R.D.Blumenfeld on the Lord Mayor's Show

Monday, November 10th, 1890

This has been a considerable holiday, for it is Lord Mayor's Day, and all London gave itself up to the celebration. There was a procession from the Mansion House down Fleet Street and Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square, and then back along the Embankment, a wonderful circus-like pageant, particularly attractive this year, because one of the Sheriffs in the Lord Mayor's entourage is Augustus Harris, the manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, and he, with his stage manager, Arthur Collins, has made the historic procession more theatrical than it has ever been. "Gus " Harris, in his green and gold carriage of state, was wildly cheered all along the route, for he is immensely popular. The Lord Mayor, Mr. Alderman Savory, is a wholesale chemist, I believe. He looked very fine in the great golden coach drawn by magnificent horses, and driven by an enormously fat coachman in gorgeous livery, all gold and satin and pink silk. The aftermath of the show was a fine harvest of drunkenness. The Strand at eight o'clock to-night was agog with a milling stew of so-called merrymakers, which means that there was general license and intoxication. The "donah" girls from the shops and factories, all dressed up in great hats, bobbing with so-called ostrich feathers, find great amusement in assailing innocent passers-by with jets of water from little leaden squirts. It is wisest to appear to like it.