The Tennis Girl tells a delightful history story - from the Household Ledger, June 1903. 

Just below...

   Article title: “Tennis – The King of Games”

 

              “Is tennis dying out?

                I propounded this question to the Tennis Girl the other day and her answer was an emphatic negative.

                “What a pitifully absurd question!” she exclaimed, with a curl of her red lip.  “A man” (oh, the accumulative scorn on that word!) “whose allotted span is a most fourscore years and ten, asks if Tennis -- which has been in existence for three thousand years – if Tennis is dying out!”

                “Three thousand years!” I echoed in surprise.  “Impossible!”

                “Pardon me,” retorted the Tennis Girl, with a bewitching assumption of superiority. “Primitive tennis was a form of handball played without racquets, and handball is said to have been invented by the white-armed Nausicaa, who, you remember, was playing ball with her handmaidens when she discovered the shipwrecked Ulysses.”

                “Oh, yes; and she fell in love with the chap afterward,” I said, recalling my Homer vaguely and hoping to divert the conversation to more personal matters.  But the Tennis Girl was well launched on her favorite topic and defied diversions.

                “The ancient Greeks,” she continued, “played tennis under the name of sphairistike, and the Athenians thought so highly of the game that they accorded the power of citizenship to Ariston Carystius, who excelled in it, and even erected statues in his honor.  We know that the Romans also played, for Horace says that while he and Virgil were sleeping, Maecenas used to play.”

                My thoughts were wide of Maecenas and I made no rejoinder.  The Tennis Gril glanced at me.  My expression was perhaps not what one is expected to wear when discussing Maecenas impartially.  The Tennis Girl frowned and then continued hurriedly: “During the Middle Ages the game was widely played in Italy and France.  This primitive tennis was, of course, played with the hand – not with a racquet.  A glove was worn to protect the hand, and when it was found an improvement, a stiff double-gauntlet was worn.  Finally some ingenious person conceived the idea of stretching an elastic network of strings across the palm.  In due time the handle was added, and the racquet thus evolved.”

                “Evolution in all phases – “ I began, but the Tennis Girl coolly continued: “Just when the racquet was introduced is not known, but Chaucer mentions it in his “Troilus and Criseyde,” and Sir Philip Sidney in his “Arcadia” says: ‘In such a shadow mankind lives that they are like tenis ball tossed on the racket of the higher powers.’  The racquet must have been in use then as early as the fourteenth century.”

                “Oh, by the way, talking of centuries reminds me that in the last –“

                “Tennis has been called the King of Games.  It might with equal truth be called the Game of Kings,” she continued, ignoring my remark with a delicious impertinence.  “No game has been more distinguished by royal favor than tennis.  Henry of Navarre, after the Eve of St. Bartholomew, arose at daylight to finish a game.  The chroniclers tell us also that he was wont to play all day, stripped to his shirt and breeches.”

                “Indeed!” I said.

                “And Louis X of France was found dead in a grotto where he had cooled himself too imprudently after a particularly hard game.”

                The moral of that is – don’t ---“ I began, for, like the Duchess, I am fond of drawing a moral.

                “There are ever so many other kings who played,” she went on didactically.  “Henry V,  Henry VII, and Charles II of England, Charles V, Fransis I, Henry IV and ----“

                Granted that it is properly called The Game of Kings,” I cried, thinking to appease her thus ---

                “That it is the King of Games also is evident to every fair-minded, impartial person,” she retorted severely.

                “And golf?” I suggested.

                “Golf!” she cried with scornful emphasis.  “Everyone is playing golf because it is the fad of the moment.  As a game it cannot compare with tennis.  You hit the ball so”---

                “Not always,” I said softly.

                ---“and the rest of the time you walk around the links after the ball.  In tennis the action is vigorous and unremitting.  When well played it is the most exhilarating of sports, sportsmanlike and clean in the extreme, yes affording ample scope for brilliancy of play and not lacking in healthy excitement. It ---“

                “I capitulate!” I cried.  “It is indeed the King of Games!  No other can compare with it.”

                She smiled triumphantly.

                “You have heard the old adage in reference to one good turn deserving another ---“ I continued, “It is your turn to capitulate now.”  This was in reference to a conversation we had had a week before.

                The smile of triumph vanished.

                “I can’t,” she whispered.  “I’m sorry.  Goodbye!”

                “Good-bye!” I answered and she was gone, and the words of Sir Philip Sidney came back to me:  “In such a shadow mankind lives that they are like tennis balls tossed on the racket of the higher powers.”

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According to some sources the Household-Ledger company/publication was formed in 1903 by the combining of The Household Magazine and The Ledger Monthly.