Pen mightier than the bat
QUESTION How did the Allahakbarries cricket club have such notable players as J. M. Barrie, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton and A. A. Milne?
The Allahakbarries were the occasional cricket team of writers and artists founded by Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie. The team was active from 1890 to 1913 and was named in the mistaken belief that ‘Allahu akbar’ means ‘heaven help us’ in Arabic rather than ‘God is great’.
This was because Barrie, though enthusiastic, wasn’t very good at cricket. Of his bowling, he stated that after delivering a ball, he could sit at mid-off and wait for it to reach the other end.
Nevertheless, his zeal and contacts meant he could coerce the great and good of the artistic world to take to the crease. Arthur Conan Doyle was a regular while h.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and G. K. Chesterton played occasionally.
The team also featured writers Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men In A Boat), P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves And Wooster), e.W. hornung (of Raffles fame), A.e.W. Mason (The Four Feathers), artists henry Justice Ford and John Bernard Partridge, as well as the explorer hesketh Vernon hesketh-Prichard.
Barrie praised one performance by observing: ‘You scored a good single in the first innings, but were not so successful in the second.’
he lauded one opposing team’s effort by pointing out: ‘You ran up a fine total of 14, and very nearly won.’
A short 1899 history he wrote about his team is dedicated ‘To Our Dear enemy Mary de Navarro’, a famous Broadway actress who retired to Worcestershire. She captained a team of artists and bowled Barrie during a 1897 match.
The Allahakbarries played their last game on October 13, 1913, with WinnieThe-Pooh author A. A. Milne playing in his only game for them. Also in the team was George Llewelyn Davies, one of the five brothers who had inspired Peter Pan.
Barrie wrote in his diary on a visit to Scotland the next year: ‘The Last Cricket Match. One or two days before war declared — my anxiety and premonition — boys gaily playing cricket at Auch. I know they’re to suffer. I see them dropping out one by one, fewer and fewer.’ Davies was killed by a German sniper near Ypres on March 15, 1915. Sam Butler, Tonbridge, Kent.
QUESTION
What’s the largest framed painting? IL PARADISO, a 74ft by 30ft framed oil painting on canvas that dominates the main hall of the Doge’s Palace in Venice, is the world’s largest framed canvas.
It was painted by Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto because he was the son of a dyer.
Christ and Mary are surrounded by 500 figures, including saints. It is a huge, black and somewhat gloomy picture, but contains beautiful single figures and each is quite mesmerising to the eye.
Pamela Gregory, Torquay, Devon.
QUESTION
What was the flitch of bacon custom?
The Dunmow Flitch Trials have existed since Medieval times. The award is a flitch of bacon: half a pig cut lengthwise, the name derived from the Old German word vlicke, meaning piece of flesh.
The trials are held on a Saturday in July every four years (typically a leap year) in the village of Great Dunmow, essex. Couples married for at least a year and a day come to demonstrate their fidelity to try to bring home the bacon.
Their case is heard by a court, presided over by a judge, with one counsel representing the claimants and another for the flitch donors. A jury of six maidens and six bachelors choose the winners.
Successful claimants are carried shoulder-high in the ancient Flitch Chair to Market Place, where they take an oath while kneeling on pointed stones.
Unsuccessful couples are consoled with a gammon.
The antiquary Sir William Dugdale tells in his Monasticon Anglicanum how, in 1104, Reginald Fitzwalter, Lord of the Manor, and his wife dressed as humble folk and begged for the blessing of the Prior a year and a day after their marriage. The Prior, impressed by their devotion, bestowed upon them the flitch.
Upon revealing his true identity, Fitzwalter gave his land to the Priory on the condition a flitch should be awarded to any similarly devoted couple.
The trial is first recorded in Piers Plowman, a religious allegorical satire by William Langland. It describes hasty, illmatched marriages that followed the Black Death, which suggests the custom was well established: ‘Many a couple since the pestilence Have plighted them together; The fruit that they bring forth Is foul words, In jealousy without happiness, And quarrelling in bed; They have no children but strife, And slapping between them: And though they go to Dunmow (Unless the Devil help!) To follow after the flitch, They never obtain it; And unless they are both perjured, They lose the bacon.’ In 1832, Josiah Vine, a retired cheesemonger from Reading, tried to claim the flitch, but the steward of Little Dunmow refused and said the trials were ‘an idle custom bringing people of indifferent character into the neighbourhood’.
As a result, the event moved to Great Dunmow. The ceremony was given fresh impetus in 1855 when novelist William harrison Ainsworth published The Custom Of Dunmow, in which he recounts the attempts by a publican to win the flitch by marrying a succession of wives in an attempt to find the perfect one.
Christine Walker, St Albans, Herts. IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.