Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

29 Chapter Two The Template; The Fifth Form At St Dominic’s Although Thomas Hughes may have started it, he had followers who rushed to join the colours of the standard he had so firmly raised. At first the imitators’ output was a little on the pallid side. The Rev TS Millington and the Rev HC Adams were two such. They were influenced by Thomas Hughes but more after the fashion of saintlike George Arthur than sportive ‘Scud’ East. Indeed, at this early stage the more religious effect of Frederick Farrar seems to have been stronger. They also based their stories on small fee-paying schools rather than the more sizable public schools. There was less scope for developing action and plot; sport was not often included and the emphasis was strictly on moral sanctity. One suspects these books were enjoyed more by parents, teachers and clergymen than boys and girls. In studying children’s literature of any kind one has to take into account that the purchaser-cum-censor was unlikely to be the reader. Frederic Farrar’s Eric, or, Little by Little is a well- written book with many interesting elements but it was frequently the choice of Sunday School superintendents rather than their charges. It required someone to emerge who understood the boyish mind more readily, one who could encapture the verve of Tom Brown’s sporting and allied adventures, without wholly losing some element of those values advocated by the more religious offerings of Farrar and such writers of a solely religious turn. This meant someone who, like Thomas Hughes, understood that boys appreciated fairness and fair dealings, not least in playing football and cricket, and was skilled enough to link such sportsmanship to Christian tenets. Talbot Baines Reedproved to be that central figure. If Thomas Hughes was the Karl Marx whose Das Kapital penned the