by A. W. Pullin
"Happy Jack" never took his doings with bat and ball with sufficient seriousness to make a note of them, and he had apparently forgotten that his highest score was 199 not out in 1887. He admitted that though he was played for his good behaviour and his whistling powers, he occasionally had a turn with bat and ball with a slight advantage to his side. It was also true that for a few years he had a hard time with both bat and ball, for he had to share the attack in his opponents' innings, and then go in first with the bat—an arrangement which he did not think wise for any team to adopt. As he got older he used to bowl as a change, and he thought that was better for him both in bowling and batting.
A few words as to "Happy Jack's" Australian tours. In the first, in 1876-77, he came out first in the eleven a-side averages with the excellent record of 48-6 per innings. He was also at the head of the list with 34 per innings with Lord Harris's ^78-79 team, and on going out a third time with Shaw's team in 1881-82, he came out first with the average of 39-2. His highest innings on that tour was 149, and no other member of the team reached treble figures. In 1884-85 Ulyett was out again with the eighth English team in the land of the kangaroo, but he had very indifferent luck, for he was absolutely at the bottom of the list, only making 136 runs in twelve innings. As a set-off to this he did fairly well in bowling. His fifth and last visit to Australia was with Shrewsbury's team in 1887-88, when, in spite of being handicapped by an accident, he was fourth on the batting list for eleven a-side matches with figures of 22-3 per innings, and second in all matches with 25-11 per innings.
Bringing down from the walls, on which hang numberless photographs and other mementoes of his cricketing experiences, a painted sketch of two coaching parties battling with a flood in mid-stream, Ulyett proceeded to give a graphic narrative of the dangers which Lillywhite's 1876 team had to surmount in fulfilling one of their engagements in New Zealand. "We had," he said, "to coach it to Christchurch, a distance of about 200 miles. As soon as we had set off, the heavens turned the taps on, and in that quarter when it rains it means a deluge. When we got to a certain gorge we found it 80 flooded that we had what was practically a running river seventy yards broad to cross. You will see from this picture how we crossed it. There were two coaches. A horse was taken out of one coach, and here is one man astride it, with another holding on to its tail, and each man in turn holding on to his front neighbour's coat-tails. The man here with a lady on his back is Tom Armitage. He is struggling along gallantly under his fair burden.
"The first coach got across all right, but the second had a horse down, and a rare job some of us had to get it up again. I could swim, and I had to swim, too, at one stage of the exciting adventure, or I should not have been here now. This is no fairy tale, mind you; what this picture depicts is quite true. It was painted by one of the coaching party, as the inscription 'J. Gibb, Ch. Ch., N.Z., 1877,' shows.
"Well, when we got to the other side our discomforts were not at an end. There was a shanty at which we sought accommodation, it being too late, and our clothes too wet, for us to continue the journey. There was no chair in the shanty, only lumps of wood to sit down upon. We soon drank everything there was in the house—bar water. There were only three bottles of spirits on the premises, and they did not last long, so wet and exhausted were we all. Then what a sight we were, standing round the fireplace clad in the scantiest of garments, while we dried our clothes. We reached the place at 12.30 midnight, dreadfully knocked up. There was only one bed, and five of us crowded into that: the others rested as best they could, or not at all, for the water rose in the hut also.
"At five o'clock the next morning we left the shanty intending to proceed on our journey, but two miles up the mountain we found there had been a landslip, and we had to return to the hut until a path was cleared for the coaches. We had eaten the little food there was in the shanty, but the occupier set out with his horse and gun, and returned in about two hours with a sheep. No time was lost in cutting up the carcass and throwing it on the fire to roast. While it was roasting I set to and made some bread cakes. I tended to the cakes with a hay-fork, and never did fat sheep and oven-bottom cakes seem a greater luxury than when we were able to attack them.
"We got to Christchurch eventually, but instead of reaching there the day before the match, we did not arrive until eleven o'clock on the morning when play should commence. Before we got there we had to cross another brook up to the knees in water. Tom Emmett had been riding in the rain on the box for hours, but Jupp was so vexed at having to get out of the coach and wade, while Emmett was sitting in his wet clothes on the coach, that he pulled Tom off, and they quite got to high words over it. I suppose Jupp thought that as Tom was already soaked, a little extra wet would have done him good, while he (Jupp) might have been allowed to remain under cover as the brook was being forded.
"We were so stiff, cold, and sore with being wet and cramped up in the coach that we could scarcely bowl or run. The local Eighteen batted first, and we only managed to get them out just before the end of the first day. Some of the local critics said that if that were the English team, they had better have stopped at home than come all that way to teach Christchurch folk how to play cricket. That remark, in fact, appeared in a little local evening paper. In the evening I told Lillywhite that as we had been up to the necks in water, had no bed and nothing to eat, it was worth stretching a point, so we got him to allow us a case of champagne, and we had a merry evening. The next day we went on to the field new men. The local paper had to alter its opinion of the English team."
In the match with Lord Harris's team against New South Wales, at Sydney, in February 1879, Ulyett took 4 wickets in four successive balls in the New South Wales second innings, though some of the published reports in England do not show that to have been the case. George took 2 wickets with the last two balls of one over, and 2 more with the first two balls of the next over. The feat is duly mentioned by Lord Harris in his resume of the trip in the Red Lillywhite Annual for 1880, while another well-known cricketer in his descriptive notes of the visit of the English team in the Green Lillywhite for 1880 also gives Ulyett the credit of the performance. 'Wisden,' however, credits George with but 3 wickets.
This was the famous match when something like a riot occurred. "Happy Jack's" remembrances of it are now given:—
"We won the toss, and Lord Harris made the batting order out, Mr A. P. Lucas and I to go in first, as usual. Mr Hornby, however, had his pads on, and expressed a wish to go in first, and on Lord Harris saying so, I said, 'All right, my lord,' and waited to go in first wicket down. I had to wait some time, for Messrs Hornby and Lucas put on 125 runs for the first wicket. When I got in Lord Harris soon joined me. Spofforth was bowling pretty well at the time, but I had a hitting fit on. Between the overs his lordship would give me the nod and say, 'George, do play steady; we want to win this match.' 'All right, my lord,' was my reply, and bang went two 4's and a 3 the next over. This sort of thing went on, until after being several times told to 'play steady' I made the remark, 'But, my lord, I feel
rather like hitting them.' Then he said, 'AH right, d
you, go on.' I went on, and knocked up 55 in just over half an hour, when I was caught by Evans. On leaving, Lord Harris said to me, 'Didn't I tell you you would get out?' 'Yes, my lord,' I said, 'but I have put 55 down on the book, and have had a rare good time.'
"Well, we made 267, and New South Wales had to follow on 90 behind. Mr Murdoch and Alec Bannerman opened the second innings, and the first-named hit one to cover-point, where the finest cover fielder I ever saw was on duty—Mr V. F. Royle. He had the ball back like lightning, and Mr Murdoch was run out a good two yards. Mr Murdoch went away, but the people in the pavilion, who could not possibly see the incident properly, shouted out, 'Go back; you're not out.' They would not send another man in, and the crowd rushing into the field, what a lively time we had! I got beside the stumps, thinking they might be useful, and took up one in each hand ready for an emergency. One man struck
at Lord Harris, and I elbowed my way to him and said, 'Let me have a go at him, my lord.' 'No, no, George,' he replied, 'we are going to do nothing wrong.' Mr Hornby, however, came up, and taking the man who had struck Lord Harris by the collar, he dragged him unaided through a couple of thousand persons to the pavilion, where he gave the
man in charge. Then he (Mr Hornby) forced his way back to us in the field, though he had his shirt nearly torn off his back. He was a game 'un!
"Not another ball was bowled that day, and the following day being Sunday, it was agreed to resume play on the Monday, the Australian tempers having cooled on reflection. On the Sunday the Commodore of Sydney told his tars they could have a holiday on the Monday and go to the cricketmatch, adding that if they saw any one attempt to molest the English cricketers they were at liberty to 'go for them.' Well, on the Monday the tars were in groups of a dozen a few yards apart among the crowd. That was the day I took the four wickets in four balls. We got the whole side out for 49, and won by an innings and 46 runs. The trouble had been caused on the Saturday by a Melbourne man umpiring for us. After the match a couple of hundred loafers waited for the poor umpire, who asked us to stand behind him while he fought the best man in the crowd. While we were getting ready for the fight, however, a dozen of the Commodore's men arrived, and seeing what was happening, they went for the crowd and polished them off with their fists in double-quick time. Then we and the umpire got away without further trouble."
During the 1884-85 Australian trip "Happy Jack's" propensities for practical joking brought him into a very unpleasant predicament. He fell off a steam launch, and had a narrow escape of furnishing a morning meal for an ablebodied shark. The incident has been often referred to in home cricket circles since, and has naturally lost nothing in the telling. The writer has heard it narrated how Ulyett had to draw his big pocket-knife in the water and face a long and gory fight with the voracious shark. The picture of "Happy Jack " slashing and cutting, and diving and splashing, to the confusion of the shark, has been verbally drawn with a graphic detail calculated to give the hearer the creeps. Stripped of its sensational embroidery, the real incident, as given by Ulyett himself in this Talk, is the following:—
u
"We had been staying at a place called Bourke, and our steamer was due to leave at four o'clock in the morning, and call at different ports for cargo. A gentleman who possessed a beautiful steam launch invited us to stop and have a champagne breakfast, and proceed in his launch to catch the steamer before it reached the open sea. It was put to the vote whether we should do so, and we put both hands and both feet up in favour of stopping for the breakfast. A jolly time we had, too! After breakfast, when sailing in the launch, we had a lark with a young doctor who was going to Sydney with us. I suddenly turned to the doctor and told him he was not well, that his liver was wrong, that he was making too much blood and needed bleeding, and I gravely asked him to permit me to perform the latter operation upon him, at the same time telling some one to fetch a glass. 'You bleed me! What do you know about it, I wonder 1' I told him I knew all about it, and producing a lance—I always carried one to make people believe I knew something of surgery—pointed to the place in his arm from which I should take half a gill. I was sitting on the bulwark of the launch, and when I was about to touch him with the lance he put out his arm suddenly and made the remark, 'Get away.' I got away quickly: I tumbled head over heels into the water.
"The screw just missed me, and then they reversed the engines, and turned round to pick me up. I was perfectly at home in the water, and so proceeded to quietly swim in the direction of the launch. I was wearing elasticside boots, and I took them off to enable me to swim better. I hadn't any paper or pencil at the time, or I should have labelled them home to England. Suddenly the skipper of the launch shouted, 'There's a shark coming!' and sure enough there was. Fortunately it did not see me, and I dived and swam under the water some distance. I was able to do this with my eyes open and thus watch the shark. Some one had a spear on the launch ready to go for the shark if it rushed at me as I was being hauled up. When I got hold of the rope they threw out to me, I felt as if the shark would have to pull over the launch and all if it seized me, but fortunately I got on board with no worse effects than a good wetting and a bad fright. It is a fact that I had my knife out to defend myself against the shark, but I was not under the necessity of using it. When I got on board the young doctor looked as if I had bled him of more than half a gill. He said he would give me ^100 when we got to Sydney, but after giving me a 'possum rug as an evidence of his generosity and good faith, I never again saw him or the _^100."
George Ulyett was also a member of the first English team that went to South Africa in 1888. "I did not," he said, "go out with them, but received a cablegram asking me to join them, as Mr J. H. Roberts was summoned home by the death of his father. I only got word on the Friday, and had to be in London on the Monday. A friend gave me a four-gallon jar of whisky to take out with me, and on boarding the ship two of the officers stopped me on the gangway. I told them I had a cablegram to go out to the English team in South Africa. 'Oh! But what is that you have 1' pointing to my whisky-jar. 'They are breaking all the bats out there owing to the great heat,' I replied. 'This is linseed oil to oil the bats with.' They passed the jar.
"On the voyage I of course got chummy with the officers. In their cabins at night we used to 'stand' whisky in our turn. One night I took the opportunity of filling a ship's bottle with the whisky from my smuggled four-gallon jar. They soon wanted to know what brand it was and where I had got it, but I did not enlighten them until a few nights afterwards, when I produced the 'linseed-oil' jar. As they liked the whisky, and said they enjoyed my company, they forgave me the linseed-oil dodge."
"Happy Jack " was one of Daft's American team, and also went to San Francisco with the team that travelled that way to Australia in 1881-82, captained by Alf. Shaw. "At 'Frisco," he said, "we came up against an American baseballplayer, who in the first innings jerked nearly all of us out. When we went in a second time, some Englishmen present asked us why we did not make the man bowl; but we simply altered our tactics, Barlow going in for stopping them, and I for hitting them. The baseball pitcher kept asking Alf. Shaw if he objected to his pitching, and Alf. said to me, 'Jack, do you object to this pitcher?' 'Not I,' I replied; 'I wish he would pitch at both ends.' The pitcher nearly pitched his arm away, while I made 160 odd, not out, and finally he remarked in disgust, 'I guess I don't care about cricket. It's too darned long. Guess I rather like a match that's over in about two hours.'"
One of George Ulyett's best performances in test cricket with the ball was seen in the second Australian innings of the match England v. Australia, at Lord's, in July 1884. His analysis was 39 overs, 23 maidens, 36 runs, 7 wickets. There was a wonderful catch by which he dismissed the giant Bonnor—a catch that has often been referred to. What were Ulyett's impressions of it 1—
"The ball was no sooner out of my hand than it was back again—something after the manner of those elastic balls with which you see young men and maidens amusing themselves nowadays on the sea-side parades. I had no time to judge the catch at all; the ball was back in my hand like lightning, and stuck there. I was not hurt on the inside of my hand, but on the outside or back of the hand I suffered some pain from the force of the concussion. The delivery was a straight half-volley, and Bonnor 'middled' it. Both 'W. G.' and Lord Harris said I was very foolish for attempting the catch, for if the ball had hit my wrist or arm, it would have snapped the limb as if it were a stick.
"When the innings, and with it the match, was over, a boy came to me and said I was wanted in the pavilion. I went up and saw no one, only an old gentleman in a tall hat. He never spoke and I did not speak, but went out again. The lad came to me a second time, and again I went. The old gentleman was still there, and I didn't know him from Adam. He proved to be one of the oldest members of Lord's. He said, 'Ulyett, I want to have a word with you. I have seen very nea
rly every ball that has been bowled on this ground, and I have seen every ball that you have bowled, but I have never seen such a catch as that by which you got Bonnor. Will you accept this?' (handing me a gold coin). I accepted it, and was, of course, more pleased with the old gentleman's kindly words and praise than with the present itself."
By the way, 'Punch' made mention of that catch, and said we wanted more men like Ulyett to go to war, as they would be useful in catching the cannon-balls! Ulyett had the ball presented to him, with a plated inscription upon it, and he possessed it at the time of his death.
In his career "Happy Jack" took part in a few exciting finishes. There was a famous match against Gloucester, at Sheffield, for instance, in July 1879, when Yorkshire won by 7 runs. Ulyett throws an interesting side-light upon this match. A local "three o'clock tissue" had published the result as a win for Gloucester by 7 wickets—a sad case of ultra-journalistic enterprise. Some of the "sports," who had seen the extraordinary collapse of Gloucester, and Yorkshire's sensational win after luncheon, went into those mysterious haunts where sportsmen who like to back their opinions can always rely upon finding the necessary accommodation.
The supposed downfall of the Tykes was being caustically discussed. Those in the know asked, "What odds will you lay that Yorkshire have lost 1" "Oh, it's like robbing you to make a bet; why, here's the 'three o'clock tissue,' and Gloucester have won by 7 wickets." No matter; the cool ones were prepared to bet. Ulyett said they did bet, and at various places scooped up a nice sum of money from those who thought it impossible that W. G. Grace, G. F. Grace, C. Townsend, and the other crack Gloucester bats could be dismissed for less than 30 runs.
Ulyett added that, with reference to Tom Emmett's bet of 50 to 1 with W. Bates against Yorkshire winning this match, the players had a little meeting among themselves after the game, and told Bates that he ought to accept 30s., which he did.