The races were some miles away, and when we got to the tracks we did
not find their keeping very different from that of the Saratoga tracks,
although the crowd was both smarter and shabbier, and it had got to the
place through a town of tents and sheds, and a population of hucksters
and peddlers, giving an effect of permanency to the festivity such as
a solemnity of ours seldom has. When we bought our tickets we found, in
the familiarity with the event expected of us, that there was no one to
show us to our places; but by dint of asking we got to the Grand Stand,
and mounted to our seats, which, when we stood up from them, commanded a
wholly satisfactory prospect of the whole field.
I do not know the dimensions of the Doncaster track, or how far they
exceed those of the Saratoga track. Possibly one does not do its extent
justice because there is no track at Doncaster: there is nothing but a
green turf, with a certain course railed off on it. I hope the reader
will be as much surprised as I was to realize that the sport of
horse-racing in England gets its name of Turf from the fact that the
races are run on the grass, and not on the bare ground, as with us. We
call the sport the Turf, too, but that is because in this, as in so many
other things, we lack incentive and invention, and are fondly colonial
and imitative; we ought to call it the Dirt, for that is what it is with
us. As a spectacle, the racing lacks the definition in England which
our course gives, and when it began, I missed the relief into which our
track throws the bird-like sweep of the horses as they skim the naked
earth in the distance.
I missed also the superfluity of jockeying which delays and enhances
the thrill of the start with us, and I thought the English were not so
scrupulous about an even start as we are. But, above all, I missed the
shining faces and the gleaming eyes of the black jockeys, who lend so
much gayety to our scene, where they seem born to it, if not of it. The
crowd thickened in English bloom and bulk, which is always fine to see,
and bubbled over with the babble of multitudinous voices, crossed with
the shouts of the book-makers. Having failed to enter any bets with the
book-makers of The Pavement in York, I did not care to make them here.
With all my passion for racing, I never know or care which horse wins;
but I tried to enter into the joy of a diffident young fellow near me at
the Grand Stand rail, who was so proud of having guessed as winner the
horse next to the winner at the first race; it was coming pretty close.
By the end of the third or how far they exceed those of the Saratoga
track. Possibly one does not do its extent justice because there is no
track at Doncaster: there is nothing but a green turf, with a certain
course railed off on it. I hope the reader will be as much surprised as
I was to realize that the sport of horse-racing in England gets its name
of Turf from the fact that the races are run on the grass, and not on
the bare ground, as with us. We call the sport the Turf, too, but that
is because in this, as in so many other things, we lack incentive and
invention, and are fondly colonial and imitative; we ought to call it
the Dirt, for that is what it is with us. As a spectacle, the racing
lacks the definition in England which our course gives, and when it
began, I missed the relief into which our track throws the bird-like
sweep of the horses as they skim the naked earth in the distance.
I missed also the superfluity of jockeying which delays and enhances
the thrill of the start with us, and I thought the English were not so
scrupulous about an even start as we are. But, above all, I missed the
shining faces and the gleaming eyes of the black jockeys, who lend so
much gayety to our scene, where they seem born to it, if not of it. The
crowd thickened in English bloom and bulk, which is always fine to see,
and bubbled over with the babble of multitudinous voices, crossed with
the shouts of the book-makers. Having failed to enter any bets with the
book-makers of The Pavement in York, I did not care to make them here.
With all my passion for racing, I never know or care which horse wins;
but I tried to enter into the joy of a diffident young fellow near me at
the Grand Stand rail, who was so proud of having guessed as winner the
horse next to the winner at the first race; it was coming pretty
close. By the end of the third race he had softened into something like
confidence toward me; certainly into conversability; such was the effect
of my being a dead-game sport, or looking it. But how account for the
trustfulness of the young woman on my other hand who wore her gold watch
outside her dress, and who turned to the elderly stranger for sympathy
in a certain supreme moment? This was when the crowd below crumpled
suddenly together like the crushing of paper and the sense of something
tragically mysterious in the distance clarified itself as the death of
one of the horses. It had dropped from heart-break in its tracks, as if
shot, and presently a string of young men and boys came dragging to some
_spoliarium_ the long, slender body of the pretty creature over the turf
which its hoofs had beaten a moment before. Then it was that the girl,
with the watch on her breast, turned and asked, “Isn’t it sad?”
[Illustration: FINCHALE PRIORY]