harmless imbecile, who wanders about the roads with a peacock's
feather in his battered old cap, and who talks to himself when he
cannot find another listener; and there is the stalwart lady
proprietor who farms her own land and knows as much about roots and
beasts as the best of them. She is reported to have thrashed her man
in her time, and is said to be a crack shot and the best roughrider
for miles round. There is the ruined yeoman who came into a good
property when he was a handsome young fellow with the ball at his
foot, but who has drunk himself from affluence to penury, and from
sturdy health to palsy and delirium tremens, yet who has always a
kindly word from his betters, having been no man's enemy but his own,
and even at his worst being a good fellow in a sort of way. There is
the farmer who is supposed capable of buying up all the leaner gentry
in a batch, but who, being a misogynist, lives by himself in his
rambling old ruined Hall, with a hind to do the scullery maid's work,
and never a petticoat about the place. There is the self-taught man of
science whose quantities are shaky when he tells you the names of his
treasures, but whose knowledge of local fossils, of rare plants, of
concealed antiquities, is true so far as it goes, if of too great
importance in his estimate of things; and side by side with him is the
self-made poet, whose verses are not always easy to scan and whose
thoughts are apt to express themselves mistily. These and more are
sure to be at the fête bringing; their peculiarities as their quota,
and giving that indescribable but pleasant local flavour which is half
the interest of the thing.
There is a great deal of practical democracy in these gatherings if
the grand people stay into the time of the second prices; which
however, they generally do not. If they do, then ragged coats jostle
the squire's glossy broadcloth, and rude boys crumple the fresh silks
and muslins of the ladies with the most communistic unconcern. The
shopgirl and farmer's daughters come out in gorgeous array, with
bonnets and skirts, streamers and furbelows, of wonderful
construction; and their sisters of more cultivated taste regard their
exaggerated toilets as moral crimes. But the poor things are happy in
their ugly finery; and, as millinery is by no means an exact science,
they may be pardoned if they adopt monstrosities on their own account
which a year or so ago had been sanctioned by fashion. Sometimes Punch
and Judy, 'as performed before the Queen and Prince Albert,' helps on
the enjoyment of the day, with the '----' softened out of respect for
the clergyman. Sometimes an acrobat lies down on the grass and twirls
a huge ball between his feet, which sets all the little boys to do the
like in imitation, and perhaps brings down many a maternal hand on
fleshy places as the result. In some localities a troop of little
girls in scarlet and white plait ribbons dance round a maypole and are
called inappropriately morris-dancers. Perhaps there are fireworks at
the end of all things; when the set pieces will not light
simultaneously in all their parts, the catherine-wheels have the
disastrous trick of sticking, and only the Roman candles and the
rockets succeed as they should. But the gaping crowd is vociferous and
good-natured, and holds the whole affair to have been splendid. There
is a great deal of coarse jollity among the men and women over the
failures and successes alike, and if the fête is in the North there is
sure to be more drink afloat than is desirable. Headaches are the rule
of the next morning, with perhaps some things lost which can never be
regained. Yet, in spite of the inevitable abuses, these local fêtes
are things worthy of encouragement; and perhaps if the great people
would enter into them more heartily, and remain on the ground longer,
the lower orders would behave themselves better all through, and there
would not be so much rowdyism at the end. It does not seem to us that
this would be an unendurable sacrifice of time and personal dignity
for the pleasure and morality of the neighbourhood where one lives.
THE END.
S. & H.
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Transcriber's note:
Minor spelling and punctuation inconsistencies, mainly hyphenated
words, have been harmonized. In this version, the oe ligature is
represented by the separate characters oe, e.g. manoeuvre.