12 ENGLISHSAGA

embanked river, the sage Carlyle rode down eighteenth-century
lanes to improve his digestion. Here on Saturdays would come
bowling by many "a spicy turn-out and horse of mettle and
breed," with the little liveried top-hatted tiger swinging on the
footboard behind and his gay bachelor master smoking his
cheroot and flicking his whip as he sped to his riverside villa, with
its fairy-like grounds, cellar of recherche wines, pictures, statues,
and "many a gem of vertue."

Elegant London of royal Victoria's virgin days where Jullien,
the Napoleon of Quadrille, "saucily served Mozart with sauce-
piquant". ?&&. Taglioni danced like a spirit in Rossini's newest
ballet! For all its ragged hungry urchins, its fever-stricken
alleys and crushing poverty, there was still music and gaiety in
it. In August, 1842, Mozart's Cost fan tutte was being sung at His
Majesty's and Rossini's Semimmide at Covent Garden under the
direction of Benedict, while Purcell's King Arthur was rehearsing
at Drury Lane and Spohr's new opera, The Fall of Babylon^ at
the Hanover Rooms.

• •*•••••

There was a pastoral quality about the amusements of our
great-grandparents. The great summer regattas on the Thames
between London Bridge and Hammersmith were attended by
paddle steamers with brass bands and boats full of fluttering
flags and pretty girls giggling in the sunlight under painted
awnings, while the banks were thronged with runners and riders
and convivial parties watching from the festooned balconies and
gardens of riverside pubs. At Putney Fair were Fat Ladies and
Learned Pigs, much "firing of cannon, jollity, shouting, jangling
of street pianos and popping of ginger beer," and many a pull at
Finch's ale. Every Whit Tuesday the Cockneys went en masse to
Greenwich, cargo after cargo going down the river singing and
cheering and devouring stout and sandwiches, to sample the
traditional delights of the great fair—its rows of booths hung
with dolls, gilt gingerbreads and brandy balls, its raree-shows and
performing pigs, its giants and its dwarfs. Here prentices and
shop boys pushed about with whistles, penny trumpets, false
noses and rolled twopenny scrapers—in sound simulating tearing
material—down the backs of their elders. And the park was filled
with young people and hoydens—playing at kiss-in-the-ring,
riding donkeys, or, more simply, tumbling head over heels down
the hill.