The coronation of William IV. in 1831 did not pass without influence on the Eagle, for in October the proprietor bought up the fittings of the Abbey entrance and robing-rooms and erected them as an entrance to his gardens, advertising them not only as the identical fittings, but as re-erected by ‘the identical mechanics.’ In this year, also, the famous Grecian Saloon came into existence. It was furnished with an organ and ‘a superb self-acting piano’; also with a superb gas chandelier, and with classic paintings by Philip Phillips, a pupil of Clarkson Stanfield and ‘scene-painter to the Adelphi and Haymarket.’ {58b} The Eagle reopened in the spring of 1832 with many of the attractions that long continued to characterize it. In the garden was an orchestra of Oriental type, variously described as Moorish or Chinese, and the Pandean Band from Vauxhall Gardens was engaged to perform. Dancing took place, generally once a week, in the ‘Grecian tent’ or in the assembly-room, and the gardens were adorned with Chinese lanterns, cosmoramas, fountains, and dripping rocks. In the Saloon there were concerts and ‘vaudevilles’ every evening, with sacred music (in Lent) from Handel and Mozart. The admission was no more than a shilling or sixpence, and it is pleasing to find that the ‘junior branches of families’ were admitted at threepence a head. One has a tender feeling for these junior branches, some of whom must have sat there with their fathers and mothers rather wearily from 7.30 to near 11, enlivened at times by the conjurer and the lady on the elastic cord (Miss Hengler or Miss Clarke) but caring little for the excellent glees and the vocal efforts of Miss Fraser James—bright star though she was of the London tavern concerts {59a}—or for those of Miss Smith, ‘the little Pickle’ of Drury Lane, of whom the critics remarked that it was miraculous that so young a person should be able to sing so high and so low, and excel in such songs as the ‘Deep, Deep Sea’ and ‘The Wolf,’ which she was understood to sing in private. How many people at this period visited the Eagle, or, indeed, any other place of open-air amusement, it is hard to determine; but the newspapers speak of 5,000 or 6,000 persons being present on one night in May, while others give the more modest total of 1,000 or 1,300 at sixpence each. The frequenters of the Eagle were people of humble rank, and at this time we hear of no distinguished visitors, except, perhaps, Paganini, who, going there with his friends to amuse himself one August night in 1832, was considerably mobbed, the remarks on his appearance being doubtless gems of Cockney sarcasm. [Picture: A Tavern-Concert Singer, Miss Frazer (or Fraser) James, circa 1838]