The Yellow Perils - Yokohama F.C. (1909)

'The idea of Japs playing football ----in the English Cup too- struck them as being intensely amusing …'

So wrote the sports writer William Pollock of the fans and players before the match in his short story 'The Yellow Perils' which appeared in the  January 28th 1909 number of Pearson’s Weekly. It’s also unlikely that these same sceptics would have backed a Japanese rugby team to beat the South Africans in the 2015 World Cup in England.

'The Yellow Perils' is a fictional account of the exploits of a visiting soccer team, Yokohama F.C. in pursuit of The English Cup, where their extraordinary success in trouncing not only a few lowly London teams, such as Hammersmith Rovers and Shepherd’s Bush, but also such League One titans as Chelsea, Aston Villa, Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, and Manchester City, astounded everyone who witnessed them play.

To those who watched the humbling of such a famous team as Chelsea,

Matthew Arnold letter - a football injury

Found tipped into the front of Poems of Matthew Arnold (London, 1853) an unpublished  handwritten signed letter from the poet to his French friend the writer and anglophile Edmond Schérer.

PAINS HILL COTTAGE, COBHAM, SURREY*. Oct 13th '76

My dear Mr. Scherer


My boy slipped down and was trodden upon at football last March, and was very ill afterwards from some injury to the back. He got well, however, but when I wrote to you we had been disturbed by a sudden return of his pain.  We have taken him to Prescott Hewitt** a great surgeon, who says that he must lie in bed till the pain has entirely gone,  this upsets the arrangements of a small cottage, as we have to give our invalid the one spare room we have, that he may have more air  and  space than in his own little room.  So we are unable to receive any guests in the house while he is ill, and therefore I was obliged, to my very great regret, to put you off.  I fear it will be still a week before we cease to be a  hospital but – do let me know what you are doing and how long you stay in England.  I cannot easily give up the hope of seeing you here. At any rate I shall meet you at the Athenaeum, I trust;  for next week I begin inspecting*** again and shall be in London every day. I have so much to say to you and to hear from you. Most sincerely yours Matthew Arnold.

* Printed at head of notepaper. This was in the beautiful private landscaped park Painshill Park and Arnold rented the cottage from 1873 to 1888.

** In Dickens's Dictionary of London, by Charles Dickens , Jr., (1879) under 'Doctors' Prescott G. Hewitt is noted as Consulting Surgeon at the  Evelina Hospital for Sick Children (Southwark Bridge Road.)

***Matthew Arnold  was appointed, in April 1851, one of Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, a job which he worked at until 1886. He once described it as 'drudgery.'

Song of the Football Cup (Eton 1890)

Found- a rare pamphlet Song of the Football Cup (Ingalton Drake, Eton 1890) by R. Carr Bosanquet, with music composed by Joseph Barnby. The whole song goes thus:

Mustering under the old red wall, less than year ago 
(The sky that day was sullen and gray the frost lay hard below,)
Each of us vow'd he would conquer or fall, facing the friendly foe; 
Our hearts we steel'd as we took the field, and felt our pulses glow.

Mustering under the old red wall, less than year ago etc.,

Remember the struggle that won the game! Remember the charge we made,
When only a minute was left to us to win it was e'er a man afraid?
Lock'd in a mass on the ball we came, between the cheering hosts, 
Like a roaring wind on their long behind, and drove it through the posts.

Mustering under the old red wall, less than year ago etc.,

Tho' almost done, tho' almost dead, we knew that we should win;
With lightning pace and stern-set face and crash of shin on shin;
Then shout till you shiver the beams o'erhead, shout till you shake the sky
We've won! for my tutor's the king among Pewters and still we'll do or die!

Mustering under the old red wall, less than year ago etc.,

And year after year, as body and soul are plunged in the sterner strife, 
As pleasures and pains, losses and gains, sadden or gladden our life;
Tho' scatter'd where'er from pole to pole our conquering flags unfurl'd,
In darkest December we still shall remember the noblest game in the world!

Mustering under the old red wall, less than year ago etc.,

R. Carr Bosanquet, later a distinguished archaeologist,  makes into the DNB  and even Wikipedia although there is no mention of this rousing football chant. While at Eton he edited The Parachute and later the rare anthology Seven Summers: An Eton Medley. He was related to the distinguished cricketer Bernard Bosanquet, the inventor of the Googly. The cricketer's son was the amusing and fun-loving BBC presenter Reginald "Reggie" Bosanquet. The reference to 'the king among Pewters' probably refers to sporting trophies..