player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameHerbert
LastnameRoper Barrett
GenderMale
CountryEngland
Date of birth1873-11-24
Place of birthUpton, Essex, England
Date of death1943-07-27
Place of deathHorsham, Sussex, England

About

A Biographical Sketch of Herbert Roper Barrett

By Mark Ryan

Herbert Roper Barrett was born on 24 November 1873 in West Ham in south-west Essex (now East London), England. He was the eldest of the four surviving children – all sons – of Joseph Barrett (1843-1913), a solicitor, and Louisa Barrett (née Roper; 1850-1923). Both parents were from Stepney in Middlesex and were married on 19 October 1871 in Saint Peter’s Church, Mile End Old Town, Tower Hamlets, in what is now also part of East London.

Herbert Roper Barrett’s siblings were Joseph Robert Barrett (1879-1949), John Ambrose Barrett (1881-1917) and Arthur Bernard Barrett (1884-1945). Like Herbert, all three younger boys were born in West Ham. It is clear from existing records that the ‘Roper’ in the name Herbert Roper Barrett comes from his mother’s maiden name and is not a first name. Contemporary reports of his sporting exploits sometimes refer to him as Roper Barrett, and at other times just as Barrett.

From 1883 until 1890, in other words from the age of nine until the age of sixteen, Herbert Roper Barrett attended the Merchant Taylors’ School, an independent day school for boys then located in Charterhouse Square in the Smithfield area of London, just north of the City of London. He entered the school in the autumn term, soon before his tenth birthday, and, together with thirteen other boys, was placed in Form I of the Lower School.

At Christmas 1883, the young Barrett sat his first examinations at the Merchant Taylors’ School whose records show that he was studying, amongst other subjects, Classics and Divinity (Latin, the Old and New Testament, the Church Catechism and the Collects). Naturally enough, he was also studying English and History, using, in part, standard texts such as Dr Smith’s “Primary History of Britain” and Lang’s “Geography”. Arithmetic was also an important part of the syllabus.

The results of these first examinations show that Barrett finished eleventh out of the fourteen boys in Form I of the Lower School. He did particularly well in Classics and Divinity, but average in the other subjects, thereby setting a pattern for his future scholastic career at the Merchant Taylor’s School. The records show that he was a consistently average schoolboy, at least in terms of academic achievement. In the summer of 1887, he finished seventeenth out of thirty-two pupils in his class, his best grades again being in Classics and Divinity. By then he was also studying French.

At Christmas 1890, soon after his seventeenth birthday, Barrett sat his final examinations at the Merchant Taylor’s School, where he was a pupil in the Lower Modern Side of the Upper School. At that point in time he was studying several additional subjects, including geometrical drawing, the physical sciences and German. Once again he did well in Classics and Divinity, finishing fifth out of twenty-three in Latin. He also received a ‘commendation’ for high marks in History.

Although he was an average pupil, it is clear from the records that Herbert Roper Barrett did very well at extra-curricular activities, in particular at sport. In the late nineteenth century, to counterbalance indoor studies, a strong emphasis was being placed on games and outdoor activities at the Merchant Taylors’ School and at other independent and public schools in England. In this respect, William Baker, headmaster during Barrett’s time at the Merchant Taylors’ School, was very progressive.

Looking back on the time he spent at the Merchant Taylors’ School, in an interview he gave to the Gloucestershire Echo newspaper in August 1935, when he was 61, Herbert Roper Barrett recalled how he first came to focus on tennis, or lawn tennis, as it was called in his youth: “‘It was only an accident, or rather an incident, that led me to make lawn tennis my summer game,’ said Mr Barrett, when interviewed. ‘At Merchant Taylors’ School I had visions of playing for Essex at cricket, and might have done so had I obtained my first eleven colours. I only just missed them, but the way in which they were withheld caused me to turn to lawn tennis.

“‘I was in my last term at school, and when, a day after our team was to meet the M.C.C. [Marylebone Cricket Club] was put up on the board with one vacancy to fill, I made 82 not out for the second eleven, it looked long odds on my getting the place. But I had a rival. My average was 36 for 28 innings, and his about 14. For some reason or other, a reason apparently quite apart from his cricket, this boy was given his colours and played against the M.C.C.

“‘I was so annoyed at being left out in such circumstances that I would not play cricket for the school, and spent my evenings at the old Forest Gate Lawn Tennis Club, near my home at Upton. For some seasons I hardly missed a day without playing a single, and at sixteen years of age, in 1889, won the club handicap, beating Walter Ramsey, father of Mrs [Geraldine] Beamish, the well-known Wimbledon player, in the final.’”

In the early 1890s, soon before his twentieth birthday, Barrett began taking part in the non-handicap events at lawn tennis tournaments, in other words in events where he played on level terms with his opponents. He restricted his participation to what might be called local tournaments, taking place in south-east England, not far from the Barrett family home in the Upton area of West Ham. The records show that he also played lawn tennis mainly during the summer months. Due to professional commitments, he kept to this routine throughout his lawn tennis career; unlike a number of his contemporaries, Barrett needed to earn a living.

Like his father before him, Barrett studied law, eventually qualifying as a solicitor. He would later join his father’s lawn firm, which was locate in Leadenhall Street in the City of London. For several years the family firm was known as Joseph Barrett & Son, Solicitors.

Most of Herbert Barrett’s early successes at lawn tennis came in the tournaments referred to above, which were held during the summer months. These included the Suffolk Championships, held in Saxmundham, the East of England Championships, held in Felixstowe, and the Essex Championships, held in Colchester.

By the time of his twenty-first birthday, in 1894, the number of tournaments held each year was multiplying at an impressive rate, not just in Great Britain and Ireland, where most tournaments were still held on grass courts. Lawn tennis, as its name implies, was still very much an outdoor sport and one also suited to the driest and warmest months of the year. Indoor courts were still something of a rarity and, although they would increase in number during the course of his lawn tennis career, Barrett rarely took part in indoor tournaments.

Commenting, in the interview already quoted from above, on the lack of opportunity for playing lawn tennis during the winter months, Barrett said: “‘There was no such thing as winter lawn tennis in England in those days. The season started on the first of May and closed with a bang on the last Saturday in September. The swells went to the Riviera, but only a few of them.

“‘My first tennis in the close season was played at the old Caterham Drill Hall, to which I made a long journey by train every Sunday morning, breakfasting at the unearthly hour, for a Sunday, of 8 a.m. The light was bad and the run back very short in the drill hall, but the chance of a game in the winter was too good to miss, and I loved every minute of it. And this after a hard game on the Saturday for the Upton Ivanhoe Football Club, afterwards the Idlers Football Club.’”

As indicated in this same interview, Barrett was also a keen player of association football, commonly known as football or soccer. Like lawn tennis, in its earliest days football was almost wholly an amateur sport. For many seasons Barrett played for both the Casuals and Corinthian, two football teams formed in London, in 1878 and 1882 respectively (they would merge in 1939 to form Corinthian-Casuals Football Club).

In the aforementioned interview Barrett said: “‘I think I enjoyed my football with the Casuals and the Corinthians nearly as much as my lawn tennis. During seventeen seasons with the Casuals I played in every position barring goal, in cup ties. I got my Corinthian cap in 1899, and had many desperate games against teams like the Spurs, Aston Villa and Preston North End.’”

It is clear that Barrett enjoyed playing team sports such as cricket and football almost as much as he did playing lawn tennis, which is not really thought of as a team sport. However, there were many opportunities for Barrett to take part in the men’s doubles and mixed doubles events at tournaments, and he took full advantage of them. Indeed, his greatest successes at lawn tennis would come as part of a doubles team.

One of Barrett’s earliest successes in this respect came at Wimbledon in 1900, when he was already 26 years of age, but competing in this most prestigious of tournaments for only the third time. In this year he reached the final match of the doubles event with his compatriot Hugh Nisbet. The match in question was, in fact, the challenge round, in other words the round where the winners of what was then known as the all-comers’ event – featuring the teams that played through the tournament – took on the holders, who did not have to play through.

In 1900, the holders of the men’s doubles event at Wimbledon were the redoubtable English brothers Reggie and Laurie Doherty, who had won the title for the past three years (Reggie was also the reigning Wimbledon singles champion). In 1900, the two brothers won the first two sets before Barrett and Nisbet rallied to take the next two. With their greater experience the Dohertys then won the fifth and last set, the final score being 9-7, 7-5, 4-6, 3-6, 6-3.

In the men’s singles event at Wimbledon in 1900, Barrett lost in the quarter-finals to his fellow Englishman Sidney Smith, in four sets, 6-1, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2. In his first appearance at Wimbledon, in 1898, Barrett had reached the third round of the men’s singles event before losing to Laurie Doherty in straight sets, 6-1, 6-4, 6-1. One year later, in 1899, Barrett went as far as the semi-finals of the men’s singles event at Wimbledon before losing to Sidney Smith in a titanic struggle, 2-6, 11-9, 4-6, 8-6, 8-6.

According to Barrett, in the interview already quoted from above, “‘In ‘ninety-nine I had a tremendous game at Wimbledon with the great Sidney H. Smith, whose forehand has been described as dynamic. Tennis had to be fitted in with business in those days, and every one of my games in the championships was preceded by a hard day’s work at the office. There was no time for training or any other sort of preparation.

“‘The day I played this match against Smith I was working up to ten minutes past four, had a great rush to catch the 4.30 from Waterloo to Wimbledon station, where I jumped into a hansom and was on the centre court at 5. It was ten past eight before I came off, after a final set of 13-11 [8-6] and a match of 66 games, in which we each won 33.’”

In 1901, Barrett again reached the quarter-finals of the men’s singles event at Wimbledon before losing to the eventual champion, his fellow Englishman Arthur Gore, in three sets, 8-6, 6-1, 7-5. One year later, Barrett went one stage further at the same tournament, reaching the semi-finals for the second time before Sidney Smith stopped him again, this time in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, 6-3.

In the years 1903-07, Herbert Roper Barrett did not take part in the Wimbledon tournament. Instead he confined himself mainly to appearances at the summer tournaments already mentioned above, i.e. the Saxmundham Championships, the Essex Championships and the East of England Championships, in addition to one or two others, such as the North London Championships (also known as the Gipsy Open), held in early July just after Wimbledon, and the Cinque Ports Championships, held in Folkestone, Kent, towards the end of August. At these tournaments in these years Barrett almost always won the singles event whenever he entered it – and often the men’s doubles and mixed doubles events, too.

In the years 1899 to 1903, Barrett had also won the men’s singles event at the tournament held around mid-May in the Belgian capital, Brussels. In 1904, he travelled even further afield, to Prague in Bohemia, then the venue for the Austrian Championships (Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at this point in time). Barrett had little difficulty in reaching the final of the men’s singles event at the Austrian Championships, which was also held on clay courts, where he faced his countryman Major Ritchie. After losing the first set easily, Barrett rallied to win the second set and lead in the third before Ritchie retired with the score standing at 1-6, 6-2, 3-0.

Although he did not take part in the Wimbledon tournament itself in the years 1903-07, Barrett did compete there in 1907 as part of the British Isles Davis Cup team. (He had been part of the ill-fated British Isles team which took on the United States in the first edition of what was then officially known as the International Lawn Tennis Challenge at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston in early August 1900. During that particular tie, Barrett had played and lost the doubles match with Arthur Gore, thereby giving the United States of America an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match tie.)

The British Isles had subsequently won the Davis Cup in the years 1903-06, when they were able to rely on the virtually invincible Laurie Doherty in the singles, with Sidney Smith as the number two, and Laurie and Reggie Doherty in the doubles. However, the Dohertys and Smith more or less retired from competition at the end of 1906, thus leaving a huge gap in British lawn tennis (Laurie Doherty had won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon in the years 1902-06).

For many decades a challenge round was in force in the Davis Cup competition, with the defending champions hosting the final tie, and in 1907 the Australasian team made up of the Australian Norman Brookes and the New Zealander Anthony Wilding came through to take on the British in mid-July at the old Worple Road ground in Wimbledon. (Only a fortnight or so earlier Brookes had won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon and, with Wilding, the men’s doubles title too.) The British Isles team consisted of Barrett and Arthur Gore. After the first day’s play things looked very grim for the home side, Brookes having beaten Gore in straight sets, 7-5, 6-1, 7-5, and Wilding having defeated Barrett almost as easily after a bad start, 1-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-5.

However, Barrett and Gore rallied to win a titanic and crucial doubles match against Brookes and Wilding, 3-6, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2, 13-11 and, on the final day, Gore raised British hopes even higher by beating Wilding, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-2. This meant that the final singles match, between Barrett and Brookes, would decide the tie. Although this match was awaited with much anticipation, in the end it was the most one-sided encounter of the whole tie, with a superb Brookes overwhelming Barrett in straight sets, 6-2, 6-0, 6-3. This win brought Australasia victory by a match score of 3-2. Barrett would not represent the British Isles in the Davis Cup again until 1912 and would never again play a singles match in the same competition.

By the summer of 1908, when he returned to take part in the Wimbledon tournament for the first time since 1902, Barrett was already 34 years of age. This is relatively old in today’s terms, but in the early decades of lawn tennis it was quite common for players not only to play on until well into their thirties, and even their forties, but also to play some of their best tennis during these later years. The idea that they would ‘peak’ in their late twenties or soon after would have been foreign to a player like Barrett and contemporaries of his such as Arthur Gore and Major Ritchie.

In 1908, Herbert Roper Barrett arrived at Wimbledon as an Olympic champion, having won a gold medal in the men’s doubles event with Arthur Gore at the indoor lawn tennis events held as part of the Fourth Olympiad, for which London was the host city. Three lawn tennis events – a men’s singles, women’s singles and men’s doubles – had been held in early May on the indoor wooden courts at the Queen’s Club in Kensington, London.

The entry had been very modest, with almost of all of the participants being British, and Barrett and Gore had had to win only two matches to become champions, their opponents in the final being their compatriots George Caridia and George Simond, whom they beat 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 6-3. Gore had previously won the gold medal in the men’s singles event, in which Barrett did not take part.

Between taking part in the Olympic Games and the Wimbledon tournament, Barrett had won the men’s singles title at the Kent Championships tournament, usually held in mid-June in Beckenham in that county in the south-east of England. In the final match Barrett had beaten his compatriot Charles Dixon in straight sets, 6-0, 9-7, 6-2

At Wimbledon itself, in 1908, Barrett and Gore met in the all-comers’ final of the men’s singles event – this was the furthest Barrett had yet gone in this event – with Gore emerging the winner after a long five-set match, 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 3-6, 6-4. In fact, this was the championship match because the holder, Norman Brookes, did not take part in the Wimbledon tournament in 1908. At the age of forty Gore thus became the oldest winner of a Wimbledon singles title.

In 1908, the all-comers’ final of the men’s doubles event at Wimbledon was also the championship match, Norman Brookes and Anthony Wilding having won the title one year earlier. Together with Arthur Gore, Barrett also reached this stage of the men’s doubles event where their opponents were Wilding and Major Ritchie. After a very poor start Barrett and Gore rallied to win a one-sided third set, but this was their only success, their opponents eventually winning in four sets, 6-1, 6-2, 1-6, 9-7.

In 1909, Barrett began the lawn tennis season by taking part in the Covered Court Championships, the most prestigious tournament of its kind, held in late April on the wooden indoor courts of the Queen’s Club in London. Barrett confined himself to the men’s doubles event where he was partnered by Arthur Gore. They won their first-round match against Major Ritchie and another Englishman, Charles Dixon, by the revealing score of 2-6, 6-4, 8-6, 4-6, 11-9, before having a much easier passage, defeating Reggie Doherty and another Englishman, Lionel Escombe, in straight sets in the semi-finals, and two more of their compatriots, the Lowe brothers Arthur and Gordon, in the all-comers’ final, 6-1, 7-9, 6-1, 6-2. (This latter match was, in fact, the championship match, Major Ritchie having won the title in 1908 with Anthony Wilding.)

In mid-June of 1909, at the Kent Championships in Beckenham, Barrett retained the men’s singles title. As the defending champion, he did not have to ‘play through’ and was due to face Major Ritchie, the winner of the all-comers’ event, in the challenge round (the Kent Championships was one of the last British lawn tennis tournaments to abolish the challenge round, eventually doing so in 1912). However, in 1909, rain prevented the challenge round match in the men’s singles event at the Kent Championships from being played.

In late June of 1909, at Wimbledon, Barrett repeated his feat of one year earlier by again reaching the all-comers final of the men’s singles event and, once again with Arthur Gore, the same stage of the men’s doubles event. In the former event Barrett was beaten by Major Ritchie, in four sets, 6-2, 3-6, 4-6, 6-4.

Major Ritchie and the New Zealander Anthony Wilding did not defend the men’s doubles title together at Wimbledon in 1909, so the all-comers’ final was the championship match, as it had been in 1908, when Barrett and Arthur Gore had been on the losing side. One year on their opponents were the Australian Stanley Doust and Harold Parker, a native of New Zealand who later moved to Australia. The latter combination played a very poor match – Parker was ill – but some excellent play by Doust in the third set made the score less one-sided than it might have been. Barrett and Gore won the match 6-2, 6-1, 6-4.

At Wimbledon in 1909, Barrett also won the mixed doubles event, although this particular event did not have championship status at Wimbledon until 1913. His partner in the event was the Englishwoman Agnes Morton, a player he liked to team up with regularly, in particular at the Saxmundham Championships in Suffolk, where they won the mixed doubles title together on multiple occasions. At Wimbledon in 1909, they beat their compatriots Albert Prebble and Dora Boothby in the final, 6-2, 7-5.

In 1910, Barrett again began the lawn tennis season by taking part in the Covered Court Championships at the Queen’s Club in London. Once again he did not take part in the men’s singles event, instead restricting himself to the men’s doubles and mixed doubles. In the men’s doubles event Barrett and Gore, the holders, were unsuccessful in the challenge round, losing their title to the Australians Stanley Doust and Leslie Poidevin in a very close five-set match, the final score being 6-3, 4-6, 7-5, 1-6, 8-6.

However, in the mixed doubles event at the Covered Court Championships Barrett emerged victorious. He was partnered by the Englishwoman Madeline O’Neill (née Fisher), who was then aged 42. In the final match they beat Stanley Doust and a Miss Adams, 6-3, 6-0.

Although Barrett won the men’s singles, and shared the men’s doubles and mixed doubles title at several tournaments in 1910, at the most important tournament of all, Wimbledon, he did not win any title. He was unfortunate in that at Wimbledon he was drawn in the first round against Anthony Wilding, then aged 26 and one of the best lawn tennis players in the world. At a time when, at least officially, there was no seeding at lawn tennis tournaments the best two players could, in theory, meet as early as the first round. However, this did not usually happen, probably due to foresight on the part of the organising committee.

Nevertheless, top players could meet each other as early as round one, and at Wimbledon in 1910 this was the case with Barrett and Wilding. After a promising start, during which he won the first set, Barrett faded, eventually losing in four sets, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-4. Wilding would go on to win the first of four consecutive men’s singles titles at Wimbledon.

In the challenge round of the men’s doubles event at Wimbledon in 1910, Barrett and Arthur Gore, the defending champions were opposed to Major Ritchie and Anthony Wilding, who had won the title together in 1908 against the same opponents. This time the challengers once again emerged victorious, by 6-1, 6-1, 6-2, the most one-sided score in the history of the final match in the men’s doubles event at Wimbledon.

In 1911, Barrett reached the challenge round of the men’s singles event at Wimbledon for the first time. His opponents along the way included James C. Parke, the top Irish player of the period, whom Barrett defeated in the first round, 6-3, 6-4, 6-1, and Charles Dixon, whom Barrett defeated in the all-comers’ final after losing the first two sets: 5-7, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-1.

The weather during the Wimbledon tournament of 1911 was particularly hot, an unusually strong heatwave prevailing for most of the meeting. This weather tested not only the physical but also the mental strength of both Anthony Wilding, the holder, and Herbert Roper Barrett, the challenger, in the challenge round. However, the New Zealander was the fitter player physically and ten years younger than Barrett; Wilding had also probably benefitted from being able to ‘stand out’ until the end of the all-comers’ event before taking on the challenger. Nevertheless, in what was a very strange match, Barrett pushed Wilding all the way before Barrett felt he had to retire with the score standing at two sets-all, 6-4, 4-6, 2-6, 6-2, retired.

Twenty-four years later, in the interview he gave to the Gloucestershire Echo newspaper, quoted from above, Barrett looked back on this match at Wimbledon. According to his account, a doctor he saw on Friday, 7 July, told him that he was suffering from a strained heart and that the doctor would not be responsible if Barrett played in the challenge round the following day, Saturday, 8 July.

However, according to Barrett, who forgets that he lost the first and fourth sets of the match in question: “I travelled down to Wimbledon that day [Saturday] with about 18 other enthusiasts in a third-class carriage, and on reaching the ground told George Hillyard, who was the All England secretary then, that I could not play and had a doctor’s certificate in my pocket.

“‘But look at the crowd,’ said Hillyard. ‘I am afraid you will have to play.’ ‘I gave way and all went well until the fourth set. I won the first two sets fairly easily, but lost the third and had a terrific struggle in the fourth. Tony got an early lead of 2-1, and when I made a big effort to catch up and failed after a lot of running about in the fourth game of the set things became a bit mixed.

“The net began to jump about in a most curious manner, the ground seemed to give beneath my feet, and the stands began to close in upon me. I could not go on, and had to retire at two sets-all. Afterwards someone recommended me to see a specialist, and when I did he said, ‘Your heart is perfect, your lungs are perfect, there is nothing whatever the matter with your liver. You have been suffering from sunstroke.’”

At that point in time – the summer of 1911 – the 37-year-old Herbert Roper Barrett was still living with his parents in their home in the Forest Gate area of Essex. In addition to Herbert, the census return completed in April 1911 lists 67-year-old Joseph Barrett and his 60-year-old wife Louisa as residents, along with their youngest surviving child, Arthur, whose profession is given as ‘Stockbroker’s authorised clerk’. Herbert is listed as a solicitor, while Joseph, senior, who had stopped practising law by then, is listed as a retired solicitor (Hebert had taken over the family law practice in Leadenhall Street by then). A number of servants also feature on the census return.

In 1912, Herbert Roper Barrett travelled abroad to take part in an overseas lawn tennis tournament for the first time in several years on the occasion of the Sixth Olympiad, which was held in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. The indoor lawn tennis events were held in early May and featured a modest entry of six nations, with New Zealand, represented by Anthony Wilding, being the only non-European nation participating. Barrett’s best performance came in the mixed doubles event where he won the silver medal alongside Helen Aitchison. Their opponents in the final were another English pair, Charles Dixon and Edith Hannam (née Boucher), who beat them, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.

In the men’s singles event at the 1912 Olympic Games Barrett lost a close five-set, second round match against the Swede Gunnar Setterwall, 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, 6-8, 6-4. In the men’s doubles event Setterwall, partnered by Carl Kempe, defeated Barrett and Arthur Gore in the quarter-finals after losing the first two sets, 4-6, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, 6-3.

In mid-June of 1912, Barrett took part in the Kent Championships tournament, in Beckenham, where he had won the men’s singles title on two previous occasions, in 1908 and 1909. In 1912, Barrett went all the way to the final at the Kent Championships where he lost a close five-set match to Anthony Wilding, the player Barrett had retired against in the challenge round at Wimbledon the previous summer. The final score was 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, 1-6, 6-2.

Two weeks later, at Wimbledon, Barrett continued his good form, although he lost in the quarter-finals of the men’s singles event to the Frenchman Max Decugis, 6-3, 7-5, 4-6, 6-4. In the men’s doubles event, however, there was more success for Barrett, this time partnered by Charles Dixon. In their first attempt at the title as a pair they went all the way to the challenge round where they faced the holders, Decugis and his compatriot Maurice Germot. After dropping the first set the English pair rallied to win a spirited encounter, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 7-5. Barrett was 38 years at the time of this victory.

In mid-July 1912, just after the end of the Wimbledon tournament, Barrett travelled to Folkestone in Kent to take part in the semi-final tie in the Davis Cup pitting the British Isles against France. Although he did not take part in the singles, Barrett and his partner played a crucial role in the doubles match by defeating André Gobert and William Laurentz in four sets, 3-6 6-4 6-1, 6-1, as the British Isles recorded a comfortable 4-1 victory in matches. This would be Barrett’s only appearance in the Davis Cup competition in 1912.

In 1913, Barrett began the lawn tennis season at the Covered Court Championships, held at the Queen’s Club in London at the end of April. Although he appears not to have taken part in the men’s singles event, it seems that he did take part in both the men’s doubles and the mixed doubles events, albeit under the pseudonym of ‘E.W.E. Lamb’. (In the early decades of lawn tennis a number of players sometimes sent in pseudonyms instead of their real names when entering for a tournament. Because this practice was supported by organising committees and only the pseudonyms were reported in the press, it is sometimes difficult in such cases to be sure of a player’s true identity.)

At the Covered Court Championships tournament in April 1913, Barrett (aka ‘E.W.E. Lamb’) and Arthur Gore reached the challenge round of the men’s doubles event where they lost to the defending champions, Anthony Wilding and Stanley Doust, 6-4, 6-2, 6-3. (Although Barrett had played men’s doubles with Charles Dixon at several tournaments in 1912, Dixon’s partner at the Covered Court Championships in 1913 was Major Ritchie.)

In addition, “E.W.E. Lamb” also reached the final match in the mixed doubles event at the Covered Court Championships tournament in partnership with Madeline O’Neill, the player with whom Barrett had won the same title in 1910. In 1913, they lost the final match to Doust and the great English player Dorothea Lambert Chambers, 6-3, 6-0. (Madeline O’Neill and the French player André Gobert had won the mixed doubles title in 1912.)

Later on in the 1913 lawn tennis season, in the run-up to Wimbledon, Herbert Roper Barrett once again took part in the Kent Championships tournament at Beckenham, where he and Arthur Gore won the doubles title over two other Englishmen, Alfred Beamish and Alfred Bentley, 6-3, 6-2. Despite their success at Beckenham, Barrett and Gore did not team up at Wimbledon in late June of 1913, Barrett instead pairing again with Charles Dixon. (This is understandable because Barrett and Dixon were the defending champions and it is common for pairs to defend a title together.)

In the men’s singles event at Wimbledon in 1913, Barrett had a very unlucky draw in that he had to play the American Maurice McLoughlin, one of the world’s top players, in the first round. At just twenty-three, McLoughlin was sixteen years younger than Barrett and came to Wimbledon as the reigning men’s singles champion of the United States of America, having won this prestigious title for the first time the previous summer. Most experts considered the American as one of the favourites for the men’s singles title, but despite the disparity in age Barrett played one of the best matches of his career on the centre court at Wimbledon, only just failing to beat McLoughlin. The final score was 4-6, 8-6, 1-6, 6-2, 8-6.

At Wimbledon in 1913, there was a consolation of sorts for Barrett when he and Charles Dixon successfully defended the men’s doubles title in the challenge round. Their opponents were the Germans Heinrich Kleinschroth and Friedrich Rahe who, although they managed to win the third set, were outplayed by their more experienced opponents, 6-2, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2.

At the time of this men’s doubles challenge round match at Wimbledon in 1913, Kleinschroth and Rahe had a combined age of 48, thirty years less than the combined age of their opponents, both of whom were 39. Charles Dixon was another of those English players who, like Barrett, Arthur Gore and Major Ritchie, seemed able to play some of his best lawn tennis well into his thirties and even in his forties.

In late July of 1913, Barrett returned to the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon to take part in the challenge round of the Davis Cup, the British Isles having won back the trophy from Australasia in Melbourne in December 1912. For the challenge round in 1913, the British Isles, in addition to Barrett who, as usual, only played doubles, were represented by Charles Dixon and the Irishman James Cecil Parke. Their opponents, the United States of America, were represented by Maurice McLoughlin, Richard Norris Williams and the doubles specialist Harold Hackett.

After the first two singles matches on day one of the tie, the teams were level at one victory apiece. Parke had beaten McLoughlin in a tremendous five-set battle, 8-10, 7-5, 6-4, 1-6, 7-5, while Dixon had lost to Williams by a similar score, 6-8, 6-3, 2-6, 6-1, 7-5. As sometimes happens, the doubles on the second day thus proved to be of vital importance and, given how things turned out on the third and final day, here, it could be said, the British Isles came very close to retaining the Davis Cup. In a thrilling match Barrett and Dixon led McLoughlin and Hackett by two sets to one, and reached match point on McLoughlin’s serve in the fourth set before the Americans rallied to win another five-set match, 5-7, 6-1, 2-6, 7-5, 6-4.

On the third and last day of the tie Maurice McLoughlin took on Charles Dixon in the first of the reverse singles, but the spark had gone out of the Englishman’s game and an in-form McLoughlin won easily, 8-6, 6-3, 6-2. With an unassailable 3-1 lead in matches, this meant that the Americans had regained the Davis Cup. However, Parke’s victory over Williams in the final match of the tie – the score was 6-2, 5-7, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 – left many wondering what might have been if Barrett and Dixon had been able to convert the match point they had had in the crucial doubles match.

Later on in the lawn tennis season of 1913, Barrett won several titles at the tournaments he was in the habit of patronising in the latter part of the summer. These victories included the men’s singles title at the Suffolk Championships in Saxmundham, the East of England Championships in Felixstowe and the Kent Coast Championships in Hythe.

In late June of 1914, Barrett returned to Wimbledon as a 40-year-old. Despite his age, his enthusiasm for the sport of lawn tennis remained undiminished though his physical and mental powers had, understandably, begun to decline. He lost in the second round of the men’s singles event, Major Ritchie beating him in four sets, 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, 6-3.

In the challenge round of the men’s doubles event Barrett and Charles Dixon were attempting to win the title for the third successive year, but they made a disastrous start against the challengers, Anthony Wilding and Norman Brookes. Although the English pair rallied to win the third set, this was not enough and the Australasian pair won a four-set match, 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 8-6. This was Herbert Roper Barrett’s last appearance in a final match at Wimbledon.

In the weeks following the Wimbledon tournament Barrett took part in two Davis Cup ties in England. In the quarter-finals of this competition he played in the tie opposing the British Isles and Belgium at the Pleasure Gardens in Folkestone, Kent. Playing only doubles, Barrett and Theodore Mavrogordato easily defeated William du Vivier and Georges Watson, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, as the British routed the Belgians 5-0.

In the first of the semi-finals of the Davis Cup competition in 1914, held at Wimbledon, and opposing the British Isles and France, Barrett and Mavrogordato once again teamed up for the doubles match. This time they were beaten, by Max Decugis and Maurice Germot, 6-3, 5-7, 7-5, 6-4. However, this match had no effect on the outcome of the tie because Mavorogordato and James Parke won both of their singles matches to give the home side a 4-1 victory.

In the all-comers’ final of the Davis Cup competition in 1914, held at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston from 6-8 August, Australasia defeated the British Isles 3-0. The reverse singles matches were not held because Norman Brookes and Anthony Wilding had already sealed victory by the end of the second day. This tie was played against a backdrop of increasing international tensions, Great Britain having declared war on Germany on 4 August. The British players were thus keen to return home as soon as possible.

One of the last lawn tennis tournaments to be held on British soil before the war caused the cancellation of all important sporting events was the Suffolk Championships in Saxmundham, which began in early August 1914. Here Barrett won the men’s singles title for the eleventh time in a row and the fourteenth time in the past seventeen years, an impressive record. In the final he beat Alfred Beamish, 8-10, 6-4, 6-4.

When Great Britain declared war on Germany at the beginning of August 1914, Herbert Roper Barrett was already 40 years of age. According to Ayres’ Lawn Tennis Almanack, he served in the National Guard during the war. Given his age, it is unlikely that he would have been considered for active military service, at least not during the early part of the war.

Conscription for single men was introduced in Great Britain in January 1916. In May of the same year it was extended to all men aged between 18 and 41, unless they were married, widowed with children or served in one of a number of reserved occupations. However, Barrett had turned forty-two the previous November, so he would not have had to join up.

John Ambrose Barrett, the third of the surviving Barrett brothers, did join up following Great Britain’s declaration of war on Germany in 1914. Like his brother Herbert, John had attended Merchant Taylors’ School where he excelled both inside and outside the classroom. After leaving the school he went up to Oxford University where he obtained a ‘half blue’ at lawn tennis. In July of 1902, he took part in the annual Oxford versus Cambridge ‘Varsity lawn tennis matches, held at the Queen’s Club in London. He was also an excellent cricketer and played association football for the Merchant Taylors’ School senior team.

The 1911 Census of England and Wales lists John Barrett’s occupation as brewer. He had married Evelyn Marion Back (b. 1890), a solicitor’s daughter from Hethersett in the county of Norfolk, before the outbreak of World War One. John Barrett was initially a private in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry before being appointed Second Lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own), 16th Battalion. By the summer of 1917, he was a member of the 117th Brigade of the 39th Battalion. John Ambrose Barrett was killed in action in Belgium on 31 July 1917, the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres (the Battle of Paschendale). He was 36 years old.

Following the cessation of hostilities, lawn tennis and other sports resumed in Great Britain in 1919. Now 45 years of age, Herbert Roper Barrett returned to tournament play, although he would restrict himself more and more to taking part only in doubles events. At the Surrey Championships tournament, held in Surbiton in late May 1919, he reached the final of the men’s single event before losing to the Australian Gerald Patterson, 6-2, 6-3, 6-2.

In mid-June of 1919, Barrett reached all three finals at the North London Championships (Gipsy Open), but was unlucky in each of them. At Wimbledon in 1919, Barrett lost in the second round of the men’s singles event to Gerald Patterson, the eventual champion, 7-5, 6-2, 7-5. In the men’s doubles event Barrett and Arthur Gore lost in the second round to Major Ritchie and the New Zealander Francis Fisher, 6-2, 7-5, 6-2.

In mid-July, Barrett was part of the British Davis Cup team that took on South Africa in a tie held at Devonshire Park in Eastbourne on the Sussex coast. Once again, Barrett played only doubles, his partner being Algernon Kingscote. They beat George Dodd and Harold Aitken, 7-5, 9-7, 6-4. The British won this tie by 4 matches to 1.

In late August of 1919, Barrett and the other members of the British Davis Cup team travelled to Deauville for the all-comers’ final against France. The other members of the British team were Percival Davson, Algernon Kingscote and 18-year-old (Oswald) Noel Turnbull. The French were represented by André Gobert and William Laurentz, and had a real advantage on the slow clay courts of Deauville.

At the end of the first day’s play the teams were level at 1-1, Gobert having beaten Davson in four sets before Kingscote outlasted Laurentz in a five-set match. On the second day the doubles match featured Barrett and Turnbull against Gobert and Laurentz. In this match the combination of British youth and experience proved a mismatch as the French pair won in straight sets, 6-1, 6-0, 12-10. France thus led 2-1 at the end of the second day.

On the third and final day an inspired Kingscote beat Gobert in straight sets before Davson faced Laurentz in the deciding match, which the British player won in five sets, giving the away side overall victory in the tie by 3 matches to 2. The British would go on to lose the challenge round to Australia (now playing as a separate nation, without New Zealand) in Sydney in January 1920. However, Barrett was not part of the British team for this tie. Indeed, the tie in Deauville in August 1919 marked his eighth and last appearance as a player for the British Davis Cup team, but not the end of his involvement in the competition.

In early August of 1919, Barrett had taken part in the Suffolk Championships tournament in Saxmundham, where he won the men’s singles title for the twelfth time in a row (there had been no competition during the war years 1915-18) and the fifteenth time overall. In the final he defeated another Englishman, Frank Jarvis, 6-2, 6-2. In September of 1919, he won another singles title when he beat Theodore Mavrogordato in the final of the Kent Coast Championships in Hythe, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3.

In the early to mid-1920s, Barrett’s main successes came mainly in men’s doubles and mixed doubles events, in which he continued to take part past his fiftieth birthday in November 1923. In August of 1920, he once again won the men’s singles title at the Suffolk Championships in Saxmundham, beating a Lieutenant-Colonel Davies in the final, 6-0, 6-2.

One of Herbert Roper Barrett’s very last successes in a men’s singles event came at the same tournament, the Suffolk Championships in Saxmundham, in August 1921 when, at the age of 47, he became champion for the fourteenth time in a row and the seventeenth time overall. In the final he defeated another Englishman, Francis Fison, 6-1, 6-1.

At Wimbledon in late June of 1921, Barrett had appeared in the men’s singles event for the last time, reaching the fourth round before being beaten by the top Japanese player Zenzo Shimidzu, 6-3, 6-3, 6-1. In the men’s doubles event Barrett and the South African player Brian Norton reached the semi-finals before losing a close match to the eventual champions, the Englishman Max Woosnam and the Australian-born player Randolph Lycett, 8-6, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4.

One year later, in 1922, Barrett and Norton again reached the semi-final of the men’s doubles event at Wimbledon. This was the first Wimbledon tournament to be held at the present location on Church Road. (The challenge round was also finally abolished at Wimbledon this year.) In the semi-finals of the men’s doubles event the 48-year-old Barrett and Norton met the Australians Gerald Patterson and Pat O’Hara Wood, and came within two games of reaching the final before the Australians won a memorable match, 6-1, 3-6, 5-7, 6-3, 15-13.

There were celebrations at Wimbledon four years later, in 1926, to mark the first holding of the Championships fifty years earlier, in 1877, when the only open event had been the men’s singles. As many surviving champions as were able to come appeared on one side of the Centre Court, down the middle of which a red carpet had been laid. Some of the other competitors in that year’s tournament were lined up on the other side of the court. In order of seniority, each of the former (and present) champions that day received a special commemorative medal from Queen Mary, who presided over the ceremony with King George V.

A photograph taken of many of the former champions present on the day in question, Monday, 21 June 1926, includes Herbert Roper Barrett, men’s doubles champion in 1909 (with Arthur Gore), and 1912 and 1913 (with Charles Dixon). At Wimbledon in 1926, the 52-year-old Barrett and the 58-year-old Gore teamed up again for the men’s doubles event, but lost in the second round.

One year later, in 1927, both Barrett and Gore again entered the men’s doubles event at Wimbledon together, but lost their first round match to the unheralded British pair of Francis Stowe and Ulysses Williams, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 12-10. The following year, 1928, Barrett entered the men’s doubles event at Wimbledon with the New Zealander Francis Fisher, but they withdrew from the event before their first-round match was due to be played. This was the last time Barrett entered one of the main events at the Wimbledon Championships.

On 12 August 1926, a short report had appeared in the Gloucestershire Citizen newspaper under the heading ‘Tennis Romance – Veteran Player to Wed Widow’. The report in question read as follows:

“The engagement is announced of Mr Herbert Roper Barrett, a tennis veteran, who took part in the march past of veterans at the Wimbledon Jubilee this year, and Mrs [Helen] Glenny of Cleveland Square, Hyde Park, [London], widow of Mr John Waterhouse Glenny. Mr Barrett, who is a solicitor, is 53 years of age. He has gained distinction at association football as well as at tennis, having played for the Corinthians and the Casuals. He has also won many international honours at tennis, mainly by his exceptional ability as a doubles player, and he has represented Britain in many Davis Cup competitions.”

Herbert Roper Barrett and Helen Glenny were married on 13 October 1926 at All Souls’ Church in Langham Place, just off Oxford Circus in London. Helen Barrett, as she became, was born Helen Bothwick in 1879 in the town of Hawick in the Scottish Borders. She married her first husband, the aforementioned John Waterhouse Glenny, in 1898; they had four children together, all girls. John Glenny (1868-1919) was himself a talented lawn tennis player, as were his brothers George and Charles.

Two years earlier, in 1924, Barrett had become non-playing captain of the British Davis Cup team for the first time, for their tie against France. This was held at Devonshire Park, Eastbourne, in late July and resulted in a 4-1 victory for the French.

In subsequent years, Barrett would captain the British Davis Cup team several more times, most notably during the years 1933-36, when Great Britain won the prestigious trophy four times in a row, due principally to the efforts of Fred Perry, Wimbledon men’s singles champion in the years 1934-36. The British victory in the Davis Cup competition of 1933 was the country’s first such success since 1912.

As late as 1929, at the age of 55, Barrett was still capable of reaching the final of an open lawn tennis event. He did so in early August of that year in the men’s doubles event at the Suffolk Championships in Saxmundham, when he and his partner, Flight Lieutenant H.J. Gilbert, lost to E.W. Eardley and Norman Latchford, 6-3, 6-2.

In the 1930s, in addition to his role as Davis Cup captain, Barrett was also president of the British Lawn Tennis Association for a time. He also continued to practise as a solicitor and to occupy positions on various boards and committees within the City of London, where the family still had its law practice, Joseph Barrett and Son, in Leadenhall Buildings, Leadenhall Street.

Barrett had been made a Freeman of the City of London in 1910, the same year in which he entered the Worshipful Company of Farriers, one of the Livery Companies of the City of London which, amongst other things, supports charities. Barrett acted as Master of the Worshipful Company of Farriers (London) in 1921 and 1933.

In 1939, a serious illness forced Barrett to retire from his position as non-playing captain of the British Davis Cup team. He was 65 years old when World War Two broke out in September of the same year, once again causing the cancellation of lawn tennis tournaments throughout Great Britain.

Herbert Roper Barrett did not live to see the resumption of lawn tennis tournaments in 1946. He died on Tuesday, 27 July 1943, in a hospital in Horsham, a small market town in West Sussex. He was 69. His funeral was held four days later, at Itchingfield Church in Horsham. A memorial service was also held, on 10 August 1943, at Saint-Peter-upon-Cornhill Church in the City of London. Herbert Roper Barrett was survived by his wife, Helen, who died in Horsham, Sussex, in October 1952 at the age of 73.
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