Today dawns in East Anglia with expectation, even excitement, hanging in the air. My illustration is an inadequate attempt to capture the mood. It is the occasion of the annual Late Summer Luncheon for members of the Norfolk County Lawn Croquet Society.
Guests are not permitted and members are forbidden to reveal the clandestine rites that have evolved since the Society was formed on a chilly 25th October, 1854. On that auspicious day in the annals of the noble game another, almost as important, event was taking place far from our shores, namely the Battle of Balaclava, and it is from that stirring engagement that the Society has adopted its distinctive head-dress.
The game quickly achieved popularity in the county. Here is a young Osbert Lancaster swinging a mallet outside his grandfather’s residence, East Winch Hall, King’s Lynn. He drew this to illustrate his autobiography, All Done From Memory. Sir Osbert was a member of the St James’s Club in Piccadilly and it is not fanciful, I like to think, that when that club had its annual summer closure its members were permitted to play on the Society’s lawns.
It is well known that P G Wodehouse was a frequent visitor to Norfolk and took inspiration for characters and locations in his novels from his visits to Hunstanton Hall. On such visits he may have seen croquet being played at the Society. In Sunset at Blandings he describes Sir James Piper, Chancellor of the Exchequer, playing on the lawn at Blandings, foreshadowing Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott’s game at Dorneywood. The latter game was widely misinterpreted as being a scandalous waste of time by a senior member of the government on a working day but was in fact a literary homage of the greatest acuity. That they share the same initials adds to the significance of the occassion and is that a latter-day Sgt. Murchison* I see in plain clothes, leaning on his stick?
At East Winch they took inspiration from Wodehouse, as depicted below.
I salute you with your traditional toast – Hoops-a-Daisy!
*Sgt. Murchison is Sir James’s Scotland Yard bodyguard whose presence hampers his courtship of Lady Diana.