Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

8 Chapter One Pre-Victorian Society; ‘Gentle And Simple’ Pantomime, like cricket, has a lengthy tradition of lore mixed with controversial roots. By the middle of the 19 th century, just as cricket was preparing to present itself in modern clothing as a leading wholesome national spectator sport, pantomime, too, was cast in updated healthy form. Its ancient Harlequinade formation was gradually morphing from up to 400 titles to just a few standard plots still familiar today. Joe Grimaldi had introduced the ‘dame’ character in 1812 and by the 1870s this had become firmly established along with the four former Harlequinade staples. Using Jack and the Beanstalk as an example, the five main cast were and often remain Mistress Trott, Jack, the Princess, the King and, as old-fashioned ‘Clown’ – Simple Simon. 1 Over time ‘Simple’ has acquired the connotation of dimness. Instinctively, many people believe that when confronted by the wily pieman, he was not the brighter of the pair, even if he does eventually prevail. For Simple Simon – whose nursery rhyme dates from 1764 - was plebeian rather than foolish. Simple was the descriptor of the lower orders in those years gone by; the upper orders were ‘gentle’. Both terms, obviously if confusingly, have a number of meanings attached, with ‘simple’ running a gamut from uncomplicated to stupid, but, during the 18 th century and until in the following century when the class construct took hold, they offered the main social reference points. While ‘simpleman’, unlike simpleton, never took hold, ‘gentlemen’ did in a most emphatic way, enduring as a social indicator well into the 20 th century. An account of how cricket developed during these years, especially in London and its environs, into a public entertainment linked with sometimes heavy gambling, is, one trusts, instructive. It might help with an understanding of how, when cricket burgeoned into a mainstream national recreation and spectator sport in Victorian times, there was a rather unusual and timely accommodation of the knotty class question. Some useful precedents had been created. In the pre-industrial age the coupling of terms gentle and simple was a constant, with ‘gentlemen’ liberally used for cricket teams from those early days. Gentle folk and simple folk were also common terms. In a letter dated as late as 1852, the great sage Thomas Carlyle, writing to his friend Arthur Helpe, talks of ‘Scotch (sic) gentlefolk and simple-folk’, although the use of the hyphen in the second suggests it was not so commonplace as the first term. Carl Wells, commentating on Gwendoline Keats/Zack’s historical novel Life is Life (1898) says that the authoress ‘understood that gentle folk and simple-folk are both people. Humphrey is a young