ENGLAND AT PLAY
"These English take their pleasures sadly," said a French wit. It was a
misunderstanding of the national expression. The Englishman takes his
pleasures not sadly but resolutely. It is a holiday. He is out to enjoy
himself. He _will_ enjoy himself whatever the obstacles. There is a grim
resolve in his mind. But he is not sad: he is resolutely merry. That look
on his face is not agony; it is stern determination.
I have seen Hampstead Heath on the midsummer Bank Holiday. A frowning sky,
a bleak wind, and occasional gusty showers of rain declared the day to be
not of midsummer and not suitable to open-air holiday. But the East End was
not to be deterred from merriment. "London's playground" was like a huge
ant-hill with swarming holiday-makers, and all had made up their dogged
English minds to rejoice and be merry. That was apparent from the first.
In the "Tube" railways girls of from sixteen to sixty--all girly--giggled
hilariously at everything and anything and nothing. "It's from the other
side" announced one on the train platform; and this fact about the train's
going was greeted with shouting laughter, and the "joke" went round a
widening circle of rippling merriment. On the road, the coster's cart,
loaded with Mr. and Mrs. Coster and a group of Costerlings--the
numerousness of which said "no race suicide here"--scattered abroad song,
vociferous if not tuneful. When a shower came the song grew louder, as
though to smother the weather.
Commerce helped the people's resolve to be gay. You could buy a bag of
confetti for a halfpenny; for the same sum a stick adorned with bright
paper streamers, or a tuft of gorgeously-dyed flax. A penny provided a
tartan cap in paper, wearing which one might be quite ridiculously gay. The
oceans had been dredged and the earth rifled for the people's holiday.
Shellfish of all sorts, bananas from the West Indies, plums from Spain,
roses from Kent and Surrey, pine-apple tinned at Singapore, bright nacre
shells from Australian beaches, little love-birds from Papua trained as
"fortune-tellers" to pick out a paper telling you of the happiness in store
for you--all these were at your service; and the standard price was one
penny. A few coppers opened up for the holiday Englishman the resources of
a whole Empire.
Over all lowered a grey sky. But what mattered that! The factory girls
danced on the gravel paths to the music of barrel organs (sometimes,
indeed, of the humble mouth organ), danced often with verve, and always
with hilarity. The Australian larrikin and his "donah" dance at "down the
harbor" picnics with a fixed solemnity of face, as if performing some weird
corybantic rite. The London coster and his girl are determinedly merry. The
merriment may be in some cases forced, but it is forced with grit. A dance
on the road is broken up to allow a cart to slowly creep past. It is
resumed with perfect good humour, and with the same gay whoops.
Yet there is nothing orgiastic in the merriment. Among the many many
thousands you may notice here and there a man and--far worse
sight--occasionally a girl the worse for drink, prompting the thought that
if public opinion won't keep women out of the bars the licensing law
should; but the great mass of the crowd is quite sober: the merriment is
not vinous.
If dancing, shouting, or "spooning"--discouraged neither by the gaze of the
public nor the dampness of the weather--did not amuse, there were more
intellectual amusements. You might have your head read for a penny, your
character diagnosed by your eye for the same sum; or you might see an old
man making a fairly good pretence of hanging himself, and he left it to
your honesty to subscribe the penny.
The Englishman take his pleasures sadly? Not a bit of it. That roar from
the Old Bull and Bush, the crackling laughter around all the booths and
from all the crowded paths, tell that the Englishman can become very gay on
quite slight encouragement.
A day at Southend, another great "popular place of amusement," gives the
same impression of resolute gaiety. A good-humoured crowd packs the
cheap-trip trains. There are more passengers than seats; and young fellows
take it amiably in turn to stand, leaving the elders and the womenfolk to
sit throughout. At Southend there is no beach, as one understands the term
elsewhere--a scimitar curve of gleaming sand on which blue waves break,
showing their white teeth in smiles. The "beach" is just a flat, which at
high tide the sea covers, to leave it at low tide a wide muddy expanse of
marshy soil. But the seaside trippers make the best of it. The cliffs are
thronged with happy picnickers. The beach is dotted with waders, who go out
many hundreds of yards along the wet flat, and in some mysterious way enjoy
themselves. Where at last the water starts there are bathers disporting
from boats. A pier which stretches out its long straightness and suggests a
task rather than a pleasure, is filled with happy promenaders, who sniff up
the smell of the seaweed and recognise it as ozone. They mostly wear
yachting caps, or some other costume sign of the seaside, and an air of
nautical adventure.
Yes, the Englishman has a great faculty of enjoying himself. I am indeed
struck, in many aspects of life, at the Englishman's faculty of being
cheerful under what one would consider depressing conditions. The
Englishman does not hesitate to take his girl to the cemetery to court her.
A London friend asked me, with real enthusiasm, to look at the "fine view"
from his flat, and it looked out on an old Plague Cemetery, where the
victims of the London plague nourish the green of the trees. The Englishman
take his pleasures sadly? Rather he takes his sadnesses pleasurably.
It is the Englishman of the industrial classes I have pictured amusing
himself. As to the richer folk, is there anything fresh to be said? Does
not every one at least think that he knows? Have not "society" novelists
innumerable, from "Ouida" downwards, given us studies of English "society"
people at play, making the home life of the duke open for inspection by the
meanest intelligence? Are there not numberless penny and halfpenny papers
carrying on the good work to this day?
If one can contrive to put out of one's mind all that nonsense and observe
with intelligence, one will find that the middle-class Englishman and the
rich Englishman amuse themselves after very much the same manner as do the
people of the poorer classes. They refine on the methods, but the spirit
is the same. At heart, the Englishman of all classes loves feasting and
boisterous jollity. Education and breeding may modify his tastes, but they
are still there. _Au fond_, the typical Englishman likes best a joke that
has a savour of the "practical" in it. Give him his natural rein, and
duke's son, cook's son--if there are any English cooks left to have
sons--will lightly incline his thoughts to horseplay when he wishes to be
genuinely amused.
Yet perhaps this, too, passes. I remember thinking so, Lord Mayor's Day
1909, when the procession through the city proved to be not a "show," but a
display of the defence guards of the nation. Perhaps this may be taken as a
hint of a growing earnestness in English life, of a recognition of stern
struggles to come and only to be met with resolved and steady vigour. It
had, of a surety, some significance--the sudden casting off on the city's
great festival day of an old habit of childish play and the putting in its
place of a display of soldiers and sailors, and boys who will one day be
soldiers and sailors. Of some significance, too, was the ready, popular
acquiescence in the change. Crowds that had been for years regaled on such
occasions with broad pantomime, all fun and levity, were faced of a sudden
with serious drama--soldiers in glittering mail, still more impressive
soldiers in uniforms of the colour of earth; Boy Scouts playing at being
soldiers and enjoying the most wholesome game; war paraphernalia of wagons
and field telegraphs and field hospitals, and guns of all kinds, from the
great mastiff siege-guns drawn by eight horses, which the Navy taught the
Army to make mobile, down to the vicious little terrier pom-poms. And the
people cheered the change. There was no hint at a protest against the
departure from the stage of the old vanities. After a quieter method than
that which came of Savonarola's teaching, but none the less surely, they
had gone to destruction, and in their place was a dutiful parade of
citizens armed for the defence of their homes: and the people approved. The
Balaclava veterans and the Boy Scouts shared the honours of the day. Gog
and Magog were not; but the crowd would have its symbolism, and cheered the
ideal of tried valour, the ideal of aspiring youth, as they saw them
seriously personified.
[Illustration: CRICKET AT LORD'S]
In 1910 and 1911 there was the same "sober-minded" Lord Mayor's Day; and
the old pantomime procession clearly will never be revived. Perhaps now the
English nation is at last "growing up" to be too old for such elemental
humours. If so, does the fact speak for good augury or evil augury? I
wonder. A well-known Scottish artist of the day, who lives in Paris
"because it is the place for all rebels and all ideas," and sells his
pictures in London and America, told me once very solemnly, "When the
English people get artistic and witty they are going to go down. It is the
Philistinism of England that proves her national strength and sanity." I
reassured him by telling him that most of the statues erected in England
nowadays were those of men in trousers, and we were comforted to think that
there was still enough of Philistinism in England to keep her safe and
sound. But it does look as though the Englishman were losing his enjoyment
of primitive humour when he vetoes Gog and Magog on Lord Mayor's Day. Also
he begins to live in hotels and to dine at restaurants when he is not
travelling. Yes, on the surface all peoples grow sadly alike, and that
charm of travel which comes from the stimulating contact of the mind with
the more obvious differences between lands and peoples threatens to vanish
in a generation or two, through the fashion of admiring all countries but
one's own spreading, and through each country learning to imitate some
other. Still, the threat has been often made before without justifying
itself. In Shakespeare's time it was Italy
Whose manners still our tardy apish nation
Limps after in base imitation.
But we did not in the end become Italians. In spite of surface imitations
the deeper differences which come from the tap-roots of nations remain.
The Lord Mayor's Day of the old style of buffoonery is dead. But there is,
on the other hand, a movement in England nowadays--a happy and wholesome
movement--to revive the festivities of May Day, which once was the great
festival of the country-side. The old chronicles in their descriptions of
May Day rejoicings provide a very delectable picture. This from Bourne:--
On the calends or first of May, commonly called May
Day, the Juvenile part of both sexes were wont to rise
a little after midnight and walk to some neighbouring
wood accompanied with music and blowing of horns, where
they break down branches of trees and adorn them with
nosegays and crowns of flowers; when this is done they
return homewards about the rising of the sun and make
their doors and windows to triumph with their flowery
spoils and the after part of the day is chiefly spent
in dancing round a tall pole, called a May-pole and
being placed in a convenient part of the village stands
there, as it were consecrated to the Goddess of Flowers
without the least violation being offered to it in the
whole circle of the year.
Stubbes, writing in 1595, describes closely the bringing home of the
May-pole:--
Against May Day ... every parish, towne or village
assemble themselves, both men, women and children and
either all together or dividing themselves into
companies, they goe some to the woods and groves some
to the hills and mountains where they spend all the
night in pleasant pastime and in the morning return
bringing with them birch boughs and branches of trees
to deck their assemblies withal. But their chiefest
jewel they bring thence is the Maie pole which they
bring home with great veneration as thus--they have
twentie to fortie yoake of oxen, every oxe having a
sweet nosegaie of flowers tied to the top of his horns,
and these oxen draw home the Maypoale which they
covered all over with flowers and herbes bound round
with strings from the top to the bottome and sometimes
it was painted with colours, having two or three
hundred men, women and children following in great
devotion.... Then fall they to banquetting and
feasting, to leaping and dancing about it, as heathen
people did at the dedication of their idols.
Hall, in his _Chronicle_ of the time of Henry VIII., tells how the feast of
May Day was sometimes accompanied by a kind of historical pageant. This is
from his description of a May Day in the seventh year of the reign of Henry
VIII.:--
The King and Queen accompanied with many lordes and
ladies rode in the high ground of Shooter's Hill to
take the open air and as they passed by the way they
espied a company of tall yeomen clothed all in green
with green whodes and bows and arrowes to the number of
two hundred. Then one of them which called himself
Robin Hood came to the King, desiring him to see his
men shoot, and the King was content. Then he whistled
and all the two hundred archers shot and losed at once
and then he whistled again and they likewise shot
again, their arrows whistled by craft of the head, so
that the noise was strange and great and much pleased
the company. All these archers were of the King's guard
and had thus apparelled themselves to make solace to
the King. Then Robin Hood desired the King and Queen to
come into the green wood and to see how the outlaws
live. The King demanded of the Queen and her ladies if
they durst venture to go into the wood with so many
outlawes. Then the Queen said that if it pleased him
she was content, then the horns blew till they came to
the wood under Shooter's Hill, and there was an arbour
made of bows with a hall and a great chamber and an
inner chamber very well made and covered with flowers
and herbes which the King much praised. Then said Robin
Hood, Sir, outlaw's breakfast is venison and therefore
you must be content with such fare as we use. Then the
King and Queen sat down and were served with venison
and wine by Robin Hood and his men. Then the King
departed and his company and Robin Hood and his men
them conducted.
I have spoken, so far, of "amusement" only. There are other forms of play.
There is "sport." Now sport must not be considered an amusement merely in
England. It is a vital absorbing affair of life, a "bemusement" rather.
Some serious-minded folk in London still tell, with deprecation, of
incidents of the time of the South African War, when the evening newspaper
contents bills showed that there was a keener attraction for coppers in
news of the cricket matches than in news of the campaign. But even these
serious-minded people themselves probably have often bought a paper which
recorded a century in a Test Match in preference to one which gave some
news of national importance; and have murmured to themselves in excuse
something that the dour old Duke of Wellington probably never said, about
the Battle of Waterloo having been won on the playing fields of Eton.
"Sport," indeed, is so much a part of English life that it could never be
uprooted without making some vital change in the national character--and,
perhaps, not a change for the better.
One thing the passion for sport does give to the Englishman, and that is a
passion for fair play. There is not in any other nation of the world such
a nice sense of manly honour. "Give him a sporting chance" means that you
must take no unfair advantage of an enemy. "Take it like a sport" means
that you must not be merely a cheerful winner, but must be ready to face
losses and set-backs with equanimity.
When the small English boy goes to school the question is solemnly asked as
to what sports he will take up. This is of at least equal importance with
the other question as to what professional or business career he will
follow in the future. Often it is counted of greater moment. Will the
youngster be good at cricket, or football, or rowing? On that hinges the
degree of his greatness in his world's estimation for quite a number of
years. Cricket is, on the whole, the most important. To be a classic bat,
to be a deadly slow bowler, or a still more deadly fast bowler--that is
greatness for the young man. The cricket matches between the great public
schools, the universities, the counties, are the chief pre-occupation of a
large proportion of England during the summer months. Football grips more
among the industrial classes, cricket more among the professional and
administrative classes. Between them they keep a great part of England
excited from one year's end to the other.
There are, of course, other sports of the schools--running, jumping, lawn
tennis, hockey and the like. But they usually are just allowed to fill in
gaps between cricket and football. Manhood, however, adds to the list of
sports largely. There is golf. "If you find that golf interferes with your
business, give up your business," runs a popular gibe. It accentuates,
without misrepresenting acutely, the attitude taken up by very many
Englishmen and Englishwomen on the subject of golf. They live in a district
because of its golf facilities, shape their holiday resorts by the golf
they offer, reckon their days by the chances they offer for golf.
Horse-racing is another great English sport, in which few take an active
part, but in which a vast multitude has a share of interest either as
spectators or as speculators. It claims such a huge share of English
attention that one definition of the English is, "a horse-racing nation";
and wherever an English town is built in any part of the world it will have
a race-course almost as soon as it has a church and a school. The various
race-meetings throughout the year in England vary in their social
character. The Derby is a great popular event, to see which the East End of
London pours itself out on the Surrey roads. Goodwood, on the other hand,
is very much a "society" meeting.
The tale is not yet complete. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of
Englishmen find it necessary to life to disport on water during the
summer--yachting, skiff-rowing, punting, or canoeing. Hunting is mostly the
sport of the well-to-do, though an otter-hunt calls a whole country-side to
its excitement, demanding of no one either that he should be mounted or
that he should be rich.
Fox-hunting is of the very marrow of the English character. "The
unspeakable pursuing the uneatable," said Wilde savagely of the English
squire pursuing the fox; and thereby proved his utter un-Englishness. To
sneer at fox-hunting! It is a step towards atheism. Once upon a time I
remember going out into the yard of a little village public-house on the
Monaro (Australia) and seeing chained up in the yard a fox. I stopped to
ask why, and the groom told me of an English tourist who had also inquired
as to the fox, and who had learned incidentally that poison was laid for
foxes on the Monaro because they had become a pest; and, so learning, had
set his face at once away from a land where such barbarities were possible.
He did not reckon his own life safe, I suppose, in a country where foxes
were poisoned.
[Illustration: TROUT-FISHING ON THE ITCHEN, HAMPSHIRE]
The pheasant _battues_, which are one of the autumn games of the rich in
England, I would hardly dignify as "sport." They are the growth of the
recent times of great fortunes, and scarcely a wholesome sign, I think.
Grouse-shooting _en battue_ is more tolerable as a sport, for at least the
birds are wild-bred.
But one may not even catalogue all the sports of England in a chapter. I
find that fishing--in all its phases: salmon, trout, deep-sea, and the
rest--asks attention, and may not have it. One final note: the Englishman,
for all his present sports, is hospitable to welcome others, and often
takes them up to excel in them. In flying, for instance, the Englishman is
beginning now to take a place after the French. And I can recollect, as
late as the end of 1909, a Flying Meeting at Doncaster at which not a
single Englishman took the air. Within a little more than two years what a
change!
That Doncaster Flying Meeting was the first ever held in England, and I was
one of those who travelled up to see the strange fowl in the air, birds of
the growth of the fabled roc winging steady flights around the field once
sacred to the horse. Badly treated by the weather, the "First Flying
Meeting in England" faced an outlook which was not too cheerful. Over a
sodden ground a grey sky lowered threateningly, and gusty winds, blowing
hither and thither, threatened storms. The great "birds" nestled within
their sheds, and a nervous committee went round lifting questioning hands
to the sky. If this day were a fiasco the meeting was ruined, and the
horses of Doncaster would have the laugh over their strange rivals.
Then the sun came out. The wind dropped to a zephyr's lightness. There
seemed no reason why the men should not fly, and they could fly. Whispers
went round hinting at delays which were condemnable because avoidable if
they were real. An official suggested that aviators had all the tricks and
uncertainties of the indispensable _prima donna assoluta_; that they had to
be humoured to take the stage when the call-bell rang. Devout prayers were
muttered for the day when aviation would be as common in England as
trick-cycling and stout, bejewelled promoters of flying meetings would
lounge haughtily in front of a long _queue_ of humble applicants for a
chance to appear, and country hotel-keepers would, with most particular
care, exact payment in advance from poor "artists" in flying who, in the
event of a bad season, had such inconvenient facilities for escaping
without footing the score. That time has almost come in England to-day. But
then in 1909 public and managers had to wait patiently on the gentlemen who
had improved on Prometheus and, harnessing the fire that he stole from
above, dared the assault of the very heavens.
Finally the flying did begin. But it was all by Frenchmen on French
machines. There was the Bleriot, aptly to be compared in shape to a
dragon-fly; the Farman, a long box trailing a baby box in its wake. The
Bleriot suggests a successful wooing, the Farman a scientific conquest, of
the air. The one soars and swoops and skims actually like a bird, the other
progresses with scientific and mathematical precision. One might imagine a
respectable barn-door fowl brood-mother, resting a while after the arduous
labours of the pheasant season, speculating dismally on the prospects of
being called upon to hatch out a brood of aeroplanes, and resolving to
accept with resignation a clutch of Bleriots but to draw the line firmly at
Farmans. No respectable fowl could give even the kinship of adoption to a
flying contrivance that suggests so strongly a collection of egg-boxes.
Since then Englishmen have learned to fly, and aeroplaning is becoming one
of the national sports. Also I see in some of the papers that because at
the last Olympic Games England got more of the dust than of the laurels,
the Englishman must set to work to learn to throw the javelin and the
discus farther than any one else; and I believe that a section of him will
accept the direction to do this and do it quite earnestly. So the
Englishman who practises at football, cricket, hunting, sailing, rowing,
fishing, running, walking, flying, shooting, must also learn to throw
strange things great distances. Withal he has his work to do, and some time
to give to the enjoyment of the beauty of his most beautiful England. A
wonderful people of a wonderful country!