Cricket 1883

“ Together joined in cricket’s manly toil.”— Byron. No. 29, VOL. 2. Registered for Transmission Abroad. THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1883. PRICE 2d. IS PASSED IN A PU B L IC -H O U S E .’ T he above six words form the heading of one of the most charming chapters in Thackeray’s story of “ The Newcomes,” and so I adopt them. Could I follow a nobler model? Walk up ! walk up ! Ladies and Gentlemen, and see one of tho most, world-known hostelries m Cricket-land. There is no deception, it is °nly a small public-house at a cross-road on Broad- halfpenny, one of the Hampshire downs, half-way between Winchester and Portsmouth, and a little less than two miles from the pretty village of Hain- hledon, which lies nestled )n under the lee of the hills in the valley below. . To the best of my knowledge and belief the . picture .re­ presents the original very accurately, as it was drawn brick for brick under my own eye, and the artist (an amateur) being a son of my °wn, and also my brother cricketer, did his best to re­ produce the original, just as *twas, without any strained artistic effect,so that one can see the old club-house as it 8 ood in 1750, or there­ abouts, when the celebrated jiambledon Club was estab- ished; for from outward appearance it has not been altered externally in any Way for the last hundred- - fifty years. This ' ra"'ing has appeared in . '.w* Magazine for August last. It seems Impossible to realise the fact that this little .°0e tavern was the head centre of cricket the middle of the last century. Its isolated .'tuation as a kind of rest or change house » travellers across the downs to or from the Mioua markets, fairs, wakes, and races, which er6nv?*y common then, and places of meeting, ! only for equestrians before the days of good roads, seems to confirm the stories of the past that cricket, and similar sports, which' drew large crowds, were , unpopular in , the neighbourhood of large cities'as encouragement to idleness and for fear of Jacobite plots under the guise of, sports, and that cricket had a kind of “ hole and cprner ”, existence in its early days'. Still the fact is that‘ the “ Bat and Ball” was the rendezvous for the first noblemen and gentle­ men in England in the days when Little Ham­ bledon met All England in the field (now cul­ tivated and enclosed) opposite the windows of the inn. It is, and,ought to be, tho .“ Mecca ” of honest and true cricketers, as doubtless we owe our grand national sport to a great extent to the little band of heroes who fought their bloodless battles there, on the grand old prin­ ciples of fair play; in somewhat more primitive style than ours of to-day perhaps, but, .at the same time with pluck and energy, which wo may well try to imitate, but which we can nfever surpass. The old warriors of the past shoul­ dered their bats and thought nothing of walking their ten or twenty miles to a match, for they were always in training and many of them were good runners and athletes in evei:y way, and they could find their way across’.the trackless downs as easily as a sailor can at sea. The nearest railway station to ’Hamble­ don is Fareham, near Ports­ mouth, on the London and South - Western Kailway, about nine miles from Ham­ bledon ; and any one who is not made of sugar, and who cares for real old English scenery, would not do badly to send his carpet­ bag to Winchester, start whilst the dew: is on the grass, and walk from Fare­ ham to Hambledon and make it a resting place, and so on to Winchester; the whole distance is only about twenty-three miles; and it would do his pipes more good than lounging in the Club smoking room. And when h e' gets to the Old George at Winchester he may have a bottle of port .out of the old Wyke­ hamist bin, for a bucket of it would not hurt a Bishop. I made my pilgrimage on a Sunday, and I hope Little Bethel will forgive me and my brother pilgrim who I made tho drawing, as the latter was rusticating after scarlet fever, and it was our bounden duty not to carry the infection into a congregation ; and if we had attempted a Salvation Army movement in the open we might have ended in a pond, for the lads of the village in Hampshire, though rough and honest, would not, I fancy, stand tambourines and hymns with drinking-song choruses. We walked all th