My Life and Times

CHAPTER X

THE AUTHOR AT PLAY

Advanced friends of mine, with a talent for statistics, tell me that, when the world is properly organized, nobody will work more than two hours a day. The thing worrying me is, what am I going to do with the other twenty-two. Suppose we say seven hours sleep, and another three for meals: I really don’t see how, without over-eating myself, I can spin them out longer. That leaves me fourteen. To a contemplative Buddhist this would be a mere nothing. He could, so to speak, do it on his head – possibly will. To the average Christian, it is going to be a problem. It is suggested to me that I could spend most of these hours improving my mind. But not all minds are capable of this expansion. Some of us have our limits. During the process, I can see my own mind wilting. It is quite on the cards, that instead of improving myself I’d become dotty. Of course, my fears may be ungrounded. One of Shaw’s ancients, in “Back to Methuselah,” to whom some young persons have expressed their fear that he is not enjoying himself, retorts in quite the Mrs. Wilfer manner: “Infant, one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it would strike you dead.” After which, according to the stage directions, he “stalks out gravely.” And they, the young persons, “stare after him, much damped.” Just as one

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feels poor Mr. Wilfer would have done. It may come to that. Like the old road-mender, who sometimes sat and thought, and sometimes just sat, we may eventually acquire the habit of doing nothing for fourteen hours a day without injury to our liver. But it will have to come gradually. In the interim, we shall have to put in more play.

I have wasted a good deal of time myself on play. Gissing, in a short story, relates the history of a tramp. I have never been able to make up my mind whether Gissing intended the story to be humorous or tragic. He is quite a superior young tramp, fond of flowers and birds. He does not write poetry – is always a bit too tired for that – but thinks it. Not of much use in the world – perhaps few of us are – but, on the other hand, harmless. Unfortunately, for everybody, he awakens love in the bosom of a virtuous young woman. She reforms him: persuades him of the sin of idleness, the nobility of labour. For her sake, he borrows money and starts a grocer’s shop; works up from bad to worse till he becomes a universal stores; and ends eventually a bloated capitalist. I have always told that story to my conscience whenever it has reproved me for not sticking closer to my desk. I’d only have written more books and plays: might have ended as a best seller, or become a theatrical manager.

The genius has no call to shirk his work. He likes it. Shaw never wastes his time. Hall Caine is another. You hear that Hall Caine has gone to Switzerland for the winter. You picture him dancing about on a curling rink with a broom; or flying down a toboggan slide without his hat shouting “Achtung.” You find him in his study, at the end of a quiet corridor on the top floor of the hotel, doing good work. I lured him out into

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the snow one day. He was at St. Moritz, at the Palace Hotel, and I was at Davos with my niece. It was snowing. Sport was off. But Satan can always find some mischief for idle legs. It occurred to us to train over and disturb Hall Caine in the middle of his new novel. It happened to be “The Christian.” Often a good book will exert an influence even on the author himself. He received us gladly and when, after lunch, I proposed a walk, answered with gentleness that he would be pleased.

He said he knew a short cut to Pontresina. It led us into a snowdrift up to our waists.

“I know where we are now,” said Caine. “We are in a hollow. We ought to have turned to the right.”

We turned to the right, then and there. A minute later, we were up to our necks.

“I’ve been to Pontresina,” I said. “It’s not particularly interesting.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Caine.

It is easier to get into a snowdrift, than to get out. It was dusk before we reached Celerina. We left Caine walking up the railway track, and made ourselves for the station. It was still snowing.

“No joke,” I said, to my niece in the train. “We might have been buried alive. Such things often happen.”

My niece, Nellie, is a pious girl, and a great admirer of Hall Caine.

“I should have felt anxious,” she said, “if we hadn’t had Mr. Hall Caine with us. I felt so sure that Mr. Caine was being watched over.”

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St. Moritz used to be a homely little place. The Kuln was the only hotel, practically speaking. My wife and I stayed at the Palace the first winter it opened. They charged us seven francs a day, inclusive. I am told that since then prices have gone up. About a dozen of us had the place to ourselves: among us a retired Indian General who was keen on skating.

“Haven’t had a pair of skates on for forty-five years,” he confided to me the first morning. “Used to be rather a dab at it. Daresay it will soon come back.”

A sporting old fellow! He had had pads made: two for his knees, two for his elbows, and one for the back of his head.

“My nose I can always save with my hands,” he explained. “And the only other place doesn’t matter. It’s bones that we have to be careful of, at my age.”

Jacobs contents himself with bowls. As he points out, it is a game you can play without getting hot and excited, and losing your dignity. Phillpotts and his wife used to be good tennis players, in the old days at Ealing – how many years ago there is no call to discuss. Lawn tennis had not long come in. We used to play it with any kind of racquet. Keen players designed their own. Some were the shape of a kidney, and others bent like an S, with the idea of giving the ball a twist. It was not till the time of the Renshawes that we settled down to a standard size and form. There was a period when we played it – those of us who wished to be in the fashion – in stiff shirts and stand-up collars; and women wore trains which they held up as they ran. W. S. Gilbert, always original, would persist in having his court twenty feet too long. I forget the argument. It was about as long as the court. He was an obstinate chap. I remember one

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man making him awfully ratty by shouting out in the middle of a game – he hadn’t thought to notice the court before we started:

“I say, Gilbert, what are we supposed to be doing? Playing tennis or rehearsing a Bab Ballad?”

Tennis is the only active game that a man can play when he is old. Golf I have always regarded as a remedy rather than a game. A friend of mine was completely cured of hay fever by a six months’ course of golf. For most nervous complaints it is excellent. Doctors used to recommend “a little gentle carriage exercise.” Now they prescribe golf. Much more sensible. A rattling good game of tennis I have seen played by four men whose united ages totalled two hundred and forty years. I had a first-class court at “Monks Corner” on Marlow Common. It costs much labour to keep a grass court in good condition. They say that at Wimbledon, on the centre court, each blade of grass has its own pet name. I didn’t go so far as that, but there was rarely a day I did not spend an hour there on my knees. Wilfred Baddeley – he held the All England Championship for three years – said it was the best private grass court he had ever played on. We used to get good players there. My neighbour Baldry, the art critic, had laid down a cement court, and a short path through the wood connected them. Both courts were well sheltered. So, except in flood time, we could always be sure of a game. Mrs. Lambert Chambers is a delightful partner to play with. She puts quietness and confidence into one. It seems quite an easy game. We had the Italian champion, one summer. He had an impossible service. He would put a backward spin on the ball. It would drop just over the net, and

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bounce backward. Wimbledon had to summon a meeting, and hastily make a new rule: to the effect that, in service, the ball must continue a forward course. In play, the stroke is still permissible. It is a most irritatingly difficult stroke to counter. The only chance is to volley, and even then there is the devil in it. Kathleen McKane and her sister, when they were little girls, used often to come over. The family generally put up for the summer at the lock-keeper’s house at Hambledon, which was just a bicycle ride.

Doyle was an all-round sportsman; but was at his best, perhaps, as a cricketer. I was never any good at cricket myself. I had no chance of learning games as a boy, and cricket is not a thing you can pick up any time. Barrie was a great cricketer, at heart. I remember a match at Shere, in Surrey. We had a cottage there one summer. It was a little Old World village in those days. There was lonely country round it: wide-stretch- ing heaths, where the road would dwindle to a cart track and finally disappear. One might drive for miles before meeting a living soul of whom to ask the way: and ten to one he didn’t know. Barrie had got us together. He was a good captain. It was to have been Married v. Single. But the wife of one of the Married had run away with one of the Singles a few days before. So to keep our minds off a painful subject, we called it Literature v. Journalism. Burgin, who was then my sub-editor on The Idler, caught a ball hit by Morley Roberts, I think. But it came with such force that it bowled Burgin over. He turned a somersault, and came up again with the ball still clutched in his hands. Burgin argued that the ball had not touched the ground, and that therefore the catch ought to count. There

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was a distinct mark of mud on the ball. But Burgin said that was there before he caught it. He had noticed it. I forget how the argument ended.

Doyle was great on winter sports; and was one of the first to introduce ski-ing into Switzerland. Before that, it had been confined to Norway. All Davos used to turn out to watch Doyle and a few others practising. The beginner on skis is always popular. My own experience has convinced me that it is, practically speaking, impossible to break your neck, ski-ing. There may be a way of doing it: if so, it is the one way I haven’t tried. I must have been forty-five when I first put on skis. I had the advantage of being a good skater, and knowing all that could be done with the old-fashioned snow-shoe. Eventually I became fairly proficient. But were I to have my time over again, I would not leave it quite so late. Back somersaults, and the splits are exercises less painfully acquired in youth.

But it was worth the cost. The last time I put on skis was at Arosa, the first year of the war. We were an oddly mixed lot. American girls and German officers skated hand in hand. French, Germans and Italians clung together on the same bobsleigh. A kind gentleman from St. Petersburg, who claimed to be related to the Tzar, gave lessons in Russian every morning to three Austrian ladies from Vienna, who were fearful that after the war they might have to talk it. We were all on the best of terms with one another. Sport is a shameless internationalist. It was the last day of my holiday. Arosa is an excellent centre for ski-ing. I had had some fine runs and was in good form. I hired a boy from the village to come with me: and climbed the slopes of the Weibhorn. No experienced skier ever goes out alone.

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There are positions, quite easy to fall into, from which it is anatomically impossible to rise without assistance. The snow was just perfect that day. There had been a slight fall in the night, and the surface had not yet frozen. We climbed for two hours; and then on a narrow plateau we stripped the skins from our skis and fastened them round our waists, tightened our straps, and launched forth. Often have I envied the swallows, watching them sweep on poised wing downward through the air till they almost touch the ground. I envy them more now that I know what it feels like. I can imagine only one more wonderful sensation, and that is the “jump” – an ugly word that does not really describe it. The signal is given to go, and the skier gently moves forward, skis straight, side by side, with the knees just bent. The hard, beaten track grows steeper. The pine trees glide past him, swifter and swifter. Suddenly the trees divide: the track heads straight as an arrow to – nothing. And then that glorious leap into sheer space with arms outstretched and head thrown back. I wonder how long it seems to him until the earth comes rushing up to meet him, and he is flying through the cheering crowd towards the flagstaff. It only wants nerve.

One of the most dangerous things that can happen when ski-ing is to strike a sunk-fence. A broken ankle is generally the result of that; and once I came upon a man, sitting on the edge of a precipice, over which his skis were projecting. He dared not move. He had plunged his arms into the snow behind him and was hoping it would not give way. But having regard to all the dangers that a skier is bound to face, the marvel is that so few accidents occur: and even were they umpteen times as frequent, I should still advise the average youngster to chance it.

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The thing to beware of is exhaustion. Ski-ing, like riding, requires its own particular set of new muscles. Until these have been built up, avoid long excursions. It was at Villars I first put on skis. One, Canon Savage, got up a ski-ing party and asked me to come in. I told him I was only a beginner, but he said that would be all right; they would look after me; and at eight o’clock the next morning we started. On the way home, I found it impossible to keep my legs. I would struggle up merely to go down again. Towards dusk, I fell into a drift, and lost my skis. The fastenings had become loosened. They slipped away from under me, and I watched them sliding gracefully down the valley. They seemed to be getting on better without me. I had taken an equal dislike to them and, at first, was glad to see them go. Until it occurred to me that with nothing on my feet but a pair of heavy boots, I had not much chance – in my then state of exhaustion – of extricating myself. I shouted with all the breath I had left. Maybe it wasn’t much; and anyhow the Canon and his party were too far ahead to hear me. Fortunately a good Christian, named Arnold, thought of me and came back. I mentioned the incident to the Canon the next morning, but his sense of humour proved keener than mine. He found it amusing.

I never cared for the English school of skating. I have the idea it must have been invented by someone with a wooden leg. I learnt it – sufficiently, at all events, to be able to pass judgment on it. There is no joy in it. It is difficult, I admit. So, likewise, would be dancing in a strait-waistcoat. Why do a thing merely because it is against the laws of nature? Pirouetting around with arms and legs stretched out, looking

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like something out of a Russian ballet, may not be a dignified amusement for an elderly gentleman of middle weight. But I still enjoyed it up to fifty-eight.

Tobogganing down a carefully prepared snow run soon loses its charm. It answers too closely to the Chinaman’s description of it: “Swish. Then walk a milee.” Beginners can come off at a bend and perform a few more or less amusing antics before they come to a standstill. Fortunately they often do, or the spectators would have a dull time. I remember one winter, a lady at Mürren attempting to steer herself by means of a pole some twenty feet long, which she used as a rudder. She wasn’t good. At every bump the pole shot up into the air; and then it was the crowd on the bank that performed the antics, and did all the swearing. The bob-sleigh is, of course, another matter. That wants both pluck and skill. Freeman of Davos, who was skipper, once broke his arm at the beginning of a race, and yet steered on to the end. It must have been grim work getting her round those hairpin bends above Klosters, with a splintered bone sticking into your flesh. The best use to make of the ordinary toboggan is to take it out for an afternoon’s run down the valley. One walks a little, here and there, where the road is on the level. In the Gasthaus of the scattered village, one halts to drink a glass of beer, and to smoke. One glides through pine-woods, looking down upon the foaming torrent far below. It is good sport dodging the woodcutters’ sledges. The horses watch you out of their quiet eyes, and jingle their bells as you pass. The children, coming out of school, bar your way. You shake your fist at them and plunge on headlong. You know that, at the last moment, they will leap aside. But you

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