From the “Mirror of the Months.”
Now, at last, the Easter week is arrived, and the poor have for once in the year the best of it,—setting all things, but their own sovereign will, at a wise defiance. The journeyman who works on Easter Monday should lose his caste, and be sent to the Coventry of mechanics, wherever that may be. In fact, it cannot happen. On Easter Monday ranks change places; Jobson is as good as sir John; the “rude mechanical” is “monarch of all he surveys” from the summit of Greenwich-hill, and when he thinks fit to say “it is our royal pleasure to be drunk!” who shall dispute the proposition? Not I, for one. When our English mechanics accuse their betters of oppressing them, the said betters should reverse the old appeal, and refer from Philip sober to Philip drunk; and then nothing more could be said. But now, they have no betters, even in their own notion of the matter. And in the name of all that is transitory, envy them not their brief supremacy! It will be over before the end of the week, and they will be as eager to return to their labour as they now are to escape from it; for the only thing that an Englishman, whether high or low, cannot endure patiently for a week together, is, unmingled amusement. At this time, however, he is determined to try. Accordingly, on Easter Monday all the narrow lanes and blind alleys of our metropolis pour forth their dingy denizens into the suburban fields and villages, in search of the said amusement, which is plentifully provided for them by another class, even less enviable than the one on whose patronage they depend; for of all callings, the most melancholy is that of purveyor of pleasure to the poor.
During the Monday our determined holiday-maker, as in duty bound, contrives, by the aid of a little or not a little artificial stimulus, to be happy in a tolerably exemplary manner. On the Tuesday, he fancies himself happy to-day, because he felt himself so yesterday. On the Wednesday he cannot tell what has come to him, but every ten minutes he wishes himself at home, where he never goes but to sleep. On Thursday he finds out the secret, that he is heartily sick of doing nothing; but is ashamed to confess it; and then what is the use of going to work before his money is spent? On Friday he swears that he is a fool for throwing away the greatest part of his quarter’s savings without having any thing to show for it, and gets gloriously drunk with the rest to prove his words; passing the pleasantest night of all the week in a watchhouse. And on Saturday, after thanking “his worship” for his good advice, of which he does not remember a word, he comes to the wise determination, that, after all, there is nothing like working all day long in silence, and at night spending his earnings and his breath in beer and politics! So much for the Easter week of a London holiday-maker.
But there is a sport belonging to Easter Monday which is not confined to the lower classes, and which fun forbid that I should pass over silently. If the reader has not, during his boyhood, performed the exploit of riding to the turn-out of the stag on Epping-forest—following the hounds all day long at a respectful distance—returning home in the evening with the loss of nothing but his hat, his hunting whip, and his horse, not to mention a portion of his nether person—and finishing the day by joining the lady mayoress’s ball at the Mansion-house; if the reader has not done all this when a boy, I will not tantalize him by expatiating on the superiority of those who have. And if he has done it, I need not tell him that he has no cause to envy his friend who escaped with a flesh wound from the fight of Waterloo; for there is not a pin to choose between them.
Epping Hunt.
In 1226, king Henry III. confirmed to the citizens of London, free warren, or liberty to hunt a circuit about their city, in the warren of Staines, &c.; and in ancient times the lord mayor, aldermen, and corporation, attended by a due number of their constituents, availed themselves of this right of chace “in solemn guise.” From newspaper reports, it appears that the office of “common hunt,” attached to the mayoralty, is in danger of desuetude. The Epping hunt seems to have lost the lord mayor and his brethren in their corporate capacity, and the annual sport to have become a farcical show.
A description of the Epping hunt of Easter Monday, 1826, by one “Simon Youngbuck,” in the Morning Herald, is the latest report, if it be not the truest; but of that the editor of the Every-Day Book cannot judge, for he was not there to see: he contents himself with picking out the points; should any one be dissatisfied with the “hunting of that day,” as it will be here presented, he has only to sit down, in good earnest, to a plain matter-of-fact detail of all the circumstances from his own knowledge, accompanied by such citations as will show the origin and former state of the usage, and such a detail, so accompanied, will be inserted—
“For want of a better this must do.”
On the authority aforesaid, and that, without the introduction of any term not in the Herald, be it known then, that before, and at the commencement of the hunt aforesaid, it was a cold, dry, and dusty morning, and that the huntsmen of the east were all abroad by nine o’clock, trotting, fair and softly, down the road, on great nine-hand skyscrapers, nimble daisy-cutting nags, flowing-tailed chargers, and ponies no bigger than the learned one at Astley’s; some were in job-coaches, at two guineas a-day; some in three-bodied nondescripts, some in gigs, some in cabs, some in drags, some in short stages, and some in long stages; while some on no stages at all, footed the road, smothered by dust driven by a black, bleak north-easter full in the teeth. Every gentleman was arrayed after his own particular taste, in blue, brown, or black—in dress-coats, long coats, short coats, frock coats, great coats, and no-coats;—in drab-slacks and slippers;—in gray-tights, and black-spurred Wellingtons;—in nankeen bomb-balloons;—in city-white cotton-cord unmentionables, with jockey toppers, and in Russian-drill down-belows, as a memento of the late czar. The ladies all wore a goose-skin under-dress, in compliment to the north-easter.