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Certain Personal Matters - The Veteran Cricketer · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen of Certain Personal Matters. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Graham Scott Cheltenham, England, Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: the veteran cricketer. My old cricketer was seized, he says,
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  Speaker 1: some score of years ago now by sciatica clutched indeed
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  Speaker 1: about the loins thereby and forcibly withdrawn from the practice
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  Speaker 1: of the art, since when a certain predisposition to a
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  Speaker 1: corpulent habit has lacked its natural check of exercise, and
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  Speaker 1: a broadness almost Dutch has won upon him. Were it
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  Speaker 1: not for this, which renders his contours and his receding
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  Speaker 1: aspect unseemly, he would be indeed a venerable looking person,
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  Speaker 1: having a profile worthy of a patriarch, tinged though it
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  Speaker 1: may be, with an unpatriarchal jollity, and a close curly
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  Speaker 1: beard like that of King David. He lives by himself
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  Speaker 1: in a small cottage outside the village, hating women with
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  Speaker 1: an unaccountable detestation, and apparently earns a precarious livelihood, and
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  Speaker 1: certainly the sincere aversion of the countryside. By umpiring in
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  Speaker 1: matches and playing whist and nap with such as will
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  Speaker 1: not be so discreet and economical as to bow before
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  Speaker 1: his superior merit. His neighbors do not like him because
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  Speaker 1: he will not take their cricket or their wist seriously,
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  Speaker 1: because he will persist in offering counsel and the stimulus
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  Speaker 1: of his gift of satire. All whist than his he
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  Speaker 1: avers is bumble puppy. His umpiring is pedagogic in tone.
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  Speaker 1: He fails to see the contest in the game. To
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  Speaker 1: him who has heard his thousands roar as the bales
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  Speaker 1: of the best of all England went spinning. These village
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  Speaker 1: matches are mere puerile exercises to be corrected. His corrections, too,
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  Speaker 1: are olympian, done as it were in red Ink, vivid
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  Speaker 1: and without respect of persons. Particularly he gibes. He never
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  Speaker 1: uses vulgar bad language himself, but has a singular power
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  Speaker 1: of engendering it in others. He has a word, gabby,
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  Speaker 1: which he will sometimes enlarge too stupid Gabby the witch
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  Speaker 1: flung neatly into a man who has just missed a catch,
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  Speaker 1: will fill the same with a whirl of furious curses,
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  Speaker 1: difficult to restrain, and if perchance one should escape, my
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  Speaker 1: ancient cricketer will be as startled as Cadmus at the
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  Speaker 1: crop he has sown, and not only startled, but pained
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  Speaker 1: at human wickedness and the follies of a new generation.
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  Speaker 1: Why can't you play without swearing, mister Gibbs, he will say,
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  Speaker 1: catching the whispered hope twenty yards away and proclaiming it
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  Speaker 1: to a censorious world. And so Gibbs, our grosser and draper,
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  Speaker 1: and one made much of by the vicar, is shamed
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  Speaker 1: before the whole parish, and damned, even as he desired
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  Speaker 1: to our vicar, a well meaning, earnest and extremely nervous man,
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  Speaker 1: he displays a methodical antagonism. Our vicar is the worst
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  Speaker 1: of all possible rural vicars, unripe, a glaring modern, no
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  Speaker 1: classical scholar, no lover of nature, offensively young and yet
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  Speaker 1: not youthful. An indecent politician. He was meant to labor
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  Speaker 1: amid urban myriads, to deal with social evils, home rule,
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  Speaker 1: the woman question, and the reunion of Christendom, Attend conferences
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  Speaker 1: and go with the veltgeist, damn him. Wherever the veltgeist
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  Speaker 1: is going, he presents you jerkily, a tall, lean man
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  Speaker 1: of ascetic visage and amp garments, a soul clothed not
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  Speaker 1: so much in a fleshy body as in black flaps
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  Speaker 1: that ever trail behind its energy where they made him,
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  Speaker 1: Heaven knows, no university owns him. It may be he
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  Speaker 1: is a renegade, dissenting minister, neither good church nor wholesome nonconformity. Him,
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  Speaker 1: my cricketer, regards with malignant respect. Respect he shows by
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  Speaker 1: a punctilious touching of his hat brim directed to the
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  Speaker 1: sacred office. All the rest is malignity and aimed at
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  Speaker 1: the man that fills it. They come into contact on
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  Speaker 1: the cricket field and on the committee of our reading room.
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  Speaker 1: For our vicar, in spite of a tendency to myopia,
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  Speaker 1: conceives it his duty to encourage cricket by his participation,
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  Speaker 1: duty to encourage cricket. So figure the scene to yourself.
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  Speaker 1: The sunlit green and a match in progress. The ball
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  Speaker 1: has just snipped a stump, a skew my ancient leaning
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  Speaker 1: on a stout cabbage stick, and with the light overcoat
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  Speaker 1: that is sacred to umpires upon his arm. Oh Billy Durgan,
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  Speaker 1: says he, and adds ex cathedra and one you ought
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  Speaker 1: to a head for four. Then appears our vicar in
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  Speaker 1: semi canonicals worn to keep up his position or some
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  Speaker 1: such folly. Nervous about the adjustment of his hat and
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  Speaker 1: his eye glasses, he approaches the pitch, smiling the while
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  Speaker 1: to show his purely genial import and to anticipate and
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  Speaker 1: explain any amateurish touches. He reaches the wicket and poses
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  Speaker 1: himself as the convenient book he has studied. Directs, you'll
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  Speaker 1: be court, mister Shackelford if you keep your shoulder up
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  Speaker 1: like that, sees the umpire, yaps, that's worse forgetting himself
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  Speaker 1: in his zeal for attitude, and then a voice cries play.
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  Speaker 1: The vicar swipes wildly, cuts the ball for two, and
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  Speaker 1: returns to his wicket, breathless but triumphant. Next comes Abye,
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  Speaker 1: and then over the misguided cleric, ever pursuing a theory
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  Speaker 1: of foolish condescension to his betters at the game, and
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  Speaker 1: to show there is no offense that they Yaps, takes
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  Speaker 1: the opportunity, although panting of asking my ancient if his chicks,
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  Speaker 1: late threatened with staggers, are doing well. What would he
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  Speaker 1: think if my cricketer retaliated by asking, in the pause
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  Speaker 1: before the sermon, how the vicarage pony took his last
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  Speaker 1: bowlus The two men do not understand one another. My
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  Speaker 1: cricketer waves the hens aside and revenges himself, touching his
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  Speaker 1: hat at intervals by some offensively obvious remarks as to
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  Speaker 1: a mere beginner about playing with a straight bat, and
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  Speaker 1: the field sniggers none too furtively. I sympathize with his malice.
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  Speaker 1: Cricket is an altogether too sacred thing to him to
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  Speaker 1: be tampered with on merely religious grounds. However, our vicker
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  Speaker 1: gets himself caught at the first opportunity, and so being
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  Speaker 1: removed from my veteran's immediate environment, to their commons satisfaction,
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  Speaker 1: the due ritual of the great game is resumed. My
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  Speaker 1: ancient cricketer abounds in reminiscence of the glorious days that
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  Speaker 1: have gone forever. He can still recall the last echoes
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  Speaker 1: of the throwing controversy that agitated Nyron when overarmed bowling began,
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  Speaker 1: and though he never played himself in a beaver hat
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  Speaker 1: he can, he says, recollect seeing matches so played. In
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  Speaker 1: those days, everyone wore tall hats, the policeman, the milkman,
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  Speaker 1: workmen of all sorts. Some people I fancy must have
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  Speaker 1: bathed in them and gone to bed wearing them. He
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  Speaker 1: recalls the Titans of that and the previous age, and
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  Speaker 1: particularly delights in the legend of Noah Man, who held
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  Speaker 1: it a like thing to walk twenty miles from North
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  Speaker 1: Chapel to Hambleton to practice every Tuesday afternoon and wander
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  Speaker 1: back after dark. He himself, as a stripling, would run
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  Speaker 1: a matter of four miles after a day's work in
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  Speaker 1: the garden where he was employed to attend an hours
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  Speaker 1: practice over the downs before the twilight made the balls invisible,
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  Speaker 1: and afterwards came teutonic revelry or wanderings under the summer starlight,
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  Speaker 1: as the mood might take him. For there was a
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  Speaker 1: vein of silent poetry in the youth of this man.
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  Speaker 1: He hates your modern billiard table pitch and a batting
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  Speaker 1: of dextrous snickery. He likes character in a game gigantic
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  Speaker 1: hitting forward bowler planned leg catches a cunning obliquity in
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  Speaker 1: a wicket that would send the balls mysteriously askew, but
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  Speaker 1: dramatic breaks an now a thing unknown in trade cricket.
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  Speaker 1: One legend of his I doubt he avers that once
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  Speaker 1: at Brighton, in a match between Surrey and Sussex, he
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  Speaker 1: saw seven wickets bowled by some such aid in two
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  Speaker 1: successive overs. I have never been able to verify this.
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  Speaker 1: I believe that, as a matter of fact, the thing
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  Speaker 1: has never occurred. But he tells it often in a
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  Speaker 1: fine crescendo of surprise and the refrain out he came.
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  Speaker 1: His first beginning is a cheerful anecdote of a crew
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  Speaker 1: of young gentlemen from Cambridge staying at the Big House,
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  Speaker 1: and a challenge to the rustic talent of me and
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  Speaker 1: Billy Hall, who played a bit at that time, of
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  Speaker 1: me and Billy Hall winning the pitch and going in
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  Speaker 1: first of a memorable if uncivil stand at the wickets
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  Speaker 1: through a long, hot afternoon, and a number of young
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  Speaker 1: gentlemen from Cambridge painfully discovering local talent by exhaustive fielding
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  Speaker 1: in the park, a duty they honorably discharged. I am
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  Speaker 1: fond of my old cricketer, in spite of a certain
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  Speaker 1: mendacious and malign element in him. His yarns of gallant
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  Speaker 1: stands and unexpected turns of fortune, of memorable hits and
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  Speaker 1: eccentric umpiring, albeit tending sometimes incredibly to his glory, are
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  Speaker 1: full of the flavor of days well spent, of bright
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  Speaker 1: mornings of play, the sunlit sprawlings beside the score tent warmth,
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  Speaker 1: the flavor of bitten grass stems, and the odor of
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  Speaker 1: crushed turf. One seems to hear the clapping hands of
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  Speaker 1: village ancients and their ullulations of delight. One thinks of
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  Speaker 1: stone jars with cool drink swishing therein, of shouting victories
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  Speaker 1: and memorable defeats of eleven men in a drag and
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  Speaker 1: tuneful and altogether glorious homecomings by the light of the moon.
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  Speaker 1: His were the Olympian days of the sport, when noble
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  Speaker 1: squires were its patrons, and every village a home and
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  Speaker 1: nursery of stalwart cricketers, before the epoch of special trains,
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  Speaker 1: gate money, star elevens, and the tumultuous gathering of idle
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  Speaker 1: cads to jabber at a game they cannot play. End
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  Speaker 1: of Chapter fifteen,