The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-03 00:00:00

THE RACE-COURSE AT NIGHT.

We all know how cheerless a ballroom looks on the
morning after the ball ; or, worse still, the supper-room,
with its fragments of programmes, odd gloves, and bon-
bon papers- littering the grates, in which only the ashes
remain. Still all these are hilarious symbols compared to
the Derby course at night. The Grand Stand is a
mere white spectre : the hill-side is empty, but sparkled
over with little fires, which twinkle far and
near. Nearly all the booths are closed, though there
is loud swearing and obscene talk to be heard from most,
and in all lights shine brightly. This has sometimes a
curious effect, for the shadows thrown on the thin canvas
have the effect of a fantoccini show, and thus the figures
of men in their shirts, and women washing in
equal dishabille, are constantly passing over the scenes.
The " German Opera" is an institution which only
such a gathering as Epsom could produce. It is held on
Epsom common at a public-house called The Two Brewers.
Here all the German, Savoyard, and Italian girls who
play on tambourines and hurdy-gurdies regularly assemble
of a night during the race week, and here, too, a very
fair sprinkling of what are termed "swells" may be met
who are so kind to the youngest and the prettiest of
the foreigners as even to offer to drive some of them
back to London—an offer which is seldom de-
clined. The back of the great stands only recall
to mind some bad colliery accident when the bodies have
been brought "to bank," and lie huddled about in their
tattered rags. Beneath Langland's stand some 400
people were sleeping of every age and of every sex. One
was a child of about twelve months old, who was evidently
ill ; but nobody knew whose it was, except that the
mother—a tramp—had left it there while she went to
look for its father. We met the mother a minute after,
and she said she had walked from London to meet the father,
to whom, of course, she was not married, to try and make
him do something for the infant. Her search had been
fruitless, however, though she was confident of ultimate
success. Behind all the stands it was the same tale—
men and women, boys and girls, lying huddled up toge-
ther for warmth in heaps. These, however, were the
lnxurious spots—the posts of vantage. Those who
could not find room slept out upon the common round
little fires of furze, and the police had sometimes
to drag the people from around them to prevent their
clothes being lighted by the spreading fire. In one case
the tattered jacket of a man was smouldering beneath
him, and yet, though quite sober, it was with difficulty he
could be awakened. These, as a rule, were all
of the ~lass who " brush you down," fetch water
for horses, shoeblacks, and all sorts of nondescripts
ready to turn their hands to anything, and to
whom nothing comes amiss, from holding a horse to steal-
ing a watch. The majority, however, leave Epsom as
hungry as they entered it. Under one waggon—for it
must be remembered that, as a rule at Epsom, the people
who have waggons never sleep in them but under
them, sheltered round by bits of canvass—we come upon
a party of negro serenaders. They were very exhausted,
having walked from London the previous night, and
having been singing incessantly for twelve hours. They
had, however, taken £7 Bs., with which they seemed con-
soled, though they, in common with every other person
on the course were loud in their denunciations
of such a poor Derby day. We have as yet only spoken
of the comfortable sleepers out, but beside those who
had the shelter of being under stands or waggons there
were literally hundreds upon hundreds who slept in dry
ditches, under the lee of any wall or bush, or, as with the
Savoyards behind the shelter of their organs. It was a
band of homeless London, with all its vice and poverty con-
densed into one little space, where wasteful riot in the dan-
cing booths and misery and squalor outside them, could be
seen in every form. To those who want a new picture of
life in these days of universal novelty we can only say let
them see the Derby run and then go on the course at
midnight and remain till the shivering dawn wakes up its
wandering population. They will come back from this
inspection certainly wiser and most probably sadder men.
—Pall Mall Gazette.

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GYMNASTICS FOR GIRLS.

An unusual, but very pleasing, private morning per-
formance was given at the Hanover-square Rooms a day
or two ago. Madame Brenner is a lady who has for some
time been engaged in teaching gymnastics to girls ; and on
Monday an audience of relatives and friends assembled to
witness the results of this training. Nothing could be
more gratifying. The young ladies were very prettily
dressed in tunics and trowsers of flannel, which afforded
absolute freedom of movement without trenching upon
the borders of masculine attire. The programme was a
lengthy one, perhaps too lengthy, but it was divided into
three parts to afford intervals of rest ; and it comprised all
the exercises taught, from simple marching to rope lad-
ders and the trapeze. The performances in the last part
appeared to involve rather severe exertion ; but
the performers were certainly not unduly distressed
or, fatigued ; and they seemed thoroughly to
enjoy the plaudits that their skill called forth.
The Times, which gives an account of the performance,
criticises it thus :—The real test of Madame. Brenner's
system, however, is to be sought in the more simple action
which resemble those of ordinary life and here its success
was most remarkable. We never before saw a dozen girls
so thoroughly well "set up," so erect without an atom
of stiffness, or so steady, prompt, and certain in their
movements. All who have watched women are fami-
liar with a certain jerkiness for which they are usually
conspicuous, and which is partly the result of temperament
but chiefly of the spasmodic irritability of untrainedmuscle.
Of this jerkiness Madame Brenner's more finished pupils
shewed no trace, except, perhaps, in the exercises with
battledore and shuttlecock, in which many of them were
deficient in firmness and steadiness of stroke, as well as in
the power of measuring the force to be exerted for the pro-
duction of a given effect. The exercises with rings, and
those with hoops, and the skating (on wheels) were all very
graceful and effective, and the whole performance, ex-
cept in its more violent parts, was pleasing in its cha-
acter. It is more than likely that the violent parts may
be necessary or useful as matters of training, and that to
them some of the finished ease in other movements may
ba due. We affirm no more than that the latter are the
more graceful.. The impulse that has of late years
been given to the mental education of woman, and the
existence of such institutions as the college at Hitchin,
are facts that require to be counterbalanced by a cor-
responding attention to physical development. Girls of
sedentary habits will either be unable to rival others in
point of attainments, or else they will be unable practically
to apply their attainments to the work of life. Physiology
teaches how easy it is to produce an overgrowth of one side
of an organism, and how certainly this overgrowth is
followed or attended by diminution of power in other
directions. On the other hand, it is far from easy to
overwork the frame as a whole ; and if only due proportion
and symmetry between all functions be preserved, there
is no fear that the young will be pdshed too
much. Gymnastics, or at least well-regulated
bodily exercise furnishes the proper security against
over-taxing the brain by study ; and study renders
a correlative service by securing the muscles against
being strained by excessive effort. The greater the pres-
sure of women towards the higher classes of industrial
employment, the greater and more earnest their demand
for schools and teaching; the greater the tension put upon
their minds by examinations and by competition, the more
imperative will be the necessity for the careful and sys-
tematic training of their bodily powers."