by John Clarke
The women’s draw offered its own pleasures today. This was no surprise to Anaïs Nin. ‘The women’s draw is pleasure,’ she said after going down to Rebecca West. ‘That is its purpose. That is its destiny.’ West, who came here as a junior (as Cicily Fairfield), was sharp all day and goes through. Nin was full of praise. ‘She was wonderful,’ she said of West. ‘Absolutely wonderful. I’ll never forget it.’
Dot Sayers, natty in shorts and looking very like a kind of grown-up Christopher Robin, was beaten by Marguerite Yourcenar of Belgium. ‘How I look is irrelevant,’ said Sayers. ‘How I look is how I need to look in order to play the way I play. The way I play is not the way I look. The way I play is the way I think.’
The Scot Marie Stopes has one of the best defensive games in the business. American Marianne Moore mounted attack after attack and tried everything in the book but Stopes was impregnable.
An even bigger surprise was Kathy-Ann Porter’s demolition of Emmeline Pankhurst. Porter has been knocking on the door for a few years and she arrived in a big way out there today, serving powerfully and never giving the fifth seed a look-in. Pankhurst was as shocked as anyone. ‘I’m shocked,’ she said. ‘I’m probably as shocked as anyone.’
The Pavlova–Dietrich affair will be talked about for years. Marlene Dietrich, who left her native Germany as a junior and now plays mainly in the US, is deadly if the crowd gets behind her. This was always going to be interesting because the French crowd adores her but also loves the gifted Russian Anna Pavlova. And the more the crowd loved the match, the better it got. Pavlova’s court coverage is astounding and she has electrifying speed. Dietrich is nothing but ground strokes and with Pavlova in full stride all she could do was wait for the music to stop.
‘What could I do?’ said Dietrich. ‘I could do nothing. I was so tired.’
But Dietrich did do something. She slowed her game down even further. She hit the ball very late and low and she scorched her shots past Pavlova as she came in.
Pavlova was stunned. The fire went out of her game. She became meek and withdrawn. ‘I felt as if I was dying,’ she said. ‘The life was going out of me. It was ebbing away.’
Dietrich won the second set and carried all before her again in the third before Pavlova quite suddenly emerged from her chrysalis and began to build to a big finish. She was everywhere. She dashed from side to side like a dervish, she sprinted from the back court to the net and her overheads were breathtaking. In the end Dietrich stood in the fading light, hitting languid, low easy-looking drives, resigned to her fate.
‘Marlene looked great today,’ said Pavlova. ‘I was lucky to get on top of her.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Dietrich. ‘Is JFK here yet?’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Tallulah Bankhead.
Day 9
* * *
Russell v. Dufy • Betjeman v. Bacon • Chaplin v. Le Corbusier • Keynes v. Ribeiro • Nabokov v. Miller • Conrad v. Graves • Rand v. Potter
* * *
In a big day for the Brits, Little Bertie Russell scampered through to the second round at the expense of well-supported local boy Raoul Dufy, losing concentration only once when confused by a call from the umpire overruling the baseline judge. The ball was called ‘out’. The central umpire called it good and gave the point to Dufy.
‘Pardon?’ said Russell.
‘I thought it was on the line,’ said the umpire.
‘Where?’ said Russell urgently, scanning the packed stand.
‘The ball was good,’ said the umpire.
‘The ball?’ said Russell, interested. ‘Can a ball be “good”?’
‘On the line is good.’
‘Where?’ said Russell, fiddling with his trousers.
English selectors were also pleased with the performance of John Betjeman, up against Francis Bacon, one of the youngest players here and a huge talent, if a bit unruly. ‘Oh, lovely play in the afternoon sun,’ said Betjeman as he put one across court. ‘Racquet-head up, hit through the ball, John. Well done. Lemonade soon. Feel it in those thigh muscles.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Bacon.
‘Sorry, talking to myself,’ said Betjeman.
‘Thighs?’ said Bacon.
And on Centre Court one of the few Englishmen openly adored by the French, Charles Chaplin, had an impressive win over Swiss-born French Davis Cup stalwart and veteran international Le Corbusier. When play started the partisan sections of the crowd began chanting their support for Corbu at one end and Charlot at the other. Corbu took the first set 6–3.
Initially nothing went right for Chaplin. Several times he turned himself over on the net, losing his racquet in the air and finishing on the ground on his opponent’s side of the net facing the wrong way. At 3–4 and 0–30 in the second set he upset the drinks station and brought a container of iced beverages down on his head. At later stages of the match his trousers fell down, often as he was reaching for difficult overheads. ‘Charlot! Charlot! Charlot!’ called the crowd as he grabbed the second and third sets 7–5, 6–3. Corbu won the fourth but the little man came back and took the fifth to a standing ovation. Roses were tossed on to the court.
England’s Maynard Keynes took an unusual tack on Court 6 this afternoon in his match with the very talented Portuguese leftie Aquilino Ribeiro. It annoyed Ribeiro that the Portuguese royal family was allocated one entire section at the southern end. ‘There are people out there who’ve been told there’s no seating available,’ he said, ‘and we’ve got some pomaded ape up here with the best view in the house. He’s been given thirty tickets! He only needs two! Let the people outside have the rest.’
‘I quite agree. Wait here,’ said Keynes, who went in search of the match referee.
‘They should be gassed like badgers,’ said Ribeiro quietly when Keynes came back.
‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’
As they watched, the king of Portugal was joined by a row of French peasants whose arrival was applauded by all and sundry.
‘How did you do that?’ asked Ribeiro.
‘I bought the other seats from him and sold them to the peasants.’
‘They haven’t got any money.’
‘They have now,’ said Keynes.
‘Where did they get it?’
‘I convinced the king to lend it to them.’
‘Why should he do that?’ asked Ribeiro.
‘He owns the drinks franchise, his company makes the hats and he prints the programs,’ said Keynes.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I went to school with him,’ said Keynes.
It wasn’t all England today. Vladimir Nabokov, now resident in the US, derailed the comeback of Henry Miller who has been out of the game with a socially sustained back injury and just seemed to be coming right. As Miller put it, ‘I hunt. I kill. I eat.’
Nabokov has been playing since childhood in Russia, and can do almost anything with the ball on any surface. ‘I don’t need to play tennis,’ he said. ‘I do it because it pleases me.’
Miller seemed disappointed to have lost to ‘an elitist and a ponce’ and, asked what he planned for the future, said he wanted to play with his instinct, not his brain.
‘Unfortunately, there is a lot of this about,’ said Nabokov. ‘The idea that instinct is more radical than intellect is not one we need consider for long. Any other questions?’
Sixth-seed Joseph Conrad was fast and mobile against the baby-faced Robert Graves and he dealt well with swirling winds, and two interruptions while dead and dying insects were swept from the court. ‘I don’t know what they were,’ said Conrad. ‘It was like a plague of some sort. A sickness.’
Conrad didn’t pick up a racquet until he was twenty-three and was the oldest player in the first tournament he entered. He won and never looked back. ‘It was good to be out there,’ he said. ‘I enjoyed it, apart from the horror.’ The Poles, of course, went mad.
Italian Maria Montessori went through
comfortably and then invited the ballgirls out on to the practice courts for a hit. ‘They should play, all these children. Let them play and get confident and then they’ll be better at everything they do.’
‘Silly bitch,’ said Ezra Pound. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She doesn’t speak for Italy.’
‘Ezra Pound is not Italian,’ said Montessori, ‘knows nothing about children, does not care about anyone but himself and is mad. Is there anything else?’
American glamour-girl Gloria Swanson was also through today but perhaps the most emphatic win was Ayn Rand’s annihilation of Beatrix Potter. Rand was brought up in Russia but lives now in the US where she thrives on the lucrative American circuit. She will appear before a hearing tomorrow night over an incident following the toss. The players shook hands. ‘Good luck, Ayn,’ said Potter.
‘Get out of my way,’ replied Rand, ‘or I’ll fucking kill you.’
Day 10
* * *
Keaton v. Tzara • Spock v. Rivera • Lawrence v. Modigliani • Bishop v. Arden • McCarthy v. Doolittle • Ravel v. Hesse • Cocteau v. De Mille • Eliot v. Capek
* * *
The diminutive Buster Keaton endured everything thrown at him by Romanian Tristan Tzara. In the first-set tie-break a lighting tower crashed on to the court, missing him by centimetres. He stepped neatly out of the rubble as if it wasn’t there.
Also solid was American qualifier Ben Spock, outlasting the Colombian José Rivera in 41-degree heat on Court 12 this afternoon. Conditions were so oppressive the match referee considered a postponement. ‘It was like playing in the jungle,’ said Rivera, ‘without any of the advantages.’
An Olympic gold medallist in rowing, the Spockster was full of praise for his opponent. ‘José is a great player and he comes from a country which has been exploited and ruined by other countries, including my own. How can we bring children into the world and then do that to them?’
Lawrence of Nottingham marshalled his considerable will against the more fancied Amedeo Modigliani in the cauldron that was Court 4 this afternoon. The Italian beanpole was elegance personified and he began with some of the most imperious ground strokes we’ve seen here. He didn’t even look where the ball had gone but nodded in quiet approval and strolled to his position to play the next point.
By contrast, Lawrence is like a young bull. He snorts. He grunts as he hits the ball and in today’s heat he sweated, he groaned, he squinted, he poured water over himself in the breaks, he was not in his element at all. ‘I’m going to keep coming at you, you know,’ he said after the first set. ‘I’m going to keep coming at you until I have you.’ Modigliani looked slightly affronted at this but said nothing. For the next three sets, however, this is exactly what Lawrence did.
There was an entertaining media call after the Elizabeth Bishop–Eve Arden and the Mary McCarthy–Hilda Doolittle matches, which finished at almost the same time on different courts; Bishop successful over Arden and McCarthy over Doolittle. All the players were at the press conference except Arden, who ‘wasn’t quite ready yet’. Doolittle opened her mouth a couple of times but ultimately said nothing. A woman who announced herself as Bryher spoke for her. Doolittle was a great talent, Bryher said, and had trained with Pound, to whom she was engaged, and with Freud, to whom she was indebted. She said they had both been to SuperTom’s match earlier that day and had watched ‘with deep admiration’. She explained that Doolittle would have to be leaving soon. Bryher described herself as ‘unbelievably rich’.
Bishop and McCarthy were at college together and delighted to be here. ‘I’m delighted to be anywhere,’ said Bishop. ‘Except New England and the past.’
‘Me too,’ said McCarthy. ‘The past can go to hell. Bring on the future.’
‘Yep,’ said Bishop, ‘and South America.’
‘Did anyone see the Lillian Hellman story in the paper today?’ asked McCarthy. ‘Where she says she went into Germany and helped some people who were in trouble and then came back out again? What bullshit. She’s sold the idea to some film producer. They’re going to make a movie of it. Some pal of Dash’s, no doubt.’
‘I read that,’ said Bishop. ‘Is it incorrect?’
‘Absolute bullshit,’ insisted McCarthy. ‘Lillian’s never been to Germany.’
Chances are there’ll be a good crowd for McCarthy’s next singles match. Her opponent will be Lillian Hellman.
French Davis Cup regular Maurice Ravel came out with guns blazing against the German Hermann Hesse, building up a rhythm, layer upon layer. Hesse was never in the first set and could do little but watch and wait, making Ravel fight for the points the gods didn’t give him. He won his first game at 0–3 in the second set and glanced at the sky as if his call had been on hold but was now through. The crowd laughed but Ravel lost his way and began repeating the pattern of each point. Hesse simply put the ball where Ravel wasn’t. Like Mann, Hesse attracts support from young American college students. They were out in force last night.
Last night, too, the brilliant Frenchman Jean Cocteau was pitted against the American powerhouse with the French name, Cecil B. De Mille. The match was preceded by a dispute about the lights. De Mille wanted all the lights on, Cocteau wanted half of them on and the area where the players sit between sets to be completely unlit.
‘Unlit?’ asked De Mille. ‘Why? How are we going to see what we’re doing?’
‘There’s enough light spilling in from the court. It’ll be great. Some contrast,’ said Cocteau.
‘Contrast?’ said De Mille. ‘People don’t want contrast. They want to see what’s going on.’
‘You don’t know what people want. You only know what you want to give them,’ said Cocteau.
‘Meaningless distinction,’ said De Mille. ‘Just turn the lights on so we can see.’
The lights were turned on and play commenced. Cocteau spent much of the first set angling shots into De Mille from well above the net so they came at him out of the lights and he couldn’t see a thing. De Mille complained to the umpire who agreed, dismissing Cocteau’s protest that the lights were De Mille’s idea. Cocteau smiled. It was not the result that mattered, but the mischief.
De Mille plays well but lacks variation and, as the match progressed, his style became more metronomic, and the inventive Cocteau began to pick him off. De Mille had to be content with having executed, by his own estimation, at 4-all and 30–15 in the third set, ‘The Greatest Shot Ever Played in World Tennis’. It wasn’t enough.
There were no problems for the London-based SuperTom Eliot who was devastating against the resourceful Czech Karel Capek, sharpening his skills and hitting the ball as hard as anyone in the tournament so far. He has a bagful of racquets, each strung to a different tension and he worked his way through to the last of them.
‘Just trying a few things,’ he said. The hangdog SuperTom recently gave up his bank job to devote himself to the tour full-time and has been practising in the country with Ezra Pound. ‘Just a few little things we’re working on,’ said Eliot.
‘Can you be more specific?’ he was asked.
‘More specific?’ interrupted Pound. ‘How could he be more specific?’
‘It’s all right, Ezra,’ said SuperTom and cleared his throat:
‘Légerdemain, Marie, c’est la!
The second was the toughest set. A rugged time I had of it.
Après-dîner. Just the worst time for a match, and such a long dîner.
Because I did not serve too well.
Because I did not serve.
Because I did not serve my purpose
Was not clear Meine Heimat über alles.
I think those are meine Tennisbälle.
And timing please hurry along my timing.
The return is within the serve without the frame between.
Da.’
Day 11
* * *
Puccini v. Shostakovich • Gaudier-Brzeska v. Sibelius • Epstein v. O’Casey • K
afka v. D’Annunzio • Stravinsky v. Rivera
* * *
Rain failed to dampen enthusiasm this morning and, if anything, was good for the seeds. Several of the courts became unplayable but by late afternoon showers were intermittent and meteorologists promise bluer skies tomorrow.
On Court 1, before the rains came, Giacomo Puccini looked good all the way over one-time Russian junior champion Dmitri Shostakovich, who did not appear happy when he was whisked away by Russian officials after the match. A worried Puccini said the Russian tennis program seemed to be designed to identify ‘an incomparable talent like Dmitri. And snuff it out.’
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska found his road barred by the hardworking Finn Jean Sibelius. The Frenchman threw everything at it. Sibelius plays like no other player. ‘I play like a Finn,’ he said. ‘I am a Finn,’ he added, not unreasonably. His stroke-making sometimes seems agricultural, his serve lacks kick and he hits the ball straight and flat. The problem for his opponent today was that he hit it early and he hit it fast and he hit it into the gaps.
Englishman Jacob Epstein was also on the phone to the travel agent, beaten in four by Sean O’Casey. Epstein seems to have every shot but on the big points was tentative and sadly double-faulted to lose the match. O’Casey is a tough customer and his questioning of line calls brought him into conflict with the umpire. At 30–0 and 3–4 in the third set he did it again.
‘You are questioning a number of line calls,’ said the umpire.
‘I am,’ said O’Casey, ‘yes.’
‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t.’
