Читать книгу CB Fry: King Of Sport - England's Greatest All Rounder; Captain of Cricket, Star Footballer and World Record Holder - Iain Wilton - Страница 12

Despite arriving as an exhibitioner, Fry endured a difficult start to his career at Repton. Within his first week, in September 1885, he had been involved in a fight, earned the hostility of his colleagues and found himself last but one in his form.

C.B.’s problems began when he had a disagreement with one of the older boys with whom he shared the Number Seven study. His antagonist was, he later conceded, ‘a nice enough fellow with red hair’, who was ‘a squire at Etwall, near Derby.’ They disagreed, however, about which of them should be the study’s fire-lighting fag. As he had already been a fag for three years, the squire believed this chore should become the sole responsibility of the newly arrived Fry. C.B. took a rather different view as he was hardly responsible for his colleague’s failure to earn promotion into the upper school – a move which would have ended his long career as a fag. Their disagreement culminated in a fight which, as neither boy could gain the upper hand, was eventually abandoned as a draw and, as C.B. had originally suggested, the two combatants split the job of coaxing life out of a firelighter ‘made of sawdust and glue’.1

The fight was only the first difficulty that Fry encountered at his new school. Another incident soon followed, as Life Worth Living recalled:

Study Number Seven was at the end of a long passage upstairs. One had to convey cups and saucers down the stairs on a drawing-board for a tray, along the passage out into the yard, which ended with a heavy swing door. So the very first time I tried my hand I balanced the drawing-board between my chest and the wall while I opened the door. Some idiot came through the other way and all the cups – but none of the saucers – were broken to smithereens … The study had purchased the outfit by subscription the day before.

Fry had to replace the broken crockery and was annoyed when the shopkeeper refused to sell him replacement cups without the accompanying, and unnecessary, saucers. As if this wasn’t enough, C.B. was to endure long-lasting retribution from his colleagues, who ostracised him. This meant that most of his homework was done sitting at the top of the stairs, using the drawing-board as a desk, and having only a pile of dictionaries for company.

Academically, too, C.B. endured a difficult start to life as a Reptonian. In his first week he was one place away from being bottom of his class; throughout his first term he was in the lowest stream for mathematics and even the classics caused him to struggle. Moreover, his sense of propriety led him, once again, into trouble with his teacher:

The form I had been first drafted into was above my qualifications. I had never done Latin verses. I had no idea what they were about. The first week I did one hexameter. The second week I did twelve. The third I did sixteen, all right … The worst of it was that my form-master gave me only three marks for my third effort. I knew he gave two marks for each correct verse, and that he had meant to mark me thirty-two … I had the temerity to say, ‘Please, sir, I think you’ve made a mistake.’ This was lèse majesté, a treason, and, worse, impudence. So he gave me nought and a hundred lines as well.

As C.B. concluded, ‘what with the broken cups and the litigation about the Latin verses’ – as well as the fight – ‘I started my public-school life badly.’

In addition to these incidents Fry found the Repton lifestyle more spartan than anything he had previously experienced, emphasising, in his autobiography, that the kind of turmoil described in Tom Brown’s Schooldays was typical of a Reptonian’s daily existence.

He was struck by the busyness, as well as the austerity, of public school life and found there was never enough time to do all that was expected of him. From morning to night, he was in a constant rush, hurrying everything from his meals to his morning wash. As long as he was a fag, these problems were exacerbated: for example, although he managed to look after the boots of his elders, he never had enough time to clean his own. Revealingly, perhaps, he felt that the best part of the school holidays was not the chance to see his family but the opportunity to ensure that, at last, he could wear boots that were shiny and black instead of dull and green.

The school did have its compensations. C.B. admired his big, black-bearded housemaster, the Reverend Arthur Forman, and his beautiful wife, a daughter of Dr Pears. In addition, he secured a place in a house football team in his first term at Repton and rapidly improved his classroom performance.

In part, C.B.’s academic progress could be attributed to the intellectual gifts that he had inherited – particularly from his mother’s side of the family. According to his own account, however, he was also motivated by a fierce determination to get to the top of his class as he hated being beaten at anything. Above all, he was inspired by the prospect of moving to a higher form, in the upper school, to bring a swift end to his time as a fag.

After his early difficulties, C.B. soon moved upwards and, but for a weakness in mathematics, would have finished top of the form at the end of his first term. Myers summarised the speed with which Fry proved his worth as an exhibitioner: ‘On arrival he was placed in the Upper Fourth and came out third at the end of the term. Before a year had passed he was top of the Remove, in July had won the prize of the Lower Fifth and at Christmas that of the Middle Fifth. Each term he gained promotion.’

Fry was in no doubt about the main reason for his academic success – writing, in his autobiography, that no boy had ever worked harder.

As under H.V. Pears’ regime at Hornbrook House, C.B. was fortunate that the school’s curriculum encouraged and rewarded those pupils whose strengths lay in classical subjects. As a Reptonian, his education consisted of six years of ‘solid and [almost] undiluted Latin and Greek’2 because, as he wrote in Life Worth Living, ‘At that time the ancient castle of the classics was unassailed. Repton was essentially then a classical school, and any clever boy could travel up to the Sixth Form without bothering about anything else.’

Modern subjects were seen as a refuge for Repton’s least able pupils and, for boys like Fry, both the quantity and the quality of their teaching was low: by his own admission, C.B. would know as little about maths when a term ended as he had done when it began. Similarly, ‘As for French, the Forms attended one hour a week with Monsieur Guillemant … Him we respected; he had perfect manners, a white pointed beard, and a formidable scar across his forehead, reputed to have been acquired in youth in a desperate duel at the University of Paris … but we learned no French.’

Despite these weaknesses, Fry’s education eventually became even more unbalanced. In accordance with a Repton tradition, he asked the Headmaster for permission to read Thucydides – which, in practice, was a substitute for studying mathematics. His wish was granted and C.B. dispensed with maths for the rest of his academic career.

There were also deficiencies in Repton’s teaching of English, which consisted of requiring pupils to write an essay, once a week, on a set theme such as ‘Courage’ or ‘It’s never too late to mend’. These themes were set late each Saturday and, by the evening, most (if not all) copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica had been borrowed from the library. Latecomers had to make the most of whichever volumes they could find. As Fry wrote, ‘If you were too late to get the volume containing Alexander, you got the one containing Julius Caesar, or, failing him, Zenobia.’ Although these arrangements were chaotic, they broadened C.B.’s knowledge and enabled him to use apparently irrelevant material to surprisingly good effect.

Such skills proved useful when he became an active member of the school’s Debating Society and gradually rose through its ranks. On one occasion he spoke against a motion which condemned the system of studies at Repton but was given a rough reception by several members of the audience – being ‘violently interrupted by those in favour of radical change.’3 Later in his school career, it was C.B. who opposed the status quo, speaking against a motion which regarded fagging ‘as beneficial in every way’. In a speech from the heart, he argued that the practice was ‘degrading, bad alike for seniors and juniors, [and] led to bullying.’ Despite the sincerity of his speech, the pro-fagging motion was carried unanimously.4

C.B. had more success when he spoke in another debate in which he could call upon his own experiences. In November 1887, he seconded the motion ‘That in the opinion of this House a belief in ghosts is tenable’. The Reptonian reported that ‘Mr Fry, after successfully deciphering his own handwriting, maintained that ghosts do exist in churchyards [and] thought that the widespread belief in them betokened some reason in favour of their existence.’ He rejected, scornfully, a suggestion that people who claimed to have seen ghosts were simply suffering from indigestion.5

There were other occasions when C.B. was happy to speak in favour of motions which did not, in fact, enjoy his wholehearted support. An explanation can be found in a letter that his first biographer, Myers, received from ‘one who was intimate with him in his early days’, and which provides a fascinating assessment of Fry’s early ability as a conversationalist and debater: ‘He was a most interesting talker on every subject, and had his opinions all read on things in which most boys take a languid interest. He could talk politics, poetry, religion, and ethics with great relish, generally, I must admit, taking the opposite side from sheer love of argument.’ But despite his rapid progress as a student and a debater, Fry’s most startling successes were achieved on Repton’s sports fields. Although he eventually achieved his greatest fame as a cricketer, it was as a footballer and athlete that he first came to the fore.

Not only did C.B. appear for Forman’s Under-Sixteen football team during his first term at the school (aged only 13) but, playing at centre-forward, he contributed to their success in winning a school cup and received warm praise – tempered with a note of caution – in the school magazine. ‘Fry for his age kicked wonderfully well,’ commented the Reptonian, ‘though he is at times erratic.’

Two years later, after a brief stint as central defender, Fry forced his way into the school’s first team as right-back. It was a significant achievement, particularly for a 15-year-old, as the Repton sides of the 1880s were exceptionally strong and, in the absence of inter-school matches, played some of the Midlands’ professional clubs and several of the country’s leading amateur teams. Far from capitulating against such powerful opposition, Repton usually gave them a close game. Proof of Repton’s strength came in the 1888–89 season, when the first team drew 3-3 with Derby County in one match and lost narrowly, 3-2, in another. It was one of only two defeats that the school sustained during the whole season. Fry received fulsome praise and well-earned recognition for his contribution to the side’s success. The Football Annual described him as a ‘wonderfully promising player [who] kicks magnificently with either foot’ and he was rewarded with his colours.

In the following season, 1889–90, Fry was an integral member of the team widely regarded as the best in Repton history. (Its only reverse was a 4-3 defeat inflicted by Derby County.) Although C.B. had some off-days at the start of the season, he soon settled down and became, in the words of the Football Annual, ‘as safe and brilliant as ever’.

In its next edition, when it looked back on the 1890–91 season, the Football Annual was unambiguous in its assessment of C.B.’s record at Repton. He was, quite simply, ‘the most brilliant back the school has ever had.’ It went on to praise his exceptional pace, the strength of his kicking and quality of his captaincy. The Annual acknowledged that he made mistakes but added that C.B. always had enough speed to recover and retrieve the situation.

Although Fry’s performances owed much to his natural athleticism, they also reflected his willingness to practise: C.B. attributed the precision of his kicking, for instance, to time spent with a tennis ball on a tarmac yard. His determination to keep practising was an enduring feature of his whole sporting career – and one of the main reasons for its extraordinary longevity and success.

At athletics, C.B.’s impact was as immediate as on the football pitch. Competing in his first athletics competition at Repton, his performances in the sprints and hurdles prompted the school magazine to comment that ‘a promising athlete was unearthed in the shape of Fry.’ Just one event, the Under-Fifteen half-mile, proved too much for him and he finished the race ‘thoroughly blown’.6

In his second year, when he was still able to compete in Repton’s Junior section, C.B. virtually swept the board, winning the hurdles, high jump and half-mile, and equalling the eight-year-old record for the ‘blue riband’ event, the 100 yards. As the Reptonian reported, Fry ‘carried all before him’.

Despite having to compete in the Senior events of 1888, Fry was nearly as successful as before. He won the 100 yards and the high jump, came second in the 220 yards and, although he was also beaten into second place in the long jump, his leap of 17 feet 5 inches set a new Under-Sixteen record. Overall, based on performances in the ‘open’ events, C.B., despite his relative youth, won Repton’s Second Aggregate Prize for athletics.

He went one better in 1889. In addition to retaining his hold over the high jump and the 100 yards, he won the hurdles, came second in the 220 yards and showed that he had made further progress as a long jumper. Not only did he move from second to first place, but C.B. demonstrated that, aged 16, he could jump almost 20 feet. However, the battle for the First Aggregate Prize was not won so easily as these performances might suggest. On the contrary, Fry faced fierce competition from L.C.H. Palairet – a future England cricketer and the elder of two clever, goodlooking and multi-talented brothers who were amongst his closest schoolboy friends. In the end the 100 yards was decisive: C.B. beat Palairet by a foot and a half, and won by 410 points to 400.

In 1890, it was the turn of the younger Palairet to represent the main threat to Fry. Although C.B. won the long jump, high jump and hurdles, Dick beat him in each of the races in which they met and set new school records in the 220 and 880 yards. As a result, the outcome of the Fry vs Palairet contest was exceptionally close for the second year in succession and, under a new marking system, Palairet finally emerged victorious by 18 points to 17.

A year later, however, Fry restored his personal primacy in Repton athletics and led his house to a convincing win – with Forman’s pupils securing 52 points compared to their nearest challengers’ 13. As well as repeating his triumph in the hurdles, C.B. came within an inch of matching the school’s best-ever performance in the high jump and smashed its long jump record with a leap of 21 feet. For a schoolboy, such a distance was nothing short of astonishing – and C.B.’s school record lasted well into the twentieth century. It took an extraordinary athlete, Harold Abrahams, a future Olympic gold-medalist, to break it.

Although C.B.’s success as a schoolboy athlete cannot be questioned, one aspect of his performance is surrounded by a degree of doubt. Was Fry basically a natural and self-taught athlete, as he claimed, or did he benefit from a certain amount of coaching – and, if so, what form did it take? According to C.B.’s version of events, written in 1939:

My housemaster, Mr Forman, was the only coach I ever had in athletics, and that on only one occasion. One afternoon, he happened to be crossing the School paddock when I was practising the long jump … He stopped for a few minutes, told me I did not jump high enough, took off his black mackintosh and made a heap of it between the take-off and the pit. The mackintosh frightened me into jumping much higher.

One of Fry’s contemporaries at Repton, however, has left an account which indicates that C.B. received rather more coaching than he was willing to admit. M. Teichmann-Deville, who was in the same house, remembered seeing him being coached by Forman. If C.B. had received only one brief piece of advice from his housemaster, as he claimed, it would have been quite a coincidence for Teichmann-Deville to have been there and then committed this isolated event to paper but, as he saw Fry receiving a rather different kind of coaching from that described in Life Worth Living, it seems more likely that, contrary to his own account, C.B. benefited from Forman’s guidance more than once.7

As contemporary Britain expected its amateur athletes to triumph because of the natural talent, sound temperament and instinctive refinement that were associated with ‘Britishness’, those whose success depended upon coaching or constant practice ran the risk of being bracketed with professional athletes who, by definition, were not ‘gentlemen’. It was a problem that Abrahams faced in the 1920s and probably explains why Fry, writing in the 1930s, downplayed the amount of coaching he had received.

When writing about cricket, Fry was keen, as in the case of athletics, to downplay both the quantity and the quality of Repton’s coaching. For example, in 1939, he claimed that his batting tuition had been limited to ‘a few general sarcasms’ from his classics master, some counter-productive coaching from an old bowler employed by the school and occasional – but valuable – advice from the Reverend Forman (who, during an Old Reptonian tour, was mistaken for W.G. Grace by a porter at Nottingham station).

C.B. had a particularly low opinion of the ageing bowler who was supposed to instil the principles of batting into young Reptonians. According to Fry, he was ‘a fat old professional with a husky voice, named Scothern, who used to bowl innocuous slow-medium stuff at the nets.’ Regardless of the length of the delivery, he would always ‘utter the cabalistic words, “Come forward at ’er, sir” … I remember I used to drive the ball straight back at him with a good thump, and he used to skip out of the way with uncongenial agility. That made him say, “Come forward at ’er, sir,” all the more.’

However, these criticisms, from Life Worth Living, are undermined by the more positive comments that C.B. made about Repton’s cricket coaching in the years before his autobiography was published. For example, in The Man and His Methods, Myers described Forman as ‘an inspiring coach’ and quoted Fry paying a fulsome tribute to his housemaster. ‘“The chief lesson he taught,” says Mr Fry, “was to play your strokes hard, to put your bat against the ball. He left you to develop your own style and make the most of your natural strokes … In fact, any success I have had in cricket I owe greatly to Mr Forman.”’ Similarly, J.A.H. Catton, the editor of the Athletic News, remembered hearing, while Fry was still a schoolboy, that C.B. had shown such potential that Forman took a special interest in his development. Moreover, Forman’s knowledge of cricket was greater than has previously been understood: in addition to playing and coaching at Repton, he appeared for Derbyshire on a few occasions and wrote the chapter on ‘Public School Cricket’ in numerous editions of Lillywhite’s Cricketers’ Annual.

In Fry’s defence, he clearly derived far less benefit from conventional cricket coaching than most of his contemporaries. At the time the orthodox approach to batsmanship was based on front-foot and off-side play. C.B., on the other hand, was more comfortable – and successful – when he adopted a very different strategy, in which back-foot and on-side shots formed the major part of his repertoire. Today, it is hard to appreciate the radicalism of his approach but as he recalled (and others have confirmed), his natural game broke many of the conventions that governed cricket into and beyond the 1880s:

In my school days the peculiar term the ‘hook’ had not been invented. If one hit a ball in an unexpected direction to the on-side, intentionally or otherwise, one apologised to the bowler. Being by nature a rebel, I used to heave a short ball round to the on-boundary on slow wickets, even if it was straight … An advantage was that the opposing captain never by any chance put a fieldsman there; he expected you to drive on the off-side like a gentleman, even if his bowlers presented stuff which, by the exercise of a modicum of agility, one could turn into long-hops to leg.

During the early part of his career at Repton it seems that C.B. tried to reconcile conventional batting techniques, which he had been taught by Hawes and Scothern, with the unorthodox methods he found more productive. The results were inelegant and unconvincing and, as a schoolboy cricketer, Fry struggled to match the impression he had made as a footballer and athlete.

C.B.’s problems were probably compounded by the way in which Repton organised cricket practice. Recalling the start of his cricketing career at the school, he wrote: ‘My first sphere of action was the fourth ground, where we had net practice on the principle of “you batted if you bowled the man out”.’ Although this would have encouraged Fry to improve both his bowling and his defensive play, it may have increased his reluctance to attack balls which pitched on or outside the off-stump, as such strokes involved an element of risk. As a result, C.B. developed an almost limpet-like ability to stay at the crease but was unable to turn time in the middle into runs on the board.

Fry’s breakthrough was also delayed by the fact that Repton’s cricket team (like its soccer side) was enjoying a period of considerable strength. It included some exceptional schoolboy players who, like C.B., went on to play Test cricket. When Fry arrived at the school, the first eleven was captained by the future Cambridge, Middlesex and England player, Francis Ford,8 whose achievements were already remarkable. In an Under-Sixteen house match in 1882, accompanied by J.H. Kelsey, he had been responsible for perhaps the most one-sided game in cricket history. Representing Priory house, Ford and Kelsey opened the batting and made 312 before ‘retiring’; when their opponents went in to bat, they bowled unchanged and dismissed them, twice, for the grand total of 16 runs.

Like Ford, Lionel Palairet had a remarkable record as a schoolboy cricketer: at the age of 10, before arriving at Repton, he had taken seven wickets with seven consecutive balls. As a Reptonian, however, he distinguished himself mainly as a batsman, scoring prolifically and, above all, batting with extraordinary grace.

The two Palairet brothers were fortunate to have received an excellent cricketing education courtesy of their father, who employed professional county bowlers to coach them in the Easter holidays. Both made rapid progress, and Lionel Palairet was captain of the first eleven by the time that Fry, in his third year at Repton, won a place in the school side. But, as he later admitted, his batting still left much to be desired:

My chief merit was being able to stick in, for I was a marvellously stiff player and could not hit a bit except on the leg side. The stiffness was due, I believe, to the misconception that the art of batting consisted entirely in playing forward; I used to tie myself up in extraordinary knots trying to play forward at unsuitable balls.

In the two most important fixtures of Repton’s 1888 season, C.B. produced two very different performances. In the drawn match with Uppingham,9 he was dismissed without scoring in the first innings but began to atone for his failure with an undefeated nine in the second.10 He fared much better when Repton visited Malvern and, batting at Number Four, top-scored with 32 of his side’s 119 runs. It was an innings which ensured that Lionel Palairet would present him with his colours but, overall, he had an indifferent season. His 13 innings yielded only 146 runs; he was in little demand as a bowler (his six overs, although reasonably economical, were wicketless); and even his fielding had its faults. In its summary of the season, Lillywhite’s Cricketers’ Annual was lukewarm in its assessment of the future England captain:

Keeps his bat straight and is a hard wicket to get; style terribly cramped. Did well at Malvern, and will probably score more freely on fast wickets; covers a lot of ground at mid-on but is apt to drop catches.

In his second season C.B. started to score more freely, and far more heavily, than before. A remarkable transformation had taken place. According to the most comprehensive history of Repton cricket, ‘Fry indeed seemed a new batsman altogether, and it was impossible to recognise in him the anxious novice, who had hunched his shoulders and poked about in the mud of 1888 … he now made his mark as a cricketer, and his batting proved the chief feature of the season.’11

The house matches showed that Fry had developed the ability to annihilate second-rate attacks. In Forman’s game against Hall he carried his bat in both innings, scoring 76 out of 138 in the first and 98 out of 130 in the second. More significantly, he proved that he could also succeed, on a regular basis, against good bowling in keenly contested inter-school matches. Playing Malvern, C.B. scored his first half-century (60) for Repton and, a fortnight later, he top-scored (with another fifty) against Uppingham. By the end of the season he had scored over 440 runs, won a bat for having a higher average (36.1) than any other Repton batsman and even took his first wickets for the school. Compared to his achievements in football and athletics, his breakthrough as a cricketer had been a long time in coming – so his sense of self-satisfaction must have been even greater.

The scale of his improvement helped to ensure that, in 1890, Fry became Repton’s cricket captain. The effects were mixed. On the one hand, his batting was less consistent than in the previous season; on the other, he used the skipper’s prerogative to bowl himself rather more frequently than his predecessors had done – and enjoyed greater success. With seven wickets at nine runs apiece, he topped the bowling averages and, despite his inconsistency, still came second in the batting averages, with over 400 runs at 24.1.

Once again two of Fry’s finest performances were saved for the matches which Repton most wanted to win. He made an important contribution to an innings victory over Malvern, scoring a half-century, but his efforts were overshadowed by an astonishing 172 from the younger of the two Palairets, Richard. In the game against Uppingham, C.B. was the highest scorer on either side, with 59 of Repton’s 176 first innings runs. Although he was dismissed cheaply when his team batted again, he had the satisfaction of taking two catches and achieving a stumping – indicating that he had diversified into wicket-keeping as well.

Fry’s batting displayed greater consistency in the house matches and, in winning the tournament for Forman’s, he also captured 27 wickets to confirm his claims to be seen as an all-rounder. The final match of the tournament was particularly eventful. According to Myers, it was the most exciting game in which C.B. played during his time at Repton and, in the view of Fry himself, it contained probably his best innings as a Reptonian.

The first day of the match had been relatively uneventful but, in the evening, a boy in Fry’s house gave a ‘leaving grub’12 in his study. Unfortunately, one of the pies caused an outbreak of food poisoning which, in one fell swoop, incapacitated many (or, according to C.B., most) members of Forman’s team: ‘The next day our opponents were due to open their second innings in the afternoon. We went on the field with eight substitutes. I bowled one end. Our only other first eleven man, R.B. Hope, bowled the other, and the third survival (afterwards Lord Moncrieff, but then called “The Goozer”) had to keep wicket, which he did with every part of his body, including his forehead.’

It was a similar story when Forman’s team batted again, needing over 90 runs to win. Fry was missed at slip in the first over, and then, he wrote: ‘Hope stayed in for a few overs, and Moncrieff succeeded in sitting on his splice at the other end while I made the runs. He batted too with nearly every part of his body, including the back of his neck.’ In doing so, he played an invaluable role in helping Forman’s team to victory, but C.B. was the chief architect of their triumph. Although we cannot rely on him for some of the match details, it is clear that he scored at least 70 of his side’s 98 runs. As the school magazine pointed out, however, the captain of the Priory side also emerged from the game with considerable credit. Not only did he provide substitutes to help his opponents in the field but he allowed them to bat for Fry’s side as well. It was, the Reptonian believed, ‘a totally unprecedented action’ and ‘set an example in sportsmanlike conduct which it will be well for future generations to follow.’ Regrettably, C.B. was insufficiently sportsmanlike to include this crucial fact in the version of the story that appeared in Life Worth Living. Fry was a good sportsman but believed such details should not get in the way of a story that would be much more dramatic without them.

Overall, C.B. enjoyed a successful season as a captain, batsman and bowler, and Lillywhite’s assessment was far more generous than it had been two years before: ‘Fry, the captain, stays on for another summer, but he had done enough already to justify us reckoning him a most valuable man. He is a very difficult wicket to get, and though not the most stylish of batsmen, plays very straight and hits clean and hard. If he improves he should next year be second to none.’

C.B. did improve in 1891, although he had a difficult start to the season. Not only did he suffer from chickenpox but, in the absence of its captain, the Repton XI went from strength to strength, winning each of the four matches that he missed. Moreover, when Fry returned, for the game against Malvern, Repton lost and C.B. himself was injured. According to Lillywhite’s, he was ‘so badly hurt in the first innings as to materially affect his batting afterwards.’ But, it added, ‘the extent of his misfortune can be appreciated when we state that this was the only occasion when he failed to secure double figures in any completed innings throughout the school season.’ Indeed, C.B. went on to top-score against Uppingham, plundered 144 from the bowling of the Old Reptonians and batted brilliantly against a strong team organised by the former Derbyshire cricketer, John Smith. In the words of C.B.’s housemaster: ‘Fry and Glover made such a mess of the opposition bowling that a sensational victory was the result.’

In the house matches themselves, C.B. led by example to steer Forman’s to another year of success. His all-round performances were remarkable. As a bowler, he again finished with 27 wickets and, as a batsman, he scored 187,108 not out, 19, 13 and 130 not out, to average over 150.

In the school’s first-team matches, Fry’s figures were similarly impressive. He finished third in the bowling table and ended the season nudging 50 runs per innings with the bat – almost twice the average of his nearest rival. The Reverend Forman’s pride was obvious when Lillywhite’s carried his summary of ‘Public School Cricket’ in the 1891 season: ‘REPTON. C.B. Fry (Captain): Quite a first-rate schoolboy batsman; has splendid defence, combined with great punishing powers; a straight and improving fast bowler and magnificent field anywhere; [an] energetic and successful captain. Enough has already been said of Fry to prove his value, and he ought, if schoolboy performances go for anything, to have a great future before him.’

C.B. confirmed his potential when he played for Repton against the Derbyshire Friars. Although the timing of the match is uncertain, and his precise score is open to doubt, he seems to have coped well with the Friars’ attack which included Spofforth, the legendary Australian bowler – nicknamed ‘The Demon’ – who had played against England as recently as 1887. As Fry wrote in Life Worth Living, Spofforth was ‘not much past his prime’ and played regularly for Derbyshire as he had become ‘the Midland representative of the Star Tea Company. He must have been nearly as good at trading tea as he was at bowling; he died worth seventy thousand.’

Such cricketing achievements capped, but did not complete Fry’s extraordinary sporting career at Repton. As well as breaking school athletic records, becoming its best-ever footballer and its most successful batsman, C.B. finished first equal in its diving competition. Despite the achievements of contemporaries like Francis Ford and the Palairets, and competition from future generations of Reptonians (including Harold Abrahams), Fry’s all-round record remains unsurpassed. Many of those who followed him to the school (such as Basil Rathbone, the actor) would remember seeing his photograph in the pavilion – providing a reminder of his position as one of Repton’s all-time sporting greats.

However, Fry emphasised that Repton reserved its greatest acclaim for those who secured academic, not sporting, success. ‘There is no doubt at all,’ he wrote, ‘that the eminent lights of the Upper Sixth and the winners of the School prizes figured on the whole as more important persons in public estimation than the successful gamesters.’ As C.B. combined his sporting achievements with prize-winning academic progress, there is no doubt he was held in the highest possible esteem. He won school prizes for Latin Verse, Greek Verse, Latin Prose and, surprisingly, French, and was the runner-up in German. In other fields, too, he showed the extraordinary range of his abilities. In 1890, for example, he finished in the top three in a school singing competition and even his performance in Le Malade Imaginaire earned praise from the Reptonian, which concluded: ‘Fry is evidently an actor: he discharged his part most efficiently.’ It is the first record of C.B.’s interest in acting, which eventually led him to California (where he met Rathbone, amongst others) and hopes of Hollywood stardom.

Few school careers can have been so successful and there seems little doubt that Fry’s time at Repton was one of the happiest of his life. He relished its emphasis on sport, delighted in the importance it attached to the classics and enjoyed an environment in which he was set high standards but faced no outside pressure or criticism on the rare occasions when he failed to meet or surpass them. To his dying day, C.B. defended the type of public school education that he had received. No other country, he claimed, ‘has succeeded in inventing a better way of training a boy to become of use to himself and other people’.

Fry’s views are, in some respects, surprising. Indeed, towards the end of his Repton career, he must have known that his hopes of joining the Indian Civil Service were threatened by the long-standing weakness at maths which his school had done nothing to address. However, before he faced the I.C.S. examination, his headmaster, Dean Furneaux, suggested that he should try to get into Trinity College, Oxford, instead. According to Fry’s autobiography, this suggestion came completely out of the blue and he allowed his name to be put forward because he wanted to win the scholarship for Repton, not himself. But, once again, C.B.’s version of events, written in 1939, is contradicted by the contents of an earlier book. In The Man and His Methods, Myers showed that C.B. had been thinking of going to university and even made it clear that he wanted to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps by winning a place at Cambridge. His plans were upset when an attack of mumps prevented him from travelling there to take the scholarship exam.

No such problems arose when, whatever his motives, C.B. tried to win an Oxford scholarship at the end of 1890. Although he knew the examination was being held at Wadham, he was genuinely surprised to find that it had not been organised on behalf of Trinity College alone, as he had been led to believe. According to Fry: ‘The examination was held in the great Hall of Wadham. It was only on entering the beautiful arch mounted with the figures in stone of Nicholas Wadham and Dorothy his wife that I discovered that the examination was jointly on behalf of Trinity and Wadham Colleges.’

As others have confirmed, however, the two colleges joined forces when staging their scholarship exams but their dons read the papers and interviewed the best candidates on an entirely independent basis. Both sets of academics were clearly impressed by Fry’s performance. He received offers from each college, with Trinity wanting him to be their Senior Exhibitioner and Wadham inviting him to become their Senior Scholar. History was to give an extra glow to his achievement, as one of the rivals whom he defeated was F.E. Smith (subsequently Lord Birkenhead) – later described as having the finest mind of his generation. But in getting into Oxford, Smith was convincingly beaten by Fry. As he informed one of his biographers:

I can still see the old porter at Wadham, a veteran I believe of the Indian Mutiny, coming from the Warden’s lodging – how slow he was! – with a sheet of paper. He opened a glass case – again, how slowly – produced four brass pins, and proceeded to pin up an announcement written in the scholarly hand of Warden Thorley, which I can see before me as I write, to the effect that the scholars elected at Wadham College as a result of the examination were, in the following order, ‘C.B. Fy, A.B. Willimot [sic], W.H. Anstie, [and] F.E. Smith.’13

As with most of his tales, Smith’s account is largely fanciful but he was right about the results of the exam – and the primacy of Fry.

Back at Repton, after C.B. received the news of his success from the headmaster, it soon became clear that, whatever his original views, he would have to take advantage of the scholarship – and not simply take pleasure in the reflected glory that it gave to his school. The reason was simple: while F.E. Smith had been inventing the ‘veteran of the Indian Mutiny’, Fry, despite excelling at Oxford, had failed the more mundane I.C.S. exams, his downfall being caused by his weakness in mathematics. Instead of going to India, therefore, Wadham College would be his home for the next four years.

As he prepared to travel to Oxford, in the autumn of 1891, Fry may have reflected on a dream he had after seeing Macbeth at Repton. The three witches had appeared, hailing him as ‘Captain of Varsity Soccer, President of Varsity Athletics and Captain of Varsity Cricket’. No one had ever secured such a prestigious hat-trick of titles. Was it to remain purely the stuff of dreams?