Derby

“ With his heart almost frozen, he dashed around the corner in time to see Derby plunging into the underbrush. Like a wild man Porter shouted, "I'm coming, Jack, I'm coming!"—impelling his already spent horse to the spot where Derby had disappeared into the thicket.
Derby, like all men who live much in the woods, had almost an animal's instinct for danger, and his ears, supersensitive to wood sounds, had caught a moving in the bushes. To get his revolver in hand and drop forward behind his horse's shoulders had been the act of a second, and the bullet whistled [Pg 260] over his head. ”

“ Next comes West Derby, a group of clean-faced cottages standing about its car-terminus like smocked village children gaping prettily at a lurid visitor, its neatly dignified church and deer-scattered park reflecting the outburst of ripe, authentic aristocracy that makes the country-side beyond so unexpectedly, so exotically, old English. ”

“ I felt a pleasure in walking about Derby such as I always have in walking about any town to which I am not accustomed. There is an immediate sensation of novelty; and one speculates on the way in which life is passed in it, which, although there is a sameness every where upon the whole, is yet minutely diversified. ”

“ Railway carriages run from London to Derby, I don't know, how many times every hour, and the road to Derby was almost blocked up with cabs, hansoms, landaulets, flys, omnibuses, traps, dog-carts, and, in fact, conveyances of all size, shape and description that imagination can invent. This is one of the few occasions when Englishmen throw off—or try to throw off—their habitual reserve, and become as merry as possible, and it makes one's heart glad to see crowds of people neatly dressed with faces beaming with gladness and hilarity. ”

“ The untravelled are easily misled as to the appearance of Derby town. If you were to believe the average guide-book, you would never visit the place, and would rank it with Swindon or Wolverton, or the like. It is true that the chief offices and the works of the Midland Railway are centred here, and that modern Derby is the creation of these circumstances; but, lapped round and enfolded though it is by machine-shops and the mean streets of sheer industrialism, ancient Derby is not altogether to be spoken of in the past tense. ”

“ The very horses seem to rejoice in the performance of their Derby duties, and cast encouraging looks out of the corners of their eyes, as if the addition of a few more passengers would fill up the measure of their hilarity and satisfaction. And how the Hanson cabmen have rigged up their vehicles with veils to keep out the dust, and altogether have an appearance as though they would scorn to look upon the run to the Derby as a purely commercial transaction—what they really want is not an exorbitant fare, but the presence of a couple of kindred spirits. ”

“ A manufactory, at once local and elegant, exists at Derby, which excites the attention and loosens the purse-strings of most strangers. It is the spar-manufactory of Mr. Hall, and in it, he converts the petrified sports of nature, in the Derbyshire hills, into the luxuries of civil life. Those in London, who desire to see the products of these works, may behold them at Mawe's, in the Strand; but all, who visit Derby, will not fail to call upon Mr. Hall, who is as courteous as he is ingenious. ”

“ Way was a coming Derby favourite, and the property of a Native young Indian sportsman, whose entire fortunes depended on her success, and soon immense multitudes congregated in Regent's Park to witness her trials of speed, and cheered enthusiastically to behold the fiery sparks scintillating from the stones as she circumvented the inner circle in seven-leagued boots. ”

“ It was after five o’clock when the bugle called the horses to the post for the Derby, in which a big surprise was in store for the spectators. Every inch of space in clubhouse and grandstand was taken, while a solid mass of humanity lined the lawns a quarter of a mile long, extending from clubhouse to the quarter pole, almost to the head of the homestretch. The procession of eight sleek thoroughbreds, trained to the minute, led by the outrider on a gray horse, garbed in a fiery jacket, made an imposing picture. ”

“ But while at the Derby all is interest and excitement, and every one is pushing and struggling, and the air palpitates with the intoxication of a great event, the winning of a horse-race—here, where men are killed every hour and no one of them knows when his turn may come, the fact that most impresses you is their indifference to it all. ”

“ Derby was known in the time of the heptarchy as Northworthig, and did not receive the name of Deoraby or Derby until after it was given up to the Danes by the treaty of Wedmore and had become one of their five boroughs, probably ruled in the ordinary way by an earl with twelve “lawmen” under him. Being won back among the sweeping conquests of Æthelflæd, lady of the Mercians, in 917, it prospered during the 10th century, and by the reign of Edward the Confessor there were 243 burgesses in Derby. ”

“ The road they travelled ran to Derby from the south-west, and its deep ruts showed the heavy traffic it had lately borne. By it coaches, waggons and every variety of pack and riding horse had carried the timid folks of Derbyshire into sanctuaries beyond the track of the Highland army. To-day the traffic had shrunk to an occasional horseman or a farmer's wife with panniers, and a jovial huntsman in red who, from his greeting, seemed thus early to have been powdering his wig. Already the country was settling down, thought Alastair, as folk learned of the Prince's clemency and good-will. ”

“ We have already, at Swarkestone Bridge, heard at length of this ill-fated rising, but Derby affords some amusing incidents. The Duke of Devonshire had raised a regiment of one hundred and fifty men, to oppose the advance of the Highlanders, and the squires and magistrates of the county, and the corporation of Derby, had raised a force of six hundred more. Derby apparently presented an armoured front to the foe, but it was woefully deceptive. At ten o’clock on the night of December 3rd, when scouts brought tidings of the enemy’s advance, the drums sounded to the muster and the warriors fell in. ”

“ The stands were filled moderately with well-dressed persons of both sexes; and on the lawn in front, and beneath the flowering shrubs, and luxuriant creepers of the balcony, in every variety of charming summer toilette, were seated crowds of pretty women. Between the races military bands played the exquisite music of Rossini and Mozart. The whole wore an air of enchantment. For the first time in my life I enjoyed a race without a single alloy. The Derby has its host of London pleasure-seekers, a motley crowd of confusion and intemperance. ”

“ A record Derby in more ways than one was this year’s Louisville’s big racing attraction. Never was there such a crowd, the dimensions of which reminded me of Epsom and of Flemington. A vast surging mass of racing enthusiasts, which, prior to the running of the big race, were to be found eagerly discussing the merits or demerits of the Derby contestants and afterwards the whys and wherefores of the success of one and the failure of others. ”

“ Up and down went the betting respecting Surplice until the market was in such a state that it was to the interest of an unscrupulous gang to poison or lame him.
Detectives, policemen, trainer and stablemen had to watch him night and day and the excitement waxed intense as the date of the Derby drew near. When the horse was taken from Goodwood to Epsom and from the stable to the course a crowd of horsemen and pedestrians dogged his steps. ”

“ The Derby race, though the greatest feature of the day, was not a thousandth part of the sights. If no race had come off, the assembly itself was well worth coming to see, and sitting through a whole day to study.
Anna, Drusilla and General Lyon, were well content to occupy their seats and spend their time in calmly contemplating the scene before them.
But the three young men, Dick, Spencer and Tredegar, wished to mingle with the active life below, and so, making an excuse to go and get cards of the race they bowed and left the hill and soon disappeared in the crowd on the heath. ”

“ Ansonia was formed from a part of Derby in 1889. In 1893 the borough of Birmingham, on the opposite side of the Naugatuck, was annexed to Derby, and Derby was chartered as a city. In the 18th century Derby was the centre of a thriving commerce with the West Indies. ”

“ His nimble wit caught the challenge and answered it.
"Sir," he said, with the swiftness and assurance of a cavalry attack, "remember Lady Derby there at Lathom. She has held out for weary months—a woman, with a slender garrison to help her—has held out for the honour of the Stuart. Give me my Metcalfs, and other troops to raise, and grant us leave to go by way of Lathom House."
The King smiled. "I thought you a fighter only, Rupert. Now you're an orator, it seems. Go, rescue Lady Derby; but, as you love me, save York. There are only two cities on the map to me these days—York and Oxford. ”

“ Here hills on hills, extend their alpine reign,
Stretch their wide arms, and bound the fertile plain;
View of the Country—Bolton—The Earl of Derby.
To the far west, where rolling Mersey bends,
In one long view the wide champaign extends. ”

“ Ticketing, stick it in, hattery, battery, flare away, stare away, splashery, dashery —
Up from the Derby as all of us go,
These are the sights that we each of us know
Yet off to the Downs as we often have been,
Still every year is some novelty seen.
Home get at last, going it fast,
Lifery, wifery, look, look ”

“ I determined, if possible, to see the Derby of 1886, as I had seen that of 1834. I must have spoken of this intention to some interviewer, for I find the following paragraph in an English sporting newspaper, "The Field," for May 29th, 1886:--
"The Derby has always been the one event in the racing year which statesmen, philosophers, poets, essayists, and littérateurs desire to see once in their lives. A few years since Mr. Gladstone was induced by Lord Granville and Lord Wolverton to run down to Epsom on the Derby day. ”

“ It is the only day in the year you can catch her; but the stars always bring her to the Derby. If he won’t come, you bring something of his, something he has worn, or had about him. If it is bad news, why we need not tell him, and if it is good, why it will be new life to him. ”

“ The result of the Derby is known in New York before the winning horse has slacked his pace after passing the judge's box, and it is all over the world before the proud owner has had time to lead him back into the paddock. A cable message goes round the world in an hour or so, and the sun gets so rattled that people hear of events that happened to-morrow. ”

“ There is a statue of him in Miller Square, Preston; and another, in Parliament Square, Westminster, was unveiled by Disraeli in July 1874, when he summed up Derby's achievements in the sentence, ‘He abolished slavery, he educated Ireland, he reformed parliament.’
Derby's reputation as a statesman suffers from the fact that he changed front so often. ”

“ Regret, the scion of illustrious thoroughbreds, achieved an easy victory, and, while she may not be the greatest horse that ever won the Derby, the daughter of Broomstick and the granddaughter of Ben Brush furnished a spectacle for more than 40,000 persons at Churchill Downs that will not soon be forgotten. ”

“ But not merely do screws daily draw cabs and stage-coaches: screws have won the Derby and the St. Leger. A noble-looking thorough-bred has galloped by the winning-post at Epsom at the rate of forty miles an hour, with a white bandage tightly tied round one of its fore-legs: and thus publicly confessing its unsoundness, and testifying to its trainer's fears, it has beaten a score of steeds which were not screws, and borne off from them the blue ribbon of the turf. ”

“ The little happenings in Derby; the changes of weather in the farms; the deaths of old people from the summer heats—these things were far more vital and significant than the distant thunders of Spain. A beacon or two had been piled on the hills, by order of the authorities, to pass on the news when it should come; a few lads had disappeared from the countryside to drill in Derby marketplace ”

“ The race itself is nothing more or less than other horse-races are, but the immense—I may almost say incredible—amount of Derby Race.interest attached to it makes it one of the national institutions of England. The excitement among the people is immense, there is perhaps not a man in England who does not take an interest in it, and it is almost beyond the powers of arithmetic to count the people who flock to Derby, not exactly to see the races but for the sake of merrymaking and enjoying a holiday. ”

“ But I pursued my journey, and still kept in the road to Derby, along a footpath which I knew to be right. It led across a very pleasant mead, the hedges of which were separated by stiles, over which I was often obliged to clamber. When I had walked some distance without meeting with an inn on the road, and it had already begun to be dark, I at last sat me down near a small toll-house, or a turnpike-gate, in order to rest myself, and also to see whether the man at the turnpike could and would lodge me. ”

“ But, of course, if I have correctly grasped the situation, the Derby is not a race that you need consider seriously just yet. You have plenty of other chances to win your money, and it is over those that you had better lay yourself out. You've got to earn your legacy first, and then you'll be in the position to direct all your attention to the Derby—that is, if you're still anxious to make good what you said upon my coach at Epsom a week or so back—that you would win the classic race in five years' time."
Sir Roderick laughed heartily as he recalled the scene. ”