Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

80 Travel with Ball or Gun Wellington – and it was agreed that he would report for duty in February but spend a week at the Viceregal Lodge in December to see how things went. This seems a slightly odd decision, because it was not at all clear what Hex would get out of it other than a certain added social cachet. By this time the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was purely decorative and had no political significance, except perhaps to annoy the nationalist community. It seems that the basic role was to facilitate the necessary events for the Dublin social season. There was an attempt to dramatise Don Q at this stage, but it didn’t then come off: it was staged some years later. In September 1907 Hex captained an MCC team of 14 amateurs that went to North America, sailing on the maiden voyage of R.M.S.Lusitania . A longish piece welcoming the team appeared in the Atlanta Constitution on 25 August, rather oddly, since cricket never seems to have been played much in the Southern states and the tour certainly was not going that way. It seems to have been picked up from their English correspondent: That there are some remarkably good cricket players in the United States is fully recognized here, and this autumn the famous and aristocratic Marylebone Cricket Club will send over a first-class team to try conclusions with them. The team will leave England on September 7 and open in New York about ten days later. After that matches will be played in Philadelphia and later in Canada. The MCC team was a fairly strong one and was to have included three South Africans, P.W.Sherwell, R.O.Schwarz and S.J.Snooke. Sherwell in the end seems not to have made the trip, with Gregor MacGregor keeping wicket. The team summary presented in the Constitution says that ‘Prichard took 100 wickets in 1904. Since that year his literary work has kept him out of first-class cricket.’ It adds ‘Mr Prichard has a very high opinion of Philadelphian cricket and thinks that in Lester, Clark and King they have three magnificent cricketers. He played against them when they were last in England in 1903 and much looks forward to meeting such good sportsmen and cricketers again.’ Which perhaps goes to show that the meaningless press conference is not, after all, a modern invention. The article then goes on to talk about him: Since Kipling wrote his famous lines about ‘flannelled fools at the wicket’ and ‘muddied oafs at the goal’ [in 1902] there has been a strong tendency in some circles to deprecate devotion to sport as fatal to exercise in more serious pursuits. Hesketh Prichard is a shining example of the contrary. He made a success in literature long before he ever thought of success in cricket. He was only 19 when he made his way into the ultra-exclusive Cornhill Magazine and since then he has gone far. Probably the general public know him best as the creator of Don Q , the fascinating Spanish brigand. But Mr Prichard has done other work which has won him high praise from the fastidious. Two or three books written in conjunction with his mother have placed him in the first flight of writers of dramatic fiction.