Chapter III: Wars, Interruptions, and Hannibal
The English Pell Mell Club, like so many venerable institutions, has always insisted that it exists above the fray of politics and war. Unfortunately, politics and war have never quite returned the courtesy. Over the past two centuries, the Club’s history has been punctuated by interruptions ranging from the inconvenient to the cataclysmic — though, remarkably, the game itself has proved as stubbornly indestructible as the Pimlico Wilde Cup.
The Napoleonic Afterglow
Although the official founding date of the Club post-dates the Napoleonic Wars, there remains a persistent legend that Pell Mell was played in secret during the Congress of Vienna. According to a particularly florid entry in the Club archives, Lord Basingthorpe, acting in some unspecified diplomatic capacity, organised “informal rounds” between rival statesmen as a means of brokering peace. The Russian delegation reportedly refused to play after Metternich accused their mallets of being “overbalanced,” while the Austrian team insisted on using a ball the size of a cannon shot.
No reliable evidence exists for these matches, but the tale remains popular, in part because it allows members to imagine Pell Mell as the quiet hand behind nineteenth-century European stability — a theory unsupported by historians but vigorously defended over brandy.
The Hannibal Theory Emerges
The First World War was the first genuine interruption to organised Pell Mell in London. With the Club’s ground requisitioned for military purposes (it was turned into a vehicle depot), and its members scattered to various services. It was during the war’s quieter moments that the so-called “Hannibal Theory” emerged.
In 1917, club historian Sir Peveril Grange published his now-infamous pamphlet, Elephants at the Hoop: A Carthaginian Precedent for Pell Mell. In it, Grange argued — with a confidence frankly untroubled by facts — that Hannibal’s generals played a form of Pell Mell during the Second Punic War, using elephant tusks as mallets and polished stones as balls. His central “evidence” was a fragmentary Roman mosaic showing three men with sticks in an oval enclosure, which every actual archaeologist agreed was probably a wrestling match.
The Hannibal Theory was swiftly debunked by the British Museum, which called it “a work of imaginative fiction with illustrations.” Nevertheless, it was embraced by the Club’s more romantic members and remains a cornerstone of official toasts, with visiting dignitaries often baffled by the cry of “To Hannibal!” before the first stroke of every match.
Pell Mell in the Colonies
The interwar years also saw the spread of Pell Mell to the far reaches of the Empire. British colonial officers, eager to display refinement, introduced the game to places as far-flung as Ceylon, the Gold Coast, and New South Wales. Reports survive of Pell Mell being played on palace lawns in Delhi, in front of bemused maharajas, and in the gardens of Singapore’s Raffles Hotel, where the heat forced matches to be played at dawn.
Not all adaptations were considered orthodox. In Nairobi, for instance, local conditions inspired a variant involving hollowed gourds as balls, producing a wildly unpredictable bounce; in the Caribbean, mallets were occasionally replaced by sugarcane stalks. The London Committee dutifully sent polite letters acknowledging these innovations while privately agreeing that “colonial rules” were not to be recognised at home.
The Second World War and “The Underground Years”
The outbreak of the Second World War once again put a halt to formal competition. This time, however, several members conspired to keep the game alive in unconventional settings. The most famous of these was the so-called “Underground League” — matches held in unused sections of the London Tube, lit by hurricane lamps and timed to avoid air raids. Balls, it turns out, roll unusually well on smooth concrete platforms, though the occasional passing rat proved a unique hazard.
After the Wars: Myth and Memory
By 1946, the Club’s court off Pall Mall was restored, and Pell Mell returned to its peacetime rhythms. The war years, however, had left their mark — and their myths. Stories of desert matches in North Africa (balls rolling endlessly down dunes), impromptu games aboard troopships (masts serving as hoops), and a supposed exhibition match in liberated Paris (with Charles de Gaulle himself taking a ceremonial first stroke) circulated freely.
Whether any of these events happened is ultimately irrelevant. In the world of the English Pell Mell Club, evidence has never been a prerequisite for tradition. And so, to this day, when the Pimlico Wilde Cup is held aloft, someone will inevitably mutter, “Hannibal would have approved.”
