rough cobbled streets of Carpi, he learned to ride and he knew that somehow he had to get his hands on a bike. By saving his tips from deliveries, he found that he could hire a bike and take part in the races organised by La Patria in Modena, 20 miles or so from Carpi. It was here that Dorando had his first races and he loved them. His legs were already strong from his work as a messenger boy and he discovered that he was competitive at the sport.
Of course, the roads were rough, the tumbles were frequent and Dorando found that his small and lightweight body meant he was never going to beat some of the more powerful, bigger boys. Nevertheless, he did well enough, even though the bikes were crude and heavy. In one race, his chain broke, but he was not a boy to give up easily; he heaved the bike onto his shoulders and ran his way to the finish.
One afternoon, at the beginning of the autumn of 1904, Dorando stood at the door of the café looking out onto the square and watched as a crowd gathered to see a tall skinny man and his helpers walk around the piazza putting chalk marks on the cobbles. The man was Pericle Pagliani, a champion runner from Rome, he was told. ‘Here,’ the men said, ‘is the mighty Pagliani. He’s come to give a demonstration of running. He is the champion of all Italy – he can run like the wind.’
Dorando peered through the crowd. All the town had turned out and formed a huge circle, jostling for the best view, while allowing Pagliani enough room to run around his chalk marks. The word went round that he was going to run 10,000 metres.
Pagliani had circled the piazza for the second time when several of the boys thought it would be fun to join in, and within another couple of laps he had a little trail of them puffing, blowing, laughing and jostling, trying to keep up with him. Four laps later, most of the boys, red in the face and gasping for breath, found the pace far tougher than anything they had known during their games on the streets.
But Dorando was running easily. Away from the cumbersome bike he found his legs felt very light. He knew every cobble of this square and as he floated behind Pagliani, the crowd first of all started to laugh, but then the laughter turned to cheering.
As the run went on, Dorando drew up alongside Pagliani and grinned. But the champion gave him little more than a glance, his eyes fixed on his task. Then, as Pagliani’s friends yelled that there were only two laps to go, Dorando was still there running. As they passed the cheering, excited crowd, he eased smoothly and easily ahead and crossed the finishing line just before Pagliani.
The champion didn’t say a word; he refused to acknowledge Dorando’s existence and the errand boy stepped out of the square and went back to the shop. But others smiled at him and slapped him on the back.
‘Hey, Dorando,’ they shouted, ‘you can be a champion too!’
The crowd clapped and cheered for a few moments but already most of them were melting away. They had taken time out from their jobs – from the bars, the factories and the fields – and they seemed to disappear very quickly. Their disappearance may perhaps have had something to do with the fact that Pagliani’s helpers were roaming about the square with a bowl and a bucket asking for contributions to his training expenses. It was a deep and sobering shock for Dorando. Here was a man they’d applauded and cheered as the champion of all Italy – and now he was begging for money.
Dorando’s father had always drummed into him, ‘Never see yourself as a beggar. There’s always work even here in Carpi, but never, ever be a beggar.’ But here was Pagliani begging for money.
Dorando wished he had money with him so that he could put something in the bowl. Running with Pagliani had been fun and inspiring, and he had tingled with excitement when he heard the cheering of the crowd. The clank of the coins hitting the bottom of the near-empty bucket was to haunt Dorando for the rest of his life.
CONAN DOYLE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE DIRTY WAR
Sometimes it would take six weeks for the letters from Mama to reach the hands of Wyndham Halswelle, but when they eventually came they were long and well worth waiting for. The evocative letters reminded him of England and London itself. Mama’s words would bring back the smell of cut grass on the lawn, the gentle rain that kept the great park in Richmond so very green, and strolls beside the River Thames, along the waterfront towards the gardens at Kew. But she would also write to him of serious matters, of war and politics.
The letters would remind Halswelle, too, of what made him a soldier – a word here or a phrase there would transport him right back to playing with those tin soldiers in Richmond or marching proudly in his playroom uniform. Mama would also bring him London’s news of the war. She wrote so vividly of the relief of the siege of Mafeking in South Africa and the heroism and example of Robert Baden-Powell in Afghanistan.
‘Never forget,’ she wrote, ‘that you and he were at the same school. You played in the same grounds. He’s a great hero and a great soldier.’
By the time Halswelle arrived in South Africa in the spring of 1902, the great Boer War had been won, but was not yet finally over. The tide had turned with the arrival of two of Britain’s most respected Generals: Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener. Field Marshall Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Baron Roberts of Kandahar (known throughout the army as ‘Little Bobs’), was virtually hauled out of retirement to turn the course of the difficult war. A tiny man, just over 5 feet tall – 2 inches below the minimum height for enlisted soldiers – with a large, drooping white moustache, he was legendary for marching his army 300 miles across the wastelands of Northern India from Kabul to relieve the besieged garrison at Kandahar. It was the sort of legend to inspire Halswelle – that and the Victoria Cross Little Bobs wore for his bravery during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Roberts returned to Britain at the beginning of 1901 in triumph. He was met by the Prince of Wales, later to be Edward VII, and paraded through the crowds on the streets of London, cheered as the war’s great hero.
His command was taken over by Kitchener – a fine, if ruthless soldier, who had the task of mopping up the guerrilla war being waged by the Boers. There was still plenty of skirmishing, and a smouldering resentment fired up the Boers against the imperialism of Britain. Destined to last for another eighteen months, the war was to lay the British open to charges of rape and torture and to bring about the establishment of concentration camps.
By the time Halswelle arrived, Kitchener was ordering farms to be burned and food destroyed to reduce the Boers’ infrastructure. Barbed wire and blockhouses further limited their manoeuvrability, and the raids steadily became less frequent.
With time on their hands, the principal enemy for officers like Halswelle was boredom, and there was an immense amount of debate in the regiment about the charges laid against the British, both by the Boers and by their sympathisers around the world, who wanted to grab every opportunity to attack the British armed forces. Nothing angered Halswelle more than these charges of dirty tricks.
The British army had taken some heavy defeats before its leaders realised that their tactics were outdated, for the Boers were a fast and highly mobile guerrilla force, using the new smokeless cartridges in their German rifles, which hid their positions. They employed hit-and-run tactics that not only caused losses the British could ill afford, but thoroughly frustrated the Empire’s view of a fair fight.
It was a letter from his mother that brought Halswelle the news that Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was about to leap to the defence of the Empire and fair play. Charges of war crimes, Conan Doyle believed, could not go unchallenged.
