When one has been without a certain pleasure for a number of
years, one is accustomed to find on returning to it that it is
not quite so delightful as one had imagined. In the years of
abstinence one had built up too glowing a picture, and the
reality turns out to be something much more commonplace.
Pleasant, yes; but, after all, nothing out of the ordinary. Most
of us have made this discovery for ourselves in the last few
months of peace. We have been doing the things which we had
promised ourselves so often during the war, and though they have
been jolly enough, they are not quite all that we dreamed in
France and Flanders. As for the negative pleasures, the pleasure
of not saluting or not attending medical boards, they soon lose
their first freshness.
Yet I have had one pre-war pleasure this week which carried with
it no sort of disappointment. It was as good as I had thought it
would be. I went to Lord's and watched first-class cricket again.
There are people who want to "brighten cricket." They remind me
of a certain manager to whom I once sent a play. He told me, more
politely than truthfully, how much he had enjoyed reading it, and
then pointed out what was wrong with the construction. "You have
two brothers here," he said. "They oughtn't to have been
brothers, they should have been strangers. Then one of them
marries the heroine. That's wrong; the other one ought to have
married her. Then there's Aunt Jane--she strikes me as a very
colourless person. If she could have been arrested in the second
act for bigamy--- And then I should leave out your third act
altogether, and put the fourth act at Monte Carlo, and let the
heroine be blackmailed by-- what's the fellow's name? See what I
mean?" I said that I saw. "You don't mind my criticizing your
play?" he added carelessly. I said that he wasn't criticizing my
play. He was writing another one--one which I hadn't the least
wish to write myself.
And this is what the brighteners of cricket are doing. They are
inventing a new game, a game which those of us who love cricket
have not the least desire to watch. If anybody says that he finds
Lord's or the Oval boring, I shall not be at all surprised; the
only thing that would surprise me would be to hear that he found
it more boring than I find Epsom or Newmarket. Cricket is not to
everybody's taste; nor is racing. But those who like cricket like
it for what it is, and they don't want it brightened by those who
don't like it. Lord Lonsdale, I am sure, would hate me to
brighten up Newmarket for him.
Lord's as it is, which is as it was five years ago, is good
enough for me. I would not alter any of it. To hear the pavilion
bell ring out again was to hear the most musical sound in the
world. The best note is given at 11.20 in the morning; later on
it lacks something of its early ecstasy. When people talk of the
score of this or that opera I smile pityingly to myself. They
have never heard the true music. The clink of ice against glass
gives quite a good note on a suitable day, but it has not the
magic of the Lord's bell.
As was my habit on these occasions five years ago, I bought a
copy of The Daily Telegraph on entering the ground. In the
ordinary way I do not take in this paper, but I have always had a
warm admiration for it, holding it to have qualities which place
it far above any other London journal of similar price. For the
seats at Lord's are uncommonly hard, and a Daily Telegraph,
folded twice and placed beneath one, brings something of the
solace which good literature will always bring. My friends had
noticed before the war, without being able to account for it,
that my views became noticeably more orthodox as the summer
advanced, only to fall away again with the approach of autumn. I
must have been influenced subconsciously by the leading articles.
It rained, and play was stopped for an hour or two. Before the
war I should have been annoyed about this, and I should have said
bitterly that it was just my luck. But now I felt that I was
indeed lucky thus to recapture in one day all the old sensations.
It was delightful to herald again a break in the clouds, and to
hear the crowd clapping hopefully as soon as ever the rain had
ceased; to applaud the umpires, brave fellows, when they ventured
forth at last to inspect the pitch; to realize from the sudden
activity of the groundsmen that the decision was a favourable
one; to see the umpires, this time in their white coats, come out
again with the ball and the bails; and so to settle down once
more to the business of the day.
Perhaps the cricket was slow from the point of view of the
follower of league football, but I do not feel that this is any
condemnation of it. An essay of Lamb's would be slow to a reader
of William le Queux's works, who wanted a new body in each
chapter. I shall not quarrel with anyone who holds that a day at
Lord's is a dull day; if he thinks so, let him take his amusement
elsewhere. But let him not quarrel with me, because I keep to my
opinion, as firmly now as before the war, that a day at Lord's is
a joyous day. If he will leave me the old Lord's, I will promise
not to brighten his football for him.