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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ME. PONGO. 



IT is a specialty of places of public entertain- 

 ment in England that the approaches to 

 them shall be made as deterrent as possible ; 

 that the persons whose duty it is to admit the 

 public shall wear an aspect of gloom and grudge, 

 as of men who know how mistaken one is in sup- 

 posing one is goiDg to see anything for the chil- 

 ling entrance-fee, and would prefer to warn the 

 public off the premises, but, such an act of chari- 

 ty being forbidden, would at least suggest by their 

 grumpy carelessness the vanity of human expec- 

 tations with regard to the particular entertain- 

 ment beyond their respective doors or turn-tables. 

 Who has not noted the surprise, the discomfiture, 

 the sudden falling of tbe spirits, of foreign vis- 

 itors, when they face for the first time the bare- 

 boarded, backwoods'-hut-like approaches to the 

 temples of art, science, and bric-d-brac, at South 

 Kensington ; the insecure, slanting passages, like 

 nothing but the improvised covered way to Mr. 

 Myers's circus-stable, which lead to the jocosely- 

 styled Horticultural Gardens flower-shows; and 

 the squalid disorder of the Low-Level entrance 

 to the Crystal Palace, which combines a rickety 

 and dangerous staircase from the outside with 

 some dirty pens inside, through which the aspi- 

 rant to the delights of the palace hurries, over 

 loose, filthy, unevenly-laid boards, but in which 

 he is confined on his way back to the train, under 

 conditions similar to those of a " lock-up," where 

 the tenants are habitually disorderly ? We have 

 always put up with things of this kind — was not 

 there a perceptible undercurrent of misgiving 

 when decent entrances to certain theatres were 

 " introduced," by managers whose minds had 

 been influenced by foreign customs in this re- 

 spect ? — and we probably always shall put up 

 with them ; but still we must air our grievances 

 concerning the entrances to the Aquarium at 

 Westminster, the dreariest place by daylight — 

 that is, unless our experience was exceptional — 

 within our knowledge. Not the gentle melan- 

 choly of which Dickens writes as mostly charac- 

 teristic of places where one is encouraged by ad- 

 vertisement to expect a " happy day," but a 

 stronger feeling, akin to dismay, takes possession 

 of the visitor who has passed through the creak- 

 ing turn-table and the doors, with the rough 

 handles which he is to "push" or " pull," ac- 

 cording to circumstances, and finds himself in 

 the dingy vastness of the Aquarium, where the 



tanks are thinly occupied by a few common 

 specimens of fish, often not of the kinds indi- 

 cated on the cards supposed to guide the visitor 

 to their contents, and where the smaller cases, 

 containing the tortoises, water-serpents, and baby- 

 alligators, are exceedingly foul-smelling. Dust 

 and dreariness — both of which, of course, may be 

 accidental — are the pervading elements of the 

 " entertainment," as of so many others ; the floor 

 when we visited it was as dusty as that of any 

 metropolitan station; the walls and pillars are 

 disfigured with advertisements ; the flowers and 

 shrubs are of the commonest kinds ; the galleries 

 are narrow walks between dust-laden rails and 

 tables, covered with ghastly models of fish, and 

 specimens of the blighted hopes of the Zoological 

 Gardens. A plaster cast of an infant hippopota- 

 mus, with one leg broken off short, and a " prep- 

 aration " of monkey, are among the cheering 

 objects which one encounters on one's dusty way 

 to the inconvenient corner at which one finds the 

 narrow door through which one passes to an 

 audience of the distinguished gorilla, Mr. Pongo. 

 At a dirty table stands a boy, who distributes 

 dirty cards of admission to a space in a gallery 

 formed by a rough inclosure of boards, leaving a 

 narrow passage — exactly like the prisoners' way 

 in a police-court, with the coarsely-papered wall 

 of the gallery on one side — which is fitted on 

 three sides with rows of chairs, 1he two-shilling 

 seats being in front, and offering no advantage 

 whatever over the one-shilling seats, except to 

 persons of lively imagination, who discern some 

 in the red rope at their back. A space, with a 

 raised floor, inclosed within wire-work, and fur- 

 nished with a couple of chairs, a horsewhip, a 

 ladder, and a brown blanket, forms the scene of 

 the exhibition of Mr. Pongo, and his friends — 

 August, the chimpanzee, and the dog Flok. As 

 the audience collect, the depression of disillusion 

 is to be read in their faces. What was the neces- 

 sity for stowing away the object of so much rea- 

 sonably expected attraction in a dirty corner, and 

 surrounding him with deterrent accessories ? The 

 outer edge of the gallery is shut up with a suffo- 

 cating, curtain, lest a glimpse of the bewildering 

 delights below ehould be caught by the dismal 

 assemblage who wait for the appearance of Pon- 

 go, and a boy, shrill and irrepressible as Dr. 

 Ginery Dunkle (of Troy) himself, screams inces- 

 sant admonitions about tbe taking of tickets, 



