Take up naked vice!
By Cyril Bracegirdle"He who has grasped the mallet in his hand has grasped naked vice!" Such was the accusation hurled against the game of croquet back in the 19th century.
Naked vice? Croquet? Picture the traditional scene: ladies and gentlemen move elegantly across the greensward on a fine summer's day, delicately pushing a small ball through a narrow hoop. In the pavilion the vicar's wife is supervising the preparation of afternoon tea.
Few games can look more tranquil, yet beneath the placid surface of Association Croquet seethed and have seethed from the beginning violent emotions as passionate as any that have animated the world of international chess.
In the London Divorce Court in 1902 the reality that has always applied to this deceptive game was summed up by Judge Barlaine Deane. Adjudicating in the case of cruelty brought by the wife of the Reverend Fearnley-Whittingstall, he heard the lady explain that during a game of croquet her husband became so infuriated because she claimed that his ball had not properly passed through the hoop that he refused to speak to her for a week.
"I do not think," said Judge Deane, "that there is a game so liable to put one out of humour as croquet."
In 1870, in Boston, USA, the city father banned croquet as a dangerous occupation conducive to moral corruption if not as a threat to the very structure of civilisation. A councillor commented "The lady, placing her foot upon one of two closely juxtaposed balls and administering a sharp thwack with her mallet gives a thinly-disguised symbol of female aggression against male society. Where will it all end?"
Where indeed? We who live in the age of fem. lib.could have told him!
The origins of this emotive game go back to France in the Middle Ages where it seems to have been invented by wealthy aristocrats with spacious private lawns. It came to England late, around the 1850s, under the name of paille maille (ball and mallet) and seems to have had some connection with London's Pall Mall and a game that was played in the streets.
It was soon a craze among the upper classes, having a great advantage for ladies in that they could play it with gentlemen on equal terms and without a chaperone hovering a yard away.
Trouble was, as the ladies glided excitedly across the green, their wide skirts tended to lift, revealing tantalising glimpses of that portion of the anatomy which is attached to the lower end of--dare we say it?--the nether limb!
This had the disadvantage that when public championships were held, gangs of youths were liable to gather on the sides. These uncouth yobs came, not to participate of the vicar's wife's sandwiches, but to enjoy an erotic thrill. It was very likely this as much as anything else that gave the game its risque tone.
It also became obvious to watching mammas and idle gossipers that out there on the green there was ample opportunity for illicit flirting, for the sly glances, the whispered endearments so much more difficult in the drawing room. Stern moralists pointed out that "those who took too long between shots are warned that such delays can lead to unwise dalliance."
There was a perpetual problem with the shrubbery. It was not unknown for an attractive young lady to give her ball an unusually vigorous shove with her mallet and send it rolling behind bushes. The gentleman with whom she was playing (it never seemed to happen when ladies were playing together) would then accompany the damsel into the bushes to help her find her ball. Well, wouldn't you?
This had the effect of causing chaperones and mammas sitting around the perimeter of the court to stare glassily into the distance and breathe heavily until the couple reappeared.
Fashionable young dandies of the upper class with nothing better to do used to progress from one croquet garden party to another throughout the social season. There would be a Champagne supper on the terrace in the evening and music in the ballroom.
In Mr Punche's Pocket Book for 1862 there was a cartoon with the wording "Fanny, her eyes on him, placing her pretty foot on the ball, said 'Now I am going to croquet you.' And croqueted he was completely!
By the 1870s the first enthusiasm for croquet in England had begun to fade a little and ladies were starting to take up lawn tennis. Croquet now passed over the Atlantic and became a rage among the upper classes, leading to the aforementioned banning. Alexander Woolcot was later to say that "Croquet is no game for the soft of sinew or gentle of heart"
Like chess, croquet requires the player always to be thinking several moves ahead and to be trying to manoeuvre his or her opponent into making errors or lead him into a tactical blunder that will provide an opening.
The Bostonian attitude that croquet masked a feminine assault on the male world seemed to be borne out when Lily Gower appeared on the English lawns in 1898. A tall, willowy blonde, Lily beat the famous top player G.H. Woolston, winning from him the Open Gold Medal. The game was only slightly marred by a dispute concerning a tactical manoeuvre called double tapping about which Woolston complained. Ladies, and even men, had been known to double tap before and, anyway, it was felt that Mr Woolston was not a gentleman for mentioning it.
The real sensation came in 1907 when Lily performed the extraordinary feat of winning the Men's Open Event! It seems that the rules had been very loosely drafted and Lily had taken advantage of a tactical loophole which enabled her to enter.
There was consternation in the committee room at the Hurlingham Club, citadel of the Croquet Association. "By gad, you chaps, this must never happen again!" The rules were immediately tightened up.
Croquet was never a pastime for working classes, partly because of its aristocratic origins on the private lawns of the rich, and when the game migrated across the Atlantic it was quickly taken up by the smart set. These days tournaments are held in such haunts of the super rich as Palm Beach, Bermuda and Newport. In the 1920s and '30s it was taken up by movie stars in Hollywood where such as Bogart and Tyrone Power had their own croquet lawns by their swimming pools.
Association croquet today is played on a flat, rectangular grass court measuring 35 yards by 28 yards with the boundaries marked out in white lines, although many provincial clubs maintain smaller lawns which they use for teaching. There are 6 iron hoops or wickets and each player has 2 balls. Far more skill than the onlooker realises is needed to steer the ball through a hoop which is only one eighth of an inch wider than the ball itself.
More than anyone else, it was John Jacques who was responsible for popularising croquet in Britain.His company of ivory turners, established in 1795, exhibited equipment for the game at the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851, and in 1864 he wrote and had published a book on The Laws and Regulations of the Game of Croquet,fully illustrated by diagrams and engravings. Up to that time the rules had been chaotic. After 1864 they became standardised on the basis of the Jaques rules.
In 1986 Granada TV, in search of some spectacular to rival snooker and bowls, organised a tournament on a purpose built court outside their Manchester studios. It was not a great success. The ball was not easily visible on the small screen and the game looked, as it always does to the uninitiated, far too slow and genteel.
Have a go. Become a croquet addict. But remember the divorce court and practice diplomacy!
