Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

121 Chapter Eleven The Legacy The time has come to sum up. In talking about Hex’s legacy, we have to look three ways at least. In the literal sense, he left £6,951 6s 2d in his will, perhaps £270,000 at 2012 prices. The will was dated 6 June 1908 and so had been made immediately on marriage, but there was a codicil written not long after the will itself – it refers to ‘my infant child’. This established the arrangement that Kate would be his literary executor and inherit all the income from the books. He left a substantial amount in debentures of the Daily Express (£3,000 to Elizabeth, £1,000 to Kate) with the residue of his estate to be shared equally between them. He owned no real estate, of course: it was not the custom of the time and Prae Wood belonged to the Gorhambury Estate, and Lily of course would continue to be accommodated by the family. That looks more comfortable than it was, as it may not have provided much of an income. Lily wrote shortly after Hex’s death to her sister-in-law Violet and said: First of all financial – we shall have with my hundred about £200 a year. Of that Michael costs £80 at Fettes (including clothes) and then four months keep at home to be added. Out of the remaining £120 – of course, if I did the cooking and house the food would not come to £1 a head as it always does in cook’s hands. But the P.N.E.U. 61 fees for both (£12 a term I believe) would be £36 and books extra – but it is obviously not a £200 a year proposition. 62 Lily was to remarry in 1927; she had earlier been appointed a ‘Woman of the Bedchamber’, an aide-de-camp position, to Queen Mary, the wife of King George V. Writing as recently as 2000, Jeremy Malies said of Hex that ‘his fiction is long gone’ . In 2012 nothing could be further from the truth: almost all the novels are available on line, many of them in print-on-demand editions. With second-hand copies of the cheap editions available, it is not at all difficult to find Hex’s fiction. Some of the other books may be more difficult to locate, but most are available somewhere, many of them available to read online or as e-books free. The obvious legacy he left was in the education of the British Army in 61 These schools are affiliated to the Parents’ National Educational Union, offering a liberal curriculum based on the ideas of Charlotte Mason. There is, and was, such a school in Rickmansworth. 62 Letter from Lily to Violet Grimston, 1922, at Hertfordshire Archives D/EV/ F1682.