Janie and I were super excited ahead of this one. During lockdown Janie had taken to fine art and had been reading up on graffiti art/street art. This Alternative London street tour, with an opportunity to try out some spray can art at a workshop afterwards, seemed like a very good idea, so I snapped up a couple of tickets for an alternative Friday afternoon off.
Gary was the geezer we rolled with
We were part of a group of 12 to 15 people, most of whom were tourists from outside the UK and very few of whom seemed to come from anywhere near Janie’s and my age range. Unlike my visits to Lord’s lately, no-one addressed me as “young man” on this afternoon.
Janie and I went mad with our camera-phones. We took nearly 140 pictures between us and if you want to flick through them all, unedited but in time sequence, this Flickr album (here and image below) has the lot:
I’ll pepper this account with some highlight pictures, which should give you a reasonable idea.
The Walking Tour
We started in Fashion Street, where there were many superb street art works, including this one, which had recently acquired its tears and farewell messages:
The above two pictures also Fashion Street, with moving stories to go with them
It also dawned on me that we were walking streets (and due to walk streets) close to the locations I have recently been researching regarding the early years of my mother’s Arkus/Markus/Marcus family in London. More on that later.
Some of the most spectacular street art in the area emerged during (or just after) lockdown, when artists needed an outlet for their outpourings and many building owners presumably thought, “why not?”:
Extraordinary and exceptional skills needed to produce works like these
We wandered a bit further east, around Princelet Street…
Janie was already getting funky with the art, snapping Princelet Street through the looking glass
We then wended our way to the open space around the old Truman Brewery, where a great deal of street art and graffiti art resides.
Lots of symbolism…Banksy himself had a hand in the car……Gary tried to explain some of it to me – it reminded me a bit of situationismThis concrete sculpture was simply stunning
Then back along Hanbury Street..
In Hanbury Street, Gary pointed out the utterly compelling Libreria bookshop and then didn’t stop to give us time to have a look around – you cannot do things like that to me!
In the few moments I grabbed in the shop, the attendant spotted my Middlesex CCC shirt and engaged me in conversation about that as well as books. I’ll have to go back, I suppose.
At the end of Hanbury Street, we were on the corner of Spital Street, where my Great Uncle John (Johnny) lived and worked as a cabinet maker at the turn of the 20th century.
On Heneage Street we rather liked the Up Yours street art piece.
Multi sport facility – well streetWe SO nearly ended our tour prematurely in there
Then back to Brick Lane…
Kill The Cat
…more or less completing a circuit before ploughing south towards Whitechapel.
A wonderful, almost new, symbolic piece by an artist of Bangladeshi origin
We said goodbye to the few walking tourists who had chosen not to try some spray can art – the rest of us ploughed on towards the Hessel Street studio.
A Brief Arkus/Markus/Marcus Family Tour
We walked along White Church Lane and then past Back Church Lane – the latter (No 132) being the residence of my Great Uncle Max & Great Aunt Leah Markus at the time of the 1901 census – just a few years after Max arrived in London and while he was still labouring in the tobacco industry and dreaming of returning to his chosen profession – violinist.
Modern buildings & street works where 132 would have beenGreat Uncle Max c1900
When Max first arrived, in the late 19th century, he lived at 1 Matilda Street, where the rest of that enormous family (including my grandpa) still resided in 1901.
No longer there, Matilda Street has been absorbed by council housing buildings on the block just south-west of Gary’s Alternative London studio…
Of course I hadn’t yet got around to taking that stroll (I spend so little time in the City these days) and it hadn’t occurred to me that we might be close by, when I booked this experience.
But let us return to Whitechapel and spraying paint around.
The Studio Session
Gary made us all mask up and glove up (thank goodness) and then taught us how to spray paint on walls/boards rather than ourselves (useful skill, that, when spraying paint).
These pictures taken just before we all masked and gloved up
Keeping us away from the stencils until we had “mastered” the basics, we were charged with making a rectangular base and graffitiing our names. This, even I could do quite well.
Quite well, although my street art name should really be Ged
Even the use of the larger stencils was within my skills grasp with relative ease – the trick being to spray enough but not too much.
It was the attempt at some detailed lettering with stencils that confounded me, with more red paint on my fingers and blotching that corner of my masterpiece than actually communicating words. I wanted to spray “Media Kills”, but I think I’ll stick to the keyboard for such detailed messages.
Janie chose, instead, to “give it large” with the visual imagery, absorbing some of the existing images into her own creation, which, I am reliably informed, is very street.
So there you have it – Janie shows big idea talent at this art medium while I scratch away thinking that words are necessary in all cases.
We’d had a wonderful afternoon. Although we haven’t travelled to far-flung locations now for years, this experience transported us in far-flung cognitive ways.
And for those who think that the words are unnecessary for this experience, there’s always the Flickr album with all the pictures from the day:
What a palaver getting tickets for this exhibition, even though we are members of the V&A. Don’t get me started. But once Janie gets started with a mission to get something, she can be quite tenacious and I can sometimes help.
Anyway, one thing led to another and we scored a pair of tickets for 8:00 a.m. on the last Saturday of the show. Here’s the trailer for those who would like to know more about it:
Janie was keen to take pictures, undaunted by the professional pictures on the website and the beautiful Epic Iran book, which naturally we procured on exit:
The headline picture and those below are a few of Janie’s own efforts as we went around the show.
The scope of the exhibition was awe-inspiring – from the earliest civilisations to modern Iranian arts and culture.
This was the first cultural event that we have attended since the start of the pandemic. It occurred to me, as my head started to spin with the mental energy required to take it all in and the sensory stimulation from all those extraordinary exhibits, that we should have “warmed up” for such a momentous exhibition.
We wouldn’t have gone straight back to the tennis court and played a five-set epic as our first match back, would we? So perhaps we should have warmed up for Epic Iran by looking at a smaller, more familiar collection first. Twenty minutes in the MCC Museum during the Lord’s test match for example.
But I digress.
Epic Iran was a truly superb exhibition.
I wanted to try and bargain for the above carpet, but the owner was nowhere to be found. I should really complain to the V&A authorities about that.
Meanwhile Janie, being more sensible than me, made a bee-line for the V&A shop, snapping up a copy of the beautiful Epic Iran book at a member/attendee price before the exhibition closed and stocks ran out.
On the way home, Janie was still in the mood for sensory stimulation, so asked me to stop in Hyde Park briefly so she could see this year’s Serpentine Pavilion construction.
Counterspace
All that culture and still we were home before noon. Not bad for our first cultural outing since the start of the pandemic.
We’re more than a week past April Fools Day, so pieces that start, “we have discovered a long lost…” would normally have to wait another year.
But this one is true.
While Janie was busy deep cleaning the place yesterday, ahead of her restart on Monday, she knocked a small Peter Harris (my dad) painting off the wall, smashing the glass of the clip frame.
She was momentarily upset, wanting everything to look right from day one of the restart, until I pointed out that Amazon Prime could ship an exact replica of the frame to us next day. Of course they could; of course they did.
The new frame has just arrived.
To our surprise we discovered, between the backing sheet and the clipboard, dad had left the above sketch. Perhaps in error. Perhaps deliberately to add bulk to the backing having abandoned the sketch. It’s unsigned, so he clearly didn’t consider it to be finished. He was not one of life’s finishers, my dad.
Good artist, though. And a lovely bloke.
Moved I am, to see this sketch for the first time. Actually Janie and I were both a little moved by the discovery.
With thanks to Kay Scorah for permission to publish her love letter as a guest piece here on Ogblog:
February 2021
Before we go any further, there’s something I need to tell you.
I’ve never been in love.
Yeah, of course, I’ve been in lust. And I’ve been in-fatuated, in-appropriate, in-secure, in-toxicated.
All those other “ins” made me think I was in love. But I wasn’t.
I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to work this out, but lately love has taught me that I have never been in love.
You see, the love I feel is overwhelming, and year by year it gets more so.
The narcissi, the daffodils, the crocuses are just opening up in Vicky Park. I looked at them the other day and I began to cry.
I love them.
Then there’s those 3 little kids that race their scooters down my street every day after school. There they are now as I write, yelling, screaming and laughing.. my heart is ready to burst with love for their voices.
The café owner up at Dartmouth Park yesterday, she just couldn’t stop talking about the trip she took to South America when she was 21. The sparkle in her eyes when she remembered the fear and the beauty of it all; I can’t get it out of my mind’s eye.
I love it.
The opening bars of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”; I have a physical love reaction to them. Can’t help but move.
And that’s before I even get started on the love I feel for my son. Looking at a picture of him when he was small or seeing him walk towards me across the park, even writing about him now...
So, the idea of being in love with someone, that I’m supposed to love them more than anyone or anything. Well, that’s too much for me. It’s frightening.
If I were to fall in love with someone, would that mean that my love for them would be bigger than all the love I already have? If so, then we’d both be overwhelmed. We wouldn’t be able to handle it.
On the other hand, if falling in love with one person meant that I had to take my love away from the flowers, the children, the music, my son - I would be so sad, and so dependent on them to give me everything that the rest of the world had provided until then, it just wouldn’t be fair. They could only disappoint me.
My love is such that if I fell in love, in the way I think it’s supposed to be, neither of us could possibly survive the intensity.
So, when your smiling but serious face pops up on the zoom screen, and your soothing voice washes in through my headphones, I love you like a crocus, like a kid on a scooter, like Tamla Motown. And that’s huge.
Victoria ParkSmiling But Serious Faces From December’s ThreadZoomMash
With thanks to Ian Theodoreson, I am delighted to host his story entitled The Unexpected Visitor
The estate agent blurb described the house as ‘A substantial Victorian property carefully restored by the present owners, preserving many of the original features. It is located on one of the town’s premier roads overlooking the golf course’.
What the write up didn’t describe was the fact that the basement displayed yet more original features as it hadn’t been subjected to the same ‘careful restoration’ the rest of the house had. Indeed it had not been subject to any restoration as the Browns had run out of steam. They had devoted five years of their lives and all of their savings doing up the main house and had decided that enough was enough. The basement became the repository for all those things that will be incredibly useful one day and, amongst the piles of boxes, crates and a well-stocked wine rack, a family of mice installed itself. On the whole they kept themselves to themselves, only occasionally encroaching upon the main living area, and regular assaults with a variety of mousetraps by Mr Brown helped keep their numbers to manageable levels.
A neighbour down the road, sensing Mr & Mrs Brown needed a new diversion from decorating, suggested he introduce them to the golf club, at which point they hung up their paint brushes and instead attempted to master the art of hitting a small ball in a straight line, without much success. Gary Player once famously said of golf ‘The more I play, the luckier I get’: if he meant that as a generally applicable aphorism then he was wrong with regard to the Browns.
Their efforts at golf were a disappointment both to the Browns themselves and to the more conservative members of the club, who viewed them with some suspicion. Not only did they not master the technical aspects of the sport, but they didn’t really fit in with the social elite who commanded the club house either. The club secretary was a particularly pompous man, Jack Cuthbert who, in his spare time, doubled up as their local Councillor. His wife Heather, by contrast, was a rather timid woman whose presence merely served to amplify her husband’s sense of superiority.
After a number of years the time came to sell their ‘substantial Victorian pile’ and to move to something smaller. Mr Brown had something of a love/hate relationship with older properties – there was a sense of grandeur living in them but it was constantly tempered with the knowledge that at any moment the decorative ceiling might crash down around ones ears. Consequently, once they decided to sell, the need to do so became urgent, before some further defect revealed itself that would take time and energy to address.
A number of prospective buyers looked around but no offers were forthcoming. The Browns decided that the agent wasn’t doing a good enough job at explaining the potential benefits of living in the house so they decided that they would show the next people around themselves: maybe give prospective buyers a sense of the genteel lifestyle Mr Brown felt the house projected.
It was with a heavy heart therefore that they learned from the agent that ‘a lovely couple, a local Councillor and his wife’, had booked to see the house. Jack Cuthbert was every bit as pompous looking round the house as he was propping up the bar in the club house however, not deterred, Mrs Brown had arranged to serve tea and cake in the living room after the ‘tour’.
In actual fact the Cuthberts were showing some interest in the house not least, Mr Brown suspected, because its imposing bulk could be seen from the nineteenth green. It was however, at this moment, that an unexpected visitor made his presence known. During a lull in the conversation Mr Brown heard the unmistakable ‘snap’ of a Little Nipper mousetrap springing into life. It had been hidden beside the log basket, just out of sight and he had completely forgotten it was there.
Generally when a mousetrap activates, the kill is swift and clean. Occasionally however it catches the mouse a glancing blow and traps its victim without finishing it off. This was one such occasion and the unfortunate animal, its head firmly caught but still able to move its hind legs, leaped into the air and onto the carpet directly in front of Mrs Cuthbert’s feet. There was a moment’s silence as everyone contemplated the vision before them, broken by Mrs Cuthbert’s scream as she threw the piece of cake she was holding into the air and rushed out of the room. ‘How dare you’, shouted Jack Cuthbert, his face red with rage, ‘my wife is a vegetarian’.
It was at this moment that Mr Brown’s calm demeanour finally deserted him – all the tension of the sale, his general distaste for the Cuthberts and the preposterousness of the situation overwhelmed him. ‘Well, we were not expecting her to eat it!’ he shouted sarcastically after their retreating forms and watched them storm up the driveway.
‘Well, that went well’ said his wife, calmly. ‘I suspect they won’t be making an offer on the house though’.
‘And you better deal with that’ she said pointing to the writhing body on the floor, still trapped in the Little Nipper, ‘I think it’s got breathing problems’.
The following day the Browns resigned their membership of the golf club.
So I was very keen to see this movie when I read about it’s impending launch on Netflix in mid December 2020.
Kim had very kindly bought Janie a 6-month trial Netflix package earlier in the lockdown, which Janie switched on in order to see the mini-series around which Kim had designed her gift. After that, our usual reluctance to watch TV had switched in, so we had watched precisely nothing more on Netflix for just shy of six months.
So I knew we only had a few days left to watch this movie on our prepaid package before…horror of horrors…we might have had to actually pay to watch the thing, having not used our trial package for five-and-a-half months.
Anyway…
…watch it we did and extremely impressed with the performances I was.
All of the performances were very good indeed, but in particular Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis were truly excellent.
Here is the official trailer for the movie:
In truth, it is a somewhat melodramatic play but it holds the attention because it shows an extraordinary moment in the history of music, plus the history of race and gender struggles in the USA, through the lens of a genuine early recording star in decline (Ma Rainey) and a fictional trumpeter whose direct experience of prejudice, racial violence and abuse set him on a tragic path.
Central to the play is the recording of Ma Rainey’s signature song, which you can hear here:
In short, I thought it was a superb movie and well worth seeing. Janie found the accents hard to follow and found the plot a bit basic, but did agree with me that we were watching outstanding performances, beautifully filmed.
The video clips shown at the end of the webinar are embedded after the transcript below
Introduction
In 1561, Thomas Gresham, while residing in Antwerp, provided “bridging finance” to a young travelling spendthrift, Thomas Cecil; William Cecil’s son, who had been living beyond his means in Paris. A few months later, Thomas Cecil and his travelling tutor, Thomas Windebank, took sanctuary under Thomas Gresham’s roof in Antwerp. It seems likely that one of young Cecil’s dalliances in Paris had required the dynamic duo to move on from Paris in a hurry.
Th0mas Cecil, once he was a few years older and wiser
“I see, in the end,”said the disapproving father in a letter to Windebank on 4 November 1561,“my sone shall come home lyke a spendyng sott, mete to kepe a tenniss court.”
This reference, to be found in J.W. Burgon’s monumental 1839 two-volume Life & Times Of Sir Thomas Gresham, seems to be the only mention of tennis to be found in any biography of Thomas Gresham to date.
Facsimile of J.W. Burgon p427 of Volume 1
Tennis does not seem to have been a big thing to Thomas Gresham. But it was a very big thing to the Cecil family and it was a big thing in Tudor times.
So why did William Cecil, who was such a massive tennis fan he even built a tennis court at his house on the Strand, write in such disparaging tones about tennis in this context?
William Cecil with disapproving look
And how on earth did this minor Cecil family intergenerational gripe find its way, some 40 years later, into a subplot of Hamlet?
It is my intention to use this tiny fragment from Thomas Gresham’s life as a MacGuffin, or plot device, to describe tennis and the colourful characters that populated the game around the time of Thomas Gresham.
Medieval & Renaissance Tennis
Humans have played ball games with implements since the very dawn of civilisation. The Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written some 4000 years ago, uses stick and ball games as a plot device more than once.
But the game we call tennis emerged in medieval times, around the 12th century, probably initially in French monastery courtyards and subsequently in noble courts. Known as Jeu De Paume in France, this walled, galleried courtyard game played with hard balls became known as tennis in England.
Today we call the game “real tennis” to distinguish it from the modern, 19th century game played with vulcanised rubber balls on open courts of grass, clay, etc.
Real tennis is often referred to as a sport of kings. There is documentary evidence of tennis as a royal pursuit from the early 14th century. Tennis’s first “star”, for all the wrong reasons, was Louis X of France, known as Louis The Quarrelsome.
Philip IV, Louis’s dad, bought the Tour de Nesle in 1308 and had a covered tennis court built within. While Philip was clearly keen on the game, there is no evidence that he played. It is said that the fashion for covered courts emanated from young Louis’s love of the game. That love also, perhaps, proved to be Louis’s undoing. Just a couple of years after succeeding to the French throne, Louis X died, age 26, apparently after playing an especially rigorous game of tennis at Vincennes, in 1316. Louis X thus became the earliest named tennis player in history.
Quarrelsome? Moi?
There are three characteristics about Renaissance tennis that might seem alien to lovers of the modern variety of this sport which are vital to understanding what it was about in the time of Thomas Gresham:
it was originally played with the hand (hence the name “Jeu De Paume”) but by around 1500 the use of the racket was emerging, the racket becoming ubiquitous within 100 to 150 years;
the game was a wagering game. If the players were of uneven quality, “odds” or “handicapping” would be deployed, such that the stakes would be an even bet. Odds might be deployed through scoring (the lesser player being given points), through the cramping of the better player through restricting their use of the court (e.g. banning certain galleries or walls) or a mixture of those handicaps. We still use handicapping today in real tennis for all but the top level competitions;;
noble folk and monarchs tended to become very fond of the game for themselves and their own sort…while taking great pains to prohibit lesser folk from playing of tennis or such sports.
During the reign of Charles V . palm play , which may properly enough be denominated hand – tennis , was exceedingly fashionable in France, being played by the nobility for large sums of money ; and when they had lost all that they had about them , they would sometimes pledge a part of their wearing apparel rather than give up the pursuit of the game . The duke of Burgundy , according to an old historian , having lost sixty franks at palm play with the duke of Bourbon , Messire William de Lyon , and Messire Guy de la Trimouille , and not having money enough to pay them , gave his girdle as a pledge for the remainder ; and shortly afterwards he left the same girdle with the comte D ‘ Eu for eighty franks , which he also lost at tennis .
Philip The Bold, Duke of Burgundy – 14th Century loser?
As an aside, Philip the Bold was not only well-known to be an enthusiast of tennis, he was also a great enthusiast for the Pinot Noir grape; prohibiting the cultivation of the Gamay grape in Burgundy (1395), thus perpetuating that region’s fine wine tradition. Philip the Bold also initiated a musical chapel which founded the great Burgundian school of music. Tennis, wine & music – Philip was my kinda guy.
Tennis-loving royals and nobles married for strategic, territorial alliance in those days. I don’t suppose that “spreading tennis across parts of Europe that other games couldn’t reach” was central to that strategy, but such marriages seem to have contributed to the spread of the game…or in some cases possibly the tennis history of the place might have attracted the marriage.
Longue paume, or field tennis, is an outdoor variety of the game, versions of which were played across all tiers of society, which probably adopted the use of implements before jeu de paume. Elements of modern tennis and cricket derive from it. It is still played today, mostly in Picardy. It is probably the variety of the game that Edward III was banning with his infamous 1349 prohibition of sports.
Jeu de paume, the court version, almost certainly became established in Spain and the Low Countries before it became established in England. So long before Thomas Gresham popped up in Antwerp, a famous court had been established there, in Borgerhout.
The Early Tudor Period
Prior to the Tudor period, the limited popularity of tennis in England was restricted to the clergy and guilds of craftsmen in larger towns and cities in the south. The clergy tended to play the game themselves while prohibiting others from doing so; hence we have some written evidence of the game.
Henry VII, tennis enthusiast, painted 29 October 1505, by order of Herman Rinck
But the Tudor monarchs were very keen on the game, so it became a more widespread, noble sport in England from the late 15th century. It is well documented that Henry VII was a player and a fan. He liked to wager on his games and his substantial losses are well documented in royal accounting documents, as are those of his more-famously tennis-keen son, Henry VIII. Naturally those monarchs were also keen on banning the game for all but the right sort.In 1493 Henry VII decreed that, “…no sheriff or mayor or any other officer…suffer any man’s servant to play at the dice or at tennis.”
Henry VIII, who neither said “anyone for tennis?” nor did he write Greensleeves
During Henry VIII’s time, several noble courts were built and several others were planned. At Austin Friars, following the dissolution of the monasteries, Thomas Cromwell planned to build a tennis court in his garden but did not see through his plans. Drapers Hall now stands on that site.
Austin Friars Copperplate c1550
But Thomas Wolsey’s court at Hampton Court Palace did get built. There is still a court on the original site (albeit a Stuart period replacement) to this day. I have had the honour and pleasure to play there.
Dedanists Norman Hyde (left) & Christie Marrian (right) defending Henry VIII (grille)Me, marking a rubber from the Hampton Court dedans, having just (successfully) fought my own
The only other court in Great Britain that remains from that period is the Falkland Palace Court, built between 1539 & 1541 by James VI of Scotland. It is the only jeu quarré court – i.e. an older design of outdoor court, without an interior (dedans) still in use in the world. Janie and I had a delightful game there in 2018.
Believe it or not, I succeeded in hitting the ball through one of those small portholes, known as lunes, more by luck than judgement I assure you, in the course of our match. Some say that such a shot merits just one point, others say that it completes a game and yet others say that it determines the entire match. Needless to say the four of us debated that matter at length in a neighbouring hostelry after the match.
Talking of eye-witness accounts of tennis matches, there is a fascinating report by one of Henry VII of England’s attendants, of a “visit” to Windsor Castle by Philip The Handsome (another Duke of Burgundy, plus also King of Castille) and his Queen: Joanna The Mad of Castille, in early 1506:
Philip The Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, King of Castille
The Sattordaye the 7 of ffebruary…
Bothe Kyngs wente to the Tennys plays and in the upper gallery theare was Layd ij Cushenes of Clothe of gold for the ij Kyngs…
…wheare played my Lord marques [of Dorset] the Lord Howard and two other knights togethers, and after the Kyngs of Casteele had scene them play a whylle , he made partys wth the Lord marques and then played the Kyngs of Casteele with the Lord Marques of Dorset the Kyngs Lookynge one them, but the Kyngs of Castelle played wth the Rackets and gave the Lord Marques xv. and after that he had pled his pleasure and arrayed himself agene it was almost nights, and so bothe Kyngs Retorned agayne to their Lodgingss.”
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in that eye-witness account. That early 16th century period was a period of transition between hand-play and racket-play at tennis. Most scholars agree that the racket came into use around 1500. So the handicap described in the account has the King of Castille playing with a racket and the Marquess of Dorset playing with his hand, while receiving fifteen (i.e. starting each game 15-0 up). Personally, I’d prefer the racket, but perhaps the Marquess was a very handy player.
Sadly, the account doesn’t tell us who won the tennis match, but the story doesn’t end brilliantly well for the visiting monarch; who in reality was more a hostage than a guest of Henry VII. Philip signed some helpful treaties and trade deals to help bring his “visit” to an amicable conclusion. Still, within a few months, Philip The Handsome died in Spain; probably poisoned/assassinated there. This made Joanna The Mad even more distraught than usual, apparently.
Joanna The Mad, but possibly Joanna The Gaslit or Joanna The Misconstrued
Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset, who as a youngster had been a ward of Henry VII, was, by 1508, sent to the tower as a suspected conspirator against Henry VII. Only the accession of Henry VIII the following year saved Grey, who had a decent run as a high-ranking courtier after that narrow escape. His grand-daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was not so lucky; famously the “nine day queen”. Coincidentally , one of his other grand-daughters, Mary Grey, pops up as a house guest for Thomas Gresham in 1569, thanks to William Cecil again, perennial supplier of house guests to Thomas Gresham. A politically sensitive and expensive guest, Mary Grey stayed with the Greshams, much to their chagrin, until 1573, by which time Sir William Cecil had become Lord Burghley.
The Late Tudor Period, Cecil & Gresham
William Cecil was a contemporary of Thomas Gresham; the two worked well together on matters of state and commerce from the early 1550s onwards. Cecil became Elizabeth’s Secretary of State in 1558. By 1560 he was ensconced in Cecil House on the Strand on the site that is now the Strand Palace Hotel and The Lyceum Theatre. Cecil House had a tennis court designed by Henry Hawthorne, the Royal Architect. It was by all accounts quite a small court with unequal lengths of penthouse along both side walls; it might have been used for hand tennis rather than racket tennis.
By that time, the prohibition of sports such as tennis had been clarified through several of Henry VIII’s statutes. Noblemen and those with an annual income of £100 or more were permitted to possess a tennis court on their own property.
Henry VIII’s 1541 statute included a system of licencing for public tennis courts and bowling alleys. Mary I abolished such licences in 1555. Elizabeth reintroduced a system of licencing for tennis courts circa 1567.
So when William Cecil vented in 1561 that his son Thomas was “mete to kepe a tenniss court”, he was not talking about the dignified tennis court that graced Cecil House. He was referring to barely reputable or even disreputable places, more or less gambling dens, frequented by “idle and misruled persons”, as the Mary prohibition statute described them.
William Cecil was an intriguing and important character during the second half of the Tudor period. Fortunately for us, he had a tendency to keep everything and to insist on his correspondence being kept, which is why we have such a rich treasure trove of material on his life and those around him, such as Thomas Gresham.
Another fascinating character who entered and stayed in William Cecil’s orbit for many decades was Michelangelo Florio, an Italian pastor who converted to Lutherism and escaped execution in Rome by the skin of his teeth around 1550. William Cecil helped establish Michelangelo Florio in London, where he became pastor to the Italian Reform Church in the City of London and chaplain to Lady Jane Grey. On this occasion, William Cecil himself gave his guest house room which led, rumour has it, to a scandalous affair with one of Cecil’s servants which resulted in Florio’s marriage to the servant and the birth of the more famous Renaissance humanist John Florio.
Soon after John’s birth, Lady Jane Grey became the nine day queen, succeeded by the Catholic Queen Mary, at which point London was not really the place for a firebrand Italian Lutheran pastor and his family.
John Florio
In the early 1570s, John Florio, steeped in a humanist education, returned to England. Around 1578, William Cecil (by then Lord Burleigh), sponsored John to study at Oxford where he excelled and the rest is history. Florio wrote several wonderful works and translated many others, not least Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Florio’s own works include First Frutes & Second Frutes, which are basically primers in the English and Italian languages. Chapter 2 of the Second Frutes book (pp15-29) is a dramatised story of a day going to play tennis with the intention to go on to the theatre afterwards.
There’s a good deal of insight into Tudor tennis in that little drama, which is a fascinating and amusing read. But Shakespeare it isn’t…
…however there are those who believe that John Florio was Shakespeare. I think those people are mistaken, but I do believe that Shakespeare probably met John Florio (through their mutual patron, the Earl of Southampton). Or at the very least Shakespeare will have read several of Florio’s works, not least the Frutes books and the Montaigne translations.
Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford
Of course there are a great many “alternative Shakespeare authorship” theories, the most popular of which, Edward de Vere, Earl Of Oxford, was yet another of William Cecil’s long-term house guests; his ward for about 10 years from 1562 and subsequently Cecil’s son-in-law. In the early 1590s Oxford unsuccessfully attempted to marry off his daughter Elisabeth to the Earl of Southampton.
These geezers were all moving in similar circles, but that, to my mind, does not provide credibility to such “alternative authorship” theories about Shakespeare. But what do I know?
What is widely believed and is almost certainly true is that the character of Polonius in Hamlet was based on William Cecil and the character of Laertes, Polonius’s ne’er-do-well son abroad, based on the young Thomas Cecil. Scholars have suggested the Cecil connection for a great many reasons. For our purposes, Act Two Scene One of Hamlet has the sole mention of tennis in Hamlet, in a context that is reminiscent of the sole mention of tennis in Thomas Gresham’s biographies.
A stained glass representation of Polonius
So was Thomas Cecil “mete to kepe a tenniss court” in the end? He was less adept at stately matters than his dad and less adept than his younger brother, Robert, who became the first Earl of Salisbury and built Hatfield House. Robert Cecil didn’t build a tennis court there, but his Victorian descendants built a fine one, a refurbished version of which is still in use there today.
Hatfield House Tennis Court
But still Thomas Cecil had a pretty successful career. He inherited Cecil House, changing its name to Exeter House when he became the first Earl of Exeter, so to that extent he did keep a tennis court.
The Old Rectory, Wimbledon
He also bought, in 1576, The Old Rectory and most of the land that is now Wimbledon Park, where he developed Wimbledon Palace.
Thomas Cecil didn’t develop tennis courts in Wimbledon. But 300 years later, some other fellows did develop tennis courts, of sorts, around there, which was the start of a sustained, global, commercial sporting success. Thomas Gresham would no doubt have approved.
Wimbledon Championship, 1877
Further Reading & References
Ian Harris’s Ogblog Tetralogy On The Origins Of Tennis:
Tennis: A Cultural History, Heiner Gillmeister, A&C Black, 1998 or Tennis A Cultural History (Second edition), Heiner Gillmeister, Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2017
Real Tennis Today and Yesterday, John Shneerson, Ronaldson Publications, 2015
Willis Faber Book Of Tennis & Rackets, Lord Aberdare, Hutchinson, 1980
We ended up pursuing a rather convoluted route this Sunday for our East Acton FoodCycle run.
The gig started normally enough. There’s Janie, Father “Friar Tuck” Richard, Alannah & Francesco from a few week’s earlier, at Our Lady of Fatima Church, White City
FoodCycle provide us with an excellent app, Circuit For Teams, which does a wonderful job of listing our drops, linking to the satnav & optimising our route.
But this week something had changed. It might have had something to do with my upgraded iPhone. Circuit is now offering us a choice of satnavs, which is great, because we both like (and are used to) Waze, whereas it was previously hard-linked to GoogleMaps, which we like less.
But here’s the thing.
It seems that, in amongst all the upgrading excitement, but unbeknown to us, the app had switched on some functions that allow the app to take instructions by voice, using Siri, Apple’s voice control gizmo.
Early in our journey that day, Janie and I were chatting about travel, or rather our much diminished desire to travel at the moment. Janie pondered where we might want to go if/when the pandemic is over and we thus discussed Madagascar, where we were planning to go in 2018, until an outbreak of pneumonic plague there in late 2017 rather put us off the idea. (In the end, we went to Japan instead, in autumn 2018.)
After the first drop, the Circuits app seemed to be in a spin of re-routing and re-optimising. No matter, I thought, I know the way from White City to North Kensington for this second drop.
But the app was still in a spin ahead of the third drop:
… it keeps saying “route not possible”…
…said Janie, to which I merely said:
…ask it to re-optimise again – I know the way to our third drop anyway.
But Janie kept reporting that the app was failing to show a route for our journey and after our third drop, we were heading to Hammersmith to a new location and I really did want the app to show me the way…
…so I took a close look at the thing myself…
…the app had added “Madagascar” to the list of destinations and was trying (and for some obscure reason, failing) to route us to Hammersmith via Madagascar.
At this juncture I was reminded of the scene in the animated film, Madagascar, after the penguins have taken control of the ship in a “special forces style” operation, only to realise that they have absolutely no idea how to use the ship’s navigation systems. That scene is 1’40” into the clip below, all of which is well worth watching.
Much like the penguins, I tried pressing buttons to see what happens – in particular I thought it might be a good idea to remove Madagascar from the list of FoodCycle delivery destinations.
That worked. Once I deleted Madagascar and pressed “reoptimize route”, within a second or two, order had been restored and Circuits was again performing as expected and showing an excellent route for our deliveries.
Thus, in the next hour or 90 minutes, it was mission accomplished. Hurrah.
Because, when we have a lot of food to deliver for FoodCycle…
I am delighted that Ian Theodoreson has asked me to guest publish this charming performance piece.
The question of what should comprise my Desert Island Disc choices has occupied me for most of my adult life and I realise I am still some way from reaching the definitive selection. So I offer the following as an interim position.
When it comes to my favourite piece of music I wondered whether to include my current fave rave – ‘Drowning in Tears’ by Gary Moore…
…but think I ought to stick with the Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan-Williams which invokes memories of idyllic summer days past and has been part of my personal soundtrack for forty years.
In terms of my favourite book I did consider choosing ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Eric Maria Remarque but given I have read it so many times I have practically memorised it, I thought I would take John Steinbeck’s ‘East of Eden’ instead and enjoy its beautifully crafted analysis of the human condition.
So, I have cheated thus far by naming two books and two pieces of music, but there is no such equivocation when it comes to the ‘luxury’ object. It is, and always has been … a drum kit.
I have wanted to be a drummer for as long as I have wanted to be a fireman, which is basically for ever. For some reason my parents were not willing to indulge my passion and preferred my taking up the violin instead and by the time I left home other interests overwhelmed me and my ambition faded into the background. However a desert island seems like an ideal place to start learning as long as it comes with a never ending supply of drumsticks.
Like many of my generation I was transfixed by what is now termed classic rock, although always avoiding the heavier end of the genre. One group that didn’t particularly trouble my consciousness was Cream, despite being arguably one of the most influential bands of the rock era. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and the drummer Ginger Baker could be considered the founding fathers of rock music.
Although Eric Clapton was the only one to go on to apparent greater exploits the music of Cream remains foundational despite the fact they only played together for just over two years from 1966 to 1968 before the irascible Ginger Baker decided he couldn’t stand touring anymore.
I was only eleven years of age when Cream split up and consequently knew very little about them so it was perhaps surprising that I entered the ballot at work to secure a pair of tickets for one of their four reunion concerts at the Albert Hall in 2005 – the only time they would ever play together again. My employer, Barnardo’s owned two debenture holder seats at the Albert Hall which they would allow staff to purchase, with a ballot being held if demand exceeded supply.
Given it was my p.a. who handled the ballot process it is perhaps fortunate that I was on holiday at the time the ballot was drawn as her phone call to tell me I had been successful was followed not long afterwards by a call from the full time UNISON official to let me know that his members were taking out a collective grievance against me. Fortunately he was joking.
So I subsequently found myself in the Albert Hall, surrounded by a crowd of ‘crusties’ all dressed in suits, having come, like me, straight from work, when it suddenly dawned on me that it was me who was the interloper. The music we were about to hear belonged to this older generation and in actual fact I probably only knew two songs that Cream had ever produced.
The guy sitting next to me looked nervous – he had been at the very last concert Cream had played in October 1968 and he was desperately worried that the moment he had dreamed of for over 36 years would be a crushing disappointment.
The concert was a triumph. Ginger Baker performed one of his trademark ten minute drum solos (while Eric and Jack went back stage to make themselves a cup of tea and finish the Times crossword) and the crowd got drunk on nostalgia.
At the end I asked my neighbour how he had found it. ‘Better than I dared hope’ he said. ‘How did it compare to 1968?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know, I was too stoned in ’68 to remember’ he replied.
If you can remember Cream in the 1960s, you weren’t really there
One impression that night that stayed with me from the concert was the mesmerising performance of Ginger Baker. He was notoriously mercurial character and not given to saying very much so it was surprising then to hear him speaking during the concert and particularly at the end of his mammoth drum solo when he ended up, in his gruff South London tones with ‘I thank you’. He had a very particular way of speaking, and this closing flourish stuck in my head. (Rohan has suggested he was channelling his inner Arthur Askey).
A few days later, with the noise of the concert still ringing in my ears, I was standing on the platform at Loughton tube station when suddenly the tannoy sprang into life:
‘This is a service update from the Loughton control centre. There are slight delays on the Circle and District lines and a good service on all other London Underground lines. I thank you’.
There was that voice again. I looked around excitedly at all my fellow passengers – Ginger Baker works in the control room at Loughton Station, isn’t that amazing – but no one else stirred. I went back down the stairs to peer in through the control room window but I was too late – a shadowy figure was stepping out of the room and closing the door behind him.
Could I really be the only person who knew that Ginger Baker has an alternative career working for London Underground? Did his colleagues realise who they were working alongside? Did he use a pseudonym? … so many questions lay unanswered.
It wasn’t the last time I heard his voice on the station tannoy…each time the announcement was signed off with his ‘I thank you’…but I tell you this, I haven’t heard it since October 2019, which is when Ginger Baker died. Coincidence or what?
Desert Island Discs? Desert Island frigging Discs!
Writing and performing at ThreadZoomMash can help us forget about the privations of lockdown?
How? By getting us to imagine the ultimate self-isolation, alone on some crappy desert island with JUST ONE poxy record? Even Roy Plomley and chums allow eight poxy records.
Look – I know that Desert Island Discs is a quintessentially BBC thing that people in Britain have loved for decades. A national treasure. I cannot deny the success of the genre. Nor can I deny its charm. Heck, I have often listened. I have often enjoyed the programme.
But I profoundly dislike the central conceit of the show. In particular the eight-record scenario leaves me feeling sceptical…or do I mean cynical…most times I listen to the show. Who can sum up their musical tastes and satisfy their thirst for music with just eight tracks?
I suspect that most guests go through a “style consultant” process, to help choose eight records that say enough about them to satisfy their fan base, while not turning too many people off them. That’s why so many people chose some Beethoven and/or Mozart. Unless they are UK politicians, who relentlessly choose a bit of Elgar or Vaughan-Williams; just to prove how very English or British they are.
Actually, that thought about politicians has brought dissembling insincerity to the front of my mind. By gosh, Rohan – this topic choice for ThreadZoomMash reeks of BoJo or DomCum levels of hypocrisy.
After all, YOU are the fellow who recently wrote the lockdown piece, Spotify vs Top Of the Pops. YOU are the fellow who once wrote a live show entitled, “What Listening To 10,000 Love Songs Has Taught Me About Love”. In fact, while you, Rohan Candappa, indulged yourself piloting the latter show at the Cockpit in 2017, a riot kicked off on the surrounding Church Street & Lisson Green Estates. It’s a minor miracle that you and we, your long-suffering friends in the audience, survived to tell the tale.
Anyway, my point Rohan, is that you of all people, the “Spotify, Top Of the Pops, 10,000 love songs” dude, should know how depleting, how devastating, this “one song per island” idea of yours is.
Oh no, not I. I will survive, there, musically. Here is my survival plan.
My object is my trusty friend, Benjy The Baritone Ukulele.
My book, which admittedly has yet to be published…but publishing my choice of book is, frankly, the least you can do for me in these circumstances, is: “The Complete Works Of English Language Song, From The Year c1220 to The Year 2020”. Ideally with chords & music as well as lyrics for the songs.
My one measly track will be a recording of my own mash-up masterpiece, helpfully spanning circa 800 years of English Language Song. It is entitled Mr Blue Sky Is Icumen In and it sounds like this:
MR BLUE SKY IS ICUMEN IN
Sumer is icumen in, the nymphs and shepherds dance
Bryd one brere, groweth sed and bloweth med
And don't you know, amarylis dance in green–ee-ee-een.
Lightly whipping o’er the dales, with wreaths of rose and laurel,
Fair nymphs tipping, with fauns and satyrs tripping
Mister Blue Sky is living here today hey, hey hey.
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Hey you with the angels face, bright, arise, awake, awake!
About her charret, with all admiring strains as today, all creatures now are merry…(merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry-minded).
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Hey there mister blue, who likes to love, lhude sing cuccu;
Nauer nu, ne swik thu, sing hey nonny nonny nu.
Mirie it is while sumer ilast, in darkness let me fast,
Flow my tears, farewell all joys for years,
Never mind, I joy not in early, I joy not in early bliss.
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
Postscript: The Evening Itself
There were eight of us live on ThreadZoomMash. Rohan Candappa made a short introduction, using John Donne (No Man Is An Island) as a helpful segway into the evening’s pieces.
Possibly it was the Tudor/Jacobean connection that encouraged Rohan to ask me to go first this evening. Possibly he simply wanted to get his own back on me. Who could blame him?
Adrian’s piece followed mine; a really charming rite of passage piece about an evening in 1985 when a 15 year old Adrian was “picked up” and taken to a party by a lovely girl while Live Aid was happening elsewhere.
I guess the Desert Island Discs theme encouraged most of the group to reflect on their lives. Terry certainly did a bit of that, but couldn’t resist the idea of Dessert Island Discs, suggesting that one might be macarooned on a dessert island. Thanks Tel.
Ian Theodoreson made me feel bad about my quip about mendacious politicians choosing Elgar and Vaughan Williams, as Ian admitted that The Lark Ascending would probably be his solo record pick. Sorry Ian – I do not think of you as a mendacious anything; quite the opposite. I guess some people really DO like Nimrod and/or The Lark Ascending best of all.
But Ian’s story mostly focussed on a visit to the Albert Hall to see a Cream Reunion Gig in May 2005. Ian subsequently became convinced that Ginger Baker was making the passenger announcements on Loughton underground station between 2005 and his departure from this mortal coil in October 2019. It’s hard to disprove that theory from where I am sitting.
Jan’s piece was charming and delightful. It focussed on her choice of book: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, which Jan apparently read when still ridiculously young and before she read the book for which Looking Glass is the sequel, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. This I found fascinating as I do recall loving the earlier novel (Wonderland) as a small child but being perplexed and scared by the sequel. Jan’s made of robust stuff. Who knew? I don’t think Make Someone Happy by Jimmy Durante gets much business on Desert Island Discs these days, but Jan would chose it.
Kay also harked back to her youth and the ways she confused people by not conforming to their gender stereotypes. A beautifully constructed piece, full of Kay’s personality and culminating, with predictable hindsight, playing her choice of record, Rebel Rebel.
Geraldine’s poetic piece explored her young adult background; very different from any of ours. Somewhat earlier and in the USA. Evocative without being straightforward narrative, it can do with reading rather than describing, as my describing wouldn’t do it justice. I felt a little badly for the second time of the evening when Geraldine announced that her sole disc would be I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor, the central lyric of which I had flagrantly pinched as a bridge in my short piece.
Then Rohan read a wonderful piece by John Eltham, who unfortunately was unable to join us for the evening. Not a straight line narrative. Like many of the pieces, it had a rite of passage at its core, by which I don’t mean “passage” in a Night Boat To Cairo sense (although that was John’s choice of record), but in a Bildugsroman sense. It was a beautifully crafted piece. Much like Geraldine’s, it defies description or rather I couldn’t do it justice with description. It should be read.
If we’re lucky, I might be able to persuade some of the others, including Geraldine and/or John, to publish their pieces on Ogblog so readers can judge the pieces for themselves.
In John Eltham’s case in particular this is a huge credit to Rohan as well as John. I remember John saying to me only a few months ago that he didn’t have the confidence to write ThreadMash pieces. He has now written two superb pieces, both brimming with self-assurance and flourish. I’m genuinely impressed and delighted.
Rohan, of course, couldn’t resist closing off the evening with a masterful pun, linking his opening, John Donne, with his ending, which was reciting the Eltham piece, or, as Rohan put it, the piece “wot John done”. Perhaps we haven’t progressed as far from the schoolboy skits and word plays as I hoped.
Still, it was a tremendous evening. With thanks to everyone involved, not least Rohan, for making it happen.
