THE FIGHTING FIFTIES ' 143

kisses blown to her was greeted with a cheer. Among the sweet-
williams and Canterbury bells sat old gentlemen at their cottage
doors smoking long pipes and giving as good as they took from
the wags on the passing brakes. At each successive turnpike
there was a jam, and here and at the roadside pubs the noise
was like all England speaking at once.

On the course itself the colours of the rainbow, and many
more crude, mingled. Round the carriages and coaches bare-
footed, hungry-looking beggars, gipsies and children swarmed
seeking food. The world of fashion and the workaday City
rubbed shoulders with comic negro singers, hucksters selling
trinkets and red-haired Scottish lassies dancing to the sound of
bagpipes. On vehicles overlooking the course sat jolly old boys
from Change or counter in top-hats with side whiskers, high
stocks and massive gold chains suspended across monumental
waistcoats, drinking champagne out of long glasses and eating
game pie, sandwiches and melon. Behind them were painted
booths and bookies* stands, and all the fun of the great day—
boxers and banjos, thimble rigs and knock-em-downs, shooting
and archery galleries, skittle alleys and dirty, bright-coloured,
bawling vendors of every kind.

Towards evening, when the races were over and swarms of
carrier pigeons had borne their news of triumph or disaster
into every corner of England, the carnival entered on its final
stage. Bacchus and the old Saxon gods of horn and mead seemed
to have descended on to the packed, twilit downs. The astonished
Frenchman, Taine, tried to describe the-scene:

"Twenty-four gentlemen triumphantly range on their
omnibus seventy-five bottles which they have emptied.
Groups pelt each other with chicken bones, lobster^shells,
pieces of turf. Two parties of gentlemen have descended
from their omnibuses and engaged in a fight, ten against
ten; one of them gets two teeth broken. There are humorous
incidents: three men and a lady are standing erect in their
carriage; the horses move on, they all tumble, the lady
with her legs in the air; peals of laughter follow. Gradually
the fumes of wine ascend to the heads; these people so
proper, so delicate, indulge in strange conduct; gentlemen
approach a carriage containing ladies and young girls, and,
stand shamefully against the wheels; the mother tries to