Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue (3 page)

The Grouse Inn, the Spinning Wheel, the Red Lion, the Griffin – landlords the length and breadth of Chesterfield turned out in best bibs and tuckers to supply champagne, fine spirits, ale and porter. Some enthusiasts were so ardent in their support of the local hostelries they missed the actual races. Revellers seeking more substantial fare could frequent the gaily painted stalls circling the perimeter, selling piles of gingerbread, sandwiches and dubious cuts of meat. Darting among the snobs and swells that afternoon were the light-fingered Johnnies who could snaffle a pocket watch without so much as blinking, and the ‘spots' for the numerous card sharps setting up trackside scams. There were many ways to lose your shirt on Race Days.

The local aristocracy had well-worn seats in the stand, but Race days also attracted well-heeled outsiders, and had done so since the mid-eighteenth century when Derbyshire joined the tourist itinerary. Ladies and gentlemen touring the Peak liked to take in the Chesterfield Races. A morning surveying Chatsworth House, Haddon Hall or Hardwick; the dour Romance of Curbar Edge, or the Blue John Mines at Castleton (the latter providing the especial titillation of the mine known as the Devil's Arse), could be followed by an afternoon's idling at the racetrack, and an evening's cold collation at the Angel Inn, courtesy of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire, long-standing friend of the turf. (His annual purse for the Chatsworth Stake was fifty sovereigns.)

Racing was one of the few sports which enabled the social classes to mix. Chesterfield Race Days produced scenes every bit as vivid as William Frith's famous painting of
The Derby Day
. Mechanics and day-tripping clerks rubbed shoulders with school teachers, domestic servants and gypsies selling lavender and pegs. Colliers, chancing a day's pay, stood feet away from ladies trying not to
crush their crinolines, and school children granted a holiday. This was a chance for the gentry to view the hoi polloi and for the hoi polloi to thank their own good fortune when regarding the numerous beggars working the course and the poor unfortunates on show – entrance, one halfpenny – in assorted curiosity booths.

Special trains from Sheffield, Nottingham and Derby disgorged passengers, who, in these still relatively early days of locomotion, were thankful to reach their destination unscathed. In the years before the railways, poorer race-goers had walked enormous distances from one race to the next; the advent of excursion trains changed all that and delivered larger numbers to the course.

By day, the rowdiness was good-natured; come nightfall, it could thicken into something less benign. Few wanted to find themselves at the shadowy margins of the racetrack as daylight drained away. The brawling and carousing that accompanied this annual shindig led to frequent debates about vice and immo rality, but although the occasion was a focal point for gambling and the fleecing of fools, and doubtless attracted ‘nymphs of the pave', loutish behaviour was not confined to Race Days. Even a cursory glance at the
Derbyshire Courier
reveals accounts of drunkenness on the part of both sexes, and in boys as young as eleven, as well as fist fights and stabbings.

Wandering among the crowds that day were Thomas and Sarah Walker, and their three-year-old son, Richard Dorance. The Walkers were fairground people, Romanies possibly, for whom Chesterfield was just another stopping point on the road. Race Days attracted a rich mix of entertainers: practitioners of ‘the noble art' drummed up custom for the ring, ‘photographic studios' promised exact likenesses for sixpence. Tumblers performed feats
of strength and agility; conjurers bamboozled the crowd, balladeers serenaded it. There were rifle galleries, peep shows, Aunt Sallies and coconut shies, as well as stalls selling cheap toys and gaudy trinkets. I don't know how the Walkers plied their trade – whether he was Thomasino with his Raven-Haired Assistant, or she, Gypsy Sarah, weaving fantastical tales of good fortune while gold bangles played up and down her arms, but, for showmen reliant on the fairground calendar, the hectic camaraderie of Race Days provided an essential way to turn a shilling.

Entertainers travelled between the country's racecourses and the larger town fairs, taking in village feasts and wakes along the way. The nearby villages of Dunston, Newbold and Hasland scheduled their feasts for Chesterfield Race Sunday; there were also opportunities to entertain the town's theatre queues or to perform at the edge of the bustling market square. (In the years when the Chesterfield Races took place in the autumn, the Walkers could also tag on to the town's annual Feast, and link up with Nottingham's famous Goose Fair.)

Many showmen drifted into the roving life because of harsh circumstances elsewhere: the past left behind and good riddance. Successful fairground entrepreneurs were few, however; for the majority, theirs was a precarious existence. The poorest showmen travelled miles on foot, carrying their belongings and staying in the kind of the hostelry where the cutlery was chained to the table. The open road could rapidly lose its romance.

Whether good takings prompted the Walkers to change their lives that year, or hunger and a pittance drove them to it, they decided to leave England and make a fresh start in America. Entertainers regularly crossed to mainland Europe, lured by advertisements like this one: ‘Wanted, for Bell and Myer's Circus,
France, a Stud-Groom and 2 Under Grooms. Liberal Salaries to competent men; also Equestrians and Gymnasts, for future Engagements. No Stamp. Silence a negative.' By the 1860s, America was also beginning to attract entertainers. All that was needed, according to one confident theatrical report, was ‘a day's notice, a wide-mouthed bag and your ticket'. The new country had circuses and fairs aplenty, and anyone good with their hands could find work in that vast, expanding economy. Steam ships had reduced some of the terrors as well as the length of transatlantic crossings, although travelling in the confined and claustrophobic spaces of steerage was still a fairly desperate enterprise. Whatever their intentions, and however unsure their scheme, one thing was certain: Thomas and Sarah Walker planned to travel without their son.

At three years old, Richard was perhaps judged to be both too young and too old for the journey – too big, too lively, too inquisitive, too hungry – too much of everything to be anything but an encumbrance en route, though this was not a decision most emigrant parents reached. If Thomas and Sarah had already removed themselves from square walls and solid ground, however, they may have found it easier to remove themselves once again, and on this occasion, relinquish their child.

Thomas Walker was illiterate, but someone had taught Sarah her letters, plus a vague understanding of the law. Her writing has a hammy style, with extra ‘hs's, in which I hear the call of the impresario summoning his audience. If Sarah was the woman who haunts nineteenth-century stories and songs, and who cast off the corsetry of Victorian propriety to run away with the raggle-taggle gypsies, I doubt she was leaving a comfortable home. But casting off was evidently something Sarah was good at. Fairground life
was about moving forward always, even if following an annual circuit: the next town, the next audience – who will surely be more appreciative than the last: keep looking forward, not back. And what could be more forward-looking or a more complete way of severing the past than a passage to America?

There were many people like the Walkers: ordinary, undistinguished emigrants who crossed the Atlantic in the hope of making something new of themselves. (‘Go West,' the
New York Times
advised immigrant hopefuls.) In 1865, 264 ships left Liverpool for America and transported nearly 5,000 cabin and around 90,000 steerage passengers between them. Several hundred steerage passengers each voyage; typically, one third single male adventurers, the remainder married couples with children: whole families uprooting themselves and what little or nothing they had, crammed into airless spaces and headed for America and the promise of a better life, undeterred by news of its civil strife. (Even the
Derbyshire Courier
carried reports of the Civil War.) The Walkers took up that promise.

The landscape of the fairground was changing. Three London fairs, most famously, Bartholomew's Fair, had come to an end in the past ten years. With increasing urbanisation, fairs were no longer so plentiful, nor so significant in people's lives: the railways offered new forms of pleasure-seeking and more accessible entertainment. Old-style attractions were dwindling; mechanisation had yet to make its mark. Perhaps the Walkers decided to get out while they could, although, ironically, 1865 was the year in which the steam-driven roundabout, which would shortly revitalise fairgrounds, made its first appearance.

In Chesterfield, the Walkers met a barber, Joseph Nash, who lived and worked a short distance from the racecourse. Joe's barber's
shop may not have run to a striped pole and fancy lotions, but my understanding is that his was a proper shop with a window on to the street. Perhaps Joe's shop was the occasion of his first meeting with Thomas Walker: confidences exchanged during the false intimacy of a friendly lather and clean shave. For whatever reason, and by whatever means the two men met, Joseph agreed to take Thomas's young son.

Joseph and his wife, Mary – with two such names, how could they possibly refuse the Walkers' request? – had a son of their own, though, by the time the Walkers came to Chesterfield, William Nash was seventeen and would shortly take up lodgings in a different part of town, nearer to the colliery that employed him. Mary was some nine years older than Joe, time enough to have a whole other adult life before she met him, but if she did, it can only be guessed at. Their own circumstances were complicated enough. Joe hailed from Hertfordshire; Mary, Worcestershire; their son William was born in Warwickshire at the end of the Hungry Forties. This couple knew about travelling to secure a life, and could surely sympathise with the Walkers in that. But many working-class families of the period were sticking pins in the map, and they weren't all taking on other people's children. Perhaps Mary wanted another child to mother – it was unusual for a woman of her generation to have only one, though she may have had others that did not survive: these were the years in which women spoke in one breath of the children they'd given birth to, versus the number still living – but whatever Mary's feelings on the matter, the actual agreement to take young Richard refers only to Joe.

It seems altogether extraordinary, but this arrangement between a fairground couple and a jobbing barber was written down. Though it may be less extraordinary than I imagine. Genealogy
is said to be particularly valued among showmen because of the lack of other continuities in their lives. But, if the Walkers shared this view, they were about to lop off the youngest branch of their family tree.

The consequence of this momentous decision was recorded on a small piece of paper; on the back of black-edged mourning paper, to be precise, which raises further unanswerable questions. Fragile now and long since secured with tape, its spidery handwriting tells a vital story: ‘I Thomas Walker, Deliver my Son Richard Darnce in to the hands of Joseph Nash to keep as his Son and I remain your affectionate friend Sarah Walker.'

Though precarious by today's standards and with no legal foundation – the Walkers probably did not realise that Richard remained his father's responsibility – the ‘adoption' (and I use the word in the loosest sense) was nonetheless a solemn pact.

I hope they loved him. I hope the Walkers left Richard behind because they loved him and felt they were doing the best they could for their son. The fact that the exchange was documented suggests a proper sense of responsibility and thoughtfulness, rather than a desire to get rid. But there is no reference to a loving mother, heartbroken at the thought of surrendering her child. For all the emotion expressed, Sarah might have been an amanuensis recording an everyday transaction on her husband's behalf. But, perhaps I'm being unfair: this was a formal statement in which sentiment had no place: she was setting down the bare bones of their arrangement. Sarah evidently believed that Joe Nash might require some proof of their understanding, although, in the 1860s, children appeared (and disappeared) all the time with very few questions asked.