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19 November 2010

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Charles Burgess Fry:

an Extraordinary Athlete

 

Cricketer, soccer player, and athlete, C.B. Fry was

also an academic, teacher, editor, writer, and publisher

 

Charles Burgess Fry was born in Croydon, south London in 1872. In his extraordinary 84-year life he accomplished many feats any one of which would have satisfied most people.

 

Oxford University Career

At school he captained soccer and cricket teams and won trophies in track and field. At Oxford University he had a stellar career. HistoricU.K.com describes some of his accomplishments, “At Oxford he gained a total of twelve sporting Blues for representing his university, and in one year he captained the football, athletics and cricket teams, earning him the nicknames of ‘Almighty’ and ‘Lord Oxford.’ ”

 

Just to keep himself busy, Fry played rugby at the top level and he “also proved himself to be a fine boxer, golfer, swimmer, tennis player, javelin thrower, and sculler.” In 1893, without any training, he equaled the then-world record for the long jump.

 

But cricket was his thing, as shown in this posed image.

 

In 1901 he scored centuries (100 runs for the uninitiated) in six successive innings in first class cricket. A record that remains unbeaten today. That’s akin in baseball terms to hitting home runs in every at-bat in a game and then doing the same thing in the next five games – at the major league level.

 

One online biographer describes a story about Fry that is oft repeated but never confirmed. But such was the athletic ability of the man that it might well have been believed. “A Manchester newspaper published another story,” writes the anonymous biographer, “which hardly seems credible but which does highlight his athletic prowess. In the article it claimed that Fry’s party piece in his prime, was to jump backwards from floor level up on to a mantelpiece from a standing position.”

 

A lesser man might let his academic life slip, but not C.B. Fry. He left Oxford with a first-class honours degree and with that began teaching at one of England’s top private school, Charterhouse.

 

Struggle with Mental Illness

In 1905, he started and edited his own magazine, C.B. Fry’s Magazine. Such was his fame that it only needed his name on the cover to sell.

 

But, all was not well. The June 2004 issue of The Wisden Cricketer reported on Fry’s struggles with mental illness.

 

In “Charles Fry - Up with the Gods” the magazine says “At Oxford Fry had endured his first breakdown…and his highly strung temperament led him into a series of controversies which gradually eroded his popular appeal and, more significantly, ensured that mental illness would again take him into its grasp.”

 

He tried and failed three times to get elected to Parliament, and even stood as a candidate to become king of Albania. Fry himself claimed he had been offered the crown, but this may have been an invention.

 

But, his mental health was fragile; Wisden picks up the story “No longer attracting people’s attention through his sporting prowess, Fry’s dress sense and conduct became increasingly eccentric until, in the late 1920s, he suffered a renewed, acute, and prolonged period of mental illness.”

 

David Frith wrote about Fry in his 1987 book Pageant of Cricket. He said that “CB” could occasionally be seen running naked along Brighton Beach.

 

A Writing Career

During the 1930s, he wrote a column “C.B. Fry Says” in The Evening Standard.

 

He wrote at least ten books, most of them about cricket, and an autobiography. His Life Worth Living: Some Phases Of An Englishman was published in 1939 and caused Fry considerable grief.

 

In the book, he praised Adolf Hitler who he had met five years earlier; not a popular thing to do on the eve of World War II.

 

He lived quietly in retirement and passed away September 7, 1956.

 

Image credit

Lordprice Collection

 

Sources

“The Great Allrounder.” Angelfire

“Is it a Train...Is it a Plane...or is it C.B. Fry?” History-UK

“Charles Fry - Up with the Gods.” The Wisden Cricketer, June 2004.

 

© Canada and the World, July 2010

All rights reserved

DEFINITION

 

C.B. Fry could definitely be described as a polymath, a Greek word meaning “having learned much.”

 

A polymath is someone who has mastered several different disciplines.

 

Sometimes such a person is also described as a “Renaissance Man.”