Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

87 Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the letter that Lady Aberdeen wrote to the Earl and Countess the following day. She appears to have been worried that Lily was her guest and she had failed to keep her parents informed of what was going on. She writes: I trust you will not think us unaware of the trust you have reposed in us by confiding your child to us. This understanding between Lily and Mr Hesketh Prichard has come with a rush, and I could scarcely have warned you. But all was well. She goes on to say: But let me assure you that your daughter has won the first love of a man who is indeed a very gallant and tender-hearted knight, and one whose beauty and simplicity of character we have marvelled at combined as it is with his experience of the world, his travels, and his success in literature. Then she gets to the nub of it: The question of income might arise, but I fancy this cannot present a serious impediment, now that he has a reason to wish to increase it. For the publishers seem ready to give him his own terms whenever he is willing to write for them. Sometimes, however reluctantly, one has to mention money. She concludes: ‘I do not think you will blame us when you know Mr Hesketh Prichard, but we fully understand the shock the news must have given you’. Following up on his letter, Hex apparently had a brief interview with the Earl at which Hex told him that ‘I had never looked at any other woman, and that I had kept my mother since I was seventeen’. That seemed to be enough. By March 10 Hex was writing to Lord and Lady Grimston thanking them and saying that he should have written before but was ‘mildly off my head’ and concluding with ‘I hope Lily will be just like her mother’. Hex was clearly not beyond laying it on with a trowel, perhaps something he had learned as an ADC. Before this he seems to have had very little contact with women other than his mother, let alone relationships. He had moved in male-dominated circles whether as a cricketer, an author, or most of all as a traveller and explorer. Yes, he had charmed the chatelaine at St Malo (according to his mother), but that was the last we heard of any women. Yet, according to Parker, Hex and Lily hit it off right away, their relationship punctuated by hoots of laughter. Perhaps she was the demon bowler of the family after all. The speed at which the Earl consented might seem remarkable: Hex and Lily had known each other only a few weeks and despite his appointment as an ADC there seemed quite a gulf in social class, but there may have been practical considerations. The Earl had six daughters in a competitive marriage market, and although two were married already he will have been conscious that he needed to get everyone sorted out. It could have been a case of ‘no reasonable offer refused’! Lily was only 23 so nearly ten years younger than Hex. On 1 June Elizabeth and Hex were married from Gorhambury, a great Married Man