Esoteric London

Old Bond Street, London, W1. Photo © Roger Dean 2013

London and Londoners in the Eighteen-Fifties and Sixties – Alfred Rosling Bennett, 1924:

The ladies had no lawn-tennis to develop their innate gracefulness, but they did possess archery; and bending the bow and aiming the shaft found favour with many of them – as might indeed be expected, their close connection with Cupid being considered and given due weight to. There were several Archery Clubs in London – and archery manuals could be bought at the railway bookstalls – which held meetings at the Crystal Palace and elsewhere at which the fair members assumed many a beautiful pose, and no doubt scored many a hit. Their targets might appropriately have been marked with men’s hearts instead of bull’s-eyes. They were not, as a matter of fact, but probably the hearts didn’t escape for all that.