THAT we Englishmen attach too much importance to sport goes without
saying—or, rather, it has been said so often as to have become a
commonplace. One of these days some reforming English novelist will
write a book, showing the evil effects of over-indulgence in sport: the
neglected business, the ruined home, the slow but sure sapping of the
brain—what there may have been of it in the beginning—leading to
semi-imbecility and yearly increasing obesity.
A young couple, I once heard of, went for their honeymoon to Scotland.
The poor girl did not know he was a golfer (he had wooed and won her
during a period of idleness enforced by a sprained shoulder), or maybe
she would have avoided Scotland. The idea they started with was that of
a tour. The second day the man went out for a stroll by himself. At
dinner-time he observed, with a far-away look in his eyes, that it seemed
a pretty spot they had struck, and suggested their staying there another
day. The next morning after breakfast he borrowed a club from the hotel
porter, and remarked that he would take a walk while she finished doing
her hair. He said it amused him, swinging a club while he walked. He
returned in time for lunch and seemed moody all the afternoon. He said
the air suited him, and urged that they should linger yet another day.
She was young and inexperienced, and thought, maybe, it was liver. She
had heard much about liver from her father. The next morning he borrowed
more clubs, and went out, this time before breakfast, returning to a late
and not over sociable dinner. That was the end of their honeymoon so far
as she was concerned. He meant well, but the thing had gone too far.
The vice had entered into his blood, and the smell of the links drove out
all other considerations.
We are most of us familiar, I take it, with the story of the golfing
parson, who could not keep from swearing when the balls went wrong.
“Golf and the ministry don’t seem to go together,” his friend told him.
“Take my advice before it’s too late, and give it up, Tammas.”
A few months later Tammas met his friend again.
“You were right, Jamie,” cried the parson cheerily, “they didna run well
in harness; golf and the meenistry, I hae followed your advice: I hae
gi’en it oop.”
“Then what are ye doing with that sack of clubs?” inquired Jamie.
“What am I doing with them?” repeated the puzzled Tammas. “Why I am
going to play golf with them.” A light broke upon him. “Great Heavens,
man!” he continued, “ye didna’ think ’twas the golf I’d gi’en oop?”
The Englishman does not understand play. He makes a life-long labour of
his sport, and to it sacrifices mind and body. The health resorts of
Europe—to paraphrase a famous saying that nobody appears to have
said—draw half their profits from the playing fields of Eton and
elsewhere. In Swiss and German kurhausen enormously fat men bear down
upon you and explain to you that once they were the champion sprinters or
the high-jump representatives of their university—men who now hold on to
the bannisters and groan as they haul themselves upstairs. Consumptive
men, between paroxysms of coughing, tell you of the goals they scored
when they were half-backs or forwards of extraordinary ability.
Ex-light-weight amateur pugilists, with the figure now of an American
roll-top desk, butt you into a corner of the billiard-room, and,
surprised they cannot get as near you as they would desire, whisper to
you the secret of avoiding the undercut by the swiftness of the backward
leap. Broken-down tennis players, one-legged skaters, dropsical
gentlemen-riders, are to be met with hobbling on crutches along every
highway of the Engadine.
They are pitiable objects. Never having learnt to read anything but the
sporting papers, books are of no use to them. They never wasted much of
their youth on thought, and, apparently, have lost the knack of it. They
don’t care for art, and Nature only suggests to them the things they can
no longer do. The snow-clad mountain reminds them that once they were
daring tobogannists; the undulating common makes them sad because they
can no longer handle a golf-club; by the riverside they sit down and tell
you of the salmon they caught before they caught rheumatic fever; birds
only make them long for guns; music raises visions of the local
cricket-match of long ago, enlivened by the local band; a picturesque
estaminet, with little tables spread out under the vines, recalls bitter
memories of ping-pong. One is sorry for them, but their conversation is
not exhilarating. The man who has other interests in life beyond sport
is apt to find their reminiscences monotonous; while to one another they
do not care to talk. One gathers that they do not altogether believe one
another.
The foreigner is taking kindly to our sports; one hopes he will be
forewarned by our example and not overdo the thing. At present, one is
bound to admit, he shows no sign of taking sport too seriously. Football
is gaining favour more and more throughout Europe. But yet the Frenchman
has not got it out of his head that the _coup_ to practise is kicking the
ball high into the air and catching it upon his head. He would rather
catch the ball upon his head than score a goal. If he can manœuvre the
ball away into a corner, kick it up into the air twice running, and each
time catch it on his head, he does not seem to care what happens after
that. Anybody can have the ball; he has had his game and is happy.
They talk of introducing cricket into Belgium; I shall certainly try to
be present at the opening game. I am afraid that, until he learns from
experience, the Belgian fielder will stop cricket balls with his head.
That the head is the proper thing with which to play ball appears to be
in his blood. My head is round, he argues, and hard, just like the ball
itself; what part of the human frame more fit and proper with which to
meet and stop a ball.
Golf has not yet caught on, but tennis is firmly established from St.
Petersburg to Bordeaux. The German, with the thoroughness characteristic
of him, is working hard. University professors, stout majors, rising
early in the morning, hire boys and practise back-handers and
half-volleys. But to the Frenchman, as yet, it is a game. He plays it
in a happy, merry fashion, that is shocking to English eyes.
Your partner’s service rather astonishes you. An occasional yard or so
beyond the line happens to anyone, but this man’s object appears to be to
break windows. You feel you really must remonstrate, when the joyous
laughter and tumultuous applause of the spectators explain the puzzle to
you. He has not been trying to serve; he has been trying to hit a man in
the next court who is stooping down to tie up his shoe-lace. With his
last ball he has succeeded. He has hit the man in the small of the back,
and has bowled him over. The unanimous opinion of the surrounding
critics is that the ball could not possibly have been better placed. A
Doherty has never won greater applause from the crowd. Even the man who
has been hit appears pleased; it shows what a Frenchman can do when he
does take up a game.
But French honour demands revenge. He forgets his shoe, he forgets his
game. He gathers together all the balls that he can find; his balls,
your balls, anybody’s balls that happen to be handy. And then commences
the return match. At this point it is best to crouch down under shelter
of the net. Most of the players round about adopt this plan; the more
timid make for the club-house, and, finding themselves there, order
coffee and light up cigarettes. After a while both players appear to be
satisfied. The other players then gather round to claim their balls.
This makes a good game by itself. The object is to get as many balls as
you can, your own and other people’s—for preference other people’s—and
run off with them round the courts, followed by whooping claimants.
In the course of half-an-hour or so, when everybody is dead beat, the
game—the original game—is resumed. You demand the score; your partner
promptly says it is “forty-fifteen.” Both your opponents rush up to the
net, and apparently there is going to be a duel. It is only a friendly
altercation; they very much doubt its being “forty-fifteen.”
“Fifteen-forty” they could believe; they suggest it as a compromise. The
discussion is concluded by calling it deuce. As it is rare for a game to
proceed without some such incident occurring in the middle of it, the
score generally is deuce. This avoids heart-burning; nobody wins a set
and nobody loses. The one game generally suffices for the afternoon.
To the earnest player, it is also confusing to miss your partner
occasionally—to turn round and find that he is talking to a man. Nobody
but yourself takes the slightest objection to his absence. The other
side appear to regard it as a good opportunity to score. Five minutes
later he resumes the game. His friend comes with him, also the dog of
his friend. The dog is welcomed with enthusiasm; all balls are returned
to the dog. Until the dog is tired you do not get a look in. But all
this will no doubt soon be changed. There are some excellent French and
Belgian players; from them their compatriots will gradually learn higher
ideals. The Frenchman is young in the game. As the right conception of
the game grows upon him, he will also learn to keep the balls lower.
I suppose it is the continental sky. It is so blue, so beautiful; it
naturally attracts one. Anyhow, the fact remains that most tennis
players on the Continent, whether English or foreign, have a tendency to
aim the ball direct at Heaven. At an English club in Switzerland there
existed in my days a young Englishman who was really a wonderful player.
To get the ball past him was almost an impossibility. It was his return
that was weak. He only had one stroke; the ball went a hundred feet or
so into the air and descended in his opponent’s court. The other man
would stand watching it, a little speck in the Heavens, growing gradually
bigger and bigger as it neared the earth. Newcomers would chatter to
him, thinking he had detected a balloon or an eagle. He would wave them
aside, explain to them that he would talk to them later, after the
arrival of the ball. It would fall with a thud at his feet, rise another
twenty yards or so and again descend. When it was at the proper height
he would hit it back over the net, and the next moment it would be
mounting the sky again. At tournaments I have seen that young man, with
tears in his eyes, pleading to be given an umpire. Every umpire had
fled. They hid behind trees, borrowed silk hats and umbrellas and
pretended they were visitors—any device, however mean, to avoid the task
of umpiring for that young man. Provided his opponent did not go to
sleep or get cramp, one game might last all day. Anyone could return his
balls; but, as I have said, to get a ball past him was almost an
impossibility. He invariably won; the other man, after an hour or so,
would get mad and try to lose. It was his only chance of dinner.
It is a pretty sight, generally speaking, a tennis ground abroad. The
women pay more attention to their costumes than do our lady players. The
men are usually in spotless white. The ground is often charmingly
situated, the club-house picturesque; there is always laughter and
merriment. The play may not be so good to watch, but the picture is
delightful. I accompanied a man a little while ago to his club on the
outskirts of Brussels. The ground was bordered by a wood on one side,
and surrounded on the other three by _petites fermes_—allotments, as we
should call them in England, worked by the peasants themselves.
It was a glorious spring afternoon. The courts were crowded. The red
earth and the green grass formed a background against which the women, in
their new Parisian toilets, under their bright parasols, stood out like
wondrous bouquets of moving flowers. The whole atmosphere was a
delightful mingling of idle gaiety, flirtation, and graceful
sensuousness. A modern Watteau would have seized upon the scene with
avidity.
Just beyond—separated by the almost invisible wire fencing—a group of
peasants were working in the field. An old woman and a young girl, with
ropes about their shoulders, were drawing a harrow, guided by a withered
old scarecrow of a man. They paused for a moment at the wire fencing,
and looked through. It was an odd contrast; the two worlds divided by
that wire fencing—so slight, almost invisible. The girl swept the sweat
from her face with her hand; the woman pushed back her grey locks
underneath the handkerchief knotted about her head; the old man
straightened himself with some difficulty. So they stood, for perhaps a
minute, gazing with quiet, passionless faces through that slight fencing,
that a push from their work-hardened hands might have levelled.
Was there any thought, I wonder, passing through their brains? The young
girl—she was a handsome creature in spite of her disfiguring garments.
The woman—it was a wonderfully fine face: clear, calm eyes, deep-set
under a square broad brow. The withered old scarecrow—ever sowing the
seed in the spring of the fruit that others shall eat.
The old man bent again over the guiding ropes: gave the word. The team
moved forward up the hill. It is Anatole France, I think, who says:
Society is based upon the patience of the poor.