Cricket 1884

70 CRICKET*, A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME, a p r i l 24 , mi. implicit reliance on Blank’s •word/’ And another thing which annoyed him was the new fashion of'not having a longstop. “ It is not cricket, ?’ he would say ; “ longstop is not simply a dummy like a net, he is a field. What becomes of your catches, which longstop would hold V Why they go for four to the boundary. And what becomes of the man to back up where longstop ought to be ? Why, there is no one there, and there is an overthrow for four to the boundary again.” H e also, without being a laudator temporis acti, was very jealous of the fame of past cricketers, who, on worse grounds than those of to-day, would, without pads or gloves, face the wildest bowling under the old law of 1b w, by which a man was “ out ” for stopping with any part of his person a ball which pitched in a line from thes bow­ ler’s Wand to the wicket, and would have hit, and who had only a bat to guard the whole wicket, and not a bat and pad as now. He stoutly maintained that, barring Dr. W. G. Grace, Fuller Pilch had the finest defence ever seen; and that old Lillywhite, Cobbett, Hillyer, Alfred Mynn, and Redgate were such a quintette of bowlers, of great excell­ ence and varied style and pace, as never existed together at any other time. Old John Bayley, who was thirty-five years at Lord’s, was another of his favourite middle- paced bowlers of the past; and he often quoted William Caldecourt and John Bayley as models of fair umpires. And now let us turn to “ Bob Grimston ” on the Harrow ground. It was a pilgrimage last Sunday, the day after his funeral, to go to Harrow and to sit in the church which, as a boy at school, he used to frequent, and in the afternoon to accompany the old school porter round the cricket ground. “ There is the place, sir, where Mr. Grimston used to practise the small boys’ eleven, and that is the ‘ trustees ’ field, which he and Lord Bessborough were mainly instrumental in securing for the school. That,” pointing to a building in the old ground, “ is the club­ house ; there are bed-rooms there, and Mr. Grimston often slept there, when he was very busy practising the eleven for Lord’s.” Among the numerous letters which are lying before me now are two from his cricket pupils, one who was under him over thirty years ago and who was afterwards one of themost distinguished cricketers ever seen in England, The first-named writes : “ He used to spend hours at Harrow rolling the ground and coaching—and especially future candidates for cricketing honours—and stood umpire always in a junior game on half holidays'; and woe betide anyone who bothered him whilst so engaged. His delight was great at discovering any unknown rising talent. In my time he was very fond of working the catapult, and his call of ‘ pla-a-y ’ I shall never forget, and his ‘ Keep the right foot firm and the left shoulder for’ard.’ ” The other letter is from an old Harrovian, who bowled for the eleven some ten years ago or so. He writes : “ All the boys knew him only as ‘ Bob Grimston,’ and his extraordinary popularity was not due so much for what he had done, but for what he was doing every day for the school he loved. He used to fix a peg in the ground and fasten a boy’s right foot to it to prevent his flinching, and he would secretly alter the catapult to find out a boy’s weak point. He would not find fault with a 1pull’ from the off to the on side if the ball was well off tho wicket. At one time he would not go and see the Eton and Harrow match, because he said he brought the Harrow boys bad luck ; and he sat in the telegraph office (he being chairman of the Telegraph Com­ pany), and followed the match ‘ by w ire.’ In the days of the school-matches, any time during his career previous to 1854, when, unfortunately, the then matches between Winchester, Harrow, and Eton were stop­ ped (in which folly Harrow refused to join), it was a sight *o see ‘ Bob Grimston ’ with his Harrow eleven, when there was elbow- room to move about, land matches were quietly played out before a ring of spec­ tators, mostly consisting of the schools, without boundary hits. An old Harrovian since deceased, who was at Harrow twenty years ago, used to record, as a specimen of ‘ Bob Grimston’s’ conservatism, that, when umpiring the junior boys’ eleven, he always said, ‘ The balls are over.’ ” During the match, when Harrow were in the field, he would be seen walking round with his inseparable friend “ Fred Pon- sonby,” as the present Earl of Bessborough was then called by the Harrovians ; and, possibly from over-zeal, “ whistles ” and “ dumb show ” on his part, would cause an alteration in the field and change in the bowling ; but on the appearance of a short letter in Bell's Life in 1848 or 1849, on the part of the Wykehamists, pointing out that Winchester was playing eleven Harrow boys, and a captain in the field besides, the system was instantly and loyally stopped. Of course his very soul was in the success of Harrow ; but it was always fondly remem­ bered of him at Winchester, in the old times, that, win or lose, if a Winchester hoy showed superior excellence, he usually gave him a bat. And there is one joke never to be forgotten. In 1852 the Winchester boys, who were to play Harrow at Lord’s the next day, were taken to the Hampstead ground for a preliminary match the day before. The field was in an out-of-the-way place, and someone suddenly “ spotted ” the familiar broad-brimmed hat on the opposite side of the hedge. This was the Harrow mentor, with two old Harrow friends, taking stock. There was a roar of laughter, as may naturally be supposed, and a little friendly chaff from the Winchester side, who asked them to walk in and see the eleven who would beat Harrow the next day, as it so happened they did that year. This is only a sketch ; but it is hoped that old Harrovians, to whom Mr. Grimston be­ longed heart and soul, will have a life of him published, as it ought to be written. In the hunting field, especially in “ the Vale” during the last few years, his face was as familiar as on the cricket ground in the summer. There is an admirable pen-and- ink sketch of him in “ Finch Mason’s Hunting Sketches,” on horseback, wearing the immortal hat tied under his chin. He was a perfectly fearless rider, and there was not a detail about the art and science of fox­ hunting, and probably staghunting too, which he had not mastered. One of the finest riders in England told me that he saw him stuck at the top of a thick hedge, and the horse was wedged in between a pollard and some timber, and it looked like a dan­ gerous accident pending, when they heard his earnest voice, “ Why don’t someone come and cannon me off.” When he had a very had accident and broke his leg, and was lying on his bed in a London hospital, to which he was taken at his »wn request, he said to a very intimate friend who -came to see him, “ It was no fault of the horse, and no fault of mine; it was an accident, and. I would ride the same horse at the same place again.” “ Well,” said his friend, “ get all right and do it, and break your other leg.” “ And so I will," was hisresponse. “ Hunt­ ing and cricket are the only sports leftnow,” he observed to a friend when his health was suddenly failing ; “ I have done with hunt • ing, but may see another match again, perhaps.” Though not caring about shooting, he was dead against battue shooting and “ driv­ ing,” and was in favour of “ hunting for the game, a long walk after it, and a sports­ man’s mixed bag.” Mr. Grimston had a will of his own, and was very determined when he tock an idea into his head; but withal he had a keen sense of justioe. No one saw through an impostor sooner, or more cordially despised a “ sporting snob ” who talked slang, than he did; but no one would be more ready than he to explain any­ thing about sport to the humblest individual who asked him for information, and he would take great pains to make him under­ stand it. He was a great walker, and would walk miles to see a friend. “ He used,” writes a neighbour who lived ten miles from Gorhambury, “ to turn up at my house at twelve o’clock in the morning, having walked over, and just eat a little breed and butter or cheese with one glass of betr, and walk home again.” As a young man he was a very fine boxer, having learnt the art from Tom Spring and Jem Ward, two ex-champions of England, the best men ever known with the gloves, the latter of whom, strange to say, was lying dead at the same time as the one whom he deemed to bo his very best and pluckiest pupil. To sum up the character of the late Hon. Robert Grimston, he was a splendid specimen of the real manly English gentle­ man, who in following sport himself, was anxious that all around him should enjoy it too. Knowing as much about horses as a dealer or a veterinary surgeon, he was never a “ horsey ” man, but a sportsman pure and simple; and whenever he wrote on the subject of sport, anyone could recognise the crack of his whip ” directly. Harrovians will not be sorry to read the final sentence of a letter to myself from a barrister, a well-known member of the Harrow eleven some ten years since : “ It is no breach of confidence now,” he writes, “ to mention how cordially he used to speak of Dr. Butler, the head master, and how heartily he approved of his efforts to raise the public feeling of the boys to take a high view of the life before them.” It is hoped that it will not be thought out of place for an old Wykehamist to take in hand 'the sketch of the character of one who belonged wholly to Harrow as a son ; but the writer of this on behalf of his old brother cricketing Wykehamists of the past, who used to meet Harrow in friendly strife at Lord’s, claims for them and himself a right to join with Harrow in desiderium for the fall of their champion, who, although a strong partisan in a Harrow match, was cosmopolitan in recognising kinship with men of all counties and classes who tried to promote the noble game of cricket. F. G. T he Tatton Club has decided to change its name. It will henceforth be known as the East Somersetshire. Pullen, the York­ shire colt, has been engaged for the season. S cotton scored 44 out of 87 for four wickets for the United Service Club, against the Portsmouth Borough Club, on the United Service Ground, at Portsmouth,, on Saturday.