CHAPTER VI
OUR PIC-NIC DAY
T was a lovely day— the bright green sea stretched glassily away in lazy languor, scarce deigning to break silence with a gentle ripple against the shingly shore, while the saucy gulls hovered and dipped, and hovered and dipped, regardless of the pop, pop, popping from the guns of the unsteady handed sportsmen in the boats. Bathing machines were engaged three or four deep, and the fair occupants got good deep remunerative dips instead of being splashed over with a little salt water, as they lay on the beach like fish on a fishmonger’s slab. The “Victoria and Albert,” the “Empress Eugénie,” the “Wedding Ring,” the “Honeymoon,” the “John and Nancy,”—all the gay white-sailed party-coloured boats pushed away from the shore with merry giggling groups who thought they could never be sick with such a smooth sea. Every available vehicle, from the pair of horse fly down to the little goat-chaise, were taken up on the very fullest of full terms. The fineness of the day drew all parties to the door, windows were thrown up, passages left exposed, while the buff-slippered owners, stretched listlessly on the benches, stared at the sea, indulged in vacuity, or polished their nails with a pebble, thinking how sharp they would be when they got back to town. It was a regular dozy, do-nothing sort of day. The new Reform Bill ought to exempt people from labour when the thermometer is at a certain height.
Smiling cantering bevies of beauties, with their shining hair in gold and silver beaded nets, and party-coloured feathers in their jaunty little hats, alone imparted energy to the scene as they tit-tup-ed along with quickly following tramp, led by the most magnificent and affable of riding-masters, who thus advertise their studs, just as Howes and Cushing advertise their grand United States Circus. Bless us, what a pace some of them go! That gentleman with all the honours looks as if he were leading his fair squadron into action, while Napoleon the First, with his clean white leathers and shining jackboots and no less interesting miscellany, follows at a pace that is perfectly appalling. If the fair-haired lady on the right of the Emperor were to fall, she would be crushed by the flaunting habits in the rear. But people who ride by the hour must go fast, or else they think they don’t get anything for their money. The Roseberry Rocks hacks, however, are the exception to all other watering-place hacks, for instead of the wretched sunkeneyed, woe-begone bags of bones peculiar to other places, we have well-bred, well-conditioned, well-caparisoned animals, that but for their constant change of riders might pass for the party’s own. No Humane Society’s “posters” disfigure the walls of the town, cautioning the owners against cruelty to animals, and calling upon the hirers to aid in their protection. Wonderful are the capabilities of the ordinary hack-horses! They can put two days’ work into one, provided of course that the owner gets paid for two days instead of one; and the poor creatures are never so fresh and “fit to go,” according to the owner’s account, as when they have just come off a twenty-miles’ trot. Parties should be paid for risking their necks on such animals, instead of being charged for their use.
But we are getting into the activity of life instead of pursuing the lassitude of heat. Let us get out into the country, for it is one of the peculiarities of the English always to want to be somewhere else than where they are.
Roseberry Rocks is one of those fine large independent places that even Paul Pry himself would be utterly at fault in appropriating the consumption of pie to this person or to that, of knowing who is going to one place and who to another. As in London on the Derby day, it is only when the extemporised drags begin to move dangerously about the streets, and the silken-jacketed post-boys to coax their jibbing screws up to the doors, that the streets become alive to the gaiety of the Greens or the Browns; so at the Rocks, it is only when the hamper-laden footmen begin to follow looming young ladies, dressed if possible with more than usual care and expansion, to their respective rendezvous, that people begin speculating upon what is going on, and wondering whose party it is. Still there are so many resources and outlets for gaiety at the Rocks, and so many converging roads, that it is not until the town is well cleared, and the concomitant brick-fields and linen-flying drying-grounds passed, that any decided opinion can be formed upon the points of attraction—or, indeed, where all dress so fine, who is going gadding, and who is merely grinding for exercise.
After all is said and done, perhaps there is nothing so potent as a turnpike-gate for settling the contributories to a party, for as nine-tenths of the watering-place people who drive out only do so for the sake of the bump— neither looking to the right nor the left—they may just as well bump two miles twice over on one side of a turnpike-gate as two miles on one side and two on the other; and Checkley-view-bar being most judiciously placed, it required a good deal of whip-cord, accompanied by certain guttural objurgations, to induce a well-accustomed hack to face its devouring jaws; and while the driver of a turn-about vehicle would have nothing to do but give his horse its head on coming to the well-defined semicircular wheel-marks on the road, the outward-bound Jehu has to get his horse by the head, and jip and jag and flagellate up to the white-aproned janitor who stands at the receipt of custom, giving parsimonious bits of paper in return for well-proportioned halfpence. The money being paid, the trustees of the road then seem to let people down gently, for the theretofore well-kept road gradually becomes rough and rutty, and presently degenerating into a toilsome short sea-hill sort of track, which the drivers endeavour to circumvent by diagonal deviations over the sound carpet of the downs. Then it is that the difference between the masters and the men is apparent, the masters getting off to ease their horses up the oft-recurring hills, while the slug of a servant slouches on his seat and plies the whip as he goes. Out upon the great lout who cannot ease a horse, even though it is not his own, say we! All then becomes openness and space. The swelling downs roll along in continuous folds to the grey dim of the horizon, while occasional clumps and belts of trees vary the monotony of the scene, and denote the habitations of the cultivators of the improved patches of land in the valleys. The uplands are dotted with gorse, increasing in strength towards the top, and affording comfortable jumps to such equestrians as prefer the downs to doing the Howes and Cushing of the streets. Bleater the shepherd leaves his tinkling-belled flock to the care of his sensible dog, and stands, crook in hand, by the roadside, staring and wondering what can bring so many fine ladies and gentlemen out of the town every day. Carriage after carriage goes creaking past, and canter after canter go the three-and-sixpence an hour-ers; some in flocks, some in pairs, the ladies enlivening the landscape with their fluttering veils and their varied paces, the riders taking occasional peeps at the watches, to see that they are not going too far for their money.
From Prospect Hill a clear programme of our pic-nic party may now be obtained; the foremost carriages which dot the chalky road over the distant down
“Show scarce so gross as beetles,”
while the whole line backward is studded with enlarging vehicles enlivened with gay parasols, pink, blue, white, lilac, lavender—all the smart colours of the season. And much the fair bearers need them, for the sun is scorchingly hot, and the air, even in these exalted regions, dances before the dazzled eyes. At length the foremost vehicles gain the brow of North Bendlaw Hill, from which the Union Jack of the Priory is seen, and a slight incline of the road quickly varies the landscape and brings the traveller amid the enclosures and green trees of the vale. Carriage after carriage drives quickly down, and great is the run upon Mrs. Baccoman’s looking-glass, each fair lady thinking the other is keeping it a most unconscionable time, while the anxious faces of the waiters contrast with the self-satisfied ones of the goers away.
