An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY was going for the championship, and (we bad become personal friends) asked me to give him a rough trial at z miles, and to his surprise, I beat him. A week after we walked half-a-mile for speed, and I again beat hjm, doing 1.31 and 3.21, which I think must have broken bis heart, for he never started in a race again. All the year I was writing for the Pall Mall Gazette and the Sporting Gazette, and on the 5th November saw my future wife for the first time. On the 30th November I met Mr. R. M. Williams 7 the Civil Service crack, for the first time in the 2 miles handicap, and beat him easily in 7.15 and 15.16, in pouring rain. I was at my best that year (1868), for I got third in the L .A.C. 3 miles handicap from scratch in 7.13, 15.6 and 23.5, then the best on record, and gave J. E. Bentley of the C.S. 30 secs., and a beating in a 2 mile match, of which my first mile was 6.54. Some fast trials (~.g., 39.16 for 5 miles) brought me to the championship, which I won in 57.40, then the best on record all the way from 1 mile to 7, beat– ing Griffith (I always beat him whenever I met him) by the length of the straight, and a buffoon named H.F. Wilkinson by just a mile. Again trying at running, I ought to have won the Parkfield open half-mile from scratch, and actually led at 880 yds., but by mistake the course was marked 80 yds. too long and I got caught again. This was the last time I saw Charlie Westhall before be died. This autumn was memorable for me for being my first close acquaintance with the Norfolk Broads,T up which Howlett and I rowed in a light paired oared boat from Yarmouth, and when I saw my first "salt tide." Towards the end of my holiday I got incidentally engaged to a very pretty girl in Mid Norfolk, and spent a few days at Lowes– toft, but was thrown over by her at her mother's instance. The old woman was a rabid Radical and Dissenter, and objected to my taking any part in any athletics, sharing with my own parents the then prevalent idea that athletics 1 We met no pleasure boats at all except one lateener laid up on Wroxham Broad. Nor did we see any pleasure wherries of which Dr. Wheeler (Norwich Science Gossip, Trans. 1913-4) says the first was invetted by Mr. Gambling, of Buxton, followed by Mr. Cooke, of Stalham, in 1863. I always thought that " Parson" Blake's boat, which he and his cousin, " Captain " Blake, fitted out themselves, was the earliest, but suppose I was wrong.