Les Robarts
In the 19th century Handel was perhaps the only composer whose music had sufficient commercial clout for railway companies to run dedicated trains to festivals featuring his music. Pop-music festivals’ attendees nowadays travel to the venue mostly by road — no special trains take them there — though in the 1950s Glyndebourne patrons could travel on exclusive first-class-only trains from Victoria. But in June 1877 an excursion for visitors to the mammoth Handel oratorio performances at Crystal Palace was one of many special trains to run from cities around the UK for devotees.
The Midland Railway’s train from Yorkshire travelled overnight in each direction. Passengers booked a return ticket for a price possibly equalling a day’s pay. For being prepared to suffer privations, they were conveyed in elderly carriages, most of which had either fixed four or fixed six wheels, were without brakes, were unheated and were probably unlit, with bench seating in open saloons. The moneyed class went First Class, while the rest crammed into Third Class. Smoking, restricted but unenforceably so, was likely throughout the journey. Conversation was not private and contended with constant rattles, bangs and thuds as carriage wheels clattered over very short-jointed rails. Because refreshment and toilet facilities were not provided on the train, food and bodily functions were catered to by a brief stop at Trent, a station situated in the middle of nowhere between Derby and Nottingham. Catnaps must have been the only respite during a fitful and tedious journey of nearly seven hours.
The handbill for this train informs passengers that they were responsible for transport and fares between St Pancras and either Victoria or Holborn Viaduct, from whence trains took them to a choice of stations at Crystal Palace. One can imagine these Yorkshire folk, in a crowd of possibly three hundred people, vying for horse-drawn vehicles to take them to the two southern stations. Yet there was some financial compensation in a discount admission ticket to the Palace, on production of their Midland Railway ticket.
Top of the bill that season was Messiah. Performers numbered in thousands, the soprano Adeline Patti a main attraction. Later in the week there was Israel in Egypt. Which was all very well for Londoners, living locally and within easy reach of Crystal Palace, but very unfortunate for the Yorkshire passengers who, having endured the horrors of overnight travel, had only the Grand Rehearsal on the day of their visit. The special train clearly was not for Yorkshire musicians wishing to swell choir and orchestra numbers. One can only speculate that such was the national awareness of the grand occasion and presentation of Handel’s music, combined with the vigorous growth in amateur choirs and orchestras in church, chapel and workplace, succoured by ‘cheap’ Novello scores of Handel’s oratorios, that the Midland Railway sensed a market opportunity for a new source of revenue.
Handbill by kind permission of Dr David Turner, University of York.