Chief among James’s observations of Derby Day at Epsom is his astonishment at the picnicking on the carriage tops.
It was a sight of madness. “The crowd was very animated; that is the most succinct description I can give of it. The horses of course had been removed from the vehicles so that the pedestrians were free to surge against the wheels and even to a certain extent to scale and overrun the carriages. This tendency became most pronounced when, as the mid-period of the day was reached, the process of lunching began to unfold itself and every coach-top to become the scene of a picnic.”
From this moment, James suffered what he calls “Derby demoralization,” as if he got dirty just being in the vicinity of the “hordes” even though he watched from a safe place.
“I was in a position to observe it, “James writes, “all around me, in the most characteristic forms. The whole affair, as regards the conventional rigidities I spoke of a while since, becomes a real dégringolade [French—to tumble down; English—a rapid decline or deterioration in condition]. The shabbier pedestrians bustle about the vehicles, staring up at the lucky mortals who are perched in a kind of tormentingly near empyrean, a region in which dishes of lobster-salad are passed about and champagne-corks cleave the air like celestial meteors.”
James makes no mention of Frith’s The Derby Day or Dore and Jerrold’s London: A Pilgrimage.
“After the great race had been run,” James writes, “I quitted my perch and spent the rest of the afternoon in wandering about the grassy concave I have mentioned. It was amusing and picturesque; it was just a huge Bohemian encampment.”
Featured Image: Joseph Pennell’s illustrations for English Hours are fuzzy impressions such as the Epsom Grandstand and the downs.
See Henry James. English Hours. London: Heinemann, 1905. The original essay “Two Excursions” included [“The Derby Stakes,” was published in The Galaxy Magazine 24: 3 (Sept. 1877), 346-357; http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=gala;cc=gala;rgn=full%20text;idno=gala0024-3;didno=gala0024-3;view=image;seq=349;node=gala0024-3%3A1;page=root;size=100