Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

13 One would suppose this might have come about through his grandfather, Major-General Ryall, as the Duke, a somewhat old-fashioned figure, had the reputation of believing social class to be more important than merit. It would seem, though, that the Duke took his time about it, and that according to Parker Hex had already passed the scholarship exam for Fettes College in Edinburgh, by writing an essay on ‘summer sports’, and indeed had started there by the time the Duke’s offer came through. The original idea was that some time at Fettes would be good experience for Wellington. In September 1887, now almost eleven, he went to Fettes as a Foundation Scholar, that is a pupil supported by a scholarship from the Fettes Foundation. It took a fair amount of string pulling, by the Sheriff of Sutherlandshire, the tremendously upper-class Cromartie Sutherland- Leveson-Gower, fourth Duke of Sutherland, who owned about 1.3 million acres of Scotland and by an ex-lieutenant-governor of the Indian Civil Service, so one can see why the offer from Wellington was turned down when it eventually came through. Mr Lea, hopeless to the last, said he had much better stay on at Lindley Lodge because he was winning them cricket matches and in any case had no chance of winning the scholarship to Fettes! He had indeed been winning them matches, writing to his mother to say that his bowling average was ‘a wicket for three runs’. He was not, according to Kate, particularly tall for his age at this time. During the summer of 1887 Kate was staying at Hythe in Kent, and Hex got together a team of visitors and local boys, which he ‘kept well in hand’ as captain. When Hex started at Fettes it was a fairly new school, with just over 200 students, having opened in 1870 as a school for ‘orphans and the sons of needy parents’ according to the Fettes College website. That is not strictly true, and not altogether uncontroversial, and in 1884 it had been alleged that funds set aside from the will of Sir Willam Fettes who died in 1836 intended for educating the poor were being diverted to the education of the sons of gentlemen. But the fact is that many public schools had started in just the same way, and an initial intention to provide half the places for foundationers disappeared before the school was opened. Of the 200 or so in Hex’s time, perhaps 50 were foundationers. The battle reverberated down the years: the College history quotes a bus driver in 1925 as saying ‘Yon’s Fettes College, founded to educate the sons of the poor. How the hell it got into the hands of the rich, I dinna ken.’ Turning back to Hex, Kate says that ‘during the first term at Fettes his health was not good, and he was in the doctor’s hands, who stopped his football and runs for two weeks, and gave him a strong iron tonic and afterwards other strengthening medicines.’ He was taking Parrish’s Food twice a day – a strong iron tonic widely believed to be good for developing bodies. India, Jersey and Edinburgh