CHAPTER XIV

ROSEBERRY ROCKS’ REGATTA

PEOPLE who call Regattas dull and stupid—say they never can make either head or tail of them, see which boat is first, or which is last, or understand what the bang, bang, banging of the guns is for—take a superficial view of the matter, and know little of their merits, in a matrimonial point of view. In fact, they would seem to be invented for the promotion of this particular enterprise, and afford facilities peculiarly their own. In the first place, they draw all people into line, so that pink parasol is easily seen; in the second place, the spectators are stationary, and a well-selected position is generally free from observation, save of those in the immediate neighbourhood; in the third place, regattas are good eyes-right, straight-forward looking exhibitions that afford no excuse for inquisitive prying and peeping about. All minds ought to be engaged and absorbed in the boats out at sea. Contrast these advantages with those afforded by pic-nics, archery meetings, or flower-shows, and the balance of quietude will be found to be greatly in favour of regattas. A pic-nic we have seen, and at flower-shows and archery meetings there are constant crossings, and, what huntsmen call, “throwings in at head,” which disturb the comfort and composure of the scene. These are like the interruptions of a boy to a bird building its nest, which sometimes causes it to desert altogether. Young gentlemen especially are liable to get laughed out of their loves.

The day but one following our pic-nic was appointed for the second of these nautical exhibitions of the season, and accordingly the morning was ushered in with whole ladders of colours flying from poles, and every conceivable place, looking as if there had been a general contribution of all the pocket-handkerchiefs in the town. All the gay white-sailed stomach-pumps of pleasure-boats—or purgatory-boats, as they too often are —were decked out in their streamers and flags, and holiday symbols. Then lusty amphibious landsmen went rolling and hitching about, persecuting people to buy their programmes of the coming sport, as if anybody was ever the wiser from having one. Towards noon, the starting and winning-posts were denoted by Union Jacks placed upon buoys, and about the same time, sundry dirty urchins began pushing and paddling about in tubs, preparatory to taking part in the sport on an element that they seemed to have very little general acquaintance with. Luncheon, that lady’s meal of the day, being at length over—the process of inflation commenced, and presently the wide portals of the mansions emitted whole bevies of beauties who, like the butterflies, unfolded their colours as they got into the gleam of the sunshine. Up went the white, the lilac, the lavender, and at the sight of the well-known signals boaty-young gentlemen, and horsey-young gentlemen, and dressy-young gentlemen, and vacant-young gentlemen, began to draw up—hands in peg-top trousers’ pockets—from no one knew where, and fall into rank, the right men, it is to be hoped, in the right places. So the whole sea-board soon floated with crinoline, the lightest of bonnets, and airiest of dresses, organdis, brilliantés, and piqués. Then as the bands began to play, and somebody on shore made a signal to somebody a-float, at the bang of a gun on a lugger-yacht, single and double Dollonds and telescopes came out of their cases ready to point against whatever might appear. And who does the reader think did appear at this most critical moment? Our friend Admiration Jack—Jack dressed within an inch of his life, simpering along as near the fair Rosa as the amplitude of her very pretty broad-sashed blue and white dress would allow. Very beautiful she looked, calm, pensive, and demure, so unlike Miss Giggleton, who came flouncing and twisting about with Captain Ogle, staring in all directions to see who was looking at her. A woman is never satisfied till she has paraded a man. Our friend’s appearance had the effect of fanning the flame of the previous day’s gossip, and set all parties looking at our newly-arrived beauty. Some thought her very well— some thought her middling—some thought nothing of her. One lady—Miss Tartey—thought she had got a most preposterous sash on.

To our friend Mr. Bunting their criticisms were more pertinent and severe. That man was always playing the fool with some one. Mrs. Salter had seen him dangling after Miss Meadowbank at Baden, Miss Granite said he had behaved extremely ill to a first cousin of hers, while Mrs. Bolsterworth observed, that it would be an act of kindness to tell Rosa’s Mamma what sort of a man he was. And here mark the merits of a regatta—just as the hostile criticism was at its height, and there is no saying what mischief might have ensued, “Bang!” went a gun on the bathing-machine battery, with such a stunning sound as caused the nervous ones to shriek and turn the current of indignation against the invisible agent who had ordered it to be fired. How could they make such a noise! What was the use of making such a noise! Reader, that gun denoted that the aquatic amusements were about to commence, an amusement in which there always appear to be two distinct and separate interests, those on the water and those on the shore, between whom there is no sort of tie, sympathy, or community of interest. Who there were in the boats we will not stop to inquire—there were no pretty bonnets—youths in shallow-crowned straws, with clay pipes in their mouths, as if to make sickness a certainty—stout ladies eating prawns and enjoying the breeze, in charge of amphibious landsmen, who may be seen wheeling about baskets of dirty linen on a Monday, and a bunch of portly gentlemen in round jackets and white trousers in the lugger-yacht, who stand consequentially on deck with, as they think, the eyes of England upon them.

Those latter are the great patrons and promoters of the regatta, men who have put down their fives and their threes, and their twos and their ones, and who call themselves the committee of management, though if they can manage not to be sick that is about all they can do. They are just as much in the hands of the Neptune of the place as non-racing stewards are in the hands of a sharp clerk of the course at a country meeting. Still they are flattered by the compliment, and, as honest Sancho Panza says, it is good to have command if it is only over a flock of sheep; so they it is who say when the next Bang from the gun has to start alike the people and the boats, and less we think the promoters could hardly have for their money. The fatties have one advantage in their favour—though it is all against the briskness of the sailing part of the regatta—namely, that there is very little wind, and the two well-adjusted boats sail and separate and come together again in a very dull uninteresting way, the owners making the same sort of sham struggle that a field of leather plates make in running on the reciprocity system for a town plate or an apocryphal vase, with a purse of gold (a five pound note perhaps) in it. But though the boats are off, no one seems to care whether the Prince Consort, Lord Derby, the Sarah Ann, or the Mary Jane is first, the whole thing being merely the means to another end, and the longer they dawdle and flutter and chop and change, the more opportunity they afford the landsmen to “avail themselves of the regatta;” as the French beau said to the lady who praised her daughter’s performance on the piano, “Mademoiselle Delphine a là un bien beau talent,” said she, pointing significantly to her as she fingered away; “Allons, faut avaler le concerto,” said the gallant, making up to Mamma.

And of all the parties who availed themselves of the regatta none were more industrious than our hero Mr. Bunting, who, despite his nautical pedigree, managed to lose three pairs of gloves to the fair Rosa in the first three matches that were sailed.

But the stout gentlemen with the worshipful white stomachs are going to change the performance, and at a given signal a score of hobbledehoys begin stripping in a boat in the offing, in a way that but at the sea-side would have a very embarrassing effect.

It is wonderful what a difference the locality makes in these Apollo Belvidere matters. If those great naked men we now see proceeding so leisurely from Underdown Cliff to the sea, were to exhibit themselves that way in a secluded wood in the country, there would be such a running and shrieking and sending for Sergeant Blue-mottles, and such a carrying before Squire Lazyman or Mr. Pheasantry. But because they come down upon the open coast, with a grand sea before them, people think nothing of it; and those fair ladies in the mushroom hats, with their back hair spread over their shoulders, sit as unconcernedly by as so many dowagers in a statue gallery.

So again with the fair. What lady would traverse the passages of a house with nothing on but a bathing-gown and slippers? What peeping and prying and listening there would be at the door before she broke cover, and what a hurrying and scuttling there would be after she once got away. If she should happen to meet a man she would never get over it. Yet here in the broad face of day, with myriads of gazers and regiments of telescopes, they come out with the greatest coolness and deliberation, and walk unconcernedly into the sea! So much for a “pure mind in a pure body,” as the advertisement says— But, to the boys.

They go on stripping like the grave-digger in Hamlet, until they have all the appearance of Robinson Crusoe’s group of savages, when they are bundled out of the boats like a tub full of eels, and told to swim to another boat further up. Away they go, struggling and splashing and gasping and spouting, with an evident desire to be first, a boat following to take up the weakly ones who soon begin tailing, but as the foremost boy’s own mother wouldn’t know that lank head of hair in the water, it can hardly be expected that the elegant spectators can take more interest in the matter than is comprised in the old saying of “may the best boy win.”

This scene, like the flopping ones, must therefore be classed under the “avaler le concerto” ones, and doubtless many of the spectators availed themselves of the opportunity. We know one who did, at all events.

Last scene of all—the pantomime of the sea—is the dirty boys in the tubs, a performance that corresponds with the “make a scramble, gents! make a scramble!” of the mud-larks under the windows at Greenwich. A dozen dirty boys in buckets and barrels and wooden contrivances of all sorts, come paddling and rowing alongshore, upsetting themselves and each other in their eager contests and dives after half-pence. This is the most interesting performance, verifying the truth of the saying, that there is nothing so popular as a little excitement in which every one can take a part. Hitherto the fatties have had it all their own way—at least, have thought they had—now all have a finger in the pie, and there is a rushing and running and shouting and screaming and mixing of classes quite different to the late orderly, stationary, line-keeping company.

But this is not for our friends. Miss Rosa has no taste for the boisterous, nor Mr. Bunting for having his neat laquer-toed boots trampled upon, so as the last group of vociferating urchins go yelling past—some backing Geordey Bacon! others Billy Brown! our ladies rise from their seats; and Mamma, having seen that Miss’s tournure is all straight, gives the approving nod, and forthwith they turn from the receding performance to retrace their steps to the quieter regions of the west. Then our fair friend and her beau became an object of attention to the forlorn left-at-home damsels. Miss Curling’s maid thinking Rosa had “got plenty of sail on hooiver,” while Mrs. Broadmeadow’s pin-sticker rather stands up for quantity. She wears hoops herself. As women always fall foul of their own sex first, and Rosa’s was a face that bore investigation—that is to say, was worth running down, our friend Mr. Jack did not come in for much observation until the return trip, when as he was airing some of his poetry apparently much to our heroine’s satisfaction, he was denounced as a conceited-looking man, and one that they wondered Miss Simpers could look so well pleased with. They then began speculating upon who he was. One said, it was young Sir Stephen Sappey; another, Captain Hubbub; a third, Mr. Lounger Hall. Just whoever they happened to have heard of, and didn’t know by sight. It takes a longish apprenticeship in a place like the Rocks, with its ever-moving panorama of company, to be able to pelt a man off-hand with his name as the sages of the Clubs in St. James’s Street do. There’s Brown, there’s Jones, there’s Robinson, even before the worthies heave well in sight.

But the field of observation is soon to be extended, for the competitive coppers having caused the urchins to desert their boats, a running scramble takes place on shore, which presently resolves itself into a general fight, bringing the cocked-hatted brown and gold-robed Bumble down with his gilt-headed staff, followed by a suitable number of police, before whom the little ragged army flies in dismay to their homes.

The regatta is over. The large-stomached gentlemen are then released from their labours, and come ashore to dine, with such appetites as the dip, dip, dippings of the boat has left them, Mr. Chousey charging them five shillings a-head extra for dinners, as well on account of the great local event, as because it happened to be the anniversary of the day on which the Clown at Astleys was drawn in a tub on the Thames by two geese.

The general company then distend their crinoline, and set sail, some to the north, some to the east, some to the west, where our friend Mr. Bunting, now in the full intoxication of ardour, was inwardly exclaiming as he looked devotedly at Rosa,

And so he proceeded, now a little in advance, now alongside the Mamma-guarded beauty past the formidable green blinds and jalousies of Promenade Gardens, through whose light barriers no one knew what envy, hatred, and malice, might be lurking; until they met the tide of regatta-returning company in the narrower pass of Somerset Shore, where the oft-recurring collision of crinoline at length caused them to turn and bend their steps to the wider region of Victoria Lawn, on whose sun-burnt grass the green and white band of the Roseberry Rocks’ Rangers, was booming and blowing away at the Malakhoff Galop. There on its well-trodden space, our friend figured away in such style, that it soon became current that Admiration Jack was going to be married. And when Herr Staub, whose real name was Tom Snooks, gave the signal for striking up “God save the Queen,” the trio wheeled off to Sea-View Place, where at the door of No. 5, Jack begged one of Rosa’s pretty little primrose-coloured gloves, as a pattern for bet-paying. So ended the Roseberry Rocks’ Regatta— an event that was duly chronicled in the newspapers of the day, but without the great advantage that we possess, of having our narrative illustrated.