by Arunabha Sengupta
Alfred Hitchcock made a movie out of his Number 17, one of the several directors to do so. A personality no less than Dorothy L Sayers said that he was, “quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures.” Yet, for all the accolades and accomplishments, Farjeon remains an almost forgotten name today.
One of the most prolific and underrated mystery writers of the golden age of detective fiction, J Jefferson Farjeon frequently dipped his pen in cricket while writing about murder and mayhem.
When a county cricketer played a major role in his classic country-house mystery Thirteen Guests, Farjeon built him into the tale with a hand that obviously delighted in gripping the bat handle and thumbing through pages of cricket statistics. Harold Taverley played for Sussex, possessed a perfect off-drive and boasted an average of 41.66. A look at that number underscores the familiarity of Farjeon with cricket averages.
Fielding practice and score cards played decisive roles in the story and the thread of cricket was intricately woven into the fabric of the tale.
The Z Murders, an otherwise unimpressive Farjeon novel, alludes to WG Grace and Fred Spofforth in its pages.
Martin Edwards, the leading authority on the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, confirmed that Farjeon was indeed a cricket fan.
However, the most delightful association with cricket occurs in the book Herbert Farjeon’s Cricket Bag, a collection of light hearted essays on the game by Herbert Farjeon, the theatre critic, playwright and scholar. Herbert Farjeon was the brother of Jefferson Farjeon. The introduction is penned by the famous mystery writer himself.
The collection is one of essays, poetry, sketches and a diversion into an one-act play… different thoughts, some curious, some macabre, all amusing… making the book a splendid volume. However, perhaps another article needs to be penned about the contents penned by Herbert Farjeon.
And the introduction, needless to say, is pure joy for the cricket lover.
The section begins with the words, “I hope this introduction will not be too sentimental.”
Well, let me assure you with immense glee that these hopes were dashed. It reads as sentimental as cricket, the king of sports, demands of its adherents, especially the impressionable ones.
Jefferson Farjeon writes about the game with his every drop of his blood, every remnant of his soul and every throb of his heart. The dreamy years of his childhood and rosy days of early youth flow back through his senses as he recalls the role cricket played in the lives of the two brothers.
As he confesses, cricket was a colossal fire of a youth that had never left the brothers. And the blaze of the same fire illuminates the 18 pages with a poetic glow that is seldom achieved by the master writer in the more morbid mystery thrillers.
“Looking back over half a century, I recapture with almost disquieting ease the excitement of our boyhood passions. The names of WG Grace — yes, we once saw that immortal bat at Lord’s — of Tom Hayward, John Briggs, Ranji, Hearne, Palairet, Sugg (how many today remember Sugg and could name his county?), set our young hearts racing and held more glamour than is exhaled today by any Hollywood star.”
We all relate to this … The great names. WG, Hayward, Briggs, Hearne … for latter day fans perhaps Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Hammond … or Tendulkar, Sehwag and Kumble… Across eras and lands the sentiments are the same.
And, what about Sugg? That Lancashire batsman who played a couple of Tests for England. Have not each one of us come across a player, short of the top bracket, for whom we always had a curious soft corner, in spite of the giants of the era who perhaps stood head and shoulders above him? Say a Luckhurst or a Logie or a Sadagoppan Ramesh?
Farjeon adds about his brother: “He confessed later [that he] used to murmur, ‘God bless Abel’ in his prayers … he mentioned to me that he also added, ‘God bless Leg-byes’.”
Well, I cannot speak about the rest of you, and neither am I going to touch upon Leg-byes (which both the Farjeons later agreed was a trick of the memory), but I do remember as a 10-year-old, looking up the horoscope pages in the Sunday paper, not checking the fortunes foretold for my own star sign but for that of my favourite batsman in the Indian team.
He adds about his brother: “In later life he regarded Shakespeare as the greatest writer of all time. As a boy he plumped for Lillywhite and Wisden, whose annual cricket almanacs, with perhaps JC Snaith’s cricket classic Willow the King, were the most treasured and constantly read volumes on our bookshelves.
I do remember the year when Crime and Punishment caught my fancy but often not enough to put aside the Wisden Cricket Monthly.
And then Farjeon discloses something about his brother that brings back memories of all the different teams constructed in the early days of adolescence, the introduction to the All-Time XIs of different varieties, and the countless matches played by flipping open books and noting the page numbers — that boundless joy known as book-cricket.
“There were three years —1898 to 1900 — when Bertie [Herbert] compiled cricket annuals himself, playing county championships with dice and recording every score of the imaginary seasons. I assisted in these productions, which gained strong disapproval of our father when he discovered them. They were, of course, a glorious waste of time. But we continued with them firmly when no real cricket was available, and the nursery window was cloaked with yellow fog, shaking the dice-cup softly and in secret, lest too loud a rattle would bring forth further parental wrath. Boundaries scored by stealth…Lillywhite, Wisden and Farjeon all produced cricket annuals in the last years of the last century.”
Then of course there were are the more mundane fan-like real games of cricket: first between the two brothers, and then alongside their cronies. And the accompanying fancies: “If we scored no centuries (for Harry and Nellie never bowled overarm and what can you do against underhand sneakers save inward writhing?), we could dream of them when we sent a lucky one over the hedge for six, and we could wonder, in that glorious future that lay ahead of us, whether we should ever be chosen to play for our country.”
And sometimes, when the weather was uncooperative or the parents strict, the games continued in the bedroom passage. “Here we played with a tennis ball, hairbrush, and a certain unmentionable article of bedroom crockery. If the hairbrush failed to keep the ball out of the bedroom crockery, the batsman was dismissed.”
There follows the description of the first visit to Lord’s, the scramble for the best seats and the purchase of the match scorecard. “‘Cards of the match!’ was lovelier than any line of Keats.”
There is the passionate perusal of the scores of the respective heroes, the exchanges with an old spectator, there is even a description of Albert Craig, the famous cricket rhymester.
No, it is not an exercise as a successful writer of pompous self-importance deigning to indulge himself and oblige cricket readers with his ramblings about the game. Farjeon left that for other writers. With all the success of his pen, when he wrote about the days of yore when the two of them were children fascinated by the game, he returned to being a child himself.
“As I indulge in this orgy of the past, seeking to discover the scenes and sensations of those early days, when all the red letter-boxes had V.R. on them, and the buses were drawn y horses, and war was a mere theory like China and old age, and Arthur Shrewsbury’s average was 38.1, I know that I am idealising the past; but I also know that it is worth idealising, as are the men and women we love. For what, after all, is reality but the attitude we bring to it? Each moment that we live goes on into the future, dimmed or illuminated by our new experiences.”
J Jefferson Farjeon was born on 4 June 1883
Illustration: Maha