But from the general let me descend to the particular. I take up the "Little Pedlington Gazette," and I find our London Correspondent dates from --- Club, St. James"s-square. Of course, in a free country, a man may date his letters where he likes; but I"ll be bound to say the letter is written in a cheap coffee-house in Chancery-lane, and all its contents are culled from that day"s papers. From the letter, however, I am led to suppose that the writer is a member of the House of Commons-that he has the run of the clubs-that royal personages are not unfamiliar with him-and that his intimacy with Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli is only equalled by his friendship with Palmerston and Russell. Our London Correspondent has very wonderful eyes, and I am sure his ears must be longer than those of any other animal extant. I have tried the Strangers" Gallery in the House of Commons, and the Speaker"s, and the Reporters", and in all I have the utmost difficulty in distinguishing emotions which an animated debate must excite in the disputants. The Parliamentary fashion is for a minister, when attacked, to sit with his hat so pulled down over his eyes that you can scarce see a feature. Lord John always sits in this way, so does Lord Palmerston. Our London Correspondent can see what no one else can, and there is not a wince of the galled jade but what is visible to his eyes. He sees Palmerston winking to Sir George Grey, and hears what Cornewall Lewis whispers to Lowe. Lord John does not chuckle quietly to himself, nor Disraeli whisper a sarcasm, nor Walpole meditate a joke, but he hears it. He possesses a rare and blessed gift of ubiquity. At the very time that he is watching these exalted personages in the House, he is chatting confidentially with Hayter in the lobby, or looking in at the Opera, or gossiping behind the scenes with Wright and Paul Bedford, or having a chop at the Garrick with Thackeray, or shining at Lady Plantagenet"s soiree "as a bright particular star." I wonder the dear creature"s head is not quite turned with the attentions he receives from the n.o.bility, with whom he is as intimate as I with Smiths and Browns. Occasionally I meet with a few London Correspondents imbibing together their frugal half-and-half. It does me good to hear them. It reminds me of Elia"s Captain Jackson"s baccha.n.a.lian orgies, where "wine we had none, nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits; but the sensation of wine was there." Says one to another, "Oh, how did you get on last night?"
"Pretty well," is the reply, "considering there were none but lords there." Walking in a low neighbourhood, I meet one. I ask after his health. "Devilish seedy," says he; "up too late last night at Lady ---,"
naming one of the proudest members of the proudest aristocracies in the world. Yet are they too uncultivated, and hairy, and _outre_, to pa.s.s with credit in Belgravia. Their literary efforts are not remarkable for polish. They affect a graphic style, and are not sparing in the use of slang. They eschew the cla.s.sics, and evince but a very superficial knowledge of literature, save that of the current year. They are chiefly strong in politics, and for the actors on that stage have that contempt which familiarity is said to breed, but which, as in the present case, sometimes flourishes without it. They view the busy scene as the G.o.ds of Epicurus the follies of mankind. This man is a fool-that a tool. As a rule, officials are run down, and some ill.u.s.trious-obscure-perhaps the borough representative, if he is on good terms with the paper-is suspiciously and inordinately puffed up. I often wish our London Correspondent would address the House. What a figure he would make on some matter of business, the details of which it is impossible to make interesting! The chances are that he is a Scotchman or an Irishman; that his impudence is merely confined to paper; that he does not shine either at the Temple Forum or Codgers" Hall. There would be a burst of laughter when he rose. They ought to be more genial critics. I was once in the lobby when our London Correspondent of a paper published in a large manufacturing town came up to me. I had not seen him for some years.
After the usual inquiries, said he, "What a capital cutting that was in the --- of your book!" "You are mistaken," said I; "the book was by so and so." Our friend, very crest-fallen, immediately rushed off without bidding us goodbye. Once upon a time one of them produced a great sensation. Our readers will remember, when Lord John Russell dismissed Lord Palmerston, what a cry was raised about German influences by a certain morning print which seems to exist merely for the sake of disgusting intelligent people with a righteous cause. A German paper was referred to. Well, the gentleman to whom I have alluded was the correspondent of that paper, and one day, in the absence of anything of importance, he had manufactured the article very innocently out of the extraordinary paragraphs in which the morning print aforesaid rejoices, little dreaming, that in Parliament and out his letter would be quoted as evidence of a deeply-laid conspiracy to weaken the power of Lord Palmerston and undermine European liberty.
But I have not yet said who our London Correspondent is. The better cla.s.s of them I think are Parliamentary reporters. There was a paper published in London kept alive merely by its Paris Correspondent. No other paper had such a correspondent, or abounded in such extraordinary tales and scandal. Yet the correspondent"s plan was very simple. Every new tale and drama which came out in Paris was worked up and sent to London as a reality, that was all. In a less degree our London Correspondent does the same, and in quiet country towns there is great wonder and lifting up of hands, especially if, as was once the case, the wrong letter is sent, and the Tory paper abounds with sneers at Lord Derby and the squirearchy, a _contretemps_ which is avoided if the plan of one London Correspondent be adopted, who supplies thirteen different papers with the same letter at five shillings each-a plan, however, not sanctioned by respectable papers, who pay a good price and get often a good article, and for whose letters, if a little too highly coloured and seasoned, the public taste is more to blame than the newspaper proprietor, or his painstaking London Correspondent. I believe _the_ Mr.
Russell, of the _Times_, was the London Correspondent of one of the Irish papers, and such papers as the _Liverpool Albion_, _Cambridge Independent_, and a few others I could name, evidently have for London Correspondents literary men of superior position and respectability.
A SUNDAY AT THE OBELISK.
The ancient Athenians were a restless, inquisitive people. At the Areopagus it was that Paul preached of an unknown G.o.d. Their popular a.s.semblies met on the Pynx. There mob orators decreed the ostracism of Aristides the Just, and the death of Socrates the Good. In the metropolis we have no Pynx where our _demoi_ are wont to a.s.semble, but we have several spots that serve for popular gatherings on the Sunday-our working-man"s holiday. One of these is the Obelisk at the Surrey end of the Blackfriars-road. The district I allude to is what is called a low neighbourhood. If I am to believe a popular poet, it was there that the Ratcatcher"s daughter lived; and I should imagine, from the seedy, poverty-struck appearance of the place, that her papa"s avocation was not so highly remunerative as some other professions, or he would have pitched his tent, _alias_ become a ten-pound householder, in a more fashionable quarter.
May I attempt a description of the neighbourhood? Circ.u.mstances compelled me to be there one Sunday, just as Sabbath bells were ringing for divine service, and the streets were crowded with hungering worshippers. Newman Hall"s place of worship was full, as was St. John"s Episcopal Chapel, and there was between them a Methodist a.s.sembly, which was by no means scanty; yet all round me there were crowds to whom Sunday was no Sunday in a religious sense, to whom it was a mere day of animal rest, who were yet pale and heavy with the previous night"s gin and beer.
What were they about? Well, from the Surrey Theatre, all placarded with yellow bills of "The Wife"s Revenge," to the Elephant and Castle, there was a busy traffic going on, far busier, I should imagine, than on any other morning of the week. Happily the public-houses were shut up, but as I pa.s.sed the coffee-houses were full of working-men reading newspapers, and an easy shaving shop (I write so from the placard on the door, not from actual experience) seemed doing a tremendous trade. Such shops as were open, and they were numerous, were very full, and opposite such as were shut up, what rows of barrows and costermongers" carts there were, with all the luxuries of the season, such as Spanish onions, carrots, cabbages, apples and pears, chestnuts, sweetmeats! Did you want your likeness taken, there were artists to do it at sixpence a head. Did you need to buy old clothes, there were Hebrew maidens waiting to sell you them to any amount. One old lady was doing a thriving business in what she denominated as "spiced elder." Boot-cleaning, though not by Lord Shaftesbury"s boys, was being carried on upon a gigantic scale. Two or three vendors of cheap prints, chiefly fancy subjects-portraits of imaginary females with very red cheeks and large eyes, and gay dresses-collected a great crowd, but I fear one consisting chiefly of admirers rather than purchasers. It may be that the tightness of the money market was felt in the Blackfriars-road, and that the lieges of that district felt that, with the Bank charging even two-and-a-half per cent., something better might be done with the money than investing it in works of art. The butchers" stalls were well attended, though I regret to say, from casual remarks dropped as I pa.s.sed by, the keepers of rival establishments were not on such friendly terms as are desirable amongst near neighbours. Women were bringing their husbands" dinners, children were flocking about in shoals, and sots were yawning, and smoking, and gossiping, waiting for one o"clock and their beer. You ask, was no effort made to get this ma.s.s under the influence of religious teaching?
Oh, yes; all the morning there was service of some kind of other at the Obelisk. As soon as one man had finished, another had commenced; and at times one man was preaching on one side and another on another. The first man I heard evidently was a working-man; and if to preach all that is required were fluency and a loud voice, evidently he would have done an immense amount of good: but he was too fluent to be clear and correct.
I question whether a working-man is a good preacher to a working-man.
The chances are, he imitates the worst characteristics of some favourite preacher, instead of translating Bible truth into plain every-day language. My friend had got all the stereotyped phrases, such as the "natural man," &c., which can only be understood by persons accustomed to religious society, and therefore I did not wonder when I found he had but some twenty or thirty to hear him. To him succeeded, I regret to say, two men in seedy black, with dirty white chokers, and cadaverous faces, whose portraits were I to give, you would tell me I was drawing a caricature. I don"t doubt but what they were most respectable, well-meaning men; but I do think it is a mistake to send such out into the highways and byways. The men who go there should be of an engaging aspect, as in the crowd that pa.s.s by you may depend upon it there are but too many disposed to sneer at and ridicule religion even when it is placed before them in the most attractive form. How they got on I cannot tell, as just at that time a host of men very earnest in discussion attracted my attention. A teetotaller was hard at work, not repeating a set of phrases parrot-like which he had learnt by heart, but discussing teetotalism with a crowd evidently well ready to go into the whole subject. Short and sharp question and answer were flying fast, and all seemed very good tempered. I don"t know whether my friend succeeded in getting any to sign the pledge, but I could see that he had more success than the preachers, who seemed to me to make no impression whatever. We may depend upon it these discussions are better than speeches or lectures; they require, perhaps, greater gifts, but they will be found to yield a richer harvest. It is in the streets we find the victims, and in the streets we must seek to save them. You would not get these loungers round the Obelisk to take the trouble to come to a temperance lecture, but they, well fortified in their prejudices as established truths, were not unwilling to engage in a discussion in which they found themselves worsted. The temperance orator had an advantage over the divine. The latter could only speak of a future joy or sorrow, the former could tell the sot how much better he would have been, how much fresher he would have felt, how much more money he would have had in his pocket, if he had kept sober last night; and there stood the sot, all dirty and stupid, yet repentant, and half influenced by the orator to become a sober man himself. Such teaching is good in such places; but the speakers must be prepared to rough it-to give and take, to be ready in repartee, to be abundant in anecdote and ill.u.s.tration. They must have pliant tongues and good voices, or they may find their congregation moving off to listen to a social orator over the way; or, what is worse still, remaining to confute, and jeer, and laugh.
EXETER HALL.
Lord Macaulay has made all the world familiar with the bray of Exeter Hall. Exeter Hall, when it does bray, does so to some purpose. It is in vain fighting Exeter Hall. It is the parliament of the middle cla.s.ses.
It has an influence for good or bad no legislator can overlook-to which often the a.s.sembly in St. Stephen"s is compelled to bow. I have seen a Prince Consort presiding at a public meeting in Exeter Hall; on its platform I have heard our greatest orators and statesmen declaim. In England who can over estimate the influence of woman? and in Exeter Hall, in the season, nine benches out of ten are filled with women. The oratory of Exeter Hall is not parliamentary. A man may shine before a legal tribunal-may shine on the floor of the House of Commons-may be great among the Lords-and yet utterly fail in Exeter Hall. He may even be a popular preacher, and yet not move the ma.s.ses that crowd the Strand, when a public meeting, chiefly religious, occasionally philanthropic, never political, is being held.
On your right-hand side, as you pa.s.s along the Strand, you see a lofty door, evidently leading to some immense building within. It is called Exeter Hall, for it stands where in old times stood Exeter Change, and still has its live lions, which are very numerous, especially in the months of May and June. You enter the door and ascend a long and ample staircase, which conducts you to one of the finest public rooms in the metropolis. What popular pa.s.sions have I not seen here! What contradictory utterances have I not heard here! High Church-Low Church-Methodism-Dissent-have all appealed from that platform to those benches crowded with living souls. From that platform, accompanying that organ, seven hundred voices join often in Handel"s majestic strains.
Underneath me are the offices of the various societies whose aims are among the n.o.blest that can be proposed to man. Westminster Hall is a fine hall, but this in which I am is eight feet wider than that-131 feet long, 76 feet wide, and 45 feet high, and will contain with comfort more than 3,000 persons. On the night of which I now write it was well filled by an audience, such as a few years back could not have been collected for love or money, but which now can be got together with the greatest ease, not merely in London, but in Manchester, in Birmingham, in Liverpool, in all our great seats of industry, of intelligence, and life.
I mean an audience of men and women who have come to see intemperance to be the great curse of this our age and land, and who have resolved to abstain themselves from all intoxicating drink, and to encourage others to do so as well. Evidently something great was expected. The western gallery was covered with tastefully-decorated cloth, on which was inscribed, in emblazoned silver letters, thirty inches deep, "The London Temperance League," with an elaborate painted border, composed of garlands of flowers. The royal gallery, and the smaller one opposite, was covered with scarlet cloth, on which were arranged rose-coloured panels, with the words, "London Temperance League," in silver letters.
The front of the platform and the reporters" box was also decorated in a similar manner. At the end of the royal gallery was fixed a large royal standard, the folds of which hung gracefully over the heads of the audience. Under the royal standard was placed the union-jack. At the end of the opposite gallery proudly waved the banner of the great Republic of the West. The platform was decorated with flags, bearing inscriptions of various kinds. Like the stars in the heavens, or the sands on the sea sh.o.r.e, they were innumerable. In front of the organ were arranged the choir of the Temperance Societies, and on the floor of the platform were placed the Shapcott family, with their Sax-horns.
Why was all this preparation made? For what purpose that living mult.i.tude of warm hearts? The answer is soon given. Some twenty-four years back a poor lad, without money and learning-almost without friends-was shipped off to America, to try his fortune in the New World.
Arrived there, the lad became a man, lived by the sweat of his brow, learned to drink, to be a boon companion, and fell as most fall; for there is that in the flowing bowl and the wine when it is red, which few can withstand. Friends left him; he became an outcast and a wanderer; he sank lower and lower; he walked in rags; he loathed life; his frame became emaciated with disease; there was none to pity or to save. It seemed for that man there was nothing left but to lie down and die.
However, whilst there is life there is hope. That man, in his degradation and despair, was reached; he signed the Temperance pledge; he became an advocate of the Temperance cause. His words were words of power; they touched men"s hearts, they fired men"s souls. He led the life of an apostle; wherever he went the drunkard was reclaimed; zeal was excited, the spell of the sparkling cup was gone, humanity was saved, and now he had returned for awhile to his native land to advocate the cause which had been a salvation to his own soul and life, and these men and women-these hopeful youths-these tender-hearted maidens-have come to give him welcome. Already every eye in that vast a.s.sembly is turned to the quarter whence it is expected the hero of the night will appear. At length the appointed hour arrives, a band of Temperance reformers move towards the platform, with the flags of Britain and America waving, as we trust they may long do, harmoniously together. Familiar faces are seen-Cruikshank-Buckingham-Ca.s.sell; but there is one form, apparently a stranger; it is John B. Gough. A few words from Mr. Buckingham, who presides, and the stranger comes forward; but he is no stranger, for the British greeting, that almost deafens his ears, while it opens his heart, makes him feel himself at once at home.
Well, popular enthusiasm has toned down-the audience has reseated itself-a song of welcome has been sung, and there stands up a man of middle size and middle age. Lord Bacon deemed himself ancient when he was thirty-one-we moderns, in our excessive self-love, delude each other into the belief that we are middle-aged when we are anywhere between forty and sixty. In reality, a middle-aged man should be somewhere about thirty-five, and such we take to be Mr. Gough"s age. He is dressed in sober black-his hair is dark, and so is his face; but there is a muscular vigour in his frame for which we were not prepared. We should judge Gough has a large share of the true _elixir vitae_-animal spirits. His voice is one of great power and pathos, and he speaks without an effort.
The first sentence, as it falls gently and easily from his lips, tells us that Gough has that true oratorical power which neither money, nor industry, nor persevering study, can ever win. Like the poet, the orator must be born. You may take a man six feet high; he shall be good-looking, have a good voice, and speak English with a correct p.r.o.nunciation-you shall write for that man a splendid speech-you shall have him taught elocution by Mr. Webster, and yet you shall no more make that man an orator than, to use a homely phrase, you can make a silk purse out of a sow"s ear. Gough is an orator born. Pope tells us he "lisped in numbers," and in his boyhood Gough must have had the true tones of the orator on his tongue. There was no effort-no fl.u.s.ter-all was easy and natural. He was speaking for the first time to a public meeting in his native land-speaking to thousands who had come with the highest expectations-who expected much and required much-speaking, by means of the press, to the whole British public. Under such circ.u.mstances, occasional nervousness would have been pardonable; but, from the first, Gough was perfectly self-possessed. There are some men who have prodigious advantages on account of appearance alone. We think it was Fox who said it was impossible for any one to be as wise as Thurlow looked. The great Lord Chatham was particularly favoured by nature in this respect. In our own time-in the case of Lord Denman-we have seen how much can be done by means of a portly presence and a stately air. Gough has nothing of this. He is just as plain a personage as George Dawson of Birmingham would be if he were to cut his hair and shave off his moustache; but, though we have named George Dawson, Gough does not speak like him, or any other living man. Gough is no servile copy, but a real original. We have no one in England we can compare him to. Our popular lecturers, such as George Dawson, Henry Vincent, George Thompson, are very different men. They have all a studied quaintness or a studied rhetoric. There is something artificial about them all. In Gough there is nothing of this. He seems to speak by inspiration. As the apostles spoke who were commanded not to think beforehand what they should say-the spoken word seems to come naturally, as air bubbles up from the bottom of the well. In what he said there was nothing new-there could be nothing new-the tale he told was old as the hills; yet, as he spoke, an immense audience grew hushed and still, and hearts were melted, and tears glistened in female eyes, and that great human ma.s.s became knit together by a common spell. Disraeli says, Sir Robert Peel played upon the House of Commons as an old fiddle; Gough did the same at Exeter Hall.
At his bidding, stern, strong men, as well as sensitive women, wept or laughed-they swelled with indignation or desire. Of the various chords of human pa.s.sions he was master. At times he became roused, and we thought how
"In his ire Olympian Pericles Thundered and lightened, and all h.e.l.las shook."
At other times, in his delineation of American manners, he proved himself almost an equal to Selsbee. Off the stage we have nowhere seen a better mimic than Gough, and this must give him great power, especially in circles where the stage is as much a _terra incognita_ as Utopia, or the Island of Laputa itself. We have always thought that a fine figure of Byron, where he tells us that he laid his hand upon the ocean"s mane.
Something of the same kind might be said to be applicable to Mr. Gough.
He seemed to ride upon the audience-to have mastered it completely to his will. He seemed to bestride it as we could imagine Alexander bestriding his Bucephalus. Since then Mr. Gough has spoken in Exeter Hall nearly seventy times-has endured cruel misrepresentations-yet his attractions are as great, and his audiences as overflowing as over. The truth is, in his strength and weakness Gough is the very personification of an Exeter Hall orator. You may object to his exaggerations-you may find fault with his digressions-you may pooh-pooh his arguments-you may question the good taste of some of his allusions-you may wonder how people can applaud, and laugh at, or weep over, what they have applauded, or laughed at, or wept over a dozen times before: but they do; that no one can deny.
Gough spoke for nearly two hours. Evidently the audience could have listened, had he gone on, till midnight. We often hear that the age of oratory has gone by-that the press supersedes the tongue-that the appeal must henceforth be made to the reader in his study, not to the hearer in the crowded hall. There is much truth in that. Nevertheless, the true orator will always please his audience, and true oratory will never die.
The world will always respond to it. The human heart will always leap up to it. The finest efforts of the orator have been amongst civilised audiences. It was a cultivated audience before whom Demosthenes pleaded; to whom, standing on Mars-hill, Paul preached of an unknown G.o.d. The true orator, like the true poet, speaks to all. He gathers around him earth"s proudest as well as poorest intellects. Notwithstanding, then, the march of mind, oratory may win her triumphs still. So long as the heart is true to its old instinct-so long as it can pity, or love, or hate, or fear, it will be moved by the orator, if he can but pity or love, or hate or fear himself. This is the true secret. This is it that made Gough the giant that he is. Without that he might be polished, learned, master of all human lore; but he would be feeble and impotent as the
"Lorn lyre that ne"er hath spoken Since the sad day its master chord was broken."
THE DERBY.
Is there a finer sight in creation than a horse? I don"t speak of the wild horse of the prairie, as seen at Astley"s-nor of the wearied animal by means of which the enterprising greengrocer transports his wares from Covent-Garden to the Edgware-road-nor of the useful but commonplace looking cob on which Jones trusts himself timidly as he ventures on a const.i.tutional ride, while his groom, much better mounted, follows scornfully behind-nor of the broken-down, broken-knee"d, spavined, blind roarer, all the summer of whose life has been pa.s.sed in dreary drudgery, and for whom nought remains but the knacker"s yard, and the cold calculations of the itinerant vendors of cat"s-meat; but of a horse such as a monarch might pet, and the very queen of beauty might deign to ride-a horse such as Gamarra.
"A n.o.ble steed, Strong, black, and of the desert breed, Full of fire and full of bone, All his line of fathers known, Fine his nose, his nostrils thin, But blown abroad by the pride within."
And who that has ever laid his leg across such, and bounded along the turf, does not feel that the bare memory of it is a joy for ever, thrilling almost as Love"s young dream? Such was our good fortune once; now we creep into town on the top of a "bus, and our hair is grey, and our pluck is gone, and our heart no larger than a pin"s head.
To write about London, and to omit all mention of the Derby, were unpardonable. At the Royal Academy Exhibition this year, the rush to see Mr. Frith"s picture of the Derby was so great that a policeman was required to keep off the crowd. Horse-racing is the natural result of horse-riding. It is essentially the English sport. Taking Wetherby"s Calendar as our guide, we may calculate that in 1855 there were 144 meetings in Great Britain and Ireland, which were attended by 1606 horses, of whom only 680 were winners, fed by 60,000 of added money inclusive of the value of cups and whips, and diffusing 198,000 in added money and stakes more or less. If there were no light weights to ride, and no n.o.blemen or wealthy commoners to run their horses, the horses would run of their own accord. There are horses, as there are men, who never will play second fiddle if they can possibly avoid it; and if horses run, men will look and admire, and the natural result is the Derby Day. A grander sight of its kind is perhaps hardly to be seen. For twelve months have the public been preparing for the event. For twelve months has the sporting and the betting world been on the _qui vive_. We do not bet, for we hold that the custom is absurd in a rich man, and wicked in one who is not so; but in every street in London, in every town in England, in many a quiet village, at the beer-shop, or the gin-palace, or the public-house, bets have been made, and thousands and thousands of pounds are depending on the event. As the time draws nigh the excitement increases. Had you looked in at Tattersall"s on the previous Sunday, you would have seen the betting of our West End swells and M.P."s who legislate for the observance of the Sabbath, and who punish poor men for keeping betting-houses-fast and furious. On the previous night of the day when the Derby is run a motley population encamp on the Downs. There are booths where there are to be dancing, and drinking, and eating, and gambling. There are gipsies who are to tell fortunes, and acrobats who are to exhibit a most astonishing flexibility of muscle. There are organs, and singing girls, and a whole legion of scamps, who will pick pockets, or play French put, or toss you for a bottle of stout, or offer their book and a pencil to betters; and as the dim grey of morning brightens into day, their number increases in a most marvellous manner.
On they come-ricketty carts laden with ginger beer-men with long barrows and short pipes, who have walked all the way from town, long trains of gigs and hansoms, and drags, and carriages, and "busses, and pleasure vans, laden with pleasure seekers, determined to have a holiday. The trains bring down some thirty or forty thousand human souls, the road is blocked up and almost impa.s.sable. Many a party, who left town in good spirits, have come to grief. Here a wheel has come off. There the springs have broken. Here the dumb brute has refused to drag his heavy burden any further. There the team have been restive or the charioteer unskilful, and the coach has been upset. In a session in which unusually little business has been done, in the very midst of a ministerial crisis, parliament has adjourned, and senators, commoners, and lords, are everywhere around. That man with spectacles and long black stock, driving a younger son past us, is England"s premier, whose horse is the favourite-who has never yet won the Derby-who, it is said, would rather do so than have a parliamentary success-and who, it is also said, has offered his jockey 50 a-year for life should he win this race. That fat, greyhaired man is the Duke of Malakoff. Here is the Royal Duke, who is treading in his father"s steps, and will be wept by a future generation as the good duke and hero of a thousand City feeds. Let us look about us while the bell is ringing and the police are clearing the course. The Grand Stand alone holds some thousands. Then, as you look from it for a mile on each side, what a cl.u.s.ter of human heads! and behind, what an array of carriages and vehicles of all kinds! A most furious attack is evidently being made on the commissariat. The more dashing have baskets, labelled "Fortnum and Mason," and it is clear that the liquids are stronger than tea. Be thankful those are not ladies, dressed elegantly though they be, who have drank so much champagne that their tongues are going rather faster than is necessary. You do not see many ladies; and the girls so gay, what is their gaiety?-is it truer than their complexions? Very beautiful at a distance, if you do not go close and see the rouge and pearl powder. But to-day is a holiday. Many here know nothing about a horse, care little about one; but they have come out for a day"s fresh air and for a pic-nic. They could not have had a finer day or chosen a better spot. The down itself, with its fresh green velvet turf, is delicious to tread: and as you look around, what a magnificent panorama meets your eye, fringed by waving woods and chestnut trees, heavy with their annual bloom! Then there are the horses taking their preliminary canter. What eager eyes are on them! How anxious are the betters now, making up their final books! At the corner, in the carriages, on the hill, or along the course, how brisk is the speculation. "Which is Tox?" "Is that Physician?" "Where"s Beadsman?"
are the questions in every mouth. And one does not like this horse"s fore legs, or that horse"s hind ones. And criticisms of all kinds are hazarded. At length some twenty horses are got together at the post.
"They"re off!" is the cry wafted across the plain. Up the hill they go.
On the top they"re scarce visible. As they turn the corner they look like so many rats. And now, amidst a whirlwind of shouting and hurrahing, the race is over; and in two minutes and fifty-four seconds Sir Joseph Hawley, a Whig baronet, beats Lord Derby, the Conservative Premier, clears 50,000, while his jockey, for that short ride, earns as much as you or me, my good sir, may win by the labour of many a long year. Pigeons fly off with the result. The telegraph is at work. At the _Sunday Times_ office, about four o"clock, the crowd is so great that you can scarce get along the street, and many a man goes home with a heavy heart, for some are hit very hard. "This is a bad day for all of us," says one to me, with a very long face. "I have lost 150," says another, and he does not look like a man who could afford to lose that sum, and the crowd disperses-some exultant-some despairing-all of them in a reckless mood, and ready for dissipation. The longer we stop now, the sadder shall we become. Go to Kennington-common, if you wish to see the moral effects of the Derby. Drop in at the places of gay resort at the West-end in the course of the night. Go in a little while after to Bow-street, or Portugal-street. For many a day will families mourn a visit to the Derby. I never saw so many wives, evidently belonging to decent tradesmen, so intoxicated as I saw on the last Derby. In the train but little intoxication was visible, but the coming home was the dark side-a side which the admirers of what they call our national sports are too ready to overlook, and which even Mr. Frith has failed to paint.
The eloquent Montalembert sees in a Derby day what Virgil has described in the fifth aeneid. The Frenchman is too complimentary, it is true.
"Undique conveniunt Teucri mixtique Sicani."
But pious aeneas sanctioned no such reckless revelry as too often is visible on the Epsom downs. Lord Palmerston compares the Derby to the Isthmian games; but as they were celebrated once in ten years, and were in honour of Neptune, the resemblance is not very clear. Pulteney, a statesman, in his day as eminent as the ill.u.s.trious M.P. for Tiverton, published in the "World" a sketch of Newmarket; but the expense and waste of time of such places seemed to him perfectly frightful. It is well that his lordship has been defunct this hundred and fifty years. A horse race then was a much more sober affair than in these enlightened days-when every head is full and every tongue vocal with mental and moral reform.
VAUXHALL GARDENS.
Vauxhall is alive. At one time it was thought dead, and people affirmed the fact to be an evidence of the improved state of the metropolis.
(Moralists are too p.r.o.ne to be thankful for small mercies.) Had the fact been so, the inference was a fallacy; but we need not trouble ourselves about that, as the fact is otherwise. It is a mistake to suppose that progress is made only in one direction. Vauxhall is a.s.sociated with the fast life of centuries. It was born in the general and fearful profligacy-the fearful price England paid for the Restoration. In 1661 Evelyn writes of it as a pretty contrived plantation. In 1665, in the diary of Pepys, we find entries of sundry visits to Fox-hall and the Spring Gardens, and "of the humours of the citizens pulling off cherries, and G.o.d knows what." Again we are told, "to hear the nightingales and the birds, and here fiddlers, and there a harp, and here laughing, and there the people walking, is mighty diverting." That respectable Secretary of the Admiralty also tells us of supper in an arbour, of ladies walking with their masks on, and his righteous soul was shocked to see "how rude some of the young gallants of the town are become," and "the confidence of the vice of the age." To Vauxhall Addison took Sir Roger de Coverley, and Goldsmith the Citizen of the World, who exclaimed, "Head of Confucius, this is fine! this unites rural beauty with courtly magnificence." Here Fielding"s Amelia was enraptured with the extreme beauty and elegance of the place. Here Miss Burney gathered incidents for her once popular but now forgotten tales. And here Hogarth, for suggesting paintings, some of which still remain, was presented with a perpetual ticket of admission, and which was last used in 1836. Strange scenes have been done here. One of them is described by Horace Walpole, who graphically narrates how Lady Caroline Petersham stewed chickens over a lamp; and how Betty, the fruit girl, supped with them at a side table.
All that is past. Dust and ashes are the fine lords and fine ladies who made Vauxhall the resort of folly and fashion-the fashion is gone, the folly remains. Yet never were there more funds subscribed for the conversion of the Jews, or more missionaries sent out to Timbuctoo.
Vauxhall is one of the delusions of London life. It lives on the past-a very common practice in this country, where real knowledge travels very slowly. When Smith comes up to London, his first Sunday he goes to hear the Rev. Mr. Flummery, thinking he is the popular preacher. Ah, Smith!
Flummery has ceased to be a popular preacher these twenty years. "What a sweet girl is gone!" exclaims old Jones, as he hears of the death of an ancient flame. Jones forgets the sweet girl had become an old maid of seventy, and had not a tooth in her mouth or a lock of hair on her head but what was artificial. So with Vauxhall. It lives as many a man, or newspaper, or magazine, or inst.i.tution, on its name. Judge for yourself if you won"t take my word. A cab will take you there from the Strand in half an hour, and for the very moderate sum of one shilling the gate will be unlocked and entrance effected. The specialty of the place is the blaze of lights from thousands of lamps. Supposing you to have got over the bewilderment created by their l.u.s.tre, to eyes not accustomed to such "hall sof dazzling light," you perceive a kind of square (the precise definition of it I leave to the mathematicians) with a dancing platform in the middle, a supper room on one side, and boxes all round, where refreshments and seats are supplied. Opposite to the supper-room is a lofty orchestra, glittering all over with many coloured lamps; further on and behind are walks, and trees, and a fountain, with gigantic horses snorting water through their nostrils, and a s.p.a.ce for fireworks, the demand for which on the part of the pleasure seekers of the metropolis, if we may judge by the supply, is insatiable. Let us not forget also the Rotunda, a large building with pit, boxes, and gallery, chiefly devoted to horsemanship, neither worse nor better than what is usually seen at such places. The comic singing is a feature of the place. Popular comic songs are not very fresh, nor very witty nor refined, and require, when delivered in public, a good deal of elocution. The point must be apparent, and the emphasis clearly enunciated, but they are much the same here as elsewhere. When you have heard one or two of them, you have heard them all. So much by way of description. The people who come here are the people whose pleasures are of the lowest character; who are dependent on others; whose life is all outward rather than inward. They are not readers nor thinkers, you may be sure, but the cla.s.s precisely to whom such places are as hurtful as they are attractive. If a man is to be known by the company he keeps, what are we to think of the habitues of Vauxhall? for after all life is, or ought to be, to us all a stern reality-a battle-field-a victory-not a pleasure garden, or a Vanity Fair; and even in London you may mix with better society than that of painted Traviatas or tipsy men. Smoking, dancing, drinking, is not all life; yet for such purposes Vauxhall solely exists. I much question, if London alone were concerned, so great is the rivalry in this particular style of amus.e.m.e.nt, whether Vauxhall would be a success; but the provincial element is amazingly strong. I account for that as follows. The railway system has done this for London. It has filled it with strangers. From the wilds of Connemara, from the distant Land"s End and remote John o"Groat"s, old and young, male and female, rich and poor, wise or foolish, come in shoals to see London and its sights. Now Vauxhall, and its illumination, and its slice of ham, have been the wonder of generations, and to Vauxhall away they rush. Their speech betrayeth them. Look at them. This party is from Lancashire. From the flowery fields of Somersetshire that party have come. Wales has sent her exciteable sons, and Scotland her reckless prodigals, for there are such even ayont the Tweed. Here we have some five or six-a father and mother, a daughter and her husband, and it may be a brother. Those giants were never reared within the sound of Bow bells, and to be impertinent to either the old lady or the young one were the height of folly. Their fashions are not ours, yet are they wondrous jolly; and, woe is me, the head of the family is exhibiting an agility as he bounds up and down as an elephant might, which is unbecoming his years. How is this? Why actually in a remote corner of the pocket, in the innermost depths of that ancient coat, there is a bottle of raw gin, which the old satyr puts to his own mouth, and then hands it to the rest of his party, by whom, in a similar manner, it is applied, till what is left would not hurt the conscience of a teetotaller to drink. It is well his "missus" is there to pilot him home, and the sooner he gets back to his Yorkshire wilds the better. Yet we have a sprinkling of town life. The reader must remember Vauxhall occupies altogether eleven acres of ground, and on one occasion upwards of 20,000 persons paid for admission. Look at that faded pair.
Some forty years ago they were fast, as times went, and here they have come to have a peep at the old place, and to wonder how they cared so much about it then. There stands an old fogy of the Regency. Of what hideous debauch can he tell; and here stuffed, and painted, and bewigged, made up from top to toe, he has come to mourn, not to moralise, over the past. A sad sight is he; but sadder still are those pale-faced ones, of elaborate hair, and exquisitely fitting costumes and bewitching Balmorals, now dancing, now chaffing, now drinking, now uproariously merry, but all the time with wanton wiles seeking their human prey in the excitement of music, and laughter, and wine.
THE PENNY GAFF.
Do my readers know Sh.o.r.editch? I do not mean the Eastern Counties Railway Station, but the regions dark and dolorous lying beyond. In an old map of London, by my side, dated 1560, I see it marked as a street with but one row of houses on each side, and the five windmills in Finsbury Fields not far off. Here stood the Curtain Theatre. In Stowe"s time there were in Sh.o.r.editch "two publique houses for the acting and shewe of comedies, tragedies, and histories for recreation." Here, according to the learned and indefatigable Mr. Timbs, "at the Blue Last public-house, porter was first sold, about 1730." And here still, if I may judge from the immense number of public-houses all round, the consumption of porter and other intoxicating liquors is still carried on on a somewhat extensive scale. Hard working and businesslike as Sh.o.r.editch is by day, with its clothes marts and extensive shoe depots, by night it is a great place for amus.e.m.e.nt. Here are theatres where melodrama reigns supreme. Close by is the renowned Britannia Saloon.