From a Cornish Window / A New Edition - Arthur Quiller-Couch

You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face to the sun,
For a last look back at the dear old track where the Jubilee Cup was won;
And draw your chair to my side, lad—no, thank ye, I feel no pain—
For I'm going out with the tide, lad, but I'll tell you the tale again.
I'm seventy-nine, or nearly, and my head it has long turned grey,
But it all comes back as clearly as though it was yesterday—
The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of the scales,
And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and Is 'Ighness, the Prince of Wales.
'Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that,
With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the flat.
"Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at five-stone-ten!
But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was a greenhorn then.
So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail—
There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and Yale;
And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint,
And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh as paint;
John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, and Lorna Doone,
Oom Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon Wooden Spoon;
And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung to baulk,
And some of us tossed for stations—But there, what use to talk?
Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station enough for me,
With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee!
And I leaned and patted her centre-bit, and eased the quid in her cheek,
With a 'Soh, my lass!' and a 'Woa, you brute!'—for she could do all but speak.
She was geared a thought too high, perhaps; she was trained a trifle fine;
But she had the grand reach forward! I never saw such a line!
Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear half-cock,
Hard-bit, pur sang, from her overhang to the heel of her off hind sock.
Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down to the mark;
"There's money on this, my lad," said he, "and most of 'em's running dark;
But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the scrimmages tight,
And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to your health to-night!"
But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to myself, said I,—
"John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have to do or die."
And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire shouted "Play!"
And we all kicked off from the Gasworks end with a "Yoicks!" and a "Gone away!"
And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in lumps,
But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd call for trumps,
And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each one as it broke,
And in triple file up the Rowley mile we went like a trail of smoke.
The Lascar made the running: but he didn't amount to much,
For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch;
And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The Saint took up the pace,
And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an ace.
John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa cleared with a punt;
And keeping her service hard and low, The Meteor forged to the front,
With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to play,
And Yale close up—but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for every day.
We laid our course for the Warner—I tell you the pace was hot!
And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the lot.
Check side! Check side! Now steer her wide! And barely an inch of room,
With The Lascar's tail over our lee rail, and brushing Leander's boom!
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 bumped 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 butt, and Oom Paul scored the trick—
"Off-side—no-ball—and at fourteen all! Mark cock! and two for his nob!"—
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 shiver 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 brush!
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!" "Pass 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-crashing on Godfrey'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 noble 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 institutes 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 passed 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 passion 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 'assisting'—he laid an ironical stress on the word—in an encounter between Kent and Middlesex. "And, as we were passing, 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!"