Friends of the Dickens Forum,

     Berkeley's Robert Tracy adds an interesting note to what we have 
been reading about
Dickens's interest in and knowledge of cricket.   We do not have a copy 
of Charley's
"Reminiscences,"  but in Robert Gottlieb's *Great Expectations: The Sons 
and Daughters
  of Charles Dickens* (2012) Charley's daughter Mary Angela tells that 
"He [her father]
was a lover of cricket and our field [at Gad' Hill] was always at the 
service of the village
club."  A love of cricket has been passed on.  Here is Professor 
Tracy:        (pjm)
>
>
> Dear colleagues: I remember but cannot put my hands on my xerox of
> "Reminiscences of My Father" by Charles Dickens, Jr., which appeared in
> Windsor Magazine Supplement in December 1934. Charles Junior comments on
> his father's eagerness to play the Squire of Gad's Hill by sponsoring the
> local cricket team and allowing it to play on his property, and particular
> delight in "marking" or keeping score. But Charles Jr. adds that his father
> did not really understand the game, made mistakes in scoring, and that
> someone else had to straighten things out. His daughter Mamie confirms his
> love of scoring in "My Father as I Recall Him" (1896) ("cricket he enjoyed
> intensely as a spectator, always keeping one of the scores during the
> matches at Gad's Hill").See also Alan S.Watts in DICKENS AT GAD'S HILL
> (!989).
>
> Dickens's urban childhood and poverty probably prevented him from playing
> cricket as a boy, and so learning how to score properly.
>
> Someone with a better memory than me, or a better filing system, can
> perhaps provide the "cricket" passage from Charles Junior's reminiscences.
>
> Rbert Tracy