3-008-892 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Preston Guild Festival: the Royal North Lancashire Agricultural Society's dinner, 1862. 'The dinner on Wednesday afternoon was a grand success, so far as attendance was concerned. The congregation of 1700 people to satisfy the pangs of hunger presents an impressive scene, but when this force is seen to bivouac under umbrellas it becomes highly amusing. There is something unique in the sight of men thus sheltered performing gastronomic duets. What the rain could make uneatable was rendered so; but, as soon as the remainder had been discussed, Lord Derby - who had been conveyed from the Mayor's official residence to the president's chair by a procession of butchers in blue coats and canary vests, in company with Lord Stanley and Sir J. Yorke Scarlett, K.C.B. - threw oil upon the troubled waters and raised the spirits of the meeting to the level of his own. Winning, courteous, and practical, his apt speeches diffused warmth around. He retrieved the occasion, and dismissed the large meeting with a feeling of having been amply repaid. Wednesday finished with a grand Masonic banquet'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.