Jacob Rees Mogg on W G Grace
One chapter in Jacob Rees Mogg’s new, very badly received, volume on The Victorians, is about the England and Gloucestershire cricketer W. G. Grace.
According to Rees Mogg W G was a ‘true professional, hungry and ruthless’. He had a ‘sharp mind’ contrary to the view of an MCC history in 1987 which saw W. G. as ‘rustic and simple’.
Unfortunately W. G, did not go to Eton or Harrow but to a much lesser boarding school Ridgeway. Rees Mogg does not approve. This meant that the young Grace was not really a gentleman and not approved of by Lords. He had to make his way in cricket by claiming ‘expenses’ leaving him open to criticism that he was not really an amateur. Rees Mogg is much more relaxed about this.
Rees Mogg’s account of W. G. Grace’s life and cricketing career are from secondary sources not footnoted but he is clearly of the view that he was a good sort, kind although occasionally with an unfortunate temper. Indeed Rees Mogg thinks that in some ways Grace was ‘the model of a Victorian’ whose public celebrity was only surpassed by that of another of Rees Mogg’s favourites, Queen Victoria herself.
Rees Mogg concludes reassuringly that W. G. Grace was a ‘businessman’ who would ‘most definitely have been keen to embrace T20 or 100 ball games, so long as the ground was full and he was paid ‘expenses’.
At no time does Rees Mogg make any reference to W. G. Grace’s magnificent beard from which we may take it that amongst his many other downsides he is very probably a pogonophobe
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