Many other things combined to help the movement. Not the least of these was the dawning belief that Juvenal’s oft quoted “mens sana in corpore sano,” contained a fallacy, and that the healthy body must precede and render possible the healthy mind. This doctrine, in “the forties,” was feebly struggling for recognition, but is now recognized as lying at the very root of social and moral regeneration. England’s danger in the period of the Crimean war, tended to turn the minds of men to the seriousness of our national position, and to the advantages of systematic training to resist hardship. The volunteer movement, with its platoon exercises and its outdoor drills, often on the old “Butts Green,” which the wisdom of our forefathers had provided for their day and generation, drew further marked attention to physical training. All this tended to create in the rising generation an inclination to return to our older, more natural, and more healthful custom of outdoor life.
Whatever were the causes, and whether this enumeration of them be either accurate or complete, certain it is that in the early “fifties” athletism took a new and marked departure. As was natural, that departure received its concrete form in the two ancient English universities “where students most do congregate.” In athletics it can with truth be said, “the boy is father of the man.”
For all the higher interests of athletism this was fortunate. In those two centres the young plant was at least in a soil with materials for its growth, and in an atmosphere where its grosser forms could scarce take root, and where that parasite, the professional blackleg, could certainly not develop. Thus it has transpired that those concomitant evils which at one time threatened even the existence of cricket have been kept from the field of amateur athletics. The watchful eye, the timely warning, the friendly aid of authority, which, without crushing, silently regulated the mode and conduct of these sports, has enabled them to spread a beneficent and not a corrupting influence. That there were evils, inherent, latent, and which might have become powerful, all will admit; that they were surely and deeply rooted and ineradicable was the fear of many; that they showed a tendency at first to develop is a matter of record, but that they no longer affect athletism, where it is conducted by gentlemen for gentlemen, is equally certain and satisfactory.
That the development of athletism, regulated and purified as it soon became, was a distinct advance on the antecedent pastimes is perfectly clear. Athletics soon obtained a recognition and a warm welcome from the public. Let those who are old enough cast back their minds thirty years and recall the scenes of brutality which filled the columns of public newspapers, the very existence of which is now almost forgotten. Turn even to the Times, and it will be found that in that exclusive journal and great reflex of the age, “prize fighting” holds quite a significant space. But the work unostentatiously begun in the universities, and spreading to the schools, was preparing a public which would become interested in the more scientific development of the human frame for higher and nobler purposes.
To Oxford belongs the honor of initiation in the Athletic Club of Exeter College founded in 1850. Five years later the sister university followed Oxford’s example; but, as is her habit, though slower to the influence of innovation than Oxford, when once she has accepted an idea, she makes more rapid progress. St. John’s College led the van; Emmanuel, and one by one the rest, followed. So rapid, indeed, was the development, that within two years the whole of the seventeen colleges and halls were ready for a “federation,” and in 1857 the first intercollegiate sports were held. Three years after, Oxford, too, was ready for its extended sphere, its “United States” constitution.
Naturally, the existence of these two friendly yet rival corporations led to a trial of strength between them. Cambridge challenged Oxford to a friendly tournament, and in 1864 the first of those since famous meetings of the students of the two universities was held. Nothing can be more significant of the then position of athletism than the manner of its announcement. In an obscure corner of the Times, crushed almost out by the more engrossing incidents of the German-Danish war and of the American Rebellion, still may be seen the two small lines announcing: “Athletic Games.—The athletic games between Oxford and Cambridge will take place on the 5th March at 12 o’clock.” But small as was the space, it was a clear indication that athletism had become a subject of national and not entirely of local interest. From this event may be measured all the subsequent career. “The events took place in Christ Church new cricket ground, in the presence of a vast number of persons, including many of the college authorities, and some hundreds of ladies, who took a very keen interest in the proceedings,” says the Times. But even more interesting is the fact that at the baptism of these inter-university sports there should have been the sponsorship of official recognition. Of the two judges, one was the Rev. A. H. Faber, of New College, Oxford; the other was the Rev. H. Mortimer Luckock, of Trinity College, Cambridge (now Canon of Ely Cathedral), whilst the office of referee was filled by the Rev. Leslie Stephen. As Oxford “had gathered there her beauty and her chivalry” as spectators, so amongst the competitors were no mean representatives of the universities at their best. Oxford had her Gooch and Darbyshire, and Cambridge that very paragon of all graceful power, C. B. Lawes (who has since enriched sculpture by so much that is admirable in art). What son of Cambridge who saw Lawes is ever likely to forget him? He was a sight for the gods!—a very athletic “Admirable Crichton.”
Emulation and imitation, that sincerest form of flattery, quickly produced followers; the flame which the universities had lit, raised to a beacon’s height by the Times’ reports, spread like a wildfire. Trinity College, Dublin, Eton College and Wellington, before the year was out, appeared in the lists, and were quickly followed by those nurseries of the universities, Harrow and Winchester, Rossall and Cheltenham, Westminster and Charterhouse, whilst Sandhurst and Chatham added to the list the military students, and the “United” Hospitals the students in medicine. Nor was the agitation confined to one side of the Atlantic, for within an extremely short period, the foundation of that now world-renowned association, the New York Athletic Club, was laid.
Is it to be wondered at that this sudden, simultaneous, and widespread movement should have raised grave apprehensions, and anxious, if not bitter, critics? The first warning voice was raised against the alleged existence of gambling and against the debasing influence of money as prizes. It is singular to remember, under present circumstances, the fact, which has almost passed from memory, that at the first inter-university sports the prizes were given in money. Nor was the friendly yet apprehensive critic alone in the field. Mr. Wilkie Collins, the novelist, with less knowledge and more animus, mixed gall and wormwood with his criticism and produced in his “Man and Wife” a caricatured monster so overdrawn as to be, fortunately, ineffective. Even so good an authority as Mr. Leslie Stephen was apparently ranged against the child of his adoption (for he was the first referee); but, as a matter of fact, he was merely tempted to use the athlete as a “bogey” to frighten “the characteristic doctrine out of the university Tory;” but having to invoke a “bogey” for his purpose he was compelled, by the exigencies of the case, to draw the university athlete in language more forcible than elegant. This having served its purpose, may now well be charitably consigned to oblivion. The Hon. Edward Lyttleton, following suit to Mr. Stephen, urged the aid of “variety in education” as a corrective to the engrossing attractions of the sports. The fears which haunted Mr. Lyttleton, and still find expression, were born of a too contracted view of the facts. To him, the enervating effect was its growing popularity. He saw the increasing multitudes flocking once a year to see the public exhibitions, in which but few students competed, and he forgot the thousands who plodded, day after day, month after month, through the weary details of practice, for the development of their frames, or in private contests.
Nor were the tutor, the schoolmaster and the novelist alone in their onslaughts; a far more dangerous attack came from certain medical men, of whom Dr. Richardson may be taken as the type. To them the athlete was a man doomed to a premature decay, a broken and exhausted wreck. Budding athletism had the good fortune to secure, in Dr. E. Morgan, of Manchester, a champion whose exhaustive labors and conclusive deductions from authentic facts, made short work of the adverse theory, and established, beyond future cavil or dispute, that the death rate amongst those who had passed the most trying ordeals was 30 per cent. lower than the national average.