at the door of which, at most times of the day, you will find lounging
a knot of medical students, who should properly, I take it, in this
sporting locality, have a racing and “down-the-road” look, but who, on
the contrary, have the garb and demeanour of ordinary gentlemen—(What
has become of the old medical student whom Mr. Albert Smith used to
caricature for our amusement, with his shaggy overcoat, white hat, lank
hair, short thick stick, staring shawl, short pipe, and slangy manners
and conversation? Is he extinct as a type, or did he never exist, save in
the lively imagination of that popular writer, and whom I hope all good
luck will attend?)—When you have passed this edifice, sacred to Galen,
Celsus, Hippocrates, and the rest of the Faculty of Antiquity, it will
be time for you to turn down a narrow lane, very like one leading to an
ordinary livery-stable, and to find yourself suddenly in a conglomeration
of “corners.” At one corner stands a building with a varnished oak
door, that does not ill resemble a dissenting chapel with a genteel
congregation, and fronting this, screened from the _profanum vulgus_ by
a stout railing, sweeps round a gravelled walk, surrounding a shaven
grass-plat of circular form. This is the famous “Ring,” of which you have
heard so much; and the building that resembles a dissenting chapel is
none other than Messrs. Tattersall’s subscription rooms. Within those to
ordinary mortals unapproachable precincts, the privacy of which is kept
with as much severity as the interior of the Stock Exchange, the great
guns of the turf discharge their broadsides of bets. They do not always
confine themselves to the interior, however; but, when the weather is
fine and betting hot, particularly on settling days, when there is an
immense hubbub and excitement possessing every one connected with the
turf, from the smallest stable-boy up to Lords Derby and Zetland, they
come forth into the open, and bet round the grass plat. Now cast your
eyes to the right (you are standing with your back to Grosvenor Place),
and you will see a low archway, passing through which a hand points to
you the spot where Mr. Rarey, the horse-tamer, had his office; while
on the other side is a counting-house, somewhat dark and mysterious in
aspect, where the names and prices of more racers and hunters than you
or I ever heard of are entered in Tattersall’s bulky ledgers. Beyond the
archway stretches a spacious court-yard, the centre occupied by a species
of temple, circular in form, with painted wooden pillars and a cupola,
surmounted by a bust of George IV. Beneath the cupola is the figure of
a fox sedent and regardant, something like the dog of Alcibiades, and
looking, in troth, very cunning and foxy indeed. To the right, looking
from the archway, are stables, with a covered penthouse in front; to the
left, another archway, with more stables and coach-houses.
[Illustration: FOUR O’CLOCK P.M.: TATTERSALL’S.]
Tattersall’s is a curious sight at all times, and has something
pervading it quite _sui generis_. Even when the ring is deserted by
the gentleman turfites, and when no sales by auction of race-horses,
hunters, carriage-horses, carriages, or fox-hounds, are proceeding in
the court-yard (the auctioneer’s rostrum is close to the king-crowned,
fox-decorated temple), there is ample food for observation and amusement
in the contemplation of the extraordinary array of hangers-on, who, at
all times and seasons, summer and winter, are to be found about the
purlieus of the Corner. I do not so much speak of the mere grooms,
stable-boys, coachmen, and helpers, who have horses to mind or carriages
to look after. You may find their prototypes down every mews, and in
every livery-stable. The originals to whom I allude are to be seen
only here, and on race-courses, hanging about the grand-stand and
the weighing-house. They are entirely different to the nonchalant
individuals who, in short coats, and a straw in their mouths, haunt
the avenues of Aldridge’s Repository, in St. Martin’s Lane. They would
appertain, seemingly, to a superior class; but from top to toe—laterally,
horizontally, vertically, and diagonally—they are unmistakeably
horse-flesh loving, and by horse-flesh living, men. It is not but you
will find white neckcloths and black broadcloth in their attire, but
there is a cut to the coat, a tie to the neckcloth, that prevents the
possibility of error as to their vocation. They are sporting men all
over. Hard-featured, serious-looking, spare-limbed men mostly, much given
to burying their hands in their coat-pockets (never in their trousers),
and peaceably addicted to the wearing of broad-brimmed hats. Now, the
general acceptation of a “sporting” man would give him a tall, shiny
hat, with a narrow brim, and considerably cocked on one side; yet I do
verily believe that, were these men attired in buttonless drab, brown
beavers, striped worsted hose, and buckles, that they would preserve
the same sporting identity. They are the wet Quakers of the turf. What
the exact nature of their multifarious functions about horses may be,
I am not rightly informed. I conjecture them to be trainers, country
horse-dealers, licensed victuallers with a turn for sporting, gentlemen
farmers who “breed a colt” occasionally, or, maybe, perfectly private
individuals led by an irresistible penchant to devote themselves to the
study and observation of horses, and led by an uncontrollable destiny to
hang, their lives-long through, about the Corner. Hangers-on of a lower
grade there are in plenty. Striped-sleeved waistcoats, corduroy or drab
cloth smalls and leggings; nay, even the mighty plush galligaskins of
coachmanhood, top boots, fur and moleskin caps, sticks with crutches
and a thong at the end, to serve, if needful, as whips; horseshoe scarf
pins, and cord trousers made tight at the knees, and ending in laced-up
boots. These—the ordinary paraphernalia of racing attire—are to be met
with at every step; while the bottommost round of the sporting ladder is
to be found in a forlorn creature in a stained ragged jerkin, that once
was scarlet, matted hair, and naked feet. _He_ hangs about the entrance,
calls everybody “captain,” and solicits halfpence with a piteous whine.
I suppose he is a chartered beggar, licensed to pursue his harmless
mendicancy here. Perhaps he may have kept hounds and harriers, carriages
and horses—may have spent ten thousand a year, gone to the dogs, and
turned up again at Tattersall’s. Who knows? You had better give him the
benefit of the doubt, and, commiserating his ragged-robin appearance,
bestow sixpence on him.
Now let us take a peep at the magnates who are jotting down the current
state of the odds in betting-books. Look at them well, and wonder. Why,
all the world’s a ring, and all the men and women in it merely betters.
To come more nearly towards exactitude, it seems as though a good portion
of at least the male part of the community had sent representatives to
Tattersall’s, while the genuine sporting element does not seem by any
means so strong as you might reasonably expect. The genus “swell,” with
his long surtout, double-breasted waistcoat, accurately-folded scarf,
peg-top trousers, eyeglass, umbrella, and drooping moustache, is perhaps
predominant. And our friend the “swell” is indeed a “welcome guest,”
in the “ring,” for he has, in the majority of instances, plenty of
money, is rather inclined to bet foolishly—not to say with consummate
imbecility—so long as his money lasts he pays with alacrity, and it takes
a long time to drain him dry even at betting, which is a forcing engine
that would empty another Lake of Haarlem of its contents in far less time
than was employed to drain the first.
Your anxious sporting man, with lines like mathematical problems in his
shrewd face, is not of course wanting in the assemblage. Here, too, you
shall see the City dandy, shining with new clothes and jewellery, who
has just driven down from the Stock Exchange to see what is going on at
“Tat’s,” and who is a member of the “Ring” as well as of the “House.”
But those, perhaps, who seem the most ardent in their pursuit of the
fickle goddess, as bearing on the Doncaster St. Leger, are certain florid
elderly gentlemen, in bright blue body coats, with brass buttons and
resplendent shirt-frills, and hats of the antique elegant or orthodox
Beau Brummel form and cock.
Such is the outward aspect of the Ring. Into its penetralia, into the
mysteries of its combinations, I, rash neophyte, do not presume to
inquire. They are too awful for me. I am ignorant of them, nor, if I
knew, should I dare to tell them. I should expect the curtain of the
temple to fall down and overwhelm me, as befell the rash stranger who
ventured to watch from, as he thought, a secure point of espial, the
celebration of the mysteries of Isis at Thebes. Besides, I never could
make either head or tail of a betting-book. _Poeta nascitur non fit_, say
the Latins. _On devient cuisinier mais on nait rôtisseur_—“One may become
a cook, but one is born a roaster,” say the French; and I verily believe
that the betting-man is to the manner born, and that if he does not feel
an innate vocation for the odds, he had much better jump into a cauldron
of boiling pitch than touch a betting-book—which theory I offer with
confident generosity for the benefit of those young gentlemen who think
it a proper thing and a fast thing to make up a book for the Derby or the
Oaks, whether they understand anything about the matter or not.
To all appearances, the Ring and the Subscription-room, with the adjacent
avenues for the outsiders (you should see the place on the Sunday
afternoon before the Derby) are quite sufficient to take up all the
accommodation which the “Corner” can afford; but there are many other
things done within Messrs. Tattersall’s somewhat crowded premises. There
is the auctioneering business; the sales, when whole studs are brought to
the hammer, and thousands of pounds’ worth of horseflesh are disposed
of in the course of a few minutes. There are the days for the sale of
all manner of genteel wheeled vehicles, which have been inspected on the
previous day by a committee _de haut goût_, of which ladies belonging to
the _élite_ of fashion are not unfrequently members. For the cream of
nobility is, oft-times, not too proud to ride in second-hand carriages.
One more episode of “Corner” life, and I must quit the queer, motley
scene. Down below the Subscription-room is another corner occupied by an
old-fashioned hostelry, called the “Turf Tap,” and here the commonalty of
Tattersall’s frequenters are to be found at any hour of the day, occupied
with the process of sustentation by liquid refreshment. And yet, though
the place is almost entirely “used” by sporting men, it has very little
the appearance of a “sporting” public-house. No portraits of “coaching
incidents,” or famous prize-fighters, decorate its walls; no glass-cases
containing the stuffed anatomies of dogs of preternaturally small size,
and that have killed unheard-of numbers of rats in a minimum of minutes,
ornament its bar-parlour; no loudly-boisterous talk about the last fight,
or the next race coming off, echoes through its bar; and the landlord
hasn’t a broken nose. The behaviour of the company is grave and decorous,
almost melancholy; and on the bench outside, wary-looking stablemen,
and sober grooms, converse in discreet undertone on “parties” and
“events,” not by them, or by any means, to be communicated to the general
public. Tattersall’s is a business-like place altogether, and even its
conviviality is serious and methodical.
I think I should like to ride a horse and take a turn in Rotten Row, if I
only knew how to accomplish the equestrian feat; but I am really afraid
to adventure it. There are some people who do things capitally which they
have never been taught; and who ride and drive, as it were, by intuition.
Irishmen are remarkable for this faculty, and I do not regard as by
any means a specimen of boastfulness, the reply of the young Milesian
gentlemen to the person who asked him if he could play the fiddle, that
he did not know, but that he dared say he could, _if he tried_. But I
am afraid that the mounting of the easiest-going park hack would be
too much for your obedient servant, and that the only way of insuring
security, would be to get inside the animal and pull the blinds down; or,
that being zoologically impossible, to have my coat skirts nailed to the
saddle; or to be tied to the body of my gallant steed with cords, in the
manner practised in the remotest antiquity by the young men of Scythia on
their first introduction to a live horse, and their commencement of the
study of equitation. I passed three days once at the hospitable mansion
of a friend in Staffordshire, who, the morning after my arrival, wanted
me to do something he called “riding to hounds.” I said, “Well out of
it,” respectfully declined the invitation, and retired to the library,
where I read Roger de Wendover’s “Flowers of History” till dinner time.
I daresay the ladies, who all rode like Amazons, thought me a milk-sop;
but I went to bed that night without any broken bones. I have an
acquaintance, too, a fashionable riding-master at Brighton, a tremendous
creature, who wears jack-boots, and has a pair of whiskers like the
phlanges of a screw-propeller. He has been obliging enough to say that he
will “mount” me any time I come his way, but I would as soon mount the
topmost peak of Chimborazo.
[Illustration: FOUR O’CLOCK P.M.: THE PARK.]
I beg to state that this short essay on horsemanship is _àpropos_ of
Hyde Park and notably of Rotten Row, into which I wander after quitting
Tattersall’s, and where, leaning over the wooden rails, I contemplate
the horsemen and horsewomen caracoling along the spongy road with
admiration, not unmixed with a little envy. What a much better, honester
world it would be if people would confess a little more frequently to
that feeling of envy? For Envy is not always, believe me, grovelling in
a cavern, red-eyed and pale-faced, and gnawing a steak sliced off her
own liver. Envy can be at times noble, generous, heroic. If I see a gay,
gallant, happy, ingenious boy of eighteen, and for a moment envy him his
youth, his health, his strength, his innocence, the golden prospect of a
sunshiny futurity, that stretches out before him, does it follow that I
wish to deprive him of one of those gifts, or that I bear him malice for
possessing them? I declare it does not follow. I say to him—_I, curre_!
“Good luck have thou, with thine honour—ride on;” and as I go home to my
garret, if I envy the bird as he sings, need I shoot him? or the dog as
he lies winking and basking in the sun, need I kick him? or the golden
beetle trudging along the gravel, need I trample on him? But people cry
fie upon the envy that is harmless, and must needs assume a virtue if
they have it not; and concerning that latter quality my private belief
is, that if Virtue were to die, Hypocrisy would have to go into the
deepest mourning immediately.
I am glad to say that I am not by any means alone as I lean over the
rails. Whether it is that they can’t or won’t ride, I know not; but I
find myself surrounded by groups of exquisites, who, to judge by their
outward appearance, must be the greatest dandies in London. For once in
a day, I see gentlemen dressed in the exact similitude of the emblazoned
cartoons in the “Monthly Magazine of Fashion.” I had always, previously,
understood those pictorial prodigies to be gross caricatures of, and
libels on, at least the male portion of the fashionable world. But I find
that I am mistaken. Such peg-top trousers! such astounding waistcoat
patterns! such lofty heels to the varnished boots! such Brobdignagian
moustaches and whiskers! such ponderous watch-chains, bearing masses
of coins and trinkets! such bewildering varieties of starched, choking
all-round collars! such breezy neckties and alarming scarves! Ladies,
too—real ladies—promenade in an amplitude of crinoline difficult to
imagine and impossible to describe; some of them with stalwart footmen
following them, whose looks beam forth conscious pride at the superlative
toilettes of their distinguished proprietresses; some escorted by their
bedizened beaux. Little foot-pages; swells walking three, sometimes
four, abreast; gambolling children; severe duennas; wicked old bucks,
splendidly attired, leering furtively under the bonnets—what a scene of
more than “Arabian Nights” delight and gaiety! And the green trees wave
around, around, around; and the birds are on the boughs; and the blessed
sun is in the heavens, and rains gold upon the beauteous Danaës, who
prance and amble, canter and career, on their graceful steeds throughout
the length of Rotten Row.
The Danaës! the Amazons! the lady cavaliers! the horsewomen! can any
scene in the world equal Rotten Row at four in the afternoon, and in
the full tide of the season? Bois de Boulogne, Course at Calcutta,
Cascine at Florence, Prado at Madrid, Atmeidan at Constantinople—I
defy ye all. Rotten Row is a very Peri’s garden for beautiful women on
horseback. The Cliff at Brighton offers, to be sure, just as entrancing
a sight towards the end of December; but what is Brighton, after all,
but London-super-Mare? The sage Titmarsh has so christened it; and the
beauties of Rotten Row are transplanted annually to the vicinity of the
Chain Pier and Brill’s baths. Watch the sylphides as they fly or float
past in their ravishing riding-habits and intoxicatingly delightful hats:
some with the orthodox cylindrical beaver, with the flowing veil; others
with roguish little wide-awakes, or pertly cocked cavaliers’ hats and
green plumes. And as the joyous cavalcade streams past, (I count the male
riders absolutely for nothing, and do not deem them worthy of mention,
though there may be marquises among them) from time to time the naughty
wind will flutter the skirt of a habit, and display a tiny, coquettish,
brilliant little boot, with a military heel, and tightly strapped over it
the Amazonian riding trouser.
Only, from time to time, while you gaze upon these fair young daughters
of the aristocracy disporting themselves on their fleet coursers, you
may chance to have with you a grim town Diogenes, who has left his tub
for an airing in the park; and who, pointing with the finger of a hard
buckskin glove towards the graceful _écuyères_, will say: “Those are not
all countesses’ or earls’ daughters, my son. She on the bay, yonder,
is Laïs. Yonder goes Aspasia, with Jack Alcibiades on his black mare
Timon: see, they have stopped at the end of the ride to talk to Phryne
in her brougham. Some of those dashing delightful creatures have covered
themselves with shame, and their mothers with grief, and have brought
their fathers’ gray hair with sorrow to the grave. All is not gold that
glitters, my son.”
FIVE O’CLOCK P.M.—THE FASHIONABLE CLUB, AND THE PRISONERS’ VAN.
The English are the only “Clubable” people on the face of the earth.
Considering the vast number of clubs which are more or less understood
to flourish all over the Continent, and in the other hemisphere, it is
within possibility that I shall be accused of having uttered something
like a paradox; but I adhere to my dictum, and will approve it Truth. Not
but that, concerning paradoxes themselves, I may be of the opinion of Don
Basilio in the “Barber of Seville,” expressed with regard to calumny.
“Calumniate, calumniate,” says that learned casuist; “calumniate, and
still calumniate, _something will always come of it_.” So, in a long
course of paradoxes, it is hard but that you shall find a refreshing
admixture of veracity.
Do you think you can call the French a “clubable” nation, because in
their revolutions of ’89 and ’48 they burst into a mushroom crop of
clubs? Do you think that the gentleman whom a late complication of
political events brought into connection with a committee of Taste,
consisting of twelve honest men assembled in a jury-box, and whom, the
penny-a-liners were kind enough to inform us, was in his own country
known as “Bernard le Clubbiste,” could be by any means considered as what
we called a “club-man?” Could he be compared with Jawkins or Borekins,
Sir Thomas de Boots, Major Pendennis, or any of the Pall Mall and St.
James’s Street bow-window loungers, whom the great master of club
life has so inimitably delineated? No more than we could parallelise
the dingy, garlic-reeking, revolutionary club-room on a three-pair
back at the bottom of a Paris court-yard, with its “tribune,” and its
quarrelsome patriots, to the palatial Polyanthus, the Podasokus or
the Poluphlosboion. French clubs ever have been—and will be again,
I suppose, when the next political smash affords an opportunity for
the re-establishment of such institutions—mere screeching, yelling,
vapouring “pig-and-whistle” symposia; full of rodomontading stump
orators, splitting the silly groundlings’ ears with denunciations of the
infamous oppressors of society—the society that wears pantaloons without
patches, and has one-and-ninepence in its pockets; yelping for communism,
equal division of property, and toothpicks, solidarity, nationalities,
and similar moonshine-and-water ices; “demanding heads,” with fierce
imprecations about universal fraternity, till their own troublesome
bodies—for society’s mere peace and quietness’ sake—are securely
shackled and straight-waistcoated up, and carted away in police-vans
to deep-holded ships, whence, after much salutary sea-sickness, they
are shot out on the shores of conveniently pestilential Cayennes and
Nouka-Hivas. A plague on such clubs and clubbists, say I, with their long
hair, flapped waistcoats, and coffee-shop treasonable practices. They
have done more harm to the cause of Liberty than all the wicked kings and
kaisers, from Dionysius to the late Bomba—now gone to his reward, and who
is enjoying it, I should say, hot and hot by this time—have done to the
true and heaven-ordained principle of royalty.
In Imperial Paris there are yet clubs of another sort existing, though
jealously watched by a police that would be Argus-eyed if its members
were not endowed with a centuple power of squinting. There are clubs—the
“Jockey,” the “Chemin de Fer,” and establishments with great gilded
saloons, and many servitors in plush and silk stockings; but they are
no more like our frank English clubs than I am like Antinous. Mere
gambling shops and arenas for foolish wagers; mere lounging-places for
spendthrifts, sham gentlemen, gilt-fustian senators, and Imperialist
patricians, with dubious titles, who haunt club-rooms, sit up late,
and intoxicate themselves with alcoholic mixtures—so aping the hardy
sons of Britain, when they would be ten times more at home in their own
pleasant, frivolous Boulevard _cafés_, with a box of dominoes, a glass
of sugar-and-water, and Alphonso the _garçon_ to bring it to them. Such
pseudo-aristocratic clubs you may find, too, at Berlin and Vienna,
scattered up and down north Italy, and in Russia, even, at Petersburg
and Moscow, where they have “English” clubs, into which Englishmen are
seldom, if ever, admitted. Some English secretaries of legation and
long-legged _attachés_, have indeed an _ex-officio_ entry to these
continental clubs, or “_cercles_,” where they come to lounge and yawn
in the true Pall Mall fashion; but they soon grow tired of the hybrid
places; and the foreigners who come to stare and wonder at them, go away
more tired still, and, with droll shrugs, say, “_Que c’est triste_!”
The proper club for a Frenchman is his _café_; for, without a woman to
admire him or to admire, your Monsieur cannot exist; and in the slowest
provincial town in France there is a _dame de comptoir_ to ogle or be
ogled. The Russian has more of the clubable element in him; but clubs
will never flourish in Muscovy till a man can be morally certain that the
anecdote he is telling his neighbour will not be carried, with notes and
emendations, in half an hour, to the Grand Master of Police. As for the
German, put him in a beer-shop, and give him a long pipe with his mawkish
draught, and—be he prince, professor, or peasant—he will desire no better
club; save, indeed, on high convivial occasions, when you had best
prepare him a cellar, where he and his blond-bearded, spectacled fellows
may sit round a wine-cask, and play cards on the top thereof.
I don’t exactly know how far the English club-shoot has been grafted on
the trunk of American society, but I can’t believe that the club-proper
flourishes there to any great extent. I like the Americans much,
recognising in them many noble, generous, upright, manly qualities; but I
am afraid they are too fond of asking questions—too ignorant or unmindful
of the great art of sitting half an hour in the company of a man whom
you know intimately, without saying a word to him, to be completely
clubable. Moreover, they are a people who drink _standing_, delighting
much to “liquor up” in crowded bar-rooms, and seldom sitting down to
their potations—a most unclubable characteristic. All sorts of convivial
and political _réunions_ exist, I am aware, in the United States, to
a high degree of organisation; and I have heard glowing accounts of
the comfortable, club-like guard-rooms and stations of the New York
volunteers and firemen; but I can’t exactly consider these in the light
of clubs. They are not exclusive enough—not concrete enough—not subject
to the rigid but salutary discipline of that _Imperium in Imperio_, or
rather, _Rempublicam in Republicâ_, the committee of a club.