"In its early years military men and more unexpectedly the clergy were among the keenest promoters and players of the game. Perhaps this only shows how central these professions then were within the upper-middle classes, as compared to their marginal or niche status in the twenty-first century. Colonel Osborn concluded his eulogy on tennis with the statement that, 'if all these conditions are present, an afternoon spent at lawn tennis is a highly Christian and beneficent pastime'. It 'produces a feeling of benevolence towards the human race generally. It causes its votaries to regard the world and all that it contains with that charity that hides a multitude of sins' (surely a rather ambiguous remark). He speculated that this was why it was 'so extensively patronised by the clergy'. Perhaps it was partly because their vicarage lawns were ideally suited to the game, but also because 'lawn tennis on a Sunday afternoon is very superior to sermons'. Tennis was by no means confined to the vicarage, however. It was associated with secular aesthetes when the new 'aesthetic' suburb of Bedford Park in West London was completed in the late 1870s attracting affluent residents of artistic bent, patrons of the Aesthetic Movement."