The sporting life and other trifles

Front matter

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Contents

PAGB

I. THE GRAND NATIONAL : THE DAY BEFORE

AND THE LIVERPOOL CUP . . 11

II Backing The Winner

IT was one of those rainy days on which Liverpool is of a gloomy, nondescript colour — the colour of wet flagstones that shine just eiiough to show the blurred reflections of the passers-by.

Even so, lines of trams were waiting long before noon to take overcoated holiday-makers out to see the Grand National, and the overcoated holiday-makers were rushing to pack them.

" Just the sort of day," said one of them, " that it was when Troy town won."

His friend, a young man of thirty, his features sharp with thoughts about money, denied it.

"It was a hundred times worse," he declared, " the day Troy town won. I shan't forgit it. I had to lay in bed for six months afterwards."

This will give you some idea of the strength of character race-going develops in the young. It was a pneumonia day, a pleurisy day, at the very least a chill- on- the-liver day. Yet even those who had had bitter experience of going to race-meetings on such a day in the past were exposing themselves to the i8 elements as freely as if they had been eonscribed for the purpose.

I found an advertisement in one of the sporting papers that may help to explain their hardihood. "Why work?" ran a tipster's appeal. "By availing yourself of our information you can live in ease and comfort without."

As an alternative to work, racing has undoubted advantages. It is more exhausting than work, but it is not so deadlily monotonous. Even one's salary grows monotonous. The racing man's income is at least never the same for two days running.

On the roadside near the race-course all manner of sellers of pigs' feet, tripe, ginger ale, and oranges were ranged in the rain. Just outside the entrance to the course was a little square filled with groups of men and women listening to tipsters.

Chief of the tipsters was " Old Pizzey " — an aged man in a faded silk hat with rings on his fingers and with, I have no doubt, bells on his toes. He had a banner behind him which declared that he was the " Daddy " of racing knowledge. I understand that, as there was more than one Homer, so there is more than one Pizzey, and that Old Pizzey must not be confused with Mr Mark Pizzey of Ascot.

"Everybody knows Old Pizzey," he assured us. " You can't open a paper, no matter what it is, without seeing my name in it. I'm ninety years old — ninety. Half of you people that are standing round must have seen me here for the last seventy years."

" Good old Pizzey I " shrieked his young assistant, rushing into the middle of the ring of spectators. " Listen ! " he screamed, and he really had the most appalling voice, and was red in the face with straining it. " Old Pizzey knows what he's talking about. Old Pizzey has a reputation. Open any paper — in — the — universe, and you'll find Old Pizzey 's name in it.

" Old Pizzey, he has tipped more winners than Rothschild or Solly Joel ever owned. He's got a sure thing to-day; 'e 'as the surest thing in the 'istory of the world. There are tipsters round 'ere," he said, pointing towards rival rings, " dressed up as jockeys. Old Pizzey don't need to dress up as a jockey. But he's as much a jockey as they are.

" There are black men," he screamed in greater frenzy still, pointing towards a negro rival, " selling tips to-day — savages from South America and the African jungles. Listen ! Old Pizzey's different."

" I'm the ' daddy ' of Turf knowledge," Old Pizzey agreed, nodding his venerable Henry-Irving head. " A man once asked me," he murmured, " why I didn't dress up as a jockey. ' Go hon,' I says to him. ' Wouldn't I look a bloomin' fool ? ' "

" Listen ! " his assistant broke out again, his eyes starting out of his head, with evangelistic fervour. " The papers tell you Southampton's going to win to-day. It has about as much chance of winning as " — he looked round for a symbol of disgusting incompetence — " as that tree."

Just then my attention was distracted by a weird and unearthly yell, and, turning round, I saw a tall Negro in a three-cornered hat made out of a newspaper striding up and down in the crowd, out-topping them all.

He uttered what may well have been a jungle war-chant as he walked. He was wearing a scarlet jacket with gold braid, and over this he wore a long overcoat with a fur collar.

Having alarmed us into gazing at him, he began to denounce the newspapers for their ignorance of horses. He laughed at those who had tipped Shaun Spadah ; he jeered at those who had tipped Southampton ; he sneered at almost every horse that anybody else had fancied.

The Negro himself apparently knew more about horses than any sporting journalist. As far as I could gather, he knew at least as much as Old Pizzey. They must both be very rich men, knowing so much as they do about horses.

I passed from tipster to tipster without buying a tip even from the man who looked like a Coalition Member of Parliament, and introduced us to a little chap who, he said, was the brother of Steve Donoghue.

He seemed to know at least as much about horses as either Old Pizzey or the Negro. He, too, I suspect, has a tidy sum put away at the bank.

Inside the turnstiles of the race-course it was dull enough after the animated addresses and other noises of the tipsters. The rain beat a tattoo on one's hat. Early comers crept into the bars and refreshment tents out of the cold, wet wind. The bookmakers stood in the ring as in a desert, dismal and silent most of them, under umbrellas. A bookmaker's umbrella, it should be said, is something worth calling an umbrella. It is more like the roof of a house than like the umbrellas Christians carry. It is the sort of umbrella you could have a picnic under, but to-day it was no picnic.

Slowly the bookies came to life and began shouting the odds — " Six to one the field," " Seven to one the field," " Eight to one bar one," " Ten to one bar two."

Their cries were still but a mouse's squeak compared to the tumult that would be audible in an hour or so.

They were, however, making enough noise to tempt me to put a small sum of money on a horse called Music Hall. I confess, not knowing very much about horses, I had never heard of Music Hall until forty-eight hours before. I saw in a little book I bought in a railway station, however — it was called by some attractive title, like Racing Up-to- Date — that he had once won a four-mile race, which was a race of about the same length as the Grand National. Strangely enough, the column in which this victory was recorded bore what I consider to be the luckiest of all lucky numbers. I also had a third reason, but I will not tell it, as I do not wish to appear superstitious. It is enough to say that I spotted the winner as cleverly as if I had been the Negro or Old Pizzey.

I then climbed into a stand and looked out over the misty course, with its pear-shaped enclosure in the centre, packed with buses, charabancs, motors, bookies, and more or less drowned human beings.

Then a doubt assailed me. I went down into the ring again and backed Drifter.

After I had had some lunch the thought insinuated itself into my mind : " Suppose an outsider should win?" I heard a bookmaker shouting; "Thirty-three to one General Saxham." I was at his ear in two minutes.

" How much General Saxham ? "

"Twenty-five to one," he said.

" You said thirty- three," I reproached him.

" Well, then, thirty- three," he said cheerfully, and after that I felt that I had done enough. . . .

The Grand National is the most beautiful of all races. It is almost worth standing for hours in the rain amid dense terraces of human beings on the concrete roof of the stand to see so beautiful a race.

To see the horses coming out one by one, each ridden by a jockey of the full stature of an ordinary man, and parading before the stands, was to see a prettier spectacle than met the eyes of Noah himself as he stood and watched the animals passing two by two, each after its kind, into the Ark. 23

Even in the leaden air, their caps, sleeves, and jackets were as rich in colours as a box of paints. It would be feeble to compare them to a rainbow. If you could imagine something with ten times as many colours as a rainbow, cut into little bits of all shapes and sizes, and then given out in odds and ends to be sewn together again into jackets and caps, according to the fantastic tastes of revellers, you will begin to have some small inkling of what the procession of the thirty-three horses that came on parade for the Grand National looked like.

After a gallop to breathe themselves, the horses gradually collected in the neighbourhood of the starting-post. They moved restlessly, a flower-bed of colours, nodding and dancing in the breeze.

Suddenly they bounded forward in a stream. A man with a white flag came and waved them back again.

They got ready again. They streamed out like things thrown in a carnival. A man with a white flag came out once more and waved them energetically back.

Then came the third start, and they were off — off through the white iron gates, and leaping over the first fence, a multitude of tiny waves.

" Here comes the first disaster," cried someone. Other people cried : " No, they're all over."

"No; there's one down!" "No; two!" "No; three. There are three down ! "

Then they passed into the distance and the mist. 24

What happened at the Canal Jump and the other perilous jumps I could not tell.

By the time the horses came into sight again the thirty- three starters had dwindled to five.

People said: " Drifter's well ahead," and, indeed, as the horses poured past us again he swept over gorse and water with a grim determination that belied his name.

By some trick of the eye I did not see Music Hall. The crimson jacket on Drifter filled my eyes, but a man near me said : " Music Hall has it ! " — and I suddenly knew that I wanted him to win.

Off into the mist again they went, while unseated jockeys could be seen waddling back home along the grass.

Once more the horses were lost to sight on their second round of the course. By the time they came into view again, mere shadows a mile away, the five seemed to have dwindled to two. It was clear that the race had become a duel. Music Hall and Drifter appeared to be winning and losing alternately, and when they sprang over the last jump they were almost neck to neck. Even when the last jump was over, and they were flying along the level green, an ignoramus such as I am could not have been sure which was going to win.

But thousands of men and women were sure. They kept yelling "Music Hall! Music Hall!" — waving race-cards and hats at him to come on.

And Music Hall came on. Under the white 25 crescents in the mauve jersey of his rider he swung past the winning post amid the acclamation due to a conqueror — a winner who has made thousands of people his fellow- winners.

Then the rain fell. It didn't pelt ; it simply fell.

After a short conversation with a bookmaker I took my way homeward, quietly pringling with pleasure. I don't think it was the money, though I am fond of money ; it was simply honest pride. I felt extraordinarily wise — like Aristotle, or Plato, or Old Pizzey.

Ill

THE LOVE OF MONEY

THE love of money is the root of all evil. It makes men fat. It makes men thin. It makes them eat too much. It makes them eat too little. It makes them drink too much. It makes them teetotallers. It makes them marry. It makes them refrain from marrying. It makes them make war. It makes them make peace. It makes them reckless. It makes them mean. It makes them rich. It makes them poor. It makes them politicians. It makes them indifferent to politics. It makes them patriots. It makes them internationalists. It makes them judges. It makes them thieves. It makes them Harley Street specialists. It makes them nervous wrecks. It makes them archbishops. It makes them miserable sinners. It makes them money-lenders. It makes them victims of money-lenders. It makes them bet. It makes them afraid to bet. I might continue the catalogue so as to fill a book. There is almost nothing that men have not done or been for the love of money. But when we have gone through all the counts in the indictment, and weighed their relative importance, we are inevitably brought back to the 27

THE SPORTING IJFE

first count as the worst count of all. The love of money is to be condemned for nothing more than for this. It makes men fat, and it makes them thin, but especially it makes them fat.

I am sure you would have agreed with me if you had stayed in any of the big Liverpool hotels during the races. There was no smoking-room in which the chairs were not filled by men who were much fatter than they ought to have been. They had straight eyebrows. Their cheeks jutted out under their eyes in ledges of flesh, sometimes yellow and sometimes red. They were of all heights and breadths, but they had not a sunken stomach among them. They wore hats at every tilt except the right tilt. One of them kept altering the tilt of his incessantly as he spoke. When he leaned forward to begin, he would touch it under the brim with the top of his thumb, and it would slide on to the back of his skull. Having got the ear of his audience he would loll back, waving a chewed cigar between two unmistakable fingers, and then, as he made his point, would suddenly seize the hat in the rear and send it rolling nor'-nor'-west over his left brow, as much as to say : " What do you think of that ? " He had a gesture of the hat for every stage in the conversation. If anybody interrupted him he would take it off altogether, look at it critically with the cigar wedged in the far corner of his mouth, wipe it with his sleeve, dandle it up and down, and restore it to his head in a flash only when he saw a hole in 28

THE LOVE OF MONEY

the conversation into which he could plunge, hat and all. Then once more he was all gay. He gave his hat a list to starboard. He tried it over each eye in turn. He boxed the compass with it. When he had said all he wanted to say he leaned back in his chair, holding his cigar as though to let you see that it was a cigar, and by some curious trick his hat seemed to walk up the back of his head of its own volition and to settle down over both his eyes. It was as if he had said : " Wake me up when the others have stopped talking." I had seen something like it on the stage, but this young man with the red, crushed and by no means inconsiderable nose was apparently a real person. He was not yet fat. At least, he was not so fat as his companions. But he will be some day, if he can survive an endless procession of bottled stout.

As for the others, some of them were elderly, some of them were middle-aged, some of them were young, but they were all fat. They called each other " 'Arry," "Joey" and "Sam" (pronounced "Sem"). It was inconceivable that one of them should have addressed another as, say, " Robert." The table before them was laden with beer, stout, double Scotches, and glasses of port wine. And, all the time, they talked about money — money they had won, and money they had lost, on horses. " Sam ! " one of them, a big, short-necked man with a grizzled black moustache, would call across the table, interrupting a whispered duologue. " Sam ! " 29

At the third repetition of his name, Sam would look up quickly. " Joey 'ere," the man with the moustache told him, " won't believe me about 'ow you and I backed Old Junk at Newbury that day Pop Goes the Weasel lost the Cup by a 'ead." " It's as true as I'm 'ere," said Sam, nodding vigorously. " D'je 'ear that ? " cried the other, turning round on Joey in triumph ; "d'je 'ear that ? " Then he spread out his hands over the table, and leaned forward to address the entire company. " I was feeling a bit cheap that morning," he began, " and me and Billy Ward were standing in the bar, splitting a bottle of fizz, when 'oo should come in but Sam 'ere. ' 'Ullo, Sam ! ' says I. ' 'Ullo, 'Arry ! ' says Sam. ' Wot is it ? ' says I, touching my glass. ' No, wot's yours ? ' says Sam. ' Look 'ere, Sam,' says I, ' p'raps you think I'm 'avin' a drink. I'm not. This is medicine. Not another drop passes my lips till I see Old Junk romping 'ome in the Cup at twenty to one.' ' Go on,' says Sam, looking at me as if I had gone barmy. ' Go on,' 'e says ; ' Old Junk 'as as much chance in a race with Pop Goes the Weasel as you 'ave.' ' Look 'ere, Sam,' I said to him ; ' come back to the point. Old Junk's going to win. 'E's going to win. If you've got a better shirt than the one you're wearing, put it on him, and don't say I didn't tell you.' Then Sam began talking about form — you remember, Sam ? — and doing all 'e could to prove that Pop Goes the Weasel was an absolute cert. Djoo 30

THE LOVE OF MONEY

remember wot my answer w^as, Sam ? ' To 'ell with form,' I said to Sam — didn't I, Sam ? — ' to 'ell with form. I was dreaming about pineapples all night.' Sam looked a bit queer at that. ' 'Ere,' 'e said, ' I must 'ave a drink. My 'ead feels swimmy.' ' Wait a bit,' I told him ; ' wait a bit, Sam, and tell me 'ow pineapples are gen' rally sold.' ' In tins,' says Sam, ' but either I'm going mad or you are.' ' Think again, Sam,' I said ; ' 'ow are pineapples gen' rally sold ? I mean to say, 'ow d'je eat 'em ? ' ' 'Ow do I eat 'em ? ' says Sam ; ' I never do eat 'em ; but I s'pose you eat 'em like anything else — off plates.' ' Don't be silly,' I said to him, ' you eat 'em in junks. Pineapple junks — does your missus never bring a tin 'ome for dinner ? ' ' Oh,' says Sam, beginning to catch the drift of wot I was saying, ' that's wot you're getting at. I know 'em. But you're all out, 'Arry. It's not junks, it's chunks you're thinking about.' ' Chunks or junks, Sam,' says I, ' junks is good enough for me. I don't know 'ow much there is in dreams, but I never 'ad one like this before, and I know I'm going to 'ave a tenner on Old Junk after dreaming about all them pineapples.' ' There's no sense in it,' says Sam, shaking ' is ' ead. ' Look 'ere, Sam,' I said to 'im ; ' I'll tell you wot I'll do. I'll back my old pineapples against your sense for an even fiver.' But Sam wasn't ' aving any. ' 'Arry,' 'e said, ' blowed if I 'aven't a sort of goosey feeling myself that Old Junk's going to win.' Well, you remember wot 'appened. ..." But there is really no need to continue. It was an exceedingly roundabout story, the end of which was that Pop Goes the Weasel " fyled to pop," as 'Arry put it — in other words, failed to get away at the start — and that Old Junk did win a surprising victory, which put hundreds of pounds into the pockets of 'Arry and Sam.

As one watched the faces round the table, one noticed that they all smirked with interest so long as conversation continued. But if there was a pause of silence they became vacuous, dull, bored. Then someone would break the horrid stillness with a question that brought all minds back to reviving thoughts about money : " Ask Joey ' ow much did 'e 'ave on Trespasser yesterday." Joey blew out a long plume of smoke from his lungs. " A fiver." " Wot didja get ? " " Twos." Then from someone else : "I 'card you dropped fifty quid." " 'Oo toldja that ? " " 'Arry. It was you, 'Arry, told me Joey 'ad dropped fifty quid on the Liverpool, wasn't it ? " " Me ? I never said such a thing in my life." "Well, 'oo was it, then? Was it you. Bill ? " " You've been dreaming, Ted, like 'Arry and the pineapples." " Blest if I can think 'oo it was, but it was somebody I was ' aving a drink with last night in this very 'otel." " You must have been 'earing as well as seeing double," Joey interrupted him ; "I 'aven't 'ad fifty quid on a horse since I backed Blue Dun in the Cesarewitch. Blimey, I never felt so sick in my life. You remember, 'Arry ? 'Arry was blind-oh before 'e got on the train, and I 32

THE LOVE OF MONEY

was nearly as bad. You remember the p'liceman outside Liverpool Street Station, 'Arry ? ' UUo,' 'e said, when 'e saw 'Arry and me 'olding each other up, ' 'ullo,' 'e said, ' wot's the trouble ? ' 'Arry couldn't 'ardly even 'iccough, but at last 'e made a sound that was more like ' Blue Dun ' than it was like anything else. Any'ow, the p'liceman understood wot 'e meant. ' Well,' 'e said, ' I can 'ardly blame you, gentlemen. I've been 'it myself.' . . ." But this story, too, does not bear telling in full. It ended with the policeman's assisting his fellow-losers into a cab, and with a vow on the part of Joey never to put fifty pounds on a horse again.

All the stories were like this. All were far too long. All were full of masses of insignificant detail. All were about money, about tips, about odds — all except one, told by a Jew with a Glasgow accent, who tried to tell a bawdy story of which he had forgotten the point. As he rambled on, with his eyes twinkling round his nose, with a " D'ye see ? " here and a " D'ye see ? " there, the rest of the company began to talk in pairs, and you could hear the eternal series of questions going on — " Did you back anything in the last race ? " " What did Bruff Bridge start at ? " " Did you back it both ways ? " " 'Ow much did you drop on Arravale ? " " Did you do well at Lincoln ? " — with their eternally monotonous answers. Meanwhile, the Jew with the Glasgow accent went on cheerfully floundering through his story to one listener, who sat with a c 33 heavy, bored face, nodding at every place where he thought he was meant to see a point. But even he after a time ceased to listen, and turning to the man on his other side said : " You remember that old chap in the train 'oo was talking about Taffytus. I wonder did 'e back him for a place." " Sure to," said the other. The conversation had become vital again. . . . Meanwhile, this most interesting of the stars wheeled on its course round the most interesting of the suns. There was never such another star. Is it any wonder that we sat there, most of us fat, drinking double Scotches and bottled stout, and excited by strange dreams ?