Acceptable Sports for Females #3: The Graces

You know these ladies, The Three Graces. No doubt our sport of the day was named with them in mind: a trio of elegantly nimble young women floating about, not "sporting" about. In The Girl's Own Book, Mrs. Lydia Child recommends The Graces as an excellent activity. It played with a light wooden hoop and sticks held by the players. Mrs. Child instructs each player to hold two sticks, while contemporary prints of adults playing show them using one stick each. The hoop, which is wrapped in strips of cloth or ribbon to pad it, is thrown up in the air from a stick and caught by another player on their stick or pair of sticks. That player, in turn, keeps the game going by flinging the hoop off the stick. Besides being a fine general physical activity, it promotes good hand-eye coordination. I would think that the two-stick version would be the better of the two in that regard. The hoop must be caught on both sticks held a few inches apart, and flung by crossing the sticks and pulling them apart. I would have been the despair of Mrs. Child, as my complete lack of hand-eye coordination is legendary and the stuff of long-standing oral tradition around the evening campfire. If it involves a moving object and a planned connection between me and it, I'm not your girl.

An interesting, though probably unwritten, rule of the Graces is that a man or boy may play against one or more females, but two males never play against each other. The bottom line is most likely that this is a girl's game, and while it is a friendly gesture on the part of a man to play against women, two guys just  don't fling the hoop around. It's a good way to meet bouncing girls though. That being said, there are later pictures of boys playing against each other. These lads may not have heard of this injunction, or simply dismissed it, claiming they were playing a new game called "Rings of Death", played without the ribbons. Note that these boys use two rings at once. Other early pictures show two rings in use, and the companies which sell the game today usually include two rings. Go, Rings of Death Lads, go!

Acceptable Sports for Females #2: Shuttlecocks & Battledores

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child (1805-1800) was a remarkable woman. A prolific writer, she used her talents to share her convictions; among them, the abolition of slavery in the United States, Native American rights, women's rights, and the education and health of children. She also wrote the classic American poem,  "A Boy's Thanksgiving Day", better known as "Over The River And Through The Woods". Among her books concerning mothers and children are The Mother's Book (1831), and The Girl's Own Book (1833). In both books, she promotes vigorous exercise for both boys and girls, and daily outdoor activity. The Girl's Own Book has descriptions of many suitable activities to promote the health and good physical development of girls. They may seem somewhat limited to today's reader, who is used to girls (and women) playing strenuous team sports and competing in national and international games, but Mrs. Child was a controversial voice for her day. The societal view of women was more and more restrictive as the 19th century wore on, which was most evident in the styles of clothing women were forced to wear by the dictates of fashion. 

One active game Mrs. Child recommends is Shuttlecocks and Battledores, an early version of badminton. The shuttlecock (or birdie, as we call it) was batted back and forth between players until a player missed and let the shuttlecock fall. A net was not used until the rise of "badminton battledore", a game popular in British India and transported back to Britain by retired army officers.  Shuttlecocks and Battledores was a popular game in France in the late 1700s, and like most other French things (except for guillotining large numbers of the population), it was taken up by the British upper classes with great enthusiasm. 

Dolly and Minerva are visiting their friends, the Sperlings, of whom I will write at length at a later date. The Sperling girls are playing with their brother Henry, while a French couple play in the background. 

Sources: Caricatures Parisiennes, watercolors of Diana Sperling, Ackermann's Repository, frame