P.N.C.C.
The thing which drove me from my late purchase of Longfield Hall in Cumberland—after nine months’ trial,—back to town, has been a dead secret, until this present writing. My friends have found a mine of reasons to explain the circumstance: either the county families refused to visit us; or our income was not more than enough to maintain our lodge-keeper; or my eldest daughter had made love to the surgeon’s young man at Nettleton; or I could not get on without my billiards and my five to two at whist; or I had been horse-whipped by Lord Wapshaw for riding over his hounds. There was more behind the curtain than people thought; and a thousand other good-natured explanations.
The actual facts are these: We arrived in Cumberland at the close of last autumn, and were as happy for some months as the days were long—and the days were very long indeed; everybody was kind and hospitable to us, and, on our parts, my port became a proverb and my daughters a toast. It was “Blathers, come and take pot-luck,” from almost any neighbour I fell in with on my walks; or, “Mr. Blathers, we see nothing of your good wife and family,” from the archdeacon’s lady, though we had been dining at the Cloisters three times within the fortnight; or “Lord and Lady Wapshaw have the——” but, no; the forms of familiarity, through which the high nobility communicate with their intimates, should not be lightly quoted. In a word, then, I was a popular man and “an accession to the county.”
In the early spring time I began to feel the country gentleman’s first grief; it came over with the swallows and, like them, never left my roof. Two of my acquaintances—men I had never esteemed as evil genii—rode over on an April day to Longfield; Sir Chuffin Stumps and Biffin Biffin of the Oaks; they were unusually cordial—quite empressés, my wife subsequently observed—to all of us, and after luncheon they desired to have some conversation with me in my study; that is the apartment wherein I keep my Landed Gentry, my stomach-pump (a capital thing to have in a country-house), and my slippers, and thither my two guests were ushered.
“It has always been the custom, my dear Blathers,” said the baronet, “for the tenant of Longfield Hall to be the president of the Nettleton Cricket-club; that we should offer, that he should accept that honor, is due to his position in the county” (and indeed there was scarcely a flat piece of ground big enough to play upon in all the district, except in my paddock, I well know). “Lather, your predecessor, was president; Singin was president before him; the Longfields of Longfield were presidents time out of mind; and you—Blathers—you will be president now?”
“Of course you will,” agreed Biffin.
“But, my dear sirs,” said I, “what shall I have to do?—what will be my duties, my—”
“Do!—nothing at all,” interrupted Sir Chuffin Stumps, “positively nothing; you have no duties, only privileges; let us have your ground to play upon; dine with us on Wednesdays in the tent, and on the great match-days; give a crust of bread and a shakedown to a swell from any long distance, now and then; you sit at the head of the festive board—your health is drunk continually—you are appealed to upon all the nice points of the game, and your decision is final. It’s a splendid post!”
“Splendid!” echoed Biffin.
“But I have not played at cricket for this thirty years,” I urged. “I don’t know the rules. I couldn’t see the ball, if you were to give me all creation. I’m as blind as a bat.”
“Ha, ha, very good,” laughed the baronet. “A bat—d’ye see, Biffin,—a bat? Blathers will do, depend upon it; he’ll keep the table in a roar. As for the game, Mr. President, it’s just what it used to be—round instead of under, that’s all; and they cut a good deal oftener and stop much less, perhaps, than they used to do.”
“Dear me,” said I, “then there’s not so many of them as there were, I suppose?”
“And as for near-sight,” pursued Sir Chuffin, “play in spectacles. Bumpshus, our great wicket-keeper, he plays in spectacles; Grogram, your vice-president, he plays in spectacles; it’s considered rather an advantage than otherwise to play in spectacles.”
“Certainly,” echoed Biffin, “it’s a great advantage.”
“So good-bye, Blathers,” said both gentlemen rising; “the first of May is our meeting day, and the tent must be up and everything arranged, of course, by that time; but Grogram will write and let you know every particular.”
And that was how I was made P.N.C.C., almost without a struggle.
In the course of a week I received a letter from Grogram, saying that there would be no difficulty whatever about anything; he would settle about the dining-tent, and the dressing-tent, and the cooking-tent, and I should only have the contracts for food and the wine-tasting to manage; the hiring of a bowler, the cutting and rolling of the grass. The coming matches for the year—I should, of course, arrange about myself; and I must be sure, he wrote, to let all the members of the club know of the day of meeting, and all the playing members of every match-day, and to dun Lord Wapshaw for his two years’-due subscriptions, as the treasurer didn’t like to—with some other little matters; and, by the bye, did I happen to have my cricket toggery complete yet? as, if not, he (Grogram) could let me have a registered belt almost for nothing, because he had grown out of it, he was sorry to say, himself; also some improved galvanised india-rubber leg-guards, and some tubular batting-gloves, and a catapult—remarkably cheap. The postscript said, “of course you will come out in flannels and spike-soles.”
I really thought when I first read this letter that I should have died with anxiety. I showed it to Mrs. Blathers, and she fairly burst into tears, and it was hours before we could either of us look our difficulties calmly in the face. Flannels! I had at that moment upon my person the only description of flannel garment which I possessed—a jerkin coming down no distance at all, and not to be dreamt of as a reception-dress to the club and half the county upon the first of May; spike-soles I did happen to have, being a skater, and set them out accordingly; but what possible use a pair of skates could be for cricket I could not imagine. The rest of the things I sent to Grogram for, who accommodated me with them very good-naturedly for fifteen pounds fifteen shillings. I put them all on—one way and another—but could make no use of the catapult, except to sit in it, and my youngest child had convulsions, because, she sobbed, Pa looked so like that dreadful diver who lived in the pond at the Polytechnic.
I issued all the circulars, and signed myself the obedient servant of two hundred and forty-six strange gentlemen. I set my gardener and my coachman to roll out the cricket-ground. I tasted the bad sherry of the three Nettleton wine-merchants, and made two of them my enemies for life. My advertisements for a bowler were answered by a host of youths, with immense professions and very limited employment; some were from Lord’s, some from the Oval, “the Maribun know’d him well enough,” averred one young gentleman; another—with a great hollow in his hand from constant practice—affirmed, that “if I wanted hart, there I had it, and no mistake;” by which he meant that Art was enshrined in his proper person—and him I chose.
The first of May was as the poets love to paint it: the white tents glittered in sunshine, and the flags fluttered from their tops to a gentle breeze; the wickets were pitched upon the velvet sward, a fiddle and cornopean, concealed in the shrubbery, welcomed every arrival with See the Conquering Hero Comes; and the president’s heart beat high with the sense of his position. I was attired in my full diving-dress, over the Nettleton uniform, and I held a bat in my right hand. The sides were chosen, and the game began; the carriages of the nobility and gentry formed a brilliant circle round the ground; a flying ball, struck by a hand more skilful than common, gave their situation the least touch of peril to enhance it. I myself was placed at one of the wickets, and my new bowler was placed opposite to me; he and I had practised together for a day or two, and he knew the balls I liked. I sent the sixth out to the left with a great bang, to the admiration of all but Grogram—who is a person of saturnine disposition—and got three runs; alas! the unprofessional Wilkins—the swiftest round-hand in the club—then inherited the mission of my destruction by bowling to me; the whizz of his balls absolutely took away my breath, and, if they had struck me, would doubtless have taken away my legs. But I placed the bat resolutely in the earth, and cowered behind it as well as I could manage. At last, after a warning cry of Play!—about as inappropriate a name as he could have called it—a tornado seemed to sweep past me, followed by a smack as of the resistance of flesh, and the wicket-keeper ejaculated “Out!” to my infinite joy.
Then came the happy time of cricket. The danger of the thing being over for that whole innings, you have nothing to do but to lie on the ground with a cigar, and explain how you had intended to have caught that ball, and hit it between long field off and cover point; when you holloa out, “Butter-fingers!” and “Wide!” and “Run it out!” My happiness, however, was but of short duration; the new bowler delivered his deadly weapon against the rest in a manner he had known better than to practise upon me. Wilkins, too, seemed to derive new strength from every bail he struck towards the sky, and reaped the air with that tremendous arm of his more terribly than ever. In an hour and twenty minutes, we were fagging out on our side. The president had his choice of places; and, having observed that the wicket-keepers had either stopped the balls, or much diminished their velocity before they arrived at long-stop, I declared for that happy post. Alas! this was the case no longer. Swift as thought, and infinitely more substantial, the balls rushed with unabated fury beside me; hardly, by leaping into the air, and stretching my legs very wide apart, could I escape the fearful concussion. “Stop ’em! Stop ’em!” screamed the fielders. “Why the deuce don’t he stop ’em?” bawled old Grogram, indignantly. So I waited my opportunity, watching, hat in hand, till one came slower than usual; and then I pounced upon him from behind, as a boy does on a butterfly. The crown of my hat was carried away, indeed, but the missile could not force its way through my person, and I threw it up to the man that hallo’d for it most in triumph; but my reputation as a cricketer was gone for ever.
At dinner I was comparatively successful. Lord Wapshaw was on my right; Sir Chuffin Stumps on my left; two long lines of gentlemen in flannels were terminated, perspectively, by Grogram, opposite; the archdeacon said grace; my new bowler assisted in waiting at table; and everything was upon the most gorgeous scale. Presently, however, the rain came down in torrents, and, in spite of the patent imperviousness of the tent, as vouched for by the vice-president, some umbrellas had to be borrowed from the hall (which were never returned). After dinner, there was a friend of his lordship to be ballotted for, and I distributed the little balls, as directed, and sent round the box. The rule of exclusion was one black ball in ten. There were four black balls to thirty white balls, and I had to publish the fact to all present.
“My friend black-balled, sir?” said the irascible peer. “Impossible! Did you do it?—did you?—did you?” he asked of everybody successively, amidst roars of laughter at his utter want of appreciation of the fundamental end and aim of the institution of vote by ballot. “There must be some mistake, sir,” said he, when they had each and all declined to satisfy such an extraordinary enquiry. “Mr. Blathers, try them again.”
This time there were four white balls to thirty black ones, a melancholy result which I had also to announce. His lordship left the tent—the marquee, somebody observed—like a maniac; and, though I swear I did not blackball his man, he never asked me to Hiltham Castle again from that day to this.
Now the season had begun, I became inundated with letters from the presidents of other cricket-clubs, requesting the N.C.C. to play them on some particular day; which, if it suited Wilkins, was invariably inconvenient to Grogram, and if it pleased Grogram, was sure to be the worst in the year for all the rest. So we were requested to name our own day, in a flippant, skittle-playing, come-on-when-you-like sort of manner, throwing upon me still greater responsibilities. The end of it was that the Levant club came to Nettleton, eat our dinner, drank our wine, and beat us; but refused to play a return match, or to give us any dinner whatever. Swiftly Downham, Esq., the man who has a European reputation as mid-wicket-on, honoured us by his company at Longfield “for a couple of nights,” as he bargained, and stayed a fortnight, smoking regularly in the best bedroom. Swiper, the professional batsman, also favoured us, and left me a cotton pocket-handkerchief with a full-length portrait of himself, in exchange, I hope—or else it was robbery—for a plain white silk one of my own. A whole school came over from Chumleyborough to play us, and nine of them took up their quarters at the hall. Fresh from toffey and gingerbeer as they were, I was fool enough to give them a champagne supper, of which the consequences were positively tremendous. They were all of them abominably ill, and the biggest boy kissed my daughter Florence, mistaking her, as he afterwards stated in apology, for one of the maids.
Wednesday, on which the club met, became my dark day of the week, and cast its shadow before and behind it; it was then that I made feud with Wilkins, by deciding that his balls were wide, and exasperated Grogram by declaring his legs were before wicket. I should not have known how these things were, even could I have seen so far; but I gave judgment alternately, now for the ins and now for the outs, with the utmost impartiality. One fine afternoon my own and favourite bowler absconded with about a dozen of the best bats, quite a forest of stumps, and a few watches belonging to the members of the N.C.C.; this was the drop too much that made my cup of patience overflow. I determined to resign, and I did resign.
Staying at Longfield Hall any longer, having ceased to be the president, I felt was not to be thought of, so I disposed of it. I wrote a cheque for a lot of things, embraced Grogram (whom I dearly love), and left the club my catapult. My last act of office was to appoint another bowler—a black man. He does capitally, Wilkins writes; only—from his having been selected by me from a band of tumblers, I suppose—he will always bowl from under his left leg.