Long, long ago, in an era far far away your genial hosts fulfilled a rather long held fancy - to be published in The Chap Magazine.
The problem was that the final feature was a savigly edited version and for many a month we thought the original was lost.
Until now.
Skimming through a hard drive we've just discovered the original which we very much hope you enjoy.
Mr Coleman’s TALES OF HONEST AND GENUINE SPORTING ENDEAVOUR: part one.
Sporting connoisseurs still speak in hushed tones of the tumultuous contest between noted duellist and gentleman adventurer, Enoch “Soames” Soames and Caswell Cornford, most notorious rake of late-Victorian and Edwardian England. It was the epoch-defining moment in that most gentlemanly of sports, Bar Billiards.
It was a battle between good and evil, self-improvement and self-abasement, their antipathy matched only by their adroitness and tailoring.
Relentless promotion of the feud by the mountebank, Cuthbert Le Fré, had raised the purse to an unimaginable ten guineas, with Soho’s Glasshouse Stores taproom erecting temporary galleries to accommodate the swell of spectators. Amongst the grotesque and sinister masses were Mr HG Wells - whose love of the game was well-known - and his close companions, Mr Bernard Shaw and Mr Elgar. Wells, indeed, cited the sport as one played in his vision of Utopia, entirely as a result of the nervous excitement this particular match gave him.
Their contrasting style of play was mirrored by their preparations. Mr. Soames partaking of many renowned tonics and elixirs, followed by a pioneering treatment to cleanse the body’s humours with Swiss oxygen (pictured, with Mr Le Fré);
Mr. Cornford’s provisions consisting of several large gamebirds, copious quantities of laudanum and a meticulous peregrination of local bordellos.
Once the pre-match exchange of Coats of Arms had taken place and the two gentlemen had posed for the commemorative Toby Jugs fired in their honour, the formalities drew to a close.
The two men barely contained their mutual repugnance at the opening handshake: an audible bark escaped Mr Soames as he identified Mr Cornford’s improperly turned shirt cuff.
Soon Mr Soames was in amongst the balls and scoring freely, prompting the other chap to nervously twirl his silver-topped cane – a gift from the young Nawab of Pataudi. And so the pattern was set: Soames studiously building breaks with sensible shot-making and little fuss; Cornford, cocksure, swaggering, audacious, by turns frustrated and then devastating.
“That is what the crowd pay to see!” sniped Mr Cornford, after potting an outrageous triple-cushion red, gesturing contemptuously at the lithographs placed around the arena celebrating Mr Soames’ endorsement of various pomades, nostrums and Mr Gillette’s new-fangled safety razor.
Mr Soames was ever the gentleman, never failing to doff his hat to his opponent in recognition of the role Lady Luck often plays in the sinking of one’s balls.
As the match meandered sedately to a climax, there was an interruption when several burly factotums had to be called to remove the excitable Mr Wells. His attempts at ‘thought transference’ had caused one of the gin drinking slatterns in the cheap seats to burst into a rendition of the music hall standard, ‘Ballyhooly’ – whose key of E Major was entirely inappropriate for a contest of such import.
With the final ball sunk and victory consummated for ‘Soames’ Soames, the two gladiators relinquished their steely grips on their cues, loosened their cravats and retired to their respective gentleman’s clubs.
It was not the first pitched battle between the two men Shaw later described as “the panjandrum and the popinjay”, and it would not be the last.
