player in France, and worthy of the silver ball given to the
finest players. Later, Henri IV. and Louis XIV. (who kept a
regular staff to look after his court) were patrons and players
of tennis; indeed, in Henri IV.’s reign so popular was the sport
that it was said that there were “more tennis-players in Paris
than drunkards in England”; in the 16th century Paris alone
could boast of 250 courts, yet it is stated that in 1879 there
were only six courts in the Whole of France. The word “tennis”
-the game having hitherto been described as luens pilae—is
first found in Gower’s “Balade unto the worthy and noble
kynge Henry the fourth” (1400), but Shakespeare’s allusion
to tennis as known to Henry V. must not be omitted. In reply
to messengers from the dauphin, who had sent him a present
of tennis-balls by their hands, Henry says:—
“When we have match’d 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.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb’d
With chases.”
—(Henry V., Act i., sc. 2.)
Even if it be an anachronism that the poet should put these technical terms into the king’s mouth, yet the fact is established that the terms were familiar in Elizabeth’s time. Henry VII. indeed both played the game and revoked the edicts that forbade it; there was a court at Windsor Castle in his time, an open court with four bare walls, no penthouse, &c., being visible, and connected with the palace by a covered way. This court still existed in 1607. It was in that reign, possibly in that court, that the king of Castile played a match with the marquis of Dorset, the king, who used a racquet, conceding “fifteen” to the marquis, who played with his hand. The king won the set. Henry VIII. probably built the court at Hampton Court Palace. In 1615 there were further courts in London of various sizes, and a picture of James II. as a boy represents him standing in a tennis-court holding a short handled racquet, strung diagonally. Pepys frequently alludes to tennis at a time when there were two courts at Oxford and five at Cambridge. Though the game ficurished in the 19th century, it lost some of its popularity, mainly through the demolition of courts as building operations increased; moreover, courts complete in every detail alone were built, the play being consequently confined to the members of the clubs that could afford the expense. The last of the old courts to disappear stood in Windmill Street, at the top of the Haymarket, London. King Edward VII., when prince of Wales, frequently played tennis at “Prince’s” Court.
The evolution of the court as now built is not easily traced, but courts undoubtedly existed side by side which differed from each other both in detail and in dimensions. It is generally assumed that such details as the penthouse, grille, galleries, &c., were deliberately planned to elaborate the game, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that the game, played, as it must often have been, in extemporized courts, took some of its modifications from them: it is at least significant that in an old illustration of la paume a miniature penthouse appears (from which the ball is rolling). apparently a shelter for a bell. The net does not appear till the 17th century, a rope, fringed or tasselled, being stretched across the court: further, the racquet was not in universal use in 1527, since Erasmus in his Colloquies says, “Reticulum (net, or racquet) piscatoribus relinquamus: elegantius est palma uti.” An Italian, Antonio Scanio de Salo, is the first bibliographer of tennis. In his Traltato della Palla (treatise on the Ball) he mentions a large court for the game as played with a racquet, and a small court for the hand-game. The large court was 121 ft. long; it was entered by two doors, one between the first and second galleries on either side of the net; there were four galleries on each side; the dedans extended across the whole width of the court: the tambour was there and two grilles. He also mentioned chases, but these were decided by the place where the ball finally stopped, the spot being marked by a small movable standard.” In another kind of court he says that there was no tambour, but two grilles. The penthouse was sometimes confined to two walls, sometimes to one, the end wall service side. In the hand-court one side was open all its length, with the exception of the battery and some pillars that perhaps gave variety to the stroke. The Latin poem to which allusion has been made shows the similarity of the 17th-century game to the modern: the racquet is spun; the marker (signator) is there to mark the chases (metae) with the movable standard; there is the grille (fenestra); the scoring by “15, 30, 40, game”; the volley (volatu ludere); the nick (pedi ludere, French au pied); the appeal to the spectators; the board (tatella, French l’ais); deuce and vantage, and the penthouse. In the 15th and 16th centuries tennis balls were so largely imported from France that the Ironmongers Company, who were the English manufactures, twice petitioned—the last time in 1591—for “protection” in the matter of balls. The term “bisk” (bisque, originally bisquaye) does not appear in English tennis till 1697 (Shadwell’s True Widow), nor is the winning gallery mentioned before 1767. In the 17th century tennis became a spectacle in France, and the professional player came into existence, the most famous of that time being Le Pape, Clergé and Servo, and about the same time was formed the gild of Paulmiers-racqnetiers (manufacturers of tennis material) with its arms, “Sable, a tennis-racquet proper; in a cross four tennis-balls of the same.” De Garsault, writing in 1797, says, “La Paume is the only game that can take rank in the list of Arts and Crafts,” and his book, L’art du Paumier-Racquetier, was adopted by the Académie Royale. In France very large sums of money were wagered on the game, especially at the end of the 16th century, the stakes being deposited under the cord or net, while in England, about 1750, there was so much betting and swindling, especially by professional players, that the game as played in the public courts fell into disrepute. In the middle of the 19th century, tennis-courts were rare indeed in England, the best known being those of the Marylebone Cricket Club (built in 1838), of the Messrs Prince in Hans Place, S.W., besides one at Brighton, one at Hampton Court, two at Cambridge, and one at Oxford; but the game progressed so fast that in 1910 there were between thirty and forty courts in England, one each in Ireland and Scotland, five in America, six in France, one in Melbourne (Australia) and one in Tasmania. The game has disappeared in Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain, though in Spain it was popular in the days of Philip III. (1578–1621) who was himself fond of playing.
The great French players mentioned above were followed by others—Cabasse (who invented the “boasted force” known as the coup de Cabasse), Barcellon, Farolais and Barnéon, and in the 18th century the Charniers, Bergeron and Masson, the last-named a really great player who could give fifteen to any of his contemporaries. One of his feats was to stand in a barrel before receiving the service, spring out of it and into it before and after each stroke. Other good players of later date were C. A. Delahaye, and greatest of all, J. E. Barre, who in 1855 re-opened the Versailles court, famous for the meeting of the Tiers État on the 20th of June 1789, which body there assembled and took the celebrated “Oath of the tennis-court.” Masson is supposed to have visited England in 1792 and to have played against Messrs Hawkins and Price, and a. professional called Pillet (or Pilet); but of Barre’s visit there can be no doubt, as he played on the new court of the Marylebone Club in 1839, meeting “Peter” Tompkins, the English champion, and beating him so severely that when they met again next year Tompkins received the odds of thirty and a bisque. As an instance of the meagre interest taken in tennis at the time, Julian Marshall in his Annals of Tennis states that in Bell’s Life, the leading sporting paper, Barre is reported as playing Cox and Tompkins “giving 712 for a bisque,” the tennis term “half fifteen” being arithmetically rendered. C. G. Taylor, the great cricketer, was one of the best amateurs, about this time. Barre eventually resigned the championship in favour of George Lambert, who was beaten in 1885 by T. Pettitt, of Boston U.S.A. Athletic Association, an Englishman by birth, who
