Curates and Croquet

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21414, 5 March 1935, Page 10

Curates and Croquet

" Croquet," says Lieutenant-Colonel du Pre, chairman of the English Croquet Council, in an interview printed this morning, " is no longer " a game of curates and crinolines." Lieutenant-Colonel du Pre's anxiety to restore the prestige and popularity of a very fine game can be understood and commended. Until it was ousted by lawn tennis, croquet was easily the most popular game at country house week-ends and garden parties. Since the 'eighties. however, despite rapid progress in its technique, it has never quite outgrown the undeserved stigma of effeminacy. But it is surely possible to right one injustice without committing another. The chairman of the Curates' Defence League, if this very necessary organisation existed, might with justice retort that curates have something better to do than play croquet. The truth is that curates are far more often maligned than croquet players. In the popular estimation they are pale, penniless, and pigeon-chested, and spend most of their time at teaparties. Their title, once as dignified as any the church could confer, is linked inseparably with a foolish joke about an egg. Sydney Smith —a curate once himself—complained sadly that " there is some- " thing which excites compassion in " the very name of a curate." Some day, it must be hoped, the Curates Defence League will confound popular prejudice with statistics

about curates who stroked their college boats to victory, about prodigious curates who sweated in tne front row of the scrum, about profound curates who startled their tutors, about silver-tongued curates who became presidents of the union, about curates who were rich beyond the dreams of avarice. For the present it is sufficient to say that, if croquet is a game that requires the highest qualities of sportsmanship and skill, curates are the men to play it.