Cricket's Connections to Charles Dickens and Christmas

Socialist historian Eric Hobsbawn wrote of how many long-held customs are actually nothing of the sort and are recent creations. His treatise on "Invented Traditions" didn’t mention Christmas, but if it had, it would no doubt have discussed the impact of Charles Dickens in helping to establish the modern British Christmas. 

We don’t know if Ebenezer Scrooge was ever a cricket fan, or whether he found time to enjoy it once relieved from the shackles of the counting-house by the spectres who haunted him over a festive period in the mid-nineteenth century. However, there are numerous references to the sport in other Dickens narratives.

Most famous is the contest in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, between All Muggelton and Dingley Dell. This match is supposedly based on a real fixture between the Cobham and Town Malling Clubs between 1830 and 1835. It is notable for its reference to “the art and mystery of the noble game,” with Dickens adding to cricket’s mystique.

The piece also highlights how the emerging bourgeoisie had taken to cricket and how they frequented it as much for the purpose of social ceremony as for the enjoyment of competition.

The irascible Alfred Jingle claims to have played the game in the West Indies. The earliest reference of cricket in the Caribbean was made in the Barbados press of 1806, and so it must have been established to be included in The Pickwick Papers in 1837.

In addition to his first novel, cricket is mentioned in Barnaby Rudge, Great Expectations, and Martin Chuzzelwit. Memories are evoked of men and boys playing on the green and the smell of trodden grass. In The Old Curiosity Shop, a child dies with a bat beside his bed, whilst James Steerforth is described in David Copperfield as “the best cricketer you ever saw.”

As Dickens the journalist painted pictures of social life, the social campaigner highlighted some of the injustices of early industrial England. One of which was the high admission charges to Lord's designed to keep the proletarian out.

Dickens complained, “the London masses do not care much for cricket, probably because they have little chance of exercising any taste they may have for the noble game; but if they did, the half-crown gate-money would effectively keep them out.”

Dickens had visited America in 1842, and readings from his works had proved to be successful. He was as popular in Australia as anywhere else where English was spoken by the multitudes and considered a speaking tour down under in 1862.

Caterers Felix Spiers and Christopher Pond looked for ways to promote their business and thought hiring the author would boost their brand. However, Dickens was unable to make the trip, and the entrepreneurs had to look elsewhere for an attraction that would assist them. Instead of England’s most favoured writer, a team of cricketers from the "old country" were invited instead.

This first English team to tour Australia arrived on Christmas Eve 1861, to be greeted by a crowd that was described by the Melbourne Herald as not seen since “the Athenians arrived in Corinth.”

We don’t know what would have happened to cricketing tours to and from Australia if Dickens had accepted the offer of a speaking tour anymore than we could predict what Christmas would be like without his books. One suspects that both would still exist with the same affection as they are held today, but perhaps they would be slightly different.

Happy holidays!