SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF SPORT
Racing--Shooting--A Fish Story--Boxing--Past and Present--Carpentier
and France--The Reno Fight--Football--Golf with the
Sirdar--Billiards--Cricket--W. G. Grace--Queer Experiences--Tragic
Matches--Humiliation--Success in Holland--Barrie’s Team--A
Precedent--Motor Accidents--Prince Henry Tour--Aviation--The Balloon
and the Aeroplane--Ski--Over a Precipice--Rifle Shooting.
It is here--before we approach what Maxwell has called “The Great
Interruption”--that I may perhaps break my narrative in order to
interpolate a chapter upon the general subject of my experiences of
sport, which have taken up an appreciable part of my life, added
greatly to its pleasure, and which can be better treated as a whole
than recounted seriatim. It may best be fitted in at this spot as my
sporting life one way and another may be said to have reached its modest
zenith about that time.
As one grows old one looks back at one’s career in sport as a thing
completed. Yet I have at least held on to it as long as I could, for
I played a hard match of Association football at forty-four, and I
played cricket for ten years more. I have never specialized, and have
therefore been a second-rater in all things. I have made up for it
by being an all-rounder, and have had, I dare say, as much fun out
of sport as many an adept. It would be odd if a man could try as
many games as I for so many years without having some interesting
experiences or forming a few opinions which would bear recording and
discussion.
And first of all let me “damn the sins I have no mind to” by recording
what most of my friends will regard as limitation. I never could look
upon flat-racing as a true sport. Sport is what a man does, not what a
horse does. Skill and judgment are shown, no doubt, by the professional
jockeys, but I think it may be argued that in nine cases out of ten
the best horse wins, and would have equally won, could his head be
kept straight, had there been a dummy on his back. But making every
allowance on the one side, for what human qualities may be called
forth, and for any improvement of the breed of horses (though I am told
that the same pains in other directions would produce infinitely more
fruitful and generally useful results), and putting on the other side
the demoralization from betting, the rascality among some book-makers,
and the collection of undesirable characters brought together by a race
meeting, I cannot avoid the conclusion that the harm greatly outweighs
the good from a broadly national point of view. Yet I recognize,
of course, that it is an amusement which lies so deeply in human
nature--the oldest, perhaps, of all amusements which have come down to
us--that it must have its place in our system until the time may come
when it will be gradually modified, developing, perhaps, some purifying
change, as prize-fighting did when it turned to contests with the
gloves.
I have purposely said “flat-racing,” because I think a stronger case,
though not, perhaps, an entirely sound one, could be made out for
steeplechasing. Eliminate the mob and the money, and then, surely,
among feats of human skill and hardihood there are not many to match
that of the winner of a really stiff point-to-point, while the man
who rides at the huge barriers of the Grand National has a heart for
anything. As in the old days of the ring, it is not the men nor the
sport, but it is the followers who cast a shadow on the business. Go
down to Waterloo and meet any returning race train, if you doubt it.
If I have alienated half my readers by my critical attitude to the
Turf, I shall probably offend the other half by stating that I cannot
persuade myself that we are justified in taking life as a pleasure.
To shoot for the pot must be right, since man must feed, and to kill
creatures which live upon others (the hunting of foxes, for example)
must also be right, since to slay one is to save many; but the rearing
of birds in order to kill them, and the shooting of such sensitive and
inoffensive animals as hares and deer, cannot, I think, be justified.
I must admit that I shot a good deal before I came to this conclusion.
Perhaps the fact, while it prevents my assuming any airs of virtue,
will give my opinion greater weight, since good shooting is still
within my reach, and I know nothing more exhilarating than to wait on
the borders of an autumn-tinted wood, to hear the crackling advance
of beaters, to mark the sudden whirr and the yell of “Mark over,” and
then, over the topmost branches, to see a noble cock pheasant whizzing
down wind at a pace which pitches him a 100 yards behind you when you
have dropped him. But when your moment of exultation is over, and
you note what a beautiful creature he is and how one instant of your
pleasure has wrecked him, you feel that you had better think no longer
if you mean to slip two more cartridges into your gun and stand by for
another. Worse still is it when you hear the child-like wail of the
wounded hare. I should think that there are few sportsmen who have not
felt a disgust at their own handiwork when they have heard it. So, too,
when you see the pheasant fly on with his legs showing beneath him as
sign that he is hard hit. He drops into the thick woods and is lost to
sight. Perhaps it is as well for your peace of mind that he should be
lost to thought also.
Of course, one is met always by the perfectly valid argument that the
creatures would not live at all if it were not for the purposes of
sport, and that it is presumably better from their point of view that
they should eventually meet a violent death than that they should never
have existed. No doubt this is true. But there is another side of the
question as to the effect of the sport upon ourselves--whether it does
not blunt our own better feelings, harden our sympathies, brutalize our
natures. A coward can do it as well as a brave man; a weakling can do
it as well as a strong man. There is no ultimate good from it. Have we
a moral right then, to kill creatures for amusement? I know many of the
best and most kind-hearted men who do it, but still I feel that in a
more advanced age it will no longer be possible.
And yet I am aware of my own inconsistency when I say I am in sympathy
with fishing, and would gladly have a little if I knew where to get
it. And yet, is it wholly inconsistent? Is a cold-blooded creature of
low organization like a fish to be regarded in the same way as the
hare which cries out in front of the beagles, or the deer which may
carry the rifle bullet away in its side? If there is any cruelty it
is surely of a much less degree. Besides, is it not the sweet solitude
of Nature, the romantic quest, rather than the actual capture which
appeals to the fisherman? One thinks of the stories of trout and salmon
which have taken another fly within a few minutes of having broken away
from a former one, and one feels that their sense of pain must be very
different from our own.
I once had the best of an exchange of fishing stories, which does not
sound like a testimonial to my veracity. It was in a Birmingham inn,
and a commercial traveller was boasting of his success. I ventured to
back the weight of the last three fish which I had been concerned in
catching against any day’s take of his life-time. He closed with the
bet and quoted some large haul, 100 lbs. or more. “Now, sir,” he asked
triumphantly, “what was the weight of your three fish?” “Just over 200
tons,” I answered. “Whales?” “Yes, three Greenland whales.” “I give you
best,” he cried; but whether as a fisherman, or as a teller of fish
stories, I am not sure. As a matter of fact, I had only returned that
year from the Arctic seas, and the three fish in question were, in
truth, the last which I had helped to catch.
My experiences during my Arctic voyage both with whales and bears I
have already touched upon, so I will not refer to them again, though it
was the greatest period of sport which has ever come my way.
I have always been keen upon the noble old English sport of boxing,
and, though of no particular class myself, I suppose I might describe
my form as that of a fair average amateur. I should have been a better
man had I taught less and learned more, but after my first tuition I
had few chances of professional teaching. However, I have done a good
deal of mixed boxing among many different types of men, and had as
much pleasure from it as from any form of sport. It stood me in good
stead aboard the whaler. On the very first evening I had a strenuous
bout with the steward, who was an excellent sportsman. I heard him
afterwards, through the partition of the cabin, declare that I was “the
best sur-r-r-geon we’ve had, Colin--he’s blacked my ee.” It struck me
as a singular test of my medical ability, but I dare say it did no
harm.
I remember when I was a medical practitioner going down to examine
a man’s life for insurance in a little Sussex village. He was the
gentleman farmer of the place, and a most sporting and jovial soul. It
was a Saturday, and I enjoyed his hospitality that evening, staying
over till Monday. After breakfast it chanced that several neighbours
dropped in, one of whom, an athletic young farmer, was fond of the
gloves. Conversation soon brought out the fact that I had a weakness
in the same direction. The result was obvious. Two pairs of gloves
were hunted from some cupboard, and in a few minutes we were hard at
it, playing light at first and letting out as we warmed. It was soon
clear that there was no room inside a house for two heavy-weights, so
we adjourned to the front lawn. The main road ran across the end of it,
with a low wall of just the right height to allow the village to rest
its elbows on it and enjoy the spectacle. We fought several very brisk
rounds, with no particular advantage either way, but the contest always
stands out in my memory for its queer surroundings and the old English
picture in which it was set. It is one of several curious bye-battles
in my career. I recollect another where another man and I, returning
from a ball at five of a summer morning, went into his room and fought
in our dress clothes several very vigorous rounds as a wind-up to the
evening’s exercise.
They say that every form of knowledge comes useful sooner or later.
Certainly my own experience in boxing and my very large acquaintance
with the history of the prize-ring found their scope when I wrote
“Rodney Stone.” No one but a fighting man would ever, I think, quite
understand or appreciate some of the detail. A friend of mine read the
scene where Boy Jim fights Berks to a prize-fighter as he lay in what
proved to be his last illness. The man listened with growing animation
until the reader came to the point where the second advises Boy Jim,
in technical jargon, how to get at his awkward antagonist. “That’s it!
By God, he’s got him!” shouted the man in the bed. It was an incident
which gave me pleasure when I heard it.
I have never concealed my opinion that the old prize-ring was
an excellent thing from a national point of view--exactly as
glove-fighting is now. Better that our sports should be a little too
rough than that we should run a risk of effeminacy. But the ring
outlasted its time. It was ruined by the villainous mobs who cared
nothing for the chivalry of sport or the traditions of British fair
play as compared with the money gain which the contest might bring.
Their blackguardism drove out the good men--the men who really did
uphold the ancient standards, and so the whole institution passed into
rottenness and decay. But now the glove contests carried on under the
discipline of the National Sporting or other clubs perpetuate the noble
old sport without a possibility of the more evil elements creeping
into it once more. An exhibition of hardihood without brutality, of
good-humoured courage without savagery, of skill without trickery, is,
I think, the very highest which sport can give. People may smile at the
mittens, but a twenty-round contest with four-ounce gloves is quite as
punishing an ordeal as one could wish to endure. There is as little
room for a coward as in the rougher days of old, and the standard of
endurance is probably as high as in the average prize-fight.
One wonders how our champions of to-day would have fared at the
hands of the heroes of the past. I know something of this end of the
question, for I have seen nearly all the great boxers of my time, from
J. L. Sullivan down to Tommy Burns, Carpentier, Bombardier Wells,
Beckett and that little miracle Jimmy Wilde. But how about the other
end--the men of old? Wonderful Jem Mace was the only link between them.
On the one hand, he was supreme in the ’sixties as a knuckle-fighter;
on the other, he gave the great impetus to glove-fighting in America,
and more especially in Australia, which has brought over such champions
as Frank Slavin and Fitz-simmons, who, through Mace’s teaching, derive
straight from the classic line of British boxers. He of all men might
have drawn a just comparison between the old and the new. But even
his skill and experience might be at fault, for it is notorious that
many of the greatest fighters under the old régime were poor hands
with the mittens. Men could bang poor Tom Sayers all round the ring
with the gloves, who would not have dared to get over the ropes had he
been without them. I have seen Mace box, and even when over sixty it
is wonderful how straight was his left, how quick his feet, and how
impregnable his guard.
After the Great War, one can see that those of us who worked for the
revival of boxing wrought better than we knew, for at the supreme test
of all time--the test which has settled the history of the future--it
has played a marked part. I do not mean that a man used his fists in
the war, but I mean--and every experienced instructor will, I am sure,
endorse it--that the combative spirit and aggressive quickness gave us
the attacking fire and helped especially in bayonet work. But it was
to our allies of France that the chief advantage came. I believe that
Carpentier, the boxer, did more to win the war for France than any
other man save the actual generals or politicians. The public proof
that a Frenchman could be at the very head of his class, as Ledoux was
also at a lighter weight, gives a physical self-respect to a nation
which tinges the spirit of every single member of it. It was a great
day for France when English sports, boxing, Rugby football and others
came across to them, and when a young man’s ideal ceased to be amatory
adventure with an occasional duel. England has taught Europe much, but
nothing of more value than this.
To return to my own small experiences of the game, I might have had one
very notable one, for I was asked to referee the great contest when the
champions of the white and black races fought for what may prove to be
almost the last time.
My first intimation was a cable followed by the following letter:--
NEW YORK,
_December 9, 1909_.
MY DEAR SIR,--
I hope you will pardon the liberty I took as a stranger in cabling
to you asking if you would act at the championship battle between
Jeffries and Johnson. The fact is that when the articles were
signed recently your name was suggested for referee, and Tex
Rickard, promoter of the fight, was greatly interested, as were many
others. I believe it will interest you to know that the opinion was
unanimous that you would do admirably in the position. In a voting
contest several persons sent in your name as their choice. Believe
me among sporting men of the best class in America you have many
strong admirers; your splendid stories of the ring, and your avowed
admiration for the great sport of boxing have made you thousands of
friends.
It was because of this extremely friendly feeling for you in America
that I took the liberty of cabling to you. I thank you for your reply.
It would indeed rejoice the hearts of the men in this country if you
were at the ring side when the great negro fighter meets the white man
Jeffries for the world’s championship.
I am, my dear Sir,
Yours sincerely,
IRVING JEFFERSON LEWIS,
Managing Editor _New York Morning Telegraph_.
I was much inclined to accept this honourable invitation, though my
friends pictured me as winding up with a revolver at one ear and a
razor at the other. However, the distance and my engagements presented
a final bar.
If boxing is the finest single man sport, I think that Rugby football
is the best collective one. Strength, courage, speed and resource are
great qualities to include in a single game. I have always wished that
it had come more my way in life, but my football was ruined, as many a
man’s is, by the fact that at my old school they played a hybrid game
peculiar to the place, with excellent points of its own, but unfitting
the youngster for any other. All these local freak games, wall games,
Winchester games, and so on are national misfortunes, for while our
youths are wasting their energies upon them--those precious early
energies which make the instinctive players--the young South African or
New Zealander is brought up on the real universal Rugby, and so comes
over to pluck a few more laurel leaves out of our depleted wreath. In
Australia I have seen in Victoria a hybrid, though excellent game of
their own, but they have had the sense in other parts to fall into
line, and are already taking the same high position which they hold in
other branches of sport. I hope that our headmasters will follow the
same course.
In spite of my wretched training I played for a short time as a forward
in the Edinburgh University team, but my want of knowledge of the game
was too heavy a handicap. Afterwards I took to Association, and played
first goal and then back for Portsmouth, when that famous club was an
amateur organization. Even then we could put a very fair team in the
field, and were runners-up for the County Cup the last season that I
played. In the same season I was invited to play for the county. I was
always too slow, however, to be a really good back, though I was a long
and safe kick. After a long hiatus I took up football again in South
Africa and organized a series of inter-hospital matches in Bloemfontein
which helped to take our minds away from enteric. My old love treated
me very scurvily, however, for I received a foul from a man’s knee
which buckled two of my ribs and brought my games to a close. I have
played occasionally since, but there is no doubt that as a man grows
older a brisk charge shakes him up as it never did before. Let him
turn to golf, and be thankful that there is still one splendid game
which can never desert him. There may be objections to the “Royal and
Ancient”--but a game which takes four miles of country for the playing
must always have a majesty of its own.
Personally I was an enthusiastic, but a very inefficient golfer--a ten
at my best, and at my worst outside the pale of all decent handicaps.
But surely it is a great testimony to the qualities of a game when a
man can be both enthusiastic and inefficient. It is a proof at least
that a man plays for the game’s sake and not for personal kudos. Golf
is the coquette of games. It always lures one on and always evades one.
Ten years ago I thought I had nearly got it. I hope so to-day. But my
scoring cards will show, I fear, that the coquette has not yet been
caught. The elderly lover cannot hope to win her smile.
I used in my early golfing days to practise on the very rudimentary
links in front of the Mena Hotel, just under the Pyramids. It was
a weird course, where, if you sliced your ball, you might find it
bunkered in the grave of some Rameses or Thothmes of old. It was here,
I believe, that the cynical stranger, after watching my energetic
but ineffectual game, remarked that he had always understood that
there was a special tax for excavating in Egypt. I have a pleasant
recollection of Egyptian golf in a match played with the late Sirdar,
then head of the Intelligence Department. When my ball was teed I
observed that his negro caddie pointed two fingers at it and spat,
which meant, as I was given to understand, that he cursed it for the
rest of the game. Certainly I got into every hazard in the course,
though I must admit that I have accomplished that when there was
no Central African curse upon me. Those were the days before the
reconquest of the Soudan, and I was told by Colonel Wingate--as he
then was--that his spies coming down from Omdurman not infrequently
delivered their messages to him while carrying his golf clubs, to avoid
the attention of the Calipha’s spies, who abounded in Cairo. On this
occasion the Sirdar beat me well, but with a Christian caddie I turned
the tables on him at Dunbar, and now we have signed articles to play
off the rubber at Khartoum, no cursing allowed. When that first match
was played we should as soon have thought of arranging to play golf in
the moon.
Every now and then I give up the game in disgust at my own
incompetence, but only to be lured on once more. Hunting in an old desk
I came upon an obituary which I had written for my game at some moment
of special depression. It ran, “Sacred to the memory of my golf. It was
never strong, being permanently afflicted with a deformed stance and
an undeveloped swing. After long weakness cheerfully borne it finally
succumbed, and was buried in the eighteenth hole, regretted by numerous
caddies.” However it is out and about once more, none the worse for
this premature interment.
There is said to be a considerable analogy between golf and billiards,
so much so that success in the one generally leads to success in the
other. Personally, I have not found it so, for though I may claim, I
suppose, to be above the average amateur at billiards, I am probably
below him in golf. I have never quite attained the three-figure break,
but I have so often topped the eighty, and even the ninety, that I have
lived in constant hope. My friend, the late General Drayson, who was
a great authority on the game, used to recommend that every player
should ascertain what he called his “decimal,” by which he meant how
many innings it took him, whether scoring or not, to make 100. The
number, of course, varies with the luck of the balls and the mood of
the player; but, taken over a dozen or twenty games, it gives a fair
average idea of the player’s form, and a man by himself can in this way
test his own powers. If, for example, a player could, on an average,
score 100 in twenty innings then his average would be five, which is
very fair amateur form. If a man finds his “decimal” rise as high as
ten over a sequence of games, he may be sure that he can hold his
own against most players that he is likely to meet. I daresay my own
decimal when I was in practise would be from six to eight.
I was never good enough for the big matches, and though I once went in
for the Amateur championship it was not out of any illusions about my
game, but because I was specially asked to do so, as it was advisable
to strengthen the undoubted amateur element in the contest. By the luck
of a bye, and by beating a player who was about my own form, I got into
the third round, when I ran across Mr. Evans, who eventually reached
the final with my scalp as well as several others at his girdle. I
made 650 against his 1,000, which, as I was not helped by a bad fall
from a motor bike a few days before, was as much as I could expect.
Forty-two off the red was my best effort. Surely billiards is the king
of all indoor games, and should have some writer who would do for it
in prose what John Nyren did for cricket. I have never seen any worthy
appreciation of its infinite varieties from the forcing losing hazard
which goes roaring into a top pocket with a clash upon the rail, to
the feather stroke so delicate that it is only the quiver of reflected
light upon the object ball which shows that it has indeed been struck.
Greatest of all is the ball heavily loaded with side which drifts down
the long cushion and then is sucked against every apparent law into the
pocket as though it were the centre of a whirlpool. Mr. E. V. Lucas is
one who could do it with discernment.
I have one funny recollection of billiards, when I wandered into some
small hotel in a South-Coast watering place, and for want of something
to do played the marker. He was a pompous person in a frock coat with
a very good opinion of his own game, which was really ruined by a
habit he had of jerking. I won the match, which was not difficult to
do, and then I thought it a kindness to point out to the man how he
could improve his game. He took this badly, however, and hinted that
he allowed gentlemen who played him to get the better of him. This in
turn annoyed me, so I said: “Look here. I will come in after dinner
and you can show all you can do, and you shall have a sovereign if you
win.” After dinner his game was worse than ever, while I had amazing
luck and made the 100 in about three shots. As I put on my coat and was
leaving the room the queer little fellow sidled up to me and said: “I
beg pardon, sir, but is your name Roberts?”
My earliest recollection of cricket is not a particularly pleasant one.
When I was a very small boy at a preparatory school I was one of a
group of admirers who stood around watching a young cricketer who had
just made his name hitting big hits off the school bowlers. One of the
big hits landed on my knee-cap and the cricketer in his own famous arms
carried me off to the school infirmary. The name, Tom Emmett, lingers
in my memory, though it was some years before I appreciated exactly
what he stood for in the game. I think, like most boys, I would rather
have been knocked down by a first-class cricketer than picked up by a
second-rater.
That was the beginning of my acquaintance with a game which has on the
whole given me more pleasure during my life than any other branch of
sport. I have ended by being its victim, for a fast bowler some years
ago happened to hit me twice in the same place under my left knee,
which has left a permanent weakness. I have had as long an inning as
one could reasonably expect, and carry many pleasant friendships and
recollections away with me.
I was a keen cricketer as a boy, but in my student days was too
occupied to touch it. Then I took it up again, but my progress was
interrupted by work and travel. I had some cause, therefore, to hold
on to the game as I had lost so much of it in my youth. Finally, I
fulfilled a secret ambition by getting into the fringe of first-class
cricket, though rather, perhaps, through the good nature of others
than my own merits. However, I can truly say that in the last season
when I played some first-class cricket, including matches against Kent,
Derbyshire, and the London County, I had an average of thirty-two for
those games, so I may claim to have earned my place. I was more useful,
however, in an amateur team, for I was a fairly steady and reliable
bowler, and I could generally earn my place in that department, while
with the M.C.C. the professional talent is usually so strong that the
amateur who fails in batting and is not a particularly good field has
no chance of atoning with the ball. Yet even with the M.C.C. I have
occasionally had a gleam of success. Such a one came some years ago,
when the team presented me with a little silver hat for getting three
consecutive clean-bowled wickets against the Gentlemen of Warwick.
One of my victims explained his downfall by assuring me that he had
it thoroughly in his head that I was a left-handed bowler, and when
the ball came from my right hand he was too bewildered to stop it. The
reason is not so good as that of an artist who, when I had bowled him
out, exclaimed: “Who can play against a man who bowls in a crude pink
shirt against an olive-green background?”
A bowler has many days when everything is against him, when a hard,
smooth wicket takes all the spin and devil out of him, when he goes all
round and over the wicket, when lofted balls refuse to come to hand,
or, if they do come, refuse to stay. But, on the other hand, he has his
recompense with many a stroke of good fortune. It was in such a moment
that I had the good luck to get the wicket of W. G. Grace, the greatest
of all cricketers.
W. G. had his speedy revenge. There was nothing more childlike and
bland than that slow, tossed-up bowling of his, and nothing more subtle
and treacherous. He was always on the wicket or about it, never sent
down a really loose ball, worked continually a few inches from the leg,
and had a perfect command of length. It was the latter quality which
was my downfall. I had made some thirty or forty, and began to relax
in the deep respect with which I faced the Doctor’s deliveries. I had
driven him for four, and jumped out at him again the next ball. Seeing
my intention, as a good bowler does, he dropped his ball a foot or
two shorter. I reached it with difficulty, but again I scored four.
By this time I was very pleased with myself, and could see no reason
why every one of these delightful slows should not mean a four to me.
Out I danced to reach the next one on the half volley. It was tossed a
little higher up in the air, which gave the delusion that it was coming
right up to the bat, but as a matter of fact it pitched well short of
my reach, broke sharply across and Lilley, the wicket-keeper, had my
bails off in a twinkling. One feels rather cheap when one walks from
the middle of the pitch to the pavilion, longing to kick oneself for
one’s own foolishness all the way. I have only once felt smaller, and
that was when I was bowled by A. P. Lucas, by the most singular ball
that I have ever received. He propelled it like a quoit into the air to
a height of at least 30 feet, and it fell straight and true on to the
top of the bails. I have often wondered what a good batsman would have
made of that ball. To play it one would have needed to turn the blade
of the bat straight up, and could hardly fail to give a chance. I tried
to cut it off my stumps, with the result that I knocked down my wicket
and broke my bat, while the ball fell in the midst of this general
chaos. I spent the rest of the day wondering gloomily what I ought to
have done--and I am wondering yet.
I have had two unusual experiences upon Lord’s ground. One was that I
got a century in the very first match that I played there. It was an
unimportant game, it is true, but still the surprising fact remained.
It was a heavy day, and my bat, still encrusted with the classic mud,
hangs as a treasured relic in my hall. The other was less pleasant and
even more surprising. I was playing for the Club against Kent, and
faced for the first time Bradley, who was that year one of the fastest
bowlers in England. His first delivery I hardly saw, and it landed
with a terrific thud upon my thigh. A little occasional pain is one
of the chances of cricket, and one takes it as cheerfully as one can,
but on this occasion it suddenly became sharp to an unbearable degree.
I clapped my hand to the spot, and found to my amazement that I was
on fire. The ball had landed straight on a small tin vesta box in my
trousers pocket, had splintered the box, and set the matches ablaze.
It did not take me long to turn out my pocket and scatter the burning
vestas over the grass. I should have thought this incident unique, but
Alec Hearne, to whom I told it, assured me that he had seen more than
one accident of the kind. W. G. was greatly amused. “Couldn’t get you
out--had to set you on fire!” he cried, in the high voice which seemed
so queer from so big a body.
There are certain matches which stand out in one’s memory for their
peculiar surroundings. One was a match played against Cape de Verde at
that island on the way to South Africa. There is an Atlantic telegraph
station there with a large staff, and they turn out an excellent
eleven. I understand that they played each transport as it passed,
and that they had defeated all, including the Guards. We made up a
very fair team, however, under the captaincy of Lord Henry Scott, and
after a hard fight we defeated the islanders. I don’t know how many of
our eleven left their bones in South Africa; three at least--Blasson,
Douglas Forbes (who made our top score), and young Maxwell Craig never
returned. I remember one even more tragic match in which I played
for the Incogniti against Aldershot Division a few months before the
African War. The regiments quartered there were those which afterwards
saw the hardest service. Major Ray, who made the top score, was killed
at Magersfontein. Young Stanley, who went in first with me, met his
death in the Yeomanry. Taking the two teams right through, I am sure
that half the men were killed or wounded within two years. How little
we could have foreseen it that sunny summer day!
It is dangerous when an old cricketer begins to reminisce, because so
much comes back to his mind. He has but to smell the hot rubber of a
bat handle to be flooded with memories. They are not always glorious. I
remember three ladies coming to see me play against one of the Bedford
schools. The boys politely applauded as I approached the wicket. A very
small boy lobbed up the first ball which I played at. It went up into
the air, and was caught at point by the very smallest boy I have ever
seen in decent cricket. It seemed to me about a mile as I walked back
from the wicket to the pavilion. I don’t think those three ladies ever
recovered their confidence in my cricketing powers.
As a set-off to this confession of failure let me add a small instance
of success, where by “taking thought” I saved a minor international
match. It was at the Hague in 1892, and the game was a wandering
British team against Holland. The Dutch were an excellent sporting lot,
and had one remarkable bowler in Posthuma, a left-hander, who had so
huge a break with his slow ball that it was not uncommon for him to
pitch the ball right outside the matting on which we played and yet
bring it on to the wicket. We won our various local matches without
much difficulty, but we were aware that we should have a stiff fight
with United Holland, the more so as Dutch hospitality was almost as
dangerous to our play as Dutch cricket.
So it proved, and we were in the position that with four wickets in
hand they had only fifteen runs to make with two batsmen well set. I
had not bowled during the tour, for as we were a scratch team, mostly
from the schoolmaster class, we did not know each other’s capacity.
Seeing, however, that things were getting desperate, I went the length
of asking our skipper to give me a chance.
I had observed that the batsmen had been very well taught by their
English professional, and that they all played in most orthodox fashion
with a perfectly straight bat. That was why I thought I might get them
out. I brought every fielder round to the off, for I felt that they
would not think it correct to pull, and I tossed up good length balls
about a foot on the off side. It came off exactly as I expected. The
pro. had not told them what to do with that particular sort of tosh,
and the four men were all caught for as many runs by mid-off or cover.
The team in their exultation proceeded to carry me into the pavilion,
but whether it was my sixteen stone or the heat of the weather, they
tired of the job midway and let me down with a crash which shook the
breath out of me--so Holland was avenged. I played against them again
when they came to England, and made sixty-seven, but got no wickets,
for they had mastered the off-side theory.
Some of my quaintest cricket reminiscences are in connection with
J. M. Barrie’s team--the “Allah-Akbarries,” or “Lord help us” as we
were called. We played in the old style, caring little about the game
and a good deal about a jolly time and pleasant scenery. Broadway,
the country home of Mr. Navarro and his wife, formerly Mary Anderson,
the famous actress, was one of our favourite haunts, and for several
years in succession we played the Artists there. Bernard Partridge,
Barrie, A. E. W. Mason, Abbey the Academician, Blomfield the architect,
Marriott Watson, Charles Whibley, and others of note took part, and
there were many whimsical happenings, which were good fun if they were
not good cricket. I thought all record of our games had faded from
human ken, but lately a controversy was raised over Mr. Armstrong,
the Australian captain, bowling the same man from opposite ends on
consecutive overs. This led to the following paragraph in a Birmingham
paper, which, I may say, entirely exaggerates my powers but is
otherwise correct.
“BARRIE AND ARMSTRONG.
“I am not surprised that in the matter of Mr. Armstrong’s conduct
in bowling two consecutive overs from different ends, no reference
has been made to the important precedent which on a similar occasion
Sir James Barrie failed to establish (writes a correspondent of
the “Nation”). The occasion was his captaincy (at Broadway, in
Worcestershire) of an eleven of writers against a strong team of
alleged artists. The circumstances were these. One side had compiled
seventy-two runs, chiefly, if not wholly, contributed by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle.
“The sun-worshippers had thereupon responded with an equal number
of runs for the loss of all but their last wicket. The ninth wicket
had fallen to the last ball of Sir Arthur’s over, the other eight
having succumbed to the same performer, then in his prime. Actuated,
apparently, by the belief that Sir Arthur was the only bowler of his
side capable of taking or reaching a wicket, even in Worcestershire,
Sir James thereupon put him on at the opposite end.
“Before, however, he could take a practice ball, a shout was heard
from the artists’ pavilion, and the nine unengaged players were seen
issuing from it to contest our captain’s decision. After an exciting
contest, it was ultimately given in their favour, with the result
that the first ball of the new bowler was hit for two, assisted by
overthrows, and the innings and match were won by the artists.”
Of Barrie’s team I remember that it was printed at the bottom of our
cards that the practice ground was in the “National Observer” office.
Mr. Abbey, the famous artist, usually captained against Barrie, and it
was part of the agreement that each should have a full pitch to leg
just to start his score. I remember my horror when by mistake I bowled
a straight first ball to Abbey, and so broke the unwritten law as
well as the wicket. Abbey knew nothing of the game, but Barrie was no
novice. He bowled an insidious left-hand good length ball coming from
leg which was always likely to get a wicket.
Talking of bowling, I have twice performed the rare feat of getting all
ten wickets. Once it was against a London Club, and once I ran through
the side of a Dragoon Regiment at Norwich. My best performance at Lords
was seven wickets for fifty-one against Cambridgeshire in 1904.
Of fencing my experience has been limited, and yet I have seen enough
to realize what a splendid toughening exercise it is. I nearly had an
ugly mishap when practising it. I had visited a medical man in Southsea
who was an expert with the foils, and at his invitation had a bout with
him. I had put on the mask and glove, but was loath to have the trouble
of fastening on the heavy chest plastron. He insisted, however, and his
insistence saved me from an awkward wound, for, coming in heavily upon
a thrust, his foil broke a few inches from the end, and the sharp point
thus created went deeply into the pad which covered me. I learned a
lesson that day.
On the whole, considering the amount of varied sport which I have done,
I have come off very well as regards bodily injury. One finger broken
at football, two at cricket (one after the other in the same season),
the disablement of my knee--that almost exhausts it. Though a heavy
man and quite an indifferent rider, I have never hurt myself in a fair
selection of falls in the hunting field and elsewhere. Once, as I have
narrated, when I was down, the horse kicked me over the eye with his
forefoot, but I got off with a rather ragged wound, though it might
have been very much more serious.
Indeed, when it comes to escapes, I have had more than my share of
luck. One of the worst was in a motor accident, when the machine,
which weighed over a ton, ran up a high bank, threw me out on a gravel
drive below, and then, turning over, fell on top of me. The steering
wheel projected slightly from the rest, and thus broke the impact and
undoubtedly saved my life, but it gave way under the strain, and the
weight of the car settled across my spine just below the neck, pinning
my face down on the gravel, and pressing with such terrific force as to
make it impossible to utter a sound. I felt the weight getting heavier
moment by moment, and wondered how long my vertebræ could stand it.
However, they did so long enough to enable a crowd to collect and the
car to be levered off me. I should think there are few who can say that
they have held up a ton weight across their spine and lived unparalyzed
to talk about it. It is an acrobatic feat which I have no desire to
repeat.
There is plenty of sport in driving one’s own motor and meeting the
hundred and one unexpected roadside adventures and difficulties which
are continually arising. These were greater a few years ago, when
motors were themselves less solidly and accurately constructed, drivers
were less skilled, and frightened horses were more in evidence. No
invention of modern civilization has done so much for developing a
man’s power of resource and judgment as the motor. To meet and overcome
a sudden emergency is the best of human training, and if a man is his
own driver and mechanician on a fairly long journey he can hardly fail
to have some experience of it.
I well remember in the early days of motoring going up to Birmingham
to take delivery of my new twelve horse-power Wolseley. I had invested
in the sort of peaked yachting cap which was considered the correct
badge of the motorist in those days, but as I paced the platform of
New Street Station a woman removed any conceit I might have over my
headgear, by asking me peremptorily how the trains ran to Walsall.
She took me for one of the officials. I got the car safely home,
and no doubt it was a good car as things went at that time, but the
secret of safe brakes had not yet been discovered, and my pair used
to break as if they were glass. More than once I have known what it
is to steer a car when it is flying backwards under no control down
a winding hill. Looking back at those days it seems to me that I was
under the car nearly as much as on the top of it, for every repair
had to be done from below. There were few accidents from smashing my
differential, seizing my engines, and stripping my gears, which I have
not endured. It was a chain-driven machine, and I can well remember
one absurd incident when the chain jumped the cogs and fell off. We
were on a long slope of 3 miles and ran on with the engine turned off
quite unconscious of what had occurred. When we reached level ground
the car naturally stopped, and we got out, opened the bonnet, tested
the electricity, and were utterly puzzled as to what was amiss, when a
yokel in a cart arrived waving our motive power over his head. He had
picked it up on the road.
Our descendants will never realize the terror of the horses at this
innovation, nor the absurd scenes which it caused. On one occasion
I was motoring down a narrow lane in Norfolk, with my mother in the
open tonneau. Coming round a curve we came upon two carts, one behind
the other. The leading horse, which had apparently never seen a motor
before, propped his forelegs out, his ears shot forward, his eyes
stared rigidly and then in a moment he whirled round, ran up the bank,
and tried to escape behind his comrade. This he could have done but
for the cart, which he also dragged up the bank. Horse and cart fell
sideways on the other horse and cart, and there was such a mixture that
you could not disentangle it. The carts were full of turnips and these
formed a top dressing over the interlaced shafts and the struggling
horses. I sprang out and was trying to help the enraged farmer to get
something right end up, when I glanced at my own car which was almost
involved in the pile. There was my dear old mother sitting calmly
knitting in the midst of all the chaos. It was really like something in
a dream.
My most remarkable motor car experience was when I drove my own sixteen
horse-power Dietrich-Lorraine in the International Road Competition
organized by Prince Henry of Prussia in 1911. This affair is discussed
later, when I come to the preludes of war. I came away from it with
sinister forebodings. The impression left on my mind by the whole
incident is shown by the fact that one of the first things I did when I
got to London was to recommend a firm of which I am director to remove
a large sum which it had lying in Berlin. I have no doubt that it would
have continued to lie there and that we might have lost it. As to the
contest itself it ended in a British victory, which was owing to the
staunch way in which we helped each other when in difficulties, while
the Germans were more a crowd of individuals than a team. Their cars
were excellent and so was their driving. My own little car did very
well and only dropped marks at Sutton Bank in Yorkshire, that terrible
hill, one in three at one point, with a hair-pin bend. When we finally
panted out our strength I put my light-weight chauffeur to the wheel,
ran round, and fairly boosted her up from behind, but we were fined so
many marks for my leaving the driving wheel. Not to get up would have
meant three times the forfeit, so my tactics were well justified.
No doubt the coming science of aviation will develop the same qualities
as motor driving to an even higher degree. It is a form of sport in
which I have only aspirations and little experience. I had one balloon
ascent in which we covered some 25 miles and ascended 6,000 feet,
which was so delightful an expedition that I have always been eager
for another and a longer one. A man has a natural trepidation the
first time he leaves the ground, but I remember that, as I stood by
the basket with the gas-bag swinging about above me and the assistants
clinging to the ropes, some one pointed out an elderly gentleman
and said: “That is the famous Mr. So-and-So, the aeronaut.” I saw a
venerable person and I asked how many ascents he had made. “About
a thousand,” was the answer. No eloquence or reasoning could have
convinced me so completely that I might get into the basket with a
cheerful mind, though I will admit that for the first minute or so
one feels very strange, and keeps an uncommonly tight grip of the
side-ropes. This soon passes, however, and one is lost in the wonder of
the prospect and the glorious feeling of freedom and detachment. As in
a ship, it is the moment of nearing land once more which is the moment
of danger--or, at least, of discomfort; but beyond a bump or two, we
came to rest very quietly in the heart of a Kentish hop-field.
I had one aeroplane excursion in rather early days, but the experience
was not entirely a pleasant one. Machines were under-engined in those
days and very much at the mercy of the wind. We went up at Hendon--May
25, 1911, the date--but the machine was a heavy bi-plane, and though it
went down wind like a swallow it was more serious when we turned and
found, looking down, that the objects below us were stationary or even
inclined to drift backwards. However, we got back to the field at last,
and I think the pilot was as relieved as I. What impressed me most was
the terrible racket of the propeller, comparing so unfavourably with
the delicious calm of the balloon journey.
There is one form of sport in which I have, I think, been able to
do some practical good, for I can claim to have been the first to
introduce skis into the Grisons division of Switzerland, or at least
to demonstrate their practical utility as a means of getting across in
winter from one valley to another. It was in 1894 that I read Nansen’s
account of his crossing of Greenland, and thus became interested in
the subject of ski-ing. It chanced that I was compelled to spend that
winter in the Davos valley, and I spoke about the matter to Tobias
Branger, a sporting tradesman in the village, who in turn interested
his brother. We sent for skis from Norway, and for some weeks afforded
innocent amusement to a large number of people who watched our awkward
movements and complex tumbles. The Brangers made much better progress
than I. At the end of a month or so we felt that we were getting more
expert, and determined to climb the Jacobshorn, a considerable hill
just opposite the Davos Hotel. We had to carry our unwieldy skis upon
our backs until we had passed the fir trees which line its slopes, but
once in the open we made splendid progress, and had the satisfaction of
seeing the flags in the village dipped in our honour when we reached
the summit. But it was only in returning that we got the full flavour
of ski-ing. In ascending you shuffle up by long zig-zags, the only
advantage of your footgear being that it is carrying you over snow
which would engulf you without it. But coming back you simply turn your
long toes and let yourself go, gliding delightfully over the gentle
slopes, flying down the steeper ones, taking an occasional cropper, but
getting as near to flying as any earth-bound man can. In that glorious
air it is a delightful experience.
Encouraged by our success with the Jacobshorn, we determined to show
the utility of our accomplishment by opening up communications with
Arosa, which lies in a parallel valley and can only be reached in
winter by a very long and roundabout railway journey. To do this we had
to cross a high pass, and then drop down on the other side. It was a
most interesting journey, and we felt all the pride of pioneers as we
arrived in Arosa.
I have no doubt that what we did would seem absurdly simple to
Norwegians or others who were apt at the game, but we had to find
things out for ourselves and it was sometimes rather terrifying. The
sun had not yet softened the snow on one sharp slope across which
we had to go, and we had to stamp with our skis in order to get any
foothold. On our left the snow slope ended in a chasm from which a
blue smoke or fog rose in the morning air. I hardly dared look in that
direction, but from the corner of my eye I saw the vapour of the abyss.
I stamped along and the two gallant Switzers got on my left, so that if
I slipped the shock would come upon them. We had no rope by which we
could link up. We got across all right and perhaps we exaggerated the
danger, but it was not a pleasant experience.
Then I remember that we came to an absolute precipice, up which no
doubt the path zigzags in summer. It was not of course perpendicular,
but it seemed little removed from it, and it had just slope enough to
hold the snow. It looked impassable, but the Brangers had picked up
a lot in some way of their own. They took off their skis, fastened
them together with a thong, and on this toboggan they sat, pushing
themselves over the edge, and going down amid a tremendous spray of
flying snow. When they had reached safety they beckoned to me to
follow. I had done as they did, and was sitting on my skis preparatory
to launching myself when a fearsome thing happened, for my skis shot
from under me, flew down the slope, and vanished in huge bounds among
the snow mounds beyond. It was a nasty moment, and the poor Brangers
stood looking up at me some hundreds of feet below me in a dismal state
of mind. However, there was no possible choice as to what to do, so I
did it. I let myself go over the edge, and came squattering down, with
legs and arms extended to check the momentum. A minute later I was
rolling covered with snow at the feet of my guides, and my skis were
found some hundreds of yards away, so no harm was done after all.
I remember that when we signed the hotel register Tobias Branger
filled up the space after my name, in which the new arrival had to
describe his profession, by the words “Sportes-mann,” which I took
as a compliment. It was at any rate more pleasant than the German
description of my golf clubs, which went astray on the railway and
turned up at last with the official description of “Kinderspieler”
(child’s toys) attached to them. To return to the skis they are no
doubt in very general use, but I think I am right in saying that these
and other excursions of ours first demonstrated their possibilities to
the people of the country and have certainly sent a good many thousands
of pounds since then into Switzerland. If my rather rambling career
in sport has been of any practical value to any one, it is probably
in this matter, and also, perhaps, in the opening up of miniature
rifle-ranges in 1901, when the idea was young in this country, and when
my Hindhead range was the pioneer and the model for many others.
A pleasing souvenir of my work on Rifle Clubs is to be found in the
Conan Doyle Cup, which was presented by my friend Sir John Langman, and
is still shot for every year at Bisley by civilian teams.
On the whole as I look back there is no regret in my mind for the time
that I have devoted to sport. It gives health and strength but above
all it gives a certain balance of mind without which a man is not
complete. To give and to take, to accept success modestly and defeat
bravely, to fight against odds, to stick to one’s point, to give credit
to your enemy and value your friend--these are some of the lessons
which true sport should impart.