I have always thought it a better fate for a man to be born a bowler than a bat. A batsman certainly gets a considerable amount of innocent fun by snicking good fast balls just off his wicket to the ropes, and standing stolidly in front against slow leg-breaks. These things are good, and help one to sleep peacefully o’ nights, and enjoy one’s meals. But no batsman can experience that supreme emotion of ‘something attempted, something done,’ which comes to a bowler when a ball pitches in a hole near point’s feet, and whips into the leg stump. It is one crowded second of glorious life. Again, the words ‘retired hurt’ on the score-sheet are far more pleasant to the bowler than the batsman. The groan of a batsman when a loose ball hits him full pitch in the ribs is genuine. But the ‘Awfully-sorry-old-chap-it-slipped’ of the bowler is not. Half a loaf is better than no bread, as Mr Chamberlain might say, and if he cannot hit the wicket, he is perfectly contented with hitting the man. In my opinion, therefore, the bowler’s lot, in spite of billiard table wickets, red marl, and such like inventions of a degenerate age, is the happier one.
And here, glowing with the pride of originality at the thought that I have written of cricket without mentioning Alfred Mynn or Fuller Pilch, I heave a reminiscent sigh, blot my MS., and thrust my pen back into its sheath.
Dulwich v. St Paul’s (1939)
Played at Dulwich, July 8.
Result: St Paul’s won by 27 runs.
IT IS A pity that the threatening weather reduced the crowd watching this match after roll-call to three – or it may have been four – for the school missed thereby a valuable object lesson in how not to bat when faced by a total of 212 on an easy wicket. Our innings lasted exactly 195 minutes, in which time we scored 185 runs. As somebody said, you can’t run a business that way.
Oddly enough, this frightful game – probably the dreariest ever seen on the school grounds – started as if we were going to have a bright and exciting day. Mischler and Somper got going briskly, and 71 was on the board when Somper, who had been badly missed at slip by Collingwood and had given a hard c & b chance to Thomas, played outside a good ball from Bailey and was bowled. Walker made some nice shots and Mischler looked like getting a century, when Bailey suddenly produced an unexpected slow one and, following up, took an excellent c & b. Soon afterwards Field caught Brett at the wicket off Knight, Collingwood took Walker at mid-off with a high one-handed catch, and Bailey bowled Mann, the score at that point being 110 for 5. Bailey had bowled splendidly from the start.
What we wanted now was another quick wicket, but Arnold and Rahman settled down, Rahman playing particularly attractively. At 146 he gave an easy c & b to Mallett.
The next wicket added 28. The score was 185 for 8, and the innings finished in a shower of rain for 212, Bailey getting the last man lbw, which made his figures 5 for 41, a fine performance.
Up till now there had been nothing to complain of, except one or two bits of slack fielding, nor did Collingwood and Turner start so badly. Collingwood got a nice four to leg off Dailey’s first over, and singles came pretty regularly. Then there were three maidens, after which Turner got a four to leg, followed by a fine off drive to the boundary. Hennessy came on – slow left hand – and Collingwood took a two and a four off successive balls. Looking back in the light of after events, this part of the innings seems like a partnership between Gimblett and H.T. Bartlett. But at 29 Collingwood was stumped off Hennessy, and the timeless Test began.
Even then, there were occasional flashes of brightness. Turner got a couple of fours and Mallett one, and the score was 57 at the end of the first hour. Then Turner called Mallett for an impossible run, and the latter was out by yards, just as he was beginning to show signs of setting about the bowling.
Barnett came in and got a lovely shot past cover to the boundary, and it was after that that the grim business started. The next ten minutes produced one run, and then Barnett was lbw. This brought Bailey in, and the next twelve minutes saw the pace of scoring quicken. Four runs were added in that period of time. Eventually Turner got a single, which gave him his 50. He then drove a half-volley to the boundary and the 100 went up after an hour and three-quarters.
The next seven minutes brought the score to 101, and then Turner suddenly got two more fours and Bailey a two and a four, and things were looking brighter when Turner was bowled at 130. He had played an innings which can be criticised only for its slowness. He gave no chances and actually hit nine fours.
It now began to dawn on the skipper that at this rate of scoring we had not a hope of making the runs, and he sent Knight in. Knight opened with a fine cut for four, and gave every sign of being about to improve the situation. Unfortunately, he was bowled at 143, and Hammond came in.
Five wickets were now down, but anxiety in the pavilion was entirely confined to the question of whether we could get the runs in the time. It did not seem possible that we could actually be beaten. Hammond did us proud. He – alone on the side – played the right game. He wasted no time, but got going at once with a grand drive to the boundary. Bailey, who had been in a sort of coma for about an hour and twenty minutes, got a four to leg, and Hammond, continuing the good work, followed up a three to leg with a drive for three and another drive for four. Then, just as the happy ending seemed in sight, he was stumped, having played an excellent innings of 17. 175 for 6.
The rest was disaster. The next four wickets added ten runs, and we were beaten at ten minutes to seven.
We would like to add a word of respectful praise for the admirable way in which Mischler captained the St Paul’s side in the field. He had not much bowling to help him, but he handled what he had got like a master.
(Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Governors of Dulwich College)
Extras
P.G. Wodehouse played in one further match serious enough to be recorded (beyond those mentioned previously). This was for Bourton Vale against MCC in 1906, at Bourton-on-the Water in Gloucestershire. Batting No.9 in a 12-a-side match, Plum made three and 24, and took one wicket; MCC won by nine wickets. The Wodehouse link came because his favourite Aunt, Louisa Deane (the model for Aunt Dahlia), lived at Bourton. The club was strongly supported by local landowners and the upper classes, and played a regular fixture against MCC from 1891, as well as entertaining the Eton Ramblers from 1893. A member of the 1906 Bourton Vale team was G.H. Simpson-Hayward, who captained Worcestershire, played five Tests for England in 1909-10, and was the last of the great “lob” (underarm) bowlers in big cricket.
* * *
The youngest Wodehouse brother, Richard Lancelot Deane, known always as Dick, who was born on May 30, 1892, and went to Cheltenham rather than Dulwich, played three first-class cricket matches while working in India. These were for The Europeans in the Quadrangular Tournament; he batted six times for a total of 84, with a top score of 52 (against the Parsis), and took five wickets for 138 runs.
* * *
Elder brother Armine might have been forgiven some disillusion with cricket after his most publicised effort for Dulwich in 1898 – his last year at school. Batting No.5 for the college in its major match against MCC, he made a duck in the first innings and six in the second – run out both times.
* * *
There is a rare slighting Wodehousean reference to cricket in “Creatures of Impulse“, published in October, 1914, in Strand Magazine and McClure’s, and reprinted in the Plum Stones series. When the somewhat stuffy and lonely Sir Godfrey Tanner KCMG stayed at the private school run by his nephew George he was bothered by the endless activities and noise of the small boys. Tanner Snr sought solace in the stable yard where, to his nephew’s surprise, he was found one day playing cricket “unskilfully, but with extreme energy”. Sir Godfrey explains; “I suppose many years ago one would have found pleasure in ridiculous foolery of that sort. It seems hardly credible, but I imagine there was a time when I might really have enjoyed it”. On his nephew suggesting, “It’s a good game”, Sir Godfrey responds; “For children possib
ly. Merely for children. However it certainly appears to be capital exercise”.
* * *
“Shall we ever get Bradman out in the Tests?” (Letter from PGW to Bill Townend on May 15, 1938, referring to the series about to begin in England). Answer: Yes – for scores of 51, 18, 103, and 16. He also made 144 not out and 102 not out, while being unable to bat in either innings of the Fifth Test. Average – 108.5.
* * *
PGW drew his character Claude Cattermole “Catsmeat” Potter-Pirbright from real life, Catsmeat having taken to the stage partly because it allowed him the chance to play county cricket. He was based on Basil Foster of the famous Worcestershire Fosters, whom Plum had met on the cricket field. B.S. Foster opened the innings for Actors against Authors at Lord’s in 1907, and made 100 before being caught by A.A. Milne off PGW’s bowling. Dismissed for 193 (Plum out for a single), the Authors were then hit for 253 for four wickets off just 26 overs. Plum’s 2/36 off five overs were the only reasonable bowling figures. Basil Foster played the hero, George Bevan, in the 1928 New Theatre (London) production of A Damsel in Distress, adapted by PGW and Ian Hay from the Wodehouse novel of the same name. He also played Psmith in Leave It to Psmith at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1930.
* * *
The cricket-enthused English journalist Michael Davie spent a day at Remsenburg to mark PGW’s 90th birthday, resulting in an article in The Observer of October 10, 1971. Asked how Bertie Wooster was conjured up, PGW responded: “Bertie was an absolutely recognisable type when I started writing about him. How jolly life was in those days! I was thinking of the country house cricket matches: I played in a lot of them. Everyone seemed to have a reasonable amount of money. I mean, the Berties never had to work”. Which country houses staged those matches which Plum enjoyed, you wonder. Are there any scoresheets tucked away in their libraries?
* * *
Plum’s enthusiasm for Surrey cricket must have been encouraged by the Dulwich professional from 1872 to 1895, William Shepherd. The Alleynian declared in 1879, “From the arrival of Shepherd dates a complete reform in the history of our cricket”. Shepherd was just 5 ft 5½ inches tall, and weighed a little over nine stone. As a left-arm, medium-pace bowler he had a unique delivery, “which gave the impression he was extracting the ball from his waistcoat pocket”. Born in Kennington in 1840, he played 13 matches for Surrey in 1864-65, then making his name as a coach, with engagements at Oxford and The Oval, before joining Dulwich. Shepherd drained, levelled and re-turfed the college playing fields, and devoted enormous energy to the cause of Dulwich cricket.
* * *
Cricket My Pleasure, the book of memories by the Yorkshireman A.A. Thomson, was said to have been read by PGW in one sitting. He added that it was “the best he had ever come across”.
* * *
A tribute to Plum’s love of cricket came in 1998 with the formation of The Gold Bats, a team representing The P.G. Wodehouse Society (UK). Beginning with an annual match against The Dulwich Dusters – the Dulwich College masters – this extended its fixture list in 2001 with the first of a series of games against The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, played at West Wycombe under the Laws of Cricket applying in 1895 (in honour of Holmes’s declaration, “It is always 1895”). The Gold Bats now also play regularly against The Charterhouse Intellectuals, The Kirby Strollers, and The Mount, as well as contributing members to George Sherston’s XI v Matfield Village, a match played in memory of Siegfried Sassoon.
* * *
PGW wrote to Ralph Blumenau, author of A History of Malvern College 1865-1965: “When I was a small boy, I used to spend part of the summer holidays with an uncle who was Vicar of Upton-on-Severn, and I played a lot of boys’ cricket, some of it on the Malvern ground. From those early days, the place fascinated me. I was of course cricket-mad, and I can well remember peering in at the pavilion and reading all those illustrious names on the boards”. (The author notes; “Malvern cricket was the inspiration [sic] of P.G. Wodehouse’s schoolboy story, Mike at Wrykyn; the Jackson brothers in that book are taken from the Fosters, and the climax is, appropriately, the ‘Ripton Match’”).
Actors v. Authors.
(Lord’s, 1905: by permission of MCC)
Authors v. Publishers.
(Lord’s, 1911: by permission of MCC)
The scorecard of the match between Dulwich Modern VI and Remove, in which Wodehouse took nine wickets (by kind permission of the Master and Governors of Dulwich College)
The Dulwich Classical VI cricket XI, 1900. Wodehouse is seated on the left of the captain. Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Governors of Dulwich College.
Authors v. Artists, Esher, May 1903. (By permission of MCC)
The Hollywood Cricket Club, 1945/6. C. Aubrey Smith bats while Boris Karloff threatens behind the stumps (by permission of Sussex County CC)
Acknowledgements
The idea for this book stemmed from a simple question which crystallised in my mind in years of reading Wodehouse: just how good a cricketer was Plum? Might he have got his Blue, perhaps played for a county, if he had gone to Oxford, instead of being thrust into the world of banking?
Sir Edward Cazalet was most helpful in my early inquiries, and approved the initial article I wrote for Wisden Cricket Monthly. Tony Ring, who pushed the idea that my original research should be expanded, and provided the introductions necessary to the publishing world, has been a security blanket as well as a catalyst, and an endless source of material. I am much in his debt for his cheery readiness to share the depth of his Wodehouse knowledge, and the range of his remarkable collection.
Colonel Norman Murphy was encouraging and helpful in one vital area, confirming that he had found no detail of Plum’s post-Dulwich cricket other than his Authors’ appearances – effectively reassuring me that if N.T.P. Murphy had found nothing, then it was improbable that anyone would do so. Barry Phelps also responded swiftly and positively to queries, as did the doyen of them all, Richard Usborne.
Dr Jan Piggott at Dulwich was an essential part of the information team, even if my first visit to his treasure house was made in time of domestic flood (to my heartfelt relief, no Wodehouse documents were affected).
His predecessor, Margaret Slythe, also had helpful thoughts to offer and made most encouraging comments.
Old Alleynian Trevor Bailey (humorously resigned to being quizzed yet again about the notorious description of his batting against St Paul’s in 1939) and his old skipper A.C. Shirreff, who expanded on Plum’s delight at the Eleven’s 1938 unbeaten run, were appreciated on-the-spot witnesses.
Mike Griffith was kind in explaining his relationship as Wodehouse’s godson, who inherited his Christian name from Wodehouse’s greatest cricketing character.
Michelle Simpson was much appreciated for providing copies of the Public School Magazine, once we found our way to the A & C Black archives in the delightful village of Eaton Soken.
David Rayvern Allen produced an invaluable file of Punch material on cricket stemming from his own researches, and a welcome Wodehouse letter to John Arlott.
David Frith as ever was interested in something beyond the normal pattern of cricket writing, to give my preliminary article welcome exposure in Wisden Cricket Monthly.
MCC curator Stephen Green and his colleagues were helpful as always in pointing me in the right direction in the Lord’s collection, not least in producing a forgotten picture of Wodehouse in 1902, with The Authors XI.
Richard Morris and David Moriarty of the Wodehouse Society were encouraging, while Frits Menschaar, New York collector, dealer and enthusiast, proved that Americans can indeed have a true feeling for cricket with his helpful thoughts and detail.
John Hayward, Yorkshire-born secretary of the Hollywood Cricket Club, was a cheerful collaborator in checking Wodehouse links with that happy band of exiles – but alas, could find no proof that Plum ever actually donned flannels in the States.
Sir Donald Bradman was courteous and kindly as he
always is to his vast network of correspondents, responding promptly to my inquiry whether he had met Plum with the touring Australian cricket team in Los Angeles in 1932.
My family was indulgent as its various members have always been about my highways and byways of enthusiasms: my wife Petra, one of those people who found Wodehouse in youth but no longer read him, made all the right responses when I needed encouragement or motivation, as she has done throughout so many rewarding years together.
And Tony Whittome at Hutchinson was sympathetically and breezily persuasive and helpful throughout an old newspaper hand’s introduction to the mysterious new world of book publishing.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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Epub ISBN 9781448164783
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Published by Arrow Books 2011
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Copyright by The Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate
All rights reserved
First published in the United Kingdom in 1997 by Hutchinson
Material in this anthology first appeared in the following books:
‘The MCC Match’, from Mike (1909), ‘The Match with Downing’s’, from Mike and Psmith (1909, revised 1953), ‘At Lords’, from Psmith in the City (1910), ‘How’s that, Umpire?’, from Nothing Serious (1950), ‘Missed!’ (1903), from The Parrot and Other Poems (1988), ‘The Cricketer in Winter (1903), from The Parrot and Other Poems (1988), ‘The Umpire’ (1906), from The Parrot and Other Poems (1988), ‘Bingley Crocker Learns Cricket’, from Picadilly Jim (1918).