The Hambledon Men/The Hambledon Club and the Old Players
THE HAMBLEDON CLUB AND THE OLD PLAYERS
Bt the Rev. James Pycroft.
What have become of the old scores and the earliest records of the game of cricket? Bentley's Book of Matches gives the principal games from the year 1786; but where are the earlier records of matches made by Dehaney, Paulet, and Sir Horace Mann? All burnt!
What the destruction of Rome and its records by the Gauls was to Niebuhr—what the fire of London was to the antiquary in his walk from Pudding Lane to Pie Corner—such was the burning of the Pavilion at Lord's and all the old score-books it is a mercy that the old painting of the M.C.C. was saved—to the annalist of cricket. 'When we were built out by Dorset Square,' says Mr. E. H. Budd, 'we played for three years where the Regent's Canal has since been cut, and still called our ground 'Lord's', and our dining-room 'the Pavilion'.
Here many a time have I looked over the old papers of Dehaney and Sir H. Mann; but the room was burnt, and the old scores perished in the flames . . . . .
And now, the oldest chronicler is Old Nyren, who wrote an account of the cricketers of his time. The said Old Nyren borrowed the pen of our kind friend Charles Cowden Clarke, to whom John Keats dedicated an epistle, and who rejoiced in the friendship of Charles Lamb; and none but a spirit akin to Elia could have written like 'Old Nyren'. Nyren was a fine old English yeoman, whose chivalry was cricket; and Mr. Clarke has faithfully recorded his vivid descriptions and animated recollections. And, with this charming little volume in hand, and inkhorn at my button, in 1837 I made a tour among the cottages of William Beldham, and the few surviving worthies of the same generation; and, having also the advantage of a MS. by the Rev. John Mitford, taken from many a winter's evening with Old Fennex, I am happy to attempt the best account that the lapse of time admits, of cricket in the olden time.
From a MS. my friend received from the late Mr. William Ward, it appears that the wickets were placed twenty-two yards apart as long since as the year 1700; that stumps were then only one foot high, but two feet wide. The width some persons have doubted; but it is rendered credible by the auxiliary evidence that there was, in those days, width enough between the two stumps for cutting the wide blockhole already mentioned, and also because—whereas now we hear of stumps and bails—we read formerly of 'two stumps with one stump laid across'.
We are informed, also, that putting down the wickets to make a man out in running, instead of the old custom of popping the ball into the hole, was adopted on account of severe injuries to the hands, and that the wicket was changed at the same time—1779-80—to the dimensions of twenty-two inches by six, with a third stump added.
Before this alteration the art of defence was almost unknown: balls often passed over the wicket, and often passed through. At the time of the alteration Old Nyren truly predicted that the innings would not be shortened but better played. The long pod and curved form of the bat, as seen in the old paintings, was made only for hitting, and for ground balls too. Length balls were then by no means common; neither would low stumps encourage them; and even upright play was then practised by very few. Old Nyren relates that one Harry Hall, a gingerbread baker of Farnham, gave peripatetic lectures to young players, and always insisted on keeping the left elbow well up; in other words, on straight play. 'Nowadays,' said Beldham, 'all the world knows that; but when I began there was very little length-bowling, very little straight play, and little defence either.' Fennex, said he, was the first who played out at balls; before his day, batting was too much about the crease. Beldham said that his own supposed tempting of Providence consisted in running in to hit. '"You do frighten me there jumping out of your ground", said our Squire Paulet': and Fennex used also to relate how, when he played forward to the pitch of the ball, his father 'had never seen the like in all his days'; the said days extending a long way back towards the beginning of the century. While speaking of going in to hit, Beldham said, 'My opinion has always been that too little is attempted in that direction. Judge your ball, and, when the least overpitched, go in and hit her away.' In this opinion Mr. C. Taylor's practice would have borne Beldham out: and a fine dashing game this makes; only, it is a game for none but practised players. When you are perfect in playing in your ground, then, and then only, try how you can play out of it, as the best means to scatter the enemy and open the field.
'As to bowling,' continued Beldham, 'when I was a boy (about 1780), nearly all bowling was fast, and all along the ground. In those days the Hambledon Club could beat all England; but our three parishes around Farnham at last beat Hambledon.'
It is quite evident that Farnham was the cradle of cricketers. 'Surrey,' in the old scores, means nothing more than the Farnham parishes. This corner of Surrey, in every match against All England, was reckoned as part of Hampshire; and, Beldham truly said, 'you find us regularly on the Hampshire side in Bentley's Book.
'I told you, sir,' said Beldham, 'that in my early days all bowling was what we called fast, or at least a moderate pace. The first lobbing slow bowler I ever saw was Tom Walker. When, in 1792, All England played Kent, I did feel so ashamed of such baby bowling: but, after all, he did more than even David Harris himself. Two years after, in 1794, at Dartford Brent, Tom Walker, with his slow bowling, headed a side against David Harris, and beat him easily.
'Kent, in early times, was not equal to our counties. Their great man was Crawte, and he was taken away from our parish of Alresford by Mr. Amherst, the gentleman who made the Kent matches. In those days, except around our parts, Farnham and the Surrey side of Hampshire, a little play went a long way. Why, no man used to be more talked of than Yalden; and, when he came among us, we soon made up our minds what the rest of them must be. If you want to know, sir, the time the Hambledon Club was formed, I can tell you by this; when we beat them in 1780, I heard Mr. Paulet say, "Here have I been thirty years raising our club, and are we to be beaten by a mere parish?" so, there must have been a cricket club, that played every week regularly, as long ago as 1750. We used to go as eagerly to a match as if it were two armies fighting; we stood at nothing if we were allowed the time. From our parish to Hambledon is twenty-seven miles, and we used to ride both ways the same day, early and late. At last, I and John Wells were about building a cart: you have heard of tax carts, sir; well, the tax was put on then, and that stopped us. The members of the Hambledon Club had a caravan to take their eleven about; they used once to play always in velvet caps. Lord Winchelsea's eleven used to play in silver-laced hats; and always the dress was knee-breeches and stockings. We never thought of knocks: and, remember, I played against Browne of Brighton too. Certainly, you would see a bump heave under the stocking, and even the blood come through; but I never knew a man killed, now you ask the question, and I never saw any accident of much consequence, though many an all but, in my long experience. Fancy the old fashion before cricket shoes, when I saw John Wells tear a finger-nail off against his shoe-buckle in picking up a ball!
'Your book, sir, says much about old Nyren.[1] This Nyren was fifty years old when I began to play; he .jpg)
'SILVER BILLY'
(Enlarged detail from the frontispiece)
'I remember when many things first came into the game which are common now. The law for Leg-before-wicket was not passed, nor much wanted, till Ring, one of our best hitters, was shabby enough to get his leg in the way, and take advantage of the bowlers; and, when Tom Taylor, another of our best hitters, did the same, the bowlers found themselves beaten, and the law was passed to make leg-before-wicket Out. The law against jerking was owing to the frightful pace Tom Walker put on, and I believe that he afterwards tried something more like the modern throwing-bowling, and so caused the words against throwing also. Willes was not the inventor of that kind of round bowling; he only revived what was forgotten or new to the young folk.
'The umpires did not formerly pitch the wickets. David Harris used to think a great deal of pitching himself a good wicket, and took much pains in suiting himself every match day.
'Lord Stowell was fond of cricket. He employed me to make a ground for him at Holt Pound.'
In the last century, when the wagon and the packhorse supplied the place of the penny train, there was little opportunity for those frequent meetings of men from distant counties that now puzzle us to remember who is North and who is South, who is Surrey or who is Kent. The matches then were truly county matches, and had more of the spirit of hostile tribes and rival clans. 'There was no mistaking the Kent boys,' said Beldham, 'when they came staring into the Green Man. A few of us had grown used to London, but Kent and Hampshire men had but to speak, or even show themselves, and you need not ask them which side they were on.' So the match seemed like Sir Horace Mann and Lord Winchelsea and their respective tenantry—for when will the feudal system be quite extinct? and there was no little pride and honour in the parishes that sent them up, and many a flagon of ale depending in the farms or the hop-grounds they severally represented, as to whether they should, as the spirit-stirring saying was, "prove themselves the better men". I remember in one match,' said Beldham, 'in Kent, Ring was playing against David Harris. The game was much against him. Sir Horace Mann was cutting about with his stick among the daisies, and cheering every run,—you would have thought his whole fortune (and he would often bet some hundreds) was staked upon the game; and, as a new man was going in, he went across to Ring, and said, "Ring, carry your bat through and make up all the runs, and I'll give you ₤10 a-year for life." Well, Ring was out for sixty runs, and only three to tie, and four to beat, and the last man made them. It was Sir Horace who took Aylward away with him out of Hampshire, but the best bat made but a poor bailiff, we heard.
'Cricket was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least; but, that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard Newland, of Slindon in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard Nyren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play him. Now, a secondrate player of our parish beat Newland easily; so you may judge what the rest of Sussex then were. But before 1780 there were some good players about Hambledon and the Surrey side of Hampshire. Crawte, the best of the Kent men, was stolen away from us; so you will not be wrong, sir, in writing down that Farnham, and thirty miles round, reared all the best players up to my day, about 1780.
'There were some who were then called "the old players",'—and here Fennex's account quite agreed with Beldham's,'—including Frame and old Small. And as to old Small, it is worthy of observation, that Bennett declared it was part of the creed of last century, that Small was the man who "found out cricket", or brought play to any degree of perfection. Of the same school was Sueter, the wicket-keeper, who in those days had very little stumping to do, and Minshull and Colshorn, all mentioned in Nyren. These men played puddling about their crease and had no freedom. I like to see a player upright and well forward, to face the ball like a man. The Duke of Dorset made a match at Dartford Brent between "the Old Players and the New".—You laugh, sir,' said this tottering silver-haired old man, 'but we all were New once;—well, I played with the Walkers, John Wells, and the rest of our men, and beat the Old ones very easily.'
Old John Small died, the last, if not the first of the Hambledonians, in 1826. Isaac Walton, the father of Anglers, lived to the age of ninety-three. This father of Cricketers was in his ninetieth year. John Small played in all the great matches till he was turned of seventy. A fine skater and a good musician. But, how the Duke of Dorset took great interest in John Small, and how his Grace gave him a fiddle, and how John, like a modern Orpheus, beguiled a wild bull of its fury in the middle of a paddock, is it not written in the book of the chronicles of the playmates of Old Nyren?—In a match of Hambledon against All England, Small kept up his wicket for three days, and was not out after all. A pity his score is unknown. We should like to compare it with Mr. Ward's.
'Tom Walker was the most tedious fellow to bowl to, and the slowest runner between wickets I ever saw. Harry was the hitter,—Harry's half-hour was as good as Tom's afternoon. I have seen Noah Mann, who was as fast as Tom was slow, in running a four, overtake him, pat him on the back, and say, "Good name for you is Walker, for you never was a runner." It used to be said that David Harris had once bowled him 170 balls for one run! David was a potter by trade, and in a kind of skittle-alley made between hurdles, he used to practise bowling four different balls from one end, and then picking them up he would bowl them back again. His bowling cost him a great deal of practice; but it proved well worth his while, for no man ever bowled like him, and he was always first chosen of all men in England.'—Nil sine labore, remember, young cricketers all.—'"Lambert" (not the great player of that name[2]), said Nyren, "had a most deceitful and teasing way of delivering the ball; he tumbled out the Kent and Surrey men, one after another, as if picked off by a rifle corps. His perfection is accounted for by the circumstance that when he was tending his father's sheep, he would set up a hurdle or two, and bowl away for hours together."
'There was some good hitting in those days, though too little defence. Tom Taylor would cut away in fine style, almost after the manner of Mr. Budd. Old Small was among the first members of the Hambledon Club. He began to play about 1750, and Lumpy Stevens at the same time. I can give you some notion, sir, of what cricket was in those days, for Lumpy, a very bad bat, as he was well aware, once said to me, "Beldham, what do you think cricket must have been in those days when I was thought a good batsman?" But fielding was very good as far back as I can remember.'—Now, what Beldham called good fielding must have been good enough. He was himself one of the safest hands at a catch. Mr. Budd, when past forty, was still one of the quickest men I ever played with, taking always middle wicket, and often, by swift running, doing part of long-field's work. Sparks, Fennex, Bennett, and young Small, and Mr. Parry, were first-rate, not to mention Beagley, whose style of long-stopping in the North and South Match of 1836, made Lord Frederick and Mr. Ward justly proud of so good a representative of the game in their younger days. Albeit, an old player of seventy, describing the merits of all these men, said, "put Mr. King at point, Mr. C. Ridding long-stop, and Mr. W. Pickering cover, and I never saw the man that could beat either of them."
'John Wells was a most dangerous man in a single-wicket match, being so dead a shot at a wicket. In one celebrated match, Lord Frederick warned the Honourable H. Tufton to beware of John; but John Wells found an opportunity of maintaining his character by shying down, from the side, little more than the single stump. Tom Sheridan joined some of our matches, but he was no good but to make people laugh. In our days there were no padded gloves. I have seen Tom Walker rub his bleeding fingers in the dust! David used to say he liked to rind him.
'The matches against twenty-two were not uncommon in the last century. In 1788 the Hambledon Club played two-and-twenty at Cold Ash Hill. "Drawing" between leg and wicket is not a new invention. Old Small (b. 1737, d. 1826) was famous for the draw, and, to increase his facility, he changed the crooked bat of his day for a straight bat. There was some fine cutting before Saunders's day. Harry Walker was the first, I believe, who brought cutting to perfection. The next genuine cutter?—for they were very scarce (I never called mine cutting, not like that of Saunders at least)—was Robinson. Walker and Robinson would wait for the ball till all but past the wicket, and then cut with great force. Others made good off-hits, but did not hit late enough for a good cut. I would never cut with slow bowling. I believe that Walker, Fennex, and myself first opened the old players' eyes to what could be done with the bat; Walker by cutting, and Fennex and I by forward play: but all improvement was owing to David Harris's bowling. His bowling rose almost perpendicular; it was once pronounced a jerk; it was altogether most extraordinary.—For thirteen years I averaged forty-three a match, though frequently I had only one innings; but I never could half play unless runs were really wanted.'
Little is recorded of the Hambledon Club after the year 1786. It broke up when Old Nyren[3] left it, in 1791; though, in this last year, the true old Hambledon Eleven all but beat twenty-two of Middlesex at Lord's. Their cricket ground on Broadhalfpenny Down, in Hampshire, was so far removed from the many noblemen and gentlemen who had seen and admired the severe bowling of David Harris, the brilliant hitting of Beldham, and the interminable defence of the Walkers, that these worthies soon found a more genial sphere for their energies on the grounds of Kent, Surrey, and Middlesex. Still, though the land was deserted, the men survived; and imparted a knowledge of their craft to gentles and simples far and near.
Most gladly would we chronicle that these good men and true were actuated by a great and a patriotic spirit, to diffuse an aid to civilization—for such our game claims to be—among their wonder-stricken fellow-countrymen; but, in truth, we confess that 'reaping golden opinions', and coins, 'from all kinds of men,' as well as that indescribable tumult and those joyous emotions which attend the ball, vigorously propelled or heroically stopped, while hundreds of voices shout applause, that such stirring motives, more powerful far with vain-glorious man than any 'dissolving views' of abstract virtue, tended to the migration of the pride of Hambledon. Still, doubtful though the motive, certain is the fact, that the old Hambledon players did carry their bats and stumps out of Hampshire into the adjoining counties, and gradually, like all great commanders, taught their adversaries to conquer too. In some instances, as with Lord Winchelsea, Mr. Amherst, and others, noblemen combined the utile dulci, pleasure and business, and retained a great player as a keeper or a bailiff, as Martingell once was engaged by Earl Ducie. In other instances, the play of the summer led to employment through the winter; or else these busy bees lived on the sweets of their sunshine toil, enjoying otium cum dignitate—that is, living like gentlemen, with nothing to do.
This accounts for our finding these Hampshire men playing Kent matches; being, like a learned Lord in Punch's picture, 'naturalized everywhere,' or 'citizens of the world'.
Let us trace these Hambledonians in all their contests, from the date mentioned 1786, to 1800, the eventful period of the French Revolution and Nelson's victories; and let us see how the Bank stopping payment, the mutiny of the fleet, and the threatened invasion, put together, did not prevent balls from flying over the tented field, in a far more innocent and rational way on this, than on the other side, of the water.
Now, what were the matches in the last century—'eleven gentlemen against the twelve Caesars?' No! these, though ancient names, are of modern times. Kent and England was as good an annual match in the last, as in the present century. The White Conduit Fields and the Artillery Ground supplied the place of Lord's, though in 1787 the name of Lord's is found in Bentley's matches, implying, of course, the old Marylebone Ground, now Dorset Square, under Thomas Lord, and not the present by St. John's Wood, more properly deserving the name of Dark's than Lord's. The Kentish battlefields were Sevenoaks—the land of Clout, one of the original makers of cricket-balls,—Coxheath, Dandelion Fields, in the Isle of Thanet, and Cobham Park; also Dartford Brent and Pennenden Heath: there is also early mention of Gravesend, Rochester, and Woolwich.
Next in importance to the Kent matches were those of Hampshire and of Surrey, with each of which counties indifferently the Hambledon men used to play. For it must not be supposed that the whole county of Surrey put forth a crop of stumps and wickets all at once: we have already said that malt and hops and cricket have ever gone together. Two parishes in Surrey, adjoining Hants, won the original laurels for their county; parishes in the immediate vicinity of the Farnham hop country. The Holt, near Farnham, and Moulsey Hurst, were the Surrey grounds. The match might truly have been called 'Farnham's hop-gatherers v. those of Kent'. The former, aided occasionally by men who drank the ale of Alton, just as Burton-on-Trent, life-sustainer to our Indian Empire, sends forth its giants, refreshed with bitter ale, to defend the honour of the neighbouring towns and counties. The men of Hampshire, after Broadhalfpenny was abandoned to docks and thistles, pitched their tents generally either upon Windmill Downs or upon Stoke Downs; and once they played a match against T. Assheton Smith, whose mantle has descended on a worthy representative, whether on the level turf or by the cover side. Albeit, when that gentleman has a 'meet' (occasionally advertised) at Hambledon, he must unconsciously avoid the spot where 'titch and turn'—the Hampshire cry did once exhilarate the famous James Aylward, among others, as he astonished the Farnham waggoner, by continuing one and the same innings as the man drove up on the Tuesday afternoon and down on the Wednesday morning! This match was played at Andover, and the surnames of most of the Eleven may be read on the tombstones (with the best of characters) in Andover Churchyard. Bourne Paddock, Earl Darnley's estate, and Burley Park, in Rutlandshire, constituted often the debateable ground in their respective counties. Earl Darnley, as well as Sir Horace Mann and Earl Winchelsea, Mr. Paulet and Mr. East, lent their names and patronage to Elevens; sometimes in the places mentioned, sometimes at Lord's, and sometimes at Perriam Downs, near Luggershall, in Wiltshire.
Middlesex also, exclusively of the Marylebone Club, had its Eleven in these days; or, we should say, its twenty-two, for that was the number then required to stand the disciplined forces of Hampshire, Kent, or England. And this reminds us of an 'Uxbridge ground', where Middlesex played and lost; also, of 'Hornchurch, Essex', where Essex, in 1791, was sufficiently advanced to win against Marylebone, an occasion memorable, because Lord Frederick Beauclerk there played nearly his first recorded match, making scarce .jpg)
GRAND CRICKET MATCH
Played in Lord's Ground, Mary-le-bone, on June 20 and following day, between the Earls of Winchelsea & Darnley for 1000 Guineas. 1793
Already, in 1790, the game was spreading northwards, or, rather, proofs exist that it had long before struck far and wide its roots and branches in northern latitudes; and also that it was a game as popular with the men of labour as the men of leisure, therefore incontestably of home growth: no mere exotic, or importation of the favoured few, can cricket be, if, like its namesake, it is found 'a household word' with those whom Burns aptly calls 'the many-aproned sons of mechanical life'.
In 1791 Eton, that is, the old Etonians, played Marylebone, four players given on either side; and all true Etonians will thank us for informing them, not only that the seven Etonians were more than a match for their adversaries, but also that this match proves that Eton had, at that early date, the honour of sending forth the most distinguished amateurs of the day; for Lord Winchelsea, Hon. H. Fitzroy, Earl Darnley, Hon. E. Bligh, C. Anguish, Assheton Smith—good men and true—were Etonians all. This match was played in Burley Park, Rutlandshire. On the following day, June 25, 1791, the Marylebone played eleven yeomen and artisans of Leicester; and though the Leicestrians cut a sorry figure, still the fact that the Midland Counties practised cricket sixty years ago is worth recording. Peter Heward, of Leicester, a famous wicket-keeper, of twenty years since, told me of a trial match in which he saw his father, quite an old man, with another veteran of his own standing, quickly put out with the old-fashioned slow bowling a really good Eleven for some twenty runs—good, that is, against the modern style of bowling; and cricket was not a new game in this old man's early days (say 1780) about Leicester and Nottingham; for such a game as cricket, evidently of gradual development, must have been played in some primitive form many a long year before the date of 1775, in which it had excited sufficient interest, and was itself sufficiently matured in form, to show the two Elevens of Sheffield and of Nottingham. Add to this, what we have already mentioned, a rude form of cricket as far north as Angus and Lothian in 1700, and we can hardly doubt that cricket was known as early in the Midland as in the Southern Counties. The men of Nottingham—land of Clarke, Baker, and Redgate—next month, in the same year (1791) threw down the gauntlet, and shared the same fate; and next day the Marylebone, 'adding,' in a cricketing sense, 'insult unto injury,' played twenty-two of them, and won by thirteen runs.
In 1790, the shopocracy of Brighton had also an Eleven; and Sussex and Surrey, in 1792, sent an eleven against England to Lord's, who scored in one innings 453 runs, the largest score on record, save that of Epsom in 1815—476 in one innings! 'M.C.C. v. twenty-two of Nottingham,' we now find an annual match; and also 'M.C.C. v. Brighton', which becomes at once worthy of the fame that Sussex long has borne. In 1793, the old Westminster men all but beat the old Etonians: and Essex and Herts, too near not to emulate the fame of Kent and Surrey, were content, like second-rate performers, to have, though playing twenty-two, one Benefit between them, in the shape of defeat in one innings from England. And here we are reminded by two old players, a Kent and an Essex man, that, being schoolboys in 1785, they can respectively testify that, both in Kent and in Essex, cricket appeared to them more of a village game than they have ever seen it of late years. 'There was a cricket bat behind the door, or else up in the bacon-rack, in every cottage. We heard little of clubs, except around London; still the game was played by many or by few, in every school and village green in Essex and in Kent, and the field placed much as when with the Sidmouth I played the Teignbridge Club in 1826. Mr. Whitehead was the great hitter of Kent; and Frame and Small were names as often mentioned as Pilch and Parr by our boys now.' And now (1793) the game had penetrated further West; for eleven yeomen at Oldfield Bray, in Berkshire, had learned long enough to be able to defeat a good eleven of the Marylebone Club.
In 1795, the Hon. Colonel Lennox, memorable for a duel with the Duke of York, fought—where the gallant Colonel had fought so many a less hostile battle—on the cricket ground at Dartford Brent, headed Elevens against the Earl of Winchelsea; and now, first the Marylebone eleven beat sixteen Oxonians on Bullingdon Green.
In 1797, the Montpelier Club and ground attract our notice. The name of this club is one of the most ancient, and their ground a short distance only from the ground of Hall of Camberwell. Swaffham, in Norfolk, is now mentioned for the first time. But Norfolk lies out of the usual road, and is a county which, as Mr. Dickens said of Golden Square, before it was the residence of Cardinal Wiseman, 'is nobody's way to or from any place.' So, in those slow coach and pack-horse days, the patrons of Kent, Surrey, Hants, and Marylebone, who alone gave to what else were 'airy nothing, a local habitation and a name', could not so easily extend their circuit to the land of turkeys, lithotomy, and dumplings. But it happened once that Lord Frederick Beauclerk was heard to say, his eleven should beat any three elevens in the county of Norfolk; whence arose a challenge from the Norfolk men, whom, sure enough, his Lordship did beat, and that in one innings; and a print, though not on pocket-handkerchiefs, was struck off to perpetuate this honourable achievement.
Lord F. Beauclerk was now one of the best players of his day; as also were the Hon. H. and I. Tufton. They frequently headed a division of the Marylebone, i. or some county club, against Middlesex, and sometimes Hampstead and Highgate.
In this year (1798) these gentlemen aforesaid made the first attempt at a match between the Gentlemen and the Players; and on this first occasion the players won; though when we mention that the Gentlemen had three players given, and also that T. Walker, Beldham, and Hammond were the three, certainly it was like playing England, 'the part of England being left out by particular desire.'
Kent attacked England in 1798, but, being beaten in about half an innings, we find the Kentish men in 1800, though still hankering after the same cosmopolitan distinction, modestly accept the odds of nineteen, and afterwards twenty-three, men to twelve.
The chief patronage, and consequently the chief practice, in cricket, was beyond all comparison in London. There, the play was nearly all professional: even the gentlemen made a profession of it; and therefore, though cricket was far more extensively spread throughout the villages of Kent than of Middlesex, the clubs of the metropolis figure in the score-books as defying all competition. Professional players, we may observe, have always a decided advantage in respect of judicious choice and mustering their best men. The best eleven on the side of the Players is almost always known, and can be mustered on a given day. Favour, friendship, and etiquette interfere but little with their election; but the eleven gentlemen of England are less easy to muster,—
'Linquenda Parish et domus et placens
Uxor,'—
and they are never anything more than the best eleven known to the party who make the match. Besides, by the time an amateur is at his best, he has duties which bid him retire.
Having now traced the rise and progress of the game from the time of its general establishment to the time that Beldham had shown us the full powers of the bat, and Lord Frederick had (as Fennex always declared) formed his style upon Beldham's; and since now we approach the era of a new school, and the forward play of Fennex,—which his father termed an innovation and presumption 'contrary to all experience',—till the same forward play was proved effectual by Lambert, and Hammond had shown that, in spite of wicket-keepers, bowling, if uniformly slow, might be met and hit away at the pitch; now, we will wait to characterize, in the words of eye-witnesses, the heroes of the contests already mentioned.
On 'the Old Players' I may be brief; because, the few old gentlemen (with one of whom I am in daily communication) who have heard even the names of the Walkers, Frame, Small, and David Harris, are passing away, full of years, and almost all the written history of the Old Players consists in undiscriminating scores.
In point of style the Old Players did not play the steady game, with maiden overs, as at present. The defensive was comparatively unknown: both the bat and the wicket, and the style of bowling too, were all adapted to a short life and a merry one. The wooden substitute for a ball, as in Cat and Dog, before described, evidently implied a hitting, and not a stopping game.
The Wicket, as we collect from a MS. furnished by an old friend to the late William Ward, Esq., was, in the early days of the Hambledon Club, one foot high and two feet wide, consisting of two stumps only, with one stump laid across. Thus, straight balls passed between, and, what we now call, well pitched balls would of course rise over. Where, then, was the encouragement to block, when fortune would so often usurp the place of science? And, as to the bat, look at the picture of cricket as played in the old Artillery Ground; the bat is curved at the end like a hockey-stick, or the handle of a spoon, and—as common implements usually are adapted to the work to be performed—you will readily believe that in olden time the freest hitter was the best batsman. The bowling was all along the ground, hand and eye being everything, and judgement nothing; because the art originally was to bowl under the bat. The wicket was too low for rising balls; and the reason we hear sometimes of the blockhole was, not that the blockhole originally denoted guard, but because between these two-feet-asunder stumps there was cut a hole big enough to contain the ball, and (as now with the schoolboy's game of rounders) the hitter was made out in running a notch by the ball being popped into this hole (whence popping-crease) before the point of the bat could reach it.
Did we say Running a Notch? unde Notch? What wonder ere the days of useful knowledge, and Sir William Curtis's three R's,—or, reading, writing, and arithmetic,—that natural science should be evolved in a truly natural way; what wonder that notches on a stick, like the notches in the milk-woman's tally in Hogarth's picture, should supply the place of those complicated papers of vertical columns, which subject the bowling, the batting, and the fielding to a process severely and scrupulously just, of analytical observation, or differential calculus! Where now there sit on kitchen chairs, with ink-bottle tied to a stump the worse for wear, Messrs. Caldecourt and Bayley ('tis pity two such men should ever not be umpires), with an uncomfortable length of paper on their knees, and large tin telegraphic letters above their heads; and where now is Lillywhite's printing press, to hand down every hit as soon as made on twopenny cards to future generations; there, or in a similar position, old Frame, or young Small (young once: he died in 1834, aged eighty) might have placed a trusty yeoman to cut notches with his bread-and-bacon knife on an ashen stick. Oh! 'tis enough to make the Hambledon heroes sit upright in their graves with astonishment to think, that in the Gentlemen and Players' Match, in 1850, the cricketers of old Sparkes' Ground, at Edinburgh, could actually know the score of the first innings in London, before the second had commenced!
But when we say that the old players had little or nothing of the defensive, we speak of the play before 1780, when David Harris flourished: for William Beldham distinctly assured us that the art of bowling over the bat by 'length balls' originated with the famous David; an assertion, we will venture to say, which requires a little, and only a little, qualification. Lengthbowling, or three-quarter balls, to use a popular, though exploded, expression, was introduced in David's time, and by him first brought to perfection. And what rather confirms this statement is, that the early bowlers were very swift bowlers—such was not only David, but the famous Brett, of earlier date, and Frame of great renown: a more moderate pace resulted from the new discovery of a well-pitched bail-ball.
The old players well understood the art of twisting, or bias bowling. 'Lambert[4], the little farmer,' says Nyren, 'improved on the art, and puzzled the Kent men in a great match, by twisting the reverse of the usual way,—that is, from the off to leg stump.' Tom Walker tried what Nyren calls the throwing-bowling, and defied all the players of the day to withstand this novelty; but, by a council of the Hambledon Club, this was forbidden, and Willes, a Kent man, had all the praise of inventing it some twenty years later[5]. In a match of the Hambledon Club in 1775, it was observed, at a critical point of the game, that the ball passed three times between Small's two stumps without knocking off the bail; and then, first, a third stump was added; and, seeing that the new style of balls which rise over the bat rose also over the wickets, then but one foot high, the wicket was altered to the dimensions of 22 inches by 6, at which measure it remained till about 1814, when it was increased to 26 inches by 8, and again to its present dimensions of 27 inches by 8 in 1817; when, as one inch was added to the stumps, two inches were added to the width between the creases. In the year 1700, the runner was made out, not by striking off the transverse stump we can hardly call it a bail—but by popping the ball in the hole therein represented.
David Harris's bowling, Fennex used to say, introduced, or at least established and fixed, a steady and defensive style of batting. 'I have seen,' said Sparkes, 'seventy or eighty runs in an innings, though not more than eight or nine made at Harris's end.' 'Harris,' said an excellent judge, who well remembers him, 'had nearly all the quickness of rise and height of delivery, which characterizes over-hand bowling, with far greater straightness and precision. The ball appeared to be forced out from under his arm with some unaccountable jerk, so that it was delivered breast-high. His precision exceeded anything I have ever seen, insomuch that Tom Walker declared that, on one occasion, where turf was thin, and the colour of the soil readily appeared, one spot was positively uncovered by the repeated pitching of David's balls in the same place." 'This bowling,' said Sparkes, 'compelled you to make the best of your reach forward; for if a man let the ball pitch too near and crowd upon him, he very rarely could prevent a mistake, from the height and rapidity with which the ball cut up from the ground.'—This account agrees with the well-known description of Nyren (on pages 75-76).
And Nyren agrees with my informants in ascribing great improvements in batting, and he specifies 'particularly in stopping ' (for the art of defence, we said, was not essential to the batsman in the ideas of one of the old players), to the bowling of David Harris, and bears testimony to an assertion, that forward play, that is meeting at the pitch balls considerably short of a half volley, was little known to the oldest players, and was called into requisition chiefly by the bowling of David Harris. Obviously, with the primitive fashion of ground bowling, called sneakers, forward play could have no place, and even well-pitched balls, like those of Peter Stevens, alias Lumpy, of moderate pace might be played with some effect, even behind the crease; but David Harris, with pace, pitch, and rapid rise combined, imperatively demanded a new invention, and such was forward play about 1800. Old Fennex, who died, alas! in a Middlesex workhouse, aged eighty, in 1 839 (had his conduct been as straightforward and upright as his bat, he would have known a better end), always declared that he was the first, and remained long without followers; and no small praise is due to the boldness and originality that set at nought the received maxims of his forefathers before he was born or thought of; daring to try things that, had they been ordinarily reasonable, would not, of course, have been ignored by Frame, by Purchase, nor by Small. The world wants such men as Fennex; men who will shake off the prejudices of birth, parentage, and education, and boldly declare that age has taught them wisdom, and that the policy of their predecessors, however extensively stereotyped, must be revised and corrected and adapted to the demands of a more inquiring generation. 'My father,' said Fennex, 'asked me how I came by that new play, reaching out as no one ever saw before.' The same style he lived to see practised, not elegantly, but with wonderful power and effect, by Lambert, 'a most severe and resolute hitter;' and Fennex also boasted that he had a most proficient disciple in Fuller Pilch: though I suspect that, as 'poeta nascitur non jit,'—that is, that all great performers appear to have brought the secret of their excellence into the world along with them, and are not the mere puppets of which others pull the strings—Fuller Pilch may think he rather coincided with, than learnt from, William Fennex.
Now the David Harris aforesaid, who wrought quite a revolution in the game, changing cricket from a backward and a slashing to a forward and defensive game, and claiming higher stumps to do justice to his skill this David, whose bowling was many years in advance of his generation, having all the excellence of Lillywhite's high delivery, though free from all imputation of unfairness—this David rose early, and late took rest, and ate the bread of carefulness, before he attained such distinction as—in these days of railroads, Thames tunnels, and tubular gloves and bridges—to deserve the notice of our pen. 'For,' said John Bennett, 'you might have seen David practising at dinner-time and after hours, all the winter through;' and 'many a Hampshire barn', said Beagley, 'has been heard to resound with bats and balls as well as threshing.'
Nil sine magno
Vita labore dedit mortalibus.
And now we must mention the men, who, at the end of the last century, represented the Pilch, the Parr, the Wenman, and the Wisden of the present day.
Lord Beauclerk was formed on the style of Beldham, whom, in brilliancy of hitting, he nearly resembled. The Hon. H. Bligh and Hon. H. Tufton were of the same school. Sir Peter Burrell was also a good hitter. And these were the most distinguished gentlemen players of the day. Earl Winchelsea was in every principal match, but rather for his patronage than his play: and the Hon. Col. Lennox for the same reason. Mr. R. Whitehead was a Kent player of great celebrity. But Lord F. Beauclerk was the only gentleman who had any claim in the last century to play in an All England eleven. He was also one of the fastest runners. Hammond was the great wicket-keeper; but then the bowling was slow: Sparkes said he saw him catch out Robinson by a draw between leg and wicket. Freemantle was the first long-stop; but Ray the finest field in England; and in those days, when the scores were long, fielding was of even more consideration than at .jpg)
THE REVEREND LORD FREDERICK BEAUCLERK
(Reproduced by permission from a portrait in the possession of the M.C.C.)
The above-mentioned players are quite sufficient to give some idea of the play of the last century. Sparkes is well known to the author of these pages as his quondam instructor. In batting he differed not widely from the usual style of good players, save that he never played forward to any very great extent. Playing under leg, according to the old fashion (we call it old-fashioned though Pilch adopts it), served instead of the far more elegant and efficient 'draw'. Sparkes was also a fair bias bowler, but of no great pace, and not very difficult. I remember his saying that the old school of slow bowling was beaten by Hammond's setting the example of running in. 'Hammond,' he said, 'on one occasion hit back a slow ball to Lord F. Beauclerk with such frightful force that it just skimmed his Lordship's unguarded head, and he had scarcely nerve to bowl after.' Of Fennex we can also speak from our friend the Rev. John Mitford. Fennex was a fair straightforward hitter, and once as good a single-wicket player as any in England. His attitude was easy, and he played elegantly, and hit well from the wrist. If his bowling was any specimen of that of his contemporaries, they were by no means to be despised. His bowling was very swift and of high delivery, the ball cut and ground up with great quickness and precision. Fennex used to say that the men of the present day had little idea of what the old underhand bowling really could effect; and, from the specimen which Fennex himself gave at sixty-five years of age, there appeared to be much reason in his assertion. Of all the players Fennex had ever seen (for some partiality for bygone days we must of course allow) none elicited his notes of admiration like Beldham. We cannot compare a man who played underhand, with those who are formed on overhand, bowling. Still, there is reason to believe what Mr. Ward and others have told us, that Beldham had that genius for cricket, that wonderful eye (although it failed him very early), and that quickness of hand, which would have made him a great player in any age.
Beldham related to us in 1838, and that with no little nimbleness of hand and vivacity of eye, while he suited the action to the word with a bat of his own manufacture, how he had drawn forth the plaudits of Lord's as he hit round and helped on the bowling of Browne of Brighton, even faster than before, though the good men of Brighton thought that no one could stand against him, and Browne had thought to bowl Beldham off his legs. This match of Hants against England in 1819 Fennex was fond of describing, and certainly it gives some idea of what Beldham could do. 'Osbaldeston,' said Mr. Ward, ' with his tremendously fast bowling, was defying every one at single-wicket, and he and Lambert challenged Mr. E. H. Budd with three others. Just then I had seen Browne's swift bowling, and a hint from me settled the match. Browne was engaged, and Osbaldeston was beaten with his own weapons.' A match was now made to give Browne a fair trial, and 'we were having a social glass', said Fennex, 'and talking over with Beldham the match of the morrow at the 'Green Man', when Browne came in, and told Beldham, with as much sincerity as good-humour, that he should soon 'send his stumps a-flying'. 'Hold there,' said Beldham, fingering his bat, ' you will be good enough to allow me this bit of wood, won't you?' 'Certainly,' said Browne. 'Quite satisfied,' answered Beldham, 'so to-morrow you shall see.' 'Seventy-two runs," said Fennex,—and the score-book attests his accuracy,—'was Beldham's first and only innings'; and, Beagley also joined with Fennex, and assured us, that he never saw a more complete triumph of a batsman over a bowler. Nearly every ball was cut or slipped away till Browne hardly dared to bowl within Beldham's reach.
We desire not to qualify the praises of Beldham, but when we hear that he was unrivalled in elegant and brilliant hitting, and in that wonderful versatility which cut indifferently, quick as lightning, all round him, we cannot help remarking, that such bowling as that of Redgate or of Wisden renders imperatively necessary a severe style of defence, and an attitude of cautious watchfulness, which must render the batsman not quite such a picture for the artist as might be seen in the days of Beldham and Lord F. Beauclerk.
So far we have traced the diffusion of the game, and the degrees of proficiency attained, to the beginning of the present century. To sum up the evidence, by the year 1800, cricket had become the common pastime of the common people in Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, and had been introduced into the adjoining counties; and though we cannot trace its continuity beyond Rutlandshire and Burley Park, certainly it had been long familiar to the men of Leicester and Nottingham as well as Sheffield;—that, in point of Fielding generally, this was already as good, and quite as much valued in a match, as it has been since; while Wicket-keeping in particular had been ably executed by Sueter, for he could stump off Brett, whose pace Nyren, acquainted as he was with all the bowlers to the days of Lillywhite, called quite of the steam-engine power, albeit no wicketkeeper could shine like Wenman or Box, except with the regularity of overhand bowling; and already Bowlers had attained by bias and quick delivery all the excellence which underhand bowling admits. Still, as regards Batting, the very fact that the stumps remained six inches wide, by twenty-two inches in height, undeniably proves that the secret of success was limited to comparatively a small number of players.
- ↑ Here Beldham is referring to Richard Nyren. Mr. Pycroft by 'Old Nyren' usually means John. E. V. L.
- ↑ Lamborn, the little farmer. See page 53. E. V. L.
- ↑ Richard Nyren. E. V. L.
- ↑ Lamborn. E. V. L.
- ↑ John Willes's tombstone in Sutton Valence churchyard perpetuates his fame: 'He was a patron of all manly sports and the first to introduce round-arm bowling in cricket' (b. 1777, d. 1852). E. V. L.