Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

26 Next from Lisbon he took a passage to Tangier on a Spanish tramp ship. In Tangier he smoked opium (though claimed that he didn’t inhale – haven’t we heard this story since?) and wrote of ‘the cry of the cardplayers, the drumming pulses, the reek of spices in the long blue-tiled picturesque saloon, and the thin curl of the opium smoke.’ The opium, he writes, is called kish and three whiffs equal a glass of strong sherry. From Tangier he returned to Spain, and in Malaga went to a bullfight, which he did not like. Much of what he saw in Spain was later to inform the stories about Don Q . He has too the plot of a novel, A Modern Mercenary, and writes to his mother giving the chapter headings and adds ‘We will plan it in the forest, along the Wimblehurst Road [in Horsham] and by the fire in the red afterglow.’ This year, too, he was invited to go and talk to Smith, Elder and Co who would later publish A Modern Mercenary , and Kate talks about the nom de plume, saying ‘we were not at all sure we should succeed and we thought it best not to write under our own name, especially as various friends had not been encouraging when they heard of our intention. So we chose E. and H.Heron.’ Then, in February 1897, came a significant meeting. Cornhill invited him to an authors’ dinner, where he met Arthur Conan Doyle. They took to each other at once and spent several hours walking the streets and talking. Conan Doyle was to prove an important contact, not only for writing but for cricket. Stories by now were in full flood. They made contributions in 1897 to Cornhill, English Illustrated, Chambers’ and Chapman’s as well as Pearson’s. Arthur Pearson suggested they should write ghost stories for Pearson’s. Pearson’s Magazine had first appeared in 1896, edited by Arthur Pearson himself, but took a slightly different line from its competitors – Upton Sinclair, Maxim Gorky, H.G.Wells and G.B.Shaw were early contributors – and it published a United States edition from 1899. Ghosts , the first of the Flaxman Low stories, was serialised there in 1898. In 1897, though no longer pretending to study law, he was still living in Horsham, playing ‘a good deal of cricket’ and on 23 and 24 August that year played for Sussex Second XI against Kent at Tonbridge. 14 In a game in which only one innings a side was completed, he took five wickets. Parker says ‘in [1897] he would definitely have been invited to play for Sussex, but the invitation was at first indefinite and sent as a message, and somehow miscarried.’ Kate says ‘the Horsham captain, Mr Oddie, did not back up the desire the county showed to have him in the county team.’ Hex’s season got going with four for 23 against Ockley, though Charles Etheridge at the other end took six for 16, Ockley managing 45 (and 94 for seven against the change bowlers). He had five for 60 against Guildford, five for 32 and five for 56 against South Saxons, and four for 11 against Guildford again in August. 14 The match was a ‘friendly’ and appears in CricketArchive at misc44271. Horsham to Haiti