A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain (35 page)

Victorian schools are credited with the invention of team games, partly as a means of channelling aggression and using up surplus energy, and it is true that in the decades before Victoria there were a number of noisy rebellions against authority in public schools, resulting in damage and expulsions. Bored young men tended to create trouble with neighbouring farmers by trespassing, poaching and vandalism, and there were often fights with local roughs. Organized games not only lessened these problems but trained participants in fitness, courage, teamwork, fairness and sacrifice. After the cult of games had become established, one of the most trite misquotations of the era was trotted out to justify it: the Duke of Wellington was reputed to have said that the Battle of Waterloo had been ‘won on the playing-fields of Eton’, though this was a twisting of his words. Games did indeed help to develop many positive qualities, but they entered the world of the school and university (for old boys took the games to Oxford
and Cambridge) gradually and in spite, rather than because, of official endorsement.

Thomas Arnold, the legendary Rugby headmaster whose tenure (1828–42) only just lasted into the Victorian era, has been credited with creating the entire public-school ethos. The school he organized became a model for others, his influence spread by several pupils who themselves became headmasters elsewhere. Games were part of this legacy, though in fact Arnold took almost no interest in them (at least he allowed them to be played openly against other schools, which represented progress!). In fact, the fixation with games had outgrown any opposition by the middle decades of the century.

The consolidation of games had derived, like so much else in Britain during the first half of the century, from improvements in transport. The creation of better roads and the building of railways meant that young men could travel to distant schools more easily. The result was an increase in the number of boarders at the great schools. It also meant that teams could much more easily visit each other’s schools – or some other, mutually convenient venue – to play fixtures. The growing wealth of the middle class was meanwhile bringing about the opening of new schools: Marlborough, Radley, Clifton, Wellington, Lancing and Cheltenham, as well as a host of smaller establishments, belong to the middle decades of the century. These quickly developed rivalries both with each other and with their more ancient counterparts. There was suddenly a whole network of opponents, and this helped drive the cult of games that had become a frenzy by the end of the century. The availability of competition also meant an increasing standardization of rules.

Cricket progressed from a school and village game to a county and national sport, with standards of play becoming increasingly high. Bats lost their curved shape and became straight and flat. Wickets were standardized as three – rather than two – upright sticks with bails on top. Boundaries were introduced, and pitches gradually became smoother, which enabled play to become more sophisticated. One development came not from the deliberations of some committee but from the playing of young people in a garden. The older sister of a boy was bowling at him, but owing to the shape of her wide crinoline skirt she was unable to throw the ball underarm, as was universal practice. She therefore bowled it overarm, with her arm straight. This doubtless seemed absurd at first glance, but it proved a much more effective means of delivering the ball. It gave the bowler much greater speed and enabled the ball to be placed with surprising accuracy. It also meant that a fast-moving ball would bounce on the crease, making it far more difficult, and more challenging, to hit. This method was introduced into matches in 1864, and has been used ever since.

County cricket began with irregular, occasional fixtures, but by the end of the reign there were permanent sides with their own – often hallowed – grounds. National teams toured the country and international competition was also well established by the middle years of the reign, for an English side had first gone to Australia in 1861, and thereafter there were regular exchanges. During one of their return visits, in 1877, the Australian team defeated their opponents so decisively that the British press commented that English cricket was dead and that the Australians had taken its ashes home with them. This jibe gave its name to one of the world’s most eccentric sporting trophies – a tiny urn containing the remains
of a burnt wooden bail – for which the two countries compete every year. It continues to be one of the great sporting fixtures. The international element in this and other games gave an added glamour and an impetus to public enthusiasm. Crowds at matches became bigger as improved public transport and special trains made it possible for greater numbers to attend, and the facilities – grandstands and permanent clubhouses or pavilions – improved.

As games became more sophisticated, those who played them well became increasingly revered. Though there had been ‘sports personalities’ in the past (one thinks of Regency prizefighters such as Daniel Mendoza), the new mass media were able to make household names out of the best of them. The most outstanding – and perhaps the greatest British sportsman of all time, for that matter – was W. G. Grace (1848–1915). A Gloucestershire country doctor, his sturdy build – he was as barrel-chested as a blacksmith – and thick beard became his trademarks. He came from a cricketing family (he and two brothers played in the England side against Australia in 1880). At the age of seventeen, playing for England against Surrey in 1866, he scored 224 runs. Thirty years later he made 257 against Kent. In the course of a lengthy career he scored 54,896 runs as well as taking 2,878 wickets. That he was a kindly and convivial man greatly endeared him to the public, who poured into the grounds to see him play. He was perhaps the first of what has been a numerous breed since his time – the national sporting celebrity.

The first inter-school football match was played between Charterhouse and Westminster in 1863, but in the same year took place a much more important event – indeed, one of the
most significant moments in British sporting history. The Football Association was formed by a gathering at the Freemasons Tavern in London, on 26 October, of old boys from different public schools, who sought to settle differences in rules and procedures so that they could play matches against each other. (The word ‘soccer’ derived from ‘Association’.) This not only cleared the way for such fixtures but enabled national sides to play against other countries. The Football Association (FA) Cup was first competed for in 1871, and the first international match took place the following year. Two years after that, Oxford and Cambridge played the first University Match.

Football had, curiously, taken root at both ends of the social scale. It continued to be played with enthusiasm by the top-drawer public schoolboys who had organized it, yet it was taken up with equal enthusiasm by mill hands, railwaymen and miners in the north and Midlands. In 1879 Darwin, a team of mill workers, competed for the FA Cup, and in 1883 a side of Old Etonians were beaten at the Oval by Blackburn.

The first football club to have a constitution and a set of rules was established at Sheffield in 1860. Six years later another club that has represented the city ever since – Sheffield Wednesday – was started. The oldest ‘League club’ (for it was to join the Football League when that was founded) in England or indeed the world was Notts County, which was raised in 1866. It was in the same period of roughly a decade and a half that many of the major teams – the household names of today – came into being: Glasgow Rangers (1872), Aston Villa (1874), Hibernian (1875), Everton (1878), Sunderland (1879), Tottenham Hotspur (1882), Manchester United (1885), Arsenal (1886), Glasgow Celtic (1887), Liverpool (1892) and Newcastle United – an amalgamation of two earlier clubs – in 1893. Many had origins that were humble but
intriguing: Manchester United was formed by employees of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and was originally called Newton Heath. Sunderland was originally ‘the Sunderland and District Teachers’ Association Football Club’ – something of a mouthful for those cheering its efforts. Everton began life as the team of the St Domingo’s Sunday School, while Aston Villa was associated with a local Wesleyan chapel. Stoke City, a club dating from as early as 1863, was founded by old boys of Charterhouse.

Though these sides usually began as a group of enthusiastic amateurs, they quickly developed a more serious outlook, for in the eighties and nineties an increasing number of clubs became fully professional: Everton was entirely so by 1885, Arsenal by 1891 and Tottenham by 1895. It was a notion unheard of before that time, but one with which we are familiar today. The Football League, which allowed for organized competition between teams that could be either amateur or professional or a combination of the two, was formed for the 1888–9 season.

Rugby, like soccer, had for some time attracted devotees among the wider public. Players were amateurs, but this situation began to alter in the nineties, when a number of working-class players – and clubs – in the north-west of England wished to turn professional. They were not allowed to do so within the terms of the game’s governing body, the Rugby Union. As a result they set up in 1895 their own equivalent, the Northern Union (later the Rugby League), in which players were initially allowed to receive expenses for participating in matches, and then – three years later – to be paid for their services (in fact it had been common for some time to pay then surreptitiously), provided they had some other paid occupation. Not until the following century would the full-time professional player become part of the sporting
world, but the basis of this system was established in the Victorian era. The Rugby League meanwhile drifted farther from its parent sport by developing a number of different rules – most notably the playing of matches between teams of thirteen, rather than fifteen, players. The two forms of the game have remained separate, and separately popular, ever since. Though it cannot be established when professional sportsmen began to appear – for wrestlers and boxers had been paid since time immemorial – this aspect of modern games began with the Victorians, the creators of spectator sport as we understand it.

The fact that a few schools (Eton and Westminster, most obviously) were situated by rivers meant that rowing gradually became a major sport at public schools, and because the universities too were on rivers it was natural that enthusiasm should spread there. The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race was first staged in 1829, and inter-collegiate competition also became highly organized. The Regatta held annually from 1839 at Henley became – and long remained – a patrician affair, for there was no aquatic equivalent of Rugby League (it was not until well into the twentieth century that the Thames Tradesmen were permitted to compete) and in any case rowing did not gain any noticeable following outside the confines of muscular Christianity. Henley Regatta was not an entirely British affair, however. Rowing had spread to the older American colleges, which consciously modelled much of their gentlemanly ethos on the English universities. Both Harvard and Yale sent crews to take part in the Regatta. In the Victorian world the great sporting clashes between ancient seats of learning attracted much more widespread interest than
they do today, and among the many millions who had no connection with these places there would often be a surprising degree of partisan feeling. The newspapers gave extensive coverage to the Eton–Harrow cricket match, first recorded in 1805, so that by the middle of the reign it seemed like a long-established tradition. It was a two-day contest, and was a recognized part of the Season. It could be assumed that much of the Government and aristocracy, as well as the leadership of the Church, the armed forces and industry, would be at Lord’s to see it. The Boat Race was less socially exclusive but attracted greater interest. On the day it took place, the light- and dark-blue ribbons of the rival crews could be seen all over London, even on the hats and coats of workmen and flower-sellers. ‘Boat Race night’ remained a major event at least until the Second World War, with supporters of both sides creating good-natured mayhem in the streets.

Some games owed nothing to the influence of schools. Golf became popular because it was gentle and unstrenuous but very skilful. This meant that it could be played well by people who lacked the size or the fitness level necessary for other sporting activities. It also required very little equipment, for a set of clubs could often be rented, and it was sociable – even a hard-fought match could have much of the feeling of an agreeable outdoor stroll with one’s friends (indeed critics of golf liked to describe it as ‘a good walk spoiled’). Despite its relative simplicity, it did not appeal to the British working class, developing instead an image as the epitome of suburban respectability. When women began to take part in games, golf was an obvious choice, for long skirts did not hamper an activity that relied on upper-body strength and hand-and-eye
coordination. Women’s golf clubs had begun to appear by the end of the reign; the St Rule’s Ladies’ Golf Club was founded at St Andrews in 1898.

The game was largely confined to Scotland until about the eighties, though the first English club, the Royal North Devon, had been established in 1864. St Andrews, on the east coast of Scotland, had a history of golf dating back to the Middle Ages, and was thus considered the Mecca of the game. It was here in 1857 that the first great modern golf tournament took place. This had, in less than two decades, evolved into the Open Championship (so-called because any player, amateur or professional, could take part) that has been held at different clubs throughout Britain ever since. The first entirely amateur championship was held at Hoylake in Cheshire in 1885. The fact that ‘professionals’ existed at all in this game says something about the speed with which it had gained popularity. The skills of those who could play well and teach others were considered worthy of respect and remuneration. Of these, the most legendary golfer of all time was the St Andrean Tom Morris (1821–1908), four times winner of the Open Championship.