London Street Games.

Bookseller Notes

With an interesting typed note by the book's original owner laid in - advising a subsequent generation of the value of 'this little book [...] something of a rarity'; a couple of inserted typed notes by the same offer personal reminiscences relating to particular games or verses.Douglas's 'breathless catalogue' of juvenile sport is written in the voice of a working-class Londoner, possibly derived - as was much of the material - from Eric Wolton, 'an East End street urchin whom Douglas had adopted in 1911 and had taken touring with him around Europe' (ODNB). This mode provides a suitable playfulness that allows it to wear its academic credentials as a study of the subject more lightly; the games themselves carry names that evince a similar sort of charm: 'Hark the Robbers Coming Through'; 'Farmer Left His Hat Behind'; 'Raps on the Bugle'; 'Green Man Rise-O'; 'Kick-Can Policeman'; 'Alley Gobs' and 'Leading the Blind Horse to the Knacker', to name but a few. The book was amongst James Joyce's extensive reading material for 'Finnegans Wake'.Later in the year of the book's publication, 'a darker aspect of Douglas's interest in young boys became evident' (ODNB), with arrests and charges for sexual activity with minors that prompted exile to Capri - this providing an unwholesome flavour to the coyness with which he curtails his account of games (the name 'Touching the King's Sceptre' suggestive enough, the other only called 'P.....e') about which 'I can't say anything whatever [...] except that you need good confederates and a boy who is quite new to the quarter', on the basis that they are 'not nice at all' and belong to the society of 'rough chaps'.