collections online.
Or you might want to ferret out these English emblem books.
1569 Jan van der Noot, A Theatre for Worldlings, Henry Bynneman, London.
1585 Samuel Daniel, The Worthy Tract of Paulus Jovius, Simon Waterson, London.
1586 Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, Francis Raphelengius for Christopher Plantin, Leiden.
1591 P.S., The Heroicall Devises of M. Claudius Paradin, William Kearney, London.
1592 Andrew Willet, Sacrorum Emblematum Centuria Una, John Legate, Cambridge.
1593 Thomas Combe, The Theater of Fine Devices, Richard Field, London.
1605 William Camden, Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine, G.E. for Simon Waterson, London.
1608 Henry Peacham, Minerva Britanna, Walter Dight, London.
1618 H.G., The Mirror of Maiestie, William Jones, London.
1626 Thomas Jenner, The Soules Solace, Thomas Jenner, London.
1632 Jeremias Drexel, The Considerations of Drexelius upon Eternitie, Nicholas Alsop, London.
1633 Jeremias Drexel, The Christian Zodiac, John Coustourier, Rouen.
1633 Jeremias Drexel, Nicetas or the Triumph over Incontinencie, ?Rouen or ?Douai.
1633 Henry Hawkins, Partheneia Sacra, John Coustourier, Rouen.
1634 Henry Hawkins, The Devout Heart, John Coustourier, Rouen.
1635 Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angells, Adam Islip, London.
l635 Francis Quarles, Emblemes, John Marriot, London.
1635 George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes, Robert Allot, John Grismond, Robert Milbourne, Richard Royston, H. Taunton, London.
1637 Thomas Heywood, Pleasant Dialogues and Dramma's, R. Hearne, London.
1638 Robert Farley, Lychnocausia sive moralia facum emblemata, Michael Sparke Jr., London.
1638 Robert Farley, Kalendarium Humanae Vitae, William Hope, London.
1638 Francis Quarles, Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man, M. Flesher for John Marriot, London.
1640 Jeremias Drexel, The School of Patience, Roger Daniel, Cambridge.
1642 Jeremias Drexel, The Forerunner of Eternitie, John Sweeting, London.
l646 Thomas Blount, The Art of Making Devices, W.E. and J.G., London.
1647 Jeremias Drexel, The Hive of Devotion, R. Best, London.
1647 Christopher Harvey, Schola Cordis, or The Heart of itself gone away from God, London.
1648 Mildmay Fane, Otia Sacra, Richard Cotes, London.
l656 Thomas Jenner, The Path of Life, Thomas Jenner, London.
1656 Thomas Jenner, The Ages of Sin, Thomas Jenner, London.
1658 John Hall, Emblems with Elegant Figures, Roger Daniel, London.
1665 E.M., Ashrea, William Place, London.
1673 Emblems Divine, Moral, Natural and Historical, William Miller and Francis Haley, London.
1680 The Protestants Vade Mecum, Daniel Browne, Samuel Lee, Daniel Major, London.
1680 John Quarles, Self-Conflict, London.
1683 Philip Ayres, Emblemata Amatoria, R. Bentley and S. Tidmarsh, London.
1684 R.B., (pseudonym of Nathaniel Crouch) Delights for the Ingenious, Nathaniel Crouch, London.
1686 Edmund Arwaker, Pia Desideria, Henry Bonwicke, London.
1686 John Bunyan, A Book for Boys and Girls, Nathaniel Ponder, London.
1709 Cesare Ripa, Iconologia; or, Moral Emblems, by Caesar Ripa, Pierce Tempest, London.
1721 Marin Le Roy, Sieur de Gomberville, The Doctrine of Morality (translated by Thomas M. Gibbs), E. Bell, J. Darby et al. , London.
1724 Thomas Gent, Divine Entertainments, M. Hotham and T. Gent., London.
?1729 Anon, Emblems for the Entertainment and Improvement of Youth, T. Green, London.
1740 Francis Tolson, Hermathenae, or Moral Emblems, and Ethnick Tales (no publisher identified).
1772 John Huddlestone Wynne, Choice Emblems, George Wiley, London.
1779 George Richardson, Iconology, or a Collection of Emblematical Figures, George Richardson ('printed for the author by G. Scott'). London.
Depending on which language you are most comfortable with, these additional websites also explore and exhibit emblem books:
French Emblems at Glasgow—French Emblem books of the sixteenth century (27 browsable and searchable transcriptions and facsimiles)—
The Literary Encyclopedia entry on “Emblems and Imprese, 1400-1700” (Essay by Claire Preston, University of Cambridge)
Glasgow University Emblem website (This site provides an overview of many current projects and includes references to numerous related sites of interest.)
The University of Illinois – German Emblem Books project
Emblem Project Utrecht (Dutch Love Emblems)
Alciato's Book of Emblems: The Memorial Web Edition in Latin and English
.
