Brief Candles

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Brief Candles" by Cyril Henry Coles, Adelaide Frances Oke Manning. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Sally and Jeremy Latimer are pleased, if somewhat puzzled, when two gentlemen with decidedly old-world manners choose to befriend them when their car mysteriously breaks down in the small French village of St. Denis-sur-Aisne while on holiday one fine day in 1953.

What they don’t know is that the two men, James and Charles Latimer, are ancestors of theirs. These two ectoplasmic gentlemen and their spectral pet monkey Ulysses have been summoned from their final resting place in an unmarked grave because their visiting relatives are in serious trouble.

But before they can solve the younger Latimers’ problems, the three benevolent spirits light brief candles of insanity for a tipsy policeman, a recalcitrant banker, a convocation of English ghost-busters, and a card-playing rogue who’s wanted for murder.

This second volume of ‘Brief Candles’ once again looks at the lives, in and out of cricket, of a batch of players who flickered only briefly on the first-class scene. Most earn their inclusion because of an unusual achievement that they recorded during their brief careers at that level. So you can read here about the five cricketers who played an innings in the 90s in their debut game, and the five who shared in century partnerships on debut when batting at number 11 - and yet none of them was ever picked again. Others are included because of something that happened to them during their one-and-only first-class matches - like the three cricketers who were no-balled for throwing on their debuts, whereupon they disappeared from the first-class game altogether. Another two earn their appearance because of a pair of unhappy coincidences: though unrelated they shared the same unusual surname, and both met their deaths in the most tragic of circumstances. And finally there’s the clergyman who played his only first-class match when just six months short of his 60th birthday. Brief Candles 2 explores the lives of these and some others who deserve to be better remembered for their unusual, if very short, contributions to the history of the first-class game.

"Brief Candles" is a collection of four short stories by Aldous Huxley. The stories included are: "Chawdron" - "The Rest Cure" - "The Claxtons" - "After the Fireworks." Each story offers a unique narrative and explores different themes and characters.

Playing in a first-class match gives a cricketer a certain cachet. For ever after, opponents know that such-and-such played ‘big cricket’ and will expect him to perform accordingly. Even when his achievements lie elsewhere, biographers and obituarists will sagely note his appearances, however limited, and readers will infer that the subject has a special talent for the game. Nine thousand cricketers have played in just one first-class match, but for some their one appearance was more memorable than for others, for good reasons or otherwise. In 1924, Fred Hyland spent less than ten minutes on the field of play before rain washed out the game. Poor Josiah Coulthurst didn’t even step onto the playing area in a damp Lancashire contest in 1919. Emile McMaster’s only match, in South Africa in 1889, was later awarded Test match status. Bob Richards, playing for Essex at Leyton in 1970, didn’t learn till afterwards that his solitary appearance was a first-class game. Nobody can now be sure who was the Wilkinson who played a match at Oxford in 1939. Some one-match wonders have achieved much in their brief days in front of the cricket-watching public, centuries even and ‘eight-fors’: others have gone on to exceptional achievements in fields sporting, political and military. Keith Walmsley reports on the ‘struts’ and ‘frets’ of some players who appeared just once on the first-class ‘stage’ and then were ‘heard no more’.

Brief Candles (1930), Aldous Huxley's fifth collection of short fiction, consists of the following four short stories: "Chawdron" "The Rest Cure" "The Claxtons" "After the Fireworks" Brief Candles takes its title from a line in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, from Macbeth's famous soliloquy: "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

At 13, Emily is tall, restless and impatient - ladylike she certainly isn't! Emily despises such things as needlework, but she has a vivid imagination and is a keen artist and, along with her talented sister, Charlotte, loves to write. But Emily stumbles upon a real-life story, when she encounters the vagabond Heslington while out walking her beloved dog, Captain, on the Yorkshire Moors. Heslington is hiding out in an abandoned cottage, on the run from someone, but claims he is guilty of nothing. All he can tell Emily is that he is passionately in love with a Miss Martha Holmes, but has been forbidden from seeing her. Martha's family believe Heslington is only after her money, but he is prepared to live like a pauper, he says, if he can only be with the girl he loves. Touched by his story, Emily finds herself drawn into the whole sorry mess, acting as a reluctant go-between for Martha and Heslington, but convinced she is doing the right thing. But when Heslington reveals his dark side, Emily finds herself doubting him, not knowing what to believe. Is Heslington the love-torn romantic hero of her imaginings or he is mad...?