Part 5
A fan painted to illustrate a song or a ballad is a very pretty thing. The common linen fan, on which a clever hand draws with pencil or ink the story of “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” becomes a precious possession. And in these days of Kate Greenaways and Rosina Emmets we ought to have many charming fan decorators. We should not object if they selected the old-fashioned _maniéré_ goddesses, hovering cupids, smiling nymphs, and _posé_ infants of Boucher, if they would give us his cool, pearly grays, and sweet, soft rose tints. We have had enough of realism and ugliness, disagreeable cat-tails, and harsh, dirty Joan of Arcs. Let us have a little beauty by way of a change, at least on our fans. Perhaps we could “live up to it.”
Nor should we fail to note the pleasant possibility of all the dinner-cards of a winter coming fresh from the hands of the young ladies of the family. What infinite suggestion does one glimpse of the garden on a June morning give to the fair artist! We can imagine that some poetical member should thus summon and direct her sister and brother artists in the following manner:
“Do give me, Rosamond, that spray of sweet-brier which has caught a bit of spider-web over its sweetest pink bud. Throw in that green dragon-fly who is about to dart through the spider’s web. Give me, Grace, that morning-glory cup with a yellow butterfly floating over it. It will shame the best Venetian glass of Mrs. Crœsus.
“You, Jane, paint me those dandelions, strewed by some millionaire who is tired of his gold. You, Constance, take this volume of the old poets, and hunt up appropriate mottoes to write under these fancies from Nature. They shall illuminate our dinners of next winter, and breathe the breath of Nature through our stiff conventionality. They shall be our visitors from Titania.
“Yes, a happy thought! You, Mary, who are so akin to the fairies, give us your kindred. Paint me Oberon and Queen Mab giving a banquet in yon lily. What a splendid and baronial apartment! How the golden shower falls on their royal heads from those laden stamens! True courtiers they, who never stop flattering. Suggest, if you can, with your brush, the perfume of luxury which is born and bred in this royal pavilion. Show me their delicate guests. Here comes the Butterfly, most _repandu_ of beaus; and the Humming-bird, rich bachelor (hard to catch), who dashes in for a look at the beauties, and away again--you can put him in; he is a type for a dinner-card.
“And you, Paul, who are of a strong, masculine, satirical turn, shall make all these frogs and toads into guests in another set of dinner-cards. Give me the frog as an Ambassador. I like his pouting throat, his puffy air--it so simulates importance. How grand and disdainful he is! I declare, he looks so like old Mr. ----! But do not make a portrait; that would give offense. These toads are just about as lively and as brilliant as the rank and file of diners-out. Put them all in Worth dresses. Make the dishes on the table after Hawthorne’s delicate fancy, the shapes of summer vegetables--squashes, cucumbers, pea-pods. What is that pretty poem I remember about Pods?
“‘The Monk’s-hood and the Shepherd’s-purse, And the Poppy’s pepper-caster; The Rose’s scarlet reticule, And the somber box of the Aster; Nasturtion’s biting brandy-flask, Infused with a wholesome smart; And the Milkweed’s knot of white floss silk, Which will not come apart; For next to the bud where the Poppy nods, And the sweet Moss-rose--are the late Seed-pods.’”
“Yes,” said Mary, “pods are very pretty.”
Well, we have, perhaps, talked nonsense enough about the dinner-cards. It is a pretty Home Amusement for the back piazza in summer, or for the close and guarded warm home parlor of winter. Give us the results of both, young ladies. And since all the wealthy chromo people are offering such splendid sums for the Christmas, Easter, and even advertising cards, why should not every group try their hand at the--perhaps--thousand dollar prize?
Here is a suggestion for a Christmas card: A group of young pagans going out of the Catacombs are represented as strewing flowers and singing gay songs. On the other side a group of austere early Christians are coming in, singing hymns. Between the two a ray of light comes down through a fissure of the roof and forms a cross. The religion that is going out, the religion that is coming in--the cross is between them. How much a clever hand could make of this moment of time, so replete with interest to all the world!
It would seem as if, with all the suggestions of Easter, that no one would need anything but a paint-box and a pack of blank cards to interest them at this season. We should have the World being hatched out of an egg; the Saxon goddess Eastre; the Legend of the Stork; the German children searching for the Nest in the garden where the Easter-hen had laid her egg; the great Sunburst; the Sun dancing on Easter morning; the games of mediæval England, when the women played ball at one end of the town and the men at the other, and one fine couple taking occasion to run away to get married on the sly. The Easter Egg is full of meat for the artist.
Growing out of these thoughts comes up the great and increasing taste for symbolism, which finds its highest exponent in church embroidery. The Catholic Church has ever been a good customer of the decorative art schools. It needs and consumes or uses much embroidery. But the pious women of Protestant communion now also deem it a duty and a pleasure to decorate the altars of their beloved churches with much that is symbolic and beautiful, and it is a favorite form of Home Amusement to create an altar-cloth or some draperies which shall engross an hour or two a day of the time of the best embroideresses in the family.
The favorite symbols are these: The Cross in its various forms; the monogram composed of the Greek letters Χ (_Ch_) and Ρ (_R_), the first two in the name of CHRIST; the Apocalyptic letters Α and Ω (_Alpha_ and _Omega_), often combined into a monogram; and the Greek characters ΙΗΣ, the first three letters in the name ΙΗΣΟΥΣ (JESUS). This last symbol is sometimes interpreted thus, in Latin: _J[esus], H[ominum] S[alvator]_--JESUS, OF MEN THE SAVIOUR.
Less frequent is the Fish, which was often used by the early Christians as a kind of secret sign of their faith, the reason being that ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for “fish,” contains the initials of an article of their creed, thus: Ι[ησοῦς] Χ[ριστὸς], Θ[εοῦ] Υ[ιὸς], Σ[ωτὴρ]--_Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Saviour_.
Besides the foregoing, we have the Ship, indicating the Church, as typified by Noah’s Ark; the Anchor (always in close connection with the ship) entwined with a dolphin--emblems of Fortitude, Faith, and Hope; the Dove, occasionally bearing the olive-branch--the symbol of Christian Charity and Meekness; the Phœnix and the Peacock--symbols of Eternity; the Cock of Watchfulness; the Lyre of the Worship of God; the Palm-branch--the heathen symbol of Victory, but in a Christian sense that of Victory over Death; the Sheaf; the Bunch of Grapes, with other Biblical signs and allusions, such as the Hart at the Brook; the Brazen Serpent; the Ark of the Covenant; the Seven-branched Candlestick; the Serpent in the Garden of Eden; and, lastly, the Cross, with flowers, with a Crown, with a dove hovering about it. Many of these decorative symbols suggest themselves to the contemplative mind, and enter into the appropriate designs for ecclesiastical embroidery.
This embroidery must be beautifully executed to be worthy of its mission. The face of Christ has been so exquisitely wrought by some devout embroideresses that it is like a painting. The work should be done in a frame, and after considerable study.
And how pleasant a study for a winter evening becomes the universal subject of symbolism! We learn that the Eagle and the Thunderbolt were the symbols of Power under pagan mythology, because the attributes of the highest among the gods. The Rod, with the two serpents, indicated Commerce, because Mercury, whose insignia they were, was the God of Traffic. The Club, the emblem of Strength, was the attribute of Hercules. The Griffin--most useful animal for all decorative purposes--was sacred to Apollo. The symbol of the Sphinx was taken from the fable of Œdipus. We are coming back to the Oriental method of teaching by parables in all our new internal decoration; and for the illuminator the knowledge is priceless.
We mount up from these simpler emblems to a consideration of the myths of Niobe, of Cupid and Psyche, of Orpheus captivating the wild beasts of the forest by the sound of his lyre, in which was supposed to lurk an analogy of the history of our Lord. Then we come down to the materialism of the ancients, by which a river is symbolized by a river-god; a city, by a goddess with a mural crown; night, by a female figure with a torch and a star-bespangled robe; heaven, by a male figure throwing a veil in an arched form over his head. All these reflections, born of study and leading to it, are brought in by the practical application now made in embroidery, painting, and wall-decorations; and it would be well if, among the Home Amusements, these graver studies went hand in hand with the pleasant duties of embroidery and illuminating cards and books.
Ole Bull says that he arrived at his wonderful effects upon the violin less by manual practice than by meditation. It would be well to _think_ much over the subject of art. He _practiced_ less and _thought_ more, it is said, than other violinists. No occupation conduces more to quiet and pleasant thought than that of embroidery. We want realism; but we also want idealism. There is no sort of doubt that Art, once admitted as a friend of the family, becomes the greatest instigator of all sorts of Home Amusements, whether peeping out through the paint-box, the needle, the embroidering-frame, the etching tool, or the turpentine-bottle and the mineral paints which are to decorate the plaque. Art is a sprite whose acquaintance should be cultivated.
IX.
ETCHING.
“Good etching is the poetry of drawing, written down rapidly in short-hand.” No doubt many a very orderly mamma, who has had a son or daughter afflicted with a mania for etching, as so many young people are now, has a vision of bath-tubs misappropriated to mixtures of what looked very unlike clear water for cleansing purposes, and which turned out to have plates of copper inside waiting for a bite of acid. Such mammas will blame us for calling this a Home Amusement; they call it--it is to be feared--“a Nuisance.” And yet what form of Art is so near the highest forms of poetry? The etcher is next door to his subject and his public. He has but the ink and himself between that cloud-shadow and them.
Etching is defined by some writers as the stenography of artistic thought; a system of short-hand writing. Given a copper plate, an etching-needle, and the proper knowledge--easily learned--of the action of the acid, and etching can be done at home as well as crochet or embroidery; and as only the simplest lines and the simplest curves are admissible, the question of merit narrows itself to one of intelligent combination. The best etching is that which combines the maximum of speed with the maximum of expressional clearness; so that the landscape may be written on a “monument less perishable than brass,” while the thought is fresh and vivid. An artist can see in the short-hand of an etching the glory of a sunset amid its clouds.
Highly-elaborated drawings can also be reproduced by etchings as in no other way, as we have learned by consulting the Magazines and Art Periodicals of the day; and although a great etcher must have a genius for it, many without genius can learn the art. An etching is not a skeleton of a picture, but a _résumé_. Samuel Palmer, Frederic Taylor, and Hook, in England; Jules Jacquemart, Flameny, Rajou, Boilvin, Le Rat, Hédouin, Greux, Courtey, Laguillermie, and others, in France, have taught us what a beautiful _résumé_ it is, not to speak of our own gifted interpreters. The original etchers can produce strong sentiment concerning life and nature; and although there is at first discouraging uncertainty about results, yet there is a great chance of success.
And the capriciousness of the thing is one of its charms, as it is, like poetic expression, dependable upon personal thought and feeling. It is like the success which attends upon a happy hit in poetry when one makes a good etching, yet a certain amount of mechanical exactitude can always be acquired. Let the boys and girls of a large family be taught etching, and some one will turn out a clever and, perhaps, a first-rate etcher.
It is quite too unfortunate that our young girls in the country do not take more to sketching from Nature, and to water-color. To sit at one’s window, and, with a “few telling touches,” to give the trees in the near foreground or the distant reach of the river, is the every-day amusement of many an English lady. Our first efforts must be labored, of course; we must patiently observe and copy what we see; but then comes the attainment of ease, and our Home Amusements are infinitely enriched. It is best to study at first in single tint until one gets accustomed to form, and then to try varied colors.
The mastery of the three primary colors--yellow, red, and blue--is the Alpha and Omega of painting. As force of color is only to be obtained by opposing one of these singly to all the others combined, they are consequently all present whenever opposition occurs; and no picture is perfectly pleasing without the presence of all three, even though they may be subdued to the most solemn and sober undertones. Try the effect of mixing the various colors, and preserve the mixtures you find most useful. But this is an art which must be learned, and for the elucidation of which we have no space here.
X.
LAWN TENNIS.
And now we come to what, perhaps, our readers may imagine we might have come to before--the out-of-door Games and Amusements which radiate from Home.
Lawn Tennis is so preëminently the game of the present moment that we must give it a central place in our volume.
It has great antiquity, of course. What fashionable game has not? Did not Agrippina play at croquet, and Cleopatra institute “Les Graces”? We know that Diana started archery, for isn’t she always drawn with a bow? And yet she died an old maid.
The Greeks styled court tennis as “_Sphairistike_,” and the Romans called it _Pila_. It was the fashionable pastime of French and English kings. Charles V, of France, and Henry V, VII, and VIII, of England, were all good tennis players. Who does not remember the insult which the French king put upon royal Harry?
“Tennis balls! My lord?”
It has been justly described as one of the most ancient games in Christendom. It became in England the exclusive sport of the wealthy, owing to the expense of erecting and maintaining covered courts; for in early days we learn that it was always played within doors. Indeed, the history of France is full of it. The unhappy Charles IX gave the order for the massacre of St. Bartholomew from a tennis court. The French Revolution was born in one.
But to Major Walter Wingfield do we owe Lawn Tennis. This officer, of the First Dragoon Guards, attempted, unsuccessfully, in 1874, to procure a patent for a new game. He had taken the net out of doors, and no longer did four walls encompass the players. A little pamphlet is in existence now which fully establishes the claim of this officer to the rightful title of inventor of lawn tennis. It is called “The Major’s Game of Lawn Tennis; dedicated to the party assembled at Nautelywdjin, December, 1873, by W. C. W.,” and is illustrated with an elaborate pictorial diagram, containing a sketch of a lawn tennis court, erected in a pretty garden. The only difference appreciable to a modern player in the appearance of the court is that on one side it is divided into two squares, and that on the other the server stands in a diamond-shaped space. With slight exceptions, the game remains as it did when Major Wingfield invented it.
Now, in 1881, as in the days of Henry III, of England (about 1222), it is a favorite with people of superior rank, well befitting the tastes of the nobility, in the performance of which they could exercise a commendable zeal, as also their whole physique; that is to say, it is the fashion. The name undoubtedly comes from Tennois, in the French district of Champagne, where balls are manufactured, and where, it is claimed, the game was first introduced.
A lawn, well clipped and evenly rolled, is the first requirement. The courts should be laid rectangularly. The game should be gotten up with reference to the wind, the net being set at right angles with it. Thus will be avoided the tendency of air currents to carry the balls off or beyond the bounds; and the play will be then against or with the wind. In either case its influence can be more accurately calculated.
The lines of boundary and division should be indicated upon the greensward by means of whitewash, carefully laid on with brush and string. The larger or double court should be seventy-eight feet long by a width of thirty-six feet, inside measure; and the smaller or single-handed court seventy-eight by twenty-seven feet, inside measurement. As in the old game of tennis, so in this, the court is divided across the middle and at right angles to its greatest length by a net, so stretched and fastened to and by two posts, standing three feet outside of the side lines, that the height of the net at each post for the double-handed or larger court is four feet, and in the middle over the half-court line three feet six inches; and for the single-handed or smaller court four feet nine inches at the posts, and three feet in the middle over the half-court line. These divisions are termed courts, and are subdivided into half-courts by a line midway between the side lines, and running parallel with the greatest length, which is known as the half-court line. The four resulting half-courts are respectively divided by a line on each side of the net, parallel to and twenty-two feet from it. These two lines, called service lines, it may be observed, will then be seventeen feet inside of the lines of boundary for the short sides, known as base lines.
The implements comprise net, posts, cordage, balls, and rackets. The net should be taut, the posts straight, the ball hollow, of India-rubber, covered with white cloth; in size, two inches and a half; weight, two ounces. The racket is made with a frame of elastic wood, with a webbing nicely wrought of catgut. The large-sized rackets made at Philadelphia and in London are the best.
The players don a costume of flannel for the purpose, wearing shoes of canvas with corrugated rubber soles, without heels. Indeed, a chapter might be written on lawn-tennis dresses, aprons, and other fancies. But these--so they are loose and easy, and not long or cumbrous--may be left to the fancy of the individual.
The choice of sides and the right of serving are left to the chance of toss, with the proviso that if the winner of the toss choose the right to serve, the other player shall have the choice of sides, or _vice versa_.
There are double-handed, three-handed, and four-handed games, each having some variations. In the double-handed game the players stand on opposite sides of the net. The player who first delivers the ball is called the server, and the other the striker-out. The first game having been played, these interchange; the server becomes the striker-out, and the striker-out the server; and so alternately in subsequent games of the set. The server usually announces the intention to serve by the interrogation “Ready?” If answered affirmatively, the service is made, the server standing with one foot outside the base line, and from any part of the base line of the right and left counts alternately, beginning with the right.
The ball so served is required to drop within the service line, half-court line, and side line of the court which is diagonally opposite to that from which it was served, where the service from the base line must fall to be a service. If the ball served drops on or beyond the service line, if it drops in the net, if it drops out of the court, or on any of the lines which bound it, or if it drops in the wrong court, or, if in attempting to serve, the server fails to strike the ball, it is a “fault.” A fault can not be taken, but the ball must be served the second time from the same court from which the fault was served.
Though the service is made if the striker-out is not ready, the service shall be repeated, unless an attempt is made to return the service on the part of the striker-out; which action shall be construed to be equivalent to having been ready. No service is allowed to be “volleyed”; that is, the striker-out is not allowed to return a service while the ball is “on the fly,” or before a “bounce.” If such a return of service is made, it counts a stroke for the server.
To properly return a service, and have the ball in play, the ball is to be played back over the net or between the posts before it has touched the ground a second time, or while on the “first bounce,” and is subject to no bounds other than the side and base lines of the court. After the ball is in play, it may be struck while “on the fly,” but policy would dictate a bounce to determine whether or not it has been played beyond the boundaries of the court. A ball served, or in play, may touch the net, and be a good service or return. If it touches the top cord it is termed a “let,” a “life,” or a “net” ball, and need not be played if it drops just inside the net, on the striker-out side, but must be served again. Should it fall on the service side, or in the wrong court on the striker-out side, or out of bounds, it counts a “fault.” If, however, it falls so as to be a good return, in any stage of the game other than service, it must be played as a good ball. In play, if the striker-out volleys the service, or the ball in play, or fails to return the service or the ball in play, or returns the service or the ball in play so that it drops untouched by the server, on or outside of any of the lines which bound the court, or if the striker-out otherwise loses a stroke, as we will find presently, when we consider the conditions common to both server and striker-out, the server wins a stroke.
In the handling of the racket the greatest dexterity may be attained by careful study and practice. The twist ball is a feature of the game which good players utilize to the greatest advantage. The uncertainty of its bounces is calculated to outwit the most adroit.