SPORTS AND PASTIMES OF THE PEOPLE. HISTORY OF THEIR CHANGES, AND PRESENT
STATE.
A mighty revolution has taken place in the sports and pastimes of the
common people. They, indeed, furnish a certain indication of the real
character of a people, and change with the changing spirit of a state. A
mighty revolution has taken place in this respect, within the last
thirty years, in England, and that entirely produced by the change of
feeling, and advance of character. But if we look back through the whole
course of English history, we shall find the sports and pastimes of the
people taking their form and character from the predominant spirit of
the age; in a great measure copied from the amusements and practices of
their superiors, and always influenced by them. While the feudal
constitution of society prevailed, and chivalry was in vogue, the sports
of the common people had a certain chivalric character. They saw jousts
and tourneys and feats of archery, and they jousted and tilted, and shot
at butts. Tilting at the quintain was, in all the chivalric ages, a
popular game. It was a Roman pastime, instituted for military practice,
and continued for the same object by the feudal nations; and was adopted
by the common people as a favourite game, because both the laws of
chivalry and their slender finances prevented them taking part in jousts
and tourneys. In Strutt may be found descriptions and quaint
illustrative engravings of the various kinds of this game. “The
Quintain,” says Strutt, quoting from Vegetius, _de re militari_,
Menestrier and others, “originally, was nothing more than the trunk of a
tree, or post set up for the practice of the tyroes in chivalry.
Afterwards a staff or spear was fixed in the earth, and a shield being
hung upon it, was the mark to strike at; the dexterity of the
performance consisted in striking the shield in such a manner as to
break the ligatures and bear it to the ground. In process of time this
diversion was improved, and instead of the staff and the shield, the
resemblance of a human figure, carved in wood, was introduced. To render
the appearance of this figure more formidable, it was generally made in
the likeness of a Turk, or a Saracen, armed at all points, having a
shield upon his left arm, and brandishing a club or a sabre in his
right. Hence this exercise was called by the Italians--‘running at the
armed man, or at the Saracen.’ The quintain thus fashioned, was placed
upon a pivot, and so contrived as to move round with facility. In
running at this figure, it was necessary for the tilter to direct his
lance with great adroitness, and make his stroke upon the forehead,
between the eyes, or upon the nose; for if he struck wide of those
parts, especially upon the shield, the quintain turned about with much
velocity, and in case he was not exceedingly careful, would give him a
severe blow upon the back with the wooden sabre held in the right hand,
which was considered as highly disgraceful to the performer, while it
excited the laughter and ridicule of the spectators. When many were
engaged in running at the Saracen, the conqueror was declared from the
number of strokes he had made, and the value of them. For instance, if
he struck the image upon the top of the nose between the eyes, it was
reckoned for three; if below the eyes upon the nose, for two; if under
the nose to the point of the chin, for one; all other strokes were not
counted: but, whoever struck upon the shield, and turned the quintain
round, was not permitted to run again upon the same day, but forfeited
his courses as a punishment for his unskilfulness.” Brande, in his
Popular Antiquities, tells us that the Saracen was often armed with a
bag of sand instead of a sabre, which came upon the back of the unlucky
tilter with such violence as to fling him to the earth with no enviable
shock. Various were the quintains, according to the age in which they
were used, or the means of the players. In some cases the quintain was
merely a common stake with a board fastened to it; in others, it was a
post with a cross-bar moving on a pivot, something like a turnstile,
with the sand-bag at one end of the bar, and the board, or shield, at
the other. In others, it was a water-butt set upon a post, so as to
throw its contents over the tilter if he struck it unskilfully. In
others, it was a living person holding a shield. There was also the
water-quintain. “A pole or a mast,” says Fitzstephen, “is fixed in the
midst of the Thames, during the Easter holidays, with a strong shield
attached to it; and a boat being previously placed at some distance, is
driven swiftly towards it by the force of oars, and the violence of the
tide, having a young man standing at the prow, who holds a lance in his
hand, with which he is to strike the shield; and if he be dexterous
enough to break the lance against it, and retain his place, his most
sanguine wishes are satisfied. On the contrary, if the lance be not
broken, he is sure to be thrown into the water, and the vessel goes away
without him; but, at the same time, two other boats are stationed near
to the shield, and furnished with many young persons, who are in
readiness to rescue the champion from danger.” It appears to have been a
very popular pastime, for the bridge, the wharfs, and the houses near
the river, were crowded with people on this occasion, who came, says the
author, to see the sports, and make themselves merry.
Running at the quintain continued to be a favourite game till Queen
Elizabeth’s time; and was universal throughout the country. Plott, in
his History of Oxfordshire, mentions it, and Laneham describes a curious
instance of it exhibited at Kenilworth during the entertainment given by
the Earl of Leicester to Queen Elizabeth. “There was,” he says, “a
solemn country bridal; when in the castle was set up a quintain for
feats of arms, where, in a great company of men and lasses, the
bridegroom had the first course at the quintain, and broke his spear
_très hardiment_. But his mare in his manage did a little stumble, that
much-adoe had his manhood to sit in his saddle. But after the bridegroom
had made his course, rose the rest of the band, awhile in some order;
but soon after tag and rag, cut and long tail; where the specialty of
the sport was to see how some for his slackness had a good bob with the
bag, and some for his haste to topple downright, and come tumbling to
the post. Some striving so much at the first setting out that it seemed
a question between man and beast whether the race should be performed on
horseback or on foot; and some put forth with spurs, would run his race
byas, among the thickness of the throng, that down they came together,
hand over head. Another, while he directed his course to the quintain,
his judgment would carry him to a man among the people; another would
run and miss the quintain with his staff, and hit the board with his
hand.”
Boys imitated this game on their own scale, drawing one another on
wooden horses to the quintain, or running at it on foot; and various
other rustic exercises were derived from it. Of archery we need not
speak, every one knowing how universal it was during the feudal ages;
and quarter-staff, quoits, flinging the hammer, pitching the bar, and
similar games were the offspring of the same state of society. Playing
at ball and at bowls were very ancient and kingly sports, and became
general amongst the people. They were ancient classical games, and no
doubt were introduced by the Romans into this country. They are
mentioned both in the oldest metrical romances, and the oldest of our
popular ballads. Tennis courts were common in England in the sixteenth
century, and the establishment of such places countenanced by the
monarchs. Henry VIII. was a tennis player. Fives courts, and places for
the practice of a variety of ball-games,--hand-ball, balloon-ball,
stool-ball, principally played at by women; hurling, foot-ball, golf,
bandy, stow-ball, pall-mall, club-ball, trap-ball, tip-ball, and that
which is now become the prince of English ball-games, cricket.
Another circumstance in the feudal ages, which contributed to promote
these and other games, was, that towns were few. The majority of the
common people, living in the country; in forests and fields; watching
the game, or cultivating the lands, or tending the herds and flocks of
their lords, on open downs and wastes, naturally congregated with
greater zest in villages after the day’s tasks were over, and entered
into amusements with the lightheartedness of children; for they were as
ignorant of all other cares, of book-learning, and what was going on in
the world at a distance, as children. Hence their social pleasures were
of an Arcadian stamp--they danced, they leaped, they wrestled, they
kicked the foot-ball, or flung the hand-ball, the quoit, or the bar.
But another circumstance which tended to fashion their amusements was
that the feudal ages were also the ages of the Catholic church; a church
which delighted to amuse the imaginations of the people with shows,
pageants, miracle-plays, and mysteries. The church festivals were all
scenes of holiday, feasting, and wonderment. Processions, and
representations of the acts and persons of their religious faith, kept
them fixed in admiration and insatiable delight. The churches were the
first and only theatres. In them all scripture subjects, personages,
doctrines, and even opinions were represented, and brought palpably
before the wondering people, in mysteries, moralities, and
miracle-plays. Things which now would justly be deemed the most
revolting blasphemies and desecrations of holy things, were then gravely
brought out by the church, for the entertainment and edification of the
people. I have already shewn something of this in speaking of the
religious festivals, as celebrated in Catholic countries, but we can
only see these things in their full growth, by looking back into the
middle ages. The theatrical exhibitions of London in the twelfth century
were of this kind; representations of the miracles wrought by
confessors, and the sufferings of holy martyrs. But these did not
suffice. These ecclesiastical actors penetrated into the Holy of Holies,
and dared to represent the sacred Trinity before the eyes of the mob. In
the mystery called Corpus-Christi, or Coventry-Play, being played in a
moveable theatre, by the mendicant friars of Coventry, the Deity himself
is represented seated on his throne, delivering a speech commencing
thus:
Ego sum de Alpha et Omega, principium et finis.
My name is knowyn God and Kynge,
My worke for to make now wyl I wende,
In myself now resteth my reyninge,
It hath no gynnyng, ne noe ende.
The angels then enter, singing from the church service, “To Thee all
angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein; to Thee the
cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of
Hosts.” Lucifer next makes his appearance, and desires to know if the
hymn they sang was in honour of God or of himself? The good angels
readily reply, in honour of God; the evil angels incline to worship
Lucifer, and he presumes to seat himself on the throne of the Deity, who
then banishes him into hell.
In the mysteries, the Devil and his angels seem to have been the
principal comic actors; and by all kind of noises, strange gestures, and
contortions, excited the laughter of the people. At many of these plays
the kings and their courts, all the nobility and gentry of the time, as
well as the people, would sit with the highest delight, nine hours a
day, for six and eight days together. Nay, at the moralities, which were
not representations of facts, but moral reasonings and dialogues,
carried on by Virtues, Vices, Good Doctrine, Charity, Faith, Prudence,
Discretion, Death, and the like, they would sit equally long. The Scotch
were as persevering in these amusements as our own ancestors. They are
represented as sitting “frae nine houris afoir none till six houris at
evin,” at the representation of Sir David Lindsay’s “Satyr of the Three
Estates,” and in 1535, in the reign of the accomplished James IV. Here,
however, Sir David, the Chaucer of Scotland, had turned the weapons of
the church against itself, and through its favourite medium, the drama,
uttered the most caustic satire against it from the mouths of Rex
Humanitas, Wantonness, Solace, Placebo, Sensualitie, Homeliness,
Flattery, Falsehood, Deceit, Chastity, Divine Correction, etc. etc.
Besides the church too, during the feudal times, there were the
festivities kept up in the castles and halls at Christmas, Easter,
birthdays, and other great days, on which all kinds of pageants,
mimings, masks, and frolics, were shewn to their followers and
dependents, by the great feudal lords; and their minstrels, mimes, and
jesters were made to exert their arts for their gratification. Wandering
minstrels and jongleurs went from house to house, and from village to
village, following their profession of entertainers of the people. All
these things combined to fashion the popular taste, and the popular
amusements, and all at the Reformation received their death-blow. It was
not, indeed, an instant death, but it was a slow and certain one; for
though the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth seemed to carry pageants
and tourneys to their climax, the living principle of them was dying
out. The Catholic church, the great mother of all festivals and
mysteries, was overturned, and in the dispersion of its property the
rise of new classes and a new state of things originated; and so far had
these causes taken effect in the reign of James I., that he made public
proclamation in 1618, that “Whereas, we did justly, in our progress
through Lancashire, rebuke some Puritans and precise people, in
prohibiting and unlawfully punishing of our good people for using their
lawful recreations and honest exercises on Sundays and other holidays
after the afternoon service, it is our will that, at the end of Divine
service, our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged, from
any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either for men or women; archery
for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other harmless recreation; nor for
having of May-games, Whitsun-ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting up
of May-poles, and other sports therewith used.”
But the day was gone by. A new spirit was arisen, and was destined soon
to shew itself with overwhelming power. The days of Cromwell and the
Puritans were coming, when all these things were to be denounced as
popish and heathenish. The spirit and language at that time becoming
universally such as that displayed by Thomas Hall, B.D., Pastor of
King’s-Norton, in his Funebria Floræ, or the Downfall of May-games in
1660, in which he says, “The city of Rome, in the county of Babylon, has
contrary to the peace of our lord, his crown and dignity, brought in a
pack of practical fanatics, viz.: ignorants, atheists, papists,
drunkards, swearers, swashbucklers, maid-marians, morris-dancers,
maskes, mummers, May-pole stealers, health-drinkers, gamesters, lewd
men, light women, contemners of magistrates, affronters of ministers,
rebellious to masters, disobedient to parents, misspenders of time, and
abusers of the creature, etc.”
This republican Puritanism, in its genuine style, was now again about to
cease, but the effects of it could never be obliterated by subsequent
kings. Compare the popular amusements as enumerated by Burton in his
“Anatomie of Melancholie,” a short time before the Commonwealth, with
those which remained thirty years ago,--the period when they expired
nearly altogether, and gave way to a new era. “Cards, dice, hawks, and
hounds,” he says, “are the recreations of the gentry; ringing, bowling,
shooting, playing with keel-pins, tronks, coits, foot-balls, balowns,
running at the quintain, and the like, are the common recreations of
country folk. Riding of great horses, running of rings, tilts and
tournaments, horse-races and wild-goose chases, are desports of greater
men. The country hath its recreations of May-games, feasts, fairs and
wakes; both town and country, bull-baitings and bear-baitings, in which
the countrymen and citizens greatly delight; dancing of ropes,
jugglings, comedies, tragedies, artillery-gardens, and cock-fightings,
Whitsun-ales, maskes, jesters, gladiators, and tumblers.”
Thirty years ago, tilts and tournaments had gone after their parent
chivalry; archery had fallen before gunpowder; Whitsun-ales had followed
many another ecclesiastical merriment; comedies and tragedies had set up
their own secular houses apart from the church; and scarcely any of the
other amusements were left but bull-baiting, bear-baiting,
cock-fighting, and similar barbarities. The public mind had become
vulgarized and brutalized. The spirit of chivalry, with its pageants and
knightly feats, had diffused some sense of grace and graceful emulation
amongst the people; the church, amid all its ludicrous shows and
absurdities, had conveyed some moral principles; the wandering minstrels
had in their lays and ballads excited some feelings of honour, and many
a feeling of true nature and homely poetry: but all these sources of
inspiration, feeble and mingled with evil as they were, were dried up,
and during the long wars of the Hanoverian dynasty the common people
seem to have been neglected as rational and immortal beings, and
cultivated and educated only as the instruments and the food of war.
Accordingly, the minstrels had dwindled into ballad-singers, the
jongleurs into jugglers and mountebanks; the Arcadian amusements of the
country--May-games, dances on the green, wrestling and leaping, were
nearly extinct; and there remained the very characteristic sports of
bull-baiting, bear-baiting, badger-baiting, dog-fighting,
cock-fighting, and throwing at cocks on Shrove-Tuesday. Bear and bull
baitings were games that our queens Elizabeth and Anne had both
delighted in, but the more elegant pastimes of those queens and their
subjects had fallen into disuetude, the savage and brutal alone
remaining. This was natural enough. From the days of Marlborough to
those of Wellington, the common people had been bred for the
battle-field,--the food of the great European Moloch of war; and the
bloody spirit which casts out all the fairer spirits of grace and
gaiety, had been purposely and avowedly cherished, as the true English
spirit. Who that remembers these times, does not recollect the famous
speeches of Wyndham and his colleagues in favour of these brutal sports?
Who forgets their prognostics that if this spirit was destroyed, there
was an end of our martial ascendency? But the point of time had arrived
beyond which this spirit could not endure. The brutal and vulgarized
condition of the people flashed on the perception of the middle classes,
which amid all the noise of war had been progressing in intelligence and
refinement. Robert Raikes and Sunday-schools arose. A better spirit, a
better sense of our duties and responsibilities towards the people
awoke. It was seen that all over the country the more laudable sports of
the village green, and the village wakes, as quoits, nine-pins,
skittles, wrestling, leaping, cricket, and the other ball games;
will-pegs, jumping in sacks, and other athletic amusements, had lost
much of their relish, and were abandoned for the bloody spectacles of
the bull-ring and the cock-pit. Attempts were made to counteract this
spirit; Parliament was petitioned on the subject, and after the repulse
given to these attempts by the senators I have alluded to, nothing was
so common as to see the bulls led through the villages adorned with
ribbons, and bearing on their necks large placards of--“SANCTIONED BY
WYNDHAM AND PARLIAMENT!”
I have before me now a curious specimen of the effect of such doctrines
on the minds of those even who are, by national authority, the public
teachers of the country, in a little volume published in 1819, by a
clergyman of the name of Chafin--“An Account of Cranbourn Chase.” He
says, “cockfighting also, in the last century was a favourite diversion,
greatly delighted in by persons of all ranks; and there was a nobleman,
Lord Albemarle Bertie, who was so fond of the amusement, that he
attended cock-pits when he was totally blind. And there were but few
gentlemen in the country, who did not keep and breed game cocks, and
were very anxious and careful in the breeding of them. Frequent matches
were made, and there were cock-pits in almost every village, the remains
of which are still visible. To this amusement also Cranbourn Chase
contributed, for the cocks bred in it were superior to others, both in
shape and make, and, as the feeders name it, handled better when brought
to their pens; insomuch that Lord Weymouth, of Longleat, an ancestor of
the present Marquis of Bath, for many years had a cock at walk at every
lodge in the chase, and the keepers were well rewarded for taking care
of them; and when they were brought chickens from Longleat, annually,
each game cock was accompanied with two dunghill hens, which became the
perquisite of the keeper when the cock was taken away. But _in our days
of refinement_, this amusement of cock-fighting hath been exploded, and,
in a great measure, abandoned, _being deemed to be barbarous and cruel_;
but in this _respect the writer thinks differently, and believes it to
be the least so of any diversions now in vogue_, and nothing equal as to
cruelty, to horse-racing, in which poor animals are involuntarily forced
against their nature to performances against their strength, with whips
and spurs, which, in jockey phrase, is styled _cutting up_. But in
fighting of cocks _the case is totally different_; for, instead of a
force against nature, it is an indulgence of natural propensities; for
cocks at their walks, and at full liberty, will seek each other for
battle as far as they can hear each other’s crowing; and _the arming
them with artificial weapons_, when they are brought in the pit to
fight, is _the very reverse of cruelty_, for the contest is sooner
ended, and sufferings trifling, in comparison to what they would have
been had they fought with their own natural weapons, _by lacerating
their bodies, and bruising each other in every tender part_.”
Now, to feel the full force of the Rev. William Chafin’s notion of a
game that is the least cruel of any diversions now in vogue, it is
necessary to consider that these cocks are stimulated to contest by
heating food and artificial contrivances, such as keeping them within
the sight or crow of their rivals; that they are then clipped almost
bare of feathers; the feathers are clipped off their stomachs; their
heads cut clean of their wattles; their wings and tails cut short and
square; that they are, in fact, metamorphosed from the most
gallant-looking of birds into the most bare, comical, quaint, and
strutting objects in nature, I was going to say; but they are put out of
all nature, and are, lastly, armed with steel or silver spurs of an inch
long, sharp as needles. With these they kick and pierce each other,
“lacerating their bodies, and bruising each other in every tender part;”
fighting till their heads are all one mass of gore; till they are often
stark blind, and go staggering about like drunken men, till one has the
luck to strike the other clean through the head with his artificial
spur. This is a game which a clergyman, a teacher of Christianity, could
by custom come to think “the least cruel of all the diversions now in
vogue.” It is impossible to produce more striking evidence of the effect
of a familiarity with cruelty. It is just by the same process that men
come to approve of war and slavery. God be praised that all these bloody
sports are gone for ever from the soil of England. That bull, bear, and
badger baiting, have all, after many a hard contest, been eventually put
down; that for some years, so much has the mind of the common people
been raised and softened, there have scarcely been any cock-fighters,
except _noblemen_ and _gentlemen_, whose cock-pits have been the
nuisances of their neighbourhoods, and their game-cock caravans,
travelling from place to place with these cocks, have offended the
public eye. It is a satisfaction to record that in the year 1835, even
this brutal game was made illegal by Act of Parliament, and that through
the exertions of Joseph Pease, the only member of Parliament who is a
member of the Society of Friends.
Since these atrocities have been exploded, their place has not been
supplied by an equal number of more commendable amusements. The people
of large towns, in particular, have not substituted a sufficient
equivalent. Politics and alehouses seem, till lately, to have furnished
their sole stimulants. There appears to have been a pause in that
important portion of human life, amusement, so far as the common people
are concerned; but it has been in appearance only. One of the greatest
changes that ever took place in human society, has been in this interval
maturing;--the change from the last stage of worn-out feudalism to the
commencement of the era of social regeneration;--a change from a system
in which the largest portion of mankind was regarded but as the
instruments of the luxury and revenge of the wealthy few,--to one in
which every part of the human family will be recognised as possessing
the same nature, and worthy of enjoying the same domestic and
intellectual blessings;--a change, in fact, from Gentilism to
Christianity; from the condition in which the great of the earth lorded
it over the poor, to that in which the common sympathies of our nature
will be honoured and obeyed; and a career of intelligence, benevolence,
and mutual good-will and good works will begin, to end in a prosperity
beyond our present imagination. And already what symptoms of this better
state of things break upon us! What schools, and Mechanics’ Libraries
and Institutes; what Friendly Societies, and plans on the part of the
wealthy for the benefit of the poor. For amusements there has been no
time. All workers, both in town and country, have been compelled to plod
on solemnly and half-despairingly from day to day, and from year to
year. But pleasures of a higher order, and more akin to genuine
happiness,--social pleasures and pleasures of the intellect, will open
upon and grow upon our more numerous brethren of the operative class.
They will find pleasures in books--boundless, unimagined, inexhaustible,
inexpressible pleasures;--pleasures in their wives and children,
pleasures in their firesides, and in the glorious face of nature, which
have hitherto been unknown to their eyes and hearts, sealed up in the
frost of ignorance and the contempt of the proud. And already we see the
commencement of that new order of pastimes which will assuredly result
from this new order of mind. In the country, indeed, you find with
pleasure occasionally, in some old-fashioned hamlet, the villagers and
farm-servants in an evening tossing the quoit, that relic of the ancient
discus; bowling, or playing at skittles; but rustics, in general, look
to wakes and fairs for amusement; and yet at wakes you do not see half
the sports there used to be,--as running, leaping, jumping in sacks; or
aiming at the snuff-boxes balanced on the will-pegs; and where these
games do remain, they are too frequently attached to alehouses, and made
gambling baits of. But, in town and country, it is the noble, and as
Miss Mitford, the fair historian of rural life, justly calls it, the
true English game of cricket, which shews whither the mind of the
people is tending, and what will be the future character of English
popular sports.
This game seems to have absorbed into itself every other kind of
ball-game, trap-ball, tip-cat, or foot-ball. Foot-ball, indeed, seems to
have almost gone out of use with the enclosure of wastes and commons,
requiring a wide space for its exercise; but far and wide is spread the
love of cricketing, and it may now be safely ranked as the prince of
English athletic games. I will here describe a match of this fine sport,
which was played on the 7th and 9th of September 1835, between the
Sussex and the Nottingham Club, and the thoughts which it produced in me
at the time.
The Nottingham Club challenged the Sussex to a match for fifty guineas
a-side; and played first at Brighton, where the Sussex men were beaten,
who then went to play the Nottingham men on their own ground. The match
commenced on Monday, September 7th, and was finished on Wednesday the
9th, about half-past four o’clock. Tuesday having been a wet day, there
was no playing. The Nottingham men beat again, having three wickets to
go down. A more animating sight of the kind never was seen.
On Sunday morning early, we saw a crowd going up the street, and
immediately perceived that, in the centre of it, were the Sussex
cricketers, just arrived by the London coach, and going to an inn kept
by one of the Nottingham cricketers. They looked exceedingly
interesting, being a very fine set of fellows, in their white hats, and
with all their trunks, carpet-bags, and cloaks, coming, as we verily
believed, to be beaten. Our interest was strongly excited; and on Monday
morning we set off to the cricket-ground, which lies about a mile from
the town, in the Forest, as it is still called, though not a tree is
left upon it,--a long, furzy common, crowned at the top by about twenty
windmills, and descending in a steep slope to a fine level, round which
the race-course runs. Within the race-course lies the cricket-ground,
which was enclosed at each end with booths; and all up the forest-hill
were scattered booths, and tents with flags flying, fires burning, pots
boiling, ale-barrels standing, and asses, carts, and people bringing
still more good things. There were plenty of apple and ginger-beer
stalls; and lads going round with nuts and with waggish looks,
crying--“nuts, lads! nuts, lads!” In little hollows the nine-pin and
will-peg men had fixed themselves, to occupy loiterers; and, in short,
there was all the appearance of a fair.
Standing at the farther side of the cricket-ground, it gave me the most
vivid idea possible of an amphitheatre filled with people. In fact, it
was an amphitheatre. Along each side of the ground ran a bank sloping
down to it, and it, and the booths and tents at the ends were occupied
with a dense mass of people, all as silent as the ground beneath them;
and all up the hill were groups, and on the race-stand an eager,
forward-leaning throng. There were said to be twenty thousand people,
all hushed as death, except when some exploit of the players produced a
thunder of applause. The playing was beautiful. Mr. Ward, late member of
Parliament for London, a great cricket-player, came from the Isle of
Wight to see the game, and declared himself highly delighted. But
nothing was so beautiful as the sudden shout, the rush, and breaking up
of the crowd, when the last decisive match was gained. To see the
scorers suddenly snatch up their chairs, and run off with them towards
the players’ tent; to see the bat of Bart Goode, the batsman on whom the
fate of the game depended, spinning up in the air, where he had sent it
in the ecstasy of the moment; and the crowd, that the instant before was
fixed and silent as the world itself, spreading all over the green space
where the white figures of the players had till then been so gravely and
apparently calmly contending,--spreading with a murmur as of the sea;
and over their heads, amid the deafening clamour and confusion, the
carrier-pigeon with a red ribbon tied to its tail, the signal of loss,
beating round and round as to ascertain its precise position, and then
flying off to bear the tidings to Brighton,--it was a beautiful sight,
and one that the most sedate person must have delighted to see.
My thoughts on such occasions overpass the things moving before me, and
run on into consequences; and I could not help feeling what a great
change the last thirty years had produced in the mind, taste, feeling,
and moral character of our working population. What a wide difference
was here presented, to the rude rabbles formerly assembled to the most
barbarous and blackguard amusements imaginable. Why this is a near
approach to the athletic games of the Greeks; and no Greek crowd could
have behaved with more order and propriety, and evincing an intense
interest, excited not by any vulgar and unworthy cause, but by a fine
trial of skill and activity between their townsmen and their countrymen
of a distant county. Such an interest, arising out of such an emulation,
not only shews a great progression of the public taste, but will
wonderfully promote that progression. Here, if we have been disappointed
in many other instances, we see the actual and legitimate effect of
general education. It is because the general mind is quickened, raised,
and made capable of more refined impulses, that twenty thousand people
can now sit, day after day, to witness a contest of manly activity and
pure skill, and enjoy a high delight without drunkenness and brutal
rows. Never was a more respectable collection of people seen; and
although there were plenty of booths and tents well supplied with all
sorts of eatables and drinkables, and a good many took a necessary
refreshment, or a comfortable glass and a pipe, as they sat and looked
on, at the time we left there were no symptoms of drunkenness, but a
sight the most gratifying imaginable--thousands of poor workmen
streaming off homewards the moment the game was over, many of them with
their children, wives, or sweethearts.
I say, therefore, that my thoughts ran on into consequences, and I saw,
in prospect, the great good which this better taste for amusement, this
purer species of emulation will produce. It is a beautiful sight to see
men coming from a distant part of England to contend in a noble
gymnastic exercise with those of another part of the country; and the
spirit of generous rivalry thus is spread wider and wider. You see while
a match is impending, what numbers of cricket-players are out in the
fields, from grown men to boys that can but just wield the lightest bat.
You see, even while the great game is going on, boys playing their
lesser games in the outskirts of the crowd; and when the match is
decided, the spirit is kindled and diffused farther than ever, by the
warm discussions of the various merits of the players, and the glory
acquired by the best.
This is a spirit which deserves the attention both of the public and
the legislature, and if ever we come to see public grounds appropriated
to every large town for such exercises, as has been proposed in
Parliament by Mr. Buckingham, then not merely cricket but kindred sports
will be pursued, quoits, nine-pins, bowls, archery, leaping, and
running; all having a direct tendency to strengthen the body and quicken
the mind; to counteract both the physical and moral poisons of crowded
factories and thickly-populated towns.
It may, indeed, be objected, that all such games would lead to betting;
but are we to shrink from every useful measure through fear of its
abuse? I say fearlessly, let us set the brand of public abhorrence on
such a practice, boldly and firmly, and the practice will disappear. It
is not long since the brutal practice of boxing had become a mania, and
seemed to set all public censure at defiance, but it did but
seem--public censure put it down. Let the higher classes too sanction
these laudable exercises by their presence as a public duty, and the
British people will, in my opinion, in coming years, exhibit scenes of
beautiful skill, activity, and grace, as imposing as Greece ever saw. In
the instance here selected, the two most obvious circumstances
were,--first, the absence of the higher classes, especially of the
ladies; and secondly, the most perfect and admirable decorum of the
people.