The heist movie, as a genre, isn’t really my thing. It feels disconnected from the real world, to me, or at least disconnected from my world.
I did have a couple of youthful, personal experiences of failed heists. Those actual experiences no doubt informed my negative subjective perception of the genre.
I’m delighted to report that the police foiled The Great Battersea Camera Shop Heist. A few minutes after the crime, a bloodied gentleman presented himself at Bolingbroke Hospital, with several items from my dad’s smashed shop window about his person, having left a trail of blood along the few streets between the shop and hospital.
I remember my father commending the police for their astute detective work in apprehending the photographic equipment fiend. The police officers, without any outward signs of irony in their response, accepted dad’s praise smugly. Thus distracted, the police failed to book my dad for using child labour (me) as assistance for the squalid clean-up operation.
My second experience of a failed heist had the added excitement of cash, contraband and gun violence. This was in the mid-1980s, when I was working, on assignment, in the accounts office, at a large wine & spirits cash and carry warehouse, The Nose, underneath the arches at London Bridge.
One of the administrative employees in that office, I think she was named Diane, was a large, well-built woman. If you had gone to central casting looking for someone to play the part of a 1970s East German Olympic shot-putter, you might have chosen her.
One afternoon, while us office workers were quietly beavering away, we suddenly heard a loud commotion just outside the office. Diane leapt out of her chair and dashed onto the warehouse floor, yelling, “what the bloody hell is going on out here?”
A few moments later she came back into the office. “That’s got rid of them”. Shortly after that, we heard the sound of multiple police car sirens, after which the place was swarming with police for the rest of the afternoon.
It might have looked a bit like this. This and the headline image with thanks to DeepAI
Several (I think two) armed robbers had entered the warehouse in search of cash. They can only have been moments away from our office, where indeed they would have found plentiful cash, when Diane, unwittingly, bounded out with her shouty enquiry. The sight and sound of Diane apparently scared the armed robbers into running away sharpish.
Everyone in the office was in a state of shocked relief on discovering what had happened, not least how close we had come to being held up at gunpoint. Diane seemed the least shocked of all of us.
My work at The Nose was connected with an earlier heist of the non-violent kind. The owners were accused (and eventually convicted) of a sophisticated VAT and bonded goods fraud which, at that time, was believed to amount to £3M; then the largest Customs & Excise fraud ever.
My firm’s role was to help get the business back onto the straight and narrow, as the tax and judicial authorities wanted the business to continue trading so that the authorities might recover the defrauded value.
That role, twixt business and authorities, was very unusual. At one point, on the first day of the trial, I ended up dashing to the Old Bailey with an incriminating document I had, in the nick of time, discovered. Richard Ducann QC, strangely more famous for the Lady Chatterley , Last Tango & Fanny Hill obscenity cases than for The Nose case, persuaded the owners to change their pleas to guilty on the back of their self-incrimination.
At that juncture, some of the customs people mistakenly thought I was their stool pigeon (ha-cha-cha-cha). But my firm’s role was to support the business, not to do the authorities bidding.
I had an idea to do forensic accounting using seminal computer modelling techniques (spreadsheets), to ascertain the true value of the fraud. In part, that required me to model the economics of the entire wine trade; someone had to do it. The exercise proved the actual value of the fraud was much less than the £3M the authorities had asserted. Thus I quickly fell from favour with the customs folk.
I learnt a lot and enjoyed doing that forensic accounting assignment. But I soon drifted away from such work, after just one other 1980s fraud case. Yet now, nearly 40 years later, I’m minded to re-assemble the old firm’s investigative team. One last enormous, audacious, forensic accounting case. Just think of the fees. We’d all be able to retire in luxury…and what could possibly go wrong?
The Evening Itself, Including Several Other Heists
It is my solemn duty, in my capacity as The Scribe (aka ‘ammer ‘arris, apparently) to report on the evening.
The Boss (Rohan), His Moll (Jan), Independent Scrutiniser (Chris) & The Polymath (Kay)
We ate Moroccan food at Souk, the scene of earlier crimes perpetrated by The Boss and some of his cronies:
After the grub, it was down to business. Usual ThreadMash style – Rohan introduced and linked the pieces. On this occasion he went for some musical links – some funny, some just plain weird.
First up was Kay, whose story started off like one of her rather wonderful childhood stories about spending time with her grandfather, but then got darker and darker, as a heist story emerged from the seemingly innocent fun at the start of piece.
Next up was me – see performance piece above.
Then John Eltham told an intriguing tale from the 18th century, partly based on true events, partly on conjecture, with a mixture of piracy, mutiny, hidden treasure and betrayal. Is it a spoiler to say that, despite the tropical setting, many jewels end up buried where the sun doesn’t shine.
Julie was next. She imagined a family business doing heists to order, with a female member of the family nonchalantly going through the businesses terms and conditions with a telephone enquirer. At least one of the cancellation clauses seemed to be an existential problem in more ways than one. It was a very funny piece…
…as was Jan’s piece, which brought everyone who had assembled that evening into play. The Boss in her piece is a sinister character with a bunch of unsuspecting cronies, who are all writing creative pieces to order, not realising that The Boss is stealing all of their stories and publishing them as his own. Who could possibly stop him? Perhaps the quiet, demure one, who also happens to be The Boss’s moll.
We all chatted together for a while…before The Boss set our next assignment and encouraged his accomplices in Souk to extract money from us.
After that, some of the gang scarpered sharpish – especially those with long journeys. Several of us stuck around to try and put the world to rights. We failed, but at least we tried.
Perhaps we should have debated world affairs over coffee, in the 18th century style. Right at the end of the evening, I suggested same to Kay, as a way of mentioning my Thomas Paine blue plaque project, a mile or so north of Souk, in Fitzrovia, three doors down from the house in which my dad was born.
In 1872 the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) codified the laws of tennis, unifying the game. When lawn tennis emerged, burgeoning with multiple codes, just a couple of years later, it seemed reasonable that the MCC, which was the guardian of the laws of cricket, rackets and tennis, should take the lead.
That process, which started on the playing field of Lord’s in 1875, and continued in the columns of The Field magazine, is well documented. But what of the people at the heart of that process? Where was the Chair of the MCC Tennis Committee, Spencer Ponsonby, when this story kicked off? Why did Ponsonby reappear nominatively-extended, as Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, when he signed off the Laws of Lawn Tennis in May 1875?
What was tennis’s resulting existential crisis and how did high-falutin’ sporting lawmakers from Lord’s, Prince’s and All England resolve it within a few years? Across the pond in the USA, how did James Dwight change his mind about lawn tennis, having “voted it a fraud” when first he tried it around 1875? And in later years, what did Spencer Ponsonby-Fane do for the enduring benefit of both Lord’s and The Newport Casino (aka The International Tennis Hall Of Fame)?
Laying Down the Laws Before 1875 And All That
The process that led to the unified codification of laws for lawn tennis in the 1870s is well-documented and has been much discussed over the years.
In summary:
In 1872 the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) codified the laws (or rules) of tennis, unifying the game.
The MCC Rules Of Tennis, April 1872, Front & Back Pages
Around the same time (late 1860s to early 1870s), lawn tennis emerged, from various games played in gardens, loosely based on other sports and pastimes such as tennis, rackets and badminton. Major Walter Clopton Wingfield was one of those innovators who took his idea further, by patenting, in early 1874:
Sphairistikè or Lawn Tennis: A New and Improved Court for Playing the Ancient Game of Tennis .
Henceforward Major Wingfield’s agents (not he, a gentlemen, engaging in trade, good heavens no) sold boxed sets of his game to the great and the good.
But Major Wingfield was not the only person developing a lawn version of tennis around that time.
In Birmingham and then Leamington, Major ‘Harry’ Gem & his pal, Augurio Perera, developed a lawn game, which they variously named pelota, lawn rackets, and lawn tennis. By late 1874, they had codified and published the rules of their Leamington Club.
Part of MS 3057, the scrapbook of T H Gem – one of the inventors of Lawn Tennis. Lawn Tennis or Pelota; Rules (changed to Laws by T H Gem) of the Game, as played by the Leamington Club. Previous reference 150861 / ZZ32. Cover of marked up draft (above) and version dated 1 January 1875 below.
The Leamington crowd seemed content to play their game in their own way at their own club without seeking to impose their equipment or rules/laws on others.
But there was an alternative “boxed set” game, named Germains Lawn Tennis, produced by cricket and croquet enthusiast John Hinde Hale, in 1874, in competition with Major Wingfield’s Sphairistikè Lawn Tennis.
Germains Lawn tennis: Box Cover above and rules cover below.John Hinde Hale (above) with some of his All England Croquet mates (below)Left to right: John Henry “Stonehenge” Walsh, Samuel Horace Clarke Maddock, Henry “Cavendish” Jones, John Hinde Hale, Rev. AC Pearson, Major CS Lane.
Meanwhile, “back at the ranch”, a young Harvard graduate, James Dwight, returned in the USA after his post graduating European travels in Europe, in 1874, with a lawn tennis kit.
Dwight almost certainly bought and brought a Wingfield Sphairistikè kit, although contemporary writings were silent on that detail. The booklet presented to Dwight by WW Sherman as a replacement for his lost booklet of rules, now housed at the Houghton Library at Harvard, is unquestionably a first edition Wingfield. Dwight refers to that booklet in the preface of his 1893 book Practical Lawn Tennis.
Subsequently, of his earliest efforts, Dwight wrote:
Mr. F.R. Sears, the elder brother of the champion [Richard Dudley Sears], and I put up the net and tried the game. As we had no lines and as we hit the ball in no particular direction, very naturally we could not return it. So we voted the whole thing a fraud and put it away. Perhaps a month later, finding nothing to do, we tried it again and this time in earnest. I remember even now that each won a game, and as it rained in the afternoon, we played in rubber boots and coats rather than lose a day.
Clearly, despite the soggy nature of that second go, it was enough to inspire Dwight and his friends in Nahant, Massachusetts. They organised a neighbourhood tournament as early as 1876 and then Dwight founded the United States National Lawn Tennis Association in 1881. That year the first US National Singles Championship was held [here], at the Newport Casino.
But let us return to England in late 1874. The new lawn game was burgeoning with multiple codes. Debate about conflicting rules and anomalies was rife; discussion in the pages of The Field was fraught. It seemed reasonable that the MCC, which was the guardian of the laws of cricket, rackets and tennis, should take the lead in helping to unify the laws of this new game, having successfully unified the laws of tennis just a couple of years earlier. Robert Allan “Fitz” Fitzgerald suggested such in a letter to The Field on 28 November 1874:
Extract from The Field 28 November 1874
The 1875
Lo and behold, in the February 1875 edition of The Field, letters from Fitz and John Moyer Heathcote, together with a formal notice from the former, announced an open meeting at Lord’s on 3 March 1875, preceded by, weather permitting, a practical exhibition of the game in its various forms.
Fitz was Secretary of the MCC in the hugely developmental years 1863 to 1876, becoming the first paid Secretary in 1865. In 1872, Fitz led the MCC’s first tour abroad, to North America, which he reported in light-hearted yet excruciating detail in his 1873 book, Wickets In The West.
The 3 March 1875 play-off on the “lawn” that is the Lord’s cricket ground outfield did go ahead; Wingfield’s Sphairistikè and Hales’s Germains Tennis were exhibited and various ideas were debated at length.
For the most part, it was Wingfield’s ideas that prevailed; in particular his distinguishing so-called hour-glass-shaped court.
Identical Isosceles trapezoids joined by a net at the shorter parallel line. Not an hour-glass shape.
Both of the box set codes used rackets scoring, as indeed did the (unrepresented) Leamington Club rules. Word is that JM Heathcote advocated a rectangular court and tennis scoring. He was a barrister by profession, but did not prevail when advocating for those matters in 1875. He got his way on those matters soon enough.
Where the real tennis expert Heathcote did prevail is in the manner of the serve and matters of the cloth. The May 1875 MCC Laws of Lawn Tennis that emerged in the aftermath of that March meeting decreed:
Rule 3 …the ball shall drop between the net and the service line of the court diagonally opposed to that from which it was delivered.
Rule 7 …Balls covered with white cloth shall be used in fine weather.
None of the pre-existing codes had regulated the serve as Rule 3 did, and much of the debate had been about the serve. The earlier codes had pretty much been unified in insisting that the serve land between the service line and the back line of the court, rather than between the service line and the net.
In early 1875, the Edinburgh Review had published the first ever journal article on lawn tennis: Lusio Pilaris & Lawn Tennis, anonymously authored by George John Cayley. It’s a fascinating read. Amongst many other things, Cayley fretted, as others had done in the columns of The Field, that big servers were dominating the lawn game. His solution was to have two nets, one high for the serve to go over (essentially mandating a lob or floated serve) and a lower one for all subsequent shots to go over.
What could possibly have gone wrong with that set up?
The May 1875 MCC solution to the serve problem is much neater than Cayley’s and largely survives to this day, as does the idea of cloth-covered balls.
The scoring system, which JM Heathcote described in his February 1875 letter to The Field as…
…the rather anomalous mode of scoring…only when hand-in (borrowed from racquets and Eton fives)…
…remained unchanged by the MCC in its initial, May 1875, published Laws of Lawn Tennis. But that important debate did not go away and we shall return to it later, as indeed did the lawn tennis powers in the late 1870s.
All this has been well documented elsewhere; there are copious references linked in the on-line paper. I hope the above summary is suitably neat.
Spencer Cecil Brabazon Ponsonby-Fane
Sir Spencer Cecil Brabazon Ponsonby-Fane
Strangely, one central character from the 1870s story of the laws of tennis codification, real and lawn, is rarely mentioned in its context. The Chair of the MCC’s Tennis Committee; Spencer Cecil Brabazon Ponsonby-Fane.
Now there’s a name to get your mouth around. I must admit, as an occasional comedy writer as well as an occasional historian, that I don’t think I could make up a better, fictional-comedic name for a 19th century MCC grandee.
Better yet, Spencer Ponsonby is a fascinating character whose influence has almost certainly been understated by past historians, possibly because his methods of influence tended to be low key.
Spencer Ponsonby was born in 1824, the sixth son of John Ponsonby, the 4th Earl of Bessborough. Spencer was the tenth of fourteen children, born and raised in their home, 3 Cavendish Square. He was probably home educated and joined the Foreign Office at the age of 16, where he had a distinguished career for the next 17 years.
Spencer was close to his older brother Frederick, who went on to be the 6th Earl of Bessborough. Those two brothers, along with several others, founded I Zingari in 1845, an early example of a peripatetic cricket club, with strong links into the MCC, which was highly influential in the development of cricket in the mid 19th century. I Zingari effectively invented “jazz-hat cricket” several decades before jazz emerged.
They were also keen amateur dramatics folk; Frederick and Spencer also founded The Old Stagers in 1842, which had close links with Kent County Cricket Club and I Zingari, playing a central part in Canterbury Cricket Week for more than half-a-century.
Spencer served on the MCC Committee 1866-68, 1870-73, and 1875-78; then was Treasurer from 1879 until his death in 1916.
So where was Spencer Ponsonby when the hoo-ha about the laws of lawn tennis kicked off in late 1874? He was clearly on a rule-based break from the main MCC committee at that time and it seems that the MCC Tennis committee was still somewhat of an ad hoc affair. The earliest Tennis Committee minute book starts in late 1875, with the 1872 laws of tennis and 1875 laws of lawn tennis inserted at the front.
But there’s his name, on the Laws of Lawn Tennis published in The Field in late May 1875: Spencer Ponsonby Fane.
But wait! On the 1872 Laws Of Tennis, his name is Spencer Ponsonby. Now it is Spencer Ponsonby Fane How did Ponsonby-Fane gain his extra name?
The simple answer to that puzzle is interesting and easy enough to find, but some of the stories behind that simple answer are fascinating history and inform our story about this man.
The simple answer: Lady Cecily Jane Georgiana Fane, died in December 1874 leaving her estates, including a beautiful but crumbling ruin near Yeovil in Somerset, Brympton d’Evercy, to her nephew and godson, Spencer Ponsonby, on condition that he adopt the name Fane.
Before progressing Spencer’s story, let’s briefly wallow in Georgiana Fane’s biggest claim to fame; that she was romantically connected with The Duke of Wellington. Subsequently, after the Duke gave Georgiana the boot, she stalked Wellington in increasingly dotty ways. I have linked to two juicy accounts of this story in the on-line version of this paper.
Parenthetically, I feel bound to point out that Lady Georgiana Fane was not Ponsonby’s only eccentric aunt who had been romantically linked with Napoleonic era superstars, including The Duke of Wellington himself. Lady Caroline Lamb, nee Ponsonby, was John Ponsonby (Spencer’s dad’s) sister. Lady Caroline Lamb famously described Lord Byron, with whom she had a tempestuous affair, as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. In her distress at the demise of her Byron affair, in 1815, it is widely believed that she had an affair with the Duke of Wellington, who, in any event, publicly comforted Caroline Lamb around that time.
The Duke of Wellington was, by repute, a keen tennis player. He accepted an invitation to become a member of the James Street Tennis Club in 1820, although it is not known whether he ever played there. Around the same time, the Duke built his own tennis court at his stately home, Stratfield Saye, near Reading. The Duke famously played tennis with Prince Albert there.
Anyway, as Oscar Wilde might have said in the context of Spencer Ponsonby’s aunts:
To have one eccentric aunt have a notorious affair with The Duke of Wellington may be regarded as misfortune, to have two looks like carelessness.
Let us return to the tennis turmoil of winter 1874/1875 and the spring of 1875. Ponsonby family legend, recorded in Charles Clive-Ponsonby-Fane’s writings on Brympton d’Evercy and elsewhere, suggests that Spencer & Frederick were in Ireland, “avoiding a subpoena”, when world reached them of Lady Georgiana’s demise and Spencer’s inheritance. The legend also suggests that the brothers played cards for the inheritance of that pile, which they envisaged as a liability more than an asset, and that Spencer lost.
I find the scandal element of that legend largely implausible. Both Frederick and Spencer were senior figures in society by late 1874, 60 and 50 years old respectively. Both went on to giddier heights as grandees in the ensuing years, which genuine scandal would most likely have snuffed out.
Further, I cannot find anything at all in the late 1874 or early 1875 press to suggest genuine difficulties for either of those Ponsonby brothers. More likely, the legend emerged from tongue-in-cheek scandal.
Around that time, Frederick Ponsonby was mentioned several times as an informant, in Charles Greville‘s sensational memoirs, which were posthumously published in late 1874.
It was that winter’s “big thing” in the press, as senior figures from the early 19th century, not least King George IV and the Duke of Wellington, were rubbished in those memoirs.
It is believed that Charles Greville especially wanted to stick the boot into Wellington, because Wellington’s affair with Greville’s mother had traumatised Greville’s immediate family.
Wellington really did have a lot to answer for in polite society.
In the mid to late 19th century, criticising recently dead monarchs and war heroes was an outrageous thing to do, which explains why Charles Greville directed that his memoirs be kept under wraps until several years after his death.
The Daily Telegraph vented its utter outrage at Greville’s memoirs being published…by serialising extracts from them. Nothing much changes in 150 years! Here is one mentioning Frederick Ponsonby in late October 1874:
Here’s another extract from Greville’s diaries in a newspaper, this time from The New York Daily Herald, 13 December 1874. This sales-generating gossip column no doubt played some small part in funding the building of James Gordon Bennett Jr’s Newport Casino. As we Londoner’s say when flabbergasted…Gordon Bennett!
In truth, Charles Greville must have been talking about “our” Spencer and Frederick’s uncle, Major-General Frederick Ponsonby, who had fought with heroic distinction in many Napoleonic period battles, not least Waterloo.
But Charles Greville had been a cricketer of some distinction and was an MCC man, so the brothers Frederick and Spencer would doubtless have known him and many people might have supposed that the Frederick in question was the I Zingari fella.
In reality, “our” Frederick Ponsonby was therefore more likely to have been avoiding a tongue-in-cheek, faux subpoena, with regard to the Greville memoirs sensation, than at risk of a real subpoena.
The brothers might have discussed at length, the financial commitment of taking up the inheritance from Georgiana Fane. Frederick was in commerce, a senior figure in the railways. He was unmarried, childless and was next in line for the Earldom. Spencer was a senior civil servant – Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office…don’t ask – with a wife and eleven children. Frederick would almost certainly have been in a much better financial position to take on the crumbling Brympton d’Evercy estate.
But the notion that the brothers “played cards for the inheritance and Spencer lost” must be a family in-joke or turn of phrase. I took the trouble to acquire a copy of Georgiana Fane’s will from the Probate Office archive; her will steps that inheritance through several other family members if Spencer fails to take it up, but Frederick Ponsonby isn’t one of those named.
The Western Gazette reported Georgiana Fane’s death and funeral. It mistakenly thought that Spencer was called Stephen in the 11 December 1874 obituary:
Spencer went about the business of changing his name by Royal Licence pretty quickly. Georgiana Fane’s will was proved on 26 December 1874 – the date being an interesting fact in itself, as Boxing Day had become a statutory holiday in 1871.
Someone was working in the Probate Office despite it being a public holiday that day. Just imagine. Anyway, just a few weeks later, according to the Index of Name Changes:
Ponsonby-Fane : Ponsonby, S. C. B. 5 Feb., 1875 (547).
Clearly Georgiana Fane’s estate was a problematic one. Spencer Ponsonby-Fane sought redress through the Court of Chancery against his cousin/executors. Here is a summary of Spencer’s letter to his cousin William Dashwood Fane on 20 February 1875:
The Chancery suit for permission to sell Nassington and the heirlooms moves so slowly that he sees no possibility of giving him a positive answer as to Brympton before the time Fane needs to give notice to his present landlord. Therefore he must abandon the hope of having him as tenant. Will try to live there in a hugger mugger way for a couple of months, and let it for hunting in the winter.
William Dashwood Fane was a barrister of some repute; it would have taken some guts for Spencer to make an adversarial challenge to that executor in court. But more likely, the suit was a collaborative effort to have the court determine potentially contentious elements of the distribution.
Don’t mess with Dashwood Fane
Here is an extract from the Lincolnshire archive with regard to the court petition itself, in March 1875:
Bill of complaint in Chancery
The Hon. Spencer Cecil Brabazon Ponsonby Fane plt. v. William Dashwood Fane and Charles Fane, defendants
Lady Georgiana Fane died possessed of an estate at Brympton, Som. (1235 ac.), annual rental about 23,000; of an estate at Nassington, Northants. (54lac.), annual rental about £900, and an estate in Prince Edward Island; and of personal estate worth £16,363.16.6, with plate and jewelry bequeathed as heirlooms or specifically bequeathed worth £12,121. The Brympton and Nassington estates are subject to mortgages for the principal sums of £32,076 and £18,111.8s. respectively, and the annual interest amounts to £1303.8s. and £765.11.4. The Brympton mansion, being on a large scale can only be kept up at considerable expense. The beneficiaries under the will have therefore presented a petition to Chancery for selling the Nassington estate and applying the proceeds of sale in discharge of the incumbrances on the Brympton estate. Expedient also to sell the plate and jewelry settled as heirlooms to help discharge mortgage debt and enable plaintiff to reside at Brympton.
Difficulty of defendants in selecting from testatrix’s jewelry in order to carry out bequest to earls of Westmorland. Difficulty in deciding which of the diamonds shall be considered heirlooms.
The plaintiff prays that the trusts of the will and codicil may be carried into execution and her estate administered under the direction of the Court.
Families, eh?
Still, none of this stopped Spencer Ponsonby-Fane from being re-elected to the MCC Committee in May 1875 and signing off the Laws of Lawn Tennis that month. But his inheritance of Brympton d’Evercy was, by all accounts, life-changing for Spencer Ponsonby-Fane. He made it his life’s work for the remaining 40 years of his life to turn that place into a cricket festival idyll, with apparent sustained success.
After May 1875…
The 1875 MCC Laws of Lawn Tennis did not eliminate debate in the pages of the Field. In the very next issue, June 1875, Henry “Cavendish” Jones requested several points of clarification, while applauding the issuance of unifying laws. Interestingly, Cavendish’s June 1875 piece is shown under the “Tennis” heading in The Field. Previous lawn tennis listings, including the publication of the May 1875 laws, were shown under Pastimes.
Dr Henry “Cavendish” Jones was a doyen of whist and croquet; a founder of the All England Club, an early enthusiastic experimenter with the new game of lawn tennis and a lover of rules.
Henry “Cavendish” Jones, above with croquet mallet, below with luxuriant beard
In September 1875, Cavendish lamented the idea of Prince’s Club setting up a rival code to the MCC’s unifying code, while suggesting a few matters for further discussion and possible revision.
The Field, September 1875
Cavendish was not the only correspondent in The Field to talk about lawn tennis, but he was the most persistent one. In June 1876 he raised, head on, the question of the scoring system. A lengthy piece, Cavendish cuts to the chase in the first sentence:
Sir, I have lately been scoring the strokes at lawn tennis in the same way that they are scored at real tennis, and I think this so great an improvement to the game that I write to advocate its general adoption, and with the hope, if this plan finds general favour, that it may be placed as an alternative method of scoring in the MCC rules should they be revised.
Parenthetically, I think this June 1876 letter is the first published use of the term “real tennis” to distinguish the original game from lawn, although Heathcote describes lawn as “no bad substitute for the real game” in his letter of March 1875.
Several of the suggestions from Cavendish and others, published in The Field between June 1875 and June 1876 were taken into account in the minor revisions of the Laws of Lawn tennis published by the MCC in August 1876…
…but not the one about the scoring system, which remained relentlessly rackets/badminton style in that version.
The Tennis Committee Minute Book suggests that the 1876 revisions were approved before Cavendish’s letter of June 1876 was published.
Here, for the record, is a table of the dates, locations and attendees of the minuted meetings 1875 and 1876:
Date
Location
Attendees
27 August 1875
Lord’s Pavilion
T Burgoyne, RA Fitzgerald, Hon E Chandos Leigh, Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, JM Heathcote, W H Dyke, Hon CG Lyttleton, CE Boyle, GB Crawley
5 November 1875
Lord Chamberlain’s Office
Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, CE Boyle, T Burgoyne, RA Fitzgerald
11 November 1875
22 Portland Place
Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, JM Heathcote, T Burgoyne, RA Fitzgerald
1 February 1876 “5”
22 Portland Place
Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, JM Heathcote, T Burgoyne, RA Fitzgerald
7 February 1876
Lord Chamberlain’s Office
T Burgoyne, RA Fitzgerald, Hon E Chandos Leigh, Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, JM Heathcote, Sir W H Dyke, GB Crawley
6 March 1876
St James’s Palace
Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, JM Heathcote, GB Crawley (Rule changes to 1872 Tennis Laws)
4 April 1876
Lord’s Cricket Ground
Hon S Ponsonby-Fane alone attended.
4 May 1876
Lord Chamberlain’s Office
Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, CE Boyle, T Burgoyne, RA Fitzgerald
1 June 1876
Lord’s Cricket Ground
Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, JM Heathcote, T Burgoyne, H Perkins
The only person who attended all meetings was Spencer Ponsonby Fane – even if we exclude the April 1876 meeting that he minuted attending alone.
A sad MCC note at the end of that list is the replacement of RA Fitzgerald with Henry Perkins in mid 1876. Fitz had been “asked to resign” due to ill health, believed to be neurosyphilis.
There’s then a break in the minutes for more than 10 months, until a hugely significant meeting at St James’s Palace on 23 April 1877:
23 April 1877 St James’s Palace.
Hon S Ponsonby-Fane, Sir WH Dyke, JM Heathcote, T Burgoyne.
At the request of the committee, Mr Julian Marshall was also present.
It was reported that JM Heathcote had retained possession, unchallenged, of the Gold Tennis Prize. and tat Mr RD [Russell Donnithorne] Walker had won the Silver Prize for 1876.
A proposal to employ Gray, the Harrow Racquets marker, during the season, was considered but postponed.
Sir William Dyke moved & Mr Heathcote seconded the following resolution: That the present Tennis Court is insufficient to meet the large amount of play, and the demand of members for the court, and that the Tennis Committee call the attention of the Committee of MCC to the receipts of providing another court, if possible, with as little delay as possible, to meet the requirements of the members.
Mr Heathcote called attention to the correspondence in The Field with regard to the Laws of Lawn Tennis & expressed an opinion that the time had arrived for altering and amending them.
The subject was discussed at some length and adjourned.
It was proposed that Mr Julian Marshall be elected to the Tennis Committee.
This April 1877 minute is, I believe, illuminating in many ways. Interesting to see the tennis Silver Racket won by one of the great cricketing Walker Brothers of Southgate, who founded Middlesex County Cricket Club and governed it for the rest of the 19th century and a bit beyond.
For most of the 1870s, Middlesex CCC played most of its cricket at Prince’s Club, in Knightsbridge, which was in its pomp at that time. In 1877, Middlesex CCC switched to Lord’s. Whether this switch was due to Prince’s locational vulnerability in Knightsbridge, or was part of the cause of that vulnerability, is unknown and probably unknowable.
At Lord’s itself, this April 1877 minute indicates that there was a change of influence, to which Spencer Ponsonby-Fane was party, if not the direct cause. Rackets was falling from favour and tennis was in the ascendancy.
Of course, the proposal to build a second tennis court at Lord’s continues to bounce around, even to this day. But co-opting Julian Marshall onto the MCC tennis committee was a masterstroke. By April 1877, The Field was well into its serialisation of Marshall’s Annals of Tennis. He was also on the All England committee, which must have been well into the planning stage of the first Wimbledon tournament by April 1877.
This leads me to contend that the prevailing view, that the All England tournament pioneers dragged the MCC reluctantly into accepting tennis scoring rather than rackets scoring for lawn tennis by unilaterally applying tennis scoring to the 1877 Wimbledon tournament, is a misreading of events.
…”which should determine whether the game was to bask for a few seasons in the smiles of fashion, and then decay and die, as rinking [rollerskating] had done, and as croquet also for a while did; or whether it was to take its place permanently among recognised English sports, and so contribute to the formation of English character and English history…
…Compared, indeed, with the M.C.C. code, the new rules might appear revolutionary…”
While CG Heathcote described the idea of a rectangular court and tennis scoring as “revolutionary”, his brother, JM Heathcote, had advocated precisely those things at the March 1875 open meeting at Lord’s. Cavendish was not a member of the MCC, but Julian Marshall was. After adding Julian Marshall to the MCC Tennis Committee, there was a clear groundswell on the MCC sub-committee to adopt the ideas that the AEC<C was about to put forward for its 1877 competition, and the rest, as they say, was history.
In 1877, the MCC would not have looked on the All England in Wimbledon as being a competitor with the MCC at Lord’s. Further, the All England, at least as represented by Cavendish in the pages of The Field, seemed keen to ensure that there was a single code of lawn tennis and wanted the MCC to be the guardian of that code.
From an MCC perspective, I suggest that only Prince’s Club will have been seen as a threat to Lord’s in the 1870s. Prince’s, with its high-falutin’ membership list, its Turkish Bath, multiple rackets courts, two tennis courts, two lawn tennis courts and a cricket pitch, located in increasingly fashionable Knightsbridge. Prince’s, in its pomp at the time, seemed willing, perhaps even keen, to apply its own codes to sports and pastimes where it chose to differ from the MCC code. Prince’s appears to have been arguing strongly for rectangular courts and net heights of its own liking, but not for a switch away from rackets scoring.
My contention is that lawn tennis’s switch from rackets scoring to tennis scoring for lawn tennis was a collaborative effort between the doyens of the MCC and the doyens of the AEC<C between the summer of 1876 and the spring of 1877. Such a collaborative, strategic manoeuvre has the hallmarks and fingerprints of genial autocrats such as Spencer Ponsonby-Fane and (possibly) the new MCC Secretary Henry Perkins, as well as advocates of the new game such as Cavendish, Julian Marshall and the Heathcote brothers.
The laws are quoted verbatim with permission. Laws 1 to 23 specify tennis scoring. Laws 24 to 30 set out an alternative permitted method of scoring – our old friend rackets/badminton first to 15 hand-in points. A very MCC-style compromise. But tennis scoring was bound to prevail quite rapidly, and so it did.
Spencer Ponsonby-Fane’s Later Years & Influence
In 1879, Spencer Ponsonby-Fane became the Treasurer of the MCC and remained so until his death in 1915. He was honoured with laying the first stone of the iconic Lord’s Pavilion in 1889.
Pavilion as seen from The President’s Box, 2025
Spencer Ponsonby-Fane remained Comptroller of The Lord Chamberlain’s Office until 1901 and remained the Governor of I Zingari until his death in 1915, despite having found a “spiritual home” for his style of festival cricket at Brympton d’Evercy in Somerset. He also chaired Somerset County Cricket Club in his dotage.
But perhaps Spencer Ponsonby-Fane’s most lasting contribution to the MCC and Lord’s was his championing of the MCC Collection, now the MCC Museum, Library and Archive. In particular during his several decades as Treasurer, the collection progressed from a casual assortment of items arising from a vague invitation to members to donate stuff (c1864) to a formal collection of art works, artefacts and books.
In his own words from the introduction to the 1912 MCC Catalogue:
I am indebted to SPF for the facilities that made it possible for me to research this piece, almost to the extent that I am indebted to the people listed below who helped me in various ways to research and produce it.
It seems more than fitting for me to be talking about SPF at Newport, where Tennis’s International Hall of Fame is located. SPF’s vision around curating the art and history of the game of cricket has been transplanted into many other sports, not least tennis, here in Newport.
I’m not convinced that SPF cared all that much for lawn tennis. Late in life, in 1901, SPF wrote a whimsical booklet for the Railway Passengers Assurance Company to help them promote their accident insurance policies, which they were promoting to sports and pastime enthusiasts.
Here’s what he says about cricket:
And here’s what he says about lawn tennis:
Indeed, while preparing this piece I have oft wondered about the extent to which SPF was an enthusiast of and/or a fine player of real tennis. After all, cricket really was his main thing and he was certainly seen as a fine amateur cricketer. But SPF was past his prime by the time we get any documented records of tennis competitions.
The evidence is purely circumstantial. He remained Chair of the MCC Tennis Committee, certainly until 1895 and possibly his death. (The Tennis Committee minute books between 1895 and 1925 are missing). That role might have been by dint of rackets as much as, or more than, tennis, but I doubt it. In his late dotage, SPF was President of the Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court, for nearly 20 years, 1896 to 1915. An unlikely honour in the absence of some real tennis pedigree. I mean real, real tennis pedigree.
SPF in his dotage, at an I Zingari function at Lord’s in his honour: “Hon. Secretary and deeply-loved, though autocratic, Governor.” according to his Wisden obituaryThe Enforcer with SPF’s bat – the author in his dotage – slightly better-looking technique than Ponsonby’s…no? The author would be content with the Wisden obituary quote, which was applied to Albert Ricardo’s I Zingari & MCC career: “He was not much of a player, but his presence was always welcome as he was a most cheery and pleasant companion.” Photograph by Alan Rees.
Acknowledgements
With grateful thanks to Alan Rees in the MCC Library, who has been incredibly helpful and patient with me. Thanks also to Alastair Robson, Nigel à Brassard, Tony Friend, David Best and others for helpful ideas, materials and encouragement.
Especial gratitude to Janie, for tolerating me while I spend many hours researching, writing about and paying more attention to dead sporty-folk, than I do to her. Bad form is temporary, class is permanent.
Further Reading & References
MCC: More Than A Cricket Club, John Shneerson, Ronaldson Publications, 2020
The Birth of Lawn Tennis: From The Origins Of The Game To The First Championship At Wimbledon, Robert T Everitt and Richard A Hillway, Vision Sports Publishing, (updated edition), 2024
Sport and the Making of Britain (International Studies in the History of Sport), Derek Birley, Manchester University Press, 1993
The Game Of Sphairistikè or Lawn Tennis, A Facsimile Of the Original (1874) Rules Of Tennis, Walter Wingfield, Wimbledon Society Museum Press
Tuesday 12 August: Goodbye Hydrotherapy At Riverstone, Hello Chelsea Arts Club
I had my last hydrotherapy session for my hip surgery rehab with Michael Lambert at Riverstone that afternoon – highly recommended if you are recovering from major surgery or injury, btw. My entire focus now will be on the more gruelling home and gym based physio.
Criss-crossing the Borough all day – later that afternoon, I ventured to the Chelsea Arts Club, where Tony Friend had kindly arranged to introduce me to Nigel à Brassard, a fellow avocational writer/historian who is also to speak at the Real Tennis Society history conference next month. A most pleasurable early evening with some very interesting note-swapping. I think Nigel’s notes to me will have helped me far more than my notes will have helped Nigel. I don’t suppose he minds.
Wednesday 13 August: A Sad Day At Stuart Morris’s Funeral
A few week’s ago Janie and I were shocked to learn that Stuart, Annalisa’s husband, had died suddenly and unexpectedly of heart failure. We resolved to keep the funeral day free and attended the moving and dignified ceremony at Bierton Crematorium.
In truth, we did not know Stuart well, having met him perhaps once or twice before attending Annalisa & Stuart’s wedding, all those years ago:
But of course we did know Annalisa well and wanted to be there for her. As it turned out, it was a very large gathering, as Stuart had been extremely popular and well -regarded by friends, police colleagues and even his latter-day colleagues from Whipsnade Zoo, whom Stuart had not known for long but the several who attended seemed much affected by their time with him, which had been so cruelly cut short.
Thursday 14 August: Nat Oaks Concert At Lord’s, Before & After Which Was Some Tennis & Cricket
I love being able to combine tennis and cricket on visits to Lord’s. Not least when this combination of activity affords the opportunity to watch some cricket with a fellow tennis player or two. On this occasion, some relatively gentle doubles (playing entirely left-handed at the time having torn my bicep tendon in late July), followed by The Hundred matches between the London Spirit and Trent Rockets, with Nat Oaks performing in-between.
…was one of the four again. This time, we had the opportunity to watch some cricket and contemporary music together after our game. It was great to watch some cricket with Max, as we had never much discussed cricket before, given the highly focussed nature of our mind sets, and therefore conversation, when playing tennis.
Max had never watched women’s cricket live before and I think was quite taken with it when observed from the rarefied atmosphere of the Lord’s pavilion terrace. We are so privileged being able to use those facilities as “our cricket club-house”.
I’m not sure that Max was as sure about the music of Nat Oaks. I rather liked it, having extensively researched the subject ahead of the match (i.e. I had watched two on-line vids before setting off for Lord’s).
This is what she looked like performing live at Lord’s – thanks to BBC Music:
Max stuck around for almost half of the men’s match. I stuck around for the entire first half of it.
Friday 15 August: A Day Chatting & Eating With Ben Schwarz
It was a most pleasant way to spend a large chunk of the day. We nattered for so long over a pot of tea at Clanricarde Gardens, that by the time we got to The Orangery in Kensington Gardens, they’d stopped serving the lunch menu and had moved on to the high tea menu. A suitable venue for high tea, we shared one of those and then strolled in the gardens chatting some more.
This photo, in truth, from 1994, but the look of the place on a sunny day hasn’t changed
Naturally, we didn’t quite complete the list of topics we had been hoping to discuss, so we’ll chat some more in the autumn. It will be interesting to compare notes from our respective times in the USA when next we meet.
154 New Cavendish Street (formerly 7 Upper Marylebone Street), 30 July 2025
An Open, Illustrated Letter To The Thomas Paine Historical Association & English Heritage
Synopsis: Previous research by the Thomas Paine Society in the UK identified 148 New Cavendish Street (Highwood House) as the site of the house 7 Upper Marylebone Street, occupied by Thomas Paine while he wrote large chunks of The Right of Man. (See Barb Jacobson’s otherwise excellent article in Fitzrovia News from November 2010). However, my subsequent research (2022 and 2025) has uncovered incontrovertible evidence that the numbering of Upper Marylebone Street in Horwood’s Plan, upon which the 148 New Cavendish Street theory is based, was in error. In fact, 7 Upper Marylebone Street is now 154 New Cavendish Street, one of the three original Georgian houses still standing on that block. That house should be eligible for an English Heritage Blue Plaque in honour of Thomas Paine. I urge The Thomas Paine Historical Association to liaise with English Heritage over this matter.
Half Of The Harris Family From Number 4. Dad, Grandma Anne & Uncle Michael, c1925.
My father’s family settled at 4 Upper Marylebone Street a few years after arriving in this country. My father was born in that house in 1919, as was his brother Michael a couple of years later. The “Harris” family moved south around 1930.
While trawling all the available information sources for Upper Marylebone Street, now the eastern end of New Cavendish Street, I uncovered electoral rolls from 1935 and 1939. These provided incontrovertible evidence of the renaming and renumbering, as that was done between those two electoral rolls, as almost every house in that block (ironically, the one my family had lived in was empty in 1939) had at least one or two occupants who spanned those electoral roll years.
From the 1935 electoral rollFrom the 1939 electoral roll
Mapping the two rolls:
1 Upper Marylebone Street became 168 New Cavendish Street – see Emma Chandler and Minnie Morris
2 Upper Marylebone Street became 166 New Cavendish Street – see John and Anna Bertha Sarah Wright
3 Upper Marylebone Street became 164 New Cavendish Street – see Charles & Clara Lohman and William Smith
4 Upper Marylebone Street became 162 New Cavendish Street – by inference, as empty in 1939
5 Upper Marylebone Street became 160 New Cavendish Street – by inference, as empty in 1935 and 1939
6a Upper Marylebone Street became 158 New Cavendish Street – see Dora Cante (Cawte) & Kathleen MacDonald
6 Upper Marylebone Street became 156 New Cavendish Street – see John William Hawkes & Pauline Hawkes
7 Upper Marylebone Street became 154 New Cavendish Street – see Hyman & Sara Gilbert, Charles & Florence Emily Jeanette Esser, George Henry & Elizabeth Emily Wheeler
8 Upper Marylebone Street became 152 New Cavendish Street – see Elizabeth Olwen & Ionwerth Lumley Jenkins
9 Upper Marylebone Street became 150 New Cavendish Street – see John Spenser & Annie Catherine Manning, and Frederick George Gransden.
Here are a couple of pictures I took in 2022 of the block of houses that was Upper Marylebone Street:
1 to 4 (plus the edge of 5) Upper Marylebone Street. Now 168 to 162 (plus the edge of 160) New Cavendish StreetEdge of 6, then 7 to 9 Upper Marylebone Street, then edge of Highwood House. Now edge of 156 to 150 New Cavendish Street, plus edge of 148 (Highwood House).
How could Horwood’s plan of 1792-1799 be in error? House numbering on Horwood’s plan is not 100% reliable and I believe this particular error is plain to see in the light of the other evidence I present:
Extract from Horwood’s Plan
Horwood leaves the three most easterly units on Upper Marylebone Street unnumbered, numbering the three most westerly units. Those three westerly units, together with an unnumbered unit from Ogle Court, subsequently became Highwood House.
It is clear from the renaming and renumbering in the 1930s that the three most easterly houses were numbered, 1, 2 & 3 Upper Marylebone Street. It is also more likely that unnumbered units were of lesser quality, more readily subsumed into a block of flats.
Barb Jacobson mentions evidence from tax records as well, which I have not seen, but it is quite possible that the three unnumbered units were part of the same demise as 9 Upper Marylebone Street – such detail would not be shown in tax records.
Still, I wanted more evidence from the Georgian period if I could find it. I turned to another great early trove of London street by street information: Lockie’s 1810 Topography of London.
Here is the relevant extract:
In other words, the small square behind No 10 Upper Marylebone Street could be found by passing three doors on the left after 9 Upper Marylebone Street. The three unnumbered doors were the three most westerly doors on the block, next to number 9.
I believe that all of this evidence is incontrovertible and points to the fact that the current house 154 New Cavendish Street is the house in which Thomas Paine wrote large chunks of Rights Of Man, as deliciously described in Barb Jacobson’s essay.
Sorry to be a Paine, but common sense suggests that we get this right…or even rights
I meant to write all of this up in 2022, but life intervened and other matters prevailed.
I told Ben the Thomas Paine story and he politely told me off for not having written it up. Actually, in truth, I told myself off while telling him the tale and he agreed with me that I deserved telling off and that the matter needed putting right.
As it happened, I found myself very near the scene with a bit of time on my hands on 30 July 2025.
The Harris place, now 162, no longer boarded up in July 2025 – instead an art gallery named Night Café. My artist/photographer dad would have approved.Two sides of 154 New Cavendish Street, now the Cracked Coffee Company
Thomas Paine would surely have approved of his former writing digs now being a coffee shop. It was in such places that his writings were most often disseminated in the late 18th century.
It was near to closing time and I was interrupting a deep conversation between that manager (who turned out to be Romanian) and a rather excitable Russian mathematician named Yuri. They both seemed fascinated by the Thomas Paine connection.
We all three tried to debate matters of great social, moral and geopolitical import in the 30 minutes before closing time. We thought it was what Thomas Paine would have wanted. We even made some progress, or at least came to the conclusion that some social progress has been made since Thomas Paine’s time there in the 1790s and since my family’s time there 100 years ago.
I’m rambling.
To summarise, I believe I have uncovered incontrovertible evidence that the site of Thomas ‘Clio’ Rickman’s house, 7 Upper Marylebone Street, where Thomas Paine stayed and wrote the second part of The Rights Of Man in the early 1790s, is now 154 New Cavendish Street, which is the original Georgian building in which those important events occurred.
I believe that 154 New Cavendish Street should be eligible for an English Heritage Blue Plaque based on the evidence I have presented in this paper. I urge the Thomas Paine Historical Association formally to request such a plaque for that building. If I can provide any further assistance in this matter, please let me know. I’d love to attend the unveiling of the Blue Plaque, if the timing permits.
Postscript: Hair Today & Gone Tomorrow In 7 Upper Marylebone Street
When conducting my 2022 research, my cousin Angela, whose memory can stretch back to the 1950s and 1960s, reminded me that the Gilbert family, who lived at 7 Upper Marylebone Street, were great friends of our family and remained friends for many decades after my family moved on.
Angela remembers visiting the Gilbert family (or, as my father would affectionately call them, “The Giblets”), at 154 New Cavendish Street and believes that at least some of the Gilbert family remained there into the late 1950s or even the 1960s. Theirs was a barbershop, so it is very likely indeed that my dad’s haircut in the picture above, and that of Michael, were from that very shop.
That dad haircut would have been about 100 years before I sat in the same shop, drinking coffee and trying to put the world to rights through lively discussion.
Thomas Paine might have had a thing or two to say about forcing a kid to have his hair cut against his will.
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.” Thomas Paine. Don’t tell me he wasn’t talking about involuntary hair cutting.
Pauline Wormleighton led a long and turbulent life. What do we, her surviving family, learn from that life, now that Pauline has died? I have chosen three quotes that we might use as our lessons from Pauline.
Lesson One — Audrey Hepburn: “The most important thing is to enjoy your life — to be happy. It’s all that matters.”
Pauline, nee Wallen, was born 1 July 1929, a couple of months after Audrey Hepburn. She doted on her absentee father Jack, but had a tempestuous relationship with her mother, Alice. Pauline was close to her older brother John, before he and his family emigrated to Australia, but couldn’t get along with her younger sister, Christine.
Pauline was an unhappy evacuee teenager during the War, yet still learnt to excel at the arts (especially music) and languages. She spoke Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, French and German.
I get a strong sense that Pauline sought enjoyment & happiness early in her life.
In the early 1950s, Pauline found glamorous, high-profile work in Europe as a social secretary; first for a Swedish industrialist, then for an eminent Portuguese medical family and thirdly, 1952-1953, for Prince Otto von Bismark, the Iron Chancellor’s grandson.
Bismarks in Library: Otto, Leopold, Gunilla, Maximillian & Ann-Mari December 1953
A few years ago, Janie interviewed & noted Pauline’s memories of those early years – we’ll edit & post that material on-line sometime soon.
Bismark children above & staff below (Pauline right) October 1953
In January 1954, during a supposedly brief stop in England before starting work for Aristotle Onassis, Pauline met Howard Wormleighton. Within 10 weeks, Pauline & Howard were married, while Aristotle was dumped. Let’s hope Aristotle took it philosophically.
Howard had been an heroic prisoner of the Japanese for most of the war; by 1954 he was going places as an insurance executive. Despite worries that Howard & Pauline were unable to have children, in 1955 Hilary arrived and in 1956 twins; Phillipa and Jane. Pauline attributed this “miracle” to fertility charms that Howard brought her from his business travels in Central & South America.
Pauline with Hilary, Phillipa and Janie
Pauline and Howard had a happy marriage, initially in Willesden, near Pauline’s birth family, then in a large family house in Batchworth Lane. Pauline used her social secretarial skills at home and on glamourous travels with Howard on business, while the girls were at boarding schools.
In October 1978, while the couple were in Portugal on business, Howard collapsed and died, while Pauline’s long life was only half done.
Lesson Two – Henry Fielding: “If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil.”
The 18th century writer Henry Fielding, like Howard, died aged 50-something in Portugal.
Howard’s untimely death left Pauline emotionally bereft. Pauline also became convinced that she was impoverished, although by objective measures that was not the case. I describe the condition as “anorexia of money”, an affliction which Pauline bore herself and inflicted on others, for the rest of her life.
But for the last 20 years or so, it was not even possible to mollify Pauline with cricket, theatre or music concerts. Pauline would find an excuse to reject such treats, often angrily.
Pauline holding court in the Sandall Close Garden, Summer 2009
Pauline could not understand unconditional kindness, nor could she express gratitude or love. The last few years were harder still, especially once dementia took hold of her already troubled personality. But in truth, by that time, Pauline had long since pushed most of the family away. And in truth, most of us took the hint and stayed away.
Still, we should all remember and try to learn lessons from Pauline’s life. This final quote is from her near-namesake, St Paul, in his unifying letter to the Corinthians.
Lesson Three – St Paul (1 Corinthians 13): “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
I wonder whether Angus Wilson would have seen the funny side of this?
As it happens I wasn’t working on Monday (the previous day). In fact, Janie and I had just got home from a specialist’s rather gloomy prognosis on my right hip (“got to go”) and were just heading off to play tennis…
…yes I know those two phrases seem incongruous, but if the hip is more or less worn out I might as well wear it out completely before it goes…
…when I picked up an utterly unexpected e-mail from the Royal Court Theatre.
…I found you from your website, as you wrote about Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant.
I’m reaching out from the Royal Court Theatre’s Living Archive, where we’re working on a series of events called Beyond the Library and I’m hoping you might be able to help us with a last-minute facilitation opportunity tomorrow at 5.30pm.
I know this is very out of the blue and very short notice, but we’d be grateful for your consideration…
Included was the script for The Mulberry Bush and a Facilitator Guide.
It was obvious to me that someone had pulled out at the last minute and that the Royal Court was a bit desperate. There was a modest fee to be had, but not at the level that would get me out of bed unless I was interested/intrigued. I was interested/intrigued.
I picked up the phone and explained, truthfully, that my primary emotion was one of imposter syndrome at the thought of helping them with this. Yes, I am a seasoned facilitator, but normally for organisational/strategic topics, not the arts. Yes, I was familiar with Giant. And yes, as it happens, I have read some Angus Wilson in my time – probably more than 40 years ago. But I have never read or seen The Mulberry Bush.
I’m sure you’ll be great at it. Don’t worry about not being an arts facilitator. We’re looking for diversity in our pool of facilitators.
I suppose I offer diversity from your regular drama facilitator, but perhaps not the kind of diversity you are looking for in your stats.
Janie thought I’d get a buzz out of doing it and was prepared to put up with me hijacking the afternoon to prepare the event, so I said yes.
Janie even did some research for me, finding this excellent documentary about Angus Wilson:
I enjoyed reading The Mulberry Bush and then did some digging into how it was received when it was first shown at The Royal Court. Spoiler alert: it was not received well. I was reminded that I have heard of the play simply because it was the very first play that George Devine put on in 1956 when he started up the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. It actually felt like an extraordinary honour to be facilitating the Royal Court’s event on the topic of that seminal production.
Anyway, I got my facilitator notes ready and sent them across on the Monday evening – here they are if you want to read them, and then got on with my other activities for the next 20 hours or so.
Coincidentally, my other activities that Tuesday morning included going through my Autumn 1984 diaries, where I discovered my very first visit to the Royal Court. 8 December 1984, to see The Pope’s Wedding – what a cast! That Living Archive looks like a fabulous project, btw, and I shall no doubt be contributing observations from my 40 years or so of visiting The Royal Court.
When I got to the flat, I was able to locate my copy of Hemlock & After by Angus Wilson, but I didn’t have time to do more than skim it.
Still, I was one step ahead of my victims…I mean, the attendees, and that one step ahead seemed to be enough to get me through on the evening.
It was a pretty lively, bright bunch; a mixture of drama students, young folk new to working in theatre, writers and a few more senior folk who were just interested in having a book club style discussion.
Everyone contributed and I thought the quality of the discussion was very high. But then, what would I know? I’m not really an arts facilitator. The feedback was good, so I think it went well.
Also, I note, that the Beyond The Library series, which had plenty of spaces left for the November & December sessions when I looked on the Tuesday, has now (by Sunday) sold out. I understand that The Royal Court is considering extending the idea into 2025, so watch that space if you are interested in future such events.
It was hard work preparing, at such short notice, a discussion around a play I had never read or seen before. I fed back that 28 days would be a more suitable advanced notice than 28 hours under normal circumstances. But then, as Angus Wilson said in No Laughing Matter:
“Life isn’t just to be found, you have to work for it.”
Totally genuine picture taken on the night in question
I needed to get one more Ogblog piece in before the end of the 2023/24 tax year, obviously, so have chosen briefly to write up the Ivan Shakespeare Dinner which took place on 4 April 2024.
These gatherings of former NewsRevue writers (most of us relics from the 1990s) are a source of great joy. As Graham said at the end of the dinner,
I laugh far more at one of these evenings than I would if I paid to see almost any comedy show in town.
We’ve been enjoying these events for decades now – a couple of examples below:
John Random is our ringleader for these get togethers. In real life John might not be the most organised person I know, but oh boy is he better than all the rest of us put together in the matter of organising these gatherings.
As the years have gone on, it’s not just been Ivan we have been memorialising but several other “fallen” from our ranks. On this occasion, Barry brought a little memorial photograph tribute, which was lacking a picture of at least one of the fallen and which lacks room for any additional pictures. Either hope way in excess of expectation, or Barry plans to cram in some smaller pictures when the time comes.
John deferred on the quizzing this time, allowing Colin and Graham to confound us with some good quizzy offerings. Graham’s revolved around hit song lyrics, which he (and Sue) expected me to smash [did you see what I did there?] but I came up well short on that game, failing similarly on Colin’s quiz. I don’t think I am much of a solo quizzer to be honest. I work better as part of a team…
Anyway, Ivan Shakespeare dinners are not primarily about the quizzing, they are about mirth and convivial dining. I think I’m reasonably good at that.
Colin commented that we don’t often take pictures at these events, which I realised is true. The six of us who gathered this evening: Barry, Colin, Graham, John, Mark, and me – might never again comprise the exact group of an actual Ivan Shakespeare dinner. So obviously the event needed to be commemorated with a picture – see headline and below.
Proof…not that proof should be needed…that we are all absolutely fine.
There is no reason for anyone to question the veracity of this picture. My plea, should the gutter press start to delve deeply where they are not wanted, is to scream, “leave us alone FFS”.
Everything I want to say about this matter is covered in the King Cricket piece that I wrote up in my capacity as Ged Ladd.
Alex “King Cricket” Bowden was clearly taken with the piece, as I submitted it on 21 March 2024 and it went up on King Cricket less than a month later.
…Rohan decided to try the National Theatre foyer bars as a venue this time around – cunningly timed with two quite long plays at the Olivier and Lyttelton both starting at 19:30. That gave us ample time to perform in the relative quiet between the start of the plays and the intervals.
The relative quiet was rather noisily broken by the bar staff hoovering up around us, very early in the reading of Geraldine’s piece, but we’ll put that temporary disturbance aside. The venue worked.
And we can all honestly claim now that we have performed at The National Theatre.
Rohan threaded our pieces together, as is his way. In this instance, with the topic “The Phone Call”, Rohan’s thread covered Alexander Graham Bell‘s innovation, the practical telephone. Also the contribution of the lesser known but colourful Florentine, Antonio Meucci, who largely invented that communication method before Bell, but was too polite to patent the critically novel elements of the technology he had discovered.
Geraldine’s piece came first. A charming throwback to 1973, Geraldine recounted her mother’s almost infeasibly regular long-distance calls to Geraldine (who had escaped to New York). Geraldine’s mum persistently tried, in vain, to persuade her daughter to return to “Hicksville” and resume the “normal” life into which Geraldine had, to her mother’s perception, been born.
Rohan then reminded us all that Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call was to an employee who awaited his call…
Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you
…starting the mighty tradition of bosses using such devices to issue instructions to underlings.
Rohan was rather sniffy about my ability to follow a simple instruction – i.e. to write a story about a phone call. I cannot imagine what Rohan’s beef might have been.
The Phone Call by Ian Harris
We don’t go out so much anymore. Not since the pandemic. It’s not a fear of infection or anything like that. It’s just that we have got out of the habit. It now takes something especially interesting or unusual to lure us back to the theatre or concert hall.
One such interesting concert caught our eyes recently – a concert of African chamber music at the Wigmore Hall, led by Tunde Jegede, who is both a virtuoso kora player and a classically-trained cellist. The kora is a large West-African 21-stringed plucking instrument, sometimes described as a cross between a lute and a harp.
Janie and I like the Wigmore Hall. It is one of the few remaining public spaces where we still normally bring down the average age of the audience quite significantly. But we soon saw, on arrival at the Wigmore Hall for the kora concert, that this audience was different. Only sparsely populated with “the usual suspects”, the average age of the audience was, horror of horrors, below ours.
The front row still had a comfortingly senior look. Next to Janie was a beaming, white-haired woman you might have got from central casting had you requested “a left-over hippy”. The woman was very friendly and chatty – clearly not part of the regular front row mafia. Familiar with the kora – she had spent time in West Africa when younger – she was a fan of Tunde Jegede’s playing but had not previously managed to see him play live. She was, as the young folk say, super-excited.
The first half of the concert was truly magical. Tunde had brought with him a posse of chamber musicians from Lagos, together with a wonderful percussionist. We were transported by the music, not least the entrancing sound of Tunde’s kora-playing.
During the interval, our friendly neighbour said that she was delighted with the live music experience and thrilled that we had enjoyed it. She recommended and wrote down the names of a couple of Tunde’s albums for us to follow up, which we did.
I wondered what those silky-sounding kora strings are made of. Our otherwise-expert neighbour didn’t know. More or less at that moment, Tunde came on to the stage to rearrange the setting for the second half of the concert. As he was standing, with his kora, about three yards away from me, it seemed only polite to ask him about the strings.
I was expecting the answer to be something along the lines of, “skin from an antelope’s anus or a sitatunga’s scrotum“. But instead, Tunde simply said, “Nylon”. “Just Nylon”, I asked, hoping for more enlightenment. “Just Nylon”, said Tunde, gently.
The second half of the concert was also good but less to our taste. Tunde didn’t play his kora – instead he demonstrated his skills as a cellist. The fusion theme was retained, as the pieces were arrangements of traditional African music, but to us the real magic had been the kora.
I tried to work out the common theme in Tunde’s unusual choice of devices for his multi-instrumentalism. I concluded that Tunde likes making music while holding his instrument between his legs.
525 WORDS
I smiled to myself as I hit the save button and e-mailed my piece to Rohan Candappa for review.
Ninety minutes later, my iPhone buzzed.
It was Rohan.
“Ian, old chap”, said Rohan. “A charming vignette, but it has nothing to do with the subject and title – The Phone Call”.
“I beg to differ”, I said. “The piece is absolutely about The Phone Call”. The introductory story about the kora concert is a MacGuffin. The main story is about the phone call.
“Well”, said Rohan, “I did consider e-mailing you, but then…”
“…never explain”, I interrupted. “You and I have collaborated on and off for over 50 years now, Rohan. Many things don’t need to be said.”
It seemed that everyone else was able to understand and obey a simple instruction from Rohan…even Jan.
Strangely, Jan, like Geraldine, had set her story in 1973. Without conferring. The central conceit of Jan’s story, which revolved around an uprooted little girl whose family had recently moved to a different town, was a troubling phone call aimed at one or both parents, inadvertently picked up by the little girl.
Similarly strange was the structural similarity between Jan’s and Julie’s story, which was also about a troubling phone call picked up by someone other than the intended recipient of the call. Julie’s was not set in a particular bygone year, but the details within the story suggested 1970s as well.
David’s story was about a character who bought a vintage GPO rotary telephone through the internet and, as a result, got a phone call more than he had bargained for.
All of The Phone Call stories were charming, thought-provoking and enjoyable to hear. It was also very pleasing to spend time with the ThreadMash gang again, even though we were a somewhat depleted group on this occasion.
Sadly, Kay, who was going to join us, was unable to attend due to the recent death of her mother. Yet Kay made a charming contribution to the collection of stories by e-mail a couple of days later:
“Here is my belated contribution to “The Call”. In the endless process of clearing out my mum’s house, we found the tin in which I used to save my phone money when I was a kid. Like many others, I was expected to pay for my calls!”
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and my goodness that picture of Kay’s is worth at least that many. But Rohan had instructed us to limit our stories to a maximum of 800 words. Honestly, some people can’t comply with the simplest of instructions from the ThreadMaster.
The building “set back” with a turret in the above picture is the original Tudor-period covered tennis court at Hampton Court Palace, with several walls remaining, one of which is part of the current, Stuart-period covered court, which is on the site of the original uncovered court.
Thanks to Janie for most of the pictures and all the videos (apart from the professional highlights vid).
Whose idea was it to have a real tennis-themed event at Hampton Court? As the event proved to be a great success, Tim Connell is claiming full responsibility for the idea. Meanwhile, I am claiming at least to have inspired the idea with my lockdown webinar, Tennis Around The Time Of Thomas Gresham, in 2020.
Full credit to Tim for the timing of the event – he insisted that we try to find a sweet spot between the summer holidays and the weather turning autumnal. A hostage to fortune, perhaps, but the timing worked brilliantly, as we were blessed with a sunny but not too hot afternoon for the event.
The good people at the Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court (RTCHC) were incredibly helpful in allowing us to hold the event and facilitating same, from the initial conversation I had about it with Lesley Ronaldson the previous autumn right through to the day itself. Thanks to all named below plus Nick Wood, the RTCHC Head Professional, without whose blessing none of this would have been possible.
The History Of The Court & Explaining The Game, David Best, Lesley Ronaldson & Jack Josephs
Yours truly introducing David Best
Lesley very kindly suggested that David Best, who wrote THE book on the history of the Royal Tennis Court, speak to our group on that topic. David even more kindly agreed to speak and also to join in our brief “exhibition” to demonstrate the game.
RTCHC’s junior professional, Jack Josephs, did most of the game explaining. Two years ago, when I first met Jack at Middlesex University’s court, he was a complete newbie!
Both Lesley and Jack talked a lot of balls…I mean, talked a lot ABOUT balls
After hearing about it, Gresham Society members and guests were invited to have a go. Surprisingly, many tried…
Unsurprisingly, few succeeded. It is a fiendishly difficult game, even for moderately talented regular enthusiasts. For neophytes it is even harder than that.
Basil’s first ever hit of a Real Tennis ball skimmed beautifully over the net. The second did not – Basil claims that it was poorly delivered.Tim & Bobbie; “close but no cigar” in the matter of hitting the ball over the netJanie’s technique looks wanting, but she landed chases with each of her goes
Then a short exhibition, during which David Best and I, ably assisted by a professional on each side – thank you Jack & thank you Scott Blaber – demonstrated through a short match how it should and shouldn’t be done. Lesley supplied the commentary, as did the players when at the service end.
Janie shot very little video of the exhibition match…”thank goodness” I hear many readers cry…but here is a short snippet to give you an idea:
If you want to see what the game looks like at the highest level, the following six minute reel of highlights shows the very top professionals at play:
Tea & Cake
Then, for the Gresham Society visitors and their guests it was time for tea and cake. In truth I hadn’t realised, when the RTCHC people said that they would lay on tea and cake, that “Lesley Ronaldson’s home made cake” is what they meant.
Had I known that, I wouldn’t have teased Lesley by e-mail a couple of days before with the words:
No pressure, but my wife, Janie, will be judging the whole event on her piece of cake.
Former US Open Champions / World Championship Finalists are not deterred such entreaties. As we know, champions adjust and pressure is a privilege.
Lesley “pulled off a blinder” in the matter of the home made cakes, to such an extent that Janie was too busy enjoying the tea break to photograph same until most of the sweet delicacies had been well and truly devoured.
The weather was simply glorious at that stage of the afternoon, allowing the visitors to enjoy the wonderful tea and cakes in the garden – hence the barren look of the dining room in the above photo.
The visitors took some marshalling back into the dedans gallery for the final part of the visit, a performance symposium, led by yours truly, on the topic of “Hampton Court, Tennis, Gresham, Music & Drama”.
The performance was ably supported by Jack Carter and Reuben Ard, tennis-playing music graduate / research students from Middlesex University Real Tennis Club and a couple of guest appearances from Tim and Pilar Connell. Also providing praiseworthy support were the visitors, most of whom sang along with the help of their scripts/song sheets. Click here for a pdf of those extracts.
I was particularly impressed that people sang along so well to “In Darkness Let Me Paint It Black” – see final embed below.
Janie got busy with the video app on her phone during the performances, so several highlights and lowlights were recorded. Below only the highlights as YouTube embeds.
I would recommend, if you were to choose only one highlight, Reuben Ard’s performance of William Byrd’s Earl of Salisbury Pavan, which was really quite magical performed in that wonderful setting on “electric virginals”:
Word is, most if not all of the visitors thoroughly enjoyed their afternoon at Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court. Thanks again to our hosts, who made us feel so welcome and steered the event to sweet success.
