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FRANCIS THOMPSON'S CRICKET verses.

To the readers of the memoir of the late Francis Thompson which was printed just after his death in 'The Athenæum ' for November 23, 1907, and which stands as preface to the volume of his 'Selected Poems' just published, it must have come as a surprise to learn that this rapt celebrant of the soul was, if not himself a cricketer, a very keen student of the game. They would have felt surprise not because there is anything irreconcileable between the life spiritual and this noble pastime, but because one naturally falls into the habit of thinking of men in one direction only and Thompson's name carried with it the idea rather of midnight visions than of the sunlit pitch.

But literary genius and love of cricket have joined hands before. Cowper at Westminster was eager for the game. Byron played for Harrow against Eton. Mr. Meredith, whose cricket enthusiasm flushes through his novels, was, he has told me, an alert fieldsman at the point of the bat; while Mr. Barrie, it is well known, goes so far as to possess a team of his own whose merits he has described in an illustrated brochure which is at once the joy of those who own it and the despair of those who do not. Two instances of what I may call wholly unexpected cricketers may be added. Mr. Lang, by whose cradle the muse of the game, benignantly smiling, most assuredly stood with gifts in her hand, has just discovered that Cuchulainn, the Irish hero, played, and naturally excelled, at cricket in its most primitive form about 200 A.D., while (and here we come nigher the poet of 'The Hound of Heaven') if you look in Mr. Philip Norman's fascinating history of the West Kent Cricket Club you will find the name and fame of one H. E. Manning, afterwards Cardinal.

None the less it was a surprise to many persons, as I say, to find that Francis Thompson was a devotee too; and to those who had seen him in the flesh (and in the ulster which he did not don until the swallows were with us nor doff until they had flown) the surprise must have been greater still, since from such an exterior it would require a reader of men of supernatural acumen to deduce a love of open-air sport. For of all men Francis Thompson was

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to the casual observer least like a cricketer. It was not only this inverted affection for his overcoat; it was the whole effect, the ensemble, as Whitman would say. If ever a figure seemed to say Take me any where in the world so long as it is not to a cricket match,' that was Francis Thompson's. And his eye supported it. His eye had no brightness: it swung laboriously upon its object; whereas the enthusiasts of St. John's Wood dart their glances like birds.

But Francis Thompson was born to baffle the glib inference. With his heart warmed by the very presence of God he could sell matches at Charing Cross. The world, which at every turn seemed to have crushed him beneath its cold weight, he had mastered and disdained while still a youth. Fate might beat against his frame, but within blossomed the rose. He carried consolation about him.

Latterly he went seldom to Lord's. His memories were too sad. It was indeed from this sadness, this regret for the past and unwillingness to recall it too vividly, that was born the poem a stanza of which was printed in 'The Athenæum,' and which, with other verses on the game, I am now permitted to print in full here. The poem is not dated, but it is recent. As I understand the case, Thompson had been invited to Lord's to see Middlesex and Lancashire, and had agreed to go; but as the time drew near he found he could not face the ordeal. Such a mood imports a new note into cricket poetry. Cricket poetry hitherto has been descriptive, reflective, rapturous, gay, humorous. It has never before to my knowledge been made a vehicle for a lament for the past of profoundest melancholy.

Everyone knows the sadness of the backward look-everyone has lost friends both of kin and of the soul. But the cricket enthusiast (and this applies to other spectacular games and sports too), whether he plays or merely watches, has had two pasts, two chances of bereavement-his own private losses, and the losses that have been suffered by the game. It is impossible for a quite ordinary enthusiast to see one match without thinking of an earlier: how much more then must a poet do so? The simplest and most prosaic of us, whose lives have been fortunate, cannot go to Lord's and regret no missing face upon the field. How have we, for example, yearned for Mr. Stoddart these many seasons past! But Thompson . . .

Francis Thompson was Lancashire born; as a boy he haunted the Old Trafford ground. Then came the realities of life, which in many cases were too much for him : his body was frail, he suffered almost constant pain, he was unfitted doubly-physically and

temperamentally-for mundane struggle. He left Ushaw, made a futile experiment or two to earn his living in the ordinary way, and drifted to London, where he fell upon the hardest times, always, however (in the beautiful image that Pater uses of Marius), protecting unsullied the white bird in his breast, always secure in his soul, but none the less conscious too that things were not as they should be with him and as they had promised to be in the days before thought, before the real fight, began-in the days when Hornby and Barlow went in first for Lancashire. To know all this is to find the first and last stanza of the poem which follows almost unbearably sad.

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though my own red roses there may blow;

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though the red roses crest the caps I know.

For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless clapping host,
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,

To and fro.

O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!

It is Glo'ster coming North, the irresistible,
The Shire of the Graces, long ago!

It is Gloucestershire up North, the irresistible,
And new-arisen Lancashire the foe!

A Shire so young that has scarce impressed its traces,
Ah, how shall it stand before all resistless Graces ?

O, little red rose, their bats are as maces

To beat thee down, this summer long ago!

This day of seventy-eight they are come up North against thee,
This day of seventy-eight, long ago!

The champion of the centuries, he cometh up against thee,
With his brethren, every one a famous foe!

The long-whiskered Doctor, that laugheth rules to scorn,

While the bowler, pitched against him, bans the day that he was born;
And G. F. with his science makes the fairest length forlorn;
They are come from the West to work thee woe!

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though my own red roses there may blow;

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though the red roses crest the caps I know.

For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless clapping host,
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,

To and fro.

O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!

I might say that the match in question was played at Old Trafford on July 25, 26, 27, 1878, when the poet was eighteen. (He was born in December, 1859.) It was an historic contest, for the two counties had never before met. The fame of the Graces was such that 16,000 people were present on the Saturday, the third day-of whom, by the way, 2000 did not pay but took the ground by storm. The result was a draw, a little in Lancashire's favour, after a very determined fight interrupted now and then by rain. It was eminently Hornby and Barlow's match. In the first innings the amateur made only 5, but Barlow went right through it, his wicket falling last for 40. In the second innings Hornby was at his best, making with incredible dash 100 out of 156 while he was in, Barlow supporting him while he made 80 of them. In this match W. G. (who is still playing, be it remembered : I saw him at the Oval on Easter Monday, immense and grey and jovial) made 32 and 58 not out and took 4 wickets, and E. M. made 21 and 4 and took 4 wickets. G. F. played too, but it was not his day.

The note book in which the verses are written contains numberless variations upon several of the lines.

O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!

becomes in one case

O my Monkey and Stone-waller long ago!

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'Monkey' was, of course, Mr. Hornby's nickname. First he runs you out of breath,' said the professional, possibly Barlow himself, 'first he runs you out of breath, then he runs you out, and then he gives you a sovereign.' A brave summary! In what other verse he and Barlow have a place I do not know, but they should be proud of this. It is something to have brought tears to the eyes of the poet of Sister Songs.' He, that unworldly ecstatic visionary, is no more, but both cricketers are happily alive to-day-(I was talking to Barlow only a month ago, and such was his vivacity he seemed to have drunk of the fountain of youth)—and they may read these verses. I hope they will, although cricketers, in my experience, however they may have taken of late to writing of their game, read as little as they can.

The second piece is a description, in very easy couplets, of the great match between Middlesex and Yorkshire at Lord's on May 28, 1899. It was never intended for print: it was merely a versified memorandum of the match for the writer's own amusement. As

will some day be seen, his note books took count of most of his experiences, trivial as well as serious. A few lines may be quoted. Albert Trott, it will be remembered, after Warner had paved the way by making an historic 150, hit up in hurricane style 164. The rhymes thus describe his innings :

For Trott, who also month-long kept
Inert, as the batsman in him slept,
Wakes, and with tumult of his waking,
The many-girded ground is shaking!
With rolling claps and clamour, as soar

Fours after fours, and ever four!

Bowls Rhodes, bowls Jackson, Haigh bowls, Hirst,—

To him the last is as the first :

West-end tent or pavilion-rail,

He lashes them home with a thresher's flail.

I omit a curious interlude in which the psychological state of Lord Hawke, as captain, is delineated: not too accurately, I fancy, for his lordship, if I know anything about him, can meet adversity with philosophic calm. This is the end :

d score

Trott keeps them trotting, till his d
Is just one hundred, sixty, and four,-
The highest tally this match has scored,
And the century fourth is long up on the board.
Thank Heaven, the fellow's grown reckless now,

Jumps and slogs at them anyhow:

Two narrow shaves, amid frenzied howl

Of jubilant people, and lordly growl;

Till a clinker tingles in Brown's left hand

Good Brown! you have snapped the infernal stand!

The last two wickets go tedious down,

And my lord strides off with his teeth and frown.

The poet throughout, although no Southerner, is against Yorkshire; the old championship of the Red Rose against the White coming out very strongly. The match ended in a victory for Middlesex by an innings and 2 runs. It was Trott's game, for not only did he score his 164 (137 of them in an hour and a half), but he took altogether nine wickets.

The third piece is a tour de force, an imitation of FitzGerald's 'Omar.' Thompson, who was not given to filling other men's moulds, began it evidently as a joke, for he gave it a comic title, 'Rime o' bat of O my sky-em.' But his mind was too powerful and proud for imitation or sustained facetio, and he quickly became individual and human, so that the stanzas although a parody in form

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