The Book of Fame Read online

  After Surrey (11–nil) the pad-and-pencil men turned on the ‘whistling ref’. At Blackheath (32–nil) we were described as artists and creatures of the stage. ‘To watch the “Hamlet”-clad lot retrieve a failure is almost as interesting as the excitement at their customary swooping or rush of attack … There is always somebody under-studying for the time-being, the player is hors de combat. Into the breach the new “artist” without a second’s hesitation goes.’

  Oxford (47–nil): we remember Hunter’s doggy grin as he jogged back from another try and the joke in the newspaper. ‘One undergraduate to an older one: “Why don’t our men tackle ’em?” Replies the other: “My son, if you read the rules you would know you are not allowed to tackle a man until you have caught him.” ’

  Cambridge (14–nil) were made of sturdier stuff.

  Richmond (17–nil). The rain fell in torrents and all around the ground rang the sour cries of ‘Gallaher play the game’.

  By November 16 we had amassed 626 points for, to 15 against.

  Then we played four matches in eight days.

  Bedford (41–nil) we remember for the hailstorm minutes before kickoff and their recruiting outside players, notably the giant Irish international, Maclear. We paid him an early visit: ‘His Blackhealth stockings showing above the Blacks’ heads.’

  Scotland (12–7) was a narrow escape. The Scots were the first side to score first against us.

  West of Scotland we beat (22–nil) on a soft turf.

  Ireland (15–nil): during a break in play when officials searched to replace a burst ball we chatted with the Irish. Billy Wallace’s opposite asked him if he was interested in motor cars.

  Munster (33–nil) was Bill Mackrell’s first game on tour. We lost George Smith to broken ribs.

  England (15–nil). Dunk McGregor’s four tries stand out, that and the premier stand filled with dukes, earls and other notables.

  We put on another 52 points against Cheltenham and Cheshire.

  Yorkshire (40–nil). We arrived at the ground in motor cars. The old members of the Yorkshire men who’d played the Natives in 1888 sat together in specially reserved seats.

  Wales 0–3. We lost. We what.? More on that later.

  Between December 16 and 30 a crushing itinerary asked us to play five matches. By then we were reduced to fielding whoever was fit enough to play.

  Glamorgan 9–nil.

  Newport 6–3.

  Cardiff 10–8.

  Against Swansea, who’d just lost to Cardiff for the first time in three years, we scraped by 4–3.

  In the silky pages of The Times we found ourselves mentioned alongside foreign countries, statesmen and other notables. Bristol was the first occasion. The match account was short but still longer than a report on the bomb explosion at Peking Railway Station.

  versus Northampton, 32–nil. The Times gave us 24 lines, six lines more than report on ‘New Anglo-Japanese Treaty’ and 18 lines more than a brief piece on the ‘Morocco Question’.

  versus Leicester—35 lines! Still disappointing … eight lines less than a report on ‘abnormal tides’ and details of Lieutenant Colonel Theophilus Vaughton Dymock’s estate. On the other hand, the match report was still longer than articles on ‘Italian Earthquakes’, a proposed ‘Austro-Chinese Bank’, and a report on ‘Congress on Tuberculosis’.

  The Times’ description of Smithy: ‘… nothing was so remarkable as the way in which G.W. Smith, the centre three-quarter, took the ball at top speed; and continually swept through opponents …’ is twice as long as a report on ‘Australian Revenue Returns’, and this grisly report out of Southern Russia: ‘The mob placed a number of Jews in barrels and trundled them along until they were dead … A large cage filled with Jews was thrown into the river …’

  versus Middlesex at Stamford Bridge—45 lines! though, this is 85 lines less than the excessively long report on the ‘National Chrysanthemum Society’s Show’. Looking at it more closely the match description turns out to be longer than the discussion of ‘chrysanthemum’s origins’. Gallaher also points out that praise of our tackling is not only lengthier but in prose more rapturous than the descriptive account of the ‘early flowering Japanese varieties’.

  versus Durham—a miserly 38 lines in The Times.

  versus Hartlepool—35 lines, which is eight lines less than ‘the kennel club show at Crystal Palace’.

  Terribly disappointing, and yet … the boys earned 31 lines more than ‘the German Steamer captured by Japanese’, 19 lines more than the betrothal of Prince Friedrich of Prussia’ and ‘Chinese Outrages in Johannesburg’.

  versus Northumberland, back on track. 52 lines in The Times, 27 lines more than ‘bomb outrages in Warsaw’.

  versus Devonport Albion—50 lines, 40 lines more than that given to ‘Mr Roosevelt on Lynch Laws’.

  versus Midland Counties—72 lines! in The Times … plus 92 lines on ‘The Revolution in Rugby Football’.

  More than ‘bloodshed in Odessa’, ‘Russian Warship Mutiny’, ‘The Conflict in Hungary’ and ‘Lord Rosebery’s address on Scottish history’ combined.

  versus Surrey—51 lines. Lost ground to ‘rioting in Warsaw’ and ‘Strikes in Finland’, plus ‘Scarcity of meat in Germany’.

  versus Cambridge—95 lines!

  versus Richmond—67 lines.

  The Times notes thus far, 571 points racked up in 18 victories, no defeats, conceding 15 points.

  versus Bedford—55 lines. Plague in India—13 lines.

  versus Scotland—160 lines!

  versus Ireland—140 lines!

  versus Munster—38 lines: rain.

  versus England—170 lines!!! Only the obituaries longer.

  versus Cheshire—40 lines, two lines more than the death of ‘Mr Humphreys-Owen, MP’ and twice as long as the report on Salome, the new Richard Strauss opera staged in Dresden. ‘The composer, who conducted, was called before the curtain 40 times.’ We didn’t even play that well. Everywhere there are signs of fatigue and Stead has boils.

  versus Wales—150 lines in The Times we could do without.

  The story begins two-thirds down the column and the eye is distracted by two advertisements opposite: one for ‘Peterkin: the story of a dog’ and the other for Enos Fruit Salts ‘to remove morning gloom’.

  THREE

  There are other moments that need to be acknowledged, spoken of, catalogued. Moments that simply occupy time between conquests.

  The walk along the chalk cliffs

  the snare of history

  in the whitish air

  No one talking, and

  because of it

  quite naturally our thoughts

  turning to

  Vikings.

  Or at Scarborough, the striped deckchairs

  the ferris wheel

  the buttoned-up English

  Tyler’s throwing a dart

  and winning a stuffed rabbit

  and us throwing it around a bit

  until Jimmy Duncan scratched his chin

  and thought he’d mention

  an error he’d seen creep into our play.

  The ride out to North Cliffs

  O’Sullivan, Casey, McDonald

  leaning into the Atlantic wind

  hands in pockets

  wondering

  but not really finding anything, and so

  drifting into private space

  until Jimmy Duncan gave the word

  ‘Pack it in, shall we?’

  The tours of factories

  where we watched other men at work

  and stuffed our pockets with pipes, cigarettes

  & bicycle parts.

  Visits to cathedrals, abbeys, ruins,

  to old prisons,

  Invitations to dine, to plays, dramas, music halls,

  to shop

  and search out

  relatives.

  Blackpool. Seagulls. Predators with black teeth

  stolen goods in their rotten pocket
s.

  Booth winning a box of chocolates at the coconut shy.

  Glasgow swinging a hammer to send a red flag to the top of the pole and breaking all records.

  We placed two five-men teams in the swimming relays and beat the Hornsey Swimming Club champions.

  We could thrash Middlesex in the afternoon 34–nil and out-swim the Woodsiders in the evening at the South Norwood Pool.

  England felt like a place specially created

  for us to excel.

  In London, fame was measurable.

  You could walk around it

  Look it in the eye

  and admire it.

  At Madame Tussaud’s we tiptoed around the Shah of Persia, Garibaldi, Shakespeare. Interesting to see which famous figure drew who: Seeling squaring off before the pugilist William Cobbett, Nicholson leaning forward to inspect Doctor Livingstone, George Smith winking at P. T. Barnum, Jimmy Duncan folding his arms before Lord Nelson, the back-heeled lean of Billy Stead and Billy Wallace inquiring of Sir Richard Burton of the desert. The rest were mainly military types, a clutch of church leaders and royalty. Mister Dixon took a solemn interest in the execution of Mary, Queen of the Scots.

  Outside Tussaud’s, we noticed that unless you were a Lord or Viscount or Admiral you worked hard to get your name in the newspaper. Something out of the ordinary pitched your name forward. For example, the woman who spent fifty-one years in bed after a mistaken diagnosis; or a much younger woman who died of apoplexy from laughter at a pantomine.

  ‘Shooting himself with a revolver, Baron Salomon de Gunsborg, formerly a banker, committed suicide in Paris, yesterday.’

  ‘Miss Morris, a teacher in high school in Chesterfield, Iowa, was lecturing on electricity when she was struck by lightning.’

  ‘The yacht Catarina, in which the absconding French bank clerk Galley sailed to South America, is due at Gospert in about a week’s time.’

  So we were surprised when we found ourselves

  in the Illustrated London News,

  sharing the limelight

  with the Russian uprising,

  portraits of Tolstoy,

  the auctioning of Napoleon’s chair,

  and a series of illustrations

  demonstrating the Indian method

  of using elephants

  to crush offenders to death.

  From the Manchester Hotel we walked to the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square. There, we toured the gallery halls and gaped back at the famous faces which seemed to want us to know them. Explorers, engineers, architects.

  Under a portrait of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin young Steve Casey found himself baled up by a finger-pointing autodidact.

  ‘You have to wonder, Why this person and not that one. I mean, have you ever thought about this. No one to my knowledge has ever painted or drawn a rat, artistically, I mean, as far as I know. There are no famous rat paintings. Name me one now and I’ll eat my hat. There are famous horse paintings. Christ, you could fill a ship’s hold with those. Grouse. One or two of them get on to the canvas. Even a bloody farm hen. You know the sort of thing. Wolves. Foxes. Cats. Dogs, and that’s all right with dogs, I suppose. But then it gets ridiculous with parrots, pheasants, quail, fish—often as not on serving platters but nonetheless represented. Snakes. Elephants. Giraffes. Your elephant lumbers in at this point. Whales bursting up around men with harpoons in open boats. Only your rat is overlooked.

  ‘But I’m bashing your ear, son. What is it you do?’

  Casey caught us up and we passed into another hall, this one displaying ‘famous groups’—

  ‘The 7 Bishops Committed to the Tower in 1688’

  ‘The Gun Powder Plot Conspirators’

  ‘The Five Children of Charles 1’

  ‘Men of Science Living in 1807–8’

  ‘Swinburne and his Sisters’

  ‘The Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840’

  ‘Four men at Cards’

  and so on … but none like us. At the end of the hall Gallaher and Stead looked at each other, and it was an even race as to who got it out first:

  ‘No football teams.’

  Put up that year were—

  Cecil Rhodes

  ‘the religious fanatic and impostor’ Joanna Southcott

  the poets Thomas Campbell and Thomas Love Peacock

  the Rajah of Sarawak

  Sir Rowland Hill, ‘initiator of penny post’

  Toberius Cavallo, author of A Complete Treatise on Electricity,

  & Captain James Cook

  We found ourselves admired

  Lord Mayors felt our biceps

  Luminaries of the theatre world invited us backstage

  A famous acrobat from the 1870s performed a handstand on a dinner chair at Bunny Abbott’s request

  An ‘associate’ of the man who invented steam said to Eric Harper, ‘If there’s anything I can do …’

  A military man who owned tea plantations in India travelled 35 miles to challenge George Tyler to an arm wrestle

  They passed on notes of introduction

  Shook our hands

  said ‘what an honour it is …’

  The hand this or that Mayor shook was as often as not a hand that held a plough

  or shovel or teat

  Didn’t seem to matter though

  At half-time against Gloucester the Duke of Northumberland came down for a chat

  and invited us to inspect his castle

  Mister Dixon warned us of ‘trophy hunters’. ‘Tehiddy.’ He looked around for Dave Gallaher. ‘Remember, Dave?’ It was the day before we thrashed Cornwall and the local tin magnate invited the two of them to his estate. ‘I’ve never seen a private library like it. First editions. Bibles in ancient Greek and Hebrew. Some clay tablets picked up from a Somalian grave. Lion skins on the wall. Zebra skins covering the floor. Port from a bottle corked in seventeen hundred and something.’ He paused here to relight his pipe, and when it was burning grunted, ‘Do you know the Bassetts employ a full-time cricketer just to have around?’

  ‘You met him?’ asked Massa.

  ‘No, son. I’m standing in the library with Bassett admiring his antiques when I happen to glance up and out the window and see this fellow in white flannels standing on the lawn next to the Etruscan fountain. So to Mr Bassett I say, “Who’s that gentleman I see?” And he says, “Him? Why that’s my Australian cricketer, Bill Thorn. I have his stats somewhere.” ’

  Mister Dixon pulled on the ends of his moustache and we fell about laughing, though he claims ‘the cricketer part is true’.

  People hung on to every

  word said

  Sometimes what we said

  hell, it didn’t even make sense

  not that it seemed to matter

  not to them

  or us

  ‘So, you’ve never eaten snails, Mr Gallaher?’

  ‘No, but I’m planning to when I get to France.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘And how do you find the food in the United Kingdom?’

  ‘Can’t complain.’

  ‘So, no complaints?’

  ‘No, not really … Except …’

  ‘Yes? Go on …’

  ‘Well I was going to say … But no, we’ve no complaints.’

  One morning we are visited by a small nervous man, a museum curator, who asks if we can give him something. Jimmy Duncan thinks he means money, but quickly withdraws his hand from his pocket when the man adds, ‘…anything at all, really.’

  McGregor and McDonald happen to be playing noughts and crosses on a table napkin. Jokingly, McGregor holds up the napkin with the game on it and asks if this will do, and the little man, the curator, well, his face grows keen. He gives a small greedy nod, then he asks, ‘I wonder, would you boys mind signing it?’

  The curator closes his hand over his mouth to stifle a yelp.

  ‘Both signatures. Please,’ he says, and bites his hand.

  Jimmy Dunca
n laughs. ‘Next you’ll be wanting our train tickets.’ The curator turns his head to look at Jimmy, and his lower lip drops. He bites his hand again, and nods. So Jimmy has to pull out his Leeds to Cardiff ticket. Jimmy Hunter fishes out a London to Oxford stub. Soon everyone is emptying their pockets and old theatre tickets and train tickets are falling to the carpet and the curator is scrambling on his knees to collect them all.

  Bob Deans hands over a pair of cufflinks. Billy Glenn unknots his tie and gives him that. George Nicholson gives the man a handful of boot sprigs. It had started out as a joke but soon a small box has to be found. We fill this and a broken suitcase that we have no further use for, and hold the door for the curator to haul his booty off. When a gust of wind removes his hat we are surprised that he doesn’t stop for it; and turning away from the door we look at one another, and it is about then that we realise we have been looted.

  In Dublin as Dave Gallaher stepped from the train a young newspaperman bounded up to him. ‘Mr Gallaher. Mr Gallaher, sir. How does it feel to be famous?’ Gallaher told him, ‘The pyramids are famous, son.’ We liked that; we liked Dave’s gruff dose of wisdom. But there was little time for Dave to expand because then the barriers holding back the crowd fell apart and the Dubliners swarmed towards us.

  Ireland knew about us. She had been expecting us. All the flags were out. We were received like royalty at the Dublin Guinness plant. We climbed aboard a miniature train and wound in and out the barrels of Guinness stacked on end like cotton reels.

  At Petersen’s Pipe Factory we got about like trade commissioners. Each of us was given a pipe. George Dixon held his under his nose. Steve Casey and Bill Mackrell stuck theirs in their pockets and looked around for the next treat.

  That night the audience stood and cheered us as we filed into the Empire Palace Theatre to take our seats.

  The applause continued the next day as we wandered Dublin’s streets. Men tipped their hats. Women smiled up beneath their hat brims. The wild shrieks belonged to small boys discovering us at the end of an alley or across the street. It was impossible to take in a statue with so many eyes on us. Dublin knew who we were, and every corner of the city appeared to have been expecting us the moment we showed up. We paused to regroup and the doors of a tavern flew open. A publican in a white apron appeared with a large tray of malt whiskies. It was the wrong time of day to be drinking but Mister Dixon gave his consent. The publican nodded encouragement and while we went about the malts a small boy scampered around our legs asking, ‘Which one are yer, Billy Wallace?’ Billy Stead pointed him out, and the boy dropped to his knees, got out a piece of chalk and traced the outline of Billy Wallace’s feet on the Dublin street.