Vol 3, No 20
Articles in this issue
- 'Goethe' claims the discovery of a variety of 'cyclist that escaped 'Rusticus' and the earlier sketches of the 'Cyclomaniac', 'The Member's Family' and 'The Medallist', the unattached 'member's brother', often so regular an attender at Club meets as to shame many a full member, of whom one asks not whether but when he will join. He regrets that the new rules provide nothing for this vagrant membership, and hopes the class will increase, since a man who joins with L.B.C. traditions already in his head is the more likely to stick to the Club.
- In these days of bye-laws, Radical Birmingham lets riders go their way by day or night without interference from the police, those nightmares of Middlesex 'cyclists, or annoyance from cap-throwers, so large a section of the public there being riders themselves. The bicycle is treated as a vehicle among the ordinary street traffic, foot passengers look for one as they would for a horse, and the horses themselves take no notice, unlike round London; the roads are indifferent, though some Midland main roads run very fairly, and the writer offers his help to intending tourists.
- Captain Theo. Godlee's account of a Meet that ranks among the successes of the year: forty-eight men, admirable weather, the two Brighton members The O'Reilly and Martin Rucker (who rode up Reigate Hill on the way), the S.E. in great force, a poor N.E. showing and only two of the five District Captains present. Finding no one at the Lea Bridge Road he rode alone to 'Jack Straw's' by 4.5, on to Kew, then by new cuts round Richmond, Kingston and Surbiton, reaching the 'Glyn Arms' at 6.30 to the minute; the S.E. came twenty strong through Nonsuch Park, where Stephen Smith knocked four or five men over without coming to grief himself, and were urged by the anxious landlord to sit down to tea first, so that the two sections had only a few minutes together. A full list of those present is printed, the N.W. men reaching Hampstead at 10.40 after about 43 miles.
- Hon. Sec. Herbert R. Boyce, who is leaving town shortly and anxious to get the Race Meeting affairs off his mind, asks the many members still in default to send the money for the tickets they used and return the unused ones, post-office orders payable at the Chief Office.
- The S.W. District report for 17 July, omitted by accident from the last number: half a dozen men left the 'Griffin' at 4.25 by Ewell and Banstead Downs in telling heat, took Reigate Hill in open order, and found chaos at the 'Grapes,' where above sixty machines stood in the stable yard and one too inquiring member discovered the milk came from the 'dry goods' store. A thunderstorm at Surbiton cost an hour's shelter and it was close on midnight before the last man was home, 29½ miles from Kingston and back.
- An N.E. and an N.W. member, left behind at Ewell five minutes after the main body started, chase it home: a head-on collision with two strange 'cyclists at the first corner leaves one with a scratched knee, a bent treadle and an apparently collapsed machine, and the reports of riders ahead grow ever more contradictory through Kingston, Richmond and Kew until a final rush near the Edgware Road overhauls only strangers in straw hats with yellow ribbons. Looking at his watch at 9.50 the pair realise they have taken an hour and three-quarters against the main body's two, and have been in front all along, and the policeman who had stopped the writer the week before had prudently deserted his corner. Signed An Essex Member.
- McCallum Hill opens a series of short antiquarian tours for riders wanting British, Roman and early English remains, with the roads by which to reach them. This one runs from Silchester, the Roman Calleva, its 120 acres, two miles of standing wall, museums and the brick signed 'Birgillius', by Old Basing House, the Andover earthworks, Quarley Mount, Vespasian's Camp and Stonehenge, across Salisbury Plain to Old Sarum, then Silbury Hill and Avebury, Ashdown and the Vale of the White Horse, Dorchester's 'Jesse' window and Medmenham Abbey, home by Great Marlow and the Uxbridge or Bath roads; distances are deliberately omitted, but stiff hills are flagged between Mortimer and Sherfield and at Lavington.
- The Pickwick B.C. has circulated other clubs inviting delegates to a meeting on 5 August to discuss representing the counties by selected teams as in cricket, and the Crystal Palace Company has at last agreed to lay a proper bicycle track round one of the great basins. Also M. D. Rucker's two prizes at the Eastbourne Sports, three South-Westers plotting a Continental tour in the 'Glyn Arms' summer-house while the South-Easters use them as a target for garden bowls, the thousand excuses a S.E. man finds for not riding in Essex, W. Wyndham's heats in the Arion B.C. open mile, curiosity about a compressed-air tricycle and the 'omnicycle', Dan Young at Colombo exchanging his 'cycle for the lawn tennis bat, and bicycling's growth at Wiesbaden, where a member's brother was fined 1 mark for knocking an old man down while his companion was fined 2 for riding on the footpath. Signed L'Homme qui Rit.
- Advertisements can be inserted without expense: H. T. Crosby's quite new 48-in. 'Club' of the latest pattern, half nickel-plated, at £12 with accessories; John Scott's 41 lb. 56-in. 'Club' with patent hollow felloes, much used for racing, at £8 10s. with a bran new Salsbury hub-lamp; and E. H. Pollock's 56-in. 'Timberlake' at £8 and 51-in. 'Stassen' at £4 4s.
- Three meetings only: the Railway Clearing House at Stamford Bridge and the Brighton B.C. annual race meeting on 31 July, and the Bedford Amateur B.C. on 2 August.
- Francis Godlee, 'Globe-trotting Treasurer and N.E. Dist. Capt.', writes from Hong Kong on 14 June with the promised report on the Club's resident China member, rechristened 'Bill' after once answering to Sykes, shaved in bed by a Chinese barber, dressed by a 'boy' who even fans his collar stiff, carried the five hundred yards to his office by two coolies, and celebrated at the balls for his conjuring, singing and a new dance step. A second letter from 'An Old Member' protests that at the Ewell General Meet the S.E. were found in the middle of tea when the N.E., N.W. and W. arrived at 6.30, so the visitors had to wait until the room emptied and the two parties saw nothing of each other, and that for the £4 10s. taken by the landlord the tea should at least have been of fair quality.
- J. W. Wilson is thanked for his communications and asked for more, H. T. Crosby is told there is no charge for advertising, and 'Loss of the Midshipmite' is held over to next week.
- Standing note that contributions must be addressed to the Editor, L.B.C. Gazette, Eastcheap, E.C., bear the author's name, be written on one side of the paper only, and be received by Wednesday morning for immediate insertion. Messrs. Darling supply badge-stamped portfolios at 2s., a few 1878 covers remain, and back numbers cost 1d. each.