But even croquet has its lighter moments. I witnessed a match some
time ago between a well-set-up cavalry officer (retired with the rank
of Major-General) and a cub of a lad--a slouching, hulking fellow whose
gait showed that he had never had a day's athletic training. The boy won
and went grinning off the lawns. His mother received him with grins, and
the General walked away in the direction of the river. It occurred to me
that people should keep an eye upon him. But he did not even fling his
mallet into the stream.
He turned up a little later at another court, and this time he was
victorious.
But against whom?
Against a stout elderly lady crippled with rheumatism; and he just
managed to beat her through making a lucky shot!
It seems to me to be marvellous that, with the possibilities of such
humiliation before players, any except the decrepit should be found
willing to take part in tournaments.
There can be no doubt, however, as to the absorbing power of croquet
upon certain temperaments. I have met an elderly lady of Early Victorian
proportions who, I am positive, can recollect the details of every match
she has ever played. If she were not able to do so she would sometimes
be compelled to sit in silence, for to her conversation means nothing
beyond a recapitulation of her croquet games. Try her as you may upon
other topics, it is no use. She seems intensely bored if you touch upon
the theatre, and to music and the other arts she is rather more than
indifferent. Indifference might be represented as “scratch,” but her
attitude can only be represented by a minus sign. On art she should be a
-3, on music a -6, and on literature a -20. These are her handicaps, so
far as I am capable of judging.
She is the terror of the managers of tournaments, such a hole-and-corner
game as she plays. She never leaves anything to chance: she invariably
sends herself into a corner. Her most dashing game occupies four hours.
It is said that she has strong views on the subject of assimilating the
game of croquet with the game of cricket in regard to the duration of
a match. If it takes three days to play a cricket match, why should not
the same limits be extended to a croquet match? she wishes to know. The
reply that is suggested by the people with whom she has played is that
even at a three-day match she would complain bitterly that she
was hustled by the managers. At present her life seems a perpetual
complaint. During the season she grumbles her way from tournament to
tournament; and when she seats herself by the side of an unwary person
to watch a match, even though it is a final for the cup, she immediately
begins to describe one of her games--it may be one that took place five
years before--and keeps on giving detail after detail of trivialities,
with a complete disregard of the excitements of the court where she is
sitting and the applause of the crowd at some brilliant play--on she
rumbles, unless her unwilling confidant rises and flies for covert. It
takes her even longer to describe one of her games than it does to
play it. Her latest complaint is that croquet players are becoming very
unsociable, the basis of her charge being that when she approaches a
court to sit down and watch a game, the people on the chairs whom she
knows quite well get up and go away. She does not believe that in every
case they do so, as was suggested, to give her a choice of chairs.
She thinks that those should remain whom she has known for some years.
It does not appear ever to have occurred to her that they get up and fly
because they have known her for some years.
Another _devotée_ has become so absorbed in her cult as to become upon
occasions an embarrassment to her relations. Of course no one makes any
remark upon a player thinking of nothing besides croquet: it is assumed
that a lady who means to become a player will not waste time thinking
about anything else.
“Man's croquet is of man's life a thing apart.
'Tis woman's sole existence.”
That is acknowledged as only reasonable; but it must sometimes be
embarrassing to the relations of this lady when at a dinner party she
refuses an offered entrée on the ground that she is wired, or when
she checks a neighbour for taking a meringue because he or she has
previously been playing with the green. It appears quite feasible to
me, however, that the green of the salad and the white of the meringue
should suggest to a thoughtful croquet player the need for such a
caution as is attributed to her on good authority; nor do I think it so
very unreasonable that on allowing herself to be carried on a 'bus beyond
her destination, through thinking out a croquet problem, she should,
on being informed by the conductor that the vehicle went no farther,
say--“What a fool I was not to take a bisque sooner!”
It is said that this same lady caused a considerable flutter in a
railway carriage one day when she was working out another croquet
problem, and was heard to mutter--“Shall I shoot now?”
Any time I chanced to look in at a croquet tournament on the beautiful
lawns at Broadminster I came away with a laugh, and upon more than
one occasion I found that the laugh was against myself. Long ago I was
accustomed to look with a pathetic interest at the reappearance year
after year of the beautiful mother of a beautiful daughter at the
tournament. Surely, I thought, there could not be a more pathetic sight
than that of a mother with a picturesque home and a husband, setting
out from both, early in the month of June, when the rosery is becoming
a paradise of blossom, and travelling from country town to country town
and from one hotel to another, without intermission until October, for
the sake of being by the side of a daughter who has given up her life to
the game.
The laugh came in when I found that the mother was more devoted to
looking on at croquet than the girl was to playing the game! The
pathetic figure was really the daughter, who was acting as companion
to her mother to enable her with propriety to gratify her passion for
watching people play croquet. The daughter complained a little at
first, but now she says she has come to see that she should be unselfish
and sink her own inclinations so that her mother may have some innocent
enjoyment.
She looks very carefully after her mother, and is even able sometimes to
exchange a few words with her at intervals during the day's play.
Since I found this out I have never allowed myself to be carried away
in pity for one who elects to play the part of onlooker at a game of
croquet. People who spend their time looking on at croquet are deserving
of no pity.
I have been told that when hospitality is offered to some of the
visitors by people in Broadminster during the tournament week, it is
now not invariably accepted without caution and preliminary inquiry. A
bitter story was imparted to me by a man who had been kindly invited
by one of the inhabitants to stay at his house for the croquet week. My
friend gratefully accepted, and as the whole of the local family were
players, he was brought up to their villa after the first day's play.
He found the house a charming one of its class, and he thought himself
lucky in his billet. Dinner was served, and then the little rift within
the hospitable lute was suggested: there was no wine offered to him! The
hissing of syphons round the table gave expression to his views on the
subject of such hospitality; but what could he say in reply to his host
when the latter turned to him, remarking quite pleasantly--“This is a
teetotal household: no strong drink of any kind is allowed to enter it.
Will you have soda water or Appolinaris?”
Of course there was nothing to be said by a guest on the subject; but
his host, like so many people professing his principles, had a good deal
to say respecting the virtue of teetotalism. But so far as I was able
to gather from the tone of his narrative, he did not obtain the cordial
concurrence of his guest in all his views; for his guest was in the
habit of taking half a bottle of claret at his dinner every day of his
life and at least one glass of sound port afterwards, and for twenty
years he had not gone to bed without wrapping himself round a tumbler
of grog at the eleventh hour, and he did not find that an exordium on
teetotalism went far to compensate him for the absent decanters. He
was ready to greet the discourse with hisses; but the syphons were
accommodating: they did their own hissing.
He went to bed in a very bad humour.