| Share page |
|
Ohap. XII.] Cricket. 147
Kilmorey (thenViscount Newry and Morne) was a frequent contributor to the scores of the " Visitors." His mother (Viscountess Newry) was tenant for some months of what is now called Rosemount, but in those days was known as Frohsdorf. From its then owner it passed by purchase to Mr. Robert Hanbury, M.P. for Middlesex. At his death Mr. G. Matthey bought it, and changed the name to that of another house near by, which he also bought and pulled down, throwing the garden of the two houses into one. Mr. Arthur Mills, M.P. for Taunton, was a constant member of our informal cricket club. Play usually took place at a spot which now forms the roadway of Devonshire Place, about opposite to No. 9, but one or two games were played in a field at the back of South Street, about where now is Gildredge Road. Another frequent player at about the same time was Samuel Moles worth, who died in 1908 as 8th Viscount Molesworth. He lived in East-Bourne with an old aunt, Miss Tompkins.
Later on, I had a great deal of cricket at Comyton Place. After the removal of Mrs. Cavendish, the mother of the 7th Duke of Devonshire, to Chislehurst about 1860, her daughter (Lady Fanny Howard) with her husband (Mr. F. J. Howard) and family came to reside there, and with the young Howards, supplemented by accessions from outside, I had many pleasant cricket afternoons, between 1862 and 1867. This last-named year was the last of my organised cricket seasons at East-Bourne, because it was the year of my marriage, and except for short but very frequent visits I was not regularly at East-Bourne again till 1873, when I became a permanent resident—"paying scot and bearing lot"—to use an ancient phrase.
One of the cricketers whom I have designated by the term " accessory," was a certain Delmar Cavendish, a cousin of the reigning family, who I never saw again till 1905, when I renewed my acquaintance with him under curious circumstances. I was a passenger in the P. & 0. steamer Arcadia from Tilbury to Marseilles, I going out to see the Eclipse of the Sun of August 30, 1905. |
||