Biological Thought, Athletics and the Formation of a ‘Man of Character': 1830–1900

In The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture Bruce Haley has argued persuasively that ‘no topic more occupied the Victorian mind than Health — not religion, or politics, or Improvement, or Darwinism’. [ ¹ ] By the 1860s, if not somewhat earlier, many of the concerns that formed part of the more general agitation about health were caught up in, and given expression through, the games-playing ‘cult’ that swept Victorian Britain. [ ² ] ‘To a nation preoccupied with health’, Haley asserted, ‘the athlete was the new hero and the “human form divine”’. From a multitude of sources the new gentleman was proclaimed to be the man who was an ‘aristocrat of character’ not an aristocrat by birth. [ ³ ]