Badminton

According to last week’s Spectator, the game of Badminton is “the pâté de foie gras of Olympic sports.” That was before the game-throwing scandal was exposed in London, and those Chinese, Korean, and Indonesian players disqualified. If the delicate, cork-and-goose-feather shuttlecock once floated back and forth over nets suspended in arbors, conservatories or on wide verandahs, affording much enjoyment to her ladyship, the colonel, and their guests, it is now propelled with grim menace by pairs of muscularly perspiring Amazons either locked in mortal combat, or else prepared clumsily to dump a match. The idea of disqualification for fraudulent conduct in the game of Badminton would surely have struck Victorian ladies and gentlemen as the height of improbability, but there it is. However, I am concerned here with the origins of the game. The Spectator goes on to state that Badminton was “invented in India by the British army, and brought back to Blighty in 1873 at a party given by the Duke of Beaufort at his country estate, hence the name.” Something about this struck an inauthentic note, so I checked. Sure enough, this claim is squarely contradicted by the Oxford English Dictionary in the article on badminton, n., and in suspiciously proximate language: “A popular tradition about the origins of the modern game, according to which it is said to have been developed by British army officers in India, and to have been so named after a version of the game which was played at Badminton House in 1873 by officers on leave, is not borne out by the evidence, although versions of the game were popular among the British in India by 1873.” (Unambiguous citations of shuttlecock, n., meanwhile, extend helpfully all the way back to the sixteenth century.) According to the Academy (226, September 2, 1876, p. 233), “Shuttlecock tennis [also known as battledore and shuttlecock] was probably played in some form or other in many private houses long before it received the meaningless or misleading name of “Badminton,” but if we go back two centuries or so we find it played also sometimes in tennis courts; so that this, as well as the ball-out-door-game [of tennis], is a revival, not an invention.” For some reason the issue must have been topical in September 1876, because according to the unsigned article “Varieties” that appeared a few weeks later in The Leisure Hour (1135, September 27, 1873, p. 624), “the game of battledore and shuttlecock is becoming popular in certain high circles of society, where it is known as ‘Badminton.’” Battledore and shuttlecock was certainly commonplace in England by 1852, when the following brief notice about a book for young people entitled The Heiress in her Minority [apparently a work by the notable political economist Jane Marcet] appeared in the Athenaeum (1266, January 31, 1852, p. 150):

On the whole, the book is a small, readable, compressed cyclopaedia, with a copious index and distinct chapter headings—a very mine for youth, and a happy anodyne for the restless hours of a wet day in a country house, when “bat and ball” are forbidden, the skipping-rope is laid aside, and les graces, battledore and shuttlecock, archery, and other amusements of the same genus are impossible.

However, the name badminton was certainly in use by 1863, though apparently not yet so widespread as to remove the need for explanation, because in December of that year an article entitled “Life in a Country House” (The Cornhill Magazine, 8:48, p. 711) stated:

After lunch, everybody is expected to hold themselves at the disposal of the lady of the house, for a ride, drive, or walk, as the case may be. If the weather be such as to induce you to remain within doors, your co-operation will be sought for a game at pool, badminton (which is battledore and shuttlecock played with sides, across a string suspended some five feet from the ground), and similar amusements.

Be that as it may, one of the more depressing things about Olympic sports is that they are in nature obviously about as distant from “amusements” as it is possible to be, so one wonders how corruption in Badminton will ever be eliminated. I daresay a Badminton doping scandal is not an inconceivable prospect.

Bond

I loved the little film that was made by the BBC and slotted into the beginning of last evening’s opening ceremony for the Games of London, celebrating the thirtieth Olympiad of the modern era. The conceit is simple enough, and therein, I suppose, lies its charm—two British icons, one fictitious and the other real, brought together in a flight of whimsy, yet at the same time with a measure of inherent logic. Of course, in an ideal world, Ian Fleming’s unassailable Bond, James Bond, would be entrusted with the task of escorting The Queen from Her Majesty’s Private Audience Room at Buckingham Palace to a waiting helicopter, and delivering the sovereign safely to that massive event, she who for longer than any other person has received and read weekly reports prepared for successive governments in Whitehall by the once secret British intelligence services. The exquisite note is one of slight tension, even a hint of urgency, on the part of Bond, as the clock strikes half past eight, and a corresponding determination on the part of Her Majesty not to be hurried (but, equally, not to delay). “Good evening, Mr. Bond,” says The Queen, with a suggestion of sprightliness, and, incidentally, effortless authority—and not the sort to which clever actors resort. “Good evening...Your Majesty,” replies Bond, who then follows The Queen out of the room, past Thomas Gainsborough’s magnificent 1777 full-length portrait of Anne, Duchess of Cumberland. Surely it must have been a glitch in the editing suite, but am I the only person who noticed the unfortunate exclusion of that moment in which Commander Bond surely bowed—correctly, and immediately upon entering the room: a clean, crisp motion of the head and neck only, and not the flamboyant deep waist-and/or-shoulders version that one occasionally observes among ill-briefed ambassadors, middle-European royalty, and on stage for curtain calls?

Kissing Their Rings

Those who say that President Barack Obama’s standing in the world has been damaged by the decision of the International Olympic Committee to eliminate Chicago, Illinois, at the earliest opportunity and to award the games of the XXXI Olympiad of the modern era to Rio de Janeiro would do well to look a little closer at the composition of that unsavory organization.

No fewer than twenty members of the I.O.C., between a sixth and a fifth of the entire membership, were not long ago found to have accepted bribes. But even if they hadn’t, the inexact process of assessing at first hand the rival bids of many cities all over the world has for years constituted an especially disgusting gravy train—an unending palanquinade of lavish official hospitalities, institutionalized obsequiousness, and plain, old-fashioned corruption.

As if to underline its far right-wing credentials, the I.O.C.’s honorary president for life, the diminutive Marquis of Samaranch, was a minister of state in the fascist régime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. By coincidence the Marquis’s son and namesake now also sits on the I.O.C.

The organization, based in Switzerland—where else?—has a particular fondness for European and petrodollar royalty, and one might ask what collective skills are brought to the task of allotting without bias immense sporting fixtures to whole nations by such luminaries as H.S.H. Princess Nora of Liechtenstein; H.S.H. the Sovereign Prince Albert II of Monaco; Sheikh Ahmad al Fahad al Sabah of Kuwait; H.R.H. the Grand Duke of Luxembourg; H.R.H. the Prince of Orange; H.R.H. Prince Nawaf Faisal Fahd Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia; H.R.H. Prince Tamim bin al Thani of Qatar; H.R.H. Prince Tunku Imran of Malaysia; H.R.H. Princess Haya Bint al Hussein of the United Arab Emirates; H.M. ex-King Constantine of the Hellenes, or H.R.H. the Infanta Doña Pilar de Borbón of Spain.

To be fair, a good number of these persons were once good at riding horses, shooting guns, sailing yachts, and/or participating in bobsleigh competitions, among other hearty out-of-door recreations of the very rich.

Nor is one especially reassured by the membership also of General Nyangweso (Uganda), General Sabet (Egypt), General Palenfo (Côte d’Ivoire), General Adefope (Nigeria), and Dr. Henry Kissinger (honorary).

There were no women members before 1981, and the current tally is 16 out of 106. This is pathetic. Far more women have been elected president or prime minister of countries all over the globe than have ever served as members of the I.O.C.

More sinister yet was the investment some years ago of millions of dollars to prevent what became known as the Gay Games from adopting and therefore tarnishing the ancient Greek name “Olympic.”

I am sure it can be good for business to win the right to stage the modern Olympics. However, there can be no shame in being rejected by a body as dubious as the I.O.C. Indeed a far, far bigger question mark ought to hang over those supplicants who manage to win its favor.

Grünhaus

Mum and Dad took me on my first visit to Europe during the Christmas holidays of 1975–76. I was eleven years old. The rationale of the journey was to spend time with my brother Hamish, who was then an undergraduate at Jesus College, Cambridge.

Hamish met us in Rome, and the four of us traveled together by train to Florence, Venice, Basel, and Trier, where we spent the day with Mum and Dad’s old friend Dr. Andreas von Schubert, whose ancient vineyard called Maximin Grünhaus is close by, at Mertesdorf, on a steep bank of the Mosel (above).

Andreas von Schubert was a charming, enormous, and supremely generous man. He stayed with the Trumbles at 18 Denham Place when in November 1956 he came to Melbourne to attend the Olympic Games.

Beforehand, in an effort to “modernize,” the city fathers demolished most of the enormous, creaky but serviceable colonial-era hotels that were still left standing in the center of Melbourne. They were considered a national embarrassment, and only the old Windsor survived. This frenzy of destruction created the almighty problem of how to accommodate the tens of thousands of foreign visitors who, not for the first time in her history, converged on Melbourne from all corners of the globe.

The solution was to create a billeting system, whereby carefully vetted families agreed to place at the disposal of the authorities a sufficiently comfortable spare bedroom or two in which weary travelers could be placed as paying guests.

In a no doubt hilarious sketch for a Melbourne University review, the undergraduate Barry Humphries lampooned the system by creating the character of Mrs. Edna Everage, whose offer to make available her lovely home in Moonee Ponds (and appurtenances in duck-egg blue, etc.) was bound to be rejected on the stuffy grounds of snobbisme, if not taste.

Fortunately Mum and Dad passed master, and in due course their enormous, friendly German house-guest took up residence, I think, in the front room. Hamish was a ten month-old baby, Simon four, and Nick was six years old.

That summer was unusually hot, even for Australia. At first, so the story goes, the family was intrigued, then fascinated, and finally maddened with curiosity as to how it was possible for Mr. Von Schubert to retire sweatily to his boiling hot, un-air-conditioned bedroom (without en suite), and presently emerge as fresh as a daisy.

Eventually, Mum could stand it no longer, and, presumably whilst Andreas was out for the day, attending the Marathon or some other Olympic event, she stole into his room, and naturally found on the dresser an enormous bottle of excellent, hi-octane eau de cologne, an accessory, a personal necessity, an item of toiletry which was still in Australia regarded as breathtakingly exotic.

Mum and Dad paid a return visit to Andreas in 1961, during which he drove them all over West Germany. That visit coincided with the sharp political tensions and the very real fear of nuclear war that arose after August 13, when the communists started putting up the Berlin wall.

Andreas changed his plans so as to steer clear of West Berlin, but the driving holiday went ahead as planned.

I think Mum and Dad were fairly happy to return to Melbourne in one piece, traveling, as was their custom, in separate aircraft (with innumerable stops), to insure that, if one went down, the other parent would hopefully survive to take care of the children.

By 1975, when I met him for the first time, Andreas von Schubert was aging, but still enormous, and firmly in charge of his family’s wine-making business at Grünhaus. In 1981 he passed the reins to one of his many children, Dr. Carl-Ferdinand von Schubert, and I confess I do not know if Andreas is still alive.

I remember being shown into the wonderful, musty barrel-vaulted stone cellar, which was underneath one of the outbuildings at Grünhaus. It was, in fact, an ancient Roman cellar. Predating the beautiful house by many centuries, the Grünhaus cellar has been in continuous use at least since the Ottonian period, and in Heidelberg earlier this year I was pleased to discover that their Bruderberg, Herrenberg, and Abtsberg vintages are all still wonderful.