CHAPTER VII

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.