The meeting is divided into three separate days running, each day having a distinctive title, and known to those familiar with equine sport, as the "Stakes Day," the "Cup Day," and the "Duke's Plate Day."
It was a beautiful and unclouded English July noon, and the smell of the hawthorn hedges, and the faint breath of the hollyhocks made a perfume in the air, which banished all humors and sulkiness from the crowds of well dressed and well bred people who had been waiting to hear the saddling bell rung before the start. Lithe and sinewy little jockeys, clad in parti-colored silk shirts, and wearing kaleidoscopic caps of the same material, walked the fresh-looking, silken-maned, and symmetrical-limbed horses, up and down the velvety green sward, to give the high bred English girls an opportunity to inspect their favorites, whose colors predominated in the shades of their gloves, parasols, and gracefully-hung robes, which rustled around their supple and elegant figures.
Under high, sheltering greenwood trees, cosy seats were arranged for the ladies, who made the Lawn picturesque with their bright colored dresses that shone with splendor as their owners gathered in brilliant patches on the velvety turf, gossiping and chatting while Guardsmen, and Clubmen, Heavy Swells, and noisy boys, from Eton and Harrow, gamboled and shouted as if at cricket, and sedate gownsmen from Cambridge, and Double Firsts, and Wranglers, from Oxford, made wagers, and drew from their coat-pockets small betting books to record the sums invested.
The Embankment, a high, long, and well-kept mound of grass-covered earth, was swarming with the fair sex, all of whom had their swan-like necks encircled with white lace ruffs, which serve so well as a setting for a well-shaped and milk-white throat.
Afar off we could observe, through yawning gaps in the ancient and stately trees, which were pierced by the ruddy beams of sunlight, the tall towers and fair proportions of Goodwood House, the magnificent mansion of the Duke of Richmond. Twenty to twenty-five thousand people were gathered in the noble old Park whose vistas stretched off into dells, copses, and woodland nooks, for thousands of acres.
Here were gathered all the well-known aristocratic patrons of the turf in England, men who would hardly be seen at Newmarket or Epsom, and here again were the racing men, whose names are met with everywhere in England, where the warning bell is rung to saddle, and where thousands may be lost and won in an hour—the Westmorelands, the Savilles, Chaplins, Anneslies, Prince Soltykoff, Count de Lagrange, who owned "Gladiateur," Lord Vivian, Sir Frederick Johnstone, Lord Roseberry, Sir Joseph Hawley, Admiral Rous, Captain Hall, Lord Wilton, Lord St. Vincent, Lord Ailesbury, Sir C. Legard, Baron Rothschild, the Duke of Beaufort, Mr. W.S. Crawfurd, Lord Poulett, Lord Falmouth, Lord Calthorpe, Mr. E. Brayley, Lord Strafford, Mr. Bromsgrove, and many others, titled and untitled, who are leaders among the racing aristocracy. The Marquis of Hastings, and the Duke of Newcastle, that day, were absent—the first in his grave, the other beggared by his extravagance, and an outcast among his peers.
As the day grew apace, the swarms of people became more densely packed until all classes of the sporting multitude were represented. There was the "Welcher," who makes bets and does not pay when he loses, a low-sized, stumpy fellow, in cutaway frock coat and drab beaver hat, a huge horse's head pin sticking out of his gaudy, blue scarf, which is dotted with small white balls, and wearing a shaggy moustache, which he twists with the head of his cane, that has for a knob a nag's head, in bone-work.
Yonder, stopping to ask for a noggin of gin from one of the proprietors of the numerous ginger beer and refreshment stands, is the London prize fighter—a model, in his way—thick set, broad in the loins, and having a murderous forehead and a battered face, from some recent encounter, one of those dangerous-looking, suspicious fellows, whom you may meet with any night wandering about the docks in Wapping, or lounging at the notched doorway of a tavern in Shoreditch, or Whitechapel.
Sauntering this way, where I stand in a shady spot with my American friend, are two "heavy swells," dressed in the height of fashion, and mincing their vowels in a feminine manner; yet effeminate as their language sounds, they are both massive-looking fellows, and now I recollect having seen both leaning out of the bow window of the Guard's Club, in Pall Mall, and one of the pair I have also noticed trooping his company at St. James' Palace, at the unusually early hour—for him—of nine o'clock, of a summer's morning.
Men are gambling, and singing, and eating, and drinking, and betting shillings and sovereigns all around us, and my companion seems stunned by the noise and uproar which rises and swells in an indistinct way this hot July day, as we move from place to place seeking a quiet nook where we may commune together.