A Social History of Tennis in Britain

Robert Lake

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415684309
• eBook ISBN: 9781317605737
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: History

Winner of the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2015- from the British Society for Sports History.

From its advent in the mid-late nineteenth century as a garden-party pastime to its development into a highly commercialised and professionalised high-performance sport, the history of tennis in Britain reflects important themes in Britain's social history. In the first comprehensive and critical account of the history of tennis in Britain, Robert Lake explains how the game's historical roots have shaped its contemporary structure, and how the history of tennis can tell us much about the history of wider British society.

Since its emergence as a spare-time diversion for landed elites, the dominant culture in British tennis has been one of amateurism and exclusion, with tennis sitting alongside cricket and golf as a vehicle for the reproduction of middle-class values throughout wider British society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Consequently, the Lawn Tennis Association has been accused of a failure to promote inclusion or widen participation, despite steadfast efforts to develop talent and improve coaching practices and structures. Robert Lake examines these themes in the context of the global development of tennis and important processes of commercialisation and professional and social development that have shaped both tennis and wider society.

The social history of tennis in Britain is a microcosm of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century British social history: sustained class power and class conflict; struggles for female emancipation and racial integration; the decline of empire; and, Britain's shifting relationship with America, continental Europe, and Commonwealth nations. This book is important and fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the history of sport or British social history.

1 ‘A highly Christian and beneficent pastime’

The emergence of lawn tennis in late nineteenth century Britain

The Victorian and Edwardian eras in Britain represented a period regarded commonly as a tumultuous turning point in class relations. The deep-rooted, secure and widely accepted political and social dominance of the aristocracy gave way to increasing status competition between themselves and the insurgent middle classes (Huggins 2008). The Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Corn Laws repeal of 1846 set in motion the decline in aristocratic authority and brought what many believed was the ‘zenith of middle-class political power’ throughout the mid-Victorian period, ushering in a period of relative peace, stable class relations and political consensus during the third quarter of the nineteenth century (Cannadine 1999:121). Further Parliamentary Reform Acts in 1867 and 1884/5, which expanded the electorate from 1.3 to 5.6 million men, however, forced the landed aristocracy, and the Conservatives, to loosen their unequivocal grip on political power. Particularly from around 1885 onwards, peerages were offered in far greater numbers to the bourgeoisie; ‘some people looked on their arrival as new blood; others maintained that it was a prostitution of honours’, argued Bédarida (1979:129). The House of Lords nevertheless remained chiefly hereditarily empowered and Tory-dominated, while the House of Commons underwent a far quicker and more notable change. After the 1906 General Election loss to the Liberals and, with 29 seats, the insurgence of Labour as the ‘second party in the state’ (Cannadine 1999:131), aristocratic power was weakened still further to the extent that by 1910, they constituted just one in seven Members of Parliament (Bédarida 1979). Moreover, the 1911 Parliament Act facilitated the transfer of decision-making power away from the House of Lords to the House of Commons, and removed the power of veto from the former.

These developments that represented the decline in traditional hierarchies of political power were the culmination of decades of shifting class relations, which began toward the end of the Industrial Revolution, when urbanisation and the damaging effects of an agricultural depression left land ownership, once the basis of aristocratic wealth and ‘the prime source of authority, prestige and influence’, now increasingly a mere status symbol (Bédarida 1979:25). The potential for wealth to be accrued through white-collar jobs in business, commerce and industry had become more lucrative and dynamic and those who exploited it best, the expanding and socially aspirational upper-middle class of bankers, city merchants, successful industrialists, factory, railway and public works owners and magnates, alongside some of the most successful professionals in law and medicine, had the keys to become Britain’s new ruling class. This position they assumed with enthusiasm, confidence, assertiveness and a fresh sense of entitlement, yet their quest for supreme authority remained incomplete, because they often deferred to the established aristocracy in matters of lifestyle, tastes and cultural values. Bédarida (1979:46) elaborated:

Grand or not, the nobility constituted the natural elite in the eyes of the vast majority. Everything encouraged this reverence – social pressure, education, institutions and the many networks that encouraged a sense of dependence among both the humblest and most sophisticated. This applies as much to the spontaneous respect shown by servants … to the vanity of bourgeois parvenus who were proud to consort with titled people.

While the middle class grew to dominate in key political and economic institutions, the upper class remained invariably the cultural reference group against which the former measured themselves.

The more [the old landed society] lost on the political plane, the more it sought to shine on the social plane. … Its gift for display continued unrivalled, and its splendour, supported by its ancient lineage, easily excelled the vulgar luxury of the new-rich.

(Bédarida 1979:131)

Undoubtedly, some distinctions between the classes had blurred. The prosperous upper-middle class were invariably welcomed into “society” life. Despite lacking the foundations of aristocratic heritage, familial inheritance or a public school or Oxbridge education of their own, many were able to gain peerages, purchase country estates with servants, send their sons to public school and marry their daughters into the aristocracy (Bédarida 1979). The upper class also adopted middle-class employment; some aristocrats departed their idle lifestyles and became successful businessmen and company directors or trustees (Holt 1989). In time, the parameters of what constituted being a “gentleman” were redefined ‘more in terms of conduct than heredity’ (Bailey 1978:86), wherein the adoption of behaviour demanding greater self-restraint and discipline as well as leadership, intellectual foresight and chivalry toward women was recognised alongside more inveterate, hereditary determinants of class (Baker 2004; Dunning and Sheard 2000). The public schools, celebrated in the literary work of Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days and recognised as principal breeding grounds for the education of ‘Muscular Christians’ and future elites in government, economics, law, business and diplomatic matters of empire, became key locations where sons of aristocracy mixed openly and with increasing frequency with boys of less noble means (Bédarida 1979). As they grew into adulthood, argued Eisenberg (1990:268), ‘gentlemen of right saw themselves continually accompanied by gentlemen of honour or of education, by so-called merchants and gentlemen, by officers and gentlemen, by Christian gentlemen’. What resulted gradually from the “gentlemen” of public schools was what became known as the ‘Mid-Victorian compromise’: a fusion of value systems necessitating the mutual accommodation of interests of, and the sharing of power between, the middle and upper classes. Bédarida (1979:79) described it as ‘an alliance between the aristocracy of land and birth and the aristocracy of money and ability’.

Team sports like cricket and rugby, as they came to develop in the public schools, were charged with instilling values of this new social elite: toughness, self-reliance, intellectual ability, gentlemanly conduct, morality, diligence, discipline, a sense of British superiority, an expectation of servility from lower social orders, and a competitive spirit as the engine for Britain’s global economic expansion (Collins 2009). Over time, the boys came to establish a set of beliefs for how all sports should be played, moulded on middle-class ideas of Protestant self-help (Gruneau 2006) and stressing fundamental “Corinthian” amateur principles: strict behavioural constraints; sportsmanship and the values of honesty, fair play, integrity and playing the game ‘as an end in itself’; distinct codes of deferential conduct and rituals of status distinction to differentiate amateurs from professionals; a deeply rooted abhorrence to physical training, preparation and specialisation; and the concomitant celebration of natural aptitude, the display of effortless style and grace, and celebration of the ‘all-rounder’ (Allison 1980; Holt 1989; Williams 2006). These characteristics marked the quintessential British gentleman-amateur sportsman, whose sporting mastery ably demonstrated and promoted ideas of innate national and racial superiority (Mangan 1981, 1992; Polley 2011). Such inveterate and widely held ideas were reinforced by numerous factors, argued Bédarida (1979:93–4), most notably: ‘the quiet conviction of being the centre of the world’; the fact that Britain embodied the ‘three great forces of the age’, industrialism, Protestantism and liberalism; and the ‘striking demonstration of naval and diplomatic supremacy’. The Illustrated London News claimed: ‘We are a rich people, powerful, intelligent, religious. … Our spirit governs the universe’ (22 July 1848); later, they were celebrated as ‘the harbingers of civilization’ before claiming: ‘All the regions of the globe feel our physical, moral and intellectual presence. … They could not live without us’ (13 October 1849). Their sporting practices as they developed throughout the nineteenth century were a direct reflection of this.

F.B. Malim (1917:152), headmaster of five public schools throughout his career, wrote in 1917:

As we desire our games to foster the spirit that faces danger, so we shall wish them to foster the spirit that faces hardship, the spirit of endurance. That is why I think that golf and lawn tennis are not fit school games; they are not painful enough.

Indeed, lawn tennis was excluded from Eton, Harrow and other elite public schools until well into the interwar years, mostly because of its public perception of effeteness and lack of potential to develop mental and physical toughness. This did not stop the sport being infused with public-school values, however; such was the power and pervasiveness of this code generally that even sports not played in public schools were conditioned by its behavioural norms, ethics and values. Many early enthusiasts of tennis were old boys from the leading schools and universities, particularly Harrow and Cambridge, respectively. The first three Wimbledon champions, Spencer Gore, Frank Hadow and Rev. John Hartley, were old Harrovians. The Renshaw brothers, William and Ernest, who dominated in the 1880s, both attended Westminster and later Cambridge University. They and the host of other young men similarly socially positioned took to lawn tennis with a clear sense of how and according to what values and rules it should be played; blending the upper-class ostentatious want to display elegance, luxury and artistic refinement with the middle-class spirit of enterprise, competition and individualism. Thus, the exclusion of tennis from the public schools did not necessarily prevent the inculcation of amateur values or the need for its male players to behave as “gentlemen” should; it merely defined a particular type of gentleman for participation and ensured the game began and remained for a long time principally a sport for adults. This was crucial.

While the fact of its omission from the leading schools might have hindered Britain’s long-term ambitions to develop talent, given that most males did not seriously take up the game until early adulthood, it likely had little effect on the sport’s popularity among the status-conscious upper-middle classes. In fact, it is suggested that its initial exclusivity, for the most part, ensured that the comfortable and relaxed air that characterised occasions for play in country-house gardens and clubs remained a central feature. Moreover, sports like lawn tennis would have played a significant role in separating the various middle-class factions from one another, at a time when, in Hobsbawm’s (1983:291) words, ‘the fluidity of [class] borders made clear criteria of social distinction unusually difficult’. The problem was, according to him, ‘how to define and separate the genuine national elite of an upper-middle class once the relatively firm criteria … [of] descent, kinship, intermarriage, the local networks of business, private sociability and politics no longer provided firm guidance’. The key lay in the preservation of “hierarchy” as a notion and an ideal, which, according to Cannadine (1999:125), was successfully accomplished by the middle classes, who ‘refurbished, reconstructed and reinvented’ it.

The various factions of the middle class had two things in common: they each sought to distinguish themselves from social inferiors, while also simultaneously aspiring upwards and seeking pathways toward social mobility for themselves. Certainly, differences in employment, income, standards of living, land ownership, culture and even religion and politics belied claims to a common middle-class identity. Crudely speaking, below the upper-middle class were the “middle-middle” class, which included owners of industrial firms and large businesses, professionals like civil engineers, professors, doctors, barristers and solicitors, alongside wealthy merchants, accountants and most government civil servants (Bédarida 1979). Their lives were not entirely uncomfortable, and despite adopting a defensive position on matters of materialism, as evident in their “conspicuous consumption” (Veblen 1899/1994), they continued to denigrate those whose prime objective in work was making money, namely the lower-middle class, who were thought collectively ‘contaminated … by direct contact with merchandise and cash … [and] sick with ambition’ (Bédarida 1979:52). This latter group consisted of small employers, shopkeepers, salesmen, office workers, bank clerks, low-ranked civil servants and teachers, who as a collective group were concerned to ‘show one’s respectability and distinguish oneself from the common herd, to the point of aping without discrimination the life and habits of the superior classes’ (Bédarida 1979:52).

Alongside institutions of employment and other areas of society, class rivalry and competition was played out culturally and within seemingly innocuous social institutions like tennis clubs. At a time when class barriers were eroding and education, line of work and the conspicuous consumption of expensive goods were failing to demarcate the classes as categorically and effectively as they once had, tennis clubs allowed unashamedly hierarchical constructions of social interaction to manifest under the guise of polite civility. Where, when, how and by whom the game was played had a strong impact on its associated values and general “social character”.

The aims of this chapter are to describe the earliest versions of lawn tennis played in Britain and discuss the various men responsible for “reinventing” them and bringing them to prominence. Majors Harry Gem and Walter Clopton Wingfield, in particular, have been credited with playing key but independent roles in this process and a critical assessment of their relative inputs in the context of the game’s growth is conducted. This is not in any way intended to clear up “once and for all” who the actual inventor of lawn tennis was, as the answer to this question is and likely always will be not a question of facts about who made what impact, but rather more a question of defining what “reinvention” means and then making arbitrary assessments about whose relative input merits the title of being the most significant. Instead, the aim here is to consider the various aspects of the sport that each “inventor” had a hand in developing and then assessing the extents to which these aspects constituted something not only unique but enduring. Inevitably, the social aspects of the sport as they developed were initially the key features that drew participants in. The actual features of its play as defined by the rules, equipment and court layout defined by the “inventors” played a far less important role early on. Thus the question of “Who invented the sport?” is a moot one in any case.

From its conception, lawn tennis was a major feature of garden parties, which afforded its hosts, from old and new money alike, excellent opportunities to convey wealth. For the young adults in attendance, tennis garden parties invited possibilities for romance and ensured the enhancement of status. It was said that to avoid tennis garden parties wholly

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 ‘A highly Christian and beneficent pastime’: the emergence of lawn tennis in late nineteenth century Britain
• 2 Pat-ball and petticoats: representations of social class and gender in early lawn tennis playing styles, etiquette and fashions
• 3 Social aspiration, social exclusion and socialites: clubs, tournaments and “pot-hunting” in pre-war lawn tennis
• 4 The LTA’s struggle for legitimacy: early efforts in talent development, coaching and the retention of amateurism
• 5 British tennis as an imperial tool: international competitions, racial stereotypes and shifting British authority
• 6 Reconciliation and consolidation: early struggles for British lawn tennis in the aftermath of war
• 7 ‘New people’ and ‘new energy’: advances for women and children amidst British decline
• 8 ‘Demand for the game was insatiable’: interwar developments in club/recreational tennis
• 9 “The Goddess” and “the Monarch”: Lenglen, Tilden and the “Amateur Problem” in lawn tennis
• 10 Developments for professional coaches and the early (failed) push for “open” tournaments
• 11 New British success and renewed issues of amateurism in the 1930s
• 12 ‘We must face the hard facts that confront us’: early post-war recovery efforts in British tennis
• 13 Shifting attitudes toward talent development, coaching, commercialism and behavioural etiquette in post-war British tennis
• 14 The enduring amateur–professional dichotomy and the new struggle for authority in world tennis
• 15 “All whites” at Wimbledon? The achievements of Gibson, Ashe and Buxton amidst shifting race relations in Britain
• 16 ‘Particularly concentrated upon the boys’: persistent struggles for women in post-war tennis
• 17 ‘A sporting event as much as a social phenomenon’: nationalism, commercialism and cultural change at Wimbledon
• Conclusion: Continuity and change in the social history of tennis in Britain and future directives for the LTA
• Index