WILKIE COLLINS, SAILING AND CRICKET
'He had a thoroughly English love of the sea and of all that belongs to
it' (Armadale)
Collins's main outdoor recreation was sailing.
His regular companions were Edward Pigott, Henry Bullar and Charles Ward.
Both Collins and his doctor, Frank Beard, were convinced that the sea
breezes were good for his health. Collins's
first major trips were with Pigott to the Scilly Isles in 1855 and Cherbourg in
1856. He sailed from Broadstairs in
1858 and the early 1860s, and from Great Yarmouth in 1864.
In his later years, he sailed off Ramsgate where he joined the local
yacht club from the 1870s.
Collins was himself a good sailor although he has the
inebriated Zack in Hide and Seek (1854)
produce "sounds nautically and lamentably associated with white basins,
whirling waves, and misery of mortal stomachs wailing in emetic despair."
Sailing featured in several other stories, including 'The Cruise of the
Tomtit' (originally in Household Words (1855) and reprinted in the 1861
edition of Rambles Beyond Railways, 'A
Plot in Private Life' (1858), Armadale
(1866), and 'Miss or Mrs?' (1871).
Collins
also mentions cricket in various stories. His longest,
humorous description occurs when he assumes the autobiographical persona of
Thomas Idle in 'The Lazy tour of Two Idle
Apprentices' jointly written with Charles
Dickens in 1857:
"So, again, with the second disaster. While Thomas was lazy, he was a model of health. His first attempt at active exertion and his first suffering from severe illness are connected together by the intimate relations of cause and effect. Shortly after leaving school, he accompanied a party of friends to a cricket-field, in his natural and appropriate character of spectator only. On the ground it was discovered that the players fell short of the required number, and facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in making up the complement. At a certain appointed time, he was roused from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, and placed before three wickets with a bat in his hand. Opposite to him, behind three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, filling the situation (as he was informed) of bowler. No words can describe Mr. Idle's horror and amazement, when he saw this young man - on ordinary occasions, the meekest and mildest of human beings - suddenly contract his eye-brows, compress his lips, assume the aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a few steps, then run forward, and, without the slightest previous provocation, hurl a detestably hard ball with all his might straight at Thomas's legs. Stimulated to preternatural activity of body and sharpness of eye by the instinct of self-preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by jumping deftly aside at the right moment, and by using his bat (ridiculously narrow as it was for the purpose) as a shield, to preserve his life and limbs from the dastardly attack that had been made on both, to leave the full force of the deadly missile to strike his wicket instead of his leg; and to end the innings, so far as his side was concerned, by being immediately bowled out. Grateful for his escape, he was about to return to the dry ditch, when he was peremptorily stopped, and told that the other side was 'going in,' and that he was expected to 'field.' His conception of the whole art and mystery of 'fielding', may be summed up in the three words of serious advice which he privately administered to himself on that trying occasion - avoid the ball. Fortified by this sound and salutary principle, he took his own course, impervious alike to ridicule and abuse. Whenever the ball came near him, he thought of his shins, and got out of the way immediately. 'Catch it!' 'Stop it!' 'Pitch it up!' were cries that passed by him like the idle wind that he regarded not. He ducked under it, he jumped over it, he whisked himself away from it on either side. Never once, through the whole innings did he and the ball come together on anything approaching to intimate terms. The unnatural activity of body which was necessarily called forth for the accomplishment of this result threw Thomas Idle, for the first time in his life, into a perspiration. The perspiration, in consequence of his want of practice in the management of that particular result of bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever. For the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself confined to his bed for many weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which his own disastrous muscular exertion had been the sole first cause."
In
Basil (1852) the eponymous hero's brother
Ralph "then,
at college, became illustrious among rowers and cricketers."
Frank Softly in A Rogue's Life
(1856) describes how he "learned to play at cricket," whilst in The
Dead Secret (1857) "Doctor Chennery was, in a physical point of view, a
credit to the Establishment to which he was attached. He stood six feet two in
his shooting-shoes; he weighed fifteen stone; he was the best bowler in the Long
Beckley cricket-club."
Mr.
Ronald in The Fallen Leaves (1879)
seemed less fortunate: "His mind began to wander strangely; he was not
angry or frightened or distressed. Instead of thinking of what had just
happened, he was thinking of his young days when he had been a
cricket-player. One special game revived in his memory, at which he had
been struck on the head by the ball. 'Just the same feeling,' he reflected
vacantly, with his hat off, and his hand on his forehead. 'Dazed and giddy--just
the same feeling!'"
There
is a brief mention in 'A Shockingly Rude Article' (reprinted in My
Miscellanies (1863) from its first appearance in Household Words
in 1858): "I married a man the other day for the third time. Man in my
parish. Capital cricketer when he was young enough to run;" whereas in Man
and Wife (1870) we have "The usual 'Sports' were to take place -
such as running, jumping, 'putting' the hammer, throwing cricket-balls"
together with Sir Patrick Lundie lamenting "What does the new generation
know? It knows how to row, how to shoot, how to play at cricket, and how to
bat."
For
Professor Pesca in The Woman in White (1860),
"The ruling idea of his life appeared to be that he was bound to show his
gratitude to the country which had afforded him an asylum and a means of
subsistence by doing his utmost to turn himself into an Englishman.
Not content with paying the nation in general the compliment of
invariably carrying an umbrella ... I had seen him risk his limbs blindly at a
fox-hunt and in a cricket-field; and soon afterwards I saw him risk his life,
just as blindly, in the sea at
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