“Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.”
– Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in “Street Haunting: A London Adventure”
“Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”
– G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) in “A Piece of Chalk”
“Then I turned and went up the Han-mein River. In all, I must have covered several thousand miles on water. During these wearisome travels, when I was unlucky enough to encounter sudden storms or rough waters, many times I cried aloud to the gods to spare my brief life. In one such moment, as I looked ahead and behind, I noticed that the only other people out in boats were all either merchants or government officials. I sighed as I thought to myself: except for men who are anxious for profit and those who have no choice, who would be caught out here?”
– Ou-Yang Hsiu (1007-1072), writing in 1043; translated by Ronald Egan
Henry Denison Babcock Jr. had the world by the tail. His grandfather, Samuel D. Babcock, was a wealthy businessman with a home on Fifth Avenue, a “country seat” at Riverdale-on-Hudson, and memberships in the Metropolitan, Union and Manhattan clubs, the New York Yacht Club, and the Country Club of Westchester County. Henry’s father, Henry Babcock Sr., was also a clubman, belonging to the Metropolitan, Union League, University, Riding, Rockaway Hunt, Larchmont Yacht and New York Yacht clubs; he worked with his father at Hollister & Babcock, the family brokerage firm.
The young Henry thus had many opportunities, but it was at the Rockaway Hunting Club in Cedarhurst, Long Island, where ocean breezes riffled the grasses of the polo field, that he found his niche. The captain of Rockaway’s polo team was William A. Hazard, who was also Secretary of the Polo Association. As a way of encouraging young men to play polo, Hazard put up trophy cups for the younger players, and was able to field as many as five teams of three players each for junior tournaments.
Tall and athletic, Henry Babcock Jr. played in Rockaway’s Junior Polo Club for four years. By the summer of 1903, he was playing with the adult players on the club’s second team in matches against teams like Westchester. That fall, he went to Yale and joined the polo team. At least two of his Rockaway teammates – S. Oakley Vander Pool and Laurence B. Rand – were players on the Yale team, and may well have influenced him to join them in New Haven. As a freshman, Babcock played polo in the fall, and then again in the spring of 1904.
On a Saturday afternoon in May, Yale met Princeton at Van Cortlandt Park. It was a spirited match. As Babcock thundered towards the Princeton goal, closely marked by Princeton’s W.G. Devereaux, both men swung for the ball at the same moment and Babcock was seen to reel slightly. He had been grazed on the temple by Devereaux’s mallet. The Princeton man was unaware of what had happened, but Babcock began to lose strength in one hand and arm, and guided his pony toward the sidelines before sliding off.
The captain of the Yale team rode to his side to ask what had happened, and Babcock said, “I have been caught, caught in the head. It’s nothing, though.” Babcock wanted to continue, but his captain sent in another player to replace him. On the sidelines, his friends gave him whiskey and oatmeal water, and rubbed his head. He laughed at the idea that he might need a doctor.
After the match, he was taken to his home in New York where his mother prevailed and a doctor was summoned. Henry Babcock wanted his dinner, but the doctor advised him to stick to milk and go to bed. He retired at 11 o’clock. At about 2 a.m., his brother was awakened by the sound of Henry’s labored breathing. More doctors were summoned; they found that Henry Babcock had sunk into a coma. He died at 4 a.m.
Students at Yale’s Sunday morning service were told of Babcock’s death by the president of the University. The polo players of Yale and Princeton, Devereaux especially, were devastated. Yale’s scheduled polo games were cancelled, and games involving Squadron A and the Meadow Brook polo club were postponed as well. Van Cortlandt Park’s polo field was closed until after the funeral, which was held at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church. Mourners came from Yale, Princeton, Rockaway, Squadron A and the Polo Association.
Amidst the prevailing shock and sadness, there was one discordant note. H.L. Herbert, chairman of the Polo Association, felt the need to say, “No, polo cannot be called a dangerous game… I think it speaks very well for polo that in all the years it has been played here, this is the only fatality that has occurred directly due to the game.”
H.L. Herbert, Polo Association Chairman
Sources: “Young Element in Polo,” The New York Times, November 17, 1902; “Westchester Won at Polo,” The New York Times, July 26, 1903; “Princeton Man’s Blow Kills Yale Polo Player,” The New York Times, May 23, 1904; “Polo Games Called Off,” The New York Times, May 24, 1904
“The love of one’s country is a natural thing. But why should love stop at the border?”
– Pablo Casals (1876-1973)
“The good road and the road of difficulties you have made me cross, and where they cross, the place is holy.”
– Black Elk, Shaman of the Oglala Sioux, 1912
“We play gladly and think gladly because in these activities we feel ourselves masters of the situation. The space of play and the space of thought are the two theaters of freedom.”
– Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973)
I have a special affection for extraordinary people who have been largely, and unfairly, forgotten, and one of my recent favorites is Marjorie LeBoutillier, a polo player of great ability. She first surfaces in Aiken, South Carolina, in Harry Worcester Smith’s Life and Sport in Aiken and Those Who Made It (1935), in which he wrote about, “as lovely young ladies as you ever saw, two of whom, Florence and Marjorie S. LeBoutillier, with their attractive, happy faces, engraved their girlish love of sport on my heart.” Florence excelled at tennis, and Marjorie at polo.
The photo above, taken at Bostwick Field in 1935, shows her attractive, happy face, and hints at the spirit with which she played the game. In 1937, Marjorie led the Long Island Freebooters when they took on the hard-riding California Ramblers on fields in New Jersey and New York. In the first game, playing at back and ranked at 8 goals, Marjorie scored five goals and led the eastern team to a 7-6 victory. The New York Times said she was “generally recognized as the best woman player in the world,” and continued, “Hereabout it is chiefly the exploits of Miss Le Boutillier, who plays and holds her own on men’s teams and who is popularly called the Tommy Hitchcock of women’s polo, that keep the women’s game in the public eye.” At the end of the three-game East West series, it was East 3, West 0.
In 1938, in what would seem a match from a fairy tale, she was wed to Stewart Iglehart, one of only three American 10-goal players at the time and a member of the Old Aiken team. They had a son, Stewart Jr., but after eight years of marriage they were divorced. Marjorie was then married to David Brown McElroy for 49 years. She was active in many sports, as one of the first women ice hockey players, a golfer with a 6-handicap, and a champion squash player. She died in 1997. A grandson, Fielding McElroy, remembers her as “an outstanding athlete and fun to be around!” Not a bad legacy at all.
* * *
I am grateful to John and Fielding McElroy, son and grandson of Marjorie, for their help in researching this piece, and, as always, to Brenda DuPont at the Polo Museum and Hall of Fame in Lake Worth, Florida.
Sources: “Women in Sports” by Maribel Y. Vinson, The New York Times, July 11, 1937; Time magazine, February 14, 1938, and September 30, 1946; The New York Times, February 2, 1997.
Over dinner in Toronto last week I was treated to a demo of the coolest gizmo. If you have ever wanted to photograph time-lapse sequences using a digital still camera, the Pclix LT is the cat’s pajamas. It’s easy to use and program, and it’s about the size of a deck of cards. You can trigger the shutter of a digital camera every second, or every hundred hours, or anywhere in between. You can buy one on the Web at pclix.com, and the site has a gallery of time-lapse films that’s way cool. I’m partial to the time-lapse sequence shot by Gerrie Burnett, from the Haleakala volcano on the island of Maui. Go there now.
“Do not let any lionizers stampede you. Hide and write and study and think. I know what factions do. Beware of them. I know what flatterers do. Beware of them. I know what lionizers do. Beware of them. Good wishes to you indeed.”
– Vachel Lindsay in a note to Langston Hughes
