Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

32 For 34 years the AEE travelled the length and breadth of Britain, bringing cricketing succour to the masses. The AEE was not a co-operative. William Clarke paid his players £4/£6, inclusive of expenses, a game, much the same as the MCC rate, although one or two players preferred the more sedate existence of Lord’s as opposed to the often irksome travel of the wayfaring life. William Clarke was very much the boss. He insisted on a down payment of £70 from those offering opposition plus part or whole of the gate money, so he was always in the clear by £10 or £20 after wages, basically his only expense, had been met, even if the fixture was rained off or otherwise affected. A conservative estimate would be that his AEE profits were easily £1000 a season, putting him straight into the middle class bracket as per finance if not finesse . Although by 1846 and thereafter the incidence and repute of cricket were, for reasons that the next chapter will explain, already on an upward curve, it cannot be doubted that the AEE played a significant role in the consolidation of an officially acknowledged construction of cricket and, over more than a generation, improved standards of play considerably. Peter Dark, a thriving equipment maker and supplier at a time when accoutrements like pads and gloves were coming into play alongside bats, wickets and balls, found to his delighted amazement that his wares were being ordered from the remotest parts of the kingdom. Indeed, so numerous were the calls for travelling cricketers that copycat versions were established without any inroads into William Clarke’s profits. John Wisden and others recruited the United All-England XI, which occasionally played a grand match versus the originals; there was a short- lived United North England XI and there was also a successful United South England side, started by Edgar Wilsher but to benefit mightily from the exploits of W.G.Grace. The redoubtable George Parr took up the reins of the AEE when William Clarke laid them down and proved to be a worthy successor, dominating the professional scene in these later years. Altogether this joint enterprise supplied the staple earnings to the first fully-fledged cadre of English cricket professionals and it was from this corps that the first overseas ventures to North America and Australia were recruited. Towards the end of this phase there were even a couple of Clown teams on the road. This offers us an insight into the social crucible of the time when, in quickly changing conditions, there was a rash of entertainments being conveyed to settlements, many of them linked for the first time with improved transport but as yet not having developed their own established theatres and other venues, The Exhibition XIs were not alone on the highways and, increasingly, the railways of the nation. As Little Nell and her feckless grandfather journeyed aimlessly in Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop (1840/41 but set in 1825), they encountered travelling entertainers. There among others were Mrs Jarley and her mobile waxworks and Short and Codlin, the puppeteers. Diaspora; Cricketing Migration