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Archie MacLaren – Part 1 – with Giles Wilcock
220 Plays7 days ago
In this first part of a series dedicated to A.C. "Archie" MacLaren, host Tom Ford is joined by eminent writer and historian Giles Wilcock, known by his pseudonym "Old Ebor", who has written extensively about the famous Lancastrian from the so-called Golden Age. Wilcock helps answer questions about MacLaren's personality and why he seemingly ruffled the feathers of so many around him.
DONATE: You can buy Tom Ford a coffee! Every donation helps with production and inspires Tom to keep the podcast going. You can donate from a little as $5. Visit: buymeacoffee.com/GoldenAgeOfCricket
ABOUT GILES WILCOCK: From Yorkshire, Giles has been writing on and off for around 12 years now. He started the Old Ebor blog (now on Substack) seven years ago, but had written a few things before that too. He has written three books — a biography of George Macaulay, a history of the Original English Lady Cricketers and a non-cricket book about an 1832 murder — with a fourth in the works.
CREDITS: Presenter & Producer: Tom Ford
All music used in podcast comes from the University of California Santa Barbara’s remarkable collection of wax cylinder’s from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which are free to download and use. You can donate to the upkeep of these recordings via their website.
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Transcript
Introduction to Archie McLaren's Legacy
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Golden Age of Cricket Podcast. My name is Tom Ford. If ever a cricketer was the creation of a single writer, it is Archie McLaren, wrote Gideon Haig in 2006.
00:00:21
Speaker
The luminous majesty with which he is associated, owed in a very large degree to his youthful acolyte Neville Cardis.
Archie McLaren's Cricket Career and Character
00:00:29
Speaker
In today's episode of the podcast, I'll attempt to discover the real A.C. Archie McLaren with the help of my special guest,
00:00:37
Speaker
McLaren's cricket career spanned the exact length of the so-called Golden Age. He was an ever-present force in English and Lancastrian cricket for more than a quarter century, and still holds two significant records, the highest first-class innings by an Englishman, and the most test matches captained against Australia.
00:00:56
Speaker
But his legacy remains a conundrum. Was he the noblest Roman, as Cardus assigned him, or a pessimistic grump, whose legacy requires continued revision?
Giles Wilcock on McLaren's Historical Context
00:01:09
Speaker
To help answer these questions, I welcome Giles Wilcock to the podcast, perhaps better known to some of you as Old Ebor. For nearly a decade, Giles' blog and now Substack page has been a treasure trove of excellent research and writing on cricketers who played prior to the Second World War.
00:01:27
Speaker
He has written three books, including a biography of George Macaulay and a history of the original English lady cricketers. Via his online publications, he has written extensively on McLaren and has pondered, more than once, on how we should view McLaren's cricket feats and his personality from the perspective of a century later.
00:01:49
Speaker
Giles, welcome to the podcast.
Exploring Forgotten Cricketers
00:01:51
Speaker
Hello. So tell us, first of all, a bit more about the Old Ybor blog, which is now on Substack. um Who was the original Old Ybor?
00:02:01
Speaker
And what sort of cricket research do you love undertaking the most? The original old Ebot, he was a ah journalist for the Yorkshire Evening Post um at the kind of the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century. He was called Alfred Pullen.
00:02:19
Speaker
And the reason that I stole his name pretty much is because and one of his most famous works, he wrote something called Talks with Old English Cricketers.
00:02:30
Speaker
And what he did, he kind of, he chased up some of the old professionals that had been playing 20, 30 years before just to find out what had happened to them and to find out um kind of the slightly messy things that had befallen them. And that kind of got me thinking about, well, there's all these stories about old cricketers that people don't really write about much very more.
00:02:54
Speaker
And that's what got me into it, trying to tell stories about forgotten cricketers and what had happened to them.
00:03:04
Speaker
And that's kind of my main inspiration, if you like. It's looking for a good story to tell, whether that's about a match or about a player. But I tend to find that the best ones, it goes way beyond cricket. could about something that happened to somebody before they became a cricketer afterwards um or trying to solve little bit a mystery about what happened to this player, where did they go to.
Research Methods and Random Discoveries
00:03:33
Speaker
But anything that is about social history as well, so anything that's about the different types of people playing cricket or just about English society in general in the late 19th and early 20th century,
00:03:47
Speaker
um ah I particularly like when you can answer some questions that have never been answered before. um For example, recently, i've I've written about this person in a few times, that the South African, Jimmy Blankenberg, that played around the First World War. just He's somebody that's vanished off the face of the earth and trying to look into that and what happened to him. That sort of thing that um I find most interesting and that I most want to write about.
00:04:17
Speaker
Well, I absolutely love your writing and I would encourage any of my listeners, if they don't know Old Ebor, go online and you'll find Giles' excellent Substack page. um And it is reading reading your work, Giles. It is clearly a labour of love. So at any given time, where do you draw or put your attention? Like why do you focus on a particular cricketer? Is it simply because you stumble across fantastic piece of research?
00:04:47
Speaker
It varies. i i have ah a list of people of i want to write about. It's it's a very long list um and I will work through that occasionally. um But quite often it might be just a a line that I come across somewhere. So, for example, um one time i was looking through... I can't remember why. i was looking through wisdom obituaries from, i think it was 1924. And I came across somebody who he talked about was the fastest bowler in England, who I'd never heard of at that time. And so I thought, oh, let's find out about him.
00:05:23
Speaker
Or it could be if I'm just, if something happens and I look up a match or something like that, and I think, oh, that play, I wonder what happened to them. or it could just be because I use the British newspaper archive quite a lot for for research. And so sometimes I will just put a random search into that that's cricket related and and see what comes up
The Myth and Reality of McLaren's Legacy
00:05:47
Speaker
that way.
00:05:47
Speaker
um i would I would love to say that there's a method in it, but is it is quite random and it just what takes my fancy. what What do I feel like writing about at the moment? That tends to be the main way it works. no I fully agree. i mean, as a fellow researcher, you you stumble across the smallest of things. And i mean, speaking of the British newspaper archive, you can be reading about a cricket report, but then you see just slightly to the right, a second column about something that's happening in the news at the time.
00:06:17
Speaker
And that's why I think as cricket researchers, we should always keep our vision quite wide and see what else is going and not just focus focus on the cricket.
00:06:29
Speaker
But we are here today, of course, to talk about a very famous cricketer, so Archie McLaren. um What is your particular fascination with McLaren? Because as I said in my introduction, you have written about him a few times. What is it exactly about Archie for you?
00:06:48
Speaker
I think it's because he doesn't quite fit into any box. He is is kind of seen as the the archetypal amateur. He was kind of a a glorious batter and he was an autocrat, etc, etc. But that doesn't quite work. And then there's the whole myth, which is, like you say, so it's mainly down to Neville Carders that he was a a genius and to everything he did, and that doesn't quite fit either. So you've you've got this person who is supposed to represent the golden age and his face doesn't quite fit because he went to public school, which is what all amateurs did then, is what all the the cricket administrators did. So he he was part of that establishment, but he didn't go to university, which that that didn't happen very often.
00:07:43
Speaker
um his personality didn't quite fit. Amateurs were supposed to be these happy, breezy, go-lucky people, but he was a he was miserable, basically. He was just always grumpy. um And it's that kind of...
00:07:59
Speaker
It's a clash between reality and myth, but it's it's not even that simple because even though he had his issues with various people, he was a very original thinker. And in some ways he was ahead of his time as a as a tactician, certainly.
00:08:19
Speaker
um But he just couldn't manage people. He fell out with so many people and these long feuds that went on for years. um But even then, there's there's something about him that's quite likeable. My favourite story about him is that he was he was always broke, he never had any money.
00:08:38
Speaker
But the second he had some, he'd spend it on his friends. He wouldn't keep it, he wouldn't be buying things for himself. he He'd go out and treat to all his friends. um h Another story that I like about him because and he met his wife in Australia in 1894. They got married four years later, think it was. And they were married for nearly 50 years. And it was obviously a very close marriage. But there there's a couple of things that he said about that. For example, he used to like buying um antique things and he bought ah a statue for the garden when the they had a bit of money. Finally, and they had a nice house. He bought a statue for the garden and his wife said, you know, having that. And he had to hide it at the back of his garden so that she couldn't see it.
00:09:22
Speaker
um And the other story that I really like about him um his last tour in New Zealand, she was there. It was kind of like a silver wedding present anniversary trip.
00:09:33
Speaker
And there's a match against one of the teams and they'd been a partnership and McLaren was captain and nothing was happening. And his wife sent him out a handwritten message on paper suggesting that he changed the bowling.
00:09:46
Speaker
And his expression is something like, my wife's bossed me around for 25 years. I'll be damned if she's going to boss me around now.
Perspectives on McLaren's Complex Personality
00:09:55
Speaker
And he kind of had a bit of a rage and stuff. And then whenever he'd forgotten, he he changed the bowling and he broke the partnership doing what his wife said.
00:10:03
Speaker
um it's It's that kind of thing about him. It is not straightforward. um And he could be quite petty, but in a quite funny way. i don't know if he was trying to be funny, but for example, when um Bill Ponsford broke the his record for the highest first class score, it was against Tasmania.
00:10:26
Speaker
And I think it was Wisden reported that this was a new record. And he wrote Wisden kind of insisting, no, this wasn't a first class match. This is why it's not a first class match. No, I've still got the record. um And the um the amount of time he spent trying to justify himself for mistakes that he made, it like he'd write these long letters to the press explaining, no, this is why I did what I did 20 years ago. And this is why I was right. So he's just ah he's a fascinating character.
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah, I can't agree with you more. And it's um it's part of the reason I wanted to, and well, I did invite you on this podcast is to try and understand the man a little better because he looms large over the golden age of cricket. So he is an important figure. Just on that point,
00:11:13
Speaker
point you mentioned about him disagreeing with bill ponsford's record of course bill ponsford then had the last laugh when he scored the second and he scored his second quadruple century and that was an official record i think it was against new south wales just a few years later um and that i'm sure probably um shushed archie mclaren for a while so As I say, Giles, I really want to um pick your brain about the personality of McLaren. And as you mentioned, there's just these series of contradictions and various reports from past cricketers and those who knew him about what sort of person he was. um One of your excellent pieces of writing is um an article titled, Frankly Unpleasant, Disappointingly Petty, A Lovable Rascal, Who Was the Real Archie McLaren?
00:12:08
Speaker
So do you think it is ever possible to understand the man behind the cricketer? think the problem is it depends who you asked, because different people who played with him had very, very different opinions about him.
00:12:28
Speaker
And he wrote a few things himself that it's not exactly and riveting stuff. He was a decent enough writer, but it's all it's all quite bland. And so all we can really do is see him through the eyes of other people. You can you can analyze his cricket. You can break down his tactics. But when it's actually understanding who he was, we are dependent on the people that wrote about him. So if you asked somebody like Ranji about him, he would have a very different opinion to what Pelham Warner said about him. um
00:13:02
Speaker
So, for example, Ranji really liked him. um I believe he was godfather to one of McLaren's children and they were friends for life pretty much. um Pelham Warner, he would never have said this because he was far too diplomatic, but I don't think they could stand each other because there were they had a feud going back to 1903 when McLaren was passed over for the captaincy of an and MCC side, but they were still at it years later because in 1919, Pelham Warner wrote an anonymous letter, I think it was to the Times,
00:13:43
Speaker
criticising how McLaren had capped in England in 1902. And that was what produced. And McLaren wrote this very, very long reply. But he was still having a dig at McLaren nearly 20 years after saying, no, he was a terrible captain, made a mistake.
00:13:58
Speaker
um Stanley Jackson seems to have gotten quite well with him um which is interesting. And he almost used him as a sort of lieutenant in the 1905 Ashes. But then you've got C.B. Fry, who I don't think could stand him.
00:14:17
Speaker
And he could he was always trying to put the knife in about how terrible McCarran was at this and how terrible he was at that. And then you've got the... but There's not many professionals that that spoke about him openly, but S.F. Barnes,
00:14:34
Speaker
pretty much respected him. um I don't think he liked him particularly much, but he did really respect him. And favourite example of things aren't always what you'd expect would be Fred Tate, who was the person who supposedly lost the ashes in 1902, and that's very connected to McLaren's captaincy. But he said years later that McLaren was the best captain he ever played under. And if I remember rightly, that that one test match was the only time McLaren ever captained him, but he thought it was ah it was a marvellous captain. So if all these different people had different opinions. And it it tends to be the case that...
00:15:13
Speaker
The people who were the amateurs, they either thought he was a terrible, terrible man they thought he was, um i think, like the quote in the title of the article, that you a lovable rogue. They kind of liked pessimism. They liked his... The fact he was always grumbling and complaining, but in ah in a kind of...
00:15:31
Speaker
They appreciated it. It was kind of amused them. Then you had the professionals that respected him and they respect and he respected them. But then you got the ones that just thought he was really aloof and he was an autocrat and he wouldn't descend to their level. um I suspect, without going all psychoanalytical, I wonder how much of it was he was quite shy and he didn't know how to...
00:15:55
Speaker
react with different people, which meant that he came across as a bit of a a bit of a an aloof autocrat that didn't want to be bothered. But when he warmed up, he was actually quite insightful.
00:16:07
Speaker
So i i to answer your question, i don't think it's possible for us to know just because we can only see him through the eyes of other people and their views were wildly different.
00:16:21
Speaker
It is fascinating and I'm really intrigued to hear about Sidney Barnes' analysis or opinion because Barnes, as we know, was never backwards in coming forward. So for him to have had that opinion, and there is a likely reason, which we might be touching on later when we talk about a particular series, but... um And I think the Australians, we can talk about this later as well. It's interesting to hear many of the international opposition players who had opinions of him as well.
00:16:50
Speaker
um Again, it's just this series of contradictions with McLaren, which leaves him with us today as just this
Supporting the Podcast
00:16:59
Speaker
enigma. Again, why we are continually analysing him as a person.
00:17:11
Speaker
If you're enjoying this podcast, perhaps you'd like to support it by buying me Tom Ford, a coffee. Every little donation helps with the production costs and also inspire me to keep going.
00:17:23
Speaker
You can support by donating as little as $5. Visit buymeacoffee.com slash goldenageofcricket.
00:17:33
Speaker
You are arching, arching From the day we'll leave the church You can bet your life when we're married You'll have to come off your turf
00:18:00
Speaker
Giles, let's return to um or go way back to the beginning and talk about McLaren's early years. He was born in 1871 in Manchester.
McLaren's Upbringing and Cricket Challenges
00:18:11
Speaker
What do we know about his early years? Was he, for example, raised in a particularly cricket loving family? Is that where he got his early influence from?
00:18:25
Speaker
Yes, his um his family were quite into cricket and his father was a big lover of cricket and he made sure that McLaren and and two of his brothers as well got kind of the best possible cricket coaching. Yeah.
00:18:44
Speaker
And two of McLaren's brothers also played for Lancashire. So they were they were pretty able. um Then McLaren went to Harrow, which I think why the kind of there's one or two of his brothers went there too. And again, he got the best coaching. And that was kind of how he became famous as a cricketer because he did very, very well at Harrow. And one of the things that stood out was his batting technique because of all the coaching that he had had for a schoolboy. He had a very good technique because a lot of public schoolboy cricketers back in those days were very much just play shots, play shots, play shots. But he certainly as he as he got older at school, was able to um bat on difficult pitches, which
00:19:36
Speaker
most schoolboys couldn't do. um These things are relative, but for so for a public schoolboy, he had a very good technique on difficult pitches. And it it made him famous because, um as I'm sure you know, that if you succeeded for Harrow, especially if he did a match against Eton, the big one at Lord's every year, you became famous. were in newspapers. You were almost like a cricketing celebrity. um the The big thing that held him back, if you like, um which might have contributed to some of his...
00:20:16
Speaker
shyness, if you like, was that he didn't go to university. Now, the reason for that was simply because his father was fairly wealthy, um but he wasn't wealthy enough to send any of his children to university. And in fact, i think after McLaren's younger brother, I want to say. But after one of McLaren's brothers went to Harrow, he didn't send the others because he couldn't afford it anymore.
00:20:46
Speaker
And you've also got this whole thing about McLaren's face not fitting because his father, although he was very wealthy and he was associated with um Lancashire County Club, he was a cotton merchant.
00:21:02
Speaker
Now, it made him rich, but back in the late 19th century, the amateur cricketers didn't have backgrounds like that. And if you came from the sort of background, oh, your father's a cotton merchant, your face didn't quite fit you. It's almost like the idea of, oh, new money. We don't like you as much.
00:21:20
Speaker
And that will have affected them. And that quite possibly contribute contributed to him always being a little bit of an outsider, because not only did he come from ah background that didn't quite fit, tick all the boxes for amateur cricketers, he didn't have the university background. He didn't have the the social connections. And bearing in mind that once he was into the England team and he was the England captain, he was surrounded by all these other amateurs. who had gone to university and they had all these social connections and they came from the right sort of family. And it it starts to explain a little bit possibly about why he was, why his face never quite fitted.
Amateur Status and Class Implications
00:22:09
Speaker
thank Well, yes, thank you for that excellent excellent summary. It is something we need to remind ourselves constantly, I think. It's too easy to just go black and white with our analysis of the professionals and the amateurs. There really were different levels of amateurs within amateur cricket, um and you mentioned it already. I mean, you've got the likes of Stanley Jackson or Ranji who were – Next level amateur in terms of their wealth and their freedom to play cricket. And then you had almost the the sort of lower class amateur like an Archie Jackson, maybe Gilbert Jessup possibly also in that category. Yeah. Of course, to be a captain of any side back in the ah late 19th century, you had to be an amateur. And this is where what you allude to already, this battle for the captain of the England cricket team, occurs in 1903-04 between the three amateurs, Fry, Warner and McLaren.
00:23:13
Speaker
So do you think Archie carried this chip on his shoulder throughout his cricket days? How do we actually assess his level of amateurism?
00:23:25
Speaker
I think you've you've explained that perfectly because you had these different levels. um You had the ones at the top who were genuinely wealthy, like Lord Hawk, for example, who didn't have to worry about money and could play as much cricket as they wanted and be the perfect amateur. um Then you had the ones who, they were okay, but they needed to do things to...
00:23:52
Speaker
be able to afford to play up people like and CB Fry to some extent, um certainly Pelham Warner. Then you have the ones who were a little bit struggling financially. And I think that's where McLaren would fit.
00:24:09
Speaker
He didn't quite do what others amateurs did, where you ended up with somebody of being a shamature, which was basically somebody who was an amateur in name, but and was secretly paid to play.
00:24:26
Speaker
Now, McLaren, he did to some extent because he became Lancashire's, quote, assistant secretary, which meant nothing. It just meant that it was an excuse to pay him money. um And if I remember rightly, he was paid more as assistant secretary than the professionals were paid to but play for Lancashire. and He wasn't the only one who did that, um but he wasn't the worst. So, for example, the the ones who are the absolute worst for just making a mockery of the system would be somebody like W.G. Grace, who made an astonishing amount of money from playing cricket for somebody who was an amateur. But then another really notorious one would be Walter Reed of Surrey, who just was raking money in as an amateur cricketer. So McLaren never...
00:25:18
Speaker
kind of stooped to that level, if you like. But he was never one of those genuine amateurs who could just play when he wanted. He always had to have money coming in from somewhere else.
00:25:29
Speaker
But the other side to it, as well as having the different levels of amateurism, it was... Being an amateur cricketer was never just about money. It was it was basically code for class. And if you were an amateur, what that basically told everybody was that you were kind of upper middle class or upper class.
00:25:51
Speaker
Whereas if you were a professional, you were lower middle class or worst of all, working class shock horror. um And so that made a big difference. Somebody like McLaren could never have been a professional because it would have basically meant giving up his social status outside of cricket.
00:26:11
Speaker
So it's for somebody like that, it was
McLaren's Occupations and Financial Pursuits
00:26:15
Speaker
never an option. You had to find a way to stay as an amateur or just to get out of cricket completely. um And then that's when you come back to the idea of his background. I mean, it difficult because having a cotton merchant as a father made it quite difficult to say, yes, I am in that that social elite.
00:26:35
Speaker
um And that made it even more important for him and for other cricketers like him, somebody like Andrew Stoddart, it made it really important to so be saying, look, I'm an amateur, look, I am one of you, even if my background doesn't quite fit.
00:26:54
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:27:05
Speaker
The other aspect with McLaren, you mentioned his wife already, Maud, I think his wife's name was, whom he met in Australia on his first tour of Australia in that famous 94, 95 series. She was the daughter of a a very wealthy Australian. And so he knew that there was money coming.
00:27:26
Speaker
at some stage. And I think that also played a factor into his status. He was going to be very rich at one point, but I i think ah what they had to wait until the 1930s to acquire it. And, you know, it is a similar story to Billy Murdoch, actually, the famous Australian captain who migrated to England, played county cricket with grace. He too sort of married wealth,
00:27:51
Speaker
and was constantly, um i was about to say jet-setting, but this is 19th century, um shipping back and forth to Australia to work out the estate, and eventually the money came. So again, that's another aspect of why these amateurs aren't always just lumped or shouldn't be lumped into the same category.
00:28:11
Speaker
I did a bit of research, Giles, into because of his status, um McLaren had to work essentially, unlike some of the other amateurs. So I've come up with this list of all the little odd jobs that he did throughout his cricket career. So if you'll let me just read them out. So these are just some of the jobs he dabbled in over the years. Journalism, radio broadcasting, advertising, hotel ownership, bloodstock agent, banking, cotton merchant,
00:28:43
Speaker
marketing of cricket equipment, a whiskey salesman, motor car salesman. He was once a film extra in Hollywood, um, cricket magazine editor, cricket coach. He was a lecturer.
00:28:54
Speaker
He hired out cricket films. He was the manager of a private team, a school master at one point, personal secretary to Ranjit s Sinji, which you've mentioned and assistant secretary to the Lancashire County cricket club. Well, How do we assess all of this? It's not like he was just a schoolmaster all those years. So he dabbled in so many different um areas. Were jobs just a means to an end for him, just so they would enable him to have a lifestyle of playing cricket?
00:29:26
Speaker
It must have been something like that. i I think part of it was he was always kind of scrambling around for money. He never had enough just to live the lifestyle he wanted, to never mind playing cricket. But he must have really liked cricket, which would explain why he was always trying to find ways to play it. He did threaten to leave it once or twice and do something else. and He was always threatening to leave Lancashire if they didn't give him more money.
00:29:55
Speaker
But... it's It's almost, maybe it could be something like that cricket brought the the social trappings that he wanted. It gave him, it helped him to reinforce that status.
00:30:07
Speaker
um Or it could just have been that he loved the game. It's very hard to say. um But the the other thing I wonder is, did he never quite find his niche? He was a cricketer, but what else was he? And if you think of other players,
00:30:23
Speaker
um famous amateurs from the time, they usually had something else, whether it was journalist or stockbroker or whatever it might have been.
00:30:33
Speaker
and But for McLaren, he never quite had that. um It could be that he was restless. It could be that he didn't know what he wanted.
00:30:45
Speaker
ah He was always he always looking for something. Or the other possibility with McLaren, which you can never rule out, is that If he stayed anywhere too long, he just annoyed the people that he worked with to the point that he to get out.
Professional Struggles and Mismanagement
00:30:59
Speaker
I think one of the most revealing stories is you mentioned about the magazine Cricket and that had been going for years. I think it was 1882 it first started. And by um i think by about nineteen eleven nineteen twelve it was really struggling And the the editor of cricket was a man called J.N. Pentelow. He was kind of a, he was just a ah general cricket writer. He wrote huge amount of things. um
00:31:31
Speaker
Quite an interesting person in his own right, actually. And he ended up as editor and it it was just sinking. And so in 1913, it folded and then it relaunched under a very slightly new title. And suddenly, Pentelow wasn't the editor. He was the assistant editor. And the editor was supposedly Archie McLaren, which basically meant that he wrote a few articles for it and he had his name on the masthead and things like that. But...
00:32:00
Speaker
um It doesn't seem that he did an awful lot for the money he was being paid. And depending on who you read, it does look as it a little bit as if just the the money vanished and it folded round about the time that the First World War started. And it folded suddenly because the very last issue, it talks about next issue, we'll be doing this and it it just stops forever.
00:32:29
Speaker
and apparently Pentelow just found the whole thing very stressful, and it was kind of McLaren's fault that he just horribly mismanaged it once he came on board.
00:32:39
Speaker
um So, yeah, it could just be that wherever he went, he kind of left a trail of wreckage around him, and... we We don't know much about all the things he did, but in quite a lot of them, it ends with a falling
Role as Ranji's Secretary and Financial Escapades
00:32:52
Speaker
out. Like he he was employed by Lancashire twice in and the early nineteen hundreds in the 1920s, and both times he was quietly let go because of personality clashes.
00:33:06
Speaker
I know exactly what you mean in regards to Cricket Magazine because I was perusing the 1913, 1914 editions recently and if you know the other previous editions, you suddenly come to 1913 and the masthead proudly says, I think, edited by Archie McLaren. I mean, it it it sort of speaks to i think, this image he also probably wanted to project of himself, that he was this cricket editor and a great journalist. But of course, it didn't really eventuate it I actually enjoy some of his writing. I think what he writes on the state of cricket is actually, at times, it seems at least truthful, unlike perhaps the writing of Pelham Warner, which can sometimes just be a bit convoluted and sort of high-handed and you feel like he's writing just to please a particular somebody at Lord's. um
00:34:02
Speaker
But there are certainly elements of McLaren's writing which I just think are to the point and actually quite perceptive. But yeah and And, you know, those those magazines are readily available. So if anyone's interested, you'll ah easily be able to find the writing of Archie McLaren. so Giles, let's talk about this relationship with Ranji in particular this job, which I had i had never actually...
00:34:30
Speaker
heard about until I read Simon Wilde's biography of Ranji few years ago and suddenly he talks about McLaren being his personal secretary I think from about 1903 to 1908 what do we know about ah suppose in in modern terms we would say position description what what did the job entail and do you think McLaren was very good at whatever it was he was required to do It's quite vague what what it actually involved. I think it was a little bit of everything. I think his official title was personal secretary.
00:35:11
Speaker
um The only thing that kind of survives about what he did is that he used to write a lot of letters. So I think he would have dealt with correspondence, things like that. But he was also involved in negotiating a few things. um It seems to have...
00:35:29
Speaker
come about because they were very good friends. And I think when Ranji was trying to um take the throne of Noanaga, he needed somebody to help him because he he had huge amounts of correspondence about it with all sorts. And it it seems to have kind of evolved from that. And it it pretty much ruined McLaren's cricket career, to be honest, because he was never quite the same once he started working for Ranji. He didn't have the time and he was it was taken up with all that.
00:36:03
Speaker
And his his role is is's very slightly opaque because they seem to have got up to all sorts of things. um and said The one that always springs out to me is that when Ranji came back to to England in 1908 and he brought McLaren with him, he basically spent, Ranji spent most of his time trying to avoid people chasing him for money that he owed because he owed a huge amount of money because he he spent money he didn't have.
00:36:31
Speaker
And my favourite little story from that is that there was an artist who he had commissioned, who Ranji had commissioned to do, I think it was like a a profile miniature, something like that. And She negotiated with McLaren about how much it was going to cost him and when she'd do it and everything like that. And she came and she did the the portrait of Ranji and he was delighted with it.
00:36:56
Speaker
She went away and they spent months, Ranji and McLaren, just making excuses for why they weren't going to pay it First of all, it was, oh, we'll pay you soon. Then it was, actually, we don't like this very much. And she had to go to court try and get them to pay. And eventually it went all the way up to the India office because it it was a massive embarrassment because she had an Indian prince in England who was just not paying paying money that he owed. She wasn't the only case. There were loads of these people that were chasing Ranji through the court.
00:37:30
Speaker
And my favorite line in the adjudication of the India office was somebody, I can't remember who it was that wrote it, but somebody talked about McLaren and they described him as Ranji's ridiculous private secretary, which I think says everything you need to know about the impression he made on people.
00:37:49
Speaker
um And round about the same time as well, and when he was still working for Ranji, McLaren was taken to court himself for non-payment of rent.
00:38:01
Speaker
And... he kind of disputed it in court and he claimed that, well, actually, no, it wasn't him that was renting it. It was Ranji that was renting it on his behalf.
00:38:13
Speaker
And to try and get out of all his money, whereas Ranji was also putting and this idea forward that he couldn't be prosecuted because he was a ruling prince. And so as a head of state, you you can't prosecute me in court. And McLaren tried to claim, no, you can't prosecute me because it's actually Ranji's house. And so, no, I don't have to pay this um And in the end, the the magistrate said, no, you have to pay this. And he didn't pay up, although where he got the money from is another question.
00:38:44
Speaker
And I think in Simon Wilde's biography of Ranji, he uses it a very nice line about something like um the exploits of Ranji and McLaren will never be known, but the closest it seems to be is an actual real-life version of Raffles, the cricketing thief. So they do seem to have... um bent the rules slightly to get around their financial troubles yeah it's a it's a very interesting relationship and you what you said at the top was very interesting how it pretty much ruined his McLaren's career and if you look at his certainly his test career you know he's very prominent in the English side and captain right up until that 03-04 and tour and then he sort of disappears and he comes back for the 1909 home series against australia which we'll certainly talk about and that corresponds beautifully with those years in which he was working for rangy