Cricket Witness No 5 - Whites on Green

57 Swansea at war in the last match of Glamorgan’s inaugural County Championship season against Hampshire at Cardiff. He duly made five and nine as Glamorgan, dismissed for 37 and 114, lost by an innings inside two days. But Williams’ mind lay elsewhere and in 1921 had left Swansea to try his luck in London and elsewhere. In particular, he went to live with an old Army comrade, Major Arnold Wilson, who had become a boxing promoter, at his house at Maidenhead. Williams duly became a close friend of the world light-heavyweight champion, Georges Carpentier, with whom he wrote a song with the music penned by Williams under the pseudonym Florian Brock, to the words by Carpentier himself, called “Vagabond Philosophy”. It was sub-titled “I’ll be all right”, and it poignantly included the following lines: “And so in life you’ll get A regular knockout blow. Don’t lie and grouse, but try to smile And have the pluck to cry. The mud and dust will soon rub off. I’ll be all right, by and by.” 4 But Williams’ optimism proved to be misplaced, and shortly before the publication of “Vagabond Philosophy” he was declared bankrupt. He vanished for a while after the bankruptcy hearings, with his brother Morgan finding him “in a rather down and out state”, he took him to his home in Maidenhead where he stayed for a while. Whilst with his brother, he spoke about his financial problems, attributing the situation to an inadequate Army pay, coupled with the cost of maintaining his law firm during the war. But in truth his betting and gambling, in addition to taking out loans at a heavy interest, had had a crippling effect on his personal situation and these were the real reasons for his predicament. In late February Williams’ world fell in as his mother died. A confirmed bachelor, he told Wilson he felt desolate, and soon afterwards went to Belgium to play the casinos. His behaviour relapsed again as cheques started to bounce, whilst he also deceived the owner of a bar into giving him the sum of £200 for a cheque, which then bounced. His debts to Wilson also mounted, but he was able to write to Wilson saying: “I have at last struck a bit of luck, just when apparently things were hopeless. I shall be able to pay you back what you have let me have.” Wilson received that letter on 19 April. Tragically, the day before, the charlady had gone to clean Wilson’s offices in St. Martin’s Court in London. She found the room full of gas, with Williams slumped to the floor. The gas stove had two taps fully turned on. The 45 year-old solicitor–soldier– cricketer had become yet another, if belated victim of the war, with the coroner duly recording a verdict of “suicide while of unsound mind”. 1. From The Toll of War – Christ College Brecon, 1914-1918 by Glenn Horridge with Felicity Kilpatrick. 2. J.H.Morgan, Glamorgan County Cricket (Convoy Publications, 1952) 3. South Wales Weekly Post , 11 May 1918. 4. Article by Bob Harragan in the Cricket Statistician , June 1985