CHAPTER XXII
ROSEBERRY ROCKS RACE-COURSE
E sometimes think the elements are unfavourable to Racing. Whether it is that the flimsey nature of people’s attire—the silken jackets and paper boots of the jockies, the gauze and gossamer of the ladies, so pretty in sunshine, so futile in showers—makes one more than ordinarily susceptible to the slightest variations of the atmosphere, or whether it is that so much ruinable finery is too great a temptation for Jupiter Pluvius, we know not, but there certainly often does seem a disposition to give the milliners the benefit of the day by watering the silks and drenching the assembly. How seldom an Epsom, for instance, is got over without some tremendous descent. If the weather has been ever so fine previously, it is almost sure to change about then. So soon as the adventurous travellers get well away from their homes, and a delicate coating of dust has permeated the garments, peacocks begin to scream, donkeys to bray, dust to rise in corkscrew eddying curls, and the whole face of nature to give these unmistakeable yearnings for drink that a sot displays as he sneaks round a street corner to get into the splendidly illuminated gin palace. Then more screams, more brays, more dust, and great spattering drops that beat like shillings as they fall, are the prelude to the disastrous rain that with all the aid of heads up and umbrellas hoisted, just damages the finery sufficiently to make it finery no more. And the curious contortions of ribbons, and flowers, and gauze, called by courtesy bonnets, are reduced to the value of as many pence as they before represented pounds.
If racing was brought home to every man’s door, as was attempted some years since on the present site of Notting Hill, how few people would be at the trouble of going to them. A quiet walk in Kensington Gardens or a penny or twopenny seat in the Park, with the aristocracy of England paraded before them, would be considered a much better thing. It is the out-ing from town, the fun of the rail or the road, the feasting, the fresh air of the downs and the heath, above all, the “once-a-year-ish-ness” of the thing that keeps the great meetings popular. Nine-tenths of the visitors know nothing about the horses or their owners or their riders, or care to confuse themselves about the odds on animals that may be running to win or lose just as it suits their owners’ pockets.
Epsom, too, generally inaugurates summer, for however many false starts Dame Nature may make with her miscalled springs, it is seldom much before Epsom that there is any downright genial outburst of warm that sets things a-growing almost perceptibly, and does in a night what spring has been nibbling at for a month. Then the cattle get a full bite of rich succulent grass, and lilacs and laburnums, and pink and white thorns—all the flowering tribe—mingle their rich hues with the clean newly-burst foliage and the golden-tipped grateful evergreens, that have helped us so handsomely through the winter. How trim and nice and comfortable all the villas, and houses, and parks, and places look as we pass them in quick succession, each containing a little world of its own.
Between Epsom and Ascott there is a good interval which is generally filled up with broken umbrella-ish sort of weather, better for turnip-sowing than for sitting in the park, which generally clears itself off with a good blue sheet-lightning thunder-storm, and a copious warm rain at the races, which finishes the proclamation of summer, after which people may safely come up from the country with the certainty of not wanting fires. To those who make an annual sight-seeing visit, this is decidedly the best time, a month of fine weather being far more available than six weeks of broken alternations of sunshine and showers.
The road to Roseberry Rocks race-course does not exhibit any great amount of rural or floricultural beauty, whatever it may say for the enterprise of the dairy-farmers, who, with the aid of that great benefactor “muck,” succeed in raising heavy green crops on as unpromising a looking staple as that of the sea-shore itself. Neither, whatever mischief it may lead to, can it be said to possess the “facilis descensus Averni” quality, for it is extremely difficult to get at, being up a very steep hill, to which a hired-by-the-hour-flyman considers it necessary to pause, and block his wheel once or twice, if not to ease his animal by taking a short walk himself, though the job-gentleman generally trots, angling the severity of the rise as he goes, thus performing two journies to his rival’s one. Thanks to the able legislation of Mr. Fitzroy, the London cabman has become a model both in the ways of charges and civility for the country one to follow.
The summit of the Roseberry Rocks’ Mont Blanc being at length attained, a goodly scene bursts upon the view. To the south is the pure glittering sail-dotted sea, next the clean, white stuccoed town stretching extensively along the equally white cliffs; then the circular green course, with its handsome stand, and distant white posts on the brow of the hills, standing in bold relief against the clear blue sky; anon the sheep-dotted downs, backed by the flourishing woods and enclosures of the vale. One almost feels it a pity that so pure and healthful a place should be polluted by the scenes that occasionally take place upon it. Still, if there is a breath of wind stirring it is sure to be had there, and many have been the ejaculations and regrets of the fair after toiling up the sun-roasting hill, at not having brought “something warmer” to brave the breezes of the heights. On this particular occasion rude Boreas was more than ordinarily boisterous, and having a great breadth of petticoat to play upon, there was a corresponding inflation of Crinoline, many of the fair ladies on emerging from their carriages at the stand being driven past their port like peacocks with their tails up on a windy day.
Railways which have condensed our cares, have condensed our pleasures too, and taught us that novelty and not repetition is the true source of enjoyment. Hence, race-meetings which used to be elaborated and attentuated over a whole week, sometimes enlisting the Sunday at each end into the bargain, for the purposes of the publicans, have gradually shrunk into half their proportions, and yet there is seldom more than one day kept up with anything like interest or spirit. People find that railways enable them to shoot out far away, see friends they had rarely met, and visit places they had only heard of, instead of being doomed to the perpetual horse-in-the-mill lives that their forefathers led. Even at our particular watering-place, where pleasure is the real business of life, with the race-course so near as to be only a walk or shilling’s worth of fly, people think one day quite enough, and some disdain even that. Of course, the show-day is the one upon which Mr. Shiney, the silversmith, shares the prize with the winner in the shape of a classical design for some extremely out-of-the-way appendage that a nobleman might be puzzled to place, let alone a man who perhaps hasn’t even a three-legged stool to put it upon, an inconvenience, however, that Mr. Shiney is always ready to rectify by taking it back at the price of old silver. Hence what is most attractive to the company is the least so to the turfite, who thinks the chaste design of golden sovereigns is far better than any model the old masters can supply.
