[... back to menu for this book]
[-154-]
CHAPTER XV.
WARLIKE WIMBLEDON.
HE was a discontented man, the omnibus-driver, and he said
generally that he didn't like it. Wolunteers might be good, he said, and they
mightn't - leastways, what noise they made, frightening horses with bangin' bands
and such-like, wasn't much count lawyers they was, and clurks, and ribbing-coves
(understood by present writer to be drapers' assistants), and such-like.
Rifle-matches - ah I well, he'd heard tell, but hadn't seen much of that game,
further than the Red House at Battersea, and for nuts at Greenwich Fair. If they
was any good-as men - do you see? they'd come up to Copenhagen House, or the
Brecknock, at Easter Monday, and have a back-fall with those parties that came
up from Devonshire and the North. Wolunteers! he thought he knew a young man in
the public line not far from Tottenham, which - he was all fair and bove-board -
which it was at Wood Green, his name being Obbie, what could
show them Wolunteers something at knurr-and-spell: let em come with their
fur-caps and all their fandangoes! Here he grew defiant, and elbowed me fiercely
with his whip-arm. The whole affair was bellicose. I was on a Waterloo omnibus,
going to the Waterloo station on my way to Wimbledon, then under martial law;
and seeing that the taint had got into the driver's blood, and fearing [-155-]
lest he should kick me with his bluchers, I remained silent and never opened my
mouth until I asked for my railway-ticket.
But when I had curled into my corner in the railway-carriage,
and had taken stock of the arms, accoutrements, and general appearance of the
three privates and the ensign who went down with me, and had weaned my ears from
drinking in the pompous rhetoric of the other occupant of our compartment, a
gentleman of very imposing appearance, to whom, according to his own account,
Wimbledon was indebted for its tenure of existence, I began to ponder over the
omnibus-driver's remarks ; and his reminiscences of Battersea Red House, and the
nuts at Greenwich Fair, reminded me of what my idea of a rifle-match was, as
embodied in the last one in which I took part. Sixteen years, I thought, have
passed since I went down, rifle in hand, to a long strip of meadow bordering the
Rhine, and paid my money to become a competitor at the Dusselberg Schutzen
Fest. A pretty quiet spot, flanked on one side by other meadows filled with
large-uddered mild-eyed cows, whose bells tinkled pleasantly in the ears of the
competitors, and on the other by the rapid-rushing river. There were some
half-dozen painted wooden targets, arranged on the Swiss system; while a little
distance apart, on the top of a high pole, towered a popinjay, to hit which was
the great event of the day. The spectators of the friendly contest, varying,
according to the time of day, from one to three hundred, were all townspeople
well known to the marksmen and to each other, and occupied their time either in
coming to the firing-posts and giving utterly vague and incoherent advice to
their favourites, or in. examining with deep reverence the prizes, consisting of
two silver-mounted bierglaser, and a few electrotyped Maltese crosses bearing
the name of the Schutzen Fest and the date, one of which I saw the other day in
a dressing-table drawer, with a few old [-156-] letters, an odd glove or two, a hacked razor-strop, a
partially-obliterated daguerreotype, and such-like lumber. I don't think we
shot well; I know that an enlightened public would not have liked our
appearance, and that General Hay would have objected to our attitudes, which
were anything but Hythe-position. I am certain that the merest tyro of a
recruit would have scorned our rifles, which required several seconds' notice
before they went off; and I have no doubt that we were supremely ridiculous ;
but I am equally certain that we were undeniably happy. The great charm, I
thought, of such a meeting as that which I am recalling and that to which I am
going, is its quiet - the change from the bustle and roar of ordinary life to the
calm tranquillity, the noiseless serenity, of open country space. If I felt it
then, when merely straying from the monastic seclusion of my university, how
shall I enjoy it now, when flying from the ceaseless hum of London! How
pleasant will be the open heath, dotted here and there with rifle-ranges and
marksmen, the freedom from bustle and noise, the picturesque surroundings, the
fresh turf the elastic air, the - PUTNEY! The voice of the guard announcing my
destination breaks upon my reverie. I jump out of the carriage, and, ascending
the steps of the station, I emerge.
Into Pandemonium. Into a roaring, raving, shouting crowd into
a combination of the road to the Derby and Aldershot Heath on a field-day in
June ; for you have every component part of both. Enormous rolling clouds of
dust, a heterogeneous mass of carriages, open and shut, some regularly licensed,
others improvised for the occasion and be a ring a paper permit obtained
impromptu from Somerset House and gummed on to the panels ; the drivers of the
vehicles shouting, shrieking, touting, beckoning, and gesticulating with whips,
carneying weak-minded and hustling feeble-bodied persons into becoming
passengers ; gipsies, beggars; imps, with the bronze of the country on their
faces and the [-157-] assurance of London in their address, vending cigar-lights,
showing the way, turning "cart-wheels," and being generally obstructive;
volunteer officers clanking a good deal, and volunteer privates unbuttoning
their tunics and showing more shirt-front than is provided for in the
regulations public-houses crammed and overflowing into the road with
drink-seeking wayfarers; station-porters giving up all idea of business, and
flitting from one knot of people to the other, sipping here, sporting there,
like butterflies in velveteen. The inhabitants of Putney evidently divided into
two sections - the natives, who gathered together in grinning masses, who chuckled
fat-headedly, and sniggered, and saw a grand opportunity for shirking work and
passing the entire day in vacant staring ; and the affiliated, acclimatised, or
naturalised Putneians, who are grubs in the City from nine till five, and
butterflies at Putney for the remaining portion of their lives, and whose
wives and daughters looked upon the whole thing as "low," and glared
balefully at us from their plate-glass windows. I managed to survive even their
scowls, and installed myself as one of a cheerful though perspiring party of
seven, in a carriage intended to hold four (and looking, in its check-chintz
lining, as though it had come out in its dressing-gown), which, after five
minutes' dalliance with a knotted whip, a very flea-bitten gray horse was
persuaded to drag up the hill towards the camp.
As we neared the spot, I was reminded of my friend the
omnibus-driver's observations anent Greenwich Fair and shooting for nuts; for I
am bound to say that, in the course of a long and varied experience, I never saw
anything so like a fair as the Wimbledon camp seen from the outside. A wooden
railing, shabby enough in itself, and rendered more shabby by the torn and
ragged bills sticking to it, surrounds the camp; from within float sounds of
distant bands, popping rifles, and cheering populace; while immediately outside
stands that salvage of nothing-doing, lounging, thieving, drunken [-158-]
scum invariably to be found in the immediate vicinity of all
fairs. On first entering, the same idea prevailed, for there were a few
miserable little booths, in front of which one expected to see painted canvases
of the giantess, the armadillo, and the tiger that devoured the Indian on
horseback. But as I progressed up the ground, and passed wonderingly
through the long line of tents, this notion vanished entirely, and instead of
being in a fair, I found myself in a very village of canvas. An hour's stroll
showed me that this village was a town. The early Australian gold-diggers had
their canvas town ; and here we had ours, within a twenty minutes' run from
London. Canvas Town, by all means! for in what town could you find more
completeness, or in what town would you require more than is here to your hand ?
For in the course of my survey I have lighted upon a newspaper- office (
Volunteer Service Gaize//e), a police-station, a post-office with the hours
of the arrival and despatch of mails duly placarded outside, a telegraph-office
with temporary wires communicating with - everywhere, whence you could send the
name of the winner of the Queen's Prize to your friend Ryot in the indigo trade
at Suez, or utterly depress Sneesh of McMull, yachting off Malta, with the
tidings that the Scotch were beaten in the International Match; many taverns
and restaurants ; many gunsmiths' and shops (tents) for kindred matters; a club,
where four copies of The Times are to be found, with other journals in
proportion, and from which issuing the sound of a grand piano and a musical
voice, proved that a great step in advance had been made in club matters, and
that lady members were admitted. Farther on, here and there, I found public
boards whereon printed matters affecting the common weal might be - and were - read; " Lost" and "Found
"(rare the latter) notices, shooting-scores for
great prizes, and other documents, very like the inscriptions on pounds and
such-like country-town institutions. I am not much of a reckoner in such
matters, but [-159-] from my observation I should imagine that Canvas Town covers
many acres; it is duly fenced-off from the outlying grounds, and it has streets
and a square regularly arranged. In what might be called the market-place, at
the back of what I choose to consider the town-hall (which, to vu]gar minds, is
the "Grand Stand"), I find the public clock, a monster Bennet, and a
little farther off the public thermometer, which tells you everything scientific
which you cannot possibly want to know, and which, while being, I understand,
excessively useful to the erudite, is so exact and so complicated, that even my
very cursory inspection of it sends inc away headachy and discomfited.
The whole of this city, which teems with an ever-busy,
running, pushing, shouting, gun-carrying, band-playing, red, green, gray, and
brown population, is under canvas, save in a few instances where canvas is
supplemented by wood. Far and away, right and left, stretch the long lines of
tents, looking somewhat ghostly, even in the bright afternoon sun, and
suggesting a very spectral appearance at night. The tents are of two shapes-some
like Brobdingnagian dishes of blancmange, others like inverted monster pegtops
without the pegs. Strolling on, I come upon a little oasis of painted brick, a
small house belonging to the miller, whose mill hooks like a huge genie with
arms outspread, protecting the phantom-village he has called into existence - a
little house which seemed quite ashamed of its conventional appearance, and had
done its best to hide it by having tents in its garden and right up to its very
doorstep; and as I skirt the garden I become aware of something couchant in the
grass - something which I imagine at first to be a snake, but which
turns out to be nothing more than a harmless policeman off duty, who is lying
supine on his back looking up at the sky, rural, happy, contemplative - as though
there were no such things as bad "beats" or Irish navvies with
homicidal tendencies. Recalled to sublunary matters by [-160-]
my approach, he sits up and gives me good-day; and sitting
down beside him, I enter into conversation, find him a very pleasant fellow,
and learn from him, amongst other things, that Canvas Town has a place for
public worship, divine service being performed on Sunday in the Grand Stand, to
a large and attentive congregation, and a school - where, however, the "instructors" are, to a man, from
Hythe.
On leaving my policeman, I strayed pleasantly into the arms
of some of my old companions the Grimgribber Rifles, and who received me with
the greatest cordiality. From them I learnt that the most interesting feature in
Wimbledon life was the camp-fire and its gathering, which was decidedly a thing
to be seen. It sounded well - a camp-fire, with plenty of punch, and singing, and
ladies' company, to be preceded by a dinner with my old corps, and to be
concluded with a dog-cart drive to London - so I agreed to stop; and very glad I
am I determined on this arrangement, for the camp-fire was the end which crowned
the day's work, and crowned it royally.
After a capital dinner, we moved out about nine o'clock to
the "meeting," which was held in a large open space, a circle, surrounded by
a rising mound, forming a perfectly natural amphitheatre. In the middle of the
circle blazed a large fire of dried heather; on the mound - some on chairs (ladies
these mostly), some couchant at full length, some squatting on their hams hike
Indians at a council-fire - sat a motley assemblage, composed of volunteers in all
uniforms and from all counties, natives of Wimbledon, neither pure nor simple,
gaping people from town, and people from the neighbourhood the ladies muffled in
pretty capes and fantastic hoods and ravishing yachting-jackets; the gentlemen
in that stern simplicity of white neckcloth and black everything else, which
gives such picturesque dignity to the dining Briton. Nor was Scotland Yard
without its representatives. Not possessing the [-161-] advantages enjoyed by caricaturists, I have never seen a
policeman at supper in my kitchen, and consequently have never been a
spectator of that hilarity to which the "force" abandons itself when it is
off duty. Certainly, at Wimbledon the police never entirely forgot that they
were not as other men ; they smiled, they spoke, they sang ; but I imagine the
singer only let out his stock by one hole to stiffer his high C to have scope,
and that in no moment of delight did any one of them cease to give an occasional
slap at his coat-tails, to assure himself that his truncheon had not been purloined. But it was very
jolly. When we arrived (and we had
scented the burning heather and the tobacco a quarter of a mile off), Lord
Bowling was just finishing a comic song, which, so far as I could make out, was
about some transaction in which a Jew and some poached eggs were equally
implicated ; and when the roar of applause which followed the termination died
away, Lord Echo, who was apparently the president of the evening, called upon
"A 395;" and that "vigilant officer," as, no doubt, he has been
often described in print, set to work with a will, and piped us a sentimental
ditty with a good voice and much real feeling. While he sang I looked round me
in wonder. Rembrandtish, or rather more after the wild dash of Salvator Rosa,
was the scene in front the fitful glare of the fire lighting up now, leaving in
dusk then, uniforms of various sombre hues, relieved here and there with a sharp
bit of scarlet stocking, the top of which, surrounded by the dark knickerbocker,
glowed like a fire in a grate; incandescent tips of cigars dotting the black
background, illumined now and then in a little space by a vesuvian match;
farther still, the long, weird, gaunt common, stunted, blank, and dreary, with
a ghostly fringe of waning spectral tents. This was a quiet night. " Not
one of our great meetings," said a Victoria Rifle to me ; and yet there must have
been between three and four hundred people present. Close by me is a [-162-]
family party, evidently from one of the houses hard by,
consisting of papa, bland and full of port-wine ; mamma,. half-sedate,
half-anxious; two noble sons of sixteen and fifteen, braving papa in the matter
of tobacco, and entirely absorbed therein; some very pretty daughters and dining
friends. As Policeman A 395 warbles forth his ditty, one pretty daughter (the
auburn-haired daughter) and one dining friend (with the shaved face and the
heavy Austrian moustache) want "to see better" - happy A 395, to be the
attraction of so much curiosity - so they gradually edge off until they are quite
by themselves, and then they no doubt see admirably, for the gentleman looks
down at the lady, and the lady looks down at the turf and draws figures on it
with her parasol. Never mind, A 395 ; you are not the first person by a good
many who has stood innocent godfather to this kind of business ; and you quiver
so nicely and make such a prolonged shake on the last note of your song, that
you deserve all the applause and the glass of punch bestowed on you, as you make
a stiff bow and retire.
Who next, my Lord Echo? Who next? Who but Harrison? And so
soon as the name is heard, the welkin (what is the welkin? you don't know! I don't! but it's a capital phrase), the welkin rings
with shouts of delight. A
prime favourite, Harrison, evidently. Doubtless a buffo-singer, short, fat,
broad, genial, and jolly, as all comic men should be. No! Harrison is a slim
handsome fellow of middle height, with a bright eye, a mellow voice, and a lithe
agile figure. " Capital fellow," says the man of the Victorias next to me;
"tremendous favourite here; sings like a lark, talks like a book, and
starts next week to join his regiment in India." Bravo, Harrison ! Well sung, my
young friend After Harrison has sung his song, he gives us (being loudly
encored) an imitation of a "stump oration," which, truth to tell, is a dull
affair. At its conclusion, to [-163-] our astonishment, Lord Echo calls upon General
McMortar for a
song. We think it is a joke, and have no idea that the gallant Inspector is
among us. But lo! like the ghost of Banquo, the well-known form of General
McMortar rises amidst the smoke, and the well-known voice commences. Not a song
! no, a speech ! The old story of volunteers being descended from those old
English bowmen (who have done such enormous service to writers and speakers on
this matter), and of pluck, and valour, and of their being called upon to resist
an enemy ; and, in fact, a choice selection from the speeches which the good
general has delivered at inspections for the last three years. This is a damper
! Men begin to scuffle off; ladies shiver and clasp their cloaks tighter round
them the evening is evidently finished - thanks to General McMortar.
Off we go then, making towards the road as best we may one
minute's halt at the Grimgribber tent, for what is known as a "nip;" and
then home in my friend's dog-cart, with a very happy reminiscence of the day's
loitering and the night's camp-fire.