“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.