Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/"Bell's Life," and our sports and pastimes
“BELL’S LIFE,” AND OUR SPORTS AND PASTIMES.
It is marvellous how little we know of each other in this England of ours in the year of grace, 1861. In common with most middle-aged quiet gentlemen, who have done a little poetry in their time, and have lamented in passable verse the merry days of old, I have lived in the belief that we were fallen upon evil days, when “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Our working population have the character, throughout Europe, of being a dull heavy people, in whose highlows the elastic spirit of sport no longer treads. Well, firmly fixed in this opinion, and no more doubting it than I did that Robin Hood of old killed a Sheriff of Nottingham every other month by way of pastime, I was suddenly brought one morning into the companionship of a deal table, two official-looking chairs, and a “Bell’s Life,” in an out-of-the-way station of the Eastern Counties Railway. Now, I had often seen this paper before, but as “the fancy” lay out of my beat, I might be said to have seen it and not seen it, and it is wonderful how much of this kind of double-sight we manage to get through in the course of a day. But how could one help seeing a paper of any kind, with nothing to look at for two mortal hours but a highly coloured picture of a gigantic mangold wurzel, meant as an advertisement to astonish the agricultural mind? At all events, I sat me down to have a spell at “Bell’s Life.” When a man suddenly lifts up a fiat stone, it is wonderful the amount of active life, before hidden to his sight, he sees skirmishing about in all directions. Just such a picture of active life opened to my benighted vision, on turning over the pages of this newspaper. Why, what has become of the dull boy, Jack? Is this the individual, I asked myself, whom I find running, racing, diving, swimming, boating, yachting, leaping, fighting, sparring, wrestling, shooting, ratting, dog-fighting, knurring and spelling, cricketing, quoiting, racketing, &c., &c.? Why, what has come to the dull boy? To read the papers he would seem suddenly to have gone crazed. But, no; the station-master draws my attention to the fact, that this paper has been going on for nearly a third of a century, and all the while its pages have presented to its readers the same astounding reflection of the vigour, agility, and desperate energy of the sporting world of England. There is spring and go in old England yet, is the mental reflection which every man must make as he reads and wonders. Even the Londoner cannot be so degenerate an animal when we read what he does. Why, he takes the shine out of the lithe Indian, even on his own ground. In this very page I read that a Cockney was lately pitted against two celebrated North American Indians in a ten miles run at New York, and beat them all to nothing. And what surprises me most is, that the clean running of the Londoner was contrasted by the lookers-on with the lollopping, awkward gait of the sons of the forest. St. Giles showing its heels to the fleet savages of Delaware! What next!
But when one analyses the contents of these pages, the curious aspects of sport that exist among us comes out still more strongly. As I have touched upon the question of running, let me examine the column appropriated to matches to come off. In a recent week’s (July 7th) paper under this head there are no less than sixty-nine pedestrian matches to be contested, and these under every conceivable condition of length, &c., from a hundred and fifty yards to four miles, and some with the addition of having to jump a thousand hurdles! For every one of these races the men have to go into training, to sweat down superfluous fat by walking daily long distances in half a dozen top-coats, under the severe and somewhat monotonous nourishment of mutton chops only—why, martyrdom was often won by the saints of old at less physical suffering than these men undergo—for a paltry 10l. stake. To read the accounts of these matches, the reader would think that it was some description of a menagerie he was perusing. “The American Deer looked up to his work “the Barnsley Antelope seemed in excellent condition or “the London Stag had not an ounce of superfluous flesh.” So earnest are all concerned in the physical qualifications of the competitors, that the man is completely sunk in the contemplation of his animal functions.
Under the heading of “The Ring” the engagements and the events to come off are so numerous, that one naturally asks where are the police? How is it that thousands of persons can congregate in the open fields, week by week, for an unlawful purpose, without any of these gentry knowing anything about it; or if they do, to find they are actually defied. In the great fight between Sayers and Heenan they were kept out of the ring simply by the spectators closing up, and preventing their getting through. The explanation is, that it is impossible to legislate against any large class of people without their consent. The Ring is still an institution of the country, declining no doubt, but it cannot be said to be defunct so long as eighty members of the lower house can be found, as in the great international fight, to patronise it. The P.R. understands that it has its duties as well as its rights; there are members of the P.R.B. Society, an institution to afford relief to decayed bruisers and their families, and there are many societies, with much higher sounding titles, whose members subscribe according to their means with much less liberality.
We all know that the P.R. possesses a phraseology particularly its own, but a little study of “Bell’s Life” gives us an insight into the social habits of this unique community. Shakspere says that he who dislikes the harmony of sweet sounds is only fit for stratagem and strife, but my “Bell” tells us a very different story. The prize-fighter’s crib is the very soul of harmony, if we may believe their advertisements. Thus, Professor Mike Madden assures his friends that the “merrie little Bell is always in tune, and everything goes on right merrily every evening.” Whilst Jem Mace (champion of the world) states “that he will hold a conversazione this evening, July 6th, in the new picture-gallery,” the said picture-gallery consisting of portraits of pugilists. By the way, I may mention that no sporting publican thinks his bar complete without one of Newbold’s pictures of the set-to between, Heenan and Sayers, the possession of which is always advertised. “At Nat Langham’s, Cambrian, Castle Street, Leicester Square,” we are informed, “that the usual scenes of tranquil delight are enacted every evening with gorgeous effect.” Who shall say after this that the converse of Shakspere’s proposition is not true? Of course such national sports as racing and cricketing are fully and minutely reflected in “Bell’s Life;” but even here the reader is surprised to find the number of events that are coming off day by day, in the former sport especially. It is remarkable the number of collateral occupations to which it gives rise. There is generally a column of advertisements of racing prophets, each vieing with the other as to their infallibility.
These horse-wise men dispense their predictions to regular subscribers at so much per season or quarter, a striking proof of the depth to which speculations on the turf have penetrated every section of the British community. Swimming is I find gradually asserting itself as a national sport of the first magnitude. There is a champion swimming belt, and Beckworth, the champion, advertises the graceful swimming and floating feats of his daughter, Miss Jessie, aged seven years, and the babies, F. and W., aged five and three years. As if the element he performed in did not furnish sufficient difficulties to the pursuit of the art, one professor attempted to perform the feat of jumping into seven feet of water from a height of ninety feet, and when in mid air firing off two pistols, jumping through two balloons, and, whilst under the water, putting on a pair of trousers! The oddest games and contests are to be found in the pages of “Bell’s Life.” For instance, what does the reader know of the game of Knurr and Spell? Yet this sport also has its professors and players devoted solely to it. We believe it is a kind of scientific trap-and-ball game. A Mr. Tupper (not Martin Farquhar) has given a challenge, which has been accepted, to match his donkey to make the best of his road for two miles against a runner. A most exciting match will, we hear, speedily come off between Lord ’s horses and the hounds of Lord. Running matches between dogs are, we find, a matter of everyday occurrence. Pigeon flying is a great sport among the Birmingham fancy, and dog and cock fighting (the latter, a stage of sport beneath the dignity of “Bell’s Life” to chronicle), are still rife in the last-named stronghold of the “fancy.” Among the more sedentary games I find matches are continually coming off. A young man challenges the world to play a game of draughts with him; even dominoes have their triumphs registered in these omnivorous pages. And be it remembered, with every season the readers have an entire change of performances. Indeed, scarcely a month goes by without witnessing an entire alteration in the nature of the sports.
It will be observed, however, that with the exception of field-sports or yachting, trials of skill, strength, agility, and endurance are not made in the public eye. Trials of skill in running, leaping, wrestling, &c., are generally made in professional grounds, into which “society” enters not. Our athletes are either professionals or plebs from the shop—the butcher, the baker, and the shoemaker, who exert themselves for money, &c. The snip who brings home your coat, for all you know, is recognised among his pals as the Brompton Stag, or the young butcher may be famous among the fancy as the great hurdle-leaper, or the baker boasts the best dog at a rat in the parish. Their triumphs are unnoted except by the publicans where the matches are made up and their proceeds spent. The other class of men who are fond of sporting are the officers of the army; they have leisure and money, and their profession gives them a strong leaning toward physical exercises. But the great middle class have not hitherto been given to sports—at least, not to contend in any public arena for honours or rewards. This has been the great want of the young men of the counter and of the desk; their wits have been, of late, fostered at the expense of their muscles. Athenæums and mechanics’ institutes have been favoured to the total exclusion of athletic and manly games, and this is the reason why the idea exists that our old sports and pastimes have died out. I have shown how far this is from being the case among the upper and lower classes, and there are very evident symptoms that the great middle classes are beginning to move in this direction. To the Volunteer movement this amendment in our public life is clearly due. The drill grounds attached to most corps throughout the country are centres of gathering for our youth, which they have not been slow to take advantage of. They have fostered in our citizen-soldiers a love for out-of-door life that was utterly wanting for a century at least. The very monotony of the drill itself has led to the practise of athletic games; and not a fortnight since, at Beaufort House, the South Middlesex ground, the palm of victory was contended for in our old English games at a fête in which there were thousands of fair women to look on and applaud. The esprit de corps produced by these regimental gatherings are likely to foster this growing love of our national games. By-and-by, corps will play against corps, and we shall be as proud of our crack runners and jumpers in our regiments, as we are of our prize shots. And, be it remembered, these sports will be carried on under the eyes of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters; all the best influences of the family will be brought to bear upon our games, and a far healthier influence will pervade our sports, thus carried on in the light of day, than we find at present, when the house of call of the athlete is a public house, and our contests are adulterated with a certain blackguardism, inseparable from them so long as they are chiefly participated in by the lowest class of the population. “Bell’s Life,” we predict, will ere long be the record of the athletic sports of the youth of the middle class, as represented by our Volunteers, and when such is the case, it will truly represent all classes in the country, and will be as true a reflection of sporting life in England in its entirety, as the “Times” is of its political life.