André Derain, in easily the loudest shorts we’ve seen so far, looked a class above his compact countryman Jacques Prevert, but afterwards had little to say about his own form.
‘Did you see Matisse?’ he said. ‘What a player! Did you see him against Miller? What a match! He was magnificent. Six times I thought he was gone and he came back. There’s only one man in the tournament who can beat him.’
And who might that be?
‘The Dutchman, van Gogh. I saw him play for the first time just the other day. If that guy doesn’t change the way this whole game is played I’m a monkey’s uncle.’
Derain has been asked to present himself to referee Charles Darwin, ‘for a few quiet words regarding trousers, predictions and primates generally’.
Day 16
Earhart v. Luxemburg • Duncan v. Mandelstam • Christie v. Noether • McCarthy v. Hellman • Keynes v. Paderewski • Mayakovsky v. Porter • Gödel v. Hemingway • Pirandello v. Lacan
Today number 1 seed Amelia Earhart was knocked out. The marvellous Isadora Duncan was stretchered off. Agatha Christie went missing and French police hold ‘grave fears’ for her safety. And just before the close of business Lillian Hellman launched legal proceedings against Mary McCarthy.
On top of everything else a submission has been put by a group representing ‘the players’ that they should be able to enter the doubles with multiple partners.
Earhart’s plan against Rosa Luxemburg was to rush the net at every opportunity. With Luxemburg in a defiant mood, however, it was a plan that never got off the ground. Time and again she was passed as she came in. ‘Are you going to keep doing that all day?’ she asked Luxemburg.
‘I have to beat you to stay in the tournament,’ said Luxemburg. ‘We’re in a cockfight. Let’s just refuse to play against one another.’
‘If we refuse to play the tournament won’t work.’
‘Exactly,’ said Luxemburg. ‘Then we can get the rules changed and start again without trying to eliminate one another.’
‘You mean change the way the whole system works?’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t think so. Get back up there. I’m going to serve even faster.’
‘And I’m going to belt it back past you as you come in.’
Both players were correct in these prognostications.
Two courts away the crowd was traumatised when Isadora Duncan caught part of her clothing in the umpire’s stand as she stretched for a drop shot. There was a sickening thud as her head snapped back and she didn’t move again. Her opponent Nadezhda Mandelstam was shaken and after the match was counselled by Russian officials by being forced to dig her own grave and stand next to it naked.
French police have issued a description of Agatha Christie and are stopping traffic in and out of the area. Christie was last seen two nights ago on a train with a Welsh male voice choir and an extension ladder. Her second-round match against the understanding Amalie Noether has been rescheduled for Friday.
Mary McCarthy was giving an interview after her win over Lillian Hellman this evening when she was handed a writ. ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘Hellman is suing me. What for?’ Her eye ran down the document. ‘Listen to this: “That McCarthy did allege both publicly and privately that Hellman did not compete in the German Open and did not win it in a heroic manner and that, further, Hellman had never been to Germany.”’ McCarthy put the writ down and asked for a glass of water.
Would McCarthy be making a statement at some future time?
‘McCarthy will be making a statement right now,’ she said. ‘Everything that Lillian Hellman says or writes is a lie, including “and” and “the”.’
After this the motion that competitors should be able to play doubles with multiple partners seemed tame. It was seconded by Peggy Guggenheim, Eleanor Roosevelt, Tallulah Bankhead, Edna St Vincent Millay, and everyone in the men’s draw except Auden.
From the beginning of his match against fluent and charismatic Jan Paderewski, John Keynes determined that one of the keys to winning this was to make his opponent play a lot of balls. ‘Padders has been hitting the ball so well this week,’ Keynes said later, ‘I couldn’t let him just stand and deliver. The more winners he hit the more the marginal propensity for error increased and the more confidence I seemed to get in my own game, over time.’
Betting markets responded by firming, with support for Nijinsky, Keynes and Picasso. The big mover was Spock, from 80s in to 7s.
An hour after Isadora Duncan’s terrible accident there was another medical emergency, this time on Court 11. Vladimir Mayakovsky has been impressive here in practice and Cole Porter is playing the tennis of his life. Porter won the first set with a barrage of volleying and measured drop shots. The Russian came back in the second, varying his pace, slowing his serve down and moving Porter around more. At 3–3 in the third set a ball called ‘out’ by the lines-person was overruled as ‘in’ by the AustroHungarian umpire who then became concerned that he had upset Mayakovsky.
‘No. I’m happy,’ said Mayakovsky.
‘Play a let if you like,’ said the umpire.
‘No. You’re the boss,’ said Mayakovsky.
‘You’re the boss,’ agreed Porter, ‘you’re the judge and jury.’
‘You’re the boss,’ they assured him, ‘and you’re both the Curies,
‘You’re the quick response, of the dog of old Pavlov,
You’re the clout of Ruth, you’re the hope of youth,
You’re Ulyanov.
You’re the grace of a novice kneeling,
You’re the height of the Sistine ceiling,
You’re a yard and a half of the Queen’s Own Household Guards,
You’re Atlantic flights, you’re the Northern Lights,
You’re credit cards.
You’re the luft in the old luftwaffe,
You’re the catch in a cash-back offer,
You’re Revere’s ride and you’re vaudeville before it died.
You’re the rebel yell, you’re the Liberty Bell,
You’re genocide.
You’re the rise, in a great crescendo,
You’re the fall, of diminuendo,
When the rolling stones have rolled, you are the moss,
And if we, sir, are the players,
