Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

10 have expected, Emile was rising to the top in another sport. Harrovians had taken quickly to the new sport of lawn tennis – both Spencer Gore and Frank Hadow were Harrovians – and Emile too became a fine lawn tennis player: so much so that he was selected to represent Cambridge in the first-ever Oxford v Cambridge lawn tennis match, held at Prince’s Ground, Chelsea on 24 and 26 June 1881. From the results of the match, Oxford had evidently taken even more expertly to the new game, and the Dark Blues won the doubles event on the Saturday by nine matches to love, with Emile, partnered by E.G.Watson, losing all three of his matches in straight sets. (All matches were played as best of three sets.) The singles on the rainy Monday were contested more closely, Oxford winning again, but only by a match score of 5-4. Emile lost his first match in three sets, but then secured a 7-5, 6-4 victory over T.P.D.Hogg, which according to The Sportsman featured ‘some very fine play’ on his part. He lost in straight sets in his final match, but overall could surely feel satisfied with his performance. Nowadays participants in the Varsity lawn tennis match receive full Blues, but this award was not made to those playing in this very first such match. Even half-Blues were not awarded for tennis until around the time of the First World War, so sadly McMaster never received even that distinction for his efforts on court. 6 He found time for some study too. In the summer of 1882 he obtained an ordinary BA degree, the course of studies for which mainly comprised the classical languages and mathematics, with a smattering of theology. He also cleared the path for a future career in law when in 1881 he was admitted to the Inner Temple. At Cambridge he took special examinations in law in both his second and third years, securing a humble fourth-class pass in 1881 but a second-class in 1882. His BA degree was conferred on him on 17 June 1882, and stayed with him for life; he did not later transform it into an MA, as those at certain universities were, and still are, able to do without further study. He may have decided on the law as his career, but Emile was not yet inclined to settle down. He was called to the Bar in June 1888, and to do so he would have had to pass a wide-ranging examination, as well as ‘keeping terms’ by dining in Hall on a certain number of days over three years. Emile must have done all this; but he was by no means a full-time student of the law. Nor was he even a full-time resident in Britain. Ireland seems to have had no special hold over him, but his feet were itchy: as witness this chairman’s introduction to a talk that McMaster gave at the Royal Colonial Institute in January 1902: Leaving England some fifteen or sixteen years ago, partly in search of health and partly in search of a country, the climate and prospects of which would be such as to induce him to make a home in it, he visited California, the Australian Colonies, and South Africa … . 7 6 We hear no more of Emile as a lawn tennis player. He never played in the Wimbledon Championships. 7 Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute , Vol 33 (1901-02), p 85. The Unlikeliest Test Cricketer