Before the First World War, tennis parties were mainstays of of polite suburban social lives, as recounted by Vera Brittain who felt stifled by such activities in Buxton. Tennis also features in The Wise Virgins in which the 'idle, waiting virgins of suburban Richstead (Richmond/Hampstead)' (as Lyndall Gordon describes them) 'play tennis, and dance, and go on the river'. This is Tennis at Hertingfordbury (1910, Yale Center for British Art) by Spencer Gore (1878-1914).