Tales of the Five Towns | Page 9

jawbone of a whale which then stood as a natural
curiosity on the waste space near the corn-mill, would discuss the fray,
and make bets for next Sunday, while the exhausted dogs licked their
wounds, or died. During the Wakes week bull and bear were baited at
frequent intervals, according to popular demand, for thousands of
sportsmen from neighbouring villages seized the opportunity of the fair
to witness the fine beatings for which Bursley was famous throughout
the country of the Five Towns. In that week the Wakes took possession
of the town, which yielded itself with savage abandonment to all the
frenzies of license. The public-houses remained continuously open
night and day, and the barmen and barmaids never went to bed; every
inn engaged special 'talent' in order to attract custom, and for a hundred
hours the whole thronged town drank, drank, until the supply of coin of
George IV., converging gradually into the coffers of a few persons,
ceased to circulate. Towards the end of the Wakes, by way of a last
ecstasy, the cockfighters would carry their birds, which had already
fought and been called off, perhaps, half a dozen times, to the
town-field (where the discreet 40 per cent. brewery now stands), and
there match them to a finish. It was a spacious age.
On this Monday afternoon in June the less fervid activities of the
Wakes were proceeding as usual in the market-place, overshadowed by
the Town Hall--not the present stone structure with its gold angel, but a
brick edifice built on an ashlar basement. Hobby-horses and revolving
swing-boats, propelled, with admirable economy to the proprietors, by

privileged boys who took their pay in an occasional ride, competed
successfully with the skeleton man, the fat or bearded woman, and
Aunt Sally. The long toy-tents, artfully roofed with a tinted cloth which
permitted only a soft, mellow light to illuminate the wares displayed,
were crowded with jostling youth and full of the sound of whistles,
'squarkers,' and various pipes; and multitudes surrounded the
gingerbread, nut, and savoury stalls which lined both sides of the
roadway as far as Duck Bank. In front of the numerous boxing-booths
experts of the 'fancy,' obviously out of condition, offered to fight all
comers, and were not seldom well thrashed by impetuous champions of
local fame. There were no photographic studios and no cocoanut-shies,
for these things had not been thought of; and to us moderns the fair,
despite its uncontrolled exuberance of revelry, would have seemed
strangely quiet, since neither steam-organ nor hooter nor hurdy-gurdy
was there to overwhelm the ear with crashing waves of gigantic sound.
But if the special phenomena of a later day were missing from the
carnival, others, as astonishing to us as the steam-organ would have
been to those uncouth roisterers, were certainly present. Chief, perhaps,
among these was the man who retailed the elixir of youth, the veritable
eau de jouvence, to credulous drinkers at sixpence a bottle. This
magician, whose dark mysterious face and glittering eyes indicated a
strain of Romany blood, and whose accent proved that he had at any
rate lived much in Yorkshire, had a small booth opposite the
watch-house under the Town Hall. On a banner suspended in front of it
was painted the legend:
THE INCA OF PERU'S ELIXER OF YOUTH SOLD HERE.
ETERNAL YOUTH FOR ALL. DRINK THIS AND YOU WILL
NEVER GROW OLD AS SUPPLIED TO THE NOBILITY &
GENTRY SIXPENCE PER BOT. WALK IN, WALK IN, &
CONSULT THE INCA OF PERU.
The Inca of Peru, dressed in black velveteens, with a brilliant scarf
round his neck, stood at the door of his tent, holding an empty glass in
one jewelled hand, and with the other twirling a long and silken
moustache. Handsome, graceful, and thoroughly inured to the public
gaze, he fronted a small circle of gapers like an actor adroit to make the

best of himself, and his tongue wagged fast enough to wag a man's leg
off. At a casual glance he might have been taken for thirty, but his age
was fifty and more--if you could catch him in the morning before he
had put the paint on.
'Ladies and gentlemen of Bursley, this enlightened and beautiful town
which I am now visiting for the first time,' he began in a hard, metallic
voice, employing again with the glib accuracy of a machine the exact
phrases which he had been using all day, 'look at me--look well at me.
How old do you think I am? How old do I seem? Twenty, my dear, do
you say?' and he turned with practised insolence to a pot-girl in a red
shawl who could not have uttered an audible word to save her soul, but
who blushed and giggled with pleasure at this mark of