In course of time Mr. Travers informed me that I was elected an active
member of the L.A.C. These magic letters stand for the London Athletic
Club, easily the most famous athletic club in the world. I had been
there as one of the public on several occasions, and already knew by
sight such giants of the arena as Phillips and George and Cowie and
other most notable men, all historically famous. In fact George soon
joined the professional ranks, as we say, and the day was coming when he
would run a mile faster than anybody in the world had ever run it.
The first time I went to Stamford Bridge it so happened that a most sad
misfortune fell on my friend Dicky Travers.
He had entered for a two-mile walking race and trained very carefully
for it—as well he might, because, such was his universal fame at this
distance, that he was handicapped to give all the other competitors a
lot of start. Some had actually as much as a minute start; but Dicky
started from scratch. He told me in the morning of the day that he felt
very well and expected to get pretty near fourteen minutes for the two
miles. I lunched with him on the day, and, as it was an evening meeting
at the L.A.C. and he would not be racing before six o’clock, he ate a
steak and some bread and cheese; but he drank nothing but water; because
experience had shown him that beer was no use before a great struggle of
this sort.
In due time, after the first heats of a “sprint” and a half-mile race,
the walking competition came on, and I was very glad to hear several
spectators cheer Travers when he appeared on the cinder path. I also did
the same. He wore black drawers and vest; but the rest of him was, of
course, entirely bare, save for his feet, which were encased in walking
shoes which he had made expressly to his directions. In each hand he
carried an oblong cork, and his face had a cheerful and calm expression
which little indicated the great ordeal before him.
Eight men had entered for the race, and the limit man went off at such a
great pace that it seemed absurd to suppose Travers could ever get near
him. Others started quickly after each other according to the handicap,
and then a man called Forrester started. He was next to Travers and
received only ten seconds start from him. But such was his speed that he
had gone about forty yards before Dicky was told to go.
Every eye was fixed upon the scratch man as, with a magnificent and
raking action, he set out on his gigantic task. Though not very tall, he
had a remarkable stride, and his legs, which were slightly hairy and
magnificently shaped, were remarkable, owing to a muscle that had
developed on the front of the shin bones. This is the walking muscle,
and only great walkers and racers have it developed in this
extraordinary manner. Travers had a very long stride and a graceful
motion. You didn’t realise that he was going so fearfully fast till you
saw that, from the first, he began to gain upon the rest. Some of the
others—all, of course, men of great distinction—appeared to be walking
quite as fast as Dicky; but they were not. Umpires ran along on the
grass inside the track to see the walking was fair; and the men who
performed this onerous task had all been famous also in their day.
At last they exercised their umpiring powers and stopped one of the
competitors. He had a most curious action, certainly, and several
experts near me prophesied from the first that he would be pulled out.
He didn’t seem to be actually running and he didn’t seem to be actually
walking. It was a kind of shuffle of a very swift and speedy character;
but whatever it exactly was, the umpires didn’t like it and told him
that he was disqualified. He was a very tall man in a red costume, and
he didn’t seem in the least surprised when they stopped him. In fact he
was rather glad, I believe. A spectator next to me, smoking a cigar and
talking very loud, said that the man had been really making the pace for
another man.
Now the race had covered a mile and Travers was walking in the most
magnificent manner it is possible to describe. An expression of great
fierceness was in his eye and he was foaming slightly at the mouth, like
a spirited steed. He and the man who had received ten seconds from him
were too good for the rest of the field, and when they had covered a
mile and a half, they passed the leader up to that distance and simply
left him standing still. It was now clear there was going to be a
historic race for the victory between Forrester and Travers, and the
supporters of each great athlete shouted encouragement and yelled and
left no stone unturned to excite their man to make a supreme effort and
win. Travers and Forrester were walking one behind the other and it was,
of course, a classical exhibition of fair “heel-and-toe” work, such as
is probably never seen outside the famous precincts of the L.A.C. I
shrieked for Travers and the man next me, with the cigar, howled for
Forrester. Such was his excitement that the man with the cigar seized
his hat and waved it to Forrester as he passed; and seeing him do this,
I seized my hat, too, and waved it to Dicky.
Of course Travers, with the enormous cunning of the old stager, had kept
just behind Forrester all the way—to let him set the pace; but now he
knew that Forrester was slacking off a little—to save himself for a
great finish—and so Travers felt that the time had come to make his bid
for victory. It was just passing me that he did so, and I saw the flash
of genius in his eye as he gathered himself for the supreme effort that
was to dash the hopes of Forrester. Only one more round of the cinder
track had to be made, so Dicky instantly got to Forrester’s shoulder
and, after a few terrific moments, during which I and the man with the
cigar and many others practically ceased to breathe, Travers wrested the
lead from Forrester. It was a gigantic achievement and a cool and
knowing sportsman near me with a stop watch in his hand declared that if
Dicky wasn’t pulled up he would do fourteen and a quarter. “He’s getting
among it,” said the cool hand, which was his way of meaning that Travers
was promised to achieve a notable performance.
But Forrester was not yet done with. This magnificent walker, in no way
discouraged by his doughty foeman, stuck gamely to his colossal task and
Travers, try as he would, could not shake him off.
“He’s lifting! He’s lifting!” screamed the man with the cigar. “Pull him
out—stop him!”
“He’s not—you’re a liar!” I shouted back, in a fever of rage, because
the friend of Forrester, of course, meant that Travers was lifting. And
if you “lift” in a walking race, you are running and not walking and all
is over.
They had only two hundred yards to go and Travers was still in front,
when an umpire, to my horror, approached Dicky. He had been watching
Dicky’s legs with a microscopic scrutiny for some time and now he
stopped the leader and told him that he was disqualified.
I shouted “Shame! Shame!” with all my might, and so did several other
men; but the man with the cigar, who evidently understood only too well
the subtleties of lifting among sprint walkers, screamed shrilly with
exaggerated joy and behaved like a silly fool in every possible way.
Forrester, relieved of his formidable rival, took jolly good care not to
lift himself. And as the next man in the race was nearly a hundred yards
behind, he, of course, won comfortably.
Travers behaved like the magnificent sportsman he was, and I felt just
as proud of knowing him as if he’d actually won; for he did not whine
and swear and bully the umpires or anything like that. He just took his
coat from the bench where he had thrown it before the race, inquired of
the timekeeper what Forrester had done it in, and presently walked into
the dressing-room with the others, quite indifferent to the hearty
cheers that greeted him and the victor.
I went in while he dressed and he said the verdict, though hard, was
just.
“I knew he was going to do me when he came up again after I passed him,”
explained Travers. “He’s a North London chap in a lawyer’s office. I’ve
never walked against him before. I ought to have pushed him much earlier
and tried to outwalk him for the mile. He’s got fine pace. Look at the
time—14.22—and he wasn’t walking after I came off. I meet him again at
Catford Bridge next month. He seems a very good sort.”
Thus did this remarkable sportsman take his defeat. But he was, of
course, cast down by it, for he had only been stopped twice before
during the whole of his honourable and brilliant career on the cinder
path.
As for my own experience, I went down after my election and Travers
himself came to see how I shaped. At Merivale I had been a sprinter and
had done well up to two hundred yards, and since I came to London I had
seen Harry Hutchings—the greatest sprinter who ever lived and of course
a professional champion. Therefore I decided to go in for that branch of
the pedestrian’s art. I bought my costume, which was entirely black,
like Dicky’s, and a pair of spiked running shoes and a black bag to
carry them in. Then I went down one evening after office hours with my
friend, and he introduced me to Nat Perry and his son, Charles Perry.
Nat Perry was the hero of many a hard-won field, and immense and dogged
courage sat upon his bronzed and clean-shaved countenance. Many hundreds
of athletes had passed through his hands to victory or defeat, as the
case might be, and he was a master in the art of judging an athlete’s
powers. As the friend of Travers he welcomed me with great kindness,
heard that I wanted to be a sprinter, but seemed doubtful whether I was
the sort of build for that branch of running.
“You look more like a half-miler or miler with them legs,” he said,
casting his eye over me critically but kindly. “And you’re on the thin
side. You want to put on some flesh. But you’re young yet.”
I told Nat Perry that I hoped to put on some flesh and that I was
prepared to follow his advice in everything. We came out on to the track
presently, and I ran and Perry watched. But he kept very calm about it
and I had a sort of feeling he wasn’t much interested. Presently he
said:
“You don’t begin running till you’ve gone fifty yards. Start running
from the jump off.”
He asked another man, who was training, to show me how to start; because
his own athletic days were, of course, at an end, and he could not show
me in person. But the other man most kindly came over and showed me how
to get set and how to start like an arrow from a bow, which is half the
art of sprinting.
After the trial was over Nat Perry said that it was impossible to
prophesy anything until I had shaken down and found my feet on the
cinders. “You may be a runner or you may not,” he told me. “I’ve seen
bigger duffers than you shape into runners. You work hard for a month
and get up your appetite and eat all you can pack away. Running or no
running, the exercise in the open air’s what you want, and plenty of
it.”
He rubbed me down after I had had a shower bath and gave me a locker for
my things. He was a good man besides being so famous, and everybody
thought a great deal of him at the L.A.C. His son was also an
exceedingly clever trainer.
In course of time I was introduced to a few of the stars of the club,
with whom, of course, Travers mixed on terms of perfect equality. They
were all brilliant men, and their knowledge of athletics and times and
great feats of the past filled me with interest and respect.
I enjoyed the evenings at the L.A.C. very much indeed, and I gradually
improved till Perry decided that I had better enter for one of the
evening handicaps.
“It will accustom you to the feel of it,” he said. “You’ll have to get
over the strangeness before you do anything; and there’s your handicap
to be thought on. As an unknown you won’t have your fair start at first;
but after you’ve lost your heat for a month of Sundays, then you’ll be
on your proper mark and may get on. You’re not a flyer and very like
never will be—you ain’t got the physic; but you’ll do a bit, I dare say.
And there’s hope for a mile, if you come on next year. No good for a
quarter nor yet a half—too punishing. Your ’eart wouldn’t stand it.”
Thus this able and honest man encouraged me cautiously and I obeyed him,
and in due time appeared to contest my heat in a hundred yards’
handicap.
It was exciting, but it didn’t last long. I took a preliminary spin and
then, curiously enough, a thing happened that quite put me off for the
moment. You must know the L.A.C. ground ran along one side of a railway
cutting and on the other side, running, in fact, parallel with the
athletic grounds, was a cemetery. And now, just as I was going to have a
second preliminary spin, there came across the railway cutting the
exceedingly mournful sound of a funeral bell tolling. Somehow I felt
that while on one side of the line was a crowd of excited and eager men
full of life and hope and joy, and others, like myself, also full of
life and hope and joy, going to run in a competition and exert their
wonderful energies to the utmost—while this was happening upon one side
of the railway cutting, a scene of a very different nature was going on
upon the other. And I got a sort of fancy they were burying a young man
in his eighteenth year, like myself—a man who only a few days before was
full of fight, and enjoying life and hoping no doubt some day to be
somebody worth talking about. And now, instead of taking the world by
storm and getting knighted even, or other honours, here was the
unfortunate chap being tolled into the earth under the weeping eyes of a
heartbroken mother and other relations. The reality of the thing was
fearful, and it was rather sad in a way, too, because it did me no good
to have my mind distracted in this manner just before I was called upon
to battle against four other men, all considerably older than I was
myself.
In fact they had to rouse me and call me to the starting-post, where the
other competitors had already assembled. There was no man at scratch in
my heat, but a great and powerful athlete called Muspratt, who received
four yards from scratch, was the best runner of the five. I got eight
yards, which was only four from Muspratt and not enough; and of the
other three men in the race, one, who was startlingly fat to be a
sprinter, had nine yards and one had ten.
At the sound of the pistol we all dashed off and I started fairly well.
The sensation in a sprint of this kind is most interesting, because at
first your position with respect to the other runners is unchanged.
Though you are all flying along at a terrific pace, you appear to be all
hardly moving at all. But then, after about half the distance had been
run, I found, much to my astonishment, that I had caught the man who had
one yard start from me, and both he and I were almost dead level with
the front man. Now, of course, was the time for me to make my supreme
effort; but just as I was about to do so, I became conscious of
something white on my left and found, to my great interest, that
Muspratt was only a yard behind me. In fact he was already making his
effort, and when I made mine it proved useless against Muspratt, who was
an old warhorse of the cinder path and a magnificent judge of pace.
Twenty yards from the tape I honestly believe the whole five of us were
in a dead line; but Muspratt really had us in the hollow of his hand,
though we little knew it and all strained every nerve for victory. He
slid past us, however, and broke the tape a yard ahead of myself and the
fat man. And I was honestly more amazed by the splendid running of the
fat man than anything else in the heat; because it showed what pluck and
training and the genius of Nat Perry could do, even for such an
unpromising sprinter.
Travers, who most kindly consented to come down that evening and
encourage me, though he was not doing anything himself, figured it all
out very correctly on paper afterwards. The heat was run in ten and
three-fifths of a second by Muspratt with four yards start, and he beat
me by a yard and a half. Therefore Travers considered that I had done
what would have amounted to a shade worse than eleven seconds from
scratch.
Muspratt, who ran in an eyeglass, by the way, which was interesting in
itself, though spectacles were common enough with sprinters, got second
in the final heat, which was won by a man with nine yards start, who had
never before won as much as a salt-cellar, though he had been competing
for two years unavailingly.
But though of great interest to me, I cannot say any more about my
doings at the London Athletic Club, because other more important matters
have to be told. What with running and cricket matches against other
Fire and Life Insurance Offices, I now got plenty of exercise and felt
exceedingly well and keen to proceed with the most important business of
my life—which was, of course, to become a tragic actor and play in the
greatest dramatic achievements of the human mind.