London: A Pilgrimage


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CHAPTER VII - THE DERBY

How many days in the course of the year are there when London wears a peculiar aspect; when you can tell the date by the appearance of the streets; the excitement in the clubs; the vivacity of the mob; and the abnormal mixture of classes and of strangers ? In truth the influx of foreign elements must be vast to alter the complexion of Cockayne. But while the Christmas Cattle Show is on; on Christmas eve when people of every degree are bent on one absorbing mission, and the schools have disgorged their pupils; on Boxing Day; on Easter and Whit Mondays when pleasure is the watchword of the people; and on the two national race-days-the boatrace and the Derby-London is not the old familiar, hard-working, solemn-visaged place of every day. On these far-between holidays there is a downright general determination to agree with Æsop, as interpreted by Dickens, that "the bow must be sometimes loose."

London at play! The foreigner will be inclined to maintain stoutly that the Londoner never amuses himself. What are these scores of poor urchins and men about? Are they not enjoying themselves among the keenest; cheering and chaffing well-to-do London on its way to the Downs? The maypole has disappeared: the fairs have been put down. We have become too polite to suffer the continuance of the annual orgies of Greenwich. May-day rejoicings have faded out of mind. The Lord and Lady of the May are as dead as Gog and Magog. The broad archery grounds of old London have been given up to the builders long since. Quarter-staff and single-stick, foot-ball and bowling-alleys are lost English games, which have gone the way of bull and bear baiting, prize and cock fighting; and young England has tried in vain, to revive the best of them. Still the workers and the non-workers; the rich and the poor do sometimes amuse themselves-if "moult tristement"-as we shall assuredly see on this day, when many a traveller finds it impossible to get a bed, even in mighty London.

Mr GIadstone admirably illustrated the English character when he defined recreation-calling it a change of employment:-the exchange of the debate and the Council-chamber for the Preparation of Among the educated classes, who are of the workers, this definition holds good; and it explains the suburban home life which is the relaxation and the delight of Londoners.

The late Bishop of NorwichAphorisms and Opinions of Dr. George Horne, late Lord Bishop of Norwich said: "Cheerfulness is the daughter of employment; and I have known a man come home in high spirits from a funeral, merely because he had had the management of it." The English mechanic can neither dance nor sing-whereas the Frenchman has both these wholesome amusements at command-and they lead him from intoxication and its cognate vices. He is employed, and consequently cheerful without stimulants. John Bull has the river-boats, the delights of Gipsy Hill, the Blackheath and Hampstead donkeys, the parks, with full liberty to feed the ducks, the Red House at Battersea, the improving spectacle of occasional pigeon-shooting, the gay amenities of Hornsey-with beer and ginger-beer and nuts everywhere; but these witcheries in the open, are seldom available under the skies, where fog, the snow-cloud and the summer sun, play the most fantastic tricks together. Londoners are not to be judged by their amusements because they are not satisfied with them themselves. It is because their feasts are few and far between that we see "the violent delights" in which they indulge by the banks of the Thames at Easter, and on the Epsom Downs in May.

On the Derby morning, all London wakes at cock-crow. The first flicker of light breaks upon thousands of busy men in misty stables: breaks upon a vast encampment of the Romans and other less reputable wandering tribes on the Downs; breaks upon lines of loaded pedestrians footing it from London, to turn a penny on the great event. Horsey folk issue from every beer-shop and inn on the road. The beggars are in mighty force; the tattered children take up their stations. Who wants to see samples of all degrees of Cockneys, has his golden opportunity to-day. From the Heir Apparent, with his handsome, manly English face, to the vilest of Fagin's pupils; the observer may pass all our Little Villagers in review. The sharp-faced, swaggering betting man; the trim, clean groom with a flower in his button-hole; the prosperous, heavy-checked tradesman; the ostentatious clerk; the shambling street singer; the hard, coarse-visaged costermonger; the pale and serious artisan; the frolicsome apprentice in flaming neck-tie; the bandylegged jockey; the nouveau-riche smug in his ostentation; the merchant splendid in every appointment of his barouche and of his person; the wouldbe aristocrat flashing his silver mug of foaming Rœderer in the eyes of the Vulgar packed close as pigs in a butcher's cart;-these-catching a branch here or encountering a "spill" there-pass under the observer's eyes in a never-ending tide. And then the ladies! The ladies of the opera, and the Mile, and Almack's, are not here. But if you desire to see the fresh buxom wives and daughters of the lower middle class, dight in their ideas of the fashion; if you wish to study the outward belongings of the workman's spouse and girl; if you would get a true idea of the apple-woman, the work-girl in holiday finery, the beggar's female companion, in a cart with Dick Swiveller and his pals-and all in the highest spirits, now is your opportunity; and it will last clear through the day, and even a fair stretch into the night.

The Derby is emphatically, all England's day. It culminates in a result in which millions are keenly interested. The English people love the water and the road; the boat and the horse: the scull and the saddle. Everv school-boy affects to know a good mount and the rig of a ship. On the eve of the Derby, urchins pretend to be knowing in their playgrounds on the relative chances of the horses: and the maid of all work will trip round to the butcher's to have early intimation of the winner.

On the road, and at the Derby, it is Dickens' children you meet, rather than Thackeray's. All the company of Pickwick-Sam Weller and his father, a hundred times: Mr. Pickwick benevolent and bibulous: Jingle on the top of many a coach and omnibus. Pushing through the crowd, nimble, silent and unquiet-eyed, Mr. Fagin's pupils are shadows moving in all directions. The brothers Cheeryble pass in a handsome barouche, beaming on the crowd, and taking any passing impertinence as intended for a compliment. Their clerks are not far behind them, in the latest paletots-their beardless faces shining behind blue and green veils. Tom Allalone offers to dust you down, as you get within the ropes. Mr. Jonas Chuzzlewit has travelled in the congenial company of Scrooge to mark their prey. Mr. Dombey is here, solemn-so that you wonder what on earth can have drawn him to the hurry-burly, and why he has planted himself in the thick of the grand stand. Barkiss is as willing as ever, planted delightedly next a buxom country wench, and threading his way through the tangle of vehicles, with a cheery and prosperous audacity; and few if any notice the solemn man who carries aloft a board on which the wicked are warned to repent in time.

We admit that the halt at the road-side public house falls naturally into a very English scene. Pots of beer flash through the crowd: are lifted to the roofs of omnibuses, passed inside through the windows, raised to the lips of ladies who are giggling in spring carts, handed to postillions who drink while their horses plunge; and not an unwilling lip is seen anywhere.

"Again!" is the exclamation as our horses are brought to a sharp stand at an angle of the road. Beer is ahead once more-and will be ahead many times before we get back to town. "The Big Pint" will have worked some strange scenes before it is put by for the night. Let us not shirk the responsibility of the whole scene, from thimble-rigger to the peer armed with flour-bags. We are told that Englishman take delight in providing themselves with frequent chances of breaking their necks; and that this is a very strange trait in our character. Our lads love perilous games: our men form a club for mutual encouragement in the art of passing a holiday on the edge of a crevasse, with chances of avalanches overhead to keep the mind fully engaged. For such a people, this mad scamper of "a whole city full " through the lovely sylvan scenes of our island, to see two or three races; with the anticipation of a hundred accidents in the twilight on the way home, is a logical form of national holiday. To take an active part in it, a man must be robust. And this is the quality which pervades the marvellous assemblage. Stroll through the enormous encampment that lights up the Downs on the eve of the Derby, and mark the strange hordes of men and women who are preparing to receive half London to-morrow-from the gipsies to the governors of the games, the proprietors of the great refreshment booths, and the thick-throated fighting-men who are to put on the gloves, for shillings. In the throng are whole battalions of the vagrant poor intent on turning a few pence on The Event: but there is robust Will amid the poorest and feeblest. None are halfhearted. The shoe-black holds it a fine thing to be within sight of the Grand Stand, and has a boisterous spirit at the morning dawn, in defiance of chill and wet-of sleet and wind. He will warm, with the richest and happiest, to the event of the day, as the hours creep on, and the mighty tide of dusty travellers, streams upon the downs; creeps along the lines of the course; fills the Grand Stand with its dark flood; and ripples round The Corner. There is a brave, contentious spirit in the vast concourse, as the dealers in hundreds of articles, the tricksters, the mountebanks, the gipsies, and the betting men bend to their work, and fill the air with a hoarse, bewildering sound.