By ROBERT MACGREGGOR.
It was in France that what its devotees call “the king of games,”
tennis, was originated; but the ground-work is found in the simple old
hand ball play that figured so conspicuously in the every-day life of
the classical world. It is of little use to speculate in which of the
varieties of ball-play mentioned by ancient writers is to be found the
progenitor of this pastime. At any rate, a game very like tennis, in
which the ball was driven to and fro by a racket, was played in 1380,
and soon after we find Richard II. including this game among those
unlawful for laboring people. The name “tennis” first occurs in Gower’s
“Ballade” in 1400. There is an old story of historical interest told in
connection with our game. When Henry V. was meditating war against the
King of France, the old “Chronicle” tells us that “The Dolphyn thynkyng
Henry to be still given to such plaies and follies as he exercised
before the tyme that he was exalted to the croune, sent hym a tunne of
tennis balles to plaie with, as he saied that he had better skill of
tennis than of warre.” Shakspere makes Henry reply to the ambassador
who brought the gift and message:
“We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for;
When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.”
While Henry received the ambassadors, James I. of Scotland lost his
life, it may be said, through his devotion to tennis. While holding the
Yuletide festival at Perth, conspirators attacked the castle. The king
tore up a plank in the flooring of the room where he was, and dropped
into a vault below the apartment, where it was thought escape would be
easy. There had been an opening by which he might have escaped, but
this had, a few days earlier, been closed by his own orders, because
the balls by which he played at tennis were apt to drop into it.
When we reach the reigns of the fourth and fifth Jameses of Scotland,
we find from the accounts of the lord high treasurer many evidences of
the kings’ fondness for this game and the considerable sums they lost
at it.
Henry VII., as the register of his expenditures shows, was a tennis
player.
The fifth Scottish James was so devoted to pastimes of all sorts that
all his leisure was devoted to amusements, and naturally his people
followed his example, especially his fondness for tennis: even the
friars caught the fever, for Lyndesay draws us a picture, probably
common in that age:
“Though I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche [tennis].
I wat thair is nocht ane amang you all
Mair ferilie can play at the fute ball.”
The game is traced in English history to Henry VIII., who was very
fond of it. It is said by a historian: “His propensity being perceived
by certayne craftie persons, they brought in Frenchmen and Lombards
to make wagers with hym; and so he lost muche money, but when he
perceyved theyr crafte he escheued their company and let them go.”
Though devoted to the game, the bluff old king passed a stringent act
against the keeping of any tennis-court, and against the enjoyment of
several games by apprentices, mariners, artificers, and many others.
This was only repealed in 1863. The Reformation gave the game a shock,
especially in Scotland. During the Commonwealth the exiled court played
the game abroad. At the Restoration Charles reintroduced the game, and
probably the next few years were the palmy days of tennis in England.
In 1664, we learn from Pepys’ diary, that the gossipy secretary had
been watching the king at tennis, but was disgusted with the flattery
bestowed upon him. He says: “I went to the tennis-court and there saw
the king play at tennis. To see how the king’s play was extolled,
without any excuse at all, was a loathsome sight, though sometimes he
did indeed play very well, but such open flattery is beastly.”
During the last century the records of tennis are meagre: it seems to
have been played in only one or two places. Even in England it may be
said that tennis as a popular game went out with the Stuarts. Of course
the pastime has never actually died out, and in recent years it has had
increased attention paid to it, but even now the number of courts does
not appear to exceed a score. “Tennis,” says the _Edinburgh Review_,
“the most perfect of games, because with the most continuous certainty
it exercises and rewards all the faculties of the player, has only
been prevented hitherto from becoming as popular as it deserves from
its being, under its original conditions, so expensive, so difficult
to learn, and so puzzling to count, as to discourage those who are not
‘to the manner born,’ from touching it.” The first objection of expense
seemed almost insuperable, the cost of a tennis-court being from
fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, until the recent revival turned
the game out to grass, and introduced its rudiments to our lawns.
Lawn-tennis, however, like the croquet, which it drove off the lawn, is
not a new form of tennis. It is at least three centuries old.