Lardner took the first game and then in the second he stood right up to the Chaplin service, hit it on the up and got in to the net. He lost the first three points but Chaplin put a forehand wide and was not happy. He then put two returns into the net and was very annoyed. He lost the game and threw his racquet on the ground. Lardner called ‘Sorry’ and the crowd laughed.
Lardner held for 3–0 and broke again, this time by hitting the ball very late past Chaplin as he came in.
The little tramp was furious. He lost his serve again at 4–4 in the third set, Lardner took it 6–4 and was 3–0 in the fourth before Chaplin got back on the board. By now the crowd knew they were watching something very unusual; a player who can take apart an opponent before the opponent realises it. Very little has been written about Ring Lardner, except by Henry Mencken, who has been practising with him, and by Damon Runyon, who revealed: ‘I have plenty of 80–1 on Mr Lardner before the matter commences as I believe him to be very handy indeed.’ But it was Mencken whose headline, above his syndicated column, best captured it: CHAPLIN STEPS INTO RING. RING STEPS INTO CHAPLIN.
It is difficult to know whether Ludwig Wittgenstein plays tennis because he enjoys it or because it keeps him from doing something he would enjoy. He is not the most relaxed character in town; he looks tense and anxious (‘haunted’ according to the newspapers) and friends say he needs to be ‘tricked’ into going to sleep or practising. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I do not play well enough to practise.’
Although he and his opponent today, the Czech Jaroslav Hasek, are six years apart and from different countries, both came up through the Austrian army, an experience Hasek describes as ‘hilarious’ and Wittgenstein as ‘appalling’.
Hasek has performed high deeds here so far; he took out the all-surface specialist Wally Gropius in the first round and out-finished Jean Sibelius in the second. Wittgenstein began slowly against the American Williams and then took Lawrence of Nottingham apart in the second round. (The sight of the perspiring Lawrence sitting proud and shirtless between sets steaming like a horse and Wittgenstein staring in unblinking fury at his racquet belied the facts of the match.)
Not everyone is impressed with Wittgenstein. Karl Popper, who missed Austrian selection because of a coaching appointment in New Zealand but who is here to practise with Einstein, says, ‘In order to establish that someone is a great player we should not look for evidence that he is, we should look for evidence that he is not. If we cannot find it, we might conclude he is a great player.’ And in Wittgenstein’s case? ‘Why do you think he won’t come out to the practice courts?’
Hasek can consider himself unlucky to have lost this match. He lost the first set with an ace which was called out (which both players protested about and which the replay showed quite clearly was in) and the second on a foot-fault called from the other end. His ground strokes in the third set were unplayable but at 3–3 in the final set he fell heavily on his left knee, lost something of his speed and that was that.
Take nothing away from Wittgenstein in this. He was never out of it and said afterwards he was learning to put the ball ‘just out of reach’. Earlier on, he said, he had been trying to put the ball ‘out of reach’. Now he realises he needs only to put it ‘just out of reach’.
There was no love lost on Court 4 last night with an Irishman and an American up against each other in what was a very English battle. Both players have done much for English tennis, Shaw enlivening its structures and forcing it to understand its own politics and Eliot finding an expression for its despair and loss of meaning. For two sets Shaw looked like an admiral, timing the ball well and serving superbly. As the match progressed, however, Eliot played the big points better, although he was annoyed when Shaw suggested that he attend to his wife who had just fainted for the fifth time. Eliot said later his wife was ‘perfectly well but was overcome by heat’.
‘Eliot is a good player,’ said Shaw, ‘a poor judge, a bad husband and a racist.’
This perhaps relates to the statement Eliot released earlier: ‘The tragic death of Karl Liebknecht, a Jew who was opposed to the usurpation of power and sponsorship money in the hands of one class, throws into question the claim often made by Jews that they do not wish to control the sponsorship money.’
There wasn’t much doubt that Gertrude Stein would say something about this following her match with Mary McCarthy. Or that McCarthy would agree with her. What was surprising was that Rosa Luxemburg, who was visibly upset throughout her match with the Indian Sarojini Naidu, would be arrested at the post-match press call and taken away for questioning.
‘Questioning by whom?’ asked Naidu. ‘Where is she?’
‘Questioning by the authorities,’ she was told. ‘A routine matter.’
Vita Sackville-West was loose in her match and Frances Hodgkins goes through to meet Bernhardt in the fourth round. Sackville-West is unusual in that she was put down for this tournament at birth although due to a filing error she discovered she had been entered in the men’s draw and was, in fact, a woman.
The departure of Eleanor Roosevelt, of whom the same might be said, was also a surprise although she has invested a
