Advisory: Look out — here follows stuff about cricket and cremation.
Sport serves as a metaphor, even a proxy, for myriad rivalries: nation against nation, city against city, suburb against suburb. In soccer/football — let’s call it soccerball for convenience — just look at the genuine enmity that lies between FC Barcelona and Réal Madrid, and the mutual hatred shared by Manchester United and Liverpool; or at intra-city level there’s United and City, who both claim the sobriquet ‘Manchester’s team’. For sectarian spice (and some tasty violence, let’s face it) look no farther than Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers.
Baseball has the Yankees and the Red Sox, the Yankees and the Mets, the Cubs and the White Sox, and the Dodgers and … well, everybody. Nobody likes the Dodgers, right?
I don’t know all that much about Aussie Rules Football, but I’m given to understand that Carlton and Collingwood share, shall we say, a similarly keen sense of competition.
At international level, the apotheosis of the perennial love-hate relationship between England and Australia is The Ashes, the third match of the 2009 series of which begins on Thursday this week. At which point I should point cricket neophytes towards an explanation: Wikipedia will do for now.
Suffice to say, The Ashes is a quasi-biennial series of five matches of five-day cricket spread across the summer, alternating between Blighty and the Antipodes, that has been fought over since 1882, and which serves, even in these less-romantic and more hard-nosed professional times, to define those summers. To make a facile comparison, it’s like an elasticated seven-week World Series. But with tea and cakes.
How this cricket series came by its name has been discussed to the point of tedium. But this is cricket after all; you’re supposed to be bored, people seem to think. So I’ll run through it again, point by point.
- When Australia visited England in 1882, they arrived for the second Test at The Oval, London, having not won any of the eight matches the two nations had thus far contested.
- An act of chicanery by W. G. Grace lit such a rocket of righteous indignation under the Australians that it propelled them to a remarkable victory. Dr William Gilbert Grace was the best cricketer of his age and for a good while after: “a portly all-rounder”, according to Simon Briggs in The Daily Telegraph, “who shared a beard with Rasputin and a moral code with Al Capone.” He might have invented both gamesmanship and sporting celebrity.
- So fired up was the Australian fast-bowler Frederick ‘The Demon’ Spofforth (I kid you not) by the Doctor’s underhandedness that he took seven wickets for just 44 runs, and Australia won by a meagre six runs — to the shame and chagrin of the nation, the England team and its unfortunate captain A.N. ‘Monkey’ Hornby (really). Such was the tension in the closing minutes that one spectator keeled over with a fatal heart attack while another chewed clean through the handle of his bumbershoot.
- Reginald Shirley Brooks — journalist, boulevardier, flâneur, bon viveur, lothario, gambler and man-whose-middle-name-was-Shirley — felt moved to publish this now infamous mock obituary in The Sporting Times:
- A few months later the England team sailed to Australia to take up the cudgels once again. This time they were without W.G. Grace, who it might reasonably be assumed was omitted for fear of his bulk capsizing the ship or his extravagant beard fouling the propellor.
It seems that they took a splendid array of moustaches, though, and also the Honourable Ivo ‘Lemur’ Bligh (later 8th Earl of Darnby) as the new captain. Of the cricket team, not the ship.
And I made up the ‘Lemur’ part.
- On arrival, Bligh announced “We have come to beard the kangaroo in his den, and to try to recover those ashes” (which they did) thus cementing the term in in the popular imagination (without the capital ‘A’ just yet). Presumably, though, forced marsupial facial hair never caught on.
During the tour, the Hon. I. Bligh fell for a music teacher called Florence Morphy, and she for him. So besotted was she that at a Christmas party she mischievously presented Bligh with a tiny perfume jar filled with real ashes which became and remains the manifestation of the whole metaphorical conceit.
Oh, and they got married the following year.
Here we have your Ashes ‘trophy’, Ricky ‘Punter’ Ponting (Australia) brandishing it, and Andrew ‘Fred’ Flintoff (England) desiring it.
The gentlemen are not giants: it really is that tiny. But that’s not the original, I have to confess, which never leaves the display case at Lord’s, the home of cricket. The ashes contained in that wee jar (which came to be renamed ‘the urn’, for a more Olympian and hairy image) are supposed to comprise, depending on who you believe, the burnt remnants of either a ball or a bail or a stump or a veil or, god help us, an Aborigine.
Most likely they are nothing of the sort and were just sweepings from the grate, or the mortal remains of one of Florence’s lacy lavender-soaked handkerchiefs.
So that’s the outline of the story of The Ashes as briefly as I can sketch it. Which is still pretty lengthy but does not even scratch the surface of more than a century of drama, intrigue, sporting heroism, athleticism, stoicism, bravery, diplomatic incidents, blood, moustaches and cake.
But there is one twist to the original Ashes gag that is often overlooked or not even known. A subtly macabre and satirical political point was being scored, which would have been obvious at the time but which soon became lost amidst the romanticism and mythology of the contest itself.
In the late 19th century the practice of human cremation was illegal. The father of Reginald Brooks, author of that sardonic obituary to English cricket, was Shirley Brooks (from whom Reginald bequeathed his middle name) who was also a journalist (and author and playwright). He became editor of the satirical magazine Punch but was also a fervent campaigner for the right to cremate.
Shirley Brooks helped to found the Cremation Society of England, which included amongst its membership such luminaries as Anthony Trollope. The Society issued a Declaration that began “We the undersigned disapprove the current custom of burying the dead, and we desire to substitute some mode which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements.” Apart from anything else, they reckoned that those ‘component elements’ would make splendid fertilizer.
Before sufficient pressure and opinion could be brought to bear on Parliament, however, Brooks Sr. died and was buried not burned.
The Australian cricket team arrived in 1882, just as a Captain Hanham from Dorset was asking for the Society to help him cremate two family members. The government said ‘no’ but he went ahead anyway, building his own crematorium, if you please, and avoided prosecution.
Frustrated at not having been able to fulfill his father’s wishes in the same way, Reginald Brooks grasped the opportunity to make his point in print while simultaneously deriding the national sport. To which I say: “Neat, huh?”
The combatants resuming hostilities on Thursday in the soggy English Midlands will mostly be unaware of this darker motif. Quite right, too. They need just concentrate on hurling that hard red ball at each other with extreme prejudice.
A fascinating piece of background to the origin of the Ashes. However I feel bound to correct you on a technicality:
In the late 19th century the practice of human cremation was illegal.
This was not the case – or at least it was not specifically the case. I remember as a child being curious about the relatively recent introduction of cremation in the UK, which I’d assumed to have always been an option, and reading about the test case brought against William Price, the Welsh doctor who attempted to cremate the body of his five month old son in 1884.
To quote the relevant parts from the Wikipedia article about Price (the italics are mine):
Shortly after Price lit the pyre, the corpse was snatched from the flames and Price was arrested for illegal disposal of a body. Price was prosecuted, but successfully defended himself in February 1884, claiming that “It is not right that a carcass should be allowed to rot and decompose in this way. It results in a wastage of good land, pollution of the earth, water and air, and is a constant danger to all living creatures”. He was dressed in his foxskin cap and a white Tunic in court at the time. The judge at the Cardiff Assizes, Mr Justice Stephen, agreed that, under English law, an action wasn’t illegal unless it was specifically proscribed. As the existing law made no explicit reference to cremation, the practice was therefore legal. The case set a precedent, which led to the Cremation Act of 1902. In 1885 the first official cremation took place at Woking.
‘The illegal disposal of a body’ wasn’t directed against cremation, but a still-existing law to ensure that people properly declared and registered deaths. But a sufficient number of people were unclear on the matter for the case to be brought.
As far as I know, no one else had been prosecuted in this way up until then: it was generally assumed to be illegal to cremate a body, but it wasn’t: the law wasn’t specific on the matter. Of course it wasn’t until after the Price case that the law was changed to clarify the matter, but, technically at least, there was no reason why Reginald Brooks shouldn’t have cremated his father’s remains.
Of course that doesn’t alter the fact that, in 1882, Brooks wrote that mock-obituary with the ‘cremation is illegal’ belief in his mind. Congratulations on… ah… digging up that snippet of information.
Hi, Simon.
One thing I love about posting my nonsense is that a kind and brainy soul (if a soul can have a brain) will come along and teach me something more interesting than I was trying to convey in the first place.
My thanks for your correction and detailed insight. And the shocking pun.
I need to chastise my source. It seems that the government believedthat cremation must be illegal when it actually was not. Just frowned upon.
Well no cremation for me! I want to be encased in clear polyester resin, like a paper weight, and set adrift in the ocean like a scary ice cube.
Thank you G Henry, for that most engaging post on one of my favourite times of this, or any year. I’ve mentioned in a previous post how much I love the Ashes series and, to know there is a fellow Ashaphile, fills my heart with gladness.
G. Henry, I so enjoyed this post. Be warned that the following comment is long, rambling and not entirely relevant.
Watching The Ashes is one of my guilty pleasures. Prior to the 2005 series, I’d always been indifferent to cricket, and though I didn’t hate it, I struggled to see the appeal. And then came the 2005 series. I’d just turned 20, and was living in a shoebox room at my university college. I felt like a complete and utter loser for neglecting sleep and study to sit on my ancient second-hand single bed with The Boy, glued to the screen, watching the drama unfold. It was wonderful, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
It was fascinating to learn about the social context surrounding cremation at the time of The Ashes’ informal beginnings, both from your own analysis and from Simon’s startlingly detailed comment. Sport, morality and politics are often best kept separate, I find – the latter two generally dampening the enjoyment of the former in quite a significant way, especially in view of that Carlton/Collingwood clip. However, it was rather wonderful to realise that this strange little tradition may actually have helped to change people’s perspectives on cremation in a lasting way.
And it’s cremation all the way for me. I’d like my ashes put in our compost heap, then eventually added to the garden bed. Not sure how legal that is, but I like to believe it will be my way of returning to nature somehow.
Ugh, cricket.
Yay learning!
I want to be cremated and have my ashes smooshed into a man-made diamond.
A terrific post – enjoyed the Pies v Blues too!
@ Eric: possibly the best funeral arrangement I have ever heard.
@ tennyson ee hemingway: I shall scour your blog for your Ashes posts. Twenty20 and ODIs have their place and are supposed to be mroe exciting — but for sheer drama you sometimes cannot simply beat Test cricket. And The Ashes in particular seems to serve up more than its fair share.
Looks like Hughes is out and Watson in to open, and to shore up the bowling. Clark might replace either Mitchell or Siddle.
@ the girl with a pink teacup: my own pleasure is entirely guiltless! It was the 1981 series that really caught my imagination; then I recall, like you, staying up half the night to watch/listen to the 1987 series broadcasts from Australia.
The guilty part of my pleasure would be, I suppose, watching the TV pictures with the sound off while listening to the ‘Test Match Special’ radio commentary. At its most ridiculous, and when we had good summers, I would swing the TV round and watch it from the garden through the patio doors, with the radio on and a chilled glass of something for company. Was that nifty or just a little bit pathetic?
I’m impressed that the 2005 series hooked you — yes, it was highly dramatic; quite a remarkable series: but it swung the wrong way for you, didn’t it? (I’m making assumptions about your nationality here, of course).
What is it with Carlton and Collingwood, by the way? I believe Collingwood v Essendon is a bit fierce, too.
Cremation is the way for me, too: I’m told I’ll then be bedded in around a maple tree or tulip tree or something after I’m burned.
@ Soda and Candy: now there’s an equally good, if not better, use for one’s remains. I should give that some thought, too. The only thing I do not want is to be buried in a hole.
Sorry you don’t like cricket, though!
@ Lermontov. Thanks! Now whence did the ‘Pies’ and ‘Blues’ nicknames come …?
G Henry: Pies comes from Collingwood being the Collingwood Magpies (their jumper is black and white stripes) and the Carlton Blues come from their jumper being all Navy Blue. Hope that helps.
All right. I can’t resist being a smartarse and put the question to you “Why is a magpie so called?”
The term pie[d] means two-coloured (usually black and white); the prefix ‘mag’ is short for the name Maggie or Margaret: several common birds in Britain had such formations, some still remaining, such as: Jackdaw, Robin redbreast, Jack sparrow, Tom-tit, Jack snipe etc. Apparently the term ‘Dicky bird’ arose in the same fashion, as children would call any small bird ‘Dick’.
Sorry for hijacking your blog again!
@ tennyson and Simon: I should have immediately realised that ‘Pie’ came from ‘magpie’. A favourite bird, and one which lends its name to a least a couple of other black-and-white striped teams in football etc. As for the Blues … well, that’s pretty obvious now I look again. Stupid of me. I thought that was black, not dark navy.
I sort of knew about the etymology of magpie — ‘pie’ as in ‘piebald’ and so forth. The OED reckons that the prefix indeed came from ‘Marguerite’ via ‘Margot’ through ‘Magot’ to ‘maggot the pie’ then ‘maggoty pie’…
Then again I’ve seen an explanation that suggests ‘the ‘pie’part is old French from latin ‘picus’.
Still, they are marvellous birds, whatever or however we call them.
Ah, I’m afraid I made the cardinal error of relying on my memory rather than checking back, and, more importantly, checking other sources before I left that comment.
I’d read it in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable many years ago, which says:
The bird was formerly known as a ‘maggot pie’, ‘maggot’ representing Margaret (compare Robin redbreast, Tomtit, and the old Phyllyp-sparrow), and ‘pie’ being ‘pied’, in allusion to its black and white plumage.
And while Jack snipe is borne out by the OED, I must (to my embarrassment) have allowed myself to be confused by The Pirates of the Caribbean when I said ‘Jack sparrow’.
I shall take more care in the future!
Ah, how tragic, the 2009 Ashes series. Only now, with the fifth successive ODI victory against ‘the old enemy’, can an Australian raise his head above the sodden pillow-slip. But, cricket boring? Well, perhaps, but it has a higher purpose.
“Play up, play up and play the game!” as Sir Henry trumpeted, or words to that effect. Nothing like a boyhood spent being pounded by a five-and-a-half ounce Kookaburra to brace one for the barely one ounce minnie-balls (and I use the term advisedly) of the foe, eh?
Also, as the great GBS is said to have said, “The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.” How very Irish of him!
So there, not “a” but two higher purposes. And, by the way, “Carn the ‘pies!”