Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

Chapter Five Schoolmaster at Llandovery College With his cricketing star most definitely increasing in magnitude, C.P. returned to Llandovery College in the autumn of 1876. Part of his job was to teach in the College’s junior school, educating the young scholars aged from seven to thirteen in a variety of Classical topics. His main brief, however, was to oversee the teaching of athletic pursuits throughout the institution, especially amongst the older age groups. At the time there was just a handful of staff at the College, and it was quite a coup for the progressive school to secure the services of Wales’ finest all-round sportsman. Typically he threw himself into his new duties with great enthusiasm, as one pupil later recalled, ‘I have seen him transform, without a word, the lackadaisical efforts of a set of rabbits into irreproachable activity.’ To return to his old school, at a time when he had made so many contacts in the social and political world of south Wales, may have seemed a strange choice. With his academic 17 and sports credentials, he could have readily secured a teaching job at a prestigious public school in the English Home Counties or in the West Country, where he could have maintained links with the amateur side of first-class cricket and perhaps have become qualified for a first-class county. 18 Similarly he would have been in touch with English rugby clubs, then rapidly growing, but would of course have not been eligible for the English national side. During the University vacations, however, he seems to have been happy to spend his time in Wales or associating with specifically Welsh sporting endeavours. By teaching at Llandovery, he was able to 44 17 Though these were not of the highest, it has to be said. He passed two papers in the first term of his final year as we have indicated earlier. He passed classics papers in the Trinity (summer) Term of 1876, and finally history papers in the autumn term of 1876, by which time he had left Oxford, to satisfy the requirements for a pass degree. He had gone up to Oxford as an exhibitioner, expecting a good honours degree: no doubt his tutors shook their heads, regretting that he had spent too much time in sporting activities, both in term-time and during the vacations. 18 First-class cricket was not played in South Wales until 1910, and Glamorgan did not join the County Championship until 1921, both events rather later than an optimistic Welsh sports enthusiast might have expected in the 1870s.