Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

33 Voyage of discovery 1 the clubhouse calling fondly for Grace, Ottoway, Hornby and others’. Afterwards the local club produced an official handbook, priced at 25 cents, for what was billed as the ‘International Cricket Fete at Philadelphia 1872’, recalling previous matches played in 1859 and 1868. In October 1859, George Parr’s touring side had beaten the United States of America at Hoboken by an innings, while in September 1868 Edgar Willsher’s XI had triumphed over the St George’s Club of New York, also by an innings, on the same ground. The 1872 handbook used quotes from William Shakespeare to describe this latest game and its players with Hornby earning this epithet: ‘a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’ from Act IV, Scene II of ‘The Winter’s Tale’. On their defeat, the Philadelphians reckoned this quote from the Bard fitted the bill: ‘Beaten, but not without honours; [As] in this glorious and well-foughten [sic] field we kept together in our chivalry’ from King Henry V, Act VI, Scene III. The Americans, in fact, added ‘beaten but not without honours’ to the Duke of Exeter’s quote. On 26 September the party arrived in Boston, where rain caused their game to be reduced to a single day with the team again winning as darkness fell. Before they left Canada to set sail for home on 28 September aboard the S.S.Prussian there were odes of farewell written for each of the players with Hornby’s reading: Here’s to Hornby, who wears the cognomen of ‘Monkey’. All muscle and nerve – never feeble or funky For pluck, skill and strength, he is hard to be beaten By picked men from Winchester, Harrow or Eton! Once the tourists had climbed aboard the S.S.Prussian they could look back on a fascinating, eye-opening, often jaw-dropping tour of several cricketing outposts. They had played in Ottawa, Toronto, London, Hamilton, New York and Philadelphia, feasted on roast leg of bear, visited the Niagara Falls, and much admired the American ladies ‘who appeared more interested in cricket than those in England’ – at least that was the view of Fitzgerald.