Real Jeeves

Brian Halford

Description

The Real Jeeves tells the story of a young cricketer whose glorious life was snuffed out, but whose name will live forever. Plucked from country-house cricket, all-rounder Percy Jeeves was to outshine the Golden Age's greats over two seasons with Warwickshire, clean bowling Jack Hobbs, hitting Wilfred Rhodes for six and outclassing England captain Plum Warner. In September 1914, Jeeves bowled Warwickshire to victory over champions Surrey. It was his 50th first-class match - and his last. The Real Jeeves traces Percy's life from idyllic childhood via county cricket into the nightmare of war. Excerpts from battalion diaries detail the horrors of the Western Front, and ultimately his demise on the Somme. Yet Percy Jeeves' name lived on thanks to PG Wodehouse, who saw him play at Cheltenham in 1913 and was so impressed he noted the name for a character who shared the modest Yorkshireman's immaculate conduct and appearance.

Sujets

• Críquet
• Inglaterra
• England
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909626010
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword by DENNIS AMISS (former Warwickshire and England cricketer)
Foreword by MILES JUPP (actor, comedian and writer)
Foreword by KEITH MELLARD (great nephew of Percy Jeeves)
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. A four-in-hand – Prevention of Singing Act – The Grasshoppers spring into life – Superhuman subtlety
2. Jeeves takes eight – Perils of the light railway – Purvis’s manly chest – It is resolved to lynch the secretary
3. Poor circumstances – A move to Sleepy Hollow – Under William Appleyard’s wing – Featherstone slag
4. "He sent down pure piffle" – The young express bowler – Right-back for Swinefleet – Train trouble
5. "Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth" – The ominous cognomen of Duck – Mr Baker’s XI – The Gentlemen bat with broomsticks
6. A wrecked wicket – The 1880 Wild Birds Act – Jeeves ponders his future – Doncaster Plant Works
7. Athletic News – Professional at Hawes – Trial for Yorkshire – R.V. Ryder cuts himself shaving
8. Ground duties at Edgbaston – S. Blanks becomes the first – Jeeves bowls F.R. Foster – A toast is drunk to ‘The Press’
9. The Titanic sinks – Jeeves shines for Moseley – West Bromwich Albion right-half George Baddeley is carried shoulder-high from the field – "The young Yorkshireman is to be heartily congratulated."
10. Herbert Hordern stays at home to concentrate on his dental practice – Jeeves make his debut against Australia – Kelleway edges behind – A perfect roar of applause
11. Middle stump a speciality – Seven Nondescripts score nought – Jeeves faces South Africa – Feeble batting, slack fielding, an attack without sting
12. 20 all out – Santall takes all ten against Samuel Talboys’s XI – Jeeves fields for five minutes in the County Championship – The Birmingham League champions are routed
13. Cold and wet – The Guller wins the Chester Cup – Championship debut at Tipton Road – "Lifeless and depressing in the extreme"
14. "A most valuable addition to the team" – The disappearance of a donkey in Southampton – Jeeves dismisses the son of a friend of Charles Dickens – Mead bats brilliantly
15. Quaife is barracked – Foster collides with a sideboard – The burden falls upon Jeeves – A ferocious new-ball spell
16. A Turkish bath – Gaily decorated tents – Jeeves too good for Woolley – 16 all out
17. The raucous regulars at Bramall Lane – "Some inspiring cricket was seen" – Jeeves hits Rhodes for successive sixes – A hero’s reception
18. Tedious batting from Makepeace – The suffering of Hastings Post Office – "Is Jeeves over-bowled?" – A broken stump
19. 485 runs and 19 wickets in a day – "Deadly bowling by Jeeves" – Yorkshire’s players speak highly of Jeeves’s batting – To Cheltenham
20. Asquith vetoes Channel Tunnel scheme – A sea of boaters – Gloucestershire crack open the champagne – P.G. Wodehouse takes note
21. A former bricklayer deploys tedious methods – Doll is the 100th – A downpour at twenty past two – Jeeves gets a pay rise
22. An interview with Percy Jeeves
23 Aston Villa – Chaos in Albania – Fender reaches his 100 with an all-run six – Warwickshire beat Worcestershire by an innings and 371 runs
24. Leg-theory – Warner is non-plussed – A sticky dog – Almost unplayable
25. Jeeves returns to his roots – Quaife bores 3,307 paying spectators – Assassination in Sarajevo – A bail is carried 41 paces
26. The finest cricketers in the world – Gunn tests the crowd’s patience – A brute of a delivery – Jeeves is the talk of English cricket
27. Four wickets in four balls – "Armies mobilising" – Jeeves and Foster in deadly tandem – War is declared
28. Chapman is commissioned to buy horses – "Your Country Needs You" – ‘Punter’ Humphries is completely baffled – Jeeves and Jaques
29. Jeeves bats brilliantly – Jeeves bowls brilliantly – Jeeves fields brilliantly – Jeeves joins up
30. Farewell to Edgbaston – Birmingham Pals – Training at Sutton Park – Boldmere Parish Rooms become a lecture theatre
31. Back to Wensleydale – Extricating Young Gussie – Service-rifles are issued – Abide with me
32. A vile introduction to France – Waist-deep thick liquid-mud – Into the trenches – Christmas Day
33. To Arras – "A cold numbness settles upon the limbs" – Jeeves spends his 28 th birthday in 24 trench – "Groans and cries were heard"
34. "Murderous fire from the enemy" – A perfect summer’s day – Nets strung across the water – B Company is "blown to pieces"
35. 1 July 1916 – Jeeves’s last game of cricket – "A vast graveyard with the majority of its occupants exposed to the elements" – "The slaughter going on in Caterpillar Valley"
36. The attack begins at dusk – Two companies ‘disappear’ – Strung out in still rows – Percy Jeeves is missing
37. A brilliant cricketer – "The summit of fame was death" – The Thiepval Memorial – Reverence and affection
Appendix
Photographs
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© Brian Halford, 2013
First published in eBook format in 2013
eISBN: 978-1-909626-01-0 (Printed edition: 978-1-90917-862-5)
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For Mary
Foreword
BY DENNIS AMISS (former Warwickshire and England cricketer)
I T GIVES me great pleasure to be asked to write this foreword for Brian Halford’s book on Percy Jeeves. I remember hearing about Percy from ‘Tiger’ Smith, who was one of my coaches at Edgbaston and, as a former Warwickshire and England player, one of the true all-time Bears greats. Tiger always said what a fantastic all-rounder Percy was and that, if he hadn’t been killed in the Great War in 1916, he could have gone on to play for England and been one of Warwickshire’s, and possibly England’s, greatest ever players.
Percy, said Tiger, was a real gentleman and very modest despite his huge talent but died, like so many others, in the Battle of the Somme, giving his life for his country. What a loss, not only to his family but to the game of cricket and to Warwickshire.
Percy Jeeves was born in Yorkshire and, after spending two years qualifying for the Bears, played for Warwickshire in the championship in 1913 and 1914. He was a brilliant all-rounder and so many people enjoyed watching him play during those seasons. He shone for Warwickshire, then when he was called up to play for the Players against the Gentlemen, he bowled out a star-studded Gents batting line-up at The Oval to win the match for his team.
The sky seemed the limit for Percy and he might well have played for England in 1914 if there had been any Test matches that summer. Instead, war was declared before he had a chance. In his 50th and last first-class match for the Bears, Percy bowled out Surrey (including Tom Hayward and Jack Hobbs) to bring victory over the champions at Edgbaston. But the war was already underway.
In this book, Brian delves into the full detail of Percy’s excellence as a cricketer, as a boy in Goole and then as a young man in Hawes and at Warwickshire. Then comes the advent of war and the tragic path that took Percy to his untimely death at the age of only 28 on Saturday 22 July 1916.
Percy played 50 first-class matches, scoring 1,204 runs, mostly in bold, attacking style, and taking 199 wickets at 20.03 each. Tiger told me that he kept wicket in all of those matches. How I wish now I had listened to Tiger more about Percy Jeeves – one of cricket’s truly gifted players.
Percy’s memory will live on forever as one of Warwickshire’s finest players, albeit in such a short career. Who knows, he might have played alongside that other great Bears all-rounder Frank Foster for England but for the war.
It was left to P.G. Wodehouse to make famous the name Jeeves after he saw him play in a county match at Cheltenham in 1913. Wodehouse was so impressed both by Percy’s attire and the way he played the game that he used his name for his famous character who possessed exactly the attributes of the real Percy Jeeves.
I am delighted that the story of the wonderful cricketer who was the inspiration for that character has now been fully told in Brian’s splendid book. Now the real Jeeves, who should have played for his country but instead died for his country, has the recognition he richly deserves.
Foreword
BY MILES JUPP (actor, comedian and writer)
I FIRST met Brian Halford at Lord’s in 2006. I had gone to meet a journalist friend and Brian was another of the handful of them ricocheting around the vast media centre attempting to report on that season’s County Championship Division One encounter between Warwickshire and Middlesex.
It was a chilly and attritional day but there were runs for Ed Smith and Owais Shah. Brian’s chief concern, as I recall, was finding somewhere to sleep for the night. A few of us ended up at the Lord’s Tavern and then later the Maida Vale Marriott where the Warwickshire lot were staying. I remember looking up and seeing the likes of Jim Troughton, Nick Knight and Mark Greatbatch.
Someone, somehow, sorted Brian out with a bed. I headed off eventually up the Kilburn High Road a little unsteady on my feet but reflecting that this was how I hoped the county cricket scene might be – a relaxed, genial atmosphere off the pitch, and the local reporter mixing freely with the players.
I first came across the name Jeeves at the start of the 1990s when the excellent ITV adaptation began. I had been, until then, quite ob