Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

many male companions were more than friendship. Several members of the cricket ‘establishment’ were among his friends with Plum Warner perhaps the warmest of these. Not surprisingly given his interests, he counted such distinguished cricket writers and historians as Harry Altham, Bob Arrowsmith, Jim Swanton, and Raymond Robertson-Glasgow among his network of friends and acquaintances. According to Swanton, it was Rockley Wilson’s library and deep knowledge of the game that inspired Harry Altham to write articles on cricket history that appeared in The Cricketer and in 1926 were published as Altham’s celebrated History of Cricket . 44 Rockley was a gregarious person and inimitable company. He loved good food and conversation. Plum Warner commented that to dine with him was “an unforgettable occasion.” Apparently, his practice was to place his guests at table as if he were setting a field! Rockley Wilson was very much a man of his time and of his class, though he was more at home in the company of professional cricketers, with whom he would happily share a game of cards during rain breaks or when on tour, than many amateurs of his generation. He had none of the innate snobbery of a Johnny Douglas or Douglas Jardine. It is just as well or Rockley would have had short shrift from his professional colleagues in the Yorkshire side. We will have cause later to say something about ructions between Yorkshire and Middlesex in the 1920s that were fermented by class-consciousness on both sides and in which Rockley found himself cast in a mediating role. Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning an incident recounted by Patsy Hendren to which Rockley Wilson was an innocent party as it illustrates the class divide between the amateur and professional in cricket in his day. On the 1920/21 Ashes tour in Australia, Harry Howell, the professional fast bowler, acted as “sub-postman” for the party. On the first morning he handed one letter addressed to E.R.Wilson with the remark “’Ere y’are.” Douglas thought this did not show the appropriate respect and remonstrated with Howell. Howell explained that he was saving time giving Wilson’s full name by saying “E.R.” which, he suggested, may have sounded like “’Ere y’are” when said quickly. Hendren doesn’t say whether Douglas accepted the explanation or whether he, Hendren, believed it. The implications are “yes” and “no”! 45 A Singular Man 47 44 E.W.Swanton, The Writer , in Hubert Doggart (ed), The Heart of Cricket: A Memoir of H.S.Altham, Hutchinson, 1967, p.161. 45 E.H.Hendren, Big Cricket , Hodder and Stoughton, 1934, p.47.