Here and There in LondonRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
General
Here and There in London
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
London (England) -- Description and travel
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 Æneid. The Frenchman is too complimentary, it is true.
“Undique conveniunt Teucri mixtique Sicani.”
But pious Æneas 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 illustrious 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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