Dimming of the Day

49 June 1914 well at Horsham, setting Hampshire 80 to win. They did it but lost eight wickets in the process, Vincett and Mr N.J.Holloway bowling unchanged. Holloway was a Cambridge blue who carried on playing for Sussex after the war, though rather occasionally. His brother Bernard, who also played a few games for Sussex but was better known as a rugby player, was to die at Loos in September 1915. John Vincett was a professional who turned amateur after the war, playing for Sussex in 1919 and then turning out in a couple of games for Surrey in 1921. Cambridge beat Mr Leveson Gower’s XI by eight runs at Eastbourne, somewhat aided by the fact that Mr Leveson Gower himself and also Mr C.U.Peat had absented themselves at the end of the game. The score had been 133-2 but fell to 165-8, at which point the side ran out of batsmen. It would seem that the two had taken themselves off believing that the match was drawn, though Mr Leveson Gower might not have gone far as his XI was going to play Oxford the next day on the same ground. The Times ruminated at length about the strength of the Oxford XI. It is clear that the newspaper regarded the Oxford and Cambridge matches as more interesting to its readers than the county games. The paper had been acquired by Lord Northcliffe in 1908, but there was no suggestion that it was looking for a popular readership. On 25 June Lady Randolph Churchill’s political play, The Bill , was produced at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre. The play dealt with a Liberal attempt to bring forward a bill for universal suffrage which might have been topical enough, but the paper seems to suggest that the audience was made up of her friends. There was a great fancy-dress midnight ball at the Savoy in aid of the National Institute for the Blind (a cause being driven by Arthur Pearson of the Daily Express ). Among the glittering array of guests was Prince Paul of Serbia, the King’s nephew and later Regent of Yugoslavia at the outbreak of the Second World War. There was Jarrett’s famous Coon Band from New York and there were two American Bars selling cocktails. As far as The Times was concerned, the leading cricket match of the day was the Royal Navy against the Army at Lord’s. On the first day the Navy scored 380 and the Army 6-0. It had first-class status, though only eight of the 22 ever played first-class cricket for a county – five of them for Hampshire, always reliant on military connections at Aldershot or Portsmouth. Perhaps surprisingly, only two of the 22 were to die in the war. Haverford College from Philadelphia began their tour but had not yet got their land legs, being bowled out by Shrewsbury for 68 and losing by 202 runs. Somerset were beaten by an innings and 127 by Northamptonshire; it was only too easy. On 28 June The Times reported on the arrest at Kiel of the 78-year-old Lord Brassey, suspected of spying on the Imperial Dockyards. He did not stay in custody long – especially since he was due that evening to have