Tennis: A Cultural History, 2nd Edition

632 Pages·2017·90.141 MB·English

by  Heiner Gillmeister

TENNIS
A Cultural History

TENNIS
A Cultural History
second edition
Heiner Gillmeister
First published in German by Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1990
First english edition published by Leicester University Press, a cassell imprint 1997;
paperback 1998
This second edition published in 2017 by equinox Publishing Ltd.
UK: office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, sheffield, south Yorkshire s1 2BX
UsA: isd, 70 enterprise drive, Bristol, ct 06010
www.equinoxpub.com
© Heiner Gillmeister 2017
All rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library cataloguing-in-Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
isBn 978 1 781795 21 7 Paperback
Library of congress cataloging-in-Publication data
names: Gillmeister, Heiner, 1939-
title: tennis : a cultural history / Heiner Gillmeister.
other titles: Kulturgeschichte des tennis. english
description: second edition. | Bristol, ct : equinox Publishing Ltd, 2017. |
“First english edition published in 1997 and reprinted in paperback 1998
by Leicester University Press, a cassell imprint.” english translation
“Heiner Gillmeister 1997”—t.p. verso. | “This second english edition
published in 2017 by equinox Publishing Ltd”—t.p. verso. | includes
bibliographical references and index.
identifiers: Lccn 2016021710 | isBn 9781781795217 (pb)
subjects: LcsH: tennis—europe—History. | social history.
classification: Lcc GV1002.95.e85 G5613 2017 | ddc 796.342094—dc23
Lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021710
typesetting and layout by s.J.i. services, new delhi
Printed and bound by cPi Antony Rowe, chippenham, UK.
contents
List of Plates vi
List of Figures vii
From the Preface to the First edition xii
Preface to the second edition xiv
Acknowledgements xv
1 The origins of tennis: The Monks’ Racket 1
2 The tennis Games of the Middle Ages 33
3 The Language of tennis 83
4 tennis in Renaissance Literature 130
5 tennis in the German Ballhouse 146
6 Lawn tennis: The sturdy Bastard 210
7 Lawn tennis in America 249
8 continental colonies: Lawn tennis in France 266
9 Lawn tennis under the Kaiser 285
notes 371
Bibliography 532
illustration sources 570
index 576
Plates between pages 256 and 257
List of Plates
1 illustration of jeu de la paume, beginning of fourteenth century
2 The service in jeu de la paume
3 A miniature from the educational treatise Avis aus Roys, c. 1360
4 Miniature from a French sixteenth-century book of hours
5 tennis in the market place, book of hours, c. 1450
6 First medieval picture of the traditional tennis court, c. 1450
7 Flemish painting on the theme of david and Bathsheba, 1559
8 seventeenth-century picture of the court in Brussels, showing a
game of pallone
9 Jeu de tamis outside the convent of Beaumont in Valenciennes, 1598
10 tennis in dompierre-sur-Helpe
11 The covered court of the collegium illustre, tübingen
12 interior view of the collegium illustre, 1598
13 earliest picture of a net in a covered tennis court, c. 1610
14 street tennis in Valencia
15 tennis lessons at the Jesuits’ seminary in Fulda
16 Frederick V playing ‘lawn tennis’
17 The ballhouse in Leipzig
18a sir John Lavery, ‘The tennis Party’, 1885
18b sir John Lavery, ‘tennis Under orange trees’, 1929
19 An American tennis party, 1886
20 Late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century tennis at the Hôtel
Beau-site in cannes
21 ‘tea and tennis’, c. 1890–1900
22 A game of mixed doubles, 1900
23 Lawn tennis in Bad Homburg, 1895
24 Homburg: a game of doubles for the ladies, c. 1900
25a Lawn tennis and cycling, symbols of female emancipation
25b Umpiring at the Berlin Rot-Weiss Pentecost tournament in 1900
List of Figures
1.1 A depiction of early football, Padua, 1642 8
1.2 The Porte d’Ardon in Laon, France, thirteenth century 8
1.3 The cloisters of the abbey in Moissac, twelfth century 9
1.4 The Gotlandic game of pärkspel, 1886 10
1.5 Kicking the ball in pärkspel 10
1.6 A game of billiards, 1674 11
1.7 The French children’s game, Le criquet, 1807 11
1.8a Franco-Flemish book of hours, c. 1300, showing the service in
jeu de la paume 14
1.8b The return in jeu de la paume 14
1.9 Woodcut from a late fifteenth-century book of hours 15
1.10 Miniature from a French sixteenth-century book of hours 15
1.11 tennis court of Falkland castle, Fife 16
1.12 interior of Falkland castle’s tennis court 16
1.13 tennis court at charles Viii’s castle of Amboise 18
1.14 Representation of the Basque game of pelota on a tombstone, 1629 19
1.15 Representation of the dutch game of kaatsen, 1698 23
1.16 in sixteenth-century italy, tennis was still played in church cloisters 28
2.1 The Real tennis court in Leamington spa 34
2.2 Le Jeu Royal de la paulme, by charles Hulpeau, Paris, 1632 34
2.3 original draft of a david and Bathsheba painting, Flemish school,
mid-sixteenth century 44
2.4 detail from the story of david and Bathsheba, by Lucas Gassel 44
2.5 View of Bruges with tennis courts, 1562 46
2.6 tennis courts in Bruges, 1641 46
2.7 The tennis court of an emblem book in 1564 47
2.8 illustration showing the finer points of tennis, 1658 47
2.9 Book of hours, c. 1450, showing special features of the game 55
2.10 Book of hours, school of tours, c. 1460 55
viii tennis: A cultural History
2.11 copper engraving from a series of ‘children’s Games’, French,
sixteenth century 56
2.12 etching by de Momper, sixteenth century, showing the tennis court
of the duke of Brabant 57
2.13 seventeenth-century copy of de Momper’s picture 57
2.14 children playing tennis under a miniature roof, France, seventeenth
century 58
2.15 sketch showing the game moving from the cloisters to the open air,
1646 59
2.16 tennis in the open, with a washboard taking over from the slanting
roof 61
2.17 Three-a-side tennis being played in Louvain, 1650 63
2.18 Pieter van der Borcht, ‘Playing Monkeys’, sixteenth century 63
2.19 Kaatsen in Flanders 64
2.20 Keatsen in Friesland 65
2.21 Keatsen in Friesland 65
2.22 Pelotamano in Lanzarote 68
2.23 Pelota mixteca in Mexico 69
2.24a and b Glove used in pelota mixteca 70
2.25 Pelota de mano in ecuador 71
2.26 The first pictorial representation of a racket strung with gut 74
2.27 A brass claw, used in Frisian keatsen 80
2.28 early representation of Frisian keatsen 81
3.1 A medieval tournament scene, carved ivory 90
3.2 The medieval passage of arms, carved ivory 90
3.3 Miniature from chrétien de troyes’ Yvain, thirteenth century 90
3.4 Linguistic analysis of the evolution of ball games 92
3.5 scene from a game of pärkspel, Gotland 93
3.6 Version of jeu de tamis from Picardy 108
3.7 The tuscan game of palla 109
3.8 Betting on tennis, on a spanish misericord 124
3.9 Medieval dice players, c. 1432 126
4.1 tennis ball found at Lavenham (sixteenth or seventeenth century) 134
4.2 original tennis ball from Westminster Hall (?seventeenth century) 134
4.3 The volley being played in the sixteenth century 136
4.4 A return of service, sixteenth century 136
4.5 Kaatsen in a dutch town, 1635 140
List of Figures ix
5.1 A kaatsen match, early sixteenth century 147
5.2 Ballhouse in cölln which later coalesced with Berlin to become the
German capital 156
5.3 The ballhouse in cölln on the oldest map of Berlin
(mid-seventeenth-century) 156
5.4 The ballhouse in dresden (second half of the seventeenth century) 159
5.5a The former Ballhof in Hanover in the 1930s 162
5.5b Mid-18th-century sketch of the Ballhof in Hanover 162
5.6 Ballhouse in the garden of the Grand ducal residence in schwerin 166
5.7 exterior view of the tübingen ballhouse 168
5.8 interior view of the tübingen ballhouse 168
5.9a and b The ballhouse in Kassel 171
5.10 seventeenth-century portrait of cornelius, the profligate German
student 172
5.11 tennis court in Leiden, 1612 179
5.12 Mathieu Rivière’s tennis court in Utrecht, before 1700 179
5.13 seventeenth-century German tennis court 180
5.14 The ballhouse in coburg in 1632 180
5.15 Representations of four Renaissance sports 184
5.16 View of the pleasure garden in stuttgart and the ducal ballhouse 190
5.17 Pen-and-ink drawing of the stuttgart ballhouse 190
5.18 Ground plan of the stuttgart ballhouse 190
5.19 Frederick V at the coronation of elizabeth, his wife 193
5.20 Frederick V’s tennis court in Heidelberg 195
5.21 Frederick riding on the Heidelberg tun 196
5.22 swashbuckling tennis players 203
5.23 Johann Bender’s tennis court on a nuremberg map 206
6.1 Lawn tennis at an english country house 211
6.2 Major Wingfield’s rules booklet for lawn tennis, 1874 212
6.3 Wingfield’s lawn tennis court 212
6.4 The only surviving photograph of a sphairistiké court 213
6.5 Harry Gem’s sketch of tennis at the Manor House Hotel in
Leamington spa 217
6.6 Arthur Wellesley tomkins, one of Harry Gem’s tennis partners 217
6.7 The ledger stone on Harry Gem’s grave in Warstone Lane cemetery,
Birmingham 217
6.8 Major Wingfield as actor and reciter 221