Croquet

An illustration from the book 'London: a Pilgrimage' by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré, 1872. Blanchard writes: 'Archery and croquet are two out-door amusements of fashionable London which no foreigner understands. They are conducted with a demureness and serious, business-like precision, that look more like performances of strict duty, than the abandon of pleasure, to the superficial observer'. He goes on to add that, with matrimony in mind, ballrooms have gone out of fashion, but croquet instead provides 'the hours for sentiment. It may be said that a man is nearer the church-door when he has a mallet in his hand, than when to the strains of Godfrey, he has his arm round a lady's waist'.