Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

128 humble against oppressors and despots.’ Clavigny had taken some of the edge off: the Prichard Don Q was quite a bit meaner than this. Indeed La Vautour du Sierra appeared as a series of short films in France, with no obvious credit to Hex, and by 1926 Clavigny had written La Mort du Vautour du Sierra. One of Hex’s stories, in The New Chronicles of Don Q , is entitled ‘How Don Q dealt with a famous cricketer’ . He has captured two Englishmen, Essenden and Rimbolt, who had been at Charterhouse together. Rimbolt was ‘no more than a respectable player’, but Essenden was ‘a great bat with a world-wide reputation’. Even in the wastes of Andalusia, Don Q, it transpires, has heard of him and remarks that ‘I have long desired to converse upon the game of cricket with one who entirely understands its intricacies.’ He holds them to ransom, demanding £2,000 each. Rimbolt is an unpleasant piece of work, but Essenden is a gentleman to the core: ‘although it was possible to discern the sadder self below, Essenden made a pleasant companion’. In the end it appears that Rimbolt believes that he will be released by political influence, so the ransom money comes only for Essenden. Being a gentleman, he tells Don Q that it is Rimbolt who has been ransomed. Don Q, who has an inkling of the truth, proposes that Essenden should defend a wicket consisting of two kegs of gunpowder with a lighted taper on top against the hurlings of the brigands. Which, of course, he does, eventually smiting a mighty blow and losing the ball in the river. At which Don Q concedes the point and releases him. Don Q was to go beyond the printed page. Kate mentions the enthusiasm for adapting the stories either for the stage or the cinema, and she says ‘various actors who seemed proud to resemble Don Q came and interviewed Hex on the matter of a play.’ In one case this went so far ‘that a party of film people came to Prae Wood bringing the ambitious Don Q. There certainly was a likeness but an entire lack of personality.’ The vicissitudes of trying to get it onto the stage have been noted, and though it eventually happened the effort was in the end a failure not a success, but Don Q was to outlive his creator. In 1920 Douglas Fairbanks had produced and starred in The Mask of Zorro , based on a story written by Johnston McCulley. One might wonder to what extent the character of Zorro owed something to Don Q himself, though rather less cruel and more romantic, but what happened next was that the Don found himself the star of another Fairbanks movie, this one entitled Don Q, Son of Zorro . Even in those days, this produced a cinema tie-in of Don Q’s Love Story illustrated by scenes from the movie, despite the fact that the story was quite different. The film appeared in 1925, together with the film tie-in edition. As we have seen, the stage play of Don Q came to the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue following a short trial week at the Palace, Ramsgate in a dramatised version written by Hex some time before, but the play was not a great success. The Manchester Guardian observed coldly that it was ‘a play of the melodramatic type’ . Don Q himself was played by the actor- The Legacy