{49} Hazlitt’s _Indian Jugglers_. Cavanagh declared that in this contest he played with his clenched fist. {50} There were already pony races for silver cups in August, 1836, when 2,000 people on one day visited the gardens (_Bell’s Life_). {51} _Cf._ Frost, _Circus Life_, p. 143. {54} According to Pinks (_Clerkenwell_, p. 501), the land was originally acquired in 1826 for £15,000, and walled in. {55a} Clinch, _Marylebone_, p. 183. {55b} Geary was the designer of the absurd statue of George IV.—the ‘Griffin’ of its day—that formerly stood at King’s Cross. He also designed one of the first gin-palaces in London (his name still appears cut in conspicuous letters as the architect of the Bell public-house (built 1835), No. 259, Pentonville Road), but afterwards repented and was one of the enthusiastic teetotallers who welcomed J. B. Gough on his visit to England, and planned a bazaar for a temperance fête at the Surrey Gardens in 1851 (Miller’s _St. Pancras_, p. 69). {56} When Lanza became bankrupt. He was the father of Rosalie Lanza, the operatic singer, and had some pupils who became well known. See Boase, _Biog. Dict._, _s.v._ Lanza. {57a} Advertisement in the _Morning Post_, February 8, 1781; _cf._ Wroth, _London Pleasure-Gardens_, p. 86. {57b} I find Rouse first mentioned as landlord of the Eagle in 1824, but the Eagle tavern was already in existence in November 1822, when a dinner took place there to welcome Henry Hunt, M.P., on his release from prison (_Jackson’s Oxford Journal_, November 16, 1822). A noisy crowd assembled in the neighbourhood and insisted on Hunt making a speech from the dining-room window. {58a} A letter from Harris written the day before his ascent, and enclosing a ticket to his balloon-makers to witness his ascent, is in the writer’s collection. {58b} He was the first proprietor (1837) of the Bower Saloon in Stangate Street, Westminster Bridge Road—a small theatre which nearly degenerated into a ‘penny gaff’ (Blanchard’s _Life_, p. 40, and bills of the Bower Saloon). There is a fairly common lithograph, ‘The Bower, Duke’s Arms, Stangate Street,’ showing a sort of garden entrance. {59a} On this lady and some of the tavern-concert singers of the time there is a rather breezy article in _The Town_ for August 18, 1838.