Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

94 played for Free Foresters against Burghley Park, taking six wickets in each innings to bowl them out for 124 and 51. In October Hex and Lily went to Sardinia in order to shoot moufflon (or mouflon!) Having shot one it turned out to be their duty to entertain the shepherds, and he sent down the mountain for 200 bottles of Sardinian wine – there were a dozen shepherds. We are told that Lady Elizabeth then became the first lady to shoot a mouflon in Sardinia: Parker is silent as to whether any had previously been shot by a woman. The trip ended in something of a shambles after the carabinieri mistakenly confiscated their rifles, but they were able to keep the heads of their mouflon. By the end of October they were back in London, being among the guests at St George’s church in Hanover Square for the wedding of Lily’s brother James to Violet Brabazon, daughter of the Earl of Meath. In December 1909 Hex took the chair at the Authors’ Club meeting at which there was a discussion on Imperial Cricket with Jackson, J.R.Mason, Fry, Spofforth and C.J.Burnup. Jackson said: In India the game was going ahead faster probably than in any other part of the Empire. There was a possibility of a team representing India, and composed of Hindoos, Mohammedans and Parsees, coming to England in a short time. What an awful prospect, however, was that of a team of eleven ‘Ranjis’. C.B.Fry said ‘there were three kinds of cricket – cricket, county cricket, and newspaper cricket.’ They must be good losers. The players were so, but he had never seen such an exhibition of bad losing as was shown by a large section of the British public and press. He considered it a disgrace. It was no disgrace to be beaten by the Australians. Fry, one feels, could have done this on autopilot. The Christmas issue of Pearson’s introduced a new character into the Hesketh Prichard repertoire, Lolita the dancer, described by the Irish Times ‘as every bit as fascinating as, and much more attractive than the Don Q.’ There were a number of stories, but this Lolita never made it into book form. * * * * * * * There was very little time for cricket in 1910, though on 1 June he played for the Authors against the Publishers at Lord’s. Hex actually got to bat at No.4 and scored 16 in a total of 101, then took four for 25 as the Publishers were out for 94. In an action-packed one-day game the Authors then scored a brisk 198 for six declared, Hex not batting, with R.B.J.Scott scoring 101*. Earlier in the year he had been in Dublin for the Court season, where he and Lily were part of a party at the Castle on 3 April. Hex found early in the summer to some country-house cricket ‘at Easton Court and elsewhere’, according to Kate. Was this Easton Lodge, in Essex, which belonged to the famously left-leaning Daisy, Countess of Warwick? He certainly did not play at Easton Park this year. Married Man