For a game’s played there which most who’ve tried it
Declare is a truly noble game.
College, it is pleasant to know, seems unlikely ever to forget this true son of Eton, for on the evening of St. Andrew’s Day each of the wall team in turn drinks “In piam memoriam, J. K. S.,” every raising of the cup as it is passed around being followed by a cheer.
A brilliant young contemporary of J. K. S. who played at the wall in 1880 is happily still left to us. This is Mr. A. C. Benson, whose fine intellect and delightful achievements in the fields of literature have rendered his name well known to that greater public which joins with Etonians in admiration of his work.
College may well be proud of having produced two such men as these.
Till the middle of the fifties in the last century the wall game was also played at the red brick wall in front of the boys’ entrance to the house which about 1790 was built overlooking the Timbralls. For nearly a quarter of a century after play had ceased to take place there, the calces marked in chalk could still be discerned. The field game is a rather modern institution. As has before been said, ordinary football does not seem to have been very popular amongst Etonians of a hundred years ago, though in the last century it gradually rose in favour. A curious character of other days was old Strugnal, who was celebrated for tightening the bladder of a football by means of blowing through a piece of tobacco pipe placed in his mouth. On the whole, the annals of Eton football, a primitive form of which in the eighteenth century was known as “goals,” with the exception of some exciting house matches, do not possess any great interest.
CRICKET
Cricket, unlike football, was popular at Eton over two hundred years ago, having been played as early as 1706, and in high favour in Horace Walpole’s day. About the first great Etonian cricketer was the eighth Lord Winchilsea, who afterwards became chief patron of the famous Hambledon Club. At one time he made an attempt to introduce an innovation by increasing the stumps to four, but the change was never popular, though in the match between the Gentlemen and Players in 1837, in order to equalise the contest, the latter undertook to defend four stumps instead of three. In 1751 three matches for £1500 were played between the Gentlemen of England and Eton College, Past and Present; the former won the stakes, winning two out of the three matches. The players were dressed in silk jackets, trousers, and velvet caps. In 1791 Lord Winchilsea made 54 runs in a contest between Old Etonians versus the Gentlemen of England. This was played at old “Lord’s,” where Dorset Square now stands. In the same year the school beat the Maidenhead Club by four wickets. Keate was one of the seven Collegers playing, and scored 0 and 4, while in the second innings Way “nipped himself out” for 11. Five years later a match seems to have taken place against Westminster on Hounslow Heath, in defiance of the Headmaster’s strict orders; it resulted in the defeat of Eton and the flogging of all the Eleven!
In those days there was a good deal of jollity in connection with the cricket in the playing fields, and the boys were allowed to do many things which would be thought very reprehensible to-day. Up to about 1827, for instance, a beer tent used to be allowed when cricket matches were played. Two or three years later Eton cricket for some reason or other admittedly deteriorated, a disastrous state of affairs which was thus explained by one of the “cads” who used to hover about the shooting fields: “Lord, sir, they never has won a match since the beer tent got the sack, and never will no more.” This tent, where “beer and baccy” were the order of the day before it gave offence to the higher powers, was kept, at every match, by the veteran Jem Miller for the accommodation of the “cads,” Broconalian Club, and other loungers, and loudly and lustily did they cheer the boys with their stentorian lungs. It was from this tent that one of the best bowlers and batters Eton ever produced—in after years a prominent divine at King’s—was encouraged by the deafening shouts of “Goo it, my dear Harding; goo it, my dear boy,” when he scored 86 runs off his own bat against Messrs. Ward, Vigne, Tanner, and others of the Epsom Club. It was on this memorable day, too, that he made a tremendous hit over the shooting-field trees, high in the air, of course, when a bargeman from the tent, lost in amazement at the hit, thundered out, “There she goes for Chessy [Chertsey] Church, by Jingo!” it being a prominent mark on the river for the bargees.
“WATER BOILS,” “MAKE TEA”