RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
Ladbroke (Lionel Day) Black (1877-1940) was an English writer and journalist who also wrote under the pseudonym Paul Urquhart. His life and career are summarised in the following entry in Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog:
Black, born in Burley-in-Wharfdale, Yorkshire, on 21 June 1877, was educated in Ireland and at Cambridge where he earned a B.A. He became assistant editor of The Phoenix in 1897 before moving to London in 1899 where he joined The Morning Herald as assistant editor in 1900. He later became assistant editor of the Echo in 1901, joint editor of Today, 1904-05, and special writer on the Weekly Dispatch, 1905-11. After a forgettable first novel, "A Muddied Oaf" (1902), co-written with Francis Rutter, Black collaborated on the collection "The Mantle of the Emperor" (1906) with Robert Lynd, later literary editor of the News Chronicle. He then produced a series of novels in collaboration with [Thomas] Meech under the name Paul Urquhart, beginning with "The Eagles" (1906). Black also wrote for various magazines and newspapers, sometimes using the pen-name Lionel Day. His books ranged from romances to Sexton Blake detective yarns. His recreations included sports (boxing and rugby), reading and long walks. He lived in Wendover, Bucks, for many years and was Chairman of the Mid-Bucks Liberal Party in 1922-24. He died on 27 July 1940, aged 63, survived by his wife (Margaret, née Ambrose), two sons and two daughters."
IN the parlour of the Jury Hotel at Ballydoyle the Regatta Committee sat in solemn conclave. Outside, in the private bar, some of the most prominent citizens of the town discussed the unprecedented situation which had arisen. It was a situation fraught with the direst consequences to the tradesmen, the hotel keepers, and indirectly, to the mass of the Ballydoyle people. Nothing less than the utter ruin and complete abandonment of the regatta, and the consequent loss of an annual golden harvest from the visitors whom the regatta attracted to the town, estimated variously from a thousand to ten thousand pounds, according to the generous mood of the statistician, was at stake.
Would Robert Joyce, captain of 'The Pride of the West' rowing club, prove himself a patriot in this hour of trial, and sinking all vain, personal ambitions, consider only the welfare of his native town? It rested entirely with him—that everybody recognised.
For two years the 'Pride of the West' had won the cup by half a dozen lengths or so with the greatest ease; that they could win it a third year if they pleased was apparent—as the landlord of The Jury Hotel put it—to the meanest intellect. And if they won it, the regatta was finished for good and all, for, according to the bequest of the gentleman since dead, who had presented the cup for competition, the trophy became the property of the club winning it three years in succession.
And where could they got another cup? There was nobody in the whole town of Ballydoyle, or in the neighbourhood, for the matter of that, who would put in the money and, consequently, the regatta was doomed—unless, of course, Robert Joyce could be persuaded not to row, or to guarantee that his eight would lose the race to one of the three other competing clubs.
Inside the parlour Michael Jamieson, captain of the Bann Rowing Club, had expounded the situation for the hundredth time.
"Will you, or will you not, withdraw your boat, Robert Joyce, that's what we want to know?' he said, banging the table in front of him with his fists.
Robert Joyce, a tall, handsome young man in homely tweeds, who sat isolated on one side of the table facing the three captains of rival clubs, shook his head.
'I will not, Michael Jameson, and there you have it. You know Kathleen Foley has set her heart on having the cup as an ornament for her sideboard. You know that she has sworn not to marry me until the 'Pride of the West' wins, and will I, do you think, throw away the prettiest girl in the whole of Ballydoyle just to please the likes of you?'
'Have you no public spirit?" put in one of the other captains.
'I have, John Nolan, but it doesn't run to losing Kathleen."
'An' will that be your final word, Robert Joyce?' queried Jamieson. .
'It is. The Pride of the West will row in the regatta, and unless you can beat them, we'll have the cup.'
Michael Jamieson rose to his feet."
'I think we'll be going,' he said to his two allies, 'but before we go I'd like to record the sentiment of the majority of the Committee that never in the history of the Ballydoyle Regatta have we had before us an example of such unreasonable and such unpatriotic conduct.'
He rounded out his sentence with the emphatic flourish of a public orator to the vociferous 'Hear-hears' of his two supporters.
Robert Joyce remained, unmoved.
'You could settle the matter easy enough without all this fine talk if you wished,' he said, also rising to his feet.
'Maybe you'll tell us how we can do that?' questioned Jamieson eagerly.
Robert Joyce moved his six-foot-two body across the floor to the door.
'Easy enough,' he said. 'Let one of your boats row a little faster than the "Pride of the West" and the matter is settled.'
With this parting shot he went out, banging the door behind him. Left alone the three remaining members of the Committee stared blankly into one another's faces.
'There's only one thing to be done,' Jamieson said at last, breaking the silence, 'We must persuade Kathleen Foley to abandon her conditions, and then, maybe, Robert Joyce will do the right thing. If that fails, we've only one other remedy."
His companions tried to show their intelligence by preserving silence. Michael Jamieson, finding that there was no chance of his own sagacity being emphasised, proceeded to explain.'
"I've a brother in Dublin at the college, where we have some first-class oars, and we'll Just ask them to send down a boat— they'll do it fast enough, my brother says—and they'll beat the 'Pride of the West' and save the Cup."
It seemed a suggestion which opened up the path of salvation for the Ballydoyle Regatta, and the committee there and then, as they officially formed a quorum, agreed to Jamieson's proposal that an invitation should be sent to the Liffey Rowing Club to enter for the Ballydoyle Cup, provided that their efforts to persuade Kathleen Foley proved abortive.
IT was Michael Jamieson who that evening formally introduced the deputation
from the committee to Miss Foley as she stood in the doorway of her mother's
house in The Diamond.
Had they not been blinded by the gravity of the situation to all other considerations, they would have recognised the reasonableness of Joyce's attitude, for from her head, crowned with its luxuriant mass of blue-black hair, to her dainty little feet, Kathleen Foley was a charming girl of nineteen as ever breathed the air of Ireland.
She listened to the ornate language of the deputation's spokesman with the suspicion of a twinkle in her eye.
'You're a credit to whoever taught you to speak, Mr. Jamieson,' she said. 'You're the prettiest talker in Ballydoyle, but if Robert, Joyce doesn't bring me the Mullingar Cup, he'll be no husband of mine.'
In vain the committee argued. Miss Foley was by turns, coquettish and ironical, but she never swerved from her position. She had made her bargain with Robert Joyce: if he won the cup he should have her hand. If he failed, well, there were other men in Ballydoyle.
The committee accepted their defeat with such fortitude as might be, and having failed in this attempt to save the fortunes of the Ballydoyle Regatta, they returned to the alternative proposition. That same night a formal, invitation was sent to the Liffey Rowing Club, to enter for the cup.
ROBERT JOYCE was the most unpopular man in Ballydoyle. The efforts that had been made to convert him to a right frame of mind by the committee had been continued in a more forcible manner by the people in the town. The hotel-keepers, shopkeepers, and retailers of liquor united for the purpose, of dissuading the 'Pride of the West' from taking part in the race.
By sheer force of public opinion, they hoped to make him change his mind at he eleventh hour. The crew dared not set their feet within any place of refreshment within the town. Little boys pelted them with stones and mud, and as the days went by the anger of the populace, carefully fostered by the trading community, increased in violence. It was only by calling in police protection, indeed, that the eight were able to secure their daily practice on the lone reaches of the Bann, and from the time they started to the time they returned to the boat-house they were the mark for the missiles of the angry crowd that swarmed on the banks.
The captains of the three rival boats had preserved, as long as they could, the secret of their invitation of the Liffey Rowing Club, but, when at last it became known that a first-class eight from Dublin was to be brought down to save the situation, life for the 'Pride of the West' became very bitter and very strenuous indeed. Howls of laughter greeted their performances on the water. If they ventured to walk abroad the street urchins shouted after them: 'The Dublin boys are after yer.' The captain was pestered with questions as to what he intended to do with the cup. Handsome offers were made to cox of the use of telescopes, so that he might keep the Liffey boat in view, and all the irony and wit of which the ingenious minds of the people of Ballydoyle were capable were employed to heap ridicule upon the 'Pride, of the West.'
Robert Joyce tried to keep a stout heart throughout these days of stress and trained his crew as rigorously as circumstances would permit. But, although he pretended in public that he would teach the Dublin boys how to row, in his heart of hearts he was convinced that the 'Pride of the West' stood no chance whatsoever of winning the cup for the third year in succession.
His men were rapidly going to pieces; two had black eyes from defending the honour of their club with their fists. There was hardly one who had escaped the shower of stones with which they were daily greeted. What with patches and plaster, the eight grew every twenty-four hours more like a comic crew in some water extravaganza than a serious boat with intentions of taking part in a serious race.
Three days before the race the excitement in the town reached its height, and the violence of the popular rage against the 'Pride of the West' exceeded all bounds.
Robert Joyce, on his way to the house of Kathleen Foley in the Diamond, was seized by the mob, and only by most strenuous exertions managed to release himself and take refuge in the doorway of Mrs. Foley's house.
As he stood there, looking down on the sea of threatening fists and sticks, listening to the long sullen roar of 'Traitor,' the door behind him suddenly opened, and Kathleen stepped out calmly to his side. A deeper volume of anger seemed to well up from the throats of the mob at the sight of a girl whose whim, they believed, was the cause of the trouble.
Alarmed for her safety, Joyce would have drawn her inside and closed the door, but she resisted and imperiously bade him mind his own business.
Standing with her hands on her hips, she smiled calmly down upon the angry crowd, until even their unreasoning anger gave way before their admiration for her radiant beauty and her pluck.
Gradually the noise and confusion ebbed until only a few voices here and there were to be heard. Then Kathleen suddenly raised her hand as if to ask for a hearing.
'I hope you're all proud of yourselves,' she said, in her soft musical voice, 'I hope you have all enjoyed your sport; two hundred of you chasing one man! One of you, maybe, would like to break your stick over my head? Nice people you are, to concern yourselves with the honour of Ballydoyle. What do you care about Ballydoyle, indeed, when you have to get a dirty lot of foreigners from Dublin to try and beat a crew that has been born and bred in Ballydoyle? Indeed, an' I hope you're all proud of yourselves. You want the Ballydoyle cup to go to Dublin—nice patriots you are, for all you can shout 'Traitor' at the bidding of other men. If this is your fine idea of patriotism you're welcome to it, but you needn't try to murder an unarmed man, or break into the house of two defenceless women, whose only fault is that they were born in Ballydoyle, and want to see the Ballydoyle cup won by Ballydoyle men, and not to see it taken to Dublin, where any time that anybody looks at it he will laugh at Ballydoyle and mock at its people.'
She stopped breathless; a vivid flash of colour in her cheeks. The crowd, which had remained silent while she was speaking, seemed to be stung suddenly into a roar of cheers. In the few seconds in which she had spoken the whole sentiment of the mob had changed.
'It's true, every word that Miss Foley says,' shouted a man at the back of the crowd. 'It's Michael Jamieson that's the traitor, getting these foreigners from Dublin. The Ballydoyle cup for Ballydoyle men! and three cheers for Robert Joyce and the 'Pride of the West'!
A great shout rent the air as the three cheers were given, followed by three more for Kathleen Foley.
As if by common instinct the crowd swerved forward, and those in front, seizing Robert Joyce, he was carried shoulder high round The Diamond until the police broke up the procession with the butt-ends of their rifles.
Kathleen Foley, however, had sown the seeds of discord. The town was divided into two camps, the majority with the watchword, 'The Ballydoyle cup for the Ballydoyle people' siding with Robert Joyce and the 'Pride of the West,' the rest, composed mostly of the tradespeople of the town and their hangers-on, supporting Michael Jameson, crystallising their policy into the words, 'Save the Ballydoyle cup for the Ballydoyle people.'
Never did nine men, coming down for a sporting event, meet with such an extraordinary reception as that which fell to the lot of the Liffey Rowing Club when they arrived at Ballydoyle on the evening before the regatta.
A body of police held the station and its immediate surroundings. On the platform a deputation of the tradesmen and hotelkeepers' alliance was in waiting, with Michael Jameson, as representative of the Regatta Committee, as spokesman.
In one of his most flowery speeches, Jameson assured them that the people of Ballydoyle appreciated the exhibition of camaraderie and good fellowship—the outstanding characteristic of true sportsmen—which had prompted them to come so nobly to the assistance of Ballydoyle, and at so much personal inconvenience to save to the people of Ballydoyle that great water festival which had so long been the pride and the glory of the town.
One of the Dublin eight, with a peculiar taste for grammar, estimated that Michael Jameson missed the principal verb three times in three separate periods, and made the calculation that he used only six full-stops in the course of a speech lasting well over a quarter of an hour. The welcome accorded them by the people of Ballydoyle, however, seemed hardly in tune with the opinion voiced by Michael Jameson.
The hearts of the people of Ballydoyle might beat like one in the true-glowing warmth or their affection for the nine noble sportsmen from Dublin, but they expressed it mostly beyond the barrier of police, outside the station, with a tempest of hisses and groans and not a few stones that fell dangerously about the four jaunting-cars, as the Liffey crew were carried to the Jury Hotel.
It might be true that the people of Ballydoyle were proud of the opportunity of extending their hospitality to the representatives of aquatic athletics in the capital of our great country, but none the less, the Liffey Rowing Club dined that night with a cordon of police round the hotel and to the accompaniment of a never-ceasing roar of angry shouts.
BUT there was nothing wrong with the hospitality, except so far as it might be considered excessive. The Tradesmen and Hotel Keepers' Alliance, with a view to showing how much they appreciated the saviours of their cause, exhausted themselves in the multiplication of toasts and the complexity of their drinks.
Nine very sad but brutally sober men made their way down to the banks of the Bann in the centre of a phalanx of their supporters the following morning. The surroundings were inspiriting, but hardly of the kind to suit a crew who to a man had violent headache. The noise was deafening, and the scene on the riverside was more like the opening of a primitive battle than the preliminaries of a boat-race.
As if by common agreement the rival factions had each taken up their position on separate banks—the supporters of Robert Joyce on the left, and backers of the Liffey Rowing Club on the right. A fierce fusillade of stones was in progress when a deafening howl announced the arrival of the nine Dublin men.
The eights got afloat with difficulty, the 'Pride of the West' having to put back to unload a small cargo of stones. At last both boats managed to take up a position at the starting-post, the Liffey boat rocking ominously, and the whole crew, from the pallid little cox in the stern to the weary crew looking more fit for a twelve hour rest in bed than a race over a mile and a haIf course.
'Ballydoyle forever!' yelled one faction. 'Save the cup for Ballydoyle!' came the answering shout, accompanied by a perfect cloud of missiles.
The police on either side laid about them with the energy which distinguishes the Irish constabulary and forged some sort of order out of the chaos, but not before the cheek of 'three' in the Liffey boat had been cut open by a stone from one of his own supporters.
Just as the pistol was fired for this the first heat of the race, a huge rock, not unlike one of those classical weapons which occasionally did so much execution on the plains of Troy, struck the stern of the 'Pride of the West' boat, hopelessly damaging the rudder and almost sinking the craft. Howls of delight went up from the other bank.
At that moment, the starting-shot was fired.
It was not exactly a scientific start; both crews plugged disgracefully, and the Liffey boat sped on to triumph, by a well-meant shower of stones intended for its rivals almost capsized. As it was, 'four,' who had reclined peacefully the night before under the same table at which he had dined, only saved himself from catching a crab with difficulty.
The 'Pride' of the West' got away better, and in the first few seconds gained half a length, but what they made in speed they lost in their steering. Owing to the smashing of the rudder, the cox was utterly unable to regulate the course. With an accuracy almost sublime, the eight headed for a point a hundred yards down the right bank.
Had the cox of the Liffey boat retained complete control of his senses, he would have easied his men until the inevitable had happened; but with no thought in his mind beyond retrieving the utter ruin and disgrace of his washed-out crew, he urged them on their course with blasphemous energy. Robert Joyce at stroke took his men to their fate with unhesitating gallantry. Amidst the roar of the crowd, he could not properly hear the piteous appeal of his cox, but kept his men at their work with zest and determination. Straight across the Bann at an angle, of forty-five the 'Pride of the West' sped. In under thirty seconds the inevitable happened.
Suddenly awaking to what had taken place, the cox of the Liffey boat bore in towards the bank as near as he dared, but the course of his rivals was inexorable. About seventy yards from the starting post the oars of the two eights clashed with one another. In another second bow had been swept from his seat in the Liffey boat, and both boats turned turtle at exactly the same moment. Eighteen men were hidden for a brief space beneath the sluggish waters of the Bann. When they rose to the surface they were greeted with a shower of sticks and stones.
Maddened by what he believed to he a deliberate foul, Robert Joyce made a plunge at the captain of the Liffey boat. The two men went down locked in each other's arms, and rose only again at the approach of asphyxiation to commence their bitter fight over again.
Other members of the rival crews joined in the fray, and from the two banks a flotilla of little boats put out, carrying the partisans of both sides. Disregarding the fighting crews in the water, they met in the middle of the stream with an impact which must have given their occupants some idea of the sensation of ramming a battleship, Then was fought a battle which lived long in the annals of Ballydoyle.
It was fought with every available weapon, from an oar to a rudder, swung dexterously by its lines. So fierce was the battle that the occupants of rival boats fell into the water, fighting madly with legs and arms and fists. That nobody was drowned is another testimony to the truth of the statement that the gods pay particular attention to the welfare of the insane.
For twenty minutes or more the battle raged in mid-stream, the parties on either bank taking what share they could in it, wading up to their necks in some cases in hope of being able to get their fingers on the throats of their opponents.
A special section of mounted police was drafted on to the scene with as much despatch as possible by the authorities. The crowds were driven back from the bank. A steam launch, filled with blue-spiked helmets, dashed into the mêlée, and with a dispassionate regard for faction dealt out blows or rendered first-aid until the river was cleared of the combatants.
The regatta was at an end. Definite instructions were forwarded from headquarters that the authorities would not permit the continuation of the meeting, that year at any rate.
The news was received with unusual calm, except by Robert Joyce. He was chagrined .and dejected.
The 'Pride of the West' had not won the cup for three years in succession, therefore he would have to wait another three years before he could claim the hand of Kathleen Foley; and in all probability he ran the chance of not winning either her hand or the cup.
The other members, of the committee, however, and the people of Ballydoyle generally, were pleased at the turn events had taken. The honour of Ballydoyle had been saved, and the cup had not been taken away by foreigners from Dublin; on the other hand, the cup was still open for competition; for three years at least the regatta was safe, and the Tradesmen and Hotelkeepers' Alliance was quite prepared to bury the hatchet now that their object had 'been secured.
In the truce of amity that was silently arranged the Liffey crew had no part. Both parties, seeking an excuse for their late hostility, agreed in ascribing all their troubles to the visitors. They were compelled to leave the town secretly, under police protection, and made their way back to Dublin, cursing the day that they ever entered for the Ballydoyle regatta.
THAT same afternoon Robert Joyce, having concluded his business with the
Regatta Committee, made his way gloomily to the house of Kathleen Foley. She
met him at the door with a little flush upon her cheeks.
'Well, you haven't won the cup, Robert Joyce,' she said, 'so what might you be coming here for?'
He hung his head mournfully.
'Just to look at you,' he said, 'and to ask you if you'll wait another three years.'
'It's too long to wait. You haven't the cup after all.'
He bit his lip angrily, not trusting himself to raise his eyes to hers. 'It's bitter enough as it is, Kathleen, I've tried my best, but, as you say, I haven't the cup—'
'Well, maybe you'll have me instead,' she said softly.
He looked up quickly, and read her meaning in her laughing face and the depths of her dancing eyes.