XXXIV
From Rossington Bridge, a long pale rise, bordered by coppices of hazels and silver birches, leads past Cantley to Tophall, where one of the old road wagons was struck by lightning on the 22nd of May 1800. One of the seven horses drawing the wagon was killed, and four others were stunned; while the great lumbering conveyance and its load of woollen cloths, muslins, cottons, rabbit-down and a piano were almost entirely burnt. The disaster was a long-remembered event for miles round, and one of the Doncaster inns was renamed from it, the “Burning Waggon.” This house has long since been renamed the “Ship.”
Passing Tophall, and by a bridge over the railway cutting, Doncaster is seen, with its great church-tower, smoking chimney-stalks, and puffing locomotives, map-like, down below, three miles away. Two miles further, past Hawbush, or Lousybush, Green, on which unaristocratically named spot old-time tramps used to congregate, Doncaster racecourse is reached, on the old Town Moor.
Doncaster, all England over, stands for racing and the St. Leger, just as much as Epsom for the Derby, and racing has been in progress here certainly ever since 1600, and perhaps even before. The renowned St. Leger, which still draws its hundreds of thousands every September, was established in 1778 and named by the Marquis of Rockingham after Lieut.-Colonel Ashby St. Leger. All Yorkshire, and a large proportion of other shires, flocks to witness this classic race, greatly to the benefit of the town, which owns the racecourse and derives the handsome income of some £30,000 per annum from it. Doncaster, indeed, does exceedingly well out of racing, and the Town Council can well afford the £380 annually expended in stakes. But the St. Leger week is a terrible time for quiet folks, for all the brazen-throated blackguards of the Three Kingdoms are then let loose upon the town, and not even this sum of £30,000 in relief of the rates quite repays them for the infliction.
Robert Ridsdale, originally “Boots” at a Doncaster inn, rose to be owner of Merton Hall, about 1830. He was a bookmaker. Betting is a pursuit in which only the bookmakers secure the fortunes.
Dickens, who was here during the St. Leger week in 1857, in company with Wilkie Collins, and stayed at the still extant “Angel,” saw this side of horse-racing fully displayed. Looking down into the High Street from their window, the friends saw “a gathering of blackguards from all parts of the racing earth. Every bad face that had ever caught wickedness from an innocent horse had its representation in the streets,” and the next day after the great race every chemist’s shop in the town was full of penitent bacchanalians of the night before, roaring to the busy dispensers to “Give us soom sal-volatile or soom damned thing o’ that soort, in wather—my head’s bad!” Night was made hideous for all who sojourned at the “Angel” by the “groaning phantom” that lay in the doorway of one of the bedrooms and howled until the morning, like a lost soul; explanation by the landlord in the morning eliciting the fact that the fearsome sounds were caused by a gentleman who had lost £1,500 or £2,000 by backing a “wrong ’un,” and had accordingly drank himself into a delirium tremens.
Sir William Maxwell of Menreith, who won the St. Leger with Filho da Puta, in 1815, celebrated his success by thrusting his walking-stick through all the pier-glasses at the “Reindeer”; expressing his regret that there were no more to smash, as an adequate relief to his feelings.
Dean Pigou, once vicar of Doncaster, bears later testimony to the character of a large proportion of the race-crowds, and tells amusingly how the contingents of pickpockets who flock here on these occasions disguise themselves as clergymen, a fact well known to the police, and resulting in the arrest of a genuine cleric on one occasion. “You old rascal!” said the constable; “we’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
Doncaster, out of the season, is a singularly quiet and inoffensive town, and looks as innocent as its native butterscotch. Quiet, because the locomotive and carriage-works of the Great Northern Railway are a little way outside; inoffensive, because it is unpretending. At the same time it is just as singularly devoid of interest. Almost its oldest houses are those on Hall Cross Hill, as the traveller passes the elm-avenue by the racecourse and enters the town from the direction of London; and they are scarce older than the days of the Prince Regent. Very like the older part of Brighton, this southern end of Doncaster is the best the town has to show.
Hall Cross—originally called “Hob Cross”—was destroyed in the seventeenth-century troubles. It was a late Norman structure, and is copied in the existing Cross, set up by the Corporation, as an inscription informs the passer-by, in 1793. A weird structure it is, too, consisting of a stone pillar of five engaged shafts, reflecting credit on neither the original designer nor the restorers. But there it stands, elevated above the modern road, as evidence of a momentary aberration in favour of restoring antiquity of which the Corporation were guilty, a century or so ago. Doncastrians have purged themselves so thoroughly of that weakness in later years that they have left no other vestige of old times in their streets. The finest example of an old inn belonging to the town was destroyed in the pulling down of the “Old Angel” in 1846, in order to clear a site for the Guildhall. Others are left, but, if old-fashioned, they are scarcely picturesque: the “Angel,” “Ram,” “Elephant,” “Salutation,” and “Old George.”
In old newspaper files we find Richard Wood, of the “Reindeer” and “Ram” inns, High Street, advertising that his coaches were the best—“the horses keep good time—no racing”; from which we conclude that there had been some. It was Richard Wood, then the foremost coach-proprietor in Doncaster, who first gave employment to that celebrated painter of horses and coaches, John Frederick Herring, who, although a Londoner born, lived long and worked much at Doncaster. It was in 1814, when in his nineteenth year, that he first came to the town, the love of horses bringing him all the way. Seeing the “Royal Union” starting at eight o’clock in the morning with “Doncaster” displayed in large letters on its panels, on the inspiration of the moment he took a seat, and arrived in time to witness the horse “William” win the St. Leger.
There is a tale of his observing a man clumsily trying to paint a picture of the Duke of Wellington, seated on his charger, for the panel of a coach to be called after that hero of a hundred fights. He had, somehow, managed to worry through the figure of the Duke, and to secure a recognisable likeness of him—because, for this purpose, all that was necessary was the representation of an ascetic face and a large, beak-like nose—but he boggled at the horse. Herring offered to paint in the horse for him, and did it so well that he earned the thanks of the proprietor, who happened to appear on the scene and commissioned him to paint the insignia of the “Royal Forester,” Doncaster and Nottingham coach; a white lion on one door and a reindeer on the other. These he performed with equal credit, and taking a seat beside the proprietor in question, who, with others, mounted for a ride to “prove” the springs and christen the new coach, he at once offered himself as coachman. Mr. Wood, for it was he, was naturally surprised at the idea of a painter driving a coach, but consented to give him a trial the next day on the “Highflyer,” and to abide by the decision of the regular driver of that famous drag. The result was favourable, and Herring obtained the box-seat, not of the “Royal Forester,” but of the “Nelson,” Wakefield and Lincoln coach. He was, after two years, transferred to the Doncaster and Halifax road, and thence promoted to the “Highflyer,” painting in his leisure hours many of the signs of Doncaster’s old inns. It was when on this road that he attracted the attention of a local gentleman, who obtained him a commission for a picture which laid the foundation of his success.
Nearly all the local signs that Herring painted have disappeared. Some were taken down when he became famous, and added to private collections of pictures; while others were renewed from the effects of time and weather by being painted over by journeyman painters. Some landlords, however, knew the value of these signs well enough. There was, for instance, mine host of the “Doncaster Arms,” who, having come from cow-keeping to the inn-keeping business, determined to change the name of the house to the “Brown Cow.” He induced Herring to paint the new sign, which immediately attracted attention. According to one story, a gentleman posting north chanced to see it and stopped the postboy while he endeavoured to drive a bargain for the purchase. He offered twice as much as mine host had originally paid; ten times as much, but without avail. “Not for twenty times,” said that licensed victualler; and the connoisseur went without it.
The other version makes the traveller a very important man, travelling with four post-horses, and represents the landlord as being away, and the landlady as the obstinate holder. “I’s rare and glad, measter, my husband’s not at home,” she said, “for p’r’aps he’d ha’ let thee hae it; but I wain’t; for what it’s worth to thee it’s worth to me, so gang on.”
A list has been preserved of the signs painted by Herring at Doncaster, but they will be sought in vain to-day. They were—
| The Labour in Vain | Marsh Gate. |
| The Sloop | Marsh Gate. |
| The Brown Cow | French Gate. |
| The Stag | The Holmes. |
| The Coach and Horses | Scot Lane. |
| The White Lion | St. George Gate. |
The “Labour in Vain” represented the fruitless labour of attempting to wash a black man white.
The old sign of the “Salutation,” painted by a Dutchman in 1766, was touched up by Herring. Many years ago it was removed, but has now been replaced, and may be seen on the front of the house in Hall Cross. It is much weather-worn, and represents, in dim and uncertain fashion, two clumsy looking old gentlemen in the costume of a hundred and forty years ago, rheumatically saluting one another. The sign of the “Stag,” painted on plaster still remains, in a decaying condition.
Herring continued as a coachman for several years, and only left the box in 1830, when he went to reside in London. From that date until his death in 1865 he devoted himself entirely to painting.
Richard Wood, Herring’s first employer, was part-proprietor of the “Lord Nelson” coach, among others. Especial mention must be made of this particular conveyance, because if not the first, it must have been one of the earliest, of the coaches by which passengers were allowed to book through to or from London, and to break their journey where they pleased. To those who could not endure the long agonies of a winter’s journey except in small doses, this arrangement must have been a great boon. To this coach belongs the story of a Frenchman, still preserved by Doncaster gossips.
It was in the early part of the century that he wanted to travel from “Doncastare” to London. Inquiring at the booking-office for the best coach, the clerk mentioned the “Lord Nelson.”
“Damn your Lord Nelson!” says the Frenchman in a rage. “What others are there?”
The names of the others heaped greater offence upon him, for they were the “Waterloo” and the “Duke of Wellington.” So perhaps he posted instead, and saved his national susceptibilities at the expense of his pocket.
Another, and a later, coach-proprietor and innkeeper at Doncaster was Thomas Pye, of the “Angel.” He lived to see railways ruin the coaching business, but he kept the “Angel” for years afterwards, and his family after him. The Queen, on her way to Scotland in 1861, slept there one night, and the loyal family promptly added the title of “Royal” to the old house.
Coaching days were doomed at Doncaster in 1859, when the Midland Railway was opened and diverted the traffic; and nine years later, when the Great Northern Railway came, the last coach was withdrawn.
Few think of Doncaster as a centre of spiritual activity. Racing seems to comprehend everything, and to make it, like a famous winner of the St. Leger a case of “Eclipse first; the rest nowhere!” Even Doncaster butterscotch is more familiar than Doncaster piety, but the Church is particularly active here, nevertheless. That activity only dates from the appointment of Dr. Vaughan as vicar, in 1859. Before his time religion was very dead, so that, when the great parish church of St. George was burnt down in 1853, the then vicar, Dr. Sharpe, on seeing the flames burst out, could at first only think of his false teeth, which he had left in the building, and exclaimed in horror-stricken tones, “Good gracious! and I have left my set of teeth in the vestry.”
The church was rebuilt by Sir Gilbert Scott. It is a magnificent building, but too palpably Scott, and the details of the carving painfully mechanical. Also, the stone was so badly selected that the crockets and enrichments were long ago found to be decaying, and “restoration” of a building not then fifty years old was found necessary.
Dr. Vaughan was a bitter opponent of horse-racing, and so was not popular with the sporting element; and as Doncaster is, above everything, given over to sport, this meant that his nine years’ vicariate was a sojourn in a hostile camp. His predecessors had been more complaisant. Always within living memory the church bells had been rung on the St. Leger day, and generally at the moment the winning horse had passed the post. Dr. Vaughan put an end to this and quietly inaugurated a new era, not by raising a dispute, but by obtaining the keys of the belfry on the first St. Leger day of his incumbency, and, locking the door, going for a walk which kept him out of the town until the evening!