Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

16 The Origin; Tom Brown’s Schooldays young male was all the rage. Matters have become really significant when the shape of the female or male body becomes regarded as pointedly fashionable in a religious or political sense. Just as relevant, when one of his medical apprentices falls in ‘calf-love’ with his winsome daughter Molly, Dr Gibson contemplates the sublimatory effects of sport; ‘I might have prescribed your joining the Hollingford Cricket Club and set you at liberty as often as I could on the Saturday afternoons.’ The Muscular Christians did regard cricket as useful in channelling animal urges, were they bestial or romantic. Hollingford, like Cranford, was a pseudonym for Knutsford; in her younger days Elizabeth Gaskell cast her youthful eye over the doubtless ‘muscled’ gents as a spectator at the Knutsford club. The chasm between Christian Socialism and Muscular Christianity is inescapable. The ebullient Teddy Roosevelt, President of the United States 1901-09, was a declared Muscular Christian but he was no Socialist. Ditto the YMCA, established in London in 1844 by George Williams, a devout Congregationalist. It is apparent that, in penning the annals of Tom Brown, the author eschewed much of his left-wing tendency and concentrated on his credo of ‘Manliness’. Gerald Howat commented on Thomas Hughes’ ambivalence and his swaying between co-operativeness and, with his delight in sport and competition, the discipline of a rowing eight or the unity of a football team might be judged as examples of co-operation. It seems that it was a deliberate choice. Perhaps Thomas Hughes did not wish unduly to confuse his young readers. Perhaps had the Socialism been too explicit his publishers or his putative readers’ parents might have objected. In the event he devised an adroit characterisation of Muscular Christianity. Tom Brown has two alter egos; the venturesome Harry ‘Scud’ East provides the Muscle and George Arthur, more serious and cerebral, supplies the Christianity. It was difficult, however, for the young reader not be more beguiled by the impish antics of ‘Scud’ East than the solemn pronouncements of the sombre Arthur. The novel was easily