The English hope for glory and are here in numbers. ‘The strongest team ever to cross the Channel,’ according to Frank ‘the Ferret’ Leavis who’ll be trying to get through the qualifiers. Lawrence, Waugh, Kipling and Maugham, Auden, Spender and Isherwood are here. Little Bertie Russell and Herbie Wells are here. Edith Sitwell, Dot Sayers, Virginia Stephen-Woolf and Vita Sackville-West are here. Orwell is expected any minute.
From Poland have come the great Nijinsky and Conrad, the gifted Rosa Luxemburg and the fabulous Paderewski. Nijinsky was ‘pleased to be back. I’ve always loved playing here. I feel good. Very fit. Watch this.’ And quite suddenly, wearing an overcoat and carrying three suitcases, he leapt five metres straight up in the air.
Beckett arrived on a bicycle, Joyce and Chaplin by car. Tallulah Bankhead came up the river on a barge. W. C. Fields arrived by dirigible. Buster Keaton was catapulted in from Belgium, Escher arrived through the departure lounge, Dali came by overnight post and Alice Toklas sent herself as an attachment. Einstein said he had come by tram.
‘But there is no tram to Paris,’ corrected George Plimpton from the Paris Review.
‘That might account for the time lapse,’ Einstein explained.
And from all over France the French have arrived: Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, the considerable Proust, Braque, Derain, Seurat, Debussy, Bernhardt, Cocteau, Satie, Duchamp. What depth there is in the French game! And what will they do in front of their own crowds?
‘Where is Picasso?’ asked Roland Barthes from Paris-Match. ‘And where is SuperTom?’
But the Spanish champion delayed his arrival at the stadium until late afternoon. Pablo Picasso stepped out of an open sports car to a rapturous reception at 5.55 pm, just in time to make the evening news.
The London-based American SuperTom Eliot was more subtle, coming in under the radar late at night and staying with friends ‘to avoid any fuss’. His preparation is said to be ‘perfect, if he gets a decent draw’. Opinion seems to be that if he and
Picasso are in opposite halves of the draw we’ve got a real contest on our hands.
Oscar Wilde is in from London. ‘Couldn’t stay away,’ he said. ‘One should always attend events in which one has no possible interest. They are invariably the most rewarding.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘A gentleman should always be serious. It amuses one’s butler and fortifies the religious convictions of one’s mother.’
‘But an event which is of no interest cannot possibly be rewarding.’
‘That is a thesis refuted by its own expression. I’m happy to say that, properly used, the language is full of them.’
‘But surely if language has meaning, it is because each individual word has meaning. A word that means nothing is useless.’
‘Everything contains its own opposite. That is its strength. Nothing is itself alone. That is its.’
Live television and internet coverage of this astounding event began with an exhibition doubles match featuring Henrik Ibsen and Claude Monet against Americans Henry James and Mark Twain. The big-hearted Norwegian and the French institution were given a hero’s welcome as they came out on Centre Court and memories flooded back as they slipped into their old rhythm. James played a perfectly timed lob at one stage and Ibsen lost sight of the ball. Monet moved away down the service line, keeping the ball over his left shoulder, and prepared to manufacture any kind of a shot to keep the ball in play. At the last minute, going left to give himself room, he hit a backhand cross-court drive which dropped just over the net.
‘I thought it was a forehand down the line,’ said Twain later. ‘It looked like a forehand down the line.’
‘Was it not a forehand down the line?’ said James. ‘My clear recollection is that it was a forehand down the line.’
‘We are doomed,’ said Ibsen.
‘It was supposed to look like a forehand down the line,’ said Monet.
‘It did,’ said Twain. ‘How do you do that? That’s brilliant.’
‘I try to make it look as if it feels as if it’s a forehand down the line,’ said Monet.
‘Try not to be absurd,’ said James. ‘Nobody of any importance is persuaded by what something looks as if it feels like.’
‘Are you kidding, Henry?’ said his partner. ‘Why didn’t we get it back?’
Ever the showman, Twain pulled out an armoury of trick shots and on several occasions all Monet and Ibsen could do was stand and applaud. Playing in bare feet because there was a frog asleep in one of his shoes, Twain hit the ball through his legs, around his back and from as far as three rows back in the stand.
‘He’s completely ridiculous to play against,’ said Ibsen. ‘He drives you crazy. I spoke to him about it at one stage and he called an official over and told him I didn’t have a ticket and he’d never seen me before in his life.’
‘You need to keep these old guys on their toes,’ said Twain, ‘or they’ll seize up altogether. I promised Ibbo’s wife I’d run him around a bit.’
Ibsen was the one player of his era Twain never defeated. ‘Ibbo was too complicated for me,’ he said. ‘I could never get within a day’s walk of him. He seemed to understand things the rest of us knew nothing about.’
Ibsen made light of this regard. ‘They’re good fellows,’ he said. ‘That James is a joy to watch. I just try to get the thing back over the net. With him it’s an art. If youngsters want to learn the way the game ought to be played, they should watch Henry.’
‘Don’t watch me,’ said James, ‘Look at Monet. He has revolutionised the way it’s done in France.’
‘He’s great,’ said Twain, ‘although don’t tell him we said that. What’s French for “little fat guy”?’
‘Twain,’ said Ibsen, ‘is a great tactician and a beautiful liar. It is true he never beat me. What he fails to point out is that we never played each other. The first time
