An Ulterior Motive

An Ulterior Motive

The two companions travelling as Mr Francis Goodchild and Mr Thomas Idle settled themselves into the plush, button backed seating of their first class carriage and politely introduced themselves to the comfortably ensconced Reverend and Mrs Drood sitting opposite. Prompted by social etiquette, the two other male occupants of this sumptuously upholstered cocoon duly introduced themselves as Mr Joe Gargery and Mr Charles Darney . Mr Francis Goodchild instantly found these names of interest and tucked them away into a small corner of his eclectic mind for future reference.

It was Monday 14th September 1857 and the two companions had spent the previous week walking in the Lake District, exploring the wonders of Skiddaw and Carrick Fell from their base in the village of Aspatria. It had not gone well. Rain had fallen relentlessly for the duration, Mr Idle had slipped on the Fell and sprained an ankle and the two had argued over their plans for the second week of their tour and the content of the article they were to co-author for their magazine, Household Words.

A bruised and limping Mr Idle had expressed a strong desire to return to London, but Goodchild was adamant that their plans to attend the renowned St.Leger races should go ahead as planned. Goodchild, being the senior of the two had an ulterior motive; young Nelly was in town.

Goodchild opened the book resting on his lap and addressed his companion.
'Bradshaw describes our destination as Danum, Thomas, a garrison established by the Romans in 69AD as a crossing point on the River Don. Occupied by a unit of Crispian Horsemen, men recruited from among tribespeople living near the town of Crispiana in western Hungary.'

Thomas Idle sat for a moment as though absorbing this information and then smiled.
'Will the Crispian Horsemen be entering runners for the St.Leger, Francis?'

Jessica Drood giggled at this enquiry and immediately covered her mouth with embarrassment, but this amusing incident was all that was required to ignite racing discourse in the carriage for the remainder of the journey. The   merits of John Scott the champion trainer, who had already won thirteen St Legers, were thoroughly assessed and it was soon agreed that Mr Scott's horse, Blink Bonny, already winner of the 1,000 guineas that year, should win the great race with ease.  Francis Goodchild, an inveterate observer of people, listened intently whilst staring out at passing rain soaked panoramas.

As the train clattered its way through the grey simmering industry of the West Riding, he took out his notebook and scribbled in it with intensity.

''From Leeds the character of our journey, both of travellers and of luggage, entirely changed, and no other business than race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth. The talk was all of horses and John Scott. Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses and John Scott. Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large bones of their legs developed under tight trousers, so that they should look as much as possible like horses' legs, paced up and down by twos at junction-stations, speaking low and moodily of horses and John Scott. The towns we passed looked, in the cinderous wet, as though they had one and all been on fire and were just put out — a dreary and quenched panorama, many miles long.'

Thomas Idle smiled, quietly observing the master at work as the train rattled relentlessly through pleasant countryside and intermittent villages until eventually, it slowed as they crossed the Don and pulled into Doncaster station. Another consignment of assorted humanity delivered into the simmering cauldron of the St Leger race week.

The station concourse was an assault upon the senses, a merciless ambush of the innocent. Opportunists and hawkers of every hue, purveyors of everything from butterscotch and biscuits to satin rosettes and sin. There were landaus, buggies, hansoms and carts of every type, all plying for business in as unruly a manner as they dare under the watchful gaze of the constabulary. Samovars of steaming tea were dispensed from the back of stationary carts whilst urchins ran the gauntlet of heavy wheels to shovel equally steaming piles of manure into leather buckets. Forty extra porters sent down for this week, and all of them making up their betting-books in the lamp-room or somewhere else, and none of them to come and touch the luggage. Paupers and Peers of the realm were all temporary captives in this mayhem, before escaping to their respective lodgings for the coming week. Hotels, guest houses, whore houses and hovels, all more than ready and waiting.

The two companions fell victim to the charms of a ruddy faced youth driving a Brougham being drawn by a chestnut mare with wild eyes, and within minutes were being dropped off outside the Angel Hotel on Frenchgate. Francis Goodchild had reserved their rooms some weeks earlier on receipt of information that young Nelly would be appearing all week at the town's Theatre Royal, information that had slowly, but surely, tormented and addled the brain of England's greatest novelist. This forty five year old genius, a married man with ten children had risked his reputation, his popularity and his career for his uncontrollable obsession with the eighteen year old actress Ellen Ternan.

In their continued pursuance of anonymity, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins booked into their comfortable coaching inn under their assumed names; Collins instantly surrendering himself and his throbbing ankle to a chaise-longue by his bedroom window and Dickens abandoning his portmanteau at the foot of his bed and striding out into the town as quickly as he could decently manage. Armed with directions from Mr Pye, the hotel manager, he stepped out into a maelstrom of idle men, as all work but race work had halted in the town. Buildings papered in advertising, boys jostling along with billboard bibs telling of attractions of every kind:

Grand Exhibition of Aztec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horrified cheap, for the Race-Week. The Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-week. Poses Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable Yard at seven and nine each evening, for the Race Week. Grand Alliance Circus in the field beyond the bridge, for the Race Week. Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all at grand prices, ranging from ten pounds to twenty, for the Grand Race Week!

Dickens was carried south along the High Street by the great tide of humanity heading in the direction of the Assembly Betting Rooms. Rowdy lunatics, horse mad, betting mad, drunken mad and vice mad, braying like mules at carriages trying to force a passage along the thoroughfare. All around him was cunning covetousness, secrecy, cold calculation, hard callousness and dire sensibility. On reaching the splendid Mansion House, he broke free of the tide into a narrow lane leading down into the Market Place and positioned himself at the entrance to an alleyway looking directly across at the stepped facade of the Theatre Royal. A huge banner had been draped across the gap between two of the facade's Corinthian columns announcing 'The Pet of the Petticoats', a comic opera in three acts for this week only. Such was the hopelessness of Dickens's infatuation that he stood until he could no longer deny his conspicuousness, feebly hoping for a glimpse of sweet Nelly. He would have to endure an agonising wait until the evening's opening performance.

* * *
 Leger day, and Dickens sat at his bedroom window looking down at the drama unfolding before him, making copious notes on his observations of this pretty and pleasant town.

'All through the night, unmannerly drinking houses opened their mouths at intervals and spat out men too drunk to be retained and this morning, the morning of the great St. Leger, it becomes apparent that there has been an even greater influx since yesterday, both of Lunatics and Keepers. The families of the tradesmen over the way are no longer within human ken ; their places know them no more ; ten, fifteen, and twenty guinea lodgers fill them. At the pastry-cook's second floor window, a Keeper is brushing Mr. Thurtel's hair — thinking it his own. In the wax-chandler's attic, another Keeper is putting on Mr. Palmer's braces. In the gunsmith's nursery, a Lunatic is shaving himself. In the serious stationer's best sitting-room, three Lunatics are taking a combination breakfast, praising the (cook's) devil, and drinking neat brandy in an atmosphere of last midnight's cigars.'

By one o'clock, all this stir had gone out of the streets, and there was no one left in them but Francis Goodchild. Francis Goodchild would not be left in them long ; for, he too was on his way to the races by way of hired Landau and in the company of Mrs Eleanor Ternan and her three daughters Maria, Frances and Ellen. Mr Dickens had got everything he came for.

The landau turned onto the Town Moor, revealing a sight to behold. A most agreeable prospect of green grass and fresh heath, where men can roll smoothly at will and can choose between the start and the coming in. Tents and awnings dispensing refreshment of every taste. Hawkers of race cards, tipsters, tricksters and pick pockets, all making free on the free course. And people; more people than you would ever see in one place. Frock coats, cravats and waistcoats. Pantaloons, knickerbockers, top hats, bowlers and boaters. But best of all, the ladies, resplendent in crinolines and bonnets of every shade, floating across the course like giant blancmanges escaped from Escoffier's kitchen.

Charles Dickens was beguiled, bewitched and enthralled, but most of all he was infatuated by Nelly.

'O little lilac gloves ! And O winning little bonnet, making in conjunction with her golden hair quite a Glory in the sunlight round the pretty head, why anything in the world but you and me ! Why may not this day's running — of horses, to all the rest : of precious sands of life to me — be prolonged through an everlasting autumn sunshine, without a sunset !'

Despite his pseudonym, Mr Dickens' presence in the town did not go unnoticed, as he had been recognised at the races and at Theatre Royal on three consecutive evenings by a reporter of the Doncaster Gazette. His trip to the town had, for five short days, been the best of times, but quickly became, for him, the worst of times when his reputation became the plaything of an outraged Victorian society.