During the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, the convergence of time-saving technologies, increased prosperity, and the growing middle- and leisure-classes created a society ripe for a variety of fads. One of these fads was for ping-pong, or table tennis. Lawn tennis, the outdoor sport, rose in popularity in the 1870s and 1880s, and no doubt due to the vagaries of English weather, the tennis-mad devised a way to play the sport indoors. This indoor tennis game, known as “whiff-whaff” or, according to famed toy shop Hamley’s of Regent Street, as “Gossima,” gradually became a popular after-dinner parlour game until around 1901 when The Windsor Magazine stated “whilst the game was undoubtedly introduced in a crude form several years ago, it was not played to any extent till July or August of last year, yet by Christmas it had caused a perfect furore, and no upper or middle class social function was considered complete without its Ping Pong table.”

From The Library of Congress

“Arnold Parker, the author of Ping-Pong, the Game and How to Play It, 1902, and one of the earliest champions, gives 1881 as the first date he had heard in connection with the game. He says that there was a rumour that someone in that year started to play with cigar-box lids for bats, champagne corks (rounded one assumes) for balls and a row of books for a net. This is rather vague but he states more confidently that the game really began about 1891 when a Mr. James Gibb persuaded John Jaques, the sports manufacturers, to register the title ‘Gossima’ for a version of the game which first of all used india-rubber balls until the introduction, about 1900, of celluloid (or xylonite) balls. The much repeated story – which probably originates with Parker – tells how Gibb, a prominent athlete, brought back some toy celluloid halls (sometimes said to be coloured) from the United States. Jaques soon saw how these balls were a huge improvement on the small india-rubber balls previously used” [Source]

Jaques of London trademarked the word “ping pong” in 1901, and the name “came to be used for the game played by the rather expensive Jaquesses equipment, with other manufacturers calling it table tennis.” By the following year, fifteen books were published on the topic and the craze had spread to the United States, where, according to The Suburban Citizen, thousands of sets were sold, and one factory even churned out 1000 sets daily.

Ping-pong even infiltrated America’s golf clubs:

“Our indoor putting green in the back of the store has been occupied by a ping-pong table for several weeks. Lots of people who never saw the game come in here and watch a few sets, get fascinated by the play and end by buying racquets and balls and a net to take home and set up on their dining-room or billiard table. There’s a game going on here almost every hour of the day. People can’t seem to get enough of it.”

The activity acquired legitimacy through its recommended health benefits, and Zaza Belasco (surely a pseudonym!) states confidently in Woman’s Physical Development:

Ping pong makes you work hard. Ping pong causes rills and rivulets of perspiration to flow and makes you feel from head to foot that moist glow that only hard exercise can produce. There is no doubt that it is one of the best flesh reducers known to too heavy man—or woman.

According to Dr. F. L. Burt of the Union General Hospital of Boston, and a well-known specialist: ” Proud men and beautiful women spend at least $1,000,000 every year in Boston alone, and nobody knows how many millions of foot pounds of energy, in their frantic efforts to get rid of superfluous tissue. They ride, swim, walk, box, fence, play golf, and do all sorts of leg-swinging and kicking up calisthenics in their anxiety to get thin and stay so. They enrich doctors who have the reputation of being able to cure adiposity. Quacks of all kinds thrive and fatten on these martyrs who drink nauseous waters, hot or lukewarm, and who submit to boiling, steaming, baking and Japanese, Burmese, Swedish or German massage in the hope of achieving and retaining slenderness.”

To my mind, Dr. Burt is right, but, presto! ping pong arrives and the necessity for all these arduous labors and sacrifices vanishes with its advent. Moreover, the game amuses while it reduces, which is more than the laboring fat man can say for his therapeutic horse or walk on baking, boiling and kneading. It may seem idle to introduce here any evidence as to the amusing quality of the game, but let it be recorded for the benefit of the ponderous and pondering type that ping pong is every bit as fascinating as golf and that hardened golf veterans, veritable high priests of the game, have deserted the pastime of the links to burn incense before this new god of sport.

From L'Illustration, 25 May 1901

In Canada, “a first edition of 500 copies of Ping Pong and How to Play It, by the English champion, Mr, E. Arnold, was disposed of within a week or so,” tournaments were devised from Halifax to Stockholm to Vienna, and in Russia, the game was banned because it was believed that playing the game had an adverse effect upon players’ eyesight!

Of course, as with all fads, the wags came out to poke fun at ping-pong, with one clever stanza ribbing shopkeepers:

The craze for ping-pong died out around 1903, but serious enthusiasts kept up with the game, and table tennis associations sprang up in the early 1920s, with London hosting the first official World Championships in 1926.

Further Reading:
Chronicling America – Ping-Pong
Ping-pong (Table Tennis): The Game and How to Play It by Arnold Parker

The Easter egg is one of the enduring symbols of Easter, and surprisingly enough, its roots reach far, far beyond the modern era. Easter and Easter eggs have their roots in pagan Europe, where eggs symbol of the rebirth of the Earth in celebrations of spring, and when the pagans converted to Christianity, they kept many of their symbols and holidays and gave them meaning within their new religion. The meaning of the Easter egg can also be found in other mythologies and religions, where “[e]ggs were held by the Egyptians as a sacred emblem of the renovation of mankind after the Deluge. The Jews adopted it to suit the circumstances of their history, as a type of their departure from the laud of Egypt; and it was used in the Feast of the Passover, as part of the furniture of the table, with the Paschal lamb. The Christians have [...] used it on this day, as retaining the elements of future life, for an emblem of the Resurrection.”

Interestingly enough, the English word for “Easter” is Saxon, although the Spanish, French, and Scandinavians cling to the Semitic word, derived from the Aramaic pesach, which means “to pass by,” and has been translated into passover. From this, Easter eggs are also called also Pasche, Pash, Pace, or Paste eggs. The earliest known practice of painting and decorating eggs comes from 2,500 years ago, when the ancient Zoroastrians painted eggs for Nowrooz, their New Year celebration, which falls on the Spring equinox. The painting of eggs also derives from the folk traditions of Bulgaria, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and Poland, and in the 18th century, Italy produced beautifully designed and elaborately painted Easter eggs, which were frequently presented as gifts to ladies of quality.

By the Edwardian era, decorating Easter eggs had become a very fine art, being painted, dyed, enameled, bejeweled, and beribboned. Some books of children’s amusements even featured instructions for turning eggs shells into a variety of shapes, such as frogs, or gluing delicate appendages on them to turn them into rabbits or cranes. In Switzerland, craftsmen carved delicate wood eggs, which were painted and highly polished, and held little gifts (a bottle of scent, a tiny vanity bag, or some of the miniature bronze or china animals and birds). French eggs were incredible chic, “covered with every conceivable material, stylishly trimmed with ribbons, artificial flowers, birds, and butterflies.” They usually contained chocolates or bon-bons, and the more sophisticated eggs were used as table decorations. And let us not forget the absolutely amazing and breathtaking eggs created by Carl Fabergé for Russia’s Imperial family and for the wealthy.

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Though the common perception of Mardi Gras links it with New Orleans, the tradition began in Mobile, Alabama in 1703, as that city was the capital of the territory of Louisiane (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama). The Carnival season in New Orleans began with the grand ball of the “Twelfth Night Revellers,” on January 9, and ended on Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday, though English-speaking countries called the day “Shrove Tuesday”), which was the eve of Ash Wednesday and marked the close of the festivities and the beginning of the Lenten Season. Because the New York social season (and those of society in many other major cities) closed with Lent, the celebration spread from the South during the Gilded Age and the Four Hundred, as well as everyday New Yorkers, threw a variety of balls and gatherings to mark the occasion.

Since Mardi Gras celebrations had begun to distance itself from the Church, it descended into what many longtime residents of the city considered “chaos.” The Mystic Crew, or Crew of Comus was founded in 1857 by six New Orleans businessmen as a secret society which would observe Mardi Gras in a less crude fashion. This society was soon joined by rivals–the Argonauts (1891), Atlanteans (1891), Krewe of Proteus (1881), Momus (1879), and Rex (1880), whose members were also made up of businessmen in high society. With the appearance of these secret societies, and the accompanying exclusive balls, floats and parades, Mardi Gras lost a fair bit of its wildness and openness by the turn of the century.

Nevertheless, the customs of these secret societies became a high point of the celebrations, particularly for women and debutantes, who were selected as maids and Queens for each society’s float. Of most importance was Rex, king of the carnival, who came up the river on his private yacht, which was decked out from stem to stem with many colored flags and was saluted by visiting battleships with twenty-one guns. The local militia would meet “His Majesty” on the landing and a grand military parade would lead Rex to the city hall, where he was presented the keys of the city by the “Duke of Crescent City” (the mayor). In the evening, the Krewe of Comus would throw a ball at the old French Opera house, where “all the kings and their queens, representing all the carnival societies, were in the opening quadrille, all crowned and robed and with their splendid suites.” At midnight, all of the masked men would disappear and return in evening dress, but as they were required to show their invitations, it was impossible to discern whom was masked as who.

Another old custom was the “King Cake” or gâteau du Rois. Though associated with the festival of Epiphany in the Christmas season, the French and Spanish colonists brought their traditions to the New World and it morphed into a Mardi Gras custom, since the King and Queen of krewes were chosen on King’s Day, or Twelfth Night. The King cake is a ring of twisted bread topped with icing or sugar dyed the traditional Mardi Gras colors of purple, gold, and green, and whomever found the trinket baked within its folds was required to provide the cake for the following year’s celebration.

When the clock struck midnight, it marked the end of Mardi Gras and the beginning of Ash Wednesday, the day of repentance. Many of the celebrations and traditions of Mardi Gras of the 19th century remain, so when you get the chance to visit New Orleans during the festivities you will notice the connection between the present and the past remains strong!

Further Reading:
The Picayune’s Guide to New Orleans (1903 edition)
The Picayune Creole cook book (1922)

“It is as futile to argue with a bridge club maniac as with an opium eater or an inebriate. The habit has outreached all rational discussion. Duty, common sense, reputation have become meaningless words before the victim’s devastated conscience.”

So said the pseudonymous “Frank Danby” in a 1912 article in an English periodical. By the time this article was published, the mania for bridge had become a major source of entertainment for society on both sides of the Atlantic, though nowhere else did this card game become a point of obsession than deep within the heart of Mayfair. In a previous article, I discussed the emergence and growth of ladies’ clubs. Though they claimed to be patterned after the historic gentlemen’s clubs dotting Pall Mall, many in the beginning were places for ladies to rest and unwind between bouts of shopping or visiting Town, or for ladies of certain social or education sets to reconnect. With the advent of bridge, ladies clubs began to fall in line with their famous counterparts (White’s, Boodles, Marlborough) as places where women convened to gossip, drink tea and cocktails, gamble, and get away from men.

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More than a century before Roger Federer and Andre Agassi faced off in the U.S Open tennis finals in New York, players were donning fancier attire and taking to the courts of Newport to compete in championship matches.

The earliest incarnation of the tournament, then known as the U.S. National Championships, began in Newport in 1881. Players competed on grass courts while musicians performed classical music in a decidedly genteel setting.

The tournament moved to New York, but Newport for years after continued to host some of the sport’s best and, in 1954, became home to the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum. Read the rest of this entry »