May 29. Went down to Epsom by rail and walked to the course. Met Woolner and a brother sculptor, Burnett, John and William Millais, Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Salomon and Miss Salomon. Tom Taylor and a lady. When the 18 horses were running for the Derby Stakes and I and Woolner and Burnett were against the ropes on the side the horses took, and we were struck by the thunder and tramping rush of their progress—that was in truth a sublime moment. In the evening adiourned to Cremorne which was densely thronged by men and women in all states of hilarity and inebricty. Met Munro and Ormsby, Poynter, Du Maurier, Millais and Jopling and others.¹²

Note 12. The annual great Derby Day race at Epsom, won this year by ‘Kettledrum’, was an infectiously exciting occasion. William Burnett, architect and landscape painter, whose work was mostly done from 1844-60. William (1828-99) younger brother of John Millais was a landscape painter. Cremorne pleasure gardens to the west of Battersea Bridge were celebrating Derby Day with coloured lamps, dancing, fireworks and larking. Those participating in the fun were John Ormsby (1829-95), traveller, mountain-climber, illustrator, and a regular contributor to Fraser's Magazine, the Saturday Review and other periodicals; George DuMaurier (1834-96) novelist and artist, now employed by Punch, and J. M. Jopling (1831-84) a self-taught artist and friend of Millais.