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[At the end of ET's description of life at Belleville, he writes about games they played:
On leaving school:
Going home, we spun our tops or two of us helped ourselves along by bowling hoops or by playing a progressive game with a marble or a stone each, called Buckalong. We used to exchange things and ratify the deed by touching the iron with which our heels were shod, saying "touch cold iron can't change back'.
We used to make fun of a solitary boy, probably of a better class than ourselves, who used to live in the same street and walked about with a snake round his wrist. We called him "Soppy', prepared to run away. But he never retaliated or took any notice of us.
My friends were chiefly boys of our street; if other boys harassed us we used to say "My father's a policeman" to frighten them. But only one grievance remains in my mind, that an older boy, not of my acquaintance, once lured me to drink urine by offering it to me in a bottle as ginger-beer.
[31]
Some time later on a Sunday I pointed out this boy standing with others by the Three Island Pond, and my father clouted his head.
Now we're on the Common...
Esepcially the ponds...
The Common and the streets leading up to it were the scene of our principal game. It was played chiefly on Saturday, our whole holiday. We assembled, for example, at the top of the road in the well-trodden garden of a doctor who had a rowdy son; each bringing a weapon or several weapons, wooden swords and pikes, or daggers, shields, pistols, bows, arrows and with horns and trumpets, and perhaps some bread and cheese and an apple or orange.
There sides were chosen. One side went out to seek a fort in someone's garden or among the gorse bushes. Ten minutes later the other set forth, often in two divisions. Sometimes stealth was the rule of expedition, we advanced whispering and in some order. Sometimes everyone was shouting for his own plans and against another's. At other times the methods alternated, the stealth would become wearisome, we began to chatter and disagree, or the riot of anarchy would suddenly strike us as wrong, everyone said "hush", and for some minutes we modelled ourselves on Sioux, Mohicans or Hurons, crouching, pausing, trying to hush the sound of our breathing. We forgot everything in this Indian ideal.
Nevertheless, the enemy had to be found. Nor were they loth. Someone was sure to show himself and wave defiance, or to leap out on us, supposing we passed by. If seen at a distance they might change the stronghold and there would be a chase. If they were content to stand a storm, the second army would gather all its numbers together and, with
[37]
yells and counter-yells, batter and push them out or be battered and pushed out itself. The struggle was one of character, not weapons. The side possessing the fiercest and most stubborn boys won. The winners would than in turn fortify themselves and sustain an attack; and so it went on, until a mealtime, or nightfall, or rain, or a serious quarrel, finished the war.
[The Boardy Blags — ]
At long intervals fiercer battles were waged. The boys of a neighbouring school of the grammar-school standard looked down upon the Board-school boys, or "Boardy Blags" (i.e. blackguards). The Board-school boys resented this. The feud was usually hardly in so much as a smouldering condition, and so far as I know must have been all but forgotten. Then suddenly it would flame out.
A loose army of Board-school boys several score strong moved along the Grove at the edge of the Common towards the enemy’s school. The army was continually being swelled from the side streets. With all the smaller or more timid boys hanging on its fringes, more angry than warlike, more curious than angry, the numbers were considerable. Stones were the long distance weapons. But rarely, I think, did both sides muster a fairly equal army at the same time. When they came in sight of one another they began to throw stones. They halted, odd stones were thrown here and there, the hangers-on disappeared. I doubt if both sides ever advanced and clashed in hand-to-hand conflict. Usually after some challenging shouts, some wavering
[Very likely to be Battersea Grammar, not Emanuel (since the latter was largely a boarding school at this time.]
[38]
and dissension, the victors knew themselves and set up a shout and moved forward confidently. The smaller army broke and fled down the streets; the larger broke and pursued. Here and there a group kept together and set upon any solitary enemy it could discover. I, who was too small to be in the army, was content to hang on the outer outskirts, pick up the news, and occasionally insult one of the enemy if I remembered that he was one.
As a relaxation we hung about in corners smoking cigarettes of rolled brown paper. Making these, lighting them, puffing them, coughing, relighting them, asking one another if they were alight, and silently enjoying the act and the seclusion, filled hours.
[...]
Being in a little mob increased our boldness and also our ease and safety. According to our tempers, I think we hoped that the others would either shelter us or support us in doing signal deeds. As member of the army, any one of us could most likely insult a passing outsider with impunity: if, however, there had been any swift retaliation the victim of it would often have been left to suffer alone.
[The Common — ]
Therefore the armies did not always wait for a formal order of disbandment.
The Common, for example, offered many temptations to more irregular
[39]
games and aimless rovings. For it was an uneven piece of never cultivated gravelly land. Several ponds of irregular shape and size, varying with the rainfall, had been hollowed out, perhaps by old gravel diggings. It was marshy in other places. Hawthorn and gorse clustered tall and dense in great and in little thickets. Tall elms and poplars stood about irregularly. And the level spaces suitable for cricket, football and tennis were not many. With this variety the Common, even though the railway ran through it parallel to Bolingbroke Grove and only two or three hundred yards away from it, was large enough to provide us with many surprises and discoveries for years. We could spend a day on it without thinking it small or having to retrace our steps. We wandered about it with or without our hoops. For any kind of hiding and hunting games the thickets were excellent. We played the other games in the open spaces.
[...]
[54]
and almost frustrated it.
[The cigar on the Common — ]
One evening after tea I went up on to Wandsworth Common with some bigger boys and sat on the seat by the Box Pond. A cigar was produced, lit and given to me to smoke. A few minutes afterwards I was crawling down the road by giddily clinging to the railings of garden after garden. I slunk into the house neglecting my mother's question "What's the matter?" but soon answering it by deeds not words. My father said that I should not go to Wales. Nevertheless, I went.
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