London: A Pilgrimage
Jerrold, Blanchard
1890
London on the Downs.
London on the Downs.
London on the Downs; London waking on the Derby morning; London on the road to the race; London in the evening after the race! Here are studies each of which illustrates salient features of our metropolitan life. | |
On the Downs London is in the highest spirits, and all classes are intermingled for a few hours on the happiest terms. Strolling amid the booths and tents, we find, elbowing each other, bantering, playing, drinking, eating, and smoking, shoals of shopboys and clerks, tradesmen in fast attire, mechanics in holiday dress, wondering foreigners, gaudy ladies, generally of loud voice and unabashed manner. We come upon a noble earl indulging in throws for a penny. He has been recognized by a few bystanders, and the whisper that a peer is casting sticks at cocoa-nuts and dolls has travelled apace. His lordship has taken heartily to the fun, and is reckless of the shillings he is spending. His cuffs turned back, his hat tilted upon | |
his head, his face red and shining, he beams upon the applauding crowd when he has deftly consigned a jack-in-the-box to the bag which makes it his. We press onward through packs of noisy lads, past negro serenaders, fortune-tellers, tattered sellers of fusees, stable-men of every degree, groups of men-servants finishing up luncheonsto the course. Way is cleared a little, and a calm-faced Nawab passes, followed by his silent retinue. Not far off we come upon a personage upon whom many hopes are centred the patient exile waiting for his crown. Then there is the beauty of the hour, flushed with champagne, and haughty to the slaves whose elbows are planted in rows round her carriage.
We suddenly find the crowd tighten about us. A flutter goes through the sea of heads on the Grand Stand; the men climb to the roofs of the carriages; the general murmur deepens; the betting-men are in a fever of excitement; a fight or may be descried from the vantage-ground of a rumble.
The emotion is quiet at . The Grand Stand suddenly becomes white with a faces turned in direction an observer remarks, Then a low, hoarse sound travels about the Downs, deepening in waves of thrilling vibration at every instant. Then a roar breaks upon the frantic people, answered by a | |
roar. The multitude is divided into prodigious camps. Faster and shriller come the shouts. The Grand Stand is in convulsions. The bellowing is fearful to hear--the frantic commotion along the lines of coaches is frightful to see--as the horses, lying like a handful, sweep to the winningpost. Cheers and counter-cheers, fluttering of handkerchiefs, waving of hats upon sticks, cries, fierce as though wild beasts had been let loose, all tend to a final crash of voices andthe Derby is won. | |
was the expression that fell upon my ear, as a young buck, with a purple face, jumped from his coach and buried himself in the heaving throng. | |
Epsom is not Ascot, we all know; but the Downs discover an extraordinary variety of superb every Derby-day, bearing considerable burdens of such beauty as is not easily matched on any Continental racecourse. The Countess Creme de la Creme is not here (unless she be among | |
the beauties gazing disdainfully from lofty balcony by the way); the Duchess of Surrey is of opinion that the scene is not for the serene eyes of her daughters; the feminine gentilities of Kensington and Westbournia are consequently absent also; but there are whole parterres of honest, pretty | |
women of humble social pretensions-plebeian beauties-whom the critical Frenchman must have overlooked or misunderstood. | |
The delights of the Downs are to M. Taine's mind our carnival, and a very noisy -noise being essential to the over-muscular, thick-throated Englishman, who delights in every opportunity of showing his manly vigor. | |
I have already observed how strongly the general wearing of cast-off clothes by our poorer countrymen and countrywomen had struck upon the mind of my fellow-Pilgrim. The sadness and meanness of the habit were impressed upon us scores of times during our wanderings, so that when on a certain Sunday we turned into we had the key to the activity of the clothes market of Lazarus. clothes thousands at Epsom. | |
M. Taine will not admit that there is anything grandiose in the great | |
race-day on the Downs. The crowd is an ant-heap: the horsemen and the carriages moving about resemble beetles, May-bugs, large sombre drones on a green cloth. M. Taine mistrusts his moralizing as he unfolds it: His description of the actual race is excellent: | |
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Perhaps the company just in our rear are extravagant enough for an illustration of British wildness on the return frolic from a race. | |
When the brilliant French observer goes on to say that the betting fever is so intense and general that we can only exclaim, Let us moralize on the way home, with the empty baskets in the boot, but don't let us make a note of every extravagant story we shall hear before we get to Common. | |
The stories we may believe are wild and startling enough for the most earnest lover of the sensational. We find the revellers divided into distinct, easily recognized sections-viz., the Winners and the Losers. The Winners are uproarious and bibulous; the Losers are bibulous and sullen. It cannot be pretended by the keenest lover of the course and the hunting-field that racing promotes any of the virtues. On the other hand, | |
it fosters a general love of gambling. But this Derby-day has its bright, even its useful side, too. It gives all London an airing, an makes a break in our overworked lives; and effects a beneficial commingling of classes. This latter result is of more importance than appears on the face of it; and I commend it to the attention of the moralists on the roadespecially of the zealots who pay the religious board--men. These silent itinerant preachers provoke the tipsy blasphemer, and never make a penitent. There is a time for all things; and most certainly the Derby-day is not the time for missionary work. | |