THE LATE LORD RIDDELL
IT is not for me to attempt even a thumb-nail sketch of the career of Lord Riddell. His life has left its mark on the world history of his time; it has left its mark of remembrance on many lives, old and young, which must be the greater thing. He felt with Virgil: "There are tears in the affairs of this life, and human sufferings touch the heart." And, as men of old sang in this land when Alfred the Great lay dead:— Cattle die, kinsfolk die, Land and lea are wasted, One thing that never dies I know— Men's judgment on the dead.
Cattle die, kinsfolk die, And man himself dies, But never dies good report Away from him that won it.
MORE to my hand is the endeavour to connect him with the game we love. I do not know that he ever swung a cue in his life; if he did, he never mentioned it to me, never hinted about a billiard table at Walton Heath where, during one or two honoured visits, he made me feel enough at home to have played him for a friendly half-crown if there had been a billiard table under his generous roof.
THAT was like him. He had the natural majesty of that presence which made you forget the lord and live with the man while you were with him; he was above and beyond so much that some men bristle with. That granted, we know him for a sportsman, taking sport to mean that British all which brings squire and labourer (even poacher, if the rascal can keep a good length) together on the village green to play cricket, the cricket we mean when We say this or that, is or is not cricket.
HIS great paper, the News of the World will always tell what an all-round sportsman Lord Riddell was at heart. Golf at Walton Heath, yes, and rightly so, but also darts for those to whom golf may never be more than a language; also angling—stay, I edit the BILLIARD PLAYER here and now, which brings us to billiards, and such connection as Lord Riddell may have had with the game beautiful, which cannot be mentioned without reference to Sir Emsley Carr, Chief Editor of the News of the World, who is a billiard enthusiast.
HOW far Lord Riddell may have been the genial patron, and how far Sir Emsley Carr may have been the active spirit, can never be known, ought not to be known of men who were together so much in matters so vastly more important during years and years so very full. But it is my billiard duty to recall that the News of the World put up cups for great match play between Willie Smith and Tom Newman, and afterwards promoted the famous Gold Cup Tournaments, in which Walter Lindrum, Joe Davis, Tom Newman and Clark McConachy took part.
THIS brings us to the only direct connection I ever knew Lord Riddell to have with billiards.
Lindrum won the Gold Cup; Lord Riddell presided and made the presentation at a lunch in the board room of the News of the World. He did not advertise his coming, to do so was not in the least like him, I doubt whether anyone in the building expected him to be present until after the lunch was ordered. But come he did, and speak he did, as he alone could with that human knack of words to take all the starch out of the occasion, without losing an atom of what was worth while talking about.
I HAVE no verbatim notes of what he said; I cannot write shorthand, it would not help me if I could. Nothing so precise and good to swear by in court can help to convey the manner of the man; the quiet, clear, effortless ease of his elocution; the power to stress so well the one word, always a short one, with which to make his point.
HE made, I remember, a couple of points, only that Lindrum was the one man in all the millions of human beings to excel above all others at the difficult game of billiards; only that Clark McConachy was a wonderful loser (you deserved that tribute, Clark).
Just these two simple points, but, ah! how he made them. How his eyes, nobly great by all he suffered and felt for all who suffered—how those eyes lit up to make glad the one little word he so wished to gladden, and did so gladden to all of us. Then, at last, the goodbye; that step, , so like him, walk out of the room—that turn of the head— that smile in parting.