(_By Mr. Punch's Own Type-Writer._)
No. VII.--THE PATRON OF SPORT.
IN order to qualify properly for the patronage of sport, a man must
finally abandon any vestiges of refinement which may remain to him after
a youth spent mainly in the use of strong language, and the abuse of
strong drink. The future patron, who has enjoyed for some years the
advantages of a neglected training in the privacy of the domestic
circle, will have been sent to a public school. Like a vicious book, he
will soon have been "called in," though not until he has been cut by
those who may have been brought in contact with him. Having thus left
his school for his school's good, he will find no difficulty in
persuading his parents that the high spirits of an ingenuous youth,
however distasteful they may have been to the ridiculous prejudices of a
pedantic Head Master, are certain to be properly appreciated by the
officers of a crack Regiment. He will, therefore, decide to enter the
Army, and after pursuing his arduous studies for some time at the
various Music Halls and drinking saloons of the Metropolis, he will
administer a public reproof to the Civil Service Commissioners, by
declining on two separate occasions to pass the examination for
admission into Sandhurst.
He will then inform his father that he is heavily in debt, and, having
borrowed money from his tailor, he will disappear from the parental ken,
to turn up again, after a week, without his watch, his scarf-pin, or his
studs. This freak will be accepted by his relatives as a convincing
proof of his fitness for a financial career, and he will shortly be
transferred to the City as Clerk to a firm of Stockbrokers. Here his
versatile talents will have full scope. He will manage to reconcile a
somewhat lax attention to the details of business with a strict
regularity in his attendance at suburban race-meetings. Nothing will be
allowed to stand in his way when he pursues the shadow of pleasure
through the most devious windings into the lowest haunts. For him the
resources of dissipation are never exhausted. Pot-houses provide him
with cocktails, restaurants furnish him with elaborate dinners, tailors
array him in fine clothes, hosiers collar him up to the chin, and cover
his breast with immaculate fronts. The master-pieces of West-End
jewellers, hatters, and boot-makers, sparkle on various portions of his
person; he finds in a lady step-dancer a goddess, and in _Ruff's Guide_
a Bible; he sups, he swears, he drinks, and he gambles, and, finally, he
attains to the summit of earthly felicity by finding himself mentioned
under a nickname in the paragraphs of a sporting organ.
Having about the same time engaged in a midnight brawl with an
undersized and middle-aged cabman, he appears the next morning in a
Police Court, and, after being fined forty shillings, is hailed as a
hero by his companions, and recognised as a genuine Patron of Sport by
the world at large. Henceforward his position is assured. He becomes the
boon companion of Music-hall Chairmen, and lives on terms of intimate
vulgarity with Money-lenders, who find that it pays to take a low
interest in the pleasures, in order the more easily to obtain a high
interest on the borrowings, of reckless young men.
[Illustration]
In company with these associates, and with others of more or less
repute, the Patron of Sport sets the seal to his patronage by becoming a
member of a so-called Sporting Club, at which professional pugilists
batter one another in order to provide excitement for a mixed assemblage
of coarse and brainless rowdies and the feeble toadies who dance
attendance upon them. Here the Patron is at his best and noblest. Though
he has never worn a glove in anger, nor indeed taken the smallest part
in any genuine athletic exercise, he is as free with his opinions as he
is unsparing of the adjectives wherewith he adorns them. He talks
learnedly of "upper-cuts" and "cross-counters," and grows humorous over
"mouse-traps," "pile-drivers on the mark," and "the flow of the ruby."
Having absorbed four whiskeys-and-soda, he will observe that
"if a fellow refuses to train properly, he must expect to be
receiver-general," and, after lighting his tenth cigar as a tribute,
presumably, to the lung power of the combatants, will indulge in some
moody reflections on the decay of British valour and the general
degeneracy of Englishmen. He will then drink liqueur brandy out of a
claret glass, and, having slapped a sporting solicitor on the back and
dug in the ribs a gentleman jockey who has been warned off the course,
he will tread on the toes of an inoffensive stranger who has allowed
himself to be elected a member of the Club under the mistaken impression
that it was the home of sportsmen and the sanctuary of honest boxers.
After duly characterising the stranger's eyes and his awkwardness, the
Patron will resume his seat near the ropes, and will stare vacuously at
the brilliant gathering of touts, loafers, parasites, usurers,
book-makers, broken-down racing men, seedy soldiers, and over-fed City
men who are assembled round the room. Inspired by their society with the
conviction that he is assisting in an important capacity in the revival
of a manly sport, he will adjust his hat on the back of his head, rap
with his gold-headed cane upon the floor, and call "Time!"--a humorous
sally which is always much appreciated, especially when the ring is
empty. After witnessing the first three rounds of the next competition,
he will rise to depart, and observing a looking-glass, will excite the
laughter of his friends and the admiration of the waiters by sparring
one round with his own reflection, finally falling into the arms of a
companion, whom he adjures not to mind him, but to sponge up the other
fellow.
After this exploit a supper-club receives him, and he is made much of by
those of both sexes who are content to thrive temporarily on the money
of a friend. He will then drive a hansom through the streets, and,
having knocked over a hot potato-stall, he will compensate the
proprietor with a round of oaths and a five-pound note.
In appearance the Patron of Sport is unwholesome. The bloom of youth
vanished from his face before he ceased to be a boy; he assumes the worn
and sallow mask of age before he has fairly begun to be a man. His hair
is thin, and is carefully flattened by the aid of unguents, his dress is
flashy, his moustache thick. In order the more closely to imitate a true
sportsman, he wears a baggy overcoat, with large buttons. Yet he abhors
all kinds of honest exercise, and, in the days of his prosperity, keeps
a small brougham with yellow wheels. Soon after he reaches the age of
thirty, he begins to feel the effects of his variegated life. He fails
in landing a big _coup_ on the Stock Exchange, and loses much money over
a Newmarket meeting, in which he plunges on a succession of rank
outsiders, whom a set of rascals, more cunning than himself, have
represented to him as certainties. His position on the Stock Exchange
becomes shaky, and he attempts to restore it by embarking with a gang of
needy rogues on a first-class "roping" transaction, in connection with a
prize-fight in Spain. Having, however, been exposed, he is shunned by
most of those who only heard of the swindle when it was too late to join
in it.
This is the beginning of the end. He becomes careless of his appearance;
with the decrease of his means his coats become shiny, and his cuffs
more and more frayed. Eventually he falls into a state of sodden
imbecility, relieved by occasional flashes of delirium tremens, and dies
at the age of thirty-six, regretted by nobody except the faithful
bull-dog, whose silver collar was the last thing he pawned.
* * * * *
A New Opera (in Preparation).
_Librettist._ Now here's a grand effect. They all say, "We swear!" Then
there's a magnificent "Oath Chorus!" How do you propose to treat that?
_Composer._ Oath Chorus? In D Major.
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A PAGE FROM AN IMPERIAL NOTE-BOOK.--So far so good. Got rid of the Grand
Old Chancellor and the rest of _that_ crew--without much of a row! Been
civil to my English Uncle, the Pope and the Democrats. Can't be idle, so
what shall I do next? Why not take a trip to America where I might stand
for President? If I propose extending trip to Salt Lake, would have to
go _en garçon_. Or I might see if I could not get a little further than
STANLEY in Africa. When I returned might write a book to be called, _The
Extra Deep-Edged Black Continent_. Or why not turn painter? With a
little practice would soon cut out all the Old Masters, native and
foreign. And if I gave my mind to poetry, why GOETHE and HEINE would be
simply nowhere! How about horse-racing? A Berlin Derby Day would make my
English cousins "sit up." And sermons, there's something to be done in
sermons! I believe I could compose as good a discourse as any of my
Court chaplains. And then, possibly, I might be qualified to do that
which would satisfy the sharpest craving of my loftiest ambition--_I
might write for Punch!_
[So he shall. He shall "write for _Punch_," enclosing stamps, and
the Number shall be sent to him by return.--ED.]
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