Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/515

502 cease to run. Work is forgotten. Honourable Members run away from their Parliamentary duties, and gentlemen who have no Parliamentary duties leave their private affairs to take care of themselves. The two tall sentries at the Horse Guards feel a mad desire to give their two huge black horses a breather up Whitehall in honourable rivalry. The nurses with the perambulators would like to run their vehicles against each other for the Two Year Old Stakes! The Baker’s boy, who delivers the rolls at the door, has a small bet with Jenny upon the Favourite, intimating by a wink that he is not without pretensions to that character. If the great heart of England, during those twenty-four hours, were opened, upon it would be found engraven in sanguine characters a list of the Running Horses, with the names, weights, and colours of the riders! <!— section break for image insertion --> But it must not be thought that the day stands out as an isolated fact. For weeks and weeks beforehand, if grave middle-aged gentlemen meet each other in the street they retire into archways and exchange confidences as to how they are going to the Derby. Younger gentlemen at the clubs put their names down for Sweepstakes at 1l. a-head. Poor fellows! to how many of them the “haul”—that is the nautical expression they make use of—the “haul,” I say, of 50l. or 60l. would be a matter of serious concernment; but with what sound English pluck they laugh it off! How invariably it happens that the poor men draw names of horses which do not appear in the running, and how the coveted prize drifts down into the pocket of some civic Dives, or some Lord of broad acres, to whom it signifies as much as the possession of an extra postage-stamp! It is always something, however, to have indulged in a vision “of the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.” Let it go, my friends, we will hold on by hook and by crook until next Derby Day, and better luck next time!

How respectable Patres-familiarum to whom, I am sure, the event cannot signify one button, are at infinite pains to master the very latest state of the odds, and how any one of that noble band, to whom a horsy sort of friend has communicated a valuable secret from “the Corner” not to be mentioned for worlds, but to be used by Paterfamilias for his own private guidance in making up his book—keeps faith like a Trojan—(I wonder if they always spoke the truth at Troy—that might account for its fall)—and only smiles with bland superiority as he sees his friends backing up the Brother to Pottinger in a reckless manner, when, as he well knows, Cacodæmon is the horse.

How younger men combine impossible results, and make up books with infinite solicitude and great arithmetical ingenuity, upon which, in any case, they must lose x—and far more probably will lose x² pounds—and how Brown and Jones entertain mean ideas of Robinson’s sporting capacities—and Brown and Robinson come to the same conclusion about Jones; and Jones and Robinson arrive at the same decision about Brown; and how all these in their very heart of hearts envy the thin tall Captain with the bushy whiskers, and the hook-nose, who just about Derby time confines himself to a pint of Léoville per diem, looking upon that military personage as a high authority upon all matters connected with The Turf. How certain it is that the sporting leader of men in question will put his foot in it deeper than any of the poor foolish boys who look up to him with such reverence! The Captain will, in all human probability, disappear from the admiration of the metropolis for a season after the Derby Day is decided—and there will be a report abroad that he is occupied in breaking the banks at Homburg and Baden, whilst he is in reality engaged in combing out his admirable beard and whiskers, and wondering in what quarter he can raise the wind to the extent of fifty pounds upon his own personal security.

But let us be off:—8.45 at the Bridge foot—not a minute later—if we would avoid the jam—and even then, as we scurry through the streets, the aspect of the town is not what it is upon ordinary days. How the lovely drags sweep past with the slim young men in dust paletôts, and white hats, and blue vests, and the very members of the Shoeblack Brigade cheer them as they go by, and love them because they are going to the Derby with a pomp and solemnity worthy of the occasion. It is just what the little fellows would do themselves if the balance at their bankers was in a more satisfactory condition. And then the great vans—the holiday vans—and the business vans converted into holiday vans for the occasion. I should really be afraid to make a guess at the number of passengers each contains—speaking at random I should be inclined to say any number between thirty and sixty—without taking the dusty babies into account. The very horses seem to rejoice in the performance of their Derby duties, and cast encouraging looks out of the corners of their eyes, as if the addition of a few more passengers would fill up the measure of their hilarity and satisfaction. And how the Hanson cabmen have rigged up their vehicles with veils to keep out the dust, and altogether have an appearance as though they would scorn to look upon the run to the Derby as a purely commercial transaction—what they really want is not an exorbitant fare, but the presence of a couple of kindred spirits.

Skurry, skurry—away we go—no jam yet! Paterfamilias—by George, he is a churchwarden—makes frantic gestures as though he were bidding an eternal adieu to a party of thirteen seated in a tax-cart, and drawn by a solemn-looking rat-tailed mare. Pater wishes them to understand that his spirit is oppressed with grief at finding himself under the painful necessity of leaving them on the road; but at the same time he still fondly clings to the expectation that by preternatural exertions upon the part of the rat-tailed mare, they may yet be in time to see the horses unsaddled at the conclusion of the race. And how the thirteen in the tax-cart do in the most indelicate manner poke fun at him as to the greater or less degree of acquiescence yielded by his consort to his presence at these festivities. How they tell him that upon his return to his household duties he will find “kittles to mend” in consequence of the fact that his lady and seven “darters” have taken advantage of his absence to make investments in haberdashery to a large