RECALLS OLD STRUGGLES IN THE EARLY DAYS OF GRACE AND INTRODUCES A
TYRANT FROM LUDLOW
On Easter Monday I went with Alderley and Naomi to see Lionel play
for a mixed team against Surrey. It was the first match of the year
and bitterly cold, but to watch real cricket again was an inducement
that would have led me to brave any temperature. For--think of
it!--it was my first match since the Gentlemen _v._ Players at
Prince's in 1874 when the Gentlemen won by 61 runs. Thirty-four
years ago! I was then twenty-four, and I went with my brother Tom
and saw every ball bowled.
Thirty-four years ago, I say, and yet what is that? To me it has
been a lifetime; but what has it been to that huge man with the
iron-grey beard? I had read his name in the papers as being among
the players, and Lionel had shown me his letter inviting him to be
one of the team; and yet it needed ocular testimony to believe that
this was W.G.--that the W.G. I saw make 110 at Prince's in that 1874
match was still active in the field. "'Time has run back,'" I quoted
to Lionel, "'and fetched the Age of Gold';" but he was not listening.
Milton is not much in his line.
All the Gentlemen _v._ Players matches were days of Grace at that
time. At Prince's, I remember, G.F. came off in the first
innings--93 not out. How we all hoped that Strachan would keep his
end up to let him get the hundred, which meant more than it does
to-day and was not yet called a century; but it was not to be. Then
came Ross, but Alfred Shaw caught and bowled him at once, and G.F.'s
chance was over. If was G.F. who in the second innings (when W.G.
made his 110) caused an odd bit of trouble. Old Jim Lillywhite was
bowling, with his beautiful easy delivery--just a brief trot to the
wicket and a gentle natural swing of his left arm. Well, he sent up
a ball to G.F., who put it tamely back right to the bowler's hands,
or what would have been right to his hands had not W.G. intervened.
W.G.'s intervention did not mean then quite what it would to-day: he
was not then so wide as a church door, but he was enough; and before
Jim could get round the obstacle the ball was out of danger. Poor
Lillywhite, with G.F.'s 93 not out only too present to his mind,
appealed first to one umpire and then the other, but both held that
W.G. was not to blame: he had not aggravated his offence of bulk by
any conscious action. The Players didn't like the decision at all,
but G.F. made only 12, and the match was lost without even those runs.
The Players' strongest men were Harry Jupp, Harry Charlwood, Shaw,
and Morley. Daft also was playing, but he made only 21. Charlwood,
the Sussex man, came out top scorer with 85, not a few of them made
by a stroke which seems to have utterly died away since then--a
glance under the left leg. He was very good at it, the little,
active, mutton-chop-whiskered fellow.
My very first Gentlemen _v._ Players match was in 1868. It was at
Lord's, and W.G. was playing then too. He only made 134 not out, but
it sufficed. People, I understand, go to see individual cricketers
now, but there can never since--not even in Ranjitsinhji's best days
(which I missed)--have been such excitement and enthusiasm among the
watchers of the cricket skies as in the late sixties and early
seventies in W.G.'s first decade. The Gentlemen's innings at the
Lord's match in 1868 was a sufficient indication of the place in
which this stripling of nineteen, a year older than I was, stood even
then--for his "hand" (as a few old-fashioned persons still called a
score) was 134 not out, and the whole side made only 201.
It was W.G., too, who took the Players' wickets--6 in the first
innings for 50 runs and 4 in the second for 31. He is not bowling
much now, and he has come to field in the way that provokes a
good-natured cheer from the crowd after every stopped ball; but the
shining fact remains that here he is still, in the cricket field, an
active man.
As I watched him I had to rub my eyes; for it seemed as if all my
years of exile, all my absurd conscientious attention to duty in that
far-off alien land, had been a dream.
What has happened in the interval? Everything has happened. The
Franco-Prussian war; the death of Dickens; the re-establishment of
the French Republic; the bombardment of Alexandria; the rise of the
Salvation Army; the Boer war; Stevenson, Whistler and Kipling; the
Daily Mail; the assassination of Kings and Queens and Presidents; the
destruction of San Francisco. And all the while W.G. has been
playing cricket.
After 1868 I saw every Gentlemen _v._ Players match but two until I
went to Buenos Ayres at the beginning of 1875--in which time the
Players won only once. I saw I.D. Walker make his 165 at the Oval in
1868. At Lord's in the following year I saw W.G.'s hit for 7 off
Wootton, no longer possible there except with an overthrow, and
I.D.'s 71; and I remember what a hard nut to crack Jupp was in the
second innings. Poor Yardley, who afterwards wrote burlesques, came
into the match that year.
But the 1870 match at the Oval was the great one, for that was when
G.F. first played, and though he got spectacles, he took altogether 8
wickets for 46 runs, and W.G. made his 215 in the second innings. As
it happened, it was too many, for it meant a draw; but what a feat it
was!
Two days later, on his twenty-second birthday, at Lord's, he made
109. That was the closest match I ever saw, the Gentlemen, who went
all to pieces in their second innings before old Jim Southerton and
Farrands, winning by only 4 runs.
In 1871 at Lord's there was a draw again. W.G. and Hornby and
Yardley and Alfred Lubbock all did well, but Ephraim Lockwood for the
Players did best of all. This was the match in which George Freeman
took three wickets in four balls.
I missed the Oval match that year, and alas! I was not at Brighton to
see W.G. make his 217 for the Nonpareil's benefit; but I was at
Lord's in 1872 again, when the champion was on hand with 77 and 112
and Daft made a superb 102 in the Players' second innings. W.G. was
again in form on the next day, at the Oval, making 117, while Hornby
and Yardley put on 163 between them.
The next year at Lord's the Gentlemen won almost too easily--by an
innings and runs, W.G. contributing 163, while at the Oval the same
thing happened again, his share then being 158 and 7 wickets for 65.
In those days you were almost as certain to see the champion come off
as you now are to see an advertised actor perform. He stood aside
from the glorious uncertainty of the game.
That year, 1873, gave us three matches, an extra one being arranged
at Prince's, at which the Gentlemen again won by an innings and runs,
W.G. making 870 and the _impayable_ "Monkey" 104 (without running any
one out, too,) and G.F. 63. Tom Emmett, I remember, bowled at the
very top of his comic energies, and he made 32 in the second innings;
but Grace and the influence of Grace were too much.
The next year, 1874, at the Oval W.G. was more restrained, but his
countryman, Frank Townsend, made 59 and G.F. 28 and 47, and the
"Monkey" 18 and 45, and all was well. Ephraim Lockwood carried his
bat right through the Players' innings for 67, and in the second
innings put on a hundred with Jupp before they were parted; but after
that Absolom and Buchanan began to see daylight, and the Gentlemen
won by 48 runs. Two days later, however, at the Oval the Players won
for the first time since 1866, Lockwood again playing beautifully. I
recall his cutting as wonderful. W.G. made 48 and 12, the "Monkey"
63, and G.F. 22 and 36. In the second innings our blood ran cold as
Hill got Ridley, the "Monkey," and I.D. Walker with successive balls.
It was that miracle which won the match.
And then came my Prince's match that I spoke of first, and my day of
watching first-class cricket was done. These were the only matches I
allowed myself; for the rest, I was busy at work or playing village
cricket at home.
And now here I am with the prospect of more Gentlemen _v._ Players
matches (which are the best of all) before me. It is almost too
much. Such happiness seems unrealisable: once again I have the old
school feeling--more than feeling, prescience--that the end of the
world will come before the holidays.
Lionel did pretty well, but it was bad cricket weather, for there was
a snow-laden wind which numbed the fingers. It was, however, a
start: a new cricket season had begun.
I have since seen the Gentlemen _v._ Players of 1908, and I am
disappointed. It was not so much the inferior cricket of the
Gentlemen that troubled me: I would as soon see the Players win; it
was the spirit of the Gentlemen that distressed me, or rather the
want of it. Gentlemen they may be in name and even station, but they
no longer play like gentlemen; they play like overworked artisans.
Anxiety and boredom have crept into cricket. The Gentlemen as I
remember them took the field joyously and cut a dash. It was their
pride to let no ball pass them. The Gentlemen to-day are listless
and without jokes--almost without personality. They have no Grace
and, even more conspicuously perhaps, no "Monkey." It comes, I
fancy, very largely from playing too much. What was once a game is
now a calling; and a calling which involves of necessity so much
disappointment and so much idleness (while waiting first for one's
own innings and then for the other innings of one's side to finish,
to say nothing of rain,) must lead to a certain amount of cynicism
and saturnine fatalism.
I don't think that cricket as a whole has improved in these thirty
years. Batting, perhaps, is nearer perfection; but it is far less
interesting. The first-class game seems to know three strokes
only--the late cut, the off drive, and the leg glance: all good, and
it is astonishing how many batsmen can make them; but I would like to
see more hitting, in the old style, where fieldsmen are not. In my
time the fieldsmen did not exert such a magnetic influence over the
ball as they now do, attracting it for the most part straight to
their hands.
Bowling, I think, is not so good as it was. Too much dependence has
been placed on the fast bumping men and five slips, and the result is
a loss in the more delicate _finesse_ that was so attractive when I
was young--the _finesse_ of Shaw and Southerton, and Jim Lillywhite,
and later, as I have been told, of Lohmann and Peel and Briggs.
But the pendulum is always swinging, and personality knows no law and
may appear at any moment; so I do not despair. And it will always be
the best of games.
In the evening after Lionel's match I found Queen Anne's Gate in
despair. The annual visit of old Mrs. Wynne--Grandmamma, as she is
called, for Margaret's mother (my stepmother) long since gave up all
rivalry in the title--the annual visit of Mrs. Wynne has been fixed
for next month.
Every one dreads this yearly fortnight of best behaviour, but does
not say so for fear of Alderley overhearing. As for Alderley, he
looks forward to his mother's visit with what appears to be the
keenest anticipation, but it has been remarked by the family that
never does he have so many public and legal dinners as during its
progress. His heartiness at breakfast is, however, unbearable,
Drusilla says.
Old Mrs. Wynne, who is nearing eighty, if not quite that age, holds
decided views on the decadence of modern life, cannot forgive the
Queen Anne's Gate celibacy, and has so capricious a memory that while
remembering clearly incidents of the dim past she is often unaware
that she is saying now what she said with equal solemnity five
minutes earlier.
Her convictions and foibles, added to her tireless activity,--eighty
years sitting more lightly on her shoulders than forty on those of
many persons,--make her a formidable visitor, especially to Drusilla,
who, being her favourite, has always to be in attendance. What this
means to that impatient young rebel may be instantly understood when
it is stated that Grandmamma's first excitement after she is
comfortably settled under her son's roof is to visit the Royal
Academy and, catalogue in hand, conscientiously look at every picture
long enough at any rate to decide whether or not it merits a pencil
mark. When it is added that Grandmamma's taste is governed wholly by
sentiment, that Drusilla is at the Slade, and that the visit lasts
four hours early in May, the extent of the poor girl's sufferings may
be gauged.
Being a happy old lady, Grandmamma says more of the pictures that she
likes than of those that displease her; but it is on record in the
family that, standing before one of Mr. Sargent's masterpieces, she
was heard by the whole room to exclaim, "My dear, never let that man
paint me!" her idea apparently being that Mr. Sargent pursued his
quarry rather in the desperate way that an Italian gunner pursues
little birds than was over besought. Drusilla promised.