Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

34 Living by the Pen man of 22. It may be, of course, that some of the tales told him about the danger of the place had been exaggerated, as no one had written about Haiti with any authority, let alone first-hand experience, for some 30 years. He was to give an account of what was then known as ‘vaudoux’ which was at least closer to being evidence based than most of what else had been written about Haiti. Kate’s notes remark on the extent to which the impoverished state of Haiti was due not so much to the indolence of the inhabitants as to their massive exploitation by American business, Haiti being a United States protectorate. They eventually returned to England in early 1900. After the serialization, for which he received £300 from the Express , presumably plus expenses, there was a decent interval until the publication of the book, Where Black Rules White . This came out in about November 1900, published in London by Constable – priced at this point at a hefty 12 shillings, close to a week’s wage for a working man. It was published in the same year by the Irish University Press, possibly for the American market. It also seems to have appeared in a French edition, and a revised and considerably cheaper edition was produced by Nelson in 1910. Hex also wrote a shorter account of the country that was published in 1900 in The Geographical Journal , the organ of the Royal Geographical Society. He lectured before the British Association at Bristol and the Imperial Institute at Newcastle upon Tyne. Throughout his career he was to show this ability to recount aspects of his experiences to very different audiences, and so, presumably, boosted his earnings. Certainly the book was noticed. The Literary World said ‘Mr Prichard has made a graphic and telling book about a dirty and disagreeable people and a fair and fertile island.’ Later this year Constable published a book which they had called Daughters of Dreams in serial form when it ran in Country Life , but called it Karadoc, Count of Gersay when it appeared in book form under the names K. and Hesketh Prichard. By this time it seems that the project to live by writing is close to success. Hex was later to say that he had kept himself and his mother since he was 18, but that seems a slight exaggeration. More time was available, and his next season’s cricket would be of a higher standard.