“James Bland and the other Legs.” At this distance of time we may perhaps repeat the epithet or nickname, and even class a named man under it, without the risk of an action for libel. Perhaps even the term “Legs” did not imply all the qualities which attach to it to-day, but in any case it is surely something of a shock to come on the presence of these questionable gentlemen just casually stated, not with any note of surprise, but merely as if they were a common and even essential accompaniment of a cricket match.
Of course we knew quite well that our forefathers betted large stakes between themselves, often on single-wicket matches. This was a favourite style of match with Mr. Osbaldestone—the Squire,—because his bowling was so fast that no one, practically, could hit it in front of the wicket, and hits did not count for runs, in single-wicket, behind the wicket. In double-wicket matches he often “beat his side,” we are told—beat his own side—“by byes,” no long-stop being able to stop his bowling effectively. The chief check to the Squire’s career seems to have been the discovery of the famous Browne of Brighton, who bowled, some said, even faster. Beldham, however, made a lot of runs off the latter on one special occasion. This is a digression, into which the consideration of single-wicket matches for money—and is it a wonder we do not have more of them now?—beguiled me. But perhaps it is a good thing that we do not have them, for they may well have been the root and source of all the subsequent “leg-work.” The Coronation match is the first occasion on which Mr. Pycroft notices the “Legs,” in his order of writing, but lower down on the very same page he quotes some words of Mr. Budd, who shared, with Lord Frederick Beauclerk, the credit of being the best amateur cricketer of the day, relative to a match at Nottingham—M.C.C. v. Twenty-two of Notts—in which the same evil influence is apparent. “In that match,” he says, “Clarke played”—the future captain of the All England travelling team. “In common with others, I lost my money, and was greatly disappointed at the termination. One paid player was accused of selling, and never employed after.”
Mr. Budd must have done his level best to avert defeat, too, for Bentley records that he caught out no less than nine of the Notts men; but one paid player was accused of selling, and Clarke was on the other side! However it happened, Notts won. Mr. Pycroft also says that in old Nyren’s day the big matches were always made for £500 a side, apart, as we may presume, from outside betting. Nowadays a sovereign or a fiver on the ‘Varsity match is about the extent of the gambling that cricket invites. The James Bland referred to above had a brother, Joe—Arcades ambo, bookmakers both. These, with “Dick Whittom of Covent Garden—profession unnamed,—Simpson, a gaming-house keeper, and Toll of Esher, as regularly attended at a match as Crockford and Gully at Epsom and Ascot.”
Mr. Pycroft scouts the idea that a simple-minded rustic of Surrey or Hampshire would long hold out against the inducements that these gentry would offer them, “at the Green Man and Still,” to sell a match, and indeed some of the naïve revelations that were made to him by rustic senility when he went to gossip with it, over brandy and water, might confirm him in a poor opinion of the local virtue.
“I’ll tell the truth,” says one, whom he describes as a “fine old man,” but leaves in kindly anonymity. “One match of the county I did sell, a match made by Mr. Osbaldeston at Nottingham. I had been sold out of a match just before, and lost £10, and happening to hear it, I joined two others of our eleven to sell, and get back my money. I won £10 exactly, and of this roguery no one ever suspected me; but many was the time I have been blamed for selling when as innocent as a babe.” Then this old innocent, with his delightful notions of cavalleria rusticana and the wooing back of his £10, goes on to tell the means—hackneyed enough in themselves—by which the company of the Legs seduced the obstinacy of rustic virtue. “If I had fifty sons,” he said, “I would never put one of them, for all the games in the world, in the way of the roguery that I have witnessed. The temptation was really very great—too great by far for any poor man to be exposed to.”
There is a pathetic dignity about this simple moralising that contrasts well with the levity of his previous confession, but the state of things that it shows is really very disgusting. It is another tribute to the merit of this first of English games that it should have lived through and have lived down such a morbid condition.
“If gentlemen wanted to bet,” said Beldham, “just under the pavilion sat men ready, with money down, to give and take the current odds. These were by far the best men to bet with, because, if they lost, it was all in the way of business; they paid their money and did not grumble.” The manners of some of the fraternity must have changed, not greatly for the better, since then. “Still,” he continues, “they had all sorts of tricks to make their betting safe.” And then he quotes, or Mr. Pycroft quotes—it is not very clear, and does not signify—Mr. Ward as saying, “One artifice was to keep a player out of the way by a false report that his wife was dead.” It was as clever a piece of practical humour as it was honest. What a monstrous state of things it reveals!
And then Beldham, inspirited by Mr. Pycroft’s geniality and brandy and water, goes on to assure him—as one who takes a view which the majority would condemn as childishly charitable—that he really does not believe, in spite of all that has been said, that any “gentleman,” by which he means “amateur,” has ever been known to sell a match, and he cites an instance in which for curiosity’s sake he put the honesty of a certain noble lord to the test by covertly proposing selling a match to him. But though his lordship, who seems to have been betting against his own side, had actually £100 on the match, even this inducement was not enough to tempt the nobleman from the paths of virtue.
We will hope that no amateur did fall, and may join with Beldham in “believing it impossible,” but the fiction that they did was used by the Legs to persuade any man of difficult honesty to go crooked. “Serve them as they serve you,” was the argument, or one of the arguments, used. That “fine old man” whom Mr. Pycroft drew out so freely gives no edifying pictures of the players of the day: “Merry company of cricketers, all the men whose names I had ever heard as foremost in the game, met together, drinking, card-playing, betting, and singing, at the Green Man—that was the great cricketers’ house—in Oxford Street—no man without his wine, I assure you, and such suppers as three guineas a game to lose and five to win—that was then the sum for players—could never pay for long.”
That was their rate of payment, and that their mode of life—perhaps not the best fitted for the clear eye and the sound wind.