June

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_ The following verses made their appearance some years ago in the pages of the _Pall Mall Magazine_. Since then (I am assured) they have put a girdle round the world, and threaten, if not to keep pace with the banjo hymned by Mr. Kipling, at least to become the most widely-diffused of their author's works. I take it to be of a piece with his usual perversity that until now they have never been republished except for private amusement.

They belong to a mood, a moment, and I cannot be at pains to rewrite a single stanza, even though an allusion to 'Oom Paul' cries out to be altered or suppressed. But, after all, the allusion is not likely to trouble President Kruger's massive shade as it slouches across the Elysian fields; and after all, though he became our enemy, he remained a sportsman. So I hope we may glance at his name in jest without a suspicion of mocking at the tragedy of his fate.

THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE JUBILEE CUP.

You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face to the sun,
For a last look back at the dear old track where the Jubilee Cup was won;
And draw your chair to my side, lad--no, thank ye, I feel no pain--
For I'm going out with the tide, lad, but I'll tell you the tale again.

I'm seventy-nine, or nearly, and my head it has long turned grey,
But it all comes back as clearly as though it was yesterday--
The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of the scales,
And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and
Is 'Ighness, the Prince of Wales.

'Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that,
With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the flat.
"Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at five-stone-ten!
But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was a greenhorn then.

So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail--
There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and Yale;
And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint,
And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh as paint;

John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, and Lorna Doone,
Oom Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon Wooden Spoon;
And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung to baulk,
And some of us tossed for stations--But there, what use to talk?

Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station enough for me,
With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee!
And I leaned and patted her centre-bit, and eased the quid in her cheek,
With a 'Soh, my lass!' and a 'Woa, you brute!'--for she could do all but speak.

She was geared a thought too high, perhaps; she was trained a trifle fine;
But she had the grand reach forward! _I_ never saw such a line!
Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear half-cock,
Hard-bit, _pur sang_, from her overhang to the heel of her off hind sock.

Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down to the mark;
"There's money on this, my lad," said he, "and most of 'em's running dark;
But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the scrimmages tight,
And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to your health to-night!"

But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to myself, said I,--
"John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have to do or die."
And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire shouted "Play!"
And we all kicked off from the Gasworks end with a "Yoicks!" and a "Gone away!"

And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in lumps,
But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd call for trumps,
And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each one as it broke,
And in triple file up the Rowley mile we went like a trail of smoke.

The Lascar made the running: but he didn't amount to much,
For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch;
And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The Saint took up the pace,
And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an ace.

John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa cleared with a punt;
And keeping her service hard and low, The Meteor forged to the front,
With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to play,
And Yale close up--but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for every day.

We laid our course for the Warner--I tell you the pace was hot!
And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the lot.
Check side! Check side! Now steer her wide! And barely an inch of room,
With The Lascar's tail over our lee rail, and brushing Leander's boom!

We were running as strong as ever--eight knots--but it couldn't last;
For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field tailing fast;
And the Portland colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was bumped at the Doves,
And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stale-mated in fifteen moves.

It was bellows to mend with Roberts--starred three for a penalty kick:
But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the butt, and Oom Paul scored the trick--
"Off-side--no-ball--and at fourteen all! Mark cock! and two for his nob!"--
When W. G. ran clean through his lee, and yorked him twice with a lob.

He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch, and wiped his eye with a brace,
But his guy-rope split with the strain of it, and he dropped back out of the race;
And I drew a bead on The Meteor's lead, and challenging none too soon,
Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called upon Wooden Spoon.

She was all of a shiver forward, the spoondrift thick on her flanks,
But I'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her over the banks;
She answered her helm--the darling!--and woke up now with a rush,
While The Meteor's jock he sat like a rock--he knew we rode for his brush!

There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using his whip,
And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pocketed deep at slip;
And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at Leander's lunge,
But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw up the sponge.

But none of the lot could stop the rot--nay, don't ask _me_ to stop!--
The Villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken his drop,
And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow! He done his best;
But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out--which he always did when pressed.

So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked the sandbags out--
I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies shout:
"The Meteor wins!" "No, Wooden Spoon!" "Check!" "Vantage!" "Leg before!"
"Last lap!" "Pass Nap!" At his saddle-flap I put up the helm and wore.

You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape:
And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will shape;
It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back--a fair ding-dong to the Ridge,
And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot neath Hammersmith Bridge.

He led by his forward canvas--he led from his strongest suit--
But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley I gained a foot.
He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash--too late!
Deuce--vantage--check! By neck and neck, we rounded into the straight.

I could hear the 'Conquering 'Ero' a-crashing on Godfrey's band,
And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there with the race in hand--
In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape,
As I felt the tack of her spinnaker crack, as I heard the steam escape!

Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind? . . . but no!
I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it there with my toe
. . .
Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and eased her up,
Shot--clean and fair--to the crossbar there, and landed the Jubilee Cup!

"The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he gave the word:
And the Umpire shouted "Over!" but I neither spoke nor stirred.
They crowded round: for there on the ground I lay in a dead-cold swoon,
Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful Wooden Spoon.

Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red-hot;
She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear in a knot;
And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth
And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her last on earth!

But I mind me well of the tear that fell from the eye of our noble Prince,
And the things he said as he tucked me in bed--and I've lain there ever since;
Tho' it all gets mixed up queerly that happened before my spill,
--But I draw my thousand yearly: it'll pay for the doctor's bill.

I'm going out with the tide, lad.--You'll dig me a humble grave,
And whiles you will bring your bride, lad, and your sons (if sons you have),
And there, when the dews are weeping, and the echoes murmur "Peace!"
And the salt, salt tide comes creeping and covers the popping-crease,

In the hour when the ducks deposit their eggs with a boasted force,
They'll look and whisper "How was it?" and you'll take them over the course,
And your voice will break as you try to speak of the glorious first of June,
When the Jubilee Cup, with John Jones up, was won upon Wooden Spoon.

"To me," said a well-known authority upon education, "these athletics are the devil." To me no form of athletics is the devil but that of paying other people to be athletic for you; and this, unhappily--and partly, I believe, through our neglect to provide our elementary schools with decent playgrounds--is the form affected nowadays by large and increasing crowds of Englishmen. The youth of our urban populations would seem to be absorbed in this vicarious sport. It throngs the reading-rooms of free public libraries and working men's institutes in numbers which delight the reformer until he discovers that all this avidity is for racing tips and cricket or football "items." I am not, as a rule, a croaker; but I do not think the young Briton concerns himself as he did in the fifties, sixties, and seventies of the last century with poetry, history, politics, or indeed anything that asks for serious thought. I believe all this professional sport likely to be as demoralising for us as a nation as were the gladiatorial shows for Rome; and I cannot help attributing to it some measure of that combativeness at second-hand--that itch to fight anyone and everyone by proxy--which, abetted by a cheap press, has for twenty years been our curse.

Curse or no curse, it is spreading; and something of its progress may be marked in the two following dialogues, the first of which was written in 1897. Many of the names in it have already passed some way toward oblivion; but the moral, if I mistake not, survives them, and the warning has become more urgent than ever.

THE FIRST DIALOGUE ON CRICKET.

1897.

Some time in the summer of 1897--I think towards the end of August--I was whiling away the close of an afternoon in the agreeable twilight of Mr. D--'s bookshop in the Strand, when I heard my name uttered by some one who had just entered; and, turning about, saw my friend Verinder, in company with Grayson and a strapping youth of twenty or thereabouts, a stranger to me. Verinder and Grayson share chambers in the Temple, on the strength (it is understood) of a common passion for cricket. Longer ago than we care to remember--but Cambridge bowlers remember--Grayson was captain of the Oxford eleven. His contemporary, Verinder, never won his way into the team: he was a comparatively poor man and obliged to read, and reading spoiled his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself with knocking up centuries in college matches, and an annual performance among the Seniors. It was rumoured that Grayson--always a just youth, too-- would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered, and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, and has since become habitual to him.

Verinder explained that he and his companions were on their way home from Lord's, where they had been 'assisting'--he laid an ironical stress on the word--in an encounter between Kent and Middlesex. "And, as we were passing, I dragged these fellows in, just to see if old D--' had anything." Verinder is a book-collector. "By the way, do you know Sammy Dawkins? You may call him the Boy when you make his better acquaintance and can forgive him for having chosen to go to Cambridge. Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage, and--as the _Oxford Magazine_ gloomily prophesied--he bowls out Athens in his later age." The Boy laughed cheerfully and blushed. I felt a natural awe in holding out an exceedingly dusty hand to an athlete whose fame had already shaken the Antipodes. But it is the way of young giants to be amiable; and indeed this one saluted me with a respect which he afterwards accounted for ingenuously enough--"He always felt like that towards a man who had written a book: it seemed to him a tremendous thing to have done, don't you know?"

I thought to myself that half an hour in Mr. D--'s shop (which contains new books as well as old) would correct his sense of the impressiveness of the feat. Indeed, I read a dawning trouble in the glance he cast around the shelves. "It takes a fellow's breath away," he confessed. "Such a heap of them! But then I've never been to the British Museum."

"Then," said I, "you must be employing researchers for the book you are writing."

"What?" he protested. "_Me_ writing a book? Not likely!"

"An article for some magazine, then?"

"Not a line."

"Well, at least you have been standing for your photograph, to illustrate some book on Cricket that another fellow is writing."

He laughed.

"You have me there. Yes, I've been photographed in the act of bowling-- 'Before' and 'After': quite like Somebody's Hair Restorer."

"Well," said I, "and I wish you had contributed to the letterpress, too. For the wonder to me is, not that you cricketers write books (for all the world wants to read them), but that you do it so prodigiously well."

"Oh," said he, "you mean Ranji! But he's a terror."

"I was thinking of him, of course; but of others as well. Here, for instance, is a book I have just bought, or rather an instalment of one: _The Encyclopaedia of Sport_, edited by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, Mr. Hedley Peek, and Mr. Aflalo, published by Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen: Part IV., CHA to CRO. I turn to the article on Cricket, and am referred 'for all questions connected with fast bowling, and for many questions associated with medium and slow' to 'the following paper by Tom Richardson.'"

"Tom Richardson ought to know," put in Grayson.

"Good Heavens!" said I, "I am not disputing that! But I remember Ruskin's insisting--I think in _Sesame and Lilies_--that no true artist ever talks much of his art. The greatest are silent. 'The moment,' says Ruskin, 'a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it. All words become idle to him--all theories.' And he goes on to ask, in his vivacious way, 'Does a bird theorise about building its nest?' Well, as to that one cannot be sure. But I take it we may call Richardson a true artist?"

"Certainly we may."

"And allow that he can really do his work?"

"Rather!"

"Then it seems to me that Ruskin's rule may apply to other arts, but not to Cricket. For here is Richardson not only talking about fast bowling, but expressing himself with signal ease and precision. Listen to this, for instance:--

"'A ball is said to _break_ when, on touching the ground, it deviates sharply from its original line of flight.'

"And again:--"

"'A ball is said to have 'spin' on it when it gains an acceleration of pace, not necessarily a variation of direction, on touching the ground.'

"It would be hard, I think, to improve upon these definitions. But let me satisfy you that I was not exaggerating when I spoke of the dignity of Mr. Richardson's English style:--

"'The bowler, whether born or made, should cultivate and acquire a high action and a good swing of arm and body, as such a delivery will make the ball rise quickly and perpendicularly from the pitch; but the action must at all costs be easy and free, qualities which neither imitation nor education must allow to disappear.'

"We often hear complaints--and reasonable ones for the most part--that the wage given to first-class professional cricketers is no longer adequate. But one of the pet arguments for increasing it is that their employment begins and ends with the summer. Now, I certainly think that, while bowlers write in this fashion, they can have little or nothing to dread from the winter months."

"I declare," said Grayson, "I believe you are jealous!"

"Well, and why not? For, mark you, Mr. Richardson's is no singular case, of which we might say--to comfort ourselves--that the Goddess of Cricket, whom he serves so mightily, has touched his lips and inspired him for a moment. Turn over these pages. We poor novelists, critics, men of letters, have no such paper, such type, as are lavished on the experts who write here upon their various branches of sport. _Our_ efforts are not illustrated by the Swan Engraving Company. And the rub for us is that these gentlemen deserve it all! I am not going to admit--to you, at any rate--that their subjects are of higher interest than ours, or of more importance to the world. But I confess that, as a rule, they make theirs more interesting. When Mr. C. B. Fry discourses about Long Jumping, or Mr. W. Ellis about Coursing, or Mr. F. C. J. Ford upon Australian Cricket, there are very few novelists to whom I had rather be listening. It cannot be mere chance that makes them all so eloquent; nor is it that they have all risen together to the height of a single great occasion; for though each must have felt it a great occasion when he was invited to assist in this sumptuous work, I remarked a similar eloquence in those who contributed, the other day, to Messrs. Longmans' 'Badminton Library.' When sportsmen take to writing admirable English, and peers of the realm to editing it, I hardly see where we poor men of letters can expect to come in."

"The only cure that I can see," said Verinder, "is for Her Majesty to turn you into peers of the realm. Some of you suggest this from time to time, and hitherto it has puzzled me to discover why. But if it would qualify you to edit the writings of sportsmen--"

"And why not? These books sell: and if aristocracy have its roots in Commerce, shall not the sale of books count as high as the sale of beer? The principle has been granted. Already the purveyors of cheap and wholesome literature are invited to kneel before the Queen, and receive the _accolade_."

"She must want to cut Tit-bits out of them," put in the Boy.

"Of course we must look at the proportion of profit. Hitherto the profits of beer and literature have not been comparable; but this wonderful boom in books of sport may redress the balance. Every one buys them. When you entered I was glancing through a volume of new verse, but without the smallest intention of buying it. My purchases, you see, are all sporting works, including, of course, Prince Ranjitsinhji's _Jubilee Book of Cricket_."

"Just so," snapped Verinder. "You buy books about sport: we spend an afternoon in looking on at sport. And so, in one way or another, we assist at the damnation of the sporting spirit in England."

When Verinder begins in this style an oration is never far distant. I walked back with the three to the Temple. On our way he hissed and sputtered like a kettle, and we had scarcely reached his chamber before he boiled over in real earnest.

"We ought never to have been there! It's well enough for the Boy: he has been playing steadily all the summer, first for Cambridge and afterwards for his county. Now he has three days off and is taking his holiday. But Grayson and I--What the deuce have we to do in that galley? Far better we joined a club down at Dulwich or Tooting and put in a little honest play, of a week-end, on our own account. We should be crocks, of course: our cricketing is done. But we should be honest crocks. At least it is better to take a back row in the performance, and find out our own weakness, than pay for a good seat at Lord's or the Oval, and be Connoisseurs of what Abel and Hearne and Brockwell can and cannot do. If a man wants to sing the praises of cricket as a national game, let him go down to one of the Public Schools and watch its close or cricket-ground on a half-holiday: fifteen acres of turf, and a dozen games going on together, from Big Side down to the lowest form match: from three to four hundred boys in white flannels--all keen as mustard, and each occupied with his own game, and playing it to the best of his powers. _Playing it_--mark you: not looking on. That's the point: and that's what Wellington meant by saying--if he ever said it--that Waterloo was won upon the playing-fields at Eton. In my old school if a boy shirked the game he had a poor time. Say that he shirked it for an afternoon's lawn-tennis: it was lucky for him if he didn't find his racquet, next day, nailed up on the pavilion door like a stoat on a gamekeeper's tree. That was the sporting spirit, sir, if the sporting spirit means something that is to save England: and we shall not win another Waterloo by enclosing twenty-two gladiators in a ring of twenty-two thousand loafers, whose only exercise is to cheer when somebody makes a stroke, howl when some other body drops a catch, and argue that a batsman was not out when the umpire has given him 'leg-before.' Even at football matches the crowd has _some_ chance of taking physical exercise on its own account--by manhandling the referee when the game is over. Sport? The average subscriber to Lord's is just as much of a sportsman as the Spaniard who watches a bull-fight, and just a trifle more of a sportsman than the bar-loafer who backs a horse he has never clapped eyes on. You may call it Cricket if you like: I call it assisting at a Gladiatorial Show. True cricket is left to the village greens."

"Steady, old man!" protested the Boy.

"I repeat it. For the spirit of the game you might have gone, a few years ago, to the Public Schools; but even they are infected now with the gladiatorial ideal. As it is you must go to the village green; for the spirit, you understand--not the letter--"

"I believe you!" chuckled young Dawkins. "Last season I put in an off day with the villagers at home. We played the nearest market town, and I put myself on to bowl slows. Second wicket down, in came the fattest man I ever saw. He was a nurseryman and seedsman in private life, and he fairly hid the wicket-keep. In the first over a ball of mine got up a bit and took him in the ab-do-men. 'How's that?' I asked. 'Well,' said the umpire, 'I wasn't azackly looking, so I leave it to you. If it hit en in the paunch, it's 'not out' and the fella must have suffered. But if it took en in the rear, I reckon it didn't hurt much, and it's 'leg-before.'' I suppose that is what you would call the 'spirit' of cricket. But, I say, if you have such a down on Lord's and what you call the gladiatorial business, why on earth do you go?"

"Isn't that the very question I've been asking myself?" replied Verinder testily.

"Perhaps we have an explanation here," I suggested; for during Verinder's harangue I had settled myself in the window-seat, and was turning over the pages of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book.

"'It is a grand thing for people who have to work most of their time to have an interest in something or other outside their particular groove. Cricket is a first-rate interest. The game has developed to such a pitch that it is worth taking interest in. Go to Lord's and analyse the crowd. There are all sorts and conditions of men there round the ropes--bricklayers, bank-clerks, soldiers, postmen, and stockbrokers. And in the pavilion are Q.C.'s, artists, archdeacons, and leader-writers. . . .'"

"Oh, come!" Grayson puts in. "Isn't that rather hard on the stockbroker?"

"It is what the book says.

"'Bad men, good men, workers and idlers, all are there, and all at one in their keenness over the game. . . . Anything that puts very many different kinds of people on a common ground must promote sympathy and kindly feelings. The workman does not come away from seeing Middlesex beating Lancashire, or vice versa, with evil in his heart against the upper ten; nor the Mayfair _homme de plaisir_ with a feeling of contempt for the street-bred masses. Both alike are thinking how well Mold bowled, and how cleanly Stoddart despatched Briggs's high-tossed slow ball over the awning. Even that cynical _nil admirari_ lawyer--'"

I pointed a finger at Verinder.

"'Even that cynical _nil admirari_ lawyer caught himself cheering loudly when Sir Timothy planted Hallam's would-be yorker into the press-box. True, he caught himself being enthusiastic, and broke off at once--'"

"When I found it hadn't killed a reporter," Verinder explained. "But I hope Ranjitsinhji has some better arguments than these if he wants to defend gladiatorial cricket. At least he allows that a change has come over the game of late years, and that this change has to be defended?"

"Yes, he admits the change, and explains how it came about. In the beginning we had local club cricket pure and simple--the game of your Village Green, in fact. Out of this grew representative local cricket-- that is, district or county cricket which flourished along with local club cricket. Out of county cricket, which in those days was only local cricket glorified, sprang exhibition or spectacular or gladiatorial cricket, which lived side by side with, but distinct from, the other. Finally, exhibition and county cricket merged and became one. And that is where we are now."

"Does he explain how exhibition and county cricket came, as he puts it, to be merged into one?"

"Yes. The introduction of spectacular cricket (he says) changed the basis of county cricket considerably. For many years the exhibition elevens and the counties played side by side; but gradually the former died out, and the new elements they had introduced into the game were absorbed into county cricket. The process was gradual, but in the end complete. The old county clubs and the new ones that from time to time sprang up added the exhibition side of cricket to the old local basis. The county clubs were no longer merely glorified local clubs, but in addition business concerns. They provided popular amusement and good cricket; in fact, they became what they are now--local in name, and partly local in reality, but also run upon exhibition or spectacular lines."

"A truly British compromise! Good business at the bottom of it, and a touch of local sentiment by way of varnish. For of course the final excuse for calling an eleven after Loamshire (let us say), and for any pride a Loamshire man may take in its doings, is that its members have been bred and trained in Loamshire. But, because any such limitation would sorely affect the gate-money, we import players from Australia or Timbuctoo, stick a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head of each, and confidently expect our public to swallow the fiction and provide the local enthusiasm undismayed."

"My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank Chauvinism, I have done. But I don't believe you are in earnest."

"In a sense, I am not. My argument would exclude Ranjitsinhji himself from all matches but a few unimportant ones. I vote for Greater Britain, as you know: and in any case my best arguments would go down before the sheer delight of watching him at the wicket. Let the territorial fiction stand, by all means. Nay, let us value it as the one relic of genuine county cricket. It is the other side of the business that I quarrel with."

"Be good enough to define the quarrel."

"Why, then, I quarrel with the spectacular side of the New Cricket; which, when you come to look into it, is the gate-money side. How does Ranjitsinhji defend it?"

"Let me see. 'Its justification is the pleasure it provides for large numbers of the public.'"

"Quite so: the bricklayer and the stockbroker by the ropes, and the cynical lawyer in the pavilion! But I prefer to consider the interests of the game."

"'From a purely cricket point of view,' he goes on, 'not much can be said against it.'"

"Let us inquire into that. The New Cricket is a business concern: it caters for the bricklayer, the stockbroker, and the whole crowd of spectators. Its prosperity depends on the attraction it offers them. To attract them it must provide first-class players, and the county that cannot breed first-class players is forced to hire them. This is costly; but again the cash comes out of the spectators' pockets, in subscriptions and gate-money. Now are you going to tell me that those who pay the piper will refrain from calling the tune? Most certainly they will not. More and more frequently in newspaper reports of cricket-matches you find discussions of what is 'due to the public.' If stumps, for some reason or other, are drawn early, it is hinted that the spectators have a grievance; a captain's orders are canvassed and challenged, and so is the choice of his team; a dispute between a club and its servants becomes an affair of the streets, and is taken up by the press, with threats and counter-threats. In short, the interest of the game and the interest of the crowd may not be identical; and whereas a captain used to consider only the interest of the game, he is now obliged to consider both. Does Ranjitsinhji point this out?"

"He seems, at any rate, to admit it; for I find this on page 232, in his chapter upon 'Captaincy':--

"'The duties of a captain vary somewhat according to the kind of match in which his side is engaged, and to the kind of club which has elected him. To begin with, first-class cricket, including representative M.C.C., county and university matches, is quite different from any other--partly because the results are universally regarded as more important, partly _because certain obligations towards the spectators have to be taken into consideration. The last point applies equally to any match which people pay to come to see_. . . . With regard to gate-money matches. The captains of the two sides engaged are, during the match, responsible for everything in connection with it. _They are under an obligation to the public to see that the match is played in such a way as the public has a reasonable right to expect_.'"

"And pray," demanded Verinder, "what are these 'obligations towards the spectators,' and 'reasonable rights' of the public?"

"Well, I suppose the public can reasonably demand punctuality in starting play; a moderate interval for luncheon and between innings; and that stumps shall not be drawn, nor the match abandoned, before the time arranged, unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary."

"And who is to be judge of these circumstances."

"The captain, I suppose."

"In theory, yes; but he has to satisfy the crowd. It is the crowd's 'reasonable right' to be satisfied; and by virtue of it the crowd becomes the final judge. It allows the captain to decide, but will barrack him if displeased with his decision. Moreover, you have given me examples to illustrate this 'reasonable right,' but you have not defined it. Now I want to know precisely how far it extends, and where it ceases. Does Ranjitsinhji provide this definition?"

"No," said I; "I cannot find that he does."

"To be sure he does not; and for the simple reason that these claims on the side of the public are growing year by year. Already no one can say how much they cover, and assuredly no one can say where they are likely to stop. You observe that our author includes even University matches under the head of exhibition cricket, in which obligations towards the spectators have to be taken into account. You remember the scene at Lord's in 1893 when Wells purposely bowled no-balls; and again in 1896 when Shine bowled two no-balls to the boundary and then a ball which went for four byes, the object in each case being to deprive Oxford of the follow-on. This policy was hotly discussed; and luckily the discussion spent itself on the question whether play could be at the same time within the laws and clean contrary to the ethics of cricket. But there was also a deal of talk about what was 'due to the public'; talk which would have been altogether wide of the mark in the old days, when Oxford and Cambridge met to play a mere friendly match and the result concerned them alone."

"And is this," I asked, "the sum of your indictment?"

"Yes, I think that is all. And surely it is enough."

"Then, as I make out, your chief objections to spectacular cricket are two. You hold that it gives vast numbers of people a false idea that they are joining in a sport when in truth they are doing no more than look on. And you contend that as the whole institution resolves itself more and more into a paid exhibition, the spectators will tend more and more to direct the development of the game; whereas cricket in your opinion should be uninfluenced by those who are outside the ropes?"

"That is my case."

"And I think, my dear Verinder, it is a strong one. But there is just one little point which you do not appear to have considered. And I was coming to it just now--or rather Prince Ranjitsinhji was coming to it--when you interrupted us. 'From a purely cricket point of view,' he was saying, 'not much can be said against exhibition cricket.' And in the next sentence he goes on: 'At any rate it promotes skill in the game and keeps up the standard of excellence.'"

"To be sure it does that."

"And cricket is played by the best players to-day with more skill than it was by the best players of twenty or forty years ago?"

"Yes, I believe that; in spite of all we hear about the great Alfred Mynn and other bygone heroes."

"Come then," said I, "tell me, Is Cricket an art?"

"Decidedly it is."

"Then Cricket, like other arts, should aim at perfection?"

"I suppose so."

"And that will be the highest aim of Cricket--its own perfection? And its true lovers should welcome whatever helps to make it perfect?"

"I see what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art, and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop a single perfect bloom."

"True: we must consider it also as a social art. But, my dear fellow, are you not exaggerating the destruction necessary to produce the perfect bloom? You talk of the crowd at Lord's or the Oval as if all these thousands were diverted from honest practice of the game to the ignoble occupation of looking on; whereas two out of three of them, were this spectacle not provided, would far more likely be attending a horse-race, or betting in clubs and public-houses. The bricklayer, the stockbroker, the archdeacon, by going to see Lockwood bowl, depopulate no village green. You judge these persons by yourself, and tell yourself reproachfully that but for this attraction _you_, John Verinder, would be creditably perspiring at a practice-net in Tooting or Dulwich; whereas, the truth is--"

"Why are you hesitating?"

"Because it is not a very pleasant thing to say. But the truth is, your heart and your conscience in this matter of athletics are a little younger than your body."

"You mean that I am getting on for middle age."

"I mean that, though you talk of it, you will never subscribe to that suburban club. You will marry; you will be made a judge: you will attend cricket matches, and watch from the pavilion while your son takes block for his first score against the M.C.C.

"And when with envy Time transported,
Shall think to rob us of our joys,
I, with my girls (if I ever have any), will sit on the top of a drag (if I ever acquire one) and teach them at what to applaud,
While you go a-batting with your boys."

Verinder pulled a wry face, and the Boy smacked him on the back and exhorted him to "buck up."

"And the round world will go on as before, and the sun will patrol Her Majesty's dominions, and still where the Union Jack floats he will pass the wickets pitched and white-flannelled Britons playing for all they are worth, while men of subject races keep the score-sheet. And still when he arrives at this island he will look down on green closes and approve what we all allow to be one of the most absolutely gracious sights on earth-- the ordered and moving regiments of schoolboys at cricket. Grayson, reach round to that shelf against which your chair is tilted; take down poor Lefroy's poems, and read us that sonnet of his, 'The Bowler.'"

Grayson found the book and the place, and read:--

"Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in!
The tired arms lie with every sinew slack
On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back,
And elbows apt to make the leather spin
Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,--
In knavish hands a most unkindly knack;
But no guile shelters under the boy's black
Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin.
Two minutes only! Conscious of a name,
The new man plants his weapon with profound
Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare.
Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game:
The flung ball takes one maddening, tortuous bound,
And the mid-stump three somersaults in air!"

"Topping!" the Boy ejaculated. "Who wrote it?"

"His name was Lefroy. He died young. He left Oxford a few years before we went up. And I think," continued Verinder, musing, "that I, who detest making acquaintances, would give at this moment a considerable sum to have known him. Well," he continued, turning to me and puffing at his pipe, "so you warn Grayson and me that we must prepare to relinquish these and all the other delights sung by Lefroy and Norman Gale and that other poet--anonymous, but you know the man--in his incomparable parody of Whitman: 'the perfect feel of a fourer'--

"'The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence resulting runs, passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten.

"'Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing all, bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration.'

"--To all this we must say good-bye. And what do you offer us in exchange?"

"Merely the old consolation that life is short, art is long; that while you grow old, cricket in other hands will be working out its perfection, and your son, when you have one, will start with higher ideals than you ever dreamed of."

"And this perfection--will it ever be attained?"

"I dare say never. For perhaps we may say after Plato, and without irreverence, that the pattern of perfect cricket is laid up somewhere in the skies, and out of man's reach. But between it and ordinary cricket we may set up a copy of perfection, as close as man can make it, and, by little and little, closer every year. This copy will be preserved, and cared for, and advanced, by those professional cricketers against whom the unthinking have so much to say; by these and by the few amateurs who, as time goes on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the search after perfection is no light one, and will admit of no half-hearted service. I say nothing here of material rewards, beyond reminding you that your professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison with an inferior singer of the music-halls, although he gives twice as much pleasure as your _lion comique_, and of a more innocent kind. But he does more than this. He feeds and guards the flame of art; and when his joints are stiff and his vogue is past, he goes down as groundman and instructor to a public school, and imparts to a young generation what knowledge he can of the high mysteries whose servant he has been: quite like the philosopher in the _Republic_--"

"Steady on!" interposed Grayson. "How on earth will the Boy stand up to Briggs' bowling if you put these notions in his head? He'll be awe-struck, and begin to fidget with his right foot."

"Oh, fire ahead!" said that cheerful youth. He had possessed himself of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker chair.--"You're only rotting, I know. And you've passed over the most important sentence in the whole book. Listen to this: 'There are very few newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket column first when the morning journal comes; who do not buy a halfpenny evening paper to find out how many runs W.G. or Bobby Abel has made.' That's the long and short of the matter. Verinder, which do you read first in your morning paper-- the Foreign Intelligence or the Cricket News?"

THE SECOND DIALOGUE. 1905.

A few days ago--to be precise, on Saturday the 24th of this month--my friend Verinder reminded me of the long-past conversation. We had met by appointment at Paddington to travel down to Windsor for the second day of the Eton and Winchester match, taking with us (or rather, being taken by) a youngster whom we call The Infant. The Infant, who talks little save in the bosom of his family, and even so preserves beneath his talk that fine reticence of judgment which most adorns the age of fifteen, not unfrequently surprises me by his experiments in the art of living. On this occasion, while I was engaged in the booking-office and Verinder in scanning the shelves of Messrs. Smith's bookstall, he had found our train, chosen our compartment, and laid out twopence in four halfpenny papers, which he spread on the cushions by way of reserving our seats.

"But why four," I asked, "seeing there are but three of us?"

"It will give us more room," he answered simply.

He had hoped, I doubt not, by this devise to retain the whole compartment; but the hope was soon and abruptly frustrated by a tall, well-dressed and pompous man who came striding down the platform while we idled by the door, and thrusting past us almost before we could give way, entered the compartment, dropped into a corner seat, tossed his copy of _The Times_ on to the seat opposite, took off his top-hat, examined it, replaced it when satisfied of its shine, drew out a spare handkerchief, opened it, flicked a few specks of dust from his patent-leather boots, looked up while reaching across for _The Times_, recognised me with a nod and a "Good morning!" and buried himself in his paper.

I on my part, almost before glancing at his face, had recognised him by his manner for a personage next to whom it has been my lot to sit at one or two public banquets. I will call him Sir John Crang. He is a K.C.M.G., a Colonial by birth and breeding, a Member of Parliament, and a person of the sort we treat in these days with consideration. Since the second year of Jubilee (in which he was knighted) he and his kind have found themselves at ease in Sion, and of his kind he has been perhaps the most fortunate. In his public speeches he alludes to himself humorously as a hustler. He has married a wealthy lady, in every other respect too good for him, entertains largely at dinners which should be private but are reported in the press, and advocates conscription for the youth of Great Britain. Upon conscription for his native colony, as upon any other of its duties towards Imperial defence, if you question him, you will find him sonorously evasive.

The Infant, accustomed to surprise at the extent of my acquaintance, gazed at him politely for a moment as we took our seats and the train moved out of the station. I noted a veiled disapproval in his eye as he picked up a newspaper, and at that moment Verinder, who had picked up another, emitted a noise not unlike the snort of the engine as it gathered speed. I glanced at him in some apprehension. Verinder's bearing toward strangers is apt to be brutal, and by an instinct acquired as his companion on old reading-parties I was prepared to be apologetic.

His ill-humour, however, had nothing to do with Sir John Crang. He had laid the newspaper across his knee, and was pointing to it with a scornful forefinger.

"Look here," he said. "Do you remember a talk we had some years ago--you and I and Grayson? It started in D--'s shop one afternoon after a Kent and Middlesex match. You ought to remember, for I picked up the _Pall Mall Magazine_ a month later and found you had made copy out of it."

"To be sure," said I. "We discussed cricket, and a number of reputations then well known, about which the public troubles itself no longer. Let us try their names upon The Infant here, and discover with how many of them he is acquainted."

"We discussed," said Verinder, "the vulgarisation of cricket. You made me say some hard things about it, but be hanged to me if anything I prophesied then came near to _this_! Listen--

"'I suppose I may say that, after some luck at starting, I played a pretty good innings: but a total of 240 is poor enough for first knock on such a wicket as Hove, and, as things stand, the omens are against us. However, as I write this wire the clouds are gathering, and there's no denying that a downfall during the night may help our chances.'"

"What on earth are you reading?" I asked.

"Stay a moment. Here's another--

"'With Jones's wicket down, the opposition declared, somewhat to the annoyance of the crowd: and indeed, with Robinson set and playing the prettiest strokes all around the wicket, I must admit that they voiced a natural disappointment. They had paid their money, and, after the long period of stonewalling which preceded the tea interval, a crowded hour of glorious life would have been exhilarating, and perhaps was no more than their due. Dickson, however, took his barracking good-humouredly. Towards the end Jones had twice appealed against the light.'"

"I suppose," said I, "that is how cricket strikes the Yellow Press. Who are the reporters?"

"The reporters are the captains of two county teams--two first-class county teams; and they are writing of a match actually in progress at this moment. Observe A.'s fine sense of loyalty to a captain's duty in his published opinion that his side is in a bad way. Remark his chivalrous hope for a sodden wicket to-morrow."

"It is pretty dirty," I agreed.

Verinder snorted. "I once tried to kill a man at mid-on for wearing a pink shirt. But these fellows! They ought to wear yellow flannels."

"What, by the way, is the tea interval?" I asked.

"It is an interval," answered Verinder seriously, "in which the opposing captains adjourn to the post office and send telegrams about themselves and one another."

"Excuse me," put in Sir John Crang, looking up from his _Times_ and addressing me, "but I quite agree with what you and your friend are saying. Interest in the Australian tour, for instance, I can understand; it promotes good feeling, and anything that draws closer the bonds of interest between ourselves and the colonies is an imperial asset."

"Good Lord!" murmured Verinder.

Sir John fortunately did not hear him. "But I agree with you," he continued, "in condemning this popular craze for cricket _per se_, which is after all but a game with a ball and some sticks. I will not go the length of our imperial poet and dub its votaries 'flannelled fools.' That was poetical license, eh? though pardonable under the circumstances. But, as he has said elsewhere, 'How little they know of England who only England know.'" (At this point I reached out a foot and trod hard on Verinder's toe.) "And to the broader outlook--I speak as a pretty wide traveller--this insular absorption in a mere game is bewildering."

"Infant!" said Verinder suddenly, still under repression of my foot, "What are you reading?"

The Infant looked up sweetly, withdrawing himself from his paper, however, by an effort.

"There's a Johnny here who tells you how Bosanquet bowls with what he calls his 'over-spin.' He has a whole column about it with figures, just like Euclid; and the funny thing is, Bosanquet writes just after to say that the Johnny knows nothing about it."

"Abandoned child," commanded Verinder, "pass me the paper. You are within measurable distance of studying cricket for its own sake, and will come to a bad end."

Within twenty seconds he and The Infant were intently studying the diagrams, which Verinder demonstrated to be absurd, while Sir John, a little huffed by his manner, favoured me with a vision of England as she should be, with her ploughshares beaten into Morris Tubes.

In the midst of this discourse Verinder looked up.

"Let us not despair of cricket," says he. "She has her victories, but as yet no prizes to be presented with public speeches."

"Curious fellow that friend of yours," said Sir John, as he took leave of me on Windsor platform. "Yes, yes, I saw how you humoured him: but why should he object to a man's playing cricket in a pink shirt?"

He went on his way toward the Castle, while we turned our faces for Agar's Plough and the best game in the world. _

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