Alaskan Range: Challenge Jumping
...jumpers challenged each other to clear distances or hurdles, jump from building to building, or over large obstacles. Cropp reported that Calverley was a risk taker who "used to jump the wall between the schoolyard and the field, a drop of ten feet, with his hands in his pockets."
Greg Hill tells of the astonishing feats of a Victorian poet.
Sporting achievement can be measured many ways, from winning a true world championship, like soccer, to competing in events hardly anyone's heard about. Soccer's played by millions around the world, and the other extreme has Victorian poet Charles Stuart Calverley, the challenge jumper.
Born in Martley, England in 1831, Calverley first attended Oxford University and was known as a "clever but indolent schoolboy." In the "People of Martley" website (www.martley.org.uk), David Cropp writes that Calverley won academic prizes at Oxford, but "his general exuberance and dangerous lack of discipline meant that he provoked the university to such an extent that his place as a student was terminated." Calverley transferred to Cambridge University, where he continued jumping, won more academic honors, became a don, and established his reputation as a poet of humorous verse. His early poems focused on college life, but his scope expanded when he left Cambridge to study law in London, and his more mature poetry included gentle, subtle parodies of the leading poets of the day.
Calverley was a kind, handsome, intelligent man who was forever popular and always the life of the party. He married his beautiful cousin, had babies, and seemed destined for a successful legal career. However, a year out of his legal apprenticeship. Calverley slipped while ice skating and suffered a severe concussion that went undiagnosed. It caused debilitating pain and made practicing law impossible, but Calverley continued writing his parodies and light verse and gained new fame for translating Latin and Greek classics into English and English classics into Latin.
Calverley's traumatic head injury is ironic since his favorite college sport was challenge jumping. In this rare and informal event, jumpers challenged each other to clear distances or hurdles, jump from building to building, or over large obstacles. Cropp reported that Calverley was a risk taker who "used to jump the wall between the schoolyard and the field, a drop of ten feet, with his hands in his pockets." Wikipedia cites Nelson Thornes' "Understanding Balance" to explain the classification of jumping: "jump" ("jumping from and landing on two feet"), "hop" ("jumping from one foot and landing on the same foot"), "leap" ("jumping from one foot and landing on the other foot"), "assemble" ("jumping from one foot and landing on two feet")", and "sissonne" ("jumping from two feet and landing on one foot").
Like all young men, Calverley enjoyed taking physical risks while fooling around. So did the inventors of American baseball about the same time as Calverley was hopping and sissonning. Back then personal honor trumped glory, and healthy, gentlemanly exercise mattered more than the final score. Pitchers in the 1850s truly pitched, as in "tossed," the ball so the batter could hit it, and fastballs and curves were considered most unseemly. On the other hand, batters were called out if fly balls were caught on the fly or on the first bounce, to give the gloveless fielders a sporting chance.
Runners were also out if fielders hit them with thrown balls, also known as "soaking," before they reached base. "Soak" is traced back to proto-Germanic "sukon," which meant "to take liquid," and according to the American Heritage Dictionary, being "soaked" was a nineteenth century American euphemism for inebriation. "Soaking" a runner with the ball was an exciting part of the game for spectators, but wasn't as popular among the players, particularly as baseballs got smaller and harder.
I read about the infusion of society's rougher elements into baseball in a library book by Peter Morris titled "But Didn't We Have Fun?: An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870." It's a fascinating piece of social history, illuminating a period of American history that's relatively unknown in modern times, apart from the Civil War.
That great conflict stirred the social pot in educational ways, too. It led to the realization that communities with public libraries are richer than those without. And that's truer than ever in these economic hard times, when educating oneself, sprucing up resumes, and finding good entertainment, and similar activities make more sense than ever. Libraries make that possible. As Oscar Wilde said, about the game of life, "Success is a science. If you have the conditions, you get the result."
