Mystic London Part 5

Being a determined sceptic in the matter of prospectuses, I determined to go and see for myself the working of this scheme, which looked so well on paper. The Inst.i.tution occupies a large house exactly opposite Dr. Punshon's chapel: and there is no chance of one's missing it, for it is placarded with announcements like a h.o.a.rding at election time. I found Mrs. Fernando an exceedingly practical lady, doing all the work of the inst.i.tution herself, with the exception of a few special subjects such as botany, &c., which are conducted by her husband. There are no "a.s.sistants," therefore, or deputed interests, the bane of so many high-priced schools.

These cla.s.ses are held in the evening from seven to nine o'clock, and are intended for ladies above the age of fifteen years, who may be engaged through the day in various occupations, and for such as suffer from neglected education, and who wish conveniently and economically to improve themselves, without being necessitated to mix with their juniors in day-schools. These cla.s.ses prepare ladies to meet the qualifications necessary to enter clerkships and other official departments; to bring them also to a standard to meet the qualifications for post offices and telegraph departments; and also to pa.s.s certain examinations open to them. The charge is only _2s._ per week--_8s._ per month--_1l. 4s._ per quarter. The first course embraces spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, and grammar. The second course consists of advanced arithmetic, book-keeping and commercial instruction, so as to qualify women to take posts of responsibility with marked success.

The third course consists of French, for practical usefulness. The fourth course embraces simple or technical training in such departments as are available within the limits of the cla.s.s-room--to qualify women to enter industrial avocations with competency, and to make them successful in obtaining employment. This department will be extended to greater usefulness as conveniences arise, by apprenticing the girls or employing them directly in trades beyond the limits of the cla.s.s-room, where employers will receive them, or where women could be consistently engaged--as, for instance, in the work of compositors, ticket-writers, embossers, &c. &c.

The two cla.s.ses with which I was brought into contact were the book-keeping and embossing. In the former, more than a dozen young ladies were being initiated in the mysteries of single and double entry, and they posted up their books in a way that made me feel very much ashamed of myself, when I thought how incapable I should be of doing anything half so useful. Many girls go from this department to be book-keepers at large hotels, places of business, &c.

I then went to the embossing room, where six presses were being worked by as many young ladies, one in an adjoining room being reserved for Mrs. Fernando, who not only tells her pupils what to do, but shows them how to do it. The gilding and colouring of the stamps was most elaborate; two monograms of the Queen's name and that of the Empress Eugenie being perfect marvels of artistic and intricate workmanship.

Every process, from mixing the colours up to burnishing the gold, was gone through in detail by this practical lady and her intelligent pupils for my special edification, and I pa.s.sed out a much wiser and certainly not a sadder man than I entered this veritable hive of human bees.

No expense was spared in the education of these girls, low as are the terms they pay. I saw quite a ruinous heap of spoilt envelopes and fashionable sheets of thick cream-laid; for they have to make their experiments on the best material, and the slightest alteration in the position of a pin where the stamping process has to be several times repeated spoils the whole result. Mrs. Fernando has also introduced envelope and circular addressing by women, as a department of female industrial work in the Technical Industrial School for Women, where a number of females are employed between the hours of ten and four o'clock, receiving satisfactory remuneration. She provides the females employed in this department evening cla.s.ses free of charge, to improve themselves in general education.

I am an intense admirer of the female s.e.x in general, and young ladies in particular, but really when I came away, leaving my pretty book-keepers and embossers to resume their normal work, and saw the numbers of young ladies sitting listlessly over misnamed "work" at the window, or walking languidly nowhither in the streets, I thought that, without losing any of their attractions, nay, adding a new claim to the many existing ones on our regard, they might with great advantage take a turn at Mrs. Fernando's sixpenny lessons in technical education.

CHAPTER XV.

FAIRLOP FRIDAY.

Amongst those customs "more honoured in the breach than the observance"

which are rapidly being stamped out by the advancing steps of civilization, are the inst.i.tutions which we can yet remember as so popular in the days of our childhood, called pleasure fairs. Like that social dodo in a higher section of society, the "three-bottle man," with the stupid Baccha.n.a.lian usages of which he was the embodiment, these fairs are slowly but surely disappearing as education spreads among the ma.s.ses of the people. In the country a fair is a simple and a necessary thing enough. At certain seasons of the year, according to the staple commodities for the sale of which the a.s.semblage was originally inst.i.tuted, our bucolic friends gather at early morning with the products of their farms; a good deal of noisy buying, selling, and barter takes place. Later in the day the ladies invest their profits in a little mild finery, or in simple pleasures; and, later still, when the public-houses have done their work, comes a greater or lesser amount of riot, rude debauchery, and vice; and then, voila tout--the fair is over for a year. One can easily imagine the result of the transition when, from the quiet country, the fair removes to the city or suburb. In such places every utilitarian element is wanting, and the gilt ginger-bread and gewgaws are only a speciously innocent attraction towards the drinking and dancing booth where the mischief is done. Well-wishers to society are unromantic enough not to regret the decidedly waning glories of these gatherings, from the great Bartholomew Fair itself down to that which, on the Friday of which I write, converted many miles of thoroughfare at the East End of London, as well as one of the prettiest forest scenes still surrounding the metropolis, into a vast al fresco tavern, where the "worship of Bacchus" was as freely indulged as in any heathen temple of ancient times.

Fairlop Fair--which has not yet died out, though beginning to show satisfactory signs of decay--commenced its existence, innocently enough, about a century ago. At that time Mr. Day, a shipbuilder, wishing to have a day's outing in the forest with his friends and employes, fitted up a vessel on wheels, fully rigged, in which he conveyed his picnic party to Hainault Forest, on the outskirts of which, some distance from Ilford, stood the famous Fairlop Oak. The holiday became an annual custom, and gradually changed its character from the simple gathering of a master and his men into regular saturnalia; during which, each year, from the first Friday in July, over the ensuing Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, riot and debauchery reigned supreme in the glades of the forest and the eastern districts of London. The example set by Mr. Day was followed by other ship, boat, and barge builders, but of late years, more particularly by the mast and block makers, riggers, shipwrights, and shipyard labourers; and more recently still by the licensed victuallers.

Finding the custom good for trade, the publicans formed a society for building or hiring these boats on wheels, which, covered with flags, and provided each with a band of music and filled with revellers, annually make their progress into Hainault Forest. They go no longer, alas! to Fairlop Oak--for that is numbered with the things of the past--but now to Barking side, where, at the Maypole Inn, the festivities of Fairlop Fair are still kept up.

These ship and boat cars attract immense mult.i.tudes along the Mile End, Bow, and Whitechapel Roads, down as far as Aldgate; the crowd a.s.semble in the morning to see the holiday people start on their expedition. The most remarkable sight, however, is at night, when the "boats" return lighted with coloured lanterns, red and green fires, &c.; and at every public-house along the road similar fires are burnt, and bra.s.s bands stationed to strike up as the cars pa.s.s, and stop at certain favoured establishments "for the good of the house." Anxious to witness the fading glories of Fairlop Friday myself, before the advancing tide of civilization shall have done their inevitable work upon them, I sallied forth to the East End, and walking along one of the finest approaches to London, from Aldgate, by Whitechapel, to Bow and Stratford Churches, succeeded in realizing more completely than ever before two facts: first, how gigantic is the population of the East End of London; and, secondly, how little is required to amuse and attract it. There were only two of the "boats" sent to the Forest that year. Their return could gratify the sight of these people but for a single instant; yet there, from early dusk almost to succeeding daylight, those working men, literally "in their thousands"--and not in the Trafalgar Square diminutive of that expression--gathered to gratify themselves with the sight of the pageant. In comparison, the "Boeuf Gras," which annually sends the gamins of Paris insane, is really a tasteful and refined exhibition. Yet there they were, women, men, and children--infants in arms, too, to a notable extent--swarming along that vast thoroughfare, boozing outside the public-houses, investing their pence in "scratch-backs" and paper noses, feathers and decorations, as do their betters on the course at Epsom, under the feeble excuse of "waiting for the boats." The first arrived en retour at Stratford Church about ten o'clock; and certainly the appearance of the lumbering affair as it moved along, with its rigging brought out by means of coloured fires, lanterns, and lamps, was odd enough. As soon as it pa.s.sed me at Stratford, I jumped outside one of the Bow and Stratford omnibuses, and so had an opportunity of following, or rather joining in, the procession as far as Whitechapel, where the "boat" turned off into Commercial Road.

For the whole of that s.p.a.ce the footway was filled with one seething ma.s.s of humanity, and the publicans were driving a rattling trade outside and inside their establishments. As the glare of the coloured fires lighted up the pale faces of the crowd with a ghastly hue, and I heard the silly and too often obscene remarks bandied between the bystanders and the returning revellers, I could not help agitating the question, whether it would not be possible to devise some innocent recreation, with a certain amount of refinement in it, to take the place of these--to say the best--foolish revelries. In point of fact, they are worse than foolish. Not only was it evident that the whole affair from beginning to end, as far as adults were concerned, was an apotheosis of drink; but amongst another section of the populace, the boys and girls, or what used to be boys and girls--for, as the Parisians say, "Il n'y a plus de garcons"--one must have been blind indeed not to see the mischief that was being done on those East End pavements; done more thoroughly perhaps, certainly on a vastly larger scale, than in the purlieus of the forest. It is an uninviting subject to dwell upon; but one could understand all about baby farms, and Lock Hospitals, and Contagious Diseases Acts, out there that July night, in the crowded streets of East London.

It would be unfair to dilate upon these evils, and not to mention an organization which, for the last ten years, has been seeking to remedy the mischief. Some hundreds of working men of a more serious stamp, aided by a few gentlemen and ministers of various denominations, form themselves into small bands of street preachers, and sallying forth in a body, hold services and preach sermons at the most populous points of the Fairlop route. Being curious to see the effect of their bold labours--for it requires immense "pluck" to face a Whitechapel mob--I joined one of these detachments, where the Rev. Newman Hall was the preacher. Before starting, this gentleman gave it as the result of his long experience with the British workman that there is no use in waiting for him to come to church. If the church is to do anything with him, it must go out and meet him in the streets and fields, as it originally did. Mr. Hall gave some amusing ill.u.s.trations of his experience at Hastings, where, for several weeks, he had been preaching on the beach to large congregations. He was idling there, he said, for health's sake, and one evening, seeing a number of men loafing about, he proposed to one of them that he should give them an address. This gentleman declined the address, but added, characteristically enough, "If ye'll gie me some beer I'll drink it." Two others, being asked if they would listen, "didn't know as they would." Under these unpromising auspices Mr. Hall began, and, attracting a crowd, was "moved on" by a policeman. A gentleman who recognised him proposed an adjournment to the beach, and there a sermon was preached, and has been repeated by Mr. Hall on several occasions, with a congregation of thousands. He has a peculiar knack of speaking in a tongue "understanded of the people," and his address to the Fairlop crowd on that Friday night "told" considerably.

At its conclusion he quietly put on his hat, dropped into the crowd, and went his way; but the tone of criticism amongst his hearers was very favourable, and I quite agree with the critics that it's a pity we haven't "more parsons like that." It is not, however, simply by religious zeal such a want as that to which I allude is to be supplied, but by the subst.i.tution of some sensible recreation for the low attractions of the beershop and gin-palace. It is a problem worthy of our deepest thinkers: "What shall we offer our huge populations in exchange for the silly pageant even now being enacted in the outskirts of the metropolis--which may well be taken to embody the pastime of the lower orders--Fairlop Fair?"

CHAPTER XVI.

A CHRISTMAS DIP.

There are few more exhilarating things, on a breezy spring morning, than a spurt across that wonderful rus in urbe--Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park--for a prospective dip in the Serpentine, where, at specified hours every morning and evening, water-loving London is privileged to disport itself in its congenial element. So congenial is it, in fact, that some enthusiastic individuals do not limit themselves to warm summer mornings, or the cooler ones of springtide and autumn, but bathe all the year round--even, it is said, when a way for their manoeuvres has to be cut through the ice. Skirting the north bank of the Serpentine at morning or evening in the summer, the opposite sh.o.r.e appears absolutely pink with nude humanity, the younger portion dancing and gambolling very much after the manner of Robinson Crusoe's cannibals. The bathers occasionally look a great deal better out of their integuments than in them. Not from this cla.s.s, however, do your all-the-year-round bathers come. The Arab is an exotic--a child of the Sun, loving not to disport himself in water the temperature of which shocks his tentative knuckles, as he dips them in the unaccustomed element. His wardrobe, again, is too much after the fashion of that pertaining to Canning's needy knife-grinder to make an al fresco toilette other than embarra.s.sing. From the all-the-year-round bathers, as a nucleus, there has grown up, within the last few years, the Serpentine Swimming Club; and on Christmas-day in the morning they have an annual match open to all comers--though, it need scarcely be said, patronized only by those whom, for brevity's sake, we may term all-rounders.

Now, I had often heard of this Christmas-day match, and as often, on Christmas-eve, made up my mind to go; but the evening's resolution faded away, as such resolutions have only too often been known to do, before the morning's light. This year, however--princ.i.p.ally, I believe, because I had been up very late the previous night--I struggled out of bed before dawn, and steered for the Serpentine. A crescent moon was shining, and stars studded the clear s.p.a.ces between ominous patches of cloud. A raw, moist wind was blowing, and on the muddy streets were evident traces of a recent shower. I had no notion that the gates of Kensington Gardens were open so early; and the sensation was novel as I threaded the devious paths in morning dawn, and saw the gas still alight along the Bayswater Road. A solitary thrush was whistling his Christmas carol as I struggled over the inundated sward; presently the sun threw a few red streaks along the East, over the Abbey Tower; but, until I had pa.s.sed the Serpentine Bridge, not a single human being met my gaze.

There, however, I found some fifty men, mostly with a "sporting" look about them. The ubiquitous boy was there, playing at some uncomfortable game in the puddles round the seats. The inevitable dog stood pensively by the diving board; and when, by-and-by straggling all-rounders came and took their morning header, the quadruped rushed after them to the very edge of the water, as though he had been a distinguished member of the Humane Society. He shirked the element itself, however, as religiously as though he had been one of London's great unwashed. In the pause which preceded the race, I learned, from the Honorary Secretary of the Serpentine Swimming Club, particulars of its history and of the race itself. For six years it had been merely a club race; but last year it was thrown open. Strangely enough the race had never been won twice by one man, though the compet.i.tors had been pretty much the same every year. I also conversed with one of the intending compet.i.tors, who showed me on his breast with pardonable pride, five medals of the Royal Humane Society, awarded for saving life in cases of danger from drowning. The wearer was a Professor of Natation, and told me that, among his pupils, he had an old lady sixty-seven years of age, who had just commenced, and was able to swim some twenty yards already. The brave old lady's example may do good; though it is to be hoped that she may not, at her time of life, be compelled to exert her art for her own protection.

Names were now called, and fourteen compet.i.tors presented themselves--a motley group, clad for the most part in trousers, horse-rug, and wide-awake, or, more simply still, in Ulster frieze coat only. The group of spectators had by this time grown to some hundreds, nearly all directly interested in the n.o.ble art; and the dips became fast and frequent. Two flags were placed in the water at the distance of 100 yards from the diving board; on this slender platform fourteen shivering specimens of humanity ranged themselves, and at the word of the starter plunged into the water with that downward plunge so incomprehensible to the uninitiated. A short, sharp struggle followed, the compet.i.tors swimming with the sidelong movement and obstreperous puffing which likens the swimmer so closely to the traditional grampus. Eventually one of the group is seen heading the others, and breasting the water with calm and equable stroke in the old-fashioned style. He reaches the flag a full yard before his nearest antagonist. Numbers two and three, following, are about half a yard apart. The others come in pretty much in a group. All were picked men, and there were no laggards. The names of the winners were as follows:--1. Ainsworth; 2. Quartermain; 3. H.

Coulter. The time occupied in the race was 1 min. 24 sec. Immediately after the race there was a rapid re-a.s.sumption of rugs and Ulsters, though some of the more hardy walked about in the garb of Nature, making everybody shiver who looked at them. Finally, the prizes, consisting of three handsome medals, were distributed by Mr. H. Bedford, who stood on a park seat and addressed a few genial words to each of the successful candidates; then, with a cheer, and frequent wishes for a Merry Christmas, the a.s.sembly resolved itself into its component parts.

I had taken my accustomed cold tub before coming out, yet each of these fourteen devoted men appeared to me as a hero. They were not Herculean individuals: several of them were mere youths. Some of the all-rounders were grey-headed men, but there was about them all a freshness and ruddiness which showed that their somewhat severe regimen agreed with them. Fresh from such a Spartan exhibition, everything seemed very late and Sybaritic in my domestic establishment, and I could not help revolving in my mind the question, what would one of these hardy all-the-year-rounders think of me if he knew I was ever guilty of such a malpractice as breakfast in bed? It is a novel method; but there are many worse ways of inaugurating the Great Holiday than by taking--what it had been a novel sensation for me even to witness--a Christmas Dip in the Serpentine.

CHAPTER XVII.

BOXING-DAY ON THE STREETS.

Boxing-day in the London streets, and especially a wet Boxing-day, can scarcely fail to afford us some tableaux vivants ill.u.s.trative of English metropolitan life. In a metaphorical and technical sense, Boxing-day is always more or less "wet"--generally more, and not less; but this year the expression is used climatically, and in its first intention.

Christmas-eve of the year about which I write was bright and springlike; Christmas-day dismal, dark, and un-Christmas-like; but Boxing-day that year was essentially muggy, sloppy, drizzly, and nasty. A day to avoid the London streets if you want to take a romantic Rosa-Matilda view of London life; but the very day of all others, if you wish to see real London as it is. Boxing-day will inevitably be "wetter" in every sense than usual this year, internally and externally. So let us commence our series of living pictures at ten o'clock in the morning. Suppose we begin with something that shall bear reference to the past festival--the eve and the day of the Great Birth, recollect. See, here is Grotto Pa.s.sage, Marylebone, and at its extremity Paradise Street--the names sound promising, but alas for the reality! We are going to turn for a moment into the Marylebone Police Court, where Mr. D'Eyncourt is dispensing summary justice to the acc.u.mulations of the last two days.

These are the people who have been spending Christmas-eve, Christmas-day, and some portion of Boxing-day already in the police-cells. Let us take one as a typical case. Let that poor little eight-year-old Arab step down from the dock and go off with his mother, who, we hope, will take the magistrate's excellent advice, and keep the child from begging--that is why he has spent Christmas in the cells--lest he be sent to a school for eight years, and she have to pay for him--G.o.d help her! she does not look as though she could afford very high terms. A bruised and bleeding woman, not young or good-looking, enters the box with her head bound up. Her lord and master confronts her in the dock. It is the "old, old story." A drop of drink yesterday--the day of the Great Nativity, never forget--series of "drops of drink" all day long; and, at five o'clock, just when gentility was beginning to think of dinner, the kitchen poker was used with frightful effect. A triangular cut over the right eye, and another in the dangerous neighbourhood of the left ear, administered with that symbol of domestic bliss, the kitchen poker, sends the wife doubled up into a corner, with an infant of two years old in her arms. The head of the family goes out for a walk after his exertions. The woman lies there bleeding until the neighbours hear her "mourning," as she terms it--the result being that the lord and master's "const.i.tutional" is cut short by a policeman, and the happy pair are this morning separated for six months, at the expiration of which period Paterfamilias is to find surety for another six months' good behaviour. Such, starred round with endless episodes of "drunk and disorderly," "foul language," and so on, is our first tableau this Boxing-day. It is not a pleasant one. Let us pa.s.s on.

Along Oxford Street, despite the Bank Holidays Act, many shops are open, chiefly those devoted to the sale of articles eatable, drinkable, and avoidable; these last being in the shape of chemists' shops, and shops for Christmas presents--to be shunned by miserly old bachelors. Let us turn into the British Museum and see sensible, decorous Boxing-day there. At the corner of Museum Street there is a lively itinerant musician, evidently French, who plays the fiddle until his bow tumbles all to pieces, but he goes on playing with the stick as though nothing had happened. When his instrument has come entirely to grief he turns to a clarionet, which he carries under his arm, and plays "Mourir pour la Patrie" with extraordinary vocal effect and irreverent gestures.

Punch-and-Judy is largely attended at the other end; Punch is kitchen-pokering his wife, too, like the gentleman we have just left; but we pa.s.s in with the crowds to the Museum itself. Halting a moment in the reading-room, to jot down there a few notes, one is struck with the scanty show of students. _They_ are spending Boxing-day somewhere else. Pa.s.sing through the little knot of people who are permitted by special order to come as far as the door of the reading-room, and who evidently regard the readers as some curious sort of animal exhibited for their special delectation--perhaps the book-"worm" of which they have heard so much--we go up the stairs, now thronged with crowds in unwonted broadcloth and fragrant with the odour of the inevitable orange. Next to the drinking fountain, which is decidedly the chief attraction, comes the gorilla, and then the extinct animals. One stout old lady, contemplating the megatherium and mastodon, inquires in what parts "them creeturs" are to be found, and seems considerably damped by being informed that Nature has been "out" of such articles for several aeons. The mummies, with the bones of their toes sticking out, also come in for a large share of admiration. There is a good deal of rough flirtation going on; but, on the whole, the pleasure is rather of a placid order, though still contrasting favourably with the settled gloom visible on the faces of the attendants in the various galleries. How well we can understand such gloom! How utterly hateful must that giant elk and overgrown extinct armadillo be to a man condemned to spend a lifetime in their close contemplation!

But let us pa.s.s on to the artistic Boxing-day keepers at the National Gallery. The walk will take us through the Seven Dials, and can scarcely fail to be suggestive. It is now one o'clock, the traditional hour of dinner; and in Broad Street, St. Giles's, I see, for the first time to-day, the human barometer evidently standing at "much wet." A gentleman in a grey coat and red comforter, who bears palpable signs of having been more than once on his back, has just reached that perplexing point of inebriety when he can walk quickly or run, but cannot stand still or walk steadily. He is pursued by small children, mostly girls, after whom, every now and then, he runs hopelessly, to their intense gratification. The poultry and bird shops in the Seven Dials are objects of some attraction, though they savour too much of "business" to be in very great force. The National Gallery is crowded with unaccustomed art students. There is about the visitors a quiet air of doing their duty, and being determined to go through with it at any price. One brazen-faced quean speculates audibly--in fact, very audibly--as to which "picter" she should choose if she had her "pick," and decent matrons pa.s.s the particularly High Art of the old masters with half-averted gaze, as though they were not quite sure of doing right in countenancing such exhibitions. Hogarth's evergreen "Marriage a la Mode" is a great centre of attraction, and the youngsters never tire of listening, as "with weeping and with laughter still is the story told"

over and over again by their elders. Gainsborough's likeness of Mrs.

Siddons is also a great favourite; but perhaps the picture that attracts most attention is Van Eyck's "John Arnolfini, of Lucca, and his Wife."

The gentleman wears a portentous hat, which tickled the fancy of the Boxing-day people immensely. There were great speculations too among them as to whether the curious Tuscan pictures at the top of the stairs were "needlework" or not. Still, who shall say that these visitors were not the better for their visit, surrounded as they were by forms of beauty on every side, even if they did not examine them with the eyes of connoisseurs?

Boxing-day on the river: The silent street is almost deserted. There is no rush for the Express boat to-day. It is literally the streets--muddier and sloppier than the Thames itself--that are the attraction. Some little boys are making the trip from Westminster to London Bridge as a treat; and it is an intense joke with them to pretend to be dreadfully seasick. Boxing-day in the City is synonymous with stagnation. It is a howling wilderness, with n.o.body to howl. On the Metropolitan Railway I verily believe travellers were tripping it like the little boys on board the penny boat. And so theatre time draws on, and the interest of Boxing-day grows to a climax. Soon after five o'clock groups furtively collect outside the playhouses, half-ashamed of being so early, but gathering courage from numbers to form the disorderly queue, so unlike that of a Parisian theatre. Boxing-night in the theatres others will describe. It is too much to expect of one whose mission has been the whole day long on the streets.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE VIGIL OF THE DERBY.

In those days--happily now gone by--when public strangulation was the mode in Merry England, there was always an evident fascination appertaining to the spot where, on the morrow, some guilty wretch was to expiate his crimes on the gallows. Long before the erection of that elegant apparatus commenced, and generally on a Sunday evening, when decent citizens had newly come from houses of G.o.d, where they had heard the message of life, crowds began to collect on that central spot in the heart of the great City dedicated to sudden and violent death. The coming event seemed to cast its shadow before; and throughout the night the roisterer or belated traveller made a detour to visit the human shambles. I confess to having felt the attraction. I could not then bring myself to be present at the strangulation proper; so, as the nearest approach to a "sensation," sometimes visited Newgate on the eve of the victim elect's last morrow. In the same way, being unfortunate enough to be London-bound on the day of our great annual holiday, and having heard graphic accounts of the Downs on the eve of the Derby, I determined that year, as I could not go to the race by day, to visit the racecourse by night. Let me own the soft impeachment: I am not a racing man--not in any degree "horsey." When I do go to the Derby it is to see the bipeds rather than the quadrupeds; to empty the hamper from Fortnum and Mason's, rather than to study the "names, weights, and colours of the riders" on the "c'rect card." If you prefer to have the sentiment in Latin--and there is no doubt Latin does go much farther than English--I am not one of those "quos pulverem Olympic.u.m collegisse juvat," except in so far that "h.o.m.o sum; nihil humanum alienum a me puto." It was to see humanity under a new aspect, I took the last train to Epsom on the eve of the Derby.

In order to combine business with pleasure, and economy with both, I took a third-cla.s.s ticket at Victoria, and was fortunate enough to find a compartment already partially occupied by a n.i.g.g.e.r troupe. In this, which under ordinary circ.u.mstances I should have avoided, I took my seat, and was regaled all the way down with choice morceaux from the repertoire of my musical friends. The "talking man" of the party, too, enlivened the proceedings by anxiously inquiring of the porters at the different stations what they would take in the way of refreshment, and issuing unlimited orders to imaginary waiters on their behoof. It was a strange sensation, being whirled away from home and bed down to a wild heath towards midnight; and as we neared our destination, the air began to "bite shrewdly," and the sky to look uncommonly like rain--a contretemps which would have been fatal to my proposed experience. We had to change carriages at Sutton, and here a sociable Aunt-Sally-man, struggling under the implements of his craft, sought to beguile me from my African friends by offers of a shake-down in his tent, with which he proposed to walk across from Ewell and erect, instead of journeying on to Epsom. My Ethiopian friends jumped at the proposal, and forthwith fraternized with Aunt Sally. I determined to follow out my previous plans; so having drunk to our next merry meeting, we parted, ostensibly until to-morrow, but, I fear, for ever.

I had been led to expect "high jinks" at Epsom--a sort of Carnival in the quiet town. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. The town, so far as outward semblance went, was almost as quiet as ever. A few sporting men thronged the bar of the princ.i.p.al hotel, and stragglers hung about the low beer-shops; but there was nothing at all to indicate the imminence of the great event. So I fell back on my usual expedient of applying to the executive, and found not only an active and intelligent but exceedingly civil sergeant of police, to whom I told my errand. He was pleased with the novelty of the idea, and as he happened to be then going the round of the town previously to visiting the course, I cast in my lot with him for the night. We first visited what he termed the "German Opera," on Epsom Common. This is an encampment of organ-grinders, hurdy-gurdy-players, German bands, &c., who pitch their tents here instead of going to the Downs. It was, however, rather late when we reached the spot where these artists were bivouacking, and they had retired for the night, so we could not form much idea of them beyond their numbers, which seemed considerable, and their odour, which was unfragrant. Thence we pa.s.sed down a short alley to a railway arch, which was aglow with many fires, and rang with the sounds of many voices.

Bidding me make no observation, whatever might be said, and requesting me to try and look like an officer in plain clothes, my cicerone led me into the strange arcade, which I certainly could not have entered without his protection. Hundreds of men, women, and boys were gathered in groups round c.o.ke fires, some partaking of coffee, others singing, the majority sleeping. After satisfying himself that the fires were legitimate ones, and not composed of broken fences, my guide left this teeming hive unmolested. We then steered for the course, not by the high road, but skirting it along the fields. The policeman, like myself, carried a stout stick, which really seemed to be endowed with creative powers that night. Wherever he poked that staff--and he did poke it everywhere--a human being growled, or snored, or cursed. Every bush along the hedgerow bore its occupant--often its group of four or five, sometimes a party of a dozen or a score. One shed filled with carts yielded at least a hundred, though the sergeant informed me it must have been already cleared several times that evening, as he had a file of men along the road, besides a cordon inside the Park palings, which border a great portion of it. It is with these palings the tramps chiefly do mischief, pulling them down to make fires along their route. Wherever my guide found these, he trampled the fires remorselessly out, and kicked the burning embers over the sleepers in a manner that must have been uncomfortable. The men submitted in comparative silence; but the ladies--where there happened to be any--exerted the privilege of their s.e.x, and treated us to some choice specimens of the vernacular. In one case, a female cried out that he was kicking the fire over the "childer;" and, sure enough, we found half-a-dozen little ones huddled up asleep. The policeman remonstrated with her for bringing them to such a place; but she informed us it was to "make their living." In what way, she did not add. To us, it seemed very much like reversing the process, and causing their death. Fancy young children camping out on the road to the Downs at midnight! Boys of thirteen and fourteen abounded, sleeping in large groups along the hedgerows, and sometimes out in the open fields, where the dew lay thick.

At length, after many windings, we reached the Downs. The white booths, following the direction of the course in their sinuous lines, looked like stately white marble streets and crescents in the dim, uncertain light of that hour which, between May 31 and June 1, is neither day nor night. Under the stands and around the booths, tabernacling beneath costermongers' barrows, and even lying out openly sub dio, were still the hundreds of human beings. In one small drinking booth was a sight the policeman said he had never seen equalled in his twenty years'

experience. A long, narrow table ran down the centre, with benches on each side. The table itself was occupied with rec.u.mbent figures; on the benches the sleepers sat, bending forward over it, and under the benches sleepers sprawled upon the gra.s.s. The whole of the front of the booth was open, and exposed to the biting wind; but there they snored as calmly as though on eider-down. We climbed the steps of the stand above the ring, and waited for the day, which slowly broke to the song of the lark and nightingale over that strange scene. With the first suspicion of dawn the sleepers awoke and got up; what for I cannot imagine. It was barely two o'clock, and how they were going to kill the next twelve hours I could not guess. Rise they did however, and an itinerant vendor of coffee, who was literally up with the lark, straightway began to drive a roaring trade. I saw no stronger drink than this consumed; nor did I witness a single case of drunkenness during the whole night. But this was before the Derby! At this juncture we were all surprised by the apparition of a hansom-lamp toiling up the hill. Two adventurous gentlemen from Liverpool, it appeared, had arrived at the Euston Station, and insisted upon being driven at once to an hotel on Epsom Downs. The Jehu, secure of a fabulous fare, drove them accordingly; and, of course, had to drive them back again to Epsom--the hotels on the Downs quietly but firmly declining to be knocked up at that untimely hour even by gentlemen from Liverpool. As the sun showed his first up-slanting rays above the horizon, with the morning star hanging impertinently near, the two gipsy encampments began to exhibit signs of life. The Zingari encamp exclusively by themselves, and some picturesque specimens of the male s.e.x, looking remarkably like the lively photograph of the Greek brigands, showed themselves on the outskirts. The ladies reserved themselves for later in the day. My guide cautioned me not to attempt to enter the encampment, as the men are dangerous, and their position on the Downs a privileged one. It was only when the tramps were trespa.s.sing, or evidently bent on mischief, that they were disturbed. On the Downs they were monarchs of all they surveyed.

When the sun was fairly up, and the morning mists rolled away from those glorious Downs, I felt my mission accomplished. I had seen the sun rise on Epsom course. As it was many hours before a train would return, and I still felt fresh, I resolved to give the coup de grace to my night's adventure by walking home--at least, walking to the radius of workmen's trains. The vanguard of the Derby procession now began to show strongly in the shape of the great unwashed climbing the ridge of the hill by the paddock; and I felt I should see some characteristic sights along the road. Bidding good-bye, therefore, to my guide at Epsom, I set out on foot along the now-populous road, mine being the only face turned London-wards. Carts laden with trestles and boards for stands now began to be in force. By-and-by the well-known paper bouquets and outrageous head-gear showed themselves as forming the cargo of costermongers'

carts. The travellers were all chatty, many of them chaffy. Frequent were the inquiries I had to answer as to the hour and the distance to the course. Occasionally a facetious gentleman anxiously inquired whether it was all over, as I was returning? I believe the majority looked upon me as a harmless lunatic, since I was travelling away from Epsom on the Derby morning, and pitied me accordingly. An Irishman aptly ill.u.s.trated the genial character of Hibernian chaff as compared with English. "Good day to your honner!" he said. "It does me good to see your honner's happy face again;" though, of course, he had never seen it before. As I pa.s.sed on with a brief salutation, he took the trouble to run after me, and slapping me on the shoulder, added, in a beautiful brogue: "Wait a minnit; I don't want to ax you for anything, but only to tell you how glad I am to see yer honner's happy face agin. Good mornin'!"

So through Ewell, Cheam, and Morden, up to Tooting; the throng increasing at every mile. At Balham, finding no train for an hour, I footed it again. I found preparations for endless Aunt Sally already being made on Clapham Common. Soon after six, I jumped into a train on the London, Chatham, and Dover, and came home "with the milk;" having not only had a healthy night's exercise--for the weather had all along been splendid--but having added to my experiences of London life one new "wrinkle" at least: I had seen the life of St. Giles's kitchen and Bethnal Green lodging-house a la campagne. What I had already seen under the garish candlelight of the Seven Dials and Commercial Road I saw gilded into picturesqueness by that glorious and never-to-be-forgotten sunrise on Epsom Downs which ushered in the Derby Day.