An etching of London’s Vauxhall Gardens, 1808–10.

The Pleasure Gardens of London

Forget the candlelit ballrooms of Jane Austen novels—partying in 18th-century London meant water taxis, drunken aristocrats, and enough pyrotechnics to level Pompeii

By Imogen Willetts

The ballroom-dance scene in a traditional period drama follows a familiar format. The camera sweeps through a grand party, the room illuminated by the warm glow of candlelight. The music is soft and classical. Dresses are exquisitely embroidered. Flirting is conducted through the coy use of eye contact. For some viewers, it can appear intolerably buttoned-up and dull. But, like many women raised on the cozy period dramas of the 90s and aughts like Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, I absorbed from films the implicit message that modernity, with its raves and nightclubs, had destroyed this more civilized way of partying.

But hedonism is not a 21st-century invention. Back in the 18th century, London’s nightlife had far more in common with the rampant excess of Studio 54 or the lurid party scene of 2000s L.A. than the ballroom dances of Hollywood’s Regency dramas. It’s time we gave that era its due.