Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

130 South American experience and a first-class shot. We have seen Hex in many roles, but what of him as a person? It is of course the case that the main resources for this are his mother’s account and (drawing on it heavily) Eric Parker’s memoir, and neither of them would draw out Hex’s failings. Indeed neither would hardly recognize that there were any. Clearly he was a man of considerable personal charm who appeared to get on easily with a surprising mix of people: he even seems never to have fallen out with Teddy Wynyard, which was something of an achievement. He was given to spells of melancholy and withdrawal when he felt ‘small’. He was perhaps intolerant of those weaker or less determined than himself. Certainly both in Patagonia and Labrador he had some problems with the ‘hired help’. He managed a fairly spectacular social ascent from the scholarship boy at Fettes to the brother-in-law of an Earl, passing through the role of ADC in Dublin, a role for which there is no obvious motive other than social betterment. His children seem to have had different experiences. Michael, away at Fettes or living with his grandparents, must have seen very little of him after the war. But there is a picture of him with Diana suggesting a closeness which we might not associate with an Edwardian paterfamilias. Alfred – or Alfgar – named after his closest friend and the youngest, was probably the favourite. Hex, though unique, was very much a man of his time, and to understand the way in which he negotiated the minefields of the Edwardian class system is to understand rather more about Edwardian society itself than one might learn from the simplifications of Downton Abbey or from a recent novel, shortlisted for a prize as a cricket book, in which the protagonist comes down from Oxford and promptly turns professional. Perhaps the last word – if a humorous one – should be left to Stanley Wood, illustrator of Don Q , writing in 1909: He entered the little room and filled it – all but the corner that contained me. Over two sofas, one chair, and a seal skin he engineered an unholy length of arm terminating in a hand like a half-acre of land – and we shook. Then I awaited developments. They came in the form of a gentle knock. The MAN – or rather sections of him – turned, and a low muttered conversation ensued – parts of the Man being in the room, and parts down the corridor. ‘Come’ said he, ‘and see the heads off! Although this sounded like a summons to an old world execution, I followed mutely, awed by the MAN’s size. His trail led me to a larger room – where an anaemic youth with lank hair appeared to be waltzing with the inverted head of a mastodon. The horns were wide – very wide – and the doorway was very narrow and the room was not adapted for this particular sort of dance. The Legacy