CYCLING.
The pastime of cycling, at first only patronised by athletic youth, has now spread to every class of the community. The vast improvement in machines, and the health and exhilaration to be gained by the exercise, have had much to do with its popularity alike with aristocracy and democracy. Like golf, it has come to stay, although many who take cycling up for amusement will drop it again as they would do anything else. But there will always remain a strong and increasing contingent, fully aware, by practical experience, of its health and pleasure giving powers, who will place it second to no existing recreation. And so the cyclist gets gleams and glances of beauty from many a nook and corner of the land, where railway, coach, or his unaided pedestrian powers would never carry him. It has widened a twenty-mile radius to a forty-mile radius, and increased man's locomotive powers threefold. Let no one imagine that there is not a considerable amount of exertion and fatigue, and sometimes hardship. But it is of a wholesome kind, when kept within limits, and physically, morally, and socially, the benefits that cycling confers on the men of the present day are almost unbounded.
Truly, we have here a great leveller; as one says: 'It puts the poor man on a level with the rich, enabling him to "sing the song of the open road" as freely as the millionaire, and to widen his knowledge by visiting the regions near to or far from his home, observing how other men live. He could not afford a railway journey and sojourn in these places, and he could not walk through them without tiring sufficiently to destroy in a measure the pleasure which he sought. But he can ride through twenty, thirty, fifty, even seventy miles of country in a day, without serious fatigue, and with no expense save his board and lodging.' This is very well put. Another enthusiast has said: 'If you want to come as near flying as we are likely to get in this generation, learn to ride on a pneumatic bicycle.' 'Sum up,' says another, 'when summer is done, all the glorious days you have had, the splendid bits of scenery which have become a possession for ever, your adventures worth telling, and see how you have been gladdened and enriched.'
An enthusiastic journalist who had been burning the candle at both ends betook himself to the wheel, and found it of so much service to body and mind that he straightway, in the columns of his newspaper, began to advise the whole world to learn the bicycle. He could hardly tell the difference it had made to his feelings and general health, and he knew of no exercise which brought so easily such a universal return in good health, good spirits, and amusement. Mr G. Lacy Hillier, of the Badminton volume on Cycling, confirms this. The cyclist seems to enter into the spirit of Emerson's saying as thoroughly as Thoreau might have done: 'Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of empires ridiculous.' Many overdo the exercise, then renounce it, or give it a bad name; others, by over-rapid riding in towns, make themselves public nuisances, and vastly increase the dangers of overcrowded streets. The sensible cyclist rides for health, increase of knowledge, and amusement.
Though at one time Mr Ruskin was prepared to spend all his best bad language in abusing the wheel, the world has gone its own way, and the careering multitudes in Battersea Park and elsewhere, on country and suburban roads, in crowded towns, have been the means of creating new manufactures, which have vastly benefited our home industries. Mr H. J. Lawson, inventor of the rear-driving safety, lately estimated the annual output of cycles at over a million, and the money spent at over ten millions. But in the absence of statistics this is only guesswork. The periodical called Invention has stated that in 1884 there were 8 bicycle factories, which turned out 6000 machines. In 1895 there were about 400 factories, with an estimated output of 650,000 bicycles. The bicycle tax in France is said to yield not less than £80,000 a year. In the United States, where cycling has become a greater craze than with us, two hundred and fifty thousand cycles at least were purchased in 1894; in 1895 more than four hundred thousand changed hands. When the proposal was made some time ago to impose a tax on cycles, it was calculated that there were at least eight hundred thousand riders in the United Kingdom. Now the number is estimated at over a million. The past few seasons have witnessed quite a 'boom' in cycling and a great increase in the number of riders. Ladies have taken more rapidly to the pastime in America and France than in England. The rubber and then the pneumatic or inflated tyre have wrought a marvellous revolution; the high 'ordinary,' the tricycle, and the heavy 'solid,' and even the 'cushion,' have in most cases been relegated to the home of old iron. The Pneumatic Tyre Company, with a capital of four millions sterling, when in full swing, turns out twenty-five thousand tyres per week. The profits of this concern in 1896 were at the rate of £432,000 a year. Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, London, and other towns, have largely benefited by the cycle trade.
Sir B. W. Richardson has often called attention to the benefit of cycling in the case of dwellers in towns. Dr Turner finds that nothing neutralises better the poison introduced into the blood through faulty digestion than gentle and continued exercise on the wheel. Mr A. J. Watson, the English amateur one-mile and five-mile champion in 1895, declared that he never suffered from any ill effects, save perhaps during the hard days in winter, when prevented from riding. Dr Andrew Wilson once quoted a budget of correspondence from ladies who had tried the wheel, all of which was in the same direction, provided that overstrain was avoided. Where the heart is weak, cycling should be left alone. The muscles of the legs are developed and the circumference of the chest increased in the case of healthy riders.
Here are a few hints by a medical man: 'Never ride within half an hour of a meal, either before or after. Wheel the machine up any hill the mounting of which on the wheel causes any real effort. See that the clothing round the stomach, neck, and chest is loose. Have the handle-bar sufficiently raised to prevent stooping. Be as sparing as possible of taking fluids during a long ride. Unless the wind, road, &c., be favourable, never ride more than ten miles an hour, save for very short distances, and never smoke while riding.'
The cycle as we know it did not burst upon the world in all its present completeness, but has been a gradual evolution, the work of many a busy hand and brain, guided by experience. As far back as 1767 we find that Richard Lovell Edgeworth had something of the nature of a velocipede; and about the same date, William Murdoch, inventor of gas for illuminating purposes, had a wooden horse of his own invention upon which he rode to school at Cumnock.
The French appear to be entitled to whatever of credit attaches to the original invention of the hobby-horse, a miserable steed at best, which wore out the toes of a pair of boots at every journey. M. Blanchard, the celebrated aëronaut, and M. Masurier conjointly manufactured the first of these machines in 1779, which was then described as 'a wonder which drove all Paris mad.' The Dandy-horse of 1818, the two wheels on which the rider sat astride, tipping the ground with his feet in order to propel the machine, was laughed out of existence. In 1840, a blacksmith named Kirkpatrick Macmillan, of Courthill, parish of Keir, Dumfriesshire, made a cycle on which he rode to Glasgow, and caused a big sensation on the way. This worthy man died in 1878, aged 68. The notable fact regarding Macmillan's cycle is, that he had adapted cranks and levers to the old dandy or hobby-horse. Gavin Dalziel, of Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, had a bicycle of his own invention in daily use in 1846. The French are probably justified, moreover, in claiming as their own the development of the crude invention into the present velocipede, for, in 1862, a M. Rivière, a French subject residing in England, deposited in the British Patent Office a minute specification of a bicycle. His description was, however, unaccompanied by any drawing or sketch, and he seems to have taken no further steps in the matter than to register a theory which he never carried into practice. Subsequently, the bicycle was re-invented by the French and by the Americans almost simultaneously, and indeed, both nations claim priority in introducing it. It came into public notoriety at the French International Exhibition of 1867, from which time the rage for them gradually developed itself, until in 1869 Paris became enthusiastic over velocipedes. Extensive foundries were soon established in Paris for the sole purpose of supplying the ironwork, while some scores of large manufactories taxed their utmost resources to meet the daily increasing demand for these vehicles.
There was a revival of cycling between 1867-69. An ingenious Frenchman, M. Michaux, had some years before fitted pedals and a transverse handle to the front wheel of what came to be irreverently known as the 'bone-shaker.' This embryo bicycle had a considerable vogue, and was introduced to Mr Charles Spencer's gymnasium in London in 1868. Spencer was in Paris in 1868, in company with Mr R. Turner, representative of the Coventry Machinists' Company, and they were each admiring the graceful evolutions of Henri Tascard on his velocipede over the broad asphalt paths of the Luxemburg Gardens. 'Charlie, do you think you could do that?' said Turner. Spencer said he thought he would have a trial, and would take home a machine that very night. He accordingly brought over a machine to London, practised riding stealthily in some of the most out-of-the-way London streets, and soon gained sufficient confidence to appear in public. Mr John Mayall, jun., photographer, Regent Street, witnessed the arrival of one of the first bicycles at Spencer's gymnasium, in Old Street, St Luke's. 'It produced but little impression upon me,' he says, 'and certainly did not strike me as being a new means of locomotion. A slender young man, whom I soon came to know as Mr Turner of Paris, followed the packing-case and superintended its opening. The gymnasium was cleared, Mr Turner took off his coat, grasped the handles of the machine, and, with a short run, to my intense surprise, vaulted on to it, and putting his feet on the treadle made the circuit of the room. We were some half-a-dozen spectators, and I shall never forget our astonishment at the sight of Mr Turner whirling himself round the room—sitting on a bar above a pair of wheels in a line, that ought, as we inadvertently supposed, to fall down as soon as he jumped off the ground.'