by Arunabha Sengupta
Arthur J Raffles. Exceptional cricketer — a dangerous bat, a brilliant field and perhaps the finest slow bowler of his decade. He is a dandy, with an indolent, athletic figure. He is handsome, debonair, witty, masterful and brave. Raffles played for the famous I Zingari team, and turns out for the Gentlemen of England against the Players. One of the early stories featuring Raffles is even titled Gentlemen and Players.
However, he himself takes incredibly little interest in the game. He explains: “Cricket is good enough sport until you discover a better. What’s the satisfaction of taking a man’s wicket when you want his spoons? Still, if you can bowl a bit your low cunning won’t get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot’s just the kind of mental exercise one wants.”
A cricketer and a criminal. He does not fix matches, but breaks safes. He is a gentleman thief – to be precise, ‘an amateur cracksman’ … a la ‘amateur cricketer’ or Gentleman.
The first Raffles book – The Amateur Cracksman — was published in 1899. The first name of Raffles was borrowed from Arthur Conan Doyle, and the character to some extent caricatured Sherlock Holmes. There is much common in style, written in second person, the narrators being awestruck inferiors in intellect, recounting the amazing deeds of the slightly snobbish heroes.
In fact, Ernst William Hornung dedicated the first volume of Raffles stories to ‘A.C.D. This form of flattery.’ Only, the final character was formulated as a curious inversion of Sherlock Holmes from sleuth to thief.
Conan Doyle himself was not too amused by the creation. “I think there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal a hero.”
Well, Conan Doyle did have major problems with the unconventional —including left-handed batsmen. He was rather uncharitable in describing his friend Hornung after the latter’s death, “He was a Dr. Johnson without the learning but with a fine wit. No one could say a neater thing, and his writings, good as they are, never adequately represented the powers of the man, nor the quickness of his brain.”
The wit however struck home decisively, and Conan Doyle’s sister, Connie, was smitten by it. In 1893, Hornung married the attractive Connie Conan Doyle, the lady having decided to bestow her charms on him among her many suitors. Thus the creator of the world’s most popular fictional detective became the brother-in-law of the creator of one of the world’s most popular fictional criminals.
The two men, however, did not really enjoy the best of relationships all the time. In fact, Lord’s of all places played a role in one of their fallouts.
It happened in 1900, when Conan Doyle’s first wife, Louise, was ill with tuberculosis. Hornung, watching cricket at the hallowed ground, was shocked to see his brother-in-law accompanied by Jean Leckie, who later became the legendary writer’s second wife. The following day, Hornung went to Conan Doyle’s residence and voiced his disapproval. Conan Doyle refused to answer.
While Conan Doyle may not have approved of Raffles, the gentleman cricketer and amateur burglar did develop a legion of admirers. One of the more prominent ones was George Orwell, who was charmed by the inclination of Raffles to take extra risks in the name of ‘sportsmanship’ and even for aesthetic reasons. Conan Doyle was not amused by the success of Raffles and the apparently harmless way they parodied the Holmes stories. It has been argued that the publication of Raffles volumes might have prompted Conan Doyle to resurrect Sherlock Holmes in 1901 with The Hound of the Baskervilles after he had killed him off at the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem of 1893.
Coming back to cricket, Hornung’s contribution to the game did not end with the creation of Raffles and playing occasional matches for JM Barrie’s curious cricket team Allahakbarries. Neither was it limited to being the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle—the author who perhaps (literally) dreamt about cricket more than anyone else, including cricketers.
In 1905, EV Lucas joined hands with Conan Doyle, Barrie, Hornung and Andrew Lang to start a fund for three poverty-stricken ladies. These unfortunate women were the granddaughters of John Nyren —the old Hambledon cricketer and author of the first classic works of cricket (and also the first in a long, long line of plagiarisers writing about the game).
EW Hornung was born on 7 June 1866.
Illustration: Maha