THE CROQUET AND LAWN PARTY

The Croquet and Lawn Party is an afternoon in late May on a private lawn outside the city, for forty members: croquet set out on the grass, and lunch under the trees.

It exists so that an afternoon on a lawn in May is spent playing something rather than watching it.

The Form

Croquet came to England from Ireland in the 1850s, and by the 1860s the country was mad for it. Its rules were first written down in 1864, at Chastleton House.

In 1868 six gentlemen met at the offices of The Field and founded the All England Croquet Club, with lawns off Worple Road in Wimbledon. In 1875 the club gave one lawn to a new game, lawn tennis.

Two years later the club’s pony roller needed mending. To pay for it, the club held a tennis tournament: twenty-two men paid a guinea each to play, and some two hundred people paid a shilling to watch the final. It was the first Wimbledon.

By 1882 tennis had the club, and croquet was dropped from its name. It was put back in 1899, for sentiment’s sake.

The game looks gentle, and is not. A player whose ball hits another may set the two together and strike again, and send an opponent’s ball to the far end of the lawn.

It has been played at the Olympic Games once, in Paris in 1900. All ten players were French, and the official report singled out one spectator, an Englishman who had come from Nice to watch.

The Afternoon

Forty places, a lawn set for croquet, and a mallet for everyone.

The game is doubles, blue and black against red and yellow, each player with one ball. A member who has never held a mallet is put with one who has.

The first games are golf croquet, the simpler form, in which all four balls go for the same hoop in turn and the first through it takes the point. The full game is there for those who ask.

Lunch is laid under the trees, and play stops for it.

After lunch the pairs play on through the afternoon.

What Is Asked

Tennis whites, or something close to them, and flat-soled shoes. A heel marks the lawn.

Stand still and say nothing while another member plays.

In doubles, advice comes from a partner and from nobody else.

A member who has played before plays the first game for the partner’s sake rather than the score.

The Places

Forty. It is enough for a lawn party, and few enough for everyone to play.

Members are written to in March.

The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the croquet and lunch.

The whites come out again in June, for the Grass Court Tennis Tournament.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.