Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

82 stronghold, and goes on to point out that Philadelphia was as gentlemanly a cricketing community as you could hope to find.’ 42 In Canada he stayed with Lord Grey at Government House in Ottawa and managed to shoot a ‘big bull moose’. After that he went back to Ireland at the beginning of December for a short unofficial visit to learn the ropes as an aide-de-camp. The Irish Times tells us here that on 2 December he attended the Countess of Aberdeen, the wife of the Viceroy, at the first of a series of lectures in connection with a tuberculosis exhibition in Limerick. It seems unlikely that this would have been particularly inspiring. The other ADC on this visit was Viscount Anson, later the fourth Earl of Lichfield. Anson’s father had been president of MCC and himself had played a few games, including one with Hex for I Zingari against the Gentlemen of Ireland in 1906. A couple of days later, having presumably stayed with the Countess at Adare Manor in Co Limerick as a guest of the Earl and Countess of Dunraven, Hex accompanied her on his own as she inspected the Thomond Building Company’s dwellings for artisans and indeed will have joined her for lunch at Messrs Smith’s tearooms before catching the 3.55 pm train from Limerick to Dublin. Parker quotes a letter written from Viceregal Lodge as saying ‘we have the best ADC here now that was ever in Dublin. No one is ever forgotten 42 Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, Aurum Press, 1999. Travel with Ball or Gun Hex led this MCC amateur side in North America in September and October 1907. Standing (l to r): K.O.Goldie, (umpire), G.H.T.Simpson-Hayward, G.T.Branston, L.G.A.Collins, (umpire), F.H.Browning. Seated: E.G.Wynyard, H.V.Hesketh-Prichard, G.MacGregor (wk). On the steps: J.W.H.T.Douglas, R.O.Schwarz, L.P.Collins, S.J.Snooke.