Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

straight back; but, mark you, hard enough to go to the boundary generally – there was no letting the ball hit the bat with him.’ 33 Despite this success he played only one more first-class game in 1874, scoring 12 in Surrey’s innings win over Sussex. He may well have had to return to school; and also, his brother William was seriously ill and died on 23 September. Rather unusually, Lucas went up to Clare College three weeks before his 18th birthday in the Lent term, the second of the academic year – some eight months earlier than might have been expected. If there was some special reason for these arrangements, I have not traced it. Unlike his brother William and his cousin Arthur, he did not win an exhibition to university, so perhaps was not quite as academically gifted as them. Clare, the second oldest of Cambridge’s thirty-one colleges, was founded in 1326, and generously endowed a few years later by Lady Elizabeth de Clare, a granddaughter of King Edward I. 34 The college steadily grew in size and wealth so in the seventeenth century the college erected the present majestic buildings, which were matched by the college’s achievements. The college also bought a field on the other side of the Cam and built the famous Clare Bridge, now the oldest across the river. The field became the college cricket ground and, despite their small numbers, the team achieved some success to which Lucas may well have contributed, although no records survive. In the 1930s the new University Library building was erected on the site. By the time Lucas arrived, Clare had declined noticeably and consisted of a mere sixteen fellows and seventy undergraduates. His tutor was Rev William Raynes, himself a graduate of Clare, which suggests that it had become a rather inward-looking institution, although he did venture into the outside world as a curate at Witham in Essex. The most notable of Lucas’s contemporaries were William Loudon Mollison, who later as an academic inspired a revival in the fortunes of Clare, and three Anglican missionary clergymen. In 1875 the Chair of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics was established, with James Stuart (1843-1913) as its first occupant. In the Easter term of 1878, Lucas sat examinations for the Ordinary BA in Mechanism and Applied Science – nowadays we would call it engineering – and Stuart gave him a Class II pass. 35 Industry was not highly regarded among the Victorian upper classes, who tended to dismiss its practitioners as ‘rude mechanicals’. 36 Lucas was therefore more typical than a later Cambridge graduate in the same subject, the Hon Charles Stewart Rolls of Rolls-Royce fame, in that he applied the mathematical skills he had learnt from his degree to his career as a stock jobber, rather than to engineering. 38 Surrey and Cambridge University, 1874-1878 33 Lord Harris, A Few Short Runs , John Murray, 1921, p 148 34 This paragraph is based on the Victoria County History of Cambridge, Vol 3: The Colleges and Halls: Clare College, 1959, pp 340-346. 35 Cambridge University Library: UA Exam.L.8, p 112. Four men had firsts and five, including Lucas, seconds. 36 See Birley, op cit ., p 198.