knowledge there is a rumour abroad that Mr. G. F. Grace's fatal illness was caused by sleeping in a damp bed at the Red Lion Hotel, Basingstoke, I beg to contradict it. He had a bad cold before he left home, and on my arrival at Basingstoke he told me that he had received another chill whilst waiting at Reading Station. By inserting this you will greatly oblige me, and also do justice to the members of a family whose attention and kindness to my cousin all through his illness could not have been surpassed had he been at home". The "damp bed" story is refuted by evidence to the contrary, as described above, because Grace's illness began with the cold he caught during the match at The Oval and he was already ill when he arrived in Basingstoke. Legacy As a team, Gloucestershire declined in the 1880s following its heady success in the 1870s and one of the stated reasons for this was Fred Grace's early death, there being a view that "the county was never quite the same without him". Writing about the Graces in Barclays World of Cricket, Ronald Mason said of Fred that he "is visible only as through a glass darkly, as after a youth of great promise and pride he was smitten with sudden illness and died (aged only 29)". Fred Grace was unquestionably a top-class cricketer through the 1870s but, like everyone else, he was overshadowed by WG, to whom he was especially close. Bernard Darwin wrote that Fred was the sibling (they were in a family of nine) to whom WG "was most devoted" and Fred's death created a "real and permanent gap" in WG's life. In his classic work, Beyond a Boundary, C. L. R. James observed that the three Grace brothers were a "clan", unlike other sets of cricketing brothers. James concluded that WG was "close enough" to EM but he felt the death of Fred more than other bereavements. The brothers were linked together but they were three individuals and, in character terms, there was polarity between EM and Fred with WG in between. EM, says James, "was a card" but Fred was "thoughtful and reserved". Footnotes References Bibliography External links Cricinfo article on the 1880 Test 1850 births 1880 deaths England Test cricketers English amateur cricketers English cricketers of 1864 to 1889 English cricketers Gentlemen cricketers Gentlemen of