CHAPTER XX

CHOOSING STEWARDS

ALTHOUGH, as we said before, Roseberry Rocks require no adventitious aid, such as racing, to make the place attractive, yet the worshipful company of leatherplaters and legs cannot afford to dispense with the plunder the races produce. There is a town-plate, a tradesman’s-purse, a county member’s cup, and a borough member’s contributions, all of which require to be fairly apportioned among the fraternity. The money is to be given, and therefore why shouldn’t they get it? It would be wasted if they didn’t. Now town’s-plates, and tradesmen’s purses, are all fair and legitimate enough, the money fructifies in the place as it were; but why Members of Parliament should be thus mulct for serving their country does seem a most unreasonable arrangement. Is it not enough that they should be condemned to hard-labour, day and night, on committees, and in the House of Commons running like waiters at the sound of the Speaker’s bell, without being also made to pay for performing the labour? We should grumble uncommonly if our good publishers, Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, were to make us pay them for printing and publishing this book. Formerly a Member was looked upon as a sort of milch-cow—a person whom everybody sucked. The old race of country-gentlemen, if they didn’t drive bodily up to their M.P.’s houses, bag and baggage, when they arrived in town, considered at all events that they had an indefeasible right to a knife-and-fork at their tables, whenever they liked to come. If they didn’t get it, woe-betide the M.P. at the next election. The consequence was, that none but great four-horse—sometimes “two-four”—powers could aspire to a county representation. The mere subscriptions were enough to deter any man of moderate means—building churches, endowing schools, erecting bridges, making roads, aiding infirmaries, to say nothing of the minor demands of promiscuous miscellaneous charity, for replacing dead horses, resuscitating old cows, redeeming patent mangles, &c. Those foxes’ breedingearths, the Clubs, have enabled the M.P.’s to shake the Old Men of the land off their shoulders in the way of hospitality, but the grievance of subscriptions—paying for the privilege of working—remains in full force to the present day. The consequence is, that resident local gentlemen will not represent places in their own neighbourhoods, and stragglers and strangers are brought from afar. This is all wrong: people should consider the sacrifices Members make in attending to their interests, and lighten their burthens as much as possible, instead of increasing them.

At our peculiar borough, the licensed “witler’s” interest is too strong to allow of the Members slighting their demands, and if they required double the amount of subscriptions they now get, they must have it. Mr. Tim Boldero, the auctioneering, coal-dealing, electioneering, alestore-keeping clerk of the course, is what the newspapers call far too active, energetic, and indefatigable to let a chance slip, or any one escape. He is always after somebody or another. The sight of Tim’s little, bustling, round-about, satiney figure is enough to make people quail. Tim’s great difficulty about his races, not an uncommon one we believe, is in getting stewards. Most people have been caught in the stewardship trap, and understand the nature of the compliment. Equally stale is the patriotic story about supporting our unrivalled breed of horses, and so subjugating the world. Why, there is scarcely a horse in the kingdom but what might be bought to go out of it. It is therefore only the very verdant and excessively fussy, unemployed gentry, that the promoters of the sport have to prey upon. Some great people will lend their names on the distinct understanding that it is not to cost them anything, and that they are not to be expected to act. Then comes the diplomacy of supplying their places. In this, our Comet year, the gratitude of Lord Fricandeau de Veau, for having recovered his precious appetite at the Rocks, being equalled only by that of the Earl of Aldborough to Mr. Holloway for curing his shocking bad leg, had caused his Lordship to permit his name to be placed on the list of stewards, and now that the time for filling the office had arrived, he had written one of those rivulets of manuscript and meadow of margin letters, which, with an imposing seal outside, and a cheque within, go so far to propitiate mankind, expressing his deep regret to “Timothy Boldero, Esquire, &c., &c., that unavoidable circumstances prevented the pleasure, &c., which however, &c., place easily supplied, &c.,” and Tim went about showing the letter, and talking of his Lordship as if he was one of his daily correspondents. And Tim put it to several, as he thought, ambitious men, Captain Caret, Sir George Greygoose, Mr. Hiatus, Mr. Lounger Hall, and others, if they would like to officiate for his Lordship; but somehow or other they all took time to consider, and ended in declining the honour. At length a benign chance brought Tim’s black satin vest in contact with Sir Felix Flexible’s blue coat and buff waistcoat, as the latter aired himself at the high-tide of fashion along the grand esplanade. Mr. Boldero, who knew Sir Felix’s valet, and of course his master’s foibles, made a grand ariel sweep with his white felt hat when he met him, which completely brought the Baronet to his bearings.

Sir Felix was a happy man, for he was not only on excellent terms with himself, but he fully believed that everybody else was equally enamoured of him. While other men are fretting, and fuming, and fancying themselves slighted, Sir Felix is always chuckling, and smiling, and thinking himself highly complimented. If Her Majesty makes one of her gracious bows to the gregarious horsemen assembled in the Park, Sir Felix always appropriates the whole of it to himself, saying to his toadey at his side, “Ah, that’s to me—saw me at the Levée—flattering—very flattering indeed,” and forthwith he trots off to intercept another bow at another point. So with everything else. He is always the hero of every assembly, the man who directs the movements, and controls the rest.

Mr. Timothy Boldero’s strutting, confident, Lord Mayor-like manner, at the same time so respectful to Sir Felix, eminently paved the way for pouring the leperous distilment about the stewardship into his ear, which Tim did most adroitly, more than half insinuating that the Right Honourable Lord Fricandeau de Veau had especially named Sir Felix to represent him.

“Has he, indeed?” smiled the Baronet, bowing graciously; “flattering—very flattering, indeed—feel the compliment,” laying his hand upon his heart. “Shall write to his Lordship by this night’s post—thank him for the honour—tell him duly appreciate the compliment, and that I shall be proud to accept the office.”

And Sir Felix, who was fond of the sound of his own voice, then commenced conning over his speech for the ordinary, for which purpose he looked up such books as he thought would enlighten him on the subject. And with very little trouble—for a smattering of learning is easily obtained now-a-days, he got up the heads of a speech, commencing with a little antiquity, and then entering upon the great national subject generally, which he laboured away at, as he mistakenly thought in private, without stint or measure to his voice. So he went pacing up and down his apartment, in the Minerva Mansion, sawing the air, and mouthing out “gentlemen” this, and “gentlemen” that, reminding his imaginary audience how absorbing the Olympic games were, when Philip, King of Macedon, and Hiero, King of Syracuse, contended for the prize. He then got into England, recalling the fact that several race-horses were sent by Hugh Capet, in the ninth century, as a present to Athelstane, and then touching with a masterly hand upon the successive monarchs who had patronised the turf, until he came down to modern times, when feeling that the Crown had gradually been withdrawing from its impurities, he proceeded to give the Rocks races a lift, by pointing out the advantage they were of to that particular place. And so he wound up by calling for a bumpertoast, with all the honours, to the Noble British Turf!

That is the rehearsal, the reader will understand, of what Sir Felix is going to say.