Sporting Aspects
A Cambridge Childhood
By BERNARD DARWIN IHAVE deliberately stolen the second title of my cousin Gwen Raverat's enchanting book, Period Piece, which everyone has been reading. Though I am by a good many years her elder we had the same sort of childhood in the same university surroundings and with the same uncles and aunts. And yet, as I have been reflecting, how different ! Mine was largely spent in worshipping and secretly impersonating eminent Blues and I doubt if she had ever heard of Fenner's. To have lived at Cambridge as a small boy is to have memories of the giants far older than one is entitled to for one's years, compared with which undergraduate memories are quite modern. Lord Hawke as captain of the Eleven (I can still see with reverent eyes notices in the shop windows, signed M. B. Hawke); Cobbold and A. M. Walters playing on Parker's Piece; F. I. Pitman stroking the boat to victory after being over two lengths behind at Barnes Bridge; H. C. L. Tindall (whom I was afterwards to know so well as the beloved Parson Tindall at Rye) running/at Fenner's—these are names going a long way back—to the middle 'eighties—and to recall them rather befits an octogenarian.
I suppose I was a confirmed dry-bob even then, since the river plays but little part in my memories. It was certainly pleasant to walk down the tow-path with my father, watching the boats and their galloping coaches. It was pleasant also to ,go to the May Races, but that was rather as a picnic or a lark with the scramble to get away as soon as the last boat had tassed, and the drama of the lock on Midsummer Common. It was in no sense a solemnity calling for serious patriotic fervour. I have no recollection of hating Jesus and Trinity Hall because they refused to be bumped by my father's First -- Trinity, though there is no fiercer and more unashamed partisan than I. Yet there must have been a short time when I abandoned these narrow views. In 1888 and 1889 Cambridge had two famous boats; the same eight oarsmen, though with a different cox, rowed each year and somebody had christened them "The Lightning Crew." My mature judgment rejects this as rather shoddy, but I fear the embryo sporting journalist in- me then deemed it romantic. In an old album, full of cherished aunts and whiskered uncles, ' is a photograph of that crew which I must have bought in Messrs. Shearns' shop with my own money—nine sleek heads each enclosed in its Own little circlet. I wonder what I should have thought, had I known that in the distant future I should be cross-examined, very gently, by No. 7 in that illustrious boat. Would the honour or the terror have predominated ?
My first cricket match at Fenner's was the University v. A. J. Webbe's eleven. I have looked up the scores in Mr. W. J. Ford's book on Cambridge Cricket, but it was unnecessary. My hero for a long time afterwards (I had neVer heard of him before) was J. A. Turner, who made 109 not out for the University. He used to play for Leicestershire and once or twice, I think, for the Gentlemen, and was a good cricketer. It was a little unkind of Mr. Fold to rub it in that the 109 was exactly half his season's total. There was a tragedy that a little damped my happiness. There was playing for Cambridge a football hero, Tinsley Lindley, a forward second only to Cobbold. The Cambridge Association side in those days bristled with internationals and they murdered Oxford by five goals to nothing. Lindley had in addition the rather sinister charm of playing for Notts Forest, even as another great one, Spilsbury, played for Derby County, and the Midlands and North must always sound dark and terrible in Southern ears. I prayed earnestly for him but he was bowled first ball. He seemed to have stopped it and then it rolled inexorably on to his wicket. I did not positively weep as I had done when an odious Richmond forward dropped, a goal in the last minute to beat the University, but it was a blow.' • Another fell the next summer when C. L. Thornton brought the team. Again I was taken and this time saw a rout, Cambridge all out to Chatterton and Crossland for 84. Crossland was very fast; the newspapers said his action was doubtful; I said he shied and cheated. He will always be for me the fastest bowler I ever saw, for the first impression is the deepest. Similarly an obscure clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Jones, will always seem the longest driver I ever saw. The first time I ever went to the Cambridge golf course on Coldham Common Mr. Jones hit a ball which vanished into the fog— I have no reason to believe he could play golf at all, but his ball never came to earth and may be flying still. At any rate Crossland did not get out the godlike Turner. He was stumped off Chatterton and no doubt the umpire cheated. Next day Cambridge had a glorious resurrection; they hit Crossland all over the field and Turner made 174, but I was not there. Perhaps there were lessons; at any rate my eyes did not behold the glory. I did see the Australians, but Spofforth, the Demon, did not play and it was rather dull. In the evening I saw some of them escorted down the river to the May Races. They were ordinary beings in ordinary clothes with walking sticks, a rather disillusioning spectacle.
Of the University sports, likewise at Fenner's, I remember clearly only another tragedy, the defeat of Tindall in the hundred. He was beaten by one Fardell and it was the surest " draw " in after years to ask him about it. For one thing Fardell, otherwise a blameless Canon in the Church of England, had scandalously beaten the pistol and for another the Parson had had an unchristian revenge on him against Oxford. It was always Tindall that I impersonated in the lonely sprints of my hidden life, but very often I was still more secretly some hero of my own invention whose name I still remember but would die rather than reveal. I was a solitary little boy and pretending was my great resource. I know that children play games of pretending together but I believe the absolute of poignancy is to be found in pretending all by oneself. The lonely player can strut and plume himself under no eyes but his Maker's with an air susceptible to the lightest breath of mockery. My theatre was my Grandmother's lawn with high jumping poles and some flights of hurdles and between them the football field with real Rugby posts made by a kind gardener. I played soccer at my day school but the unknown rugger was the more romantic. "I have been Tom Jones," said David Copperfield, "for a week together." So have I been M. M. Duncan of Fettes and Clare, of course in Fettesian- Lorettonian red stockings, dodging and corkscrewing his way through adversaries who naturally could not lay a hand on him till he grounded the ball between the posts and then kicked the ensuing goal. E. B. Brutton, too, would sometimes score after a terrific race for the corner flag under the branches of the plane tree, but Duncan was my favourite part and some fifty years later I met him and had the pleasure of telling him so.
At this point somebody may ask about golf. Did that form part of the drama ? I think not. No doubt to enact Willie Fernie, my earliest idol, was tempting, but it would have been in old Mr. George Glennie's words, "No gowf at a', jist monkey's tricks." The holes were there on the lawn, but • they must be played in my own proper person. I had no doubt that Longfellow meant to write "Golf is real; golf is earnest" and that the misprint*" life " somehow crept in. There were once two small boys who played at soldiers and devised a fraudulent measuring-tape whereby the officer should be six feet high and the private five feet nine inches. Such childish pretences might do for any other game but not for golf. That was seiious.
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