they had made with E.M. However, in the family practices opportunities to use it were limited. The older ones had seniority: they had fifteen minutes batting at a time, the little ones, Gilbert and Fred, only five. When not batting the youngsters fielded, trying to keep E.M.’s booming on-drives from going into the woods or the neighbouring quarry beyond long-on. The hours of practice must not only have sharpened the skills of boys who would eventually be among the country’s finest fielders; they also contributed to W.G.’s extraordinary stamina.
Cricket was by no means the only interest to occupy Gilbert’s time. He enjoyed all the usual diversions of a country boy, roaming the woods and fields and educating himself in the ways of nature. He was particularly keen on collecting birds’ eggs and snakes, the latter of which he would smuggle into the house to the consternation of his sisters.
He first went to the village school, run by a Miss Trotman, and was then entrusted to a private tutor, Mr Curtis, at Winterbourne, a couple of miles away. Nowadays he would have to cross the M4 to do it; he probably walked there and back. That was nothing in those days: Uncle Pocock routinely walked twelve miles to Downend just for cricket practice. Alfred and Edward had been sent away to boarding school and after Mr Curtis’s tuition young Gilbert went to a local boarding school, Rudgway House, run by a Mr Malpas, until he was fourteen.
One of W.G.’s contemporary biographers, W. Methven Brownlee, describes him at Rudgway House as ‘a steady working lad, accurate at mathematics, with no mischief in him’. The Memorial Biography of Dr W.G. Grace, published in 1919, summarises his educational achievements succinctly: ‘Of his school days the traditions are those of happy activity not of bookish application; invariably he bore an excellent character.’ His greatest achievement was to be marbles champion, ‘on one occasion clearing out the school’, according to Brownlee, with the covert assistance of one of the masters, Mr Bernard, who had taken a shine to Gilbert’s sister Alice and had clearly enlisted the boy to aid his cause. Gilbert may have been of some help, for Mr Bernard eventually married Alice and quit teaching to become a doctor, like his brothers-in-law.
The Grace girls threw themselves into family and community activities with the same vigour as their brothers. E.C. Biggs, the postmaster’s son, remembered one of them – probably Blanche – helping out when he mentioned that they needed curtains for the back of the stage at the annual concert to raise money for Downend Cricket Club. She used to play the harp or get guest artists to play at the event, and on this occasion she offered the Graces’ own drawing-room curtains, with words that might have come from any Grace, male or female: ‘Anything to help the good old game.’
The Grace boys hunted in a pack. The smaller orchard at The Chestnuts was a magnet for local kids, who would throw stones at the trees, then dash inside and pick up any apples they had dislodged. Woe betide them if the Grace boys caught them at it. One scrumper related how the Graces ‘came after us with carriage whips’. One local’s pockets were so stuffed with apples that they prevented him from crawling under the gate to make his getaway. ‘He received a nice cut or two with the whip before he could manage to shake off his coat and run.’ But the Graces did not bear a grudge: the boy got his coat back as soon as he returned to apologise.
The Graces’ home was a magnet for the village kids in the autumn too, when they would search for the sweet chestnuts that gave the house its name. They did so one Sunday, forgetting that the Graces would all be at home. Spotting the intruders, the brothers came charging down the drive, young Fred leading the way. He picked up a rock-hard pear and hurled it so accurately that it knocked one of the boys out cold. W.G. arrived, picked up the unconscious child and carried him indoors. The others hovered anxiously at the gate until Fred’s victim emerged with a broad smile and a shilling given him by W.G.
The Grace brothers were in large measure chips off the old block. All qualified as doctors except for Fred, the youngest, who was only denied the title by his untimely death as he neared the end of his medical studies. ‘They were all, more or less, crack shots, fast runners, devoted to the chase, and have long distinguished themselves in many a pedestrian contest, for all of which they have long been celebrated in the “amateur county”,’ reported Haygarth’s Cricket Scores & Biographies. Moreover, they emulated their father in their energy, enthusiasm and enjoyment of life, and they were devoted to each other and to the family. E.C. Biggs, son of the Downend postmaster, painted this evocative portrait of them in a letter to the Bristol Evening World:
When a boy the Grace brothers were always pointed out to me as an example because of the way they looked after their mother. If it was a concert one of them would take her; if it was a meet of the hounds they would see that she was at it in her pony-carriage, and if the ice would bear on the old quarry they would get her in a chair and push it about in front of them as they were skating.
Henry, the oldest, was apprenticed to his father until he moved to take over a mining practice at Kingswood Hill, Gloucestershire. He was also medical officer to the Bristol workhouse infirmary, and took a keen interest in health education, on which he gave several lectures. Of all the brothers, he was probably the most interested in the wider application of his medical expertise, followed by Alfred. E.M. and W.G. were general practitioners par excellence, but showed little interest in broader medical matters. Henry was also a fine cricketer, however. A contemporary record described him thus: ‘He is an energetic and excellent bat, bowls well, round-armed of middle speed, and fields generally at point, where he is both good and active.’ He played at Lord’s several times, his first appearance being for South Wales in a two-day match against MCC at Lord’s in July 1861, when he made top score of 63 not out in the first innings (South Wales won by seven wickets thanks to an undefeated 41 by nineteen-year-old E.M. Grace) and he maintained a close connection with the game throughout his life. He died of apoplexy in 1895 at the age of sixty-two.
Alfred, seven years his junior, was the least gifted or interested in the game of the five but still capable enough to score several hundreds in club cricket. He rated a mention in Haygarth’s Cricket Scores and Biographies: ‘Mr Alfred Grace never appeared at Lord’s … he is, however, a pretty good cricketer … and his post in the field is usually long-stop.’ He qualified as a doctor in 1864 and took over a practice in Chipping Sodbury, which he developed very successfully: his records showed that he attended to one hundred and fifty confinements a year. He had a whole series of public appointments in addition to his private practice: medical officer to the local workhouse, public vaccinator, certifying factory surgeon for the district, deputy coroner for the Lower division of Gloucestershire and medical officer to the Coalpit Heath collieries. He also took over the post of surgeon to the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars from his father, eventually becoming Lieutenant-Colonel.
He was a good boxer but his great passion was for country pursuits, particularly hunting: he followed the Duke of Beaufort’s hounds several times a week, and was famous throughout the district for his flair and daring. He was once claimed to have jumped a thirty-foot-wide stream on an Irish thoroughbred, and it was said of him that for thirty years he never had to buy a hunter of his own, but was given the most difficult horses to ride by his friends. He was an immensely popular figure, often referred to in local literature as ‘the hunting doctor’. The wonder is that he was able to find time for all his interests. He was the only smoker of the five brothers, yet he lived the longest: he died in 1916, aged seventy-six.
If W.G. had never existed, old Dr Grace could still have boasted of siring one of the finest cricketers in England. At his adult height of 5ft 7 ¾ in, E.M. was the shortest of the brothers and the liveliest. His love of cricket manifested itself from an early age. Local lore had it that he was spotted staggering towards the West Gloucestershire ground clutching a full-sized bat before his first birthday, which sounds like another tall story dreamt up for seekers after Grace myths.
Whatever the truth, he certainly practised when young with a bat that was too big for him – the cause of his unorthodox batting style. He did not play straight but hit most deliveries to leg with a cross bat, and continued to do so as an adult. At school he owned his own set of stumps, presumably a gift from a father delighted that his third son should be as passionate about cricket as himself. If events were going against him E.M. would simply hurl himself over the stumps and refuse to allow the game to proceed.