C. B. Fry - Later Life

Later Life

In the 1920s, Fry's mental health started to deteriorate severely. He had encountered mental health problems earlier in his life, experiencing a breakdown during his final year at Oxford which meant that although academically brilliant he achieved a poor degree. In the late 1920s, he had a major breakdown and became deeply paranoid. He reached breaking point in 1928 during a visit to India, becoming convinced that an Indian had cast a spell on him. For the rest of his life, he dressed in bizarrely unconventional clothes. He did recover enough to become a popular writer on cricket and other sports, and even into his sixties he entertained hopes of becoming a Hollywood star. At one point when he was staying in Brighton he was supposed to have gone for a walk along the beach early in the morning and suddenly shed all his clothes, trotting around stark naked.

In 1934, as reported in his 1939 autobiography, "Life Worth Living", he visited Germany with the idea of forging stronger links between the uniformed British youth organizations, such as the Boy Scouts, and the Hitler youth, so that both groups could learn from each other. Fry met Adolf Hitler who greeted him with a Nazi salute which he returned with a Nazi salute of his own. He failed to persuade von Ribbentrop that Nazi Germany should take up cricket to Test level. Some members of the Hitler Youth were welcomed at TS Mercury, and Fry was still enthusiastic about them in 1938, just prior to the outbreak of war. Fry's laudatory statements about Hitler persisted through his autobiography's third impression in July 1941 but appear to have been purged in the fourth impression (1947).

He retired from his position at TS Mercury in 1950, and died in 1956, in Hampstead, London. The English writer and critic, Neville Cardus, wrote the following words for Fry's obituary:

Fry must be counted among the most fully developed and representative Englishmen of his period; and the question arises whether, had fortune allowed him to concentrate on the things of the mind, not distracted by the lure of cricket, a lure intensified by his increasing mastery over the game, he would not have reached a high altitude in politics or critical literature. But he belonged – and it was his glory – to an age not obsessed by specialism; he was one of the last of the English tradition of the amateur, the connoisseur, and, in the most delightful sense of the word, the dilettante.

His ashes were buried in the graveyard of Repton Parish Church, next to Repton School's Priory. His former trainer, Forman, is buried close by. In 2008, his grandson, Jonathan Fry (chairman of the governors at Repton), was in attendance at the rededication of Fry's grave, which was inscribed with, "1872 C B Fry 1956. Cricketer, Scholar, Athlete, Author - The Ultimate All Rounder'."