The Quest For The Happy Warrior

The name of O’Neil Gordon ‘Collie’ Smith is one that has fascinated me all my life, although I cannot recall now just how that started. It must have been because of stories my father told me, and although exactly what he said now escapes me it would have been something along the lines of ‘What might he have achieved but for his untimely death?’.

The lack of any real knowledge beyond the basis of his Test career and his sadly early death was a source of frustration for some time, but something that I found easy enough to live with until I got round to reading Garry Sobers’ 2002 published My Autobiography, the opening chapter of which is a heartfelt homily to the friend he lost in that tragic road accident in 1959.

It was inevitable therefore that when, a few years later, I found an outlet for my musings on the subject of cricket and cricketers that one of the first subjects I wanted to write about was Collie Smith.

There are books aplenty that have been written about Sobers, and I found material in those as well as books by or about Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott and also the various histories of West Indies cricket and accounts of the few series in which Collie appeared. But what I couldn’t track down was a biography of Collie himself, and I knew there was one as it had a passing mention on, of all places, his Wikipedia page.

Where I couldn’t find any reference to the book, titled The Happy Warrior and written by Kenneth Chaplin, was in Padwick’s Bibliography of Cricket. The first edition of Padwick appeared in 1977, and an updated and expanded second edition seven years later. I did for a while think that perhaps it was one of those books that was written but never actually published, but then I did see a copy. It was in a dealer’s shop, but was not in great condition, was not substantial and, even if I could have overcome those concerns, was priced way in excess of what in those days I was prepared to pay for a cricket book.

By 2012 I had seen no other copy of The Happy Warrior so, on the basis I had researched everywhere else that I could find mention of Collie, I wrote the feature, that appeared as this, back in March 2012. I was happy enough with the result and, always the beauty of anything that appears online, figured I could tinker with it when and if a copy of the book ever appeared.

For the next dozen years I kept on looking for the book. I regularly asked dealers, in hope rather than expectation, whether they had copies and the answer was always no. I never saw a copy on a dealer’s website, in a catalogue or up for auction. I also trawled eBay daily, and regularly used a variety of search sites in the hope some bookseller somewhere in the world would list a copy.

So obsessed was I with this search that I took to asking everyone in the Caribbean that I came across to keep an eye open for a copy for me. Over the years I have also had dealings with a few clients whose roots were in Jamaica, and have offered them all huge discounts on fees if they could source a copy for me. It got to the stage where I have made similar offers to anyone I know with the most tenuous connection with the Caribbean, and of course nothing ever came of any of these requests for assistance.

At one stage I even managed to secure an email address for author Kenneth Chaplin, sadly no longer with us. To be fair to him Chaplin did respond to my email, albeit simply to say rather unhelpfully that the book ‘has long been out of print’ and ‘I cannot help you with finding a copy’. I did ask him a few follow up questions about who published the book, the size of its print run and the like but, perhaps understandably, I didn’t hear from him again.

I often pondered why the book should be so vanishingly rare. It wasn’t a limited edition as such, although I accept that is a misnomer in the sense that any book is limited by the number of copies printed, but then interest in Collie was huge. Tens of thousands of Jamaicans turned out for his funeral, so there was surely a demand. I can also accept that many of those who did buy copies were not cricketing bibliophiles, nor indeed ‘book people’ at all, but surely some copies must have been kept?

I can also appreciate that in 1960 the world was a much larger place, and news of the book’s publication may not have reached across the world, but surely some of the many friends who Collie made in his two seasons in the Lancashire League with Burnley would have heard of the book’s existence and made sure a few copies arrived here?

Well it ultimately seems like at least one did as, a few weeks ago, I got home from work and, for want of something to occupy my mind before the 7pm news began, had a look on eBay and, lo and behold, there was a copy of The Happy Warrior, and I didn’t even have the stress of an auction to endure as it had a ‘buy it now’ price, which I duly paid.

And so, a couple of days later, after all those years a copy of Collie Smith’s biography finally dropped through my letterbox. The most remarkable thing about the sale was that to the best of my recollection the original listing must have gone up at least eight hours before I saw it – am I really the only cricket collector with an obsession with The Happy Warrior?

One of the characteristics that collectors have, and one of the things that I believe puts us well and truly ‘on the spectrum’, is that the thrill of the acquisition conquers all. Thus I had owned The Happy Warrior for a full six weeks before the thought of actually reading the thing occurred to me, and it was only because I was stuck with very little to do last Saturday morning that I actually did so. Would it have made much difference to the feature I wrote all those years ago? I reasoned that I owed it to myself to find out.

The 62 pages took less than an hour to read. Its author, I had found out, passed away in 2019 at the age of 90. He was a career journalist, not primarily in sport reporting, but you simply have to google his name to see that he was a highly respected man who served as press secretary to four Jamaican Prime Ministers. As far as sport is concerned his main contribution seems to have been as a football referee, and a FIFA recognised one for 18 years. As far as I can see The Happy Warrior is his only book.

I had wondered if perhaps the book was simply not very good, and that the lack of quality contributed to why it was so elusive. That thought was certainly mistaken, as the book is a well-written one and sheds a great deal of light on Collie’s upbringing, his religious values and his life at home. Letters that he wrote from England to his mother and his fiancee appear in the text to further illustrate his character.

But in terms of my feature there is, I was pleased to note, nothing to change. I had managed to pick up all of Collie’s cricketing achievements from elsewhere, although were I writing the feature today I might have mentioned having finally learned where the name ‘Collie’ came from, the explanation being it was a pet name, after her maid Conchita, that Collie’s grandmother gave to him and which stuck to him for the rest of his days.

The one slight surprise in The Happy Warrior is that there is no mention of the ‘special relationship’ with Sobers, but then Chaplin had not as far as I can see, with the exception of Gerry Alexander who provides a foreword, spoken to any of Collie’s West Indies teammates. The book is very much a case of one Jamaican paying tribute to another, so perhaps that is the explanation for that.

It goes without saying that I was delighted to finally track down a copy of a book I have been actively looking for for the best part of two decades. Equally with success in finally doing so something has gone out of my life, so I will have to find something else to apply the same energy to finding – i wonder what it will be?