If I had to choose between my wife and my putter... well, I’d miss her.
Almond of Loretto
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Almond of Loretto, Robert Jameson Mackenzie, 1906
This is not a review of the book as such but rather of the contribution that it makes to the relationship been sport and Christianity.
Sally Magnusson, in her book on Eric Liddell, The Flying Scotsman, quotes Almond: "why, oh why, cannot there be a holy Alliance between the athlete and the Christian; an alliance against the common enemies of both, against intemperance and indolence and dissipation and effeminacy and aesthetic voluptuousness and heartless cynicism and all the unnatural and demoralising elements in our social life?" Page 24
Almond was headmaster of Loretto for 40 years and is described in the official history of the school as insisting on "the value of organised games" and having an intense belief in a holistic education, that "character could be trained only if body, soul and spirit were all being educated together". Robert Holt called him "the most athletic of all Victorian headmasters". Under his headship every boy had to take a minimum of one hour's active exercise out of doors in all weathers. (Page 243). He also refereed the first Scotland v England game.
When attention was flagging in class Almond was not adverse to abandoning the lesson and taking the class off to the gymnasium, believing that the learning experience could continue more productively in that environment. His comment "Too often now our schools, instead of being what Almond would call 'nurseries of character' have become factories for turning out passers in exams".seems as relevant today as when he said it!
The biography refers to Almond's "lifelong battle for the promotion of the manly virtues and the confusion of nincompoops and pedantsî (Page 56). He encountered opposition partly from evangelicals in the 1870s. Mackenzie comments that it was an "Evangelicalism which had not yet concluded its alliance with the muscular Christian's creed" (Page 95)
Almond had what Mackenzie called "a deep repugnance" of the evangelical emphasis on personal soul saving. "The great misconception of Christianity has been [a failure to recognize] that the gospel message is only so far personal that it teaches individuals the duty of working for the collective good". (Page 279)
Mackenzie makes an interesting comparison of Almond with two other Muscular Christian headmasters: "Thomas Arnold stands principally for the religious ideal in education; Thring perhaps chiefly for the artistic; Almond..for the scientific. To Arnold,education is the answer to the question - How shall we train a servant of God? To Thring - How shall we produce a life instinct with the spirit of fitness? To Almond - How shall we apply the best knowledge of the day to the nurture of the young?" Page 156
A letter Almond sent to the Editor of the Tatler (Pages 201-3) explaining why he had replaced golf with football as the main sport at Loretto gives us a further insight into the man. Golf "cultivated no school feeling, no high spirits, no courage and no endurance".
Almond saw cricket as "not a selfish game, so long as averages are kept in the background and a boy cares more for his school winning than for his own personal success". Before going on to comment on football, Almond cannot resist a dig at the preponderance of draws in modern cricket, which he attributes to selfishness!
"Football is much less selfish" but only if little stress is laid on the scorers. Almond adds that he will drop from the team any boy who fails to pass to a boy in a better scoring position. "Eight-oar rowing is the least selfish of all the great sports, because the whole eight share equally in a victory or a defeat" (Page 202)