Vol 3, No 30
Articles in this issue
- The leading article rebuts the charge that bicycling is a selfish amusement, holding that a day's ride binds men together by small services and concessions, and commends the coming winter gatherings, the promised S.E. district ball and the entertainments of the Orchestral and Dramatic Societies, as the means by which members' relatives may meet their brother wheelmen.
- Answering a complaint at the last general meeting that the Club had no time to consider who should fill the chief offices, the Gazette makes known that the Captain and Secretary, together with the N.W., S.W. and S.E. District Captains, have already announced they will not seek re-election, and urges members to use the winter gatherings to settle what is to be done.
- Minutes of the meetings of 11th and 25th October: Herbert Soames Jackson, Hugh Speed Heal, Edward Ernest Leeds and H. G. Middleton elected; the resignations of G. G. Walker, J. F. Radford, R. H. Short and J. C. Randell accepted; Arthur Adams invited to be an honorary member; the dinner fixed for the St. James's Hall Restaurant and moved from 8th to 24th November; and H. R. Boyce and Theo. Godlee giving up the secretaryship and the captaincy at the year's end.
- Hon. Sec. Herbert R. Boyce announces the annual dinner at the St. James's Hall Restaurant, Piccadilly, on Wednesday 24th November, tickets seven shillings exclusive of wine, of which sixpence goes to an attendance fund for the waiters, who are not to be given gratuities. W. A. Smith, who has the musical arrangements, asks to hear at once from members willing to sing or play.
- Three district announcements: the S.E. at the "King's Arms Hotel" (B.T.C. house), Katherine Street, Croydon, on 13th November with tea at six and a man to meet the 5.15 from Charing Cross; the N.W. at the "Holly Bush Hotel," Hampstead, on 20th November, meat tea at seven, thought better served than "Jack Straw's"; and the N.E. on the first Saturday in December.
- Frank Jolly calls a special general meeting at 47, Finsbury Circus on Tuesday 2nd November to receive the Hon. Sec.'s resignation, consider whether the Society should continue on its present basis, elect a successor, and arrange an orchestra for the L.B.C. dramatic performance.
- The general meeting of 7th October, attended by fourteen members, expunged Rule 3 and rewrote Rule 2 on the election of honorary members (one black ball in three to exclude), and elected Theo. Godlee president, F. M. Williams acting manager and F. W. Morris hon. sec. and treasurer. J. Y. Stephens of Miss Litton's company was made stage manager, and St. George's Hall, Langham Place, booked for 13th January to play Byron's comedy "Cyril's Success."
- With the Captain's sanction the ball is fixed for Thursday 9th December at the Public Hall, Croydon, tickets 5s. for ladies and 10s. 6d. for gentlemen from the thirty-odd stewards or from District Captain F. M. Williams; trains to and from East and West Croydon are listed, and an omnibus may be arranged if enough Blackheath men come.
- After two unpropitious Saturdays, two Western members met Hill and a friend of the N.W. at Tally-ho on the 16th and rode to "The Sun" at Northaw, returning by the high road, 25 miles from Hampstead. On the way they met E. Scott of Ealing, riding home from Edinburgh and already in from St. Neots that day, and Alison turned up at "Jack Straw's" still waiting for his machine from the makers.
- Captain Theo. Godlee reports the joint run to the "Saracen's Head," Beaconsfield, the last run of at all an official character for 1880: the thickest sheet-mud on record to Hornsey, a lamp-and-uncertainty collision on the Uxbridge Road that piled two men and machines on new granite without injury, eight miles of mud and stones beyond Uxbridge and a nasty fall for Langridge, four Oxford men waiting at the inn, and a homeward split between the road and the train from Slough.
- "Two O.L.'s" record a four-day tour: a broken tyre patched by a Hartlebury blacksmith, Worcester Cathedral, and a fog so thick out of Tewkesbury that riding to Gloucester Fair traffic was almost impossible, then "The Bell" at Gloucester, Cheltenham's "Queen's," the Cotswold climbs to Northleach, Burford, Witney beer at "The Marlborough," toll paid for their bicycles on Lord Abingdon's bridge, the "Randolph" at Oxford, and Stokenchurch Hill and dust home, 145 miles, the cyclometer reading 150.5.
- R. G. Francis leaves before dawn one October morning for Winchester: breakfast at the "Angel," Guildford, by nine, the long climb to the Hind Head, a lecture delivered to roadmen laying loose gravel and sandstone above Liphook, Butser and Portsdown Hills, a missed train at Botley, and a Dearlove's lamp to see him through mud and drizzle to the "Royal" at half-past seven after "about the hardest hundred miles" of his life; he returns by East Meon, Petersfield, Midhurst and Petworth, catching a late train at Horsham.
- Paragraphs signed "L'Homme Qui Rit": L.B.C. men at the opening of the new Crystal Palace track, Mr. Charles Darling's 12 lb. jack landed by Mrs. Darling in an umbrella, a Warwickshire hotel offering B.T.C. head-quarters and economical funerals by Shillibeer, a Birmingham tailor fined 1s. and 10s. 6d. costs for riding without a light who pleaded he was only on a "bone-shaker," the Treasurer writing from Maori New Zealand, and the returned Italian trio, the N.W. District Captain having flattened a gaping peasant on a Florentine tram-line.
- An occasional correspondent summarises the county's new bye-laws, sanctioned by the Local Government Board on 8th September and in force from 18th March 1881: bicyclists must keep to the right and carry lamps, sound a bell or whistle when overtaking, dismount and draw aside for a restive horse, and not ride two abreast when passing any vehicle or animal, on a penalty of £2.
- Two machines offered: Wadham Wyndham of Reigate's 56-in. "Humber" racer, japanned, 30 lb., hollow forks and ball bearings to both wheels, at £12 10s.; and a seven-month-old 57-in. nickelled "Humber" light roadster with brake, on view in the City, from A. W. Chippindale of the University Boat Club, Oxford.
- "W. A. S." takes the road on from Coventry: Kenilworth Castle and the £60,000 Leicester spent on it, Guy's Cliff and the Gaveston Cross on Blacklow Hill, Warwick's Caesar's Tower and the Warwick Vase, Shakespeare's Stratford, the Evesham bell-tower, Worcester Cathedral and bathing in the Severn, the dangerous hills of Malvern and the Wych Pass, cider at the "British Camp Inn" below the Herefordshire Beacon, Ledbury, Hereford and Ross on the Wye. To be continued.
- W. T. H. and two N.W. companions answer the stock argument that large clubs can have no esprit de corps by describing their recent tour: a former S.E. member called on them at Tewkesbury and took them home for the evening, and a former N.E. member at Wells introduced them to the local captain and gathered road information for Somerset and North Devon.
- "Una Sorella," a member's sister, forwards a local paper's warning that the sewer-ventilator gratings laid lengthwise down Widmore Hill near Bromley have bars wide enough to admit a bicycle tyre; the writer had seen a machine caught in one such man-trap and its rider shot into the air "as if he had come out of a catapult."
- "X" of the L.B.C. encloses a Field advertisement in which Louis Davis of Bishop's Waltham seeks £100 to bring out a one-wheel velocipede that will supersede everything propelled by manual power, endorses the rival "X" on the etymology of bicycle (it should have been dicycle), and rebuts a cutting claiming all bicyclists grow bow-legged and round-shouldered.
- The standing note: contributions to the Editor at 35, Eastcheap, on one side of the paper and bearing the author's name, 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.