Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

with his religious duty. If he had to play a match on Monday, necessitating Sunday travelling, he never left home until he had carried out his religious duties. They all regretted the death of one who was so highly esteemed. His memorial plaque in Fryerning church described him as ‘a notable example of modesty, piety and blamelessness.’ A universal favourite Some of this makes Lucas sound like rather a dull old stick, but that was far from the case: he seems always to have been popular and well-respected. In the early 1880s the Intercepted Letter from a Lady Rover in The Doings said: ‘Mr Lucas is such a good young man, and so sweet-tempered’, while Cricket described him as ‘a universal favourite with all classes of cricketers’. In the 1890s, at Essex, the professionals respected him as a cricketer and as a man, and he was also popular with the sometimes rather raucous Leyton crowd. It is unfortunate that his 1893 interview for Chats on the Cricket Field is rather wooden and unrevealing, for his constant tributes to H.H.Stephenson make it clear that he loved talking about cricket, and his friends Charles Green and Charles Kortright both enjoyed yarning about the game with him. The Rovers’ chronicler records several anecdotes which suggest that he had a good, if unsubtle, sense of humour. In Manchester, Bunny went out to dine on the Friday evening and I fancy dined well, very well. You would have laughed if you had seen him in the room with his arm round his umbrella, stoutly declaring that ‘he would not budge an inch from this pillar.’ … You won’t believe it I know, but Bunny made a riddle and declared it was his own. I heard him propose it to Royle as follows: ‘I say, Vernon, why are you like the Prince of Wales playing cricket? Because you are a Royle cricketer.’ Marriage and a bizarre divorce case On Tuesday, 15 September 1885, at St John’s Church Lewes, the 28-year- old Lucas married Bessie Arabella, aged 26, the third daughter of Captain Charles Maxwell Luckraft. 63 As a lieutenant in the Crimean War, Luckraft had commanded H.M.S.Euryalus , and at the time of the marriage was governor of H.M. Naval Prison at Lewes. The best man was Herbert Whitfeld, a colleague in the great Cambridge team of 1878, and captain of Sussex in 1883 and 1884. He was a member of Molyneux, Whitfeld and Molyneux, the leading bank in East Sussex until it amalgamated with Barclays in 1896. The service was conducted by the Rector of Lewes, assisted by the groom’s cousin, Rev Arthur Lucas. The man and the cricketer 76 63 Cricket magazine, 17 September 1885.