DERBY DAY IN THE EAST END. [COMMUNICATED.]
.AFEW weeks ago a party of newsboys in a boys' club in Limehouse were discussing the annual Whitsun outing. They were debating the rival claims of various spots close to London, when One Of them suddenly remembered that Derby Day this year fell some days before the holiday, instead of, as usually, just after it. Their gains, legitimate and illegitimate, would therefore be beyond all normal propor- tions, and a desire for luxury could be indulged. Immediately the scope of their preparations was enlarged. Southend, and even Margate, were not too distant goals for their ambitions. A visitor to those places on Whit-Monday might well be surprised to find there, so distant and so long after the event, an echo twelve days old from the Downs at Epsom.
To any observer in the East End on the afternoon of Derby Day these hopes would have appeared to be justified. The streets at about three o'clock presented a strange spectacle of strenuous idleness. The ordinary traffic seemed unaffected; but the pavements revealed a state of suspended animation. The familiar little mobs of boys standing at the corners where the cyclist paper-carrier dashes into sight were everywhere largely increased. Groups of two or three were talking list- lessly, obviously ill at ease and expectant. "Lunch Scores," "England Declare," "How I Got Roj.: by Togo," and similar effervescent placards were almost unheeded. Clerks popped restlessly but of shops to see if the newsboys were in sight, and, disappointed, scurried back again like rabbits on a hill- side. Men with significant notebooks and slips of paper went to and fro and disappeared. The police looked on, stolid but sympathetic, not ti.oubling to keep the loafers moving. Avery one was waiting for what presently came. A confused murmur arose in the distance, resolving itself soon into cries of " Winner !" " Durby Winner!" The bicyclists came panting along, their furious speed checked, as by a powerful brake, by a tail of boys eagerly dragging the papers out of the satchels. The loiterers turned this way and that to catch the boys. Hoarse, raucous voices whispered the mysterious word "Fav'ritjordy," as an early edition, containing no news at all, was thrust into the buyer's hand. The great race was over, and thousands of men and families for a month to come would Teel the backwash of its artificial tide.
In a little while all was at refit again. It was not till the evening that Whitechapel began to be really moved. The morning had sun the outgoing stream of racegoers, placid, but happy in anticipation. The afternoon fed the appetites
of those who never get the chance to see a racehorse. The evening was life. As the warm day closed, and night cooled the tired air, the roar of the cobble-stoned streets under heavy brewers' drays and railway vans grew less and less insistent, so that all other sounds had each a separate and distinguish- able voice. It was about eight o'clock—at a time when, from a few tall factories, workers were still looking down upon the movement below—that the first arrivals began to appear from over the bridges, straggling up from the riverside by way of Fenchurch Street and the lltlinories into the wide vistas of Whitechapel High Street and the Mile End Road. But daylight had entirely waned before the main bulk returned. The late dusk, .lasting till well after ten o'clock, was just the setting for such a diverse crowd as then filled the broad road unceasingly. It showed them up with a curiously vague distinctness, and the stillness of the night accentuated the cacophony of their joy. The cornet and the French horn were the most frequent instruments of rapture ; the con- certina was strangely rare. But the human voice bore all else down. Music-hall sentiment, given with remarkable unison and fidelity, if not with sweetness, was preferred to humour, in the songs ; but cat-calls, inchoate bellowingo, and the shouted gibe were found to indicate the temper of the rejoicings most adequately.
The vehicles themselves represented every make that fancy could devise or money procure. Here a coster-barrow. weighed down with half-a-dozen burly. men clad in the genuine but obsolescent costume of ,their calling, struggled bravely from tavern to beershop by the dogged efforts of a persevering donkey. There an opulent-looking brougham, the remains of a feast resting by the driver's side, rolled soberly through the press. Vast freights of revellers filled whole argosies of four-horsed brakes. Light traps collided harmlessly, amid objurgations, with packed omnibuses, whose green sides, plastered over with paper notices "To Epsom," seemed oddly flamboyant in so sombre an environment. Great stone jars, now doubtless empty, gave cause to doubt the spontaneity of much of the merriment ; though flags, Chinese lanterns, and branches of may protested the hilarity with which the expedition had set out. There was little or no trace of loss or gain those who had lost were as 'ready to drown their sorrows in festivity as those who had won to celebrate their winnings. A somewhat riotous aanative- ness was very conspicuous. The big brakes contained numbers of girls gaily dressed in the garish proceeds of their "hat club" or "feather club," while an older generation smiled genteelly and hailed acquaintances in every passing vehicle. With all its variousness, the monstrous procession appeared interminable. Outside every large public-house a host gathered, and yet there was hardly a break in the rolling wheels. If one went into a side-street, a stray van would be disgorging its load, breaking the silence rudely. But the main roads showed no diminution until at last one became suddenly aware, just as one does in watching the morning and evening crowds flocking over London Bridge, that the unend- ing train had faded imperceptibly into the general life of the London streets, and was no longer a thing apart.
The merry-makers were almost entirely English, so far as could be judged. They were of every station in life, and the wonder was that so many different types should all, apparently, find a home in the East End. Not a few, many of them obviously bookmakers, wore frock-coats, with tall hats tilted at a rakish angle. From their carriages there usually pro- truded the apparatus of a little platform. Other were clearly small tradesmen, out for the day with wives and daughters. Others, again, the simplest and most unaffected of them all, were of a recognisable labourer-class ; some decent and decently dressed, but a few manifestly predatory,—the professional bullies attached to the worst sort of racing- man, gross, hulking creatures with brutal faces and animal eyes. In the more distinctly alien quarters the travellers seemed to some extent out of place. It was unusual to see so many English faces unrelieved by any foreign features. But the alien element made up for the invasion by thronging the pavements in unwonted numbers, the women, in particular, arrayed in the astonishing finery which is their chief characteristic and their besetting weak- ness. Not even the rain which fell heavily a little before ten o'clock could check the general gaiety. The stream flowed on, with here and there an overflow into minor thoroughfares,
or an eddy at some well-known stopping-place, until soon after eleven it ran dry. At midnight there were still a few belated arrivals, still a few clusters engaged in refreshment. Shouts and uncouth sounds still broke out intermittently till far into the night. But they were only the last spasms of too 'violent delight. The East End grew more and more silent, till the hay-waggons and slaughterers' vans woke it to work again. Derby Day was over.
The same scene was repeated on the night after the Oaks ; but less vividly. It recurs every year, and there is no reason to believe that the great carnival is waning in popularity in the least. It is an institution singularly typical of the good and the mean elements in the English character. John Nyren's Hampshire audience, with its keen partisanship, its robust and one-sided common-sense, watched the game much as the best of these East-Enders see the Derby and exult in the day's outing. They are there to enjoy themselves ; they are keen, and their blood tingles at any contest, even if they know little of its refinements ; but through all their pleasure they are self-conscious, unable to let themselves go except with the jerky jocularity of the English middle and lower classes. Their amusement is not in itself vicious, if it is not of a high order. The trickery, the waste, the meanness, are vicious enough ; but the spirit in which the parties, or the majority of them, set out for their day's enjoyment is as innocent in intention as it is ineradicable. Perhaps progress and commerce are not furthered, are even hindered, by such a dislocation of life and business as Derby Day entails. But in spite of all the crime and vice and want which it inevitably brings, there must still be something not altogether base, something permanent, in an event which can stir so intricately and so profoundly the poorest parts of the greatest city in the world. F. J. H. D.
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