Page:The Hambledon Men (1907).djvu/31

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
'THE END OF EVERY MAN'S DESIRE'
xxv

1895. The scores went down only to 1878, but to this volume (published under the auspices of the M.C.C.) was added a biographical appendix carrying the record to 1894. My set belonged to Bob Thoms the umpire. Mr. Haygarth died in 1903 at the age of seventy-seven.

The paper on Mr. Budd and his friends which follows I have put together from various writers. Mr. Budd, who was playing at Lord's in 1802, died as recently as 1875. To know him must have been a liberal education in sport and manliness. I am surprised to find so few records of him. The M.C.C. have no portrait.

I have to thank Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Alfred Cochrane for making it possible to round off this book with poetry. Both have written classical ballads on the game: it was Mr. Lang who first called cricket 'the end of every man's desire', and Mr. Cochrane who fittingly stigmatized the wretch 'who snicketh the length-ball'. Mr. Lang's introduction to Daft's Kings of Cricket contains, in my opinion, the best writing that we have on the fascination of the game.

The illustrations, which might easily have been multiplied by ten, have been drawn from various sources. To Miss Nyren I am indebted for the portrait of her grandfather and the score of Byron's convivial song. Mr. Lacey, on behalf of the M.C.C., kindly allows me to reproduce certain pictures at Lord's; and the rest of the plates are from the col-