Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

52 Chapter Five One of the Gentlemen After spending Christmas 1902 in Jersey and getting Roving Hearts, which was a collection of stories published in various magazines ready for publication by Smith, Elder, the spring of 1903 seems to have been a quiet time. The Manchester Guardian noticed Roving Hearts on 8 April, commenting: [K. and H.Prichard] have a wide range, from psychological phenomena to the adventures of the wandering Englishman overseas. Mr Hesketh Prichard puts his acquaintance with far countries to practical use, so that we get much effective local colour in Haytian waters and fever swamps and South American forests. It is perhaps inevitable that the tales of pelt-hunters, orchid-hunters and seafaring men should be set in the same key in which Mr Kipling has sung the ‘Seven Seas’: not that they are any the worse for that, but it is curious to observe how persistently Kipling’s influence overhangs rising short-story writers. It is probably fair to say that most of their fictional work ploughed some fairly well-worn furrows, but then that is often true of short stories. Comparisons with Conan Doyle, Kipling, Wells, or Antony Hope are inescapable, but that was the field they had chosen to write in. Kate says that Hex played a good deal of cricket in the summer of 1903 – she tended to say that every year, so she obviously missed her ‘boy’ – but his first first-class appearance of the year was for London County against MCC starting on 18 May. Hampshire had no games until June, and in this fixture Charles Robson also played for London County and Llewellyn turned out for MCC, as did Teddy Wynyard. London County were shot out for 72 and 87 by Llewellyn, J.T.Hearne and A.E.Trott: MCC won by nine wickets in one day after the first two had been rained off. The whole game lasted slightly less than 100 overs. Hex bowled 13.4 of them for two wickets. On 22 May he played for the Authors against the Artists at Esher and actually opened the batting, but he was out for none in a total of 184. He took one early wicket but was then taken off before he blew the opposition away. The Artists were bowled out for 83 without his further help, There is a photograph of the teams – see page 53 – in which Hex, ‘towering over the rest’ is wearing a bizarre garment something between a collarless jacket and a cardigan over a white shirt and white bow tie. If 1902 had been wet, 1903 would be even wetter, with Hampshire having three games completely rained off. The county history says, with feeling, ‘fortunately for the exchequer all three were away’. There was a