The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-16 00:00:00

THE COURSE.

The Downs are crowded to an extent that we
have seldom seen. The hill opposite the stand and
far past the paddock, and up on the left to the
" corner," is one dense black mass of carriages and
people—a houseless population as numerous in its
crowds and as varied in its elements as that of the
metropolis itself. It is a real Derby gathering, and,
if possible, a Derby gathering exaggerated with all
its queer melange of high and low—blacklegs and
lords, card-sharpers and countrymen, gentlemen
and ladies, knaves, fools, showmen, holiday folks,
foreigners, trampers, lame, halt, and blind ; all, in
short, whom toil or money could bring together
near London, and what does that not comprise ?
Here is a blind man reading the Scripture, while
near him two other blind men led by dogs are play-
ing so vehemently on whistles as unconsciously to
drown his voice ; beyond these is a juvenile band
whose performances one cannot overlook or pardon,
even on account of their youth ; and to these, after
a brief interval of Aunt Sallys and cocoa-nuts,
succeeds a conjuror, apparently swallowing whole
reams of coloured paper.
Where is the course ? asks a stranger. The place
where it used to be is black and surging like the
ocean in a gale. Here and there a stray policeman
surges up and down like a stormy petrel, a soldier
of the Guards is borne helplessly along on the bil-
lows, or a parasol floats past like some tiny memo-
rial of a wreck. There is a Babel of discordant
sounds. The shrill voices of the ladies who sell the
cards, the sharp crack of the tin guns firing for nuts,
bells ringing everywhere apropos of nothing, Mr.
Dorling himself riding frantically up and down, and
every one pushing, swearing, making futile at-
tempts to smoke, or looking out for some friend
to admire the extraordinary paletot which has
been got up regardless of expense for this spe-
cial occasion. Raise your head a little and look
across towards the hill. There is another nation
there, surrounded by and entrenched behind all
the vehicles in the world. Fifty thousand dejeuners
in the open air are simultaneously going on. There
is a wilderness of parasols, pink and blue, and deli-
cate white, a prevailing voraciousness which you
abhor, because it is so far off, and in the immediate
foreground all the travelling jongleurs have congre-
gated to amuse the people on the hill, who seem to
be thinking of hampers and sandwiches, and cham-
pagne, and Fortnum and Mason, and everything,
in fact, but the great business of the days Under
the Grand Stand is a sort of disused wine-cellar,

whitewashed clean enough, but as small, as
ill-placed, and as inconvenient as can well
be imagined. Here the visitor finds himself
among apparently a new race of pigmy men,
with their gay-coloured silks shining brightly un-
derneath great overcoats, who converse by winks and
nudges of the elbow, and who, with bridle and
saddle round their necks, proceed with solemn
gravity to seat themselves in the scales and test in
an amateur manner their precise weight before
weighing by the proper authorities. There is nothing
in the whole proceeding that is of interest. From
the weighing-room there is always a general move
to the paddock, the cool quiet of which pretty
meadow comes in like a rest after the turmoil of the
course. There is an odd muster always here —peers,
trainers, jockeys, owners, backers, betters, all more
or less engaged with note-making on little slips of
paper or small books, and all on the look out for
authorities, " horsey" men, and what not. From
this point a rush is made to the seats on the Grand
Stand, where thousands are now waiting with
anxiety the solving of the Derby problem of 1866.