by A. W. Pullin
"My best years were 1866, when I took 150 wickets, and j 867, when my record was 151 wickets. In the first-named year I was the only bowler in first-class cricket who took 100 wickets; in 1867 Southerton alone shared the honour with me, and his total was 112 against my 151. In 1868 Willsher joined us in the capture of wicket centuries, but in 1869 Southerton and I again were alone in compiling the threefigure record. Earlier than these years, 1862, I also had 119 wickets to my credit, but that was nothing, seeing that 10 bowlers shared the honour. I was a long way below my old friends R. C. Tinley and J. Jackson, who had the wonderful records of 351 wickets and 335 respectively.
"I had the pleasure of playing in the match in which W. G. Grace made his first century in first-class cricket. I congratulated myself that I was on his side. It was for England v. Surrey on July 30, 1868. The young champion, as he then proved himself to be, scored 224 not out, and I actually preceded him in the batting list, for I went in first wicket down! I remember that in that match our captain, Mr V. E. Walker, gave young Grace leave of absence during the game to go away to run in a hurdle race at the Crystal Palace. I guess a captain would be horrified at the bare suggestion of such a thing now.
"I had not always the good luck, though, to be on W. G.'s side when he was breaking the bowlers' hearts. He played a wonderful innings of 134, not out (of a total of 201 !) at Lord's, in Gentlemen v. Players, in 1868, and I was one of the unfortunate bowlers on that occasion. Then the first time he made two separate hundreds in a match at Canterbury in the same year I had the luxury (?) of bowling against him. That, by the way, was the match in which Canon M'Cormick made his score of 137 for our side. I took 8 wickets in the first innings, and wasn't it a sweet thing when at last I clean bowled the champion with his score at 130! It was nice to see W. G. make the runs; it was a positive delight when you saw his back and knew you had sent him to the rightabout."
Wootton recalls the fact that while he was on the staff of professionals at Lord's the average number engaged was 15, besides the ground-keeper. Last year the number was 58. These figures show how cricket has advanced.
Asked what was the most exciting match that he can recall, Wootton says it was the game for Frank Tinley's benefit in August 1863. The match was the Free Foresters v. Notts, and the result was a tie, the circumstances of which were peculiar.
"I was not much of a batsman," says Wootton, "for the reason that I had not much patience: I wanted to be hitting. But I could get a few runs when badly needed, as the recollections of this match will show. The Foresters had a very good side, including, as it did, Messrs D. Buchanan, R. A. H. Mitchell, T. Goodrich, and others. Goodrich, by the way, was a famous lob-bowler. Was it not Dean Hole who, with his usual raciness, once said that several cricketers should have as the epitaph for their tombstones, 'Frightened to death by Goodrich' 1 And has not some one else written—
'And oft at night, when play is o'er,
The fragrant weed shall glow,
As they tell how they fell
Where Faulkner's swift 'uns go,
Or Goodrich, with his artful twist,
Sends in the teasers slow.'
"But that is an aside. To the tie match. The Foresters made 114 in the first innings, and we followed with 115. Then they scored 212, so that we had exactly 212 to get to win. We looked like being beaten easily, for at the fall of the ninth wicket we were over 60 runs behind. Then Biddulph and I took root and could not be dislodged . When within about 25 of the required number the umpire called 'one short.' How much may depend upon an incident like that! As a matter of fact that short run robbed us of victory.
"We had got the game a tie when 'Biddy' went out to one of Goodrich's lobs. The light, I may say, was dreadfully bad, and Biddulph missed the ball, which pitched on his knee. There was an appeal for leg-before, and out Biddy had to go, the match being a tie, with our score 211. It must have been a moot-point as to whether the ball would have hit the wicket, for Biddulph had gone far down the pitch to meet the man whom the Dean of Rochester said frightened so many batsmen to death. We should have won very easily had it not been for the phenomenally fine fielding of the fourteen Foresters. It remains to add that the effort made by Biddy and myself to pull off the match pleased the onlookers so much that we were each rewarded with a donation, which was handed to us amidst great applause by Sir Henry Bromley.
"Did you ever hear of a man acting as bowler, wicketkeeper, long-stop, point, and short-slip in one innings 1 No t Well, Grundy once did it for the M.C.C. against Sussex. Personally I only tried my hand at wicket - keeping once. That was at Brighton, also against Sussex. I knew so little about the job that I did not look round to see the long-stop throw in, with the result that I got a well-deserved blow on the back of the head. After that incident I had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that wicket-keeping was not my forte."
Mention of wicket-keeping recalls to the writer's mind an incident told him by Mr Buchanan in which Wootton was concerned. Said the old Rugby bowler: "One of the things you never forget is a bit of splendid but fruitless cricket. Tom Lockyer, playing for Surrey against the M.C.C. and Ground, with Wootton batting, once did one of the best bits of wicket-keeping I ever saw, yet it was in vain. Wootton, being very quick on his legs, ran out to hit one, but missed. Lockyer got his hand round close to the wicket, but just as the ball reached his hand Wootton regained his ground and saved his wicket. The stumps were down, and if Wootton had been the merest fraction of a second later in getting down his foot than the ball was in getting past the wicket, he would have been out. It was a superb bit of wicketkeeping on Lockyer's part."
Wootton's first match with Notts was against Surrey at the Oval in 1861. He hardly came out with a flourish of trumpets, for he did not get a wicket nor score a run, though one of his two o's was a not out. In the return match, the following month, he took 5 wickets in the first innings and the 2 that fell in the second. He afterwards played with Notts for eight seasons, and was on the Lord's staff, as stated, for twelve seasons. His benefit at Lord's, he says, was "a bad match, played in bad weather," and he received from it a little under ^300.
He claims only to have been a little above medium pace as a bowler, but Daft describes him to the writer as "a fine fast left-hand bowler, with a pretty delivery, keeping an excellent length, and coming quick off the pitch." That he could and did bowl fast is shown by the fact, recalled by Wootton himself, that once at Lord's, in bowling a wicket down, he knocked the bail 44 yards! For over twenty years since his retirement from cricket Mr Wootton has been a subscriber to Notts County. He has seen most of their matches in that time, and has opinions of his own upon Notts' play, which he shall now give :—
"I think it must be admitted Notts are a bit slow—slower at anyrate than they were in our day. But some people blame them when they do not play slow, and I think, after all, a man should be allowed, without unkind criticism, to play his natural game. Arthur Shrewsbury is slow, yet he is very certain and very good. Personally, I would rather see William Gunn make a hundred than any man in England: he is a most artistic batsman, and can punish bowling without taking liberties. 'Knee play' I confess I do not like. I once saw in a match at Trent Bridge two men lift their bats and push out their knees to play the ball. But they did not push far enough and were bowled, at which I rejoiced.
"Then I call bowling off the wicket wasted energy. As arule I used to bowl at the wicket and vary the pace. I saw Attewell once bowl two wides, and told him 'Old man, you'll have to chuck it if you bowl wides.' 'Oh, I shall go on for ten years yet.' And so I hope he will, for he has been of immense service to his county, and I was delighted to find he had such a good benefit. There was perhaps one thing I did as a bowler which I ought not to have done. I detested a short-pitched ball, and I gave batsmen perhaps a few more half-volleys than I ought to have done. Still, when a man is hitting, you have always a chance that he won't hit even a half-volley accurately.
"I cannot honestly think that the bowling now is a
s good as it was twenty years or more ago. Men do not bowl at the wicket as they used to do, and some of them seem to bowl, as it were, without their heads. We have not a bowler now like Jackson, Tarrant, and J. C. Shaw. I do not think England ever had a better bowler than George Freeman, and Allan Hill was very fast and straight, but not very difficult."
Wootton has told us that he was "a bashful sort of a chap." He also says he was a home-bird, and when at Lord's rarely went far away from the ground. Had he enjoyed travelling more, he would not have retired from the game as soon as he did. One of the Messrs Walker once asked him if he would join a team to visit America. He thanked him for the offer, but declined on the ground that he was not a waterspaniel 1
After his retirement from cricket Wootton had a short spell of umpiring.
"It is a very thankless office," says he, "and I soon gave it up. I liked umpiring very well; but if you make a mistake every one is digging at you. I could not stand that sort of thing, so I gave it up."
For a bashful man, George Wootton is very goorl company. As a farmer he appears to have fared fairly well on agricultural depression.
205
THE EEV. E. S. CARTEE.
THK contents of a man's private scrap-book necessarily give an insight into his tastes and character. The writer has been privileged to read at will the scrap-book of the Rev. E. S. Carter. He found in it one pasted extract that revealed at a glance the old Oxford cricketer's ideas of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the doctrine of muscular Christianity. The extract is a quotation from an address delivered by a certain member of Church Congress, when the Parliament of the Church held its sittings at Croydon, a quarter of a century ago. The subject was the religion of public amusement. Its exponent scornfully satirised the pious jellyfishes of the pulpit. He exhorted them to "unstarch their ephods of prudery," and to show concern, "not merely as men but as clergymen, in the existence of harmless healthy amusements, the want of which is a most fertile source of sin and crime." As an example of how this might be done, the speaker asked the country parson not to refuse his place as an active member of the parish eleven, "for so shall he find that the fine hit to leg, which opened the mouths of the rustic spectators on the Saturday, will leave them a little open on the Sunday morning; and that he whom the parson has taught to twist will be the more ready to listen to his dissuasives from tortuous conduct."
The Rev. E. S. Carter is no pious jellyfish of the pulpit. You have but to seek an acquaintance with his career in the world of cricket to know that the healthy doctrine of muscular Christianity has had in him an earnest disciple and a capable exponent. If you are privileged to have an afternoon's talk with him in his study, you will find him a delightful raconteur, brimming over with, anecdote and mirth; and you will quickly come to the conclusion that his ephod of prudery has long since been unstarched.
Edmund Sardinson Carter was born on February 3, 1845, at Malton, and followed the footsteps of his father when he entered the Church. Those who have a weakness for trying their luck at a wishing-stone will be interested in his boyish experience, which was certainly very curious. This is what he says:—
"When fourteen years of age I became a King's Scholar at Durham, and when my course was nearly run there I paid a visit to the Finkle Abbey wishing-stone, and I wished three things, all most unlikely, as I then thought, to occur. The first was that I might go to Oxford; the second, that I might play in the Oxford Eleven; and the third, that I might row in the Oxford Boat. They were all realised, the first two within eighteen months. I won a scholarship which took me to Oxford in 1864; in 1866 and 1867 I played in the University Eleven; and in 1867 and 1868 rowed in the Oxford Boat. Only about eight other gentlemen have gained these double blues, of whom the Rev. Canon M'Cormick and the Rev. J. Aitken are still living.
"I was prevented from playing with the 'Varsity Eleven a third year owing to an attack of pleurisy, which compelled me to take a voyage in a sailing-ship to Australia. The circumstances under which this attack was induced were so exceptional that I may be pardoned for referring to them. They constituted my last athletic day at Oxford. It was early in June 1868. I was in for the ''Varsity pairs' with R. G. Marsden, who had rowed stroke in 1867 and No. 4 in 1868 in the University 'eight.' We started for a practice at eleven in the morning (cutting lectures to do it), as I was engaged in the afternoon. We rowed twice over the course, one and a half mile long—making six miles' rowing, including paddling to the starting-place at Iffley. This over, I trotted to the College Cricket-Ground on Cowley Marsh, two miles, where my College (Worcester) was playing Pembroke. We went into the field, and I bowled all through the first innings, taking seven wickets. During my innings a tremendous thunderstorm came on when I had made 105 runs, and as I was engaged to row in our College Scratch Four that evening, I had only just time to get back to the river for the start of the first heat, in which I was to row. I at once ran down, as no conveyance had yet arrived, and got thoroughly soaked on the way. I arrived just in time to take my place in the boat. We won our first heat, and had to row a second the same evening, both close races. On my way back to College I got wet through again with a repetition of the heavy thunder-rain. I was already suffering from a chest cold caught a few days before through having a long wait in a cold mist at the start for the College eights. Next morning I could not draw a long breath without pain. The doctor whom I consulted pronounced it a case of pleurisy, and sent me back to my rooms, and to bed. There I remained for some weeks into the long vacation,—thus missing my third year in the University eleven and eight, but gaining a voyage to Australia by doctor's orders, and most interesting experiences in that colony.
"The trip did me immense good, for whereas I only weighed 10 stone 10 lb. when I went aboard, on reaching Melbourne I pulled the scale at 13 stone 4 lb. As luck would have it, the first man I saw in Australia at the end of the Sandridge Pier was G. P. Robertson, who played with me in the Oxford Eleven the year before. He was living in Melbourne, so at once got me down to the ground and enrolled me as a member of the Melbourne C.C., with the result that I was chosen to play against the Aboriginals and in the Inter-Colonial match, Victoria v. New South Wales at Sydney."
An even more extraordinary rencontre than the meeting with his old college chum, and one that shows "what a little world it is," should be here given.
"We were going," adds Mr Carter, "after the intercolonial contest, to Warnambool to play a match against odds. On driving from Geelong through the bush, at three o'clock in the morning, we came to a cross track. At the same moment a man came rollicking across from the other direction with a horse and cart. I was on the box seat, and a man named Evans, who seemed to know everybody, remarked to me, 'Carter, you see that driver there? he is a namesake of yours.' I replied, 'I must have a word with him; perhaps he's a long-lost brother.' Evans hailed him with the words, 'Carter, we've got a namesake of yours here.' 'Eh? Which on 'em is it?' Whereupon I exclaimed, 'Why, he's a Yorkshireman.' I got off the coach and spoke to him, and he asked, 'Young man, is yo'r name Carter?' 'Yes,' I replied. 'So's mine; where d'ye come thro'?' 'From where you've been before.' 'Where's that?' 'Yorkshire.' Then the
man burst out, 'D , you're not one of Parson Carter's
sons of Malton, are you?' 'I am,' I replied, 'only he's not Parson Carter of Malton now, but of Slingsby.' Then he rolled off the names of all the villages round Slingsby. When I asked him what he was doing out in Australia, he slily remarked, 'I didn't pay my own expenses. You see I was under-keeper to Lord Carlisle at Castle Howard Park, and there was a little bit of a misunderstanding between me and Lord Carlisle. He said all the deer in the park were his, and I thought some of them were mine, so we came to a bit of a trial about it, and they turned out to be all his.' On returning home, I found that what my rollicking namesake had told me in the Australian bush at three o'clock on that March morning in 1869 was quite true. He had been transported for shooting deer."
Though he was only eight weeks in Aus
tralia, Mr Carter managed to occupy a large space in the public eye. Certain cricket performances made him at once a public hero—a forerunner of K. S. Ranjitsinhji. In the inter-colonial match alluded to he was top scorer in each innings with 16 and 63, and, thanks to his efforts, Victoria won. The performance received due recognition, as is seen when Mr Carter brings down from the study wall a well-battered bat bearing the following inscription: "Presented by the N.S. W. Cricket Association to Edmund S. Carter for highest score in the inter-colonial match New South Wales v. Victoria, March 1869." The bat is mounted with five other presentation plates, one of them containing scores of a century and upwards, which indicate Mr Carter's prowess at the wicket. In addition to his batting in the inter-colonial match, the young Oxonian came out top scorer with 44 against the Aboriginals, among whom Mullagh, Bullocky, Redcap, and other noted "blacks" were bowling. Then a local journal wrote, "The country which produces Carters will take a good deal of beating yet, and we should recommend our cricketers to practise more and bounce less." Judging from recent AngloAustralian cricket, it would seem that the advice to practise more had been well followed.
Mr Carter was finally asked to take an English team out to Australia, but the project, after some discussion, fell through. The reason for this was twofold. Mr Carter could not spare the time, and he did not think his position in the cricketing world was then sufficiently prominent to warrant him in undertaking the responsibilities of an Australian tour.
On returning to England the young student and cricketer took Orders, and was appointed to the curacy of Christ Church, Ealing. Five years after he was appointed Vicar Choral at York Minster and Curate at St Martin-cum-Gregory, to the rectorship of which he subsequently succeeded. In 1882 he was installed Vicar of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York, a cure which he holds to-day.