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