From a Cornish Window Part 15

We were running as strong as ever--eight knots--but it couldn't last; For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field tailing fast; And the Portland colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was b.u.mped at the Doves, And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stale-mated in fifteen moves.

It was bellows to mend with Roberts--starred three for a penalty kick: But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the b.u.t.t, and Oom Paul scored the trick-- "Off-side--no-ball--and at fourteen all! Mark c.o.c.k! and two for his n.o.b!"-- When W. G. ran clean through his lee, and yorked him twice with a lob.

He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch, and wiped his eye with a brace, But his guy-rope split with the strain of it, and he dropped back out of the race; And I drew a bead on The Meteor's lead, and challenging none too soon, Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called upon Wooden Spoon.

She was all of a s.h.i.+ver forward, the spoondrift thick on her flanks, But I'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her over the banks; She answered her helm--the darling!--and woke up now with a rush, While The Meteor's jock he sat like a rock--he knew we rode for his brus.h.!.+

There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using his whip, And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pocketed deep at slip; And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at Leander's lunge, But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw up the sponge.

But none of the lot could stop the rot--nay, don't ask _me_ to stop!-- The Villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken his drop, And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow! He done his best; But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out--which he always did when pressed.

So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked the sandbags out-- I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies shout: "The Meteor wins!" "No, Wooden Spoon!" "Check!" "Vantage!"

"Leg before!"

"Last lap!" "Pa.s.s Nap!" At his saddle-flap I put up the helm and wore.

You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape: And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will shape; It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back--a fair ding-dong to the Ridge, And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot neath Hammersmith Bridge.

He led by his forward canvas--he led from his strongest suit-- But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley I gained a foot.

He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash--too late!

Deuce--vantage--check! By neck and neck, we rounded into the straight.

I could hear the 'Conquering 'Ero' a-cras.h.i.+ng on G.o.dfrey's band, And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there with the race in hand-- In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape, As I felt the tack of her spinnaker crack, as I heard the steam escape!

Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind? . . . but no!

I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it there with my toe . . .

Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and eased her up, Shot--clean and fair--to the crossbar there, and landed the Jubilee Cup!

"The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he gave the word: And the Umpire shouted "Over!" but I neither spoke nor stirred.

They crowded round: for there on the ground I lay in a dead-cold swoon, Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful Wooden Spoon.

Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red-hot; She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear in a knot; And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her last on earth!

But I mind me well of the tear that fell from the eye of our n.o.ble Prince, And the things he said as he tucked me in bed--and I've lain there ever since; Tho' it all gets mixed up queerly that happened before my spill, --But I draw my thousand yearly: it'll pay for the doctor's bill.

I'm going out with the tide, lad.--You'll dig me a humble grave, And whiles you will bring your bride, lad, and your sons (if sons you have), And there, when the dews are weeping, and the echoes murmur "Peace!"

And the salt, salt tide comes creeping and covers the popping-crease,

In the hour when the ducks deposit their eggs with a boasted force, They'll look and whisper "How was it?" and you'll take them over the course, And your voice will break as you try to speak of the glorious first of June, When the Jubilee Cup, with John Jones up, was won upon Wooden Spoon.

"To me," said a well-known authority upon education, "these athletics are the devil." To me no form of athletics is the devil but that of paying other people to be athletic for you; and this, unhappily--and partly, I believe, through our neglect to provide our elementary schools with decent playgrounds--is the form affected nowadays by large and increasing crowds of Englishmen. The youth of our urban populations would seem to be absorbed in this vicarious sport. It throngs the reading-rooms of free public libraries and working men's inst.i.tutes in numbers which delight the reformer until he discovers that all this avidity is for racing tips and cricket or football "items." I am not, as a rule, a croaker; but I do not think the young Briton concerns himself as he did in the fifties, sixties, and seventies of the last century with poetry, history, politics, or indeed anything that asks for serious thought. I believe all this professional sport likely to be as demoralising for us as a nation as were the gladiatorial shows for Rome; and I cannot help attributing to it some measure of that combativeness at second-hand--that itch to fight anyone and everyone by proxy--which, abetted by a cheap press, has for twenty years been our curse.

Curse or no curse, it is spreading; and something of its progress may be marked in the two following dialogues, the first of which was written in 1897. Many of the names in it have already pa.s.sed some way toward oblivion; but the moral, if I mistake not, survives them, and the warning has become more urgent than ever.

THE FIRST DIALOGUE ON CRICKET.

1897.

Some time in the summer of 1897--I think towards the end of August--I was whiling away the close of an afternoon in the agreeable twilight of Mr. D--'s bookshop in the Strand, when I heard my name uttered by some one who had just entered; and, turning about, saw my friend Verinder, in company with Grayson and a strapping youth of twenty or thereabouts, a stranger to me. Verinder and Grayson share chambers in the Temple, on the strength (it is understood) of a common pa.s.sion for cricket. Longer ago than we care to remember--but Cambridge bowlers remember--Grayson was captain of the Oxford eleven. His contemporary, Verinder, never won his way into the team: he was a comparatively poor man and obliged to read, and reading spoiled his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself with knocking up centuries in college matches, and an annual performance among the Seniors. It was rumoured that Grayson--always a just youth, too-- would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered, and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, and has since become habitual to him.

Verinder explained that he and his companions were on their way home from Lord's, where they had been 'a.s.sisting'--he laid an ironical stress on the word--in an encounter between Kent and Middles.e.x. "And, as we were pa.s.sing, I dragged these fellows in, just to see if old D--' had anything." Verinder is a book-collector. "By the way, do you know Sammy Dawkins? You may call him the Boy when you make his better acquaintance and can forgive him for having chosen to go to Cambridge. Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage, and--as the _Oxford Magazine_ gloomily prophesied--he bowls out Athens in his later age." The Boy laughed cheerfully and blushed. I felt a natural awe in holding out an exceedingly dusty hand to an athlete whose fame had already shaken the Antipodes. But it is the way of young giants to be amiable; and indeed this one saluted me with a respect which he afterwards accounted for ingenuously enough--"He always felt like that towards a man who had written a book: it seemed to him a tremendous thing to have done, don't you know?"

I thought to myself that half an hour in Mr. D--'s shop (which contains new books as well as old) would correct his sense of the impressiveness of the feat. Indeed, I read a dawning trouble in the glance he cast around the shelves. "It takes a fellow's breath away," he confessed. "Such a heap of them! But then I've never been to the British Museum."

"Then," said I, "you must be employing researchers for the book you are writing."

"What?" he protested. "_Me_ writing a book? Not likely!"

"An article for some magazine, then?"

"Not a line."

"Well, at least you have been standing for your photograph, to ill.u.s.trate some book on Cricket that another fellow is writing."

He laughed.

"You have me there. Yes, I've been photographed in the act of bowling-- 'Before' and 'After': quite like Somebody's Hair Restorer."

"Well," said I, "and I wish you had contributed to the letterpress, too.

For the wonder to me is, not that you cricketers write books (for all the world wants to read them), but that you do it so prodigiously well."

"Oh," said he, "you mean Ranji! But he's a terror."

"I was thinking of him, of course; but of others as well. Here, for instance, is a book I have just bought, or rather an instalment of one: _The Encyclopaedia of Sport_, edited by the Earl of Suffolk and Berks.h.i.+re, Mr. Hedley Peek, and Mr. Aflalo, published by Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen: Part IV., CHA to CRO. I turn to the article on Cricket, and am referred 'for all questions connected with fast bowling, and for many questions a.s.sociated with medium and slow' to 'the following paper by Tom Richardson.'"

"Tom Richardson ought to know," put in Grayson.

"Good Heavens!" said I, "I am not disputing that! But I remember Ruskin's insisting--I think in _Sesame and Lilies_--that no true artist ever talks much of his art. The greatest are silent. 'The moment,' says Ruskin, 'a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it. All words become idle to him--all theories.' And he goes on to ask, in his vivacious way, 'Does a bird theorise about building its nest?'

Well, as to that one cannot be sure. But I take it we may call Richardson a true artist?"

"Certainly we may."

"And allow that he can really do his work?"

"Rather!"

"Then it seems to me that Ruskin's rule may apply to other arts, but not to Cricket. For here is Richardson not only talking about fast bowling, but expressing himself with signal ease and precision. Listen to this, for instance:--

"'A ball is said to _break_ when, on touching the ground, it deviates sharply from its original line of flight.'

"And again:--"

"'A ball is said to have 'spin' on it when it gains an acceleration of pace, not necessarily a variation of direction, on touching the ground.'

"It would be hard, I think, to improve upon these definitions. But let me satisfy you that I was not exaggerating when I spoke of the dignity of Mr. Richardson's English style:--