Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

In the seventies the doyen of the racing Press was Comyns Cole, of the Times and the Field. In whatever society he might be found Cole was always a striking personality. He was not only an accomplished journalist, but he was a typical English gentleman of the school even then becoming regarded as “old.” He possessed all the gracious courtesy of a more formal age. At the time when I made his acquaintance he was well over sixty, but he was erect in carriage, slim in figure, always carefully dressed to suit the occasion, and impartially polite to Dukes and jockeys. His carefully-cultured grey moustache gave him something of a military appearance. His greatest charm was, perhaps, in a voice of unusual sweetness. And on the Turf he was liked and respected by everybody, high and low. Not merely was Cole a gentleman in thought and act, but he spoke and wrote like one. He could never have become contaminated by the baleful influences of the Press-room.

In my early days there were a lot of small race-meetings in the vicinity of London which have ceased to exist, their suppression or extinction, owing to natural causes, being a circumstance on which Society may be greatly congratulated. Of these, Hampton was one of the most notorious. It was a great Cockney carnival, and was held on the ground over which Hurst Park now stretches. All the costers of the East End drove down to this event on their “flying bedsteads,” in the shafts of which conveyances were harnessed their “mokes.” On one side of the bedstead, with legs hanging over the front, was the coster, urging his “moke” with comic blasphemies. On the other side sat his “dona,” all hat and feathers, howling snatches of the music-hall songs of the moment, and in the intervals plying her “bloke” with beer. All the pickpockets, welchers, thimble-riggers, and confidence-tricksters of the Metropolis turned up at this event, and nowhere else would you be likely to come across scenes of more unbridled blackguardism. The inhabitants of Hampton—standing as it does on one of the prettiest of the nearer reaches of the Thames—were naturally incensed by the annual Saturnalia.

Not all those who were attracted to the meeting came down for the sport. Many of them hired skiffs and went on the water. These greatly daring adventurers had but the most rudimentary use of the sculls, and their immunity from accident can only be traced to that watchful Providence which is believed to look after drunken men and infants. On one occasion I happened during these races to be at Hampton, which is, of course, on the other side of the river. I there saw a rather cranky skiff let out by a local boat-owner to a party of a dozen happy Cockneys, male and female of their kind, not one of whom could row and few of whom could swim. As they zigzagged their way to midstream, I thought it my duty to remonstrate with the boat-owner.

“I shouldn’t have let a boat to that lot: they’re sure to capsize,” I ventured to suggest.

“It’s orright, guv’nor,” answered the man cheerily; “I’ve ’ad a quid deposit!”

Funny thing, the point of view. I was solicitous about the safety of the Cockney excursionists. My boat-hiring friend could only imagine that I was anxious lest his skiff should come to grief, and was happy to assure me that he had secured himself against all possible loss!

At Kingsbury there was another of these classic events. It was never my proud privilege to witness the racing at Kingsbury; but the suppression of that meeting was a never-ceasing cause of regret to Warner, of the Welsh Harp, Hendon. I made the acquaintance of that illustrious man when I was sent down to interview Mrs. Girling on the part of a daily paper “whose name shall be nameless,” as a villain of melodrama once put it. The name of Mrs. Girling, I imagine, will call up no memories in the present generation. The poor lady, although she made a wonderful commotion in her time, has failed to write her name with any legibility on the page of history.

Mrs. Girling, then, was the president, or high-priestess, or boss of the Shaker community, which at one time thought to establish itself in the country of a hundred religions and one sauce. Notwithstanding all that has been alleged to the contrary, the English still possess a certain sense of humour, and their knowledge of the new sect was chiefly derived from the writings of Artemus Ward, who had devoted a chapter of “His Book” to the more salient eccentricities of the Shakers. One of the sect he described as looking like “a last year’s bean-pole dressed in a long meal-bag.”

The corybantic religionists who had come across the Atlantic with Mrs. Girling in the pious hope of converting the islanders had been evicted from their quarters in the New Forest, and had encamped on, and under, the grandstand on the Kingsbury racecourse. The expulsion of the Shakers from their Hampshire Eden became the subject of a great deal of comment in the Press, and Warner, who was above all else a showman, at once saw his way to make some money out of the eccentric exiles from the States. So he philanthropically offered the evicted evangelists such shelter as the Kingsbury grand-stand afforded. Mrs. Girling was grateful. Half London flocked to Hendon to inspect the high-priestess and her faithful following of Latter-Day Saints, and, incidentally, to partake of refreshments at the Welsh Harp. It was on my way home after my interview with Mrs. Girling that I made the acquaintance of Mr. Warner himself. He was a large, jovial, effusive person—quite the typical Boniface, in fact. I was about to write “the typical John Bull,” when I recollected that the national nickname has acquired associations which render it—well, not quite typical.

Warner appeared to spend most of his time sitting in a wooden armchair of Brobdingnagian proportions. When in an anecdotal or reminiscent mood, he could be extremely entertaining. One of his reminiscences may be worth repeating. The Welsh Harp pleasure-grounds had become a favourite arena for the managers of Sunday-school treats and high jinks of a similar character. During the summer months thousands of children were carted down from the lanes and alleys of the town to pick daisies in Warner’s fields, to wander by the margin of Warner’s lake, and to “wolf” Warner’s buns and ginger-beer amid delightfully rural surroundings. Consternation, therefore, seized this particular section of Society when there appeared in the papers the report that the pet bear of the Welsh Harp had escaped from its den, and had taken refuge in some neighbouring thicket. In vain did Warner write solemn disclaimers to the daily papers. His pathetic denials of the existence of any bear on the estate were received with frigid scepticism. The rumour had been sown broadcast, and had taken root. The crop was accepted as first-class fact. The more strongly did Warner protest, the more picturesque became the newspaper reports of the bear-hunt, the methods of the trackers, and their failure to trap their quarry.