London Street Games: "To find a friend one must close one eye―to keep him, two"

By Norman Douglas

Norman Douglas was born in Thüringen, Austria on 8th December 1868.

He spent the first years of his life on the family estate, Villa Falkenhorst, in Thüringen. The following years were spent in Scotland at Tilquhillie, Deeside, his paternal home. Douglas was then educated at Yarlet Hall and Uppingham School in England, before a grammar school in Karlsruhe.

Douglas started in the diplomatic service in 1894 and, until 1896, he was stationed in Russia at St. Petersburg, but was placed on leave following a sexual scandal.

In 1897 whilst travelling in Italy with his brother he bought the villa Maya in Posillipo, a maritime suburb of Naples. In doing so he abandoned his pregnant Russian mistress and his career as a diplomat.

The following year he married a cousin, Elizabeth Louisa Theobaldina FitzGibbon, with whom he would have two children.

In 1901, using his pseudonym ‘Normyx’, and in collaboration with Elizabeth, his first book, Unprofessional Tales, was published. However, his marriage was now failing, and they divorced in 1903 on the grounds of Elizabeth's infidelity.

He now moved to Capri to spend time at the Villa Daphne as well as also alternating with time in London. His general purpose now was to become a more committed and dedicated writer.

A long career lay ahead of him but it was one filled with bohemian excess, writing of tremendous quality and also scandal after scandal.

By the time of his death in Capri on 7th February 1952, apparently deliberately overdosing himself on drugs after a long illness. His last action was to hurl expletives at a group of nuns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Word To The Wise
• Release date: Apr 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787379107

Norman Douglas

Norman Douglas (Bregenz, 1868-Capri, 1952) es conocido principalmente por sus libros de viajes y por la novela Viento del sur (1917).

Book preview

London Street Games by Norman Douglas

Norman Douglas was born in Thüringen, Austria on 8th December 1868.

He spent the first years of his life on the family estate, Villa Falkenhorst, in Thüringen. The following years were spent in Scotland at Tilquhillie, Deeside, his paternal home. Douglas was then educated at Yarlet Hall and Uppingham School in England, before a grammar school in Karlsruhe.

Douglas started in the diplomatic service in 1894 and, until 1896, he was stationed in Russia at St. Petersburg, but was placed on leave following a sexual scandal.

In 1897 whilst travelling in Italy with his brother he bought the villa Maya in Posillipo, a maritime suburb of Naples. In doing so he abandoned his pregnant Russian mistress and his career as a diplomat.

The following year he married a cousin, Elizabeth Louisa Theobaldina FitzGibbon, with whom he would have two children.

In 1901, using his pseudonym ‘Normyx’, and in collaboration with Elizabeth, his first book, Unprofessional Tales, was published. However, his marriage was now failing, and they divorced in 1903 on the grounds of Elizabeth's infidelity.

He now moved to Capri to spend time at the Villa Daphne as well as also alternating with time in London.  His general purpose now was to become a more committed and dedicated writer.

A long career lay ahead of him but it was one filled with bohemian excess, writing of tremendous quality and also scandal after scandal.

By the time of his death in Capri on 7th February 1952, apparently deliberately overdosing himself on drugs after a long illness. His last action was to hurl expletives at a group of nuns.

Index of contents

Preface

LONDON STREET GAMES

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Norman Douglas – A Short Biography

Norman Douglas – A Concise Bibliography

PREFACE

It was a pastime that grew on you like a fever collecting these outdoor sports in Finsbury, Hackney, Islington, Whitechapel, Stepney, Limehouse, Poplar, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Deptford, Camberwell, Kennington, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Shadwell, and God knows where else; it brought you in touch with new lives and new ideas. The first result of the craze was an article, a little Cockney study, in the English Review (November 1913). By that time the game microbe, far from growing extenuated, had established itself firmly in the system; incipient stamp collectors will recognize this symptom. The following pages, published in 1916, mark another stage in the progress of the infection; and I might have continued to note down Street Games till Doomsday, and compiled a veritable Corpus of them, but for the fact that, owing to other occupations, it became increasingly difficult to find the necessary tune. Time! It required time, days and weeks, to stalk these children and win their confidence. Whoever doubts this let him try....

One reviewer lamented that the book did not contain sufficient descriptions of the sports. I could double their number at this moment, since the old manuscripts, an enormous and fascinating bundle of play rules written by the children themselves, are lying before me. But I does it matter how all of them are played? What matters is that they actually are, or at least were, played. Their peculiar rules strike me as neither important, nor even interesting. I think it should suffice to have copied, for nearly every separate class of game, one or more of its playing rules in the original language without the alteration of a letter, no two of them being done by the same child.

The typescript was offered to several publishers in vain, though Andrew Melrose took kindly to it. 'It is simple fact,' he wrote, 'that your Street Games fills me with admiration for it as a literary achievement of the most difficult kind triumphantly done.' That sounded promising. He would not have it, all the same; not even gratis. 'In short, I can't see a public for it.'

He might have seen a public, I suspect, had the material been cast into the shape of an informative treatise. There is always a public for stodgy professorial dissertations on out of the way subjects; and indeed, in the case of Street Games, the thing had already been done after a fashion. That was not my aim. I wished to produce a social document, however unpretending. My point, my only point, was the inventiveness of the children. That is why I piled up the games into a breathless catalogue which, to obtain its full momentum and psychological effect, should be read through, accelerando, from beginning to end without a break. It is then that you fully realize the youngsters' inventive powers. Hence the apparent disorder in my recital and its impromptu flavour, which were deliberately contrived to convey that sense of flurried accumulation. I thought I had succeeded in making this clear to an intelligent reader. Yet a critic complained of my 'undigested material,' and begged his readers to 'forget the irritation caused by casual methods.' If he knew what pains those casual methods had cost me!

Another of them made a sager remark when he said that one marvels at the 'stupidity of the social reformer who desires to close to the children the world of adventure, to take from them their birthright of the streets, and coop them up in well regulated and uninspiring playgrounds where, under the supervision of teachers, their imagination will decline, their originality wither.' That was well said. For the standardization of youth proceeds relentlessly; it is part of what Richard Aldington calls the insane process of making great groups happy by destroying the personal happiness of every individual in that group; it is one of many steps in the direction of that termite ideal towards which we are trending. I wonder how many of these games are still played?

1931.

LONDON STREET GAMES

CHAPTER I

There's not much for us to do, down our way in the way of sports, I mean. Nothing at all, in fact. When we come home from work we generally go straight indoors and have a lay down, and a cup of tea and a pipe; or else we go out and watch a match somewhere. There's always the 'Three Swans', of course....

But the youngsters get on all right seem to, at all events. Some of them have got bats and stumps or footballs, and off they go into the park; and some of the girls have got shuttlecocks, and off they go. But most of them haven't, you know; so they just lark about where they are. PAPER CHASE and ROUNDERS, for instance; you know those? They're plain sailing. But some of these games, like EGG IN CAP (also called EGGET), are rather complicated;