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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
with the mittens. Men could bang poor Tom Sayers all round
the ring with the gloves, who would not have dared to get over
the ropes had he been without them. I have seen Mace box,
and even when over sixty it is wonderful how straight was his
left, how quick his feet, and how impregnable his guard.
After the Great War, one can see that those of us who
worked for the revival of boxing wrought better than we knew,
for at the supreme test of all time – the test which has settled
the history of the future – it has played a marked part. I do not
mean that a man used his fi sts in the war, but I mean – and
every experienced instructor will, I am sure, endorse it – that
the combative spirit and aggressive quickness gave us the attacking fi re and helped especially in bayonet work. But it was
to our allies of France that the chief advantage came. I believe
that Carpentier, the boxer, did more to win the war for France
than any other man save the actual generals or politicians. The
public proof that a Frenchman could be at the very head of his
class, as Ledoux was also at a lighter weight, gives a physical
self-respect to a nation which tinges the spirit of every single
member of it. It was a great day for France when English sports,
boxing, Rugby football and others came across to them, and
when a young man’s ideal ceased to be amatory adventure
with an occasional duel. England has taught Europe much, but
nothing of more value than this.
To return to my own small experiences of the game, I might
have had one very notable one, for I was asked to referee the
great contest when the champions of the white and black races fought for what may prove to be almost the last time.
351
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
My fi rst intimation was a cable followed by the following
letter: – NEW YORK, December 9, 1909.
MY DEAR SIR, – I hope you will pardon the liberty I took
as a stranger in cabling to you asking if you would act at the
championship battle between Jeffries and Johnson. The fact
is that when the articles were signed recently your name was
suggested for referee, and Tex Rickard, promoter of the fi ght,
was greatly interested, as were many others. I believe it will
interest you to know that the opinion was unanimous that you
would do admirably in the position. In a voting contest several
persons sent in your name as their choice. Believe me among
sporting men of the best class in America you have many
strong admirers; your splendid stories of the ring, and your
avowed admiration for the great sport of boxing have made
you thousands of friends.
It was because of this extremely friendly feeling for you in
America that I took the liberty of cabling to you. I thank you
for your reply.
It would indeed rejoice the hearts of the men in this country if you were at the ring side when the great negro fi ghter
meets the white man Jeffries for the world’s championship.
I am, my dear Sir,
Yours sincerely,
IRVING JEFFERSON LEWIS,
Managing Editor New York Morning Telegraph.
I was much inclined to accept this honourable invitation,
though my friends pictured me as winding up with a revolver
at one ear and a razor at the other. However, the distance and
my engagements presented a fi nal bar.
352
MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
If boxing is the fi nest single man sport, I think that Rugby
football is the best collective one. Strength, courage, speed and
resource are great qualities to include in a single game. I have
always wished that it had come more my way in life, but my
football was ruined, as many a man’s is, by the fact that at my
old school they played a hybrid game peculiar to the place,
with excellent points of its own, but unfi tting the youngster
for any other. All these local freak games, wall games, Winchester games, and so on are national misfortunes, for while
our youths are wasting their energies upon them – those precious early energies which make the instinctive players – the
young South African or New Zealander is brought up on the
real universal Rugby, and so comes over to pluck a few more
laurel leaves out of our depleted wreath. In Australia I have
seen in Victoria a hybrid, though excellent game of their own,
but they have had the sense in other parts to fall into line, and
are already taking the same high position which they hold in
other branches of sport. I hope that our headmasters will follow the same course.
In spite of my wretched training I played for a short time as
a forward in the Edinburgh University team, but my want of
knowledge of the game was too heavy a handicap. Afterwards
I took to Association, and played fi rst goal and then back for
Portsmouth, when that famous club was an amateur organization. Even then we could put a very fair team in the fi eld,
and were runners-up for the County Cup the last season that
I played. In the same season I was invited to play for the county. I was always too slow, however, to be a really good back,
though I was a long and safe kick. After a long hiatus I took up
353
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
football again in South Africa and organized a series of interhospital matches in Bloemfontein which helped to take our
minds away from enteric. My old love treated me very scurvily,
however, for I received a foul from a man’s knee which buckled two of my ribs and brought my games to a close. I have
played occasionally since, but there is no doubt that as a man
grows older a brisk charge shakes him up as it never did before. Let him turn to golf, and be thankful that there is still
one splendid game which can never desert him. There may
be objections to the “Royal and Ancient” – but a game which
takes four miles of country for the playing must always have
a majesty of its own.
Personally I was an enthusiastic, but a very ineffi cient
golfer – a ten at my best, and at my worst outside the pale of
all decent handicaps. But surely it is a great testimony to the
qualities of a game when a man can be both enthusiastic and
ineffi cient. It is a proof at least that a man plays for the game’s
sake and not for personal kudos. Golf is the coquette of games.
It always lures one on and always evades one. Ten years ago
I thought I had nearly got it. I hope so to-day. But my scoring cards will show, I fear, that the coquette has not yet been
caught. The elderly lover cannot hope to win her smile.
I used in my early golfi ng days to practise on the very rudimentary links in front of the Mena Hotel, just under the
Pyramids. It was a weird course, where, if you sliced your
ball, you might fi nd it bunkered in the grave of some Rameses or Thothmes of old. It was here, I believe, that the cynical
stranger, after watching my energetic but ineffectual game,
remarked that he had always understood that there was a spe-
354
MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
cial tax for excavating in Egypt. I have a pleasant recollection
of Egyptian golf in a match played with the late Sirdar, then
head of the Intelligence Department. When my ball was teed
I observed that his negro caddie pointed two fi ngers at it and
spat, which meant, as I was given to understand, that he cursed
it for the rest of the game. Certainly I got into every hazard in
the course, though I must admit that I have accomplished that
when there was no Central African curse upon me.
Those were the days before the reconquest of the Soudan,
and I was told by Colonel Wingate – as he then was – that his
spies coming down from Omdurman not infrequently delivered
their messages to him while carrying his golf clubs, to avoid the
attention of the Calipha’s spies, who abounded in Cairo. On
this occasion the Sirdar beat me well, but with a Christian caddie I turned the tables on him at Dunbar, and now we have
signed articles to play off the rubber at Khartoum, no cursing
allowed. When that fi rst match was played we should as soon
have thought of arranging to play golf in the moon.
Every now and then I give up the game in disgust at my
own incompetence, but only to be lured on once more. Hunting in an old desk I came upon an obituary which I had written for my game at some moment of special depression. It ran,
“Sacred to the memory of my golf. It was never strong, being
permanently affl icted with a deformed stance and an undeveloped swing. After long weakness cheerfully borne it fi nally
succumbed, and was buried in the eighteenth hole, regretted
by numerous caddies.” However it is out and about once more,
none the worse for this premature interment.
355
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
There is said to be a considerable analogy between golf and
billiards, so much so that success in the one generally leads
to success in the other. Personally, I have not found it so, for
though I may claim, I suppose, to be above the average amateur
at billiards, I am probably below him in golf. I have never quite
attained the three-fi gure break, but I have so often topped the
eighty, and even the ninety, that I have lived in constant hope.
My friend, the late General Drayson, who was a great authority on the game, used to recommend that every player should
ascertain what he called his “decimal,” by which he meant how
many innings it took him, whether scoring or not, to make 100.
The number, of course, varies with the luck of the balls and the
mood of the player; but, taken over a dozen or twenty games, it
gives a fair average idea of the player’s form, and a man by himself can in this way test his own powers. If, for example, a player
could, on an average, score 100 in twenty innings then his average would be fi ve, which is very fair amateur form. If a man
fi nds his “decimal” rise as high as ten over a sequence of games,
he may be sure that he can hold his own against most players
that he is likely to meet. I daresay my own decimal when I was
in practice would be from six to eight.
I was never good enough for the big matches, and though
I once went in for the Amateur championship it was not out of
any illusions about my game, but because I was specially asked
to do so, as it was advisable to strengthen the undoubted amateur element in the contest. By the luck of a bye, and by beating a player who was about my own form, I got into the third
round, when I ran across Mr. Evans, who eventually reached
the fi nal with my scalp as well as several others at his girdle.
356
MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
I made 650 against his 1,000, which, as I was not helped by
a bad fall from a motor bike a few days before, was as much as
I could expect. Forty-two off the red was my best effort. Surely billiards is the king of all indoor games, and should have
some writer who would do for it in prose what John Nyren
did for cricket. I have never seen any worthy appreciation of
its infi nite varieties from the forcing losing hazard which goes
roaring into a top pocket with a clash upon the rail, to the
feather stroke so delicate that it is only the quiver of refl ected light upon the object ball which shows that it has indeed
been struck. Greatest of all is the ball heavily loaded with side
which drifts down the long cushion and then is sucked against
every apparent law into the pocket as though it were the centre of a whirlpool. Mr. E. V. Lucas is one who could do it with
discernment.
I have one funny recollection of billiards, when I wandered into some small hotel in a South-Coast watering place,
and for want of something to do played the marker. He was
a pompous person in a frock coat with a very good opinion of
his own game, which was really ruined by a habit he had of
jerking. I won the match, which was not diffi cult to do, and
then I thought it a kindness to point out to the man how he
could improve his game. He took this badly, however, and
hinted that he allowed gentlemen who played him to get the
better of him. This in turn annoyed me, so I said: “Look here.
I will come in after dinner and you can show all you can do,
and you shall have a sovereign if you win.” After dinner his
game was worse than ever, while I had amazing luck and made
the 100 in about three shots. As I put on my coat and was leav-
357
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
ing the room the queer little fellow sidled up to me and said:
“I beg pardon, sir, but is your name Roberts?”
My earliest recollection of cricket is not a particularly pleasant one. When I was a very small boy at a preparatory school
I was one of a group of admirers who stood around watching
a young cricketer who had just made his name hitting big hits
off the school bowlers. One of the big hits landed on my kneecap and the cricketer in his own famous arms carried me off
to the school infi rmary. The name, Tom Emmett, lingers in my
memory, though it was some years before I appreciated exactly
what he stood for in the game. I think, like most boys, I would
rather have been knocked down by a fi rst-class cricketer than
picked up by a second-rater.
That was the beginning of my acquaintance with a game
which has on the whole given me more pleasure during my
life than any other branch of sport. I have ended by being its
victim, for a fast bowler some years ago happened to hit me
twice in the same place under my left knee, which has left
a permanent weak-ness. I have had as long an innings as one
could reasonably expect, and carry many pleasant friendships
and recollections away with me.
I was a keen cricketer as a boy, but in my student days was
too occupied to touch it. Then I took it up again, but my progress was interrupted by work and travel. I had some cause,
therefore, to hold on to the game as I had lost so much of it
in my youth. Finally, I fulfi lled a secret ambition by getting
into the fringe of fi rst-class cricket, though rather, perhaps,
through the good nature of others than my own merits. However, I can truly say that in the last season when I played some
358
MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
fi rst-class cricket, including matches against Kent, Derbyshire,
and the London County, I had an average of thirty-two for
those games, so I may claim to have earned my place. I was more
useful, however, in an amateur team, for I was a fairly steady
and reliable bowler, and I could generally earn my place in
that department, while with the M.C.C. the professional talent
is usually so strong that the amateur who fails in batting and is
not a particularly good fi eld has no chance of atoning with the
ball. Yet even with the M.C.C. I have occasionally had a gleam
of success. Such a one came some years ago, when the team
presented me with a little silver hat for getting three consecutive clean-bowled wickets against the Gentlemen of Warwick.
One of my victims explained his downfall by assuring me that
he had it thoroughly in his head that I was a left-handed bowler, and when the ball came from my right hand he was too
bewildered to stop it. The reason is not so good as that of an
artist who, when I had bowled him out, exclaimed: “Who can
play against a man who bowls in a crude pink shirt against an
olive-green background?”
A bowler has many days when everything is against him,
when a hard, smooth wicket takes all the spin and devil out of
him, when he goes all round and over the wicket, when lofted balls refuse to come to hand, or, if they do come, refuse to
stay. But, on the other hand, he has his recompense with many
a stroke of good fortune. It was in such a moment that I had
the good luck to get the wicket of W. G. Grace, the greatest of
all cricketers.
W. G. had his speedy revenge. There was nothing more
childlike and bland than that slow, tossed-up bowling of his,
359
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
and nothing more subtle and treacherous. He was always on
the wicket or about it, never sent down a really loose ball,
worked continually a few inches from the leg, and had a perfect command of length. It was the latter quality which was my
downfall. I had made some thirty or forty, and began to relax
in the deep respect with which I faced the Doctor’s deliveries.
I had driven him for four, and jumped out at him again the next
ball. Seeing my intention, as a good bowler does, he dropped his
ball a foot or two shorter. I reached it with diffi culty, but again
I scored four. By this time I was very pleased with myself, and
could see no reason why every one of these delightful slows
should not mean a four to me. Out I danced to reach the next
one on the half volley. It was tossed a little higher up in the air,
which gave the delusion that it was coming right up to the bat,
but as a matter of fact it pitched well short of my reach, broke
sharply across and Lilley, the wicket-keeper, had my bails off in
a twinkling. One feels rather cheap when one walks from the
middle of the pitch to the pavilion, longing to kick oneself for
one’s own foolishness all the way. I have only once felt smaller,
and that was when I was bowled by A. P. Lucas, by the most singular ball that I have ever received. He propelled it like a quoit
into the air to a height of at least 30 feet, and it fell straight
and true on to the top of the bails. I have often wondered what
a good batsman would have made of that ball. To play it one
would have needed to turn the blade of the bat straight up, and
could hardly fail to give a chance. I tried to cut it off my stumps,
with the result that I knocked down my wicket and broke my
bat, while the ball fell in the midst of this general chaos. I spent
360
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