Taking Punishment Gladly; Bill Tildens Performances of the Unruly Male Body

N a t h a n T i t m a n * American Studies University o fIowa

Although historians have read the athleticism o f seven-time national cham­ pion as a cover for his sexual identity, his playing style was very much a product o f his existence outside normative gender expectations in the 1920s. Tennis allowed Tilden to engage in the homosocial amateur sporting code o f upper-class Northeastemers— establishing psychological intimacy with playing partners, opponents, andprotégés— while also adapting the more “roughneck” and varied techniques o f working-class Californian players into a style that observers celebrated for both its power and its beauty Tilden defied contempo­ rary expectations that bourgeois white men should eventually limit their partici­ pation in leisure and settle down with marriage and stable capitalist produc­ tion, while using athletic movement to bridge gentler categories in the creation o fhis own “artistic” self-expression.

I n t h e 1920s, Bill Tilden became tennis’ version of a sport celebrity. He won seven national titles in that decade and, in 1920, became the first American man to win

fA version of this paper was selected as the 2014 winner of the North American Society for Sport History Graduate Student Essay. Correspondence to [email protected]. Wimbledon. Sports enthusiasts who enjoyed more leisure time and expendable income after World War I craved appealing champion athletes, and Tilden joined the ranks of Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and Red Grange as one of the leading protagonists in the “Golden Age of Sport.”1 However, despite his dominant play and— compared to previous tennis champions— unrivaled celebrity, his arrests in 1946 and 1949 for morals violations with underage boys ultimately rendered him a pariah in the sport, a tragic figure whose sexual proclivities sullied his athletic successes. A recent New York Times article addressed Tilden’s near eradication from public memory, pointing out that the governing authorities of tennis have “not immortalized Tilden with a trophy, a stadium court or a statue” in spite of having once dominated the sport.2 Other assessments of Tilden’s career suggest that the media and Tilden himself attempted to obscure his sexuality through a shaming silence. Sports media historian John Carvalho and communication scholar Mike Milford found that the press barely covered his arrests at all and that Tilden’s attempt to portray himself as a victim of both circumstance and a medical “condition” in a 1948 autobiography was “limited and ineffective,” garnering little attention.3 His biographer Frank Deford con­ cluded that “the crowd and the game were [Tildens] sex,” suggesting that tennis effectively substituted for Tilden’s repressed homosexual identity.4 I argue that tennis, rather than sublimating Tilden’s closeted sexuality, offered him the opportunity to express a gender and sexual identity that constituted an alternative to con­ temporary expectations regarding male bodies and movement. If Tilden never identified as “gay,” he still attained a non-heteronormative identity in athletic performance. At a time when white men felt increasing pressure to perform masculinity and heterosexuality through efficient and productive movement in the early decades of the twentieth century, Tilden displayed male athleticism with a difference, destabilizing the gender and sexual categories to which many of his admirers subscribed and suggesting new potentials for the performance of white masculinity. The sport of tennis offered Tilden two unique opportunities: a stage for his “artistic” movement and the chance to affiliate himself with a code of gender socialization that responded to his particular sexual urges. O n the level o f movement and physicality, he wished to maintain the aesthetic value of male tennis athleticism— one that allowed spec­ tators to witness the supposed refinement and control of white male bodies— but did so in ways that responded to a 1920s sport culture that favored a more kinetic, aggressive mas­ culinity. He effectively merged the privileging of leisurely, mechanical posing— embodied by upper-class players in earlier generations— and the roughneck scrambling of working- class West Coast players who came to prominence in the 1910s. Often drawing compari­ sons to dance, Tilden’s tennis movement emanated both “masculine” aggression and “femi­ nine” excess for his audiences. In terms of gender socialization, tennis’ privileging of gentlemanly amateurism— as defined by contemporary Anglo-American mores— and civilized homosocial competition placed Tilden in close proximity to the youthful masculine innocence that preoccupied him throughout his life. For a man whose sheltered childhood taught him to think of bodies as potential sources of disease and filth, but who also fetishized boyhood inno­ cence, the pristine sheen of tennis sportsmanship offered him a socially-sanctioned arena in which he could attain a measure of intimacy with young men. Throughout his amateur career, his disdain for contact with the human body rendered him virtually asexual— he avoided intimate physical contact with both men and women until regularly taking young male lovers after the mid 1930s. Even his later same-sex encounters were, in Deford’s terms, “immature” in nature— he would usually “fondle the... partner, and then mastur­ bate himself afterwards, in private.”5 Tennis, with its hints of intense psychological aware­ ness between competitors, offered Tilden the opportunity to attain intimate knowledge of other male athletes, without the threat of “impure” physical contact. There is little debate about Tilden’s accomplishments in helping to push tennis fur­ ther outside the gates of the country clubs that once insulated the sport from threats to blue-blooded class, gender, and racial norms. Yet Tilden based his ideal image for men’s tennis, in part, on his unmentionable desires, emphasizing unsophisticated youth, homosocial camaraderie, and unfettered movement. While other writers have portrayed Tilden as a paragon of early twentieth-century Anglo-American ideals, I contend that Tilden capitalized on a savvy understanding of the social upheavals of tennis in order to fashion new physical potentials for male tennis players that were not based entirely on efficiency and productivity.6 I am careful to avoid claiming Tilden as “gay” or “homo­ sexual” (he certainly never identified as such in his life), but I emphasize his desires in order to illuminate the ways in which sexual diversity can potentially shape forms of popu­ lar culture and to underscore sexuality as a point o fview , an aspect of identity that moves beyond private intimacies to influence public conduct and interactions. I keep in mind the shifting class, racial, and gendered meanings of tennis but suggest that sexual desires can also contribute to an individual’s relationship to sport and fellow athletes. My reading of Tilden’s amateur career presumes that a man with his desires would have responded to sport culture, athleticism, and male bodies differently than many other prominent tennis players. For instance, while some men might accept journalistic comparisons between their athletic performances and “artistic” dance as simple compliments, Tilden could em­ brace such analogies for associating him with movements that, in the context of the 1920s, blurred rigid masculine/feminine distinctions.7 In this article, I provide an overview of tennis’ amateur sporting code in the early twentieth century, characterized by racial and class exclusion, and the belief that sport offered different benefits to bourgeois and working-class competitors. I then turn to an analysis of Tilden’s career as an amateur, during which his desire for generic innocent boyhood influenced his on-court performances and his relationships with competitors, doubles partners, and protégés. I also explore Tilden’s journalistic and autobiographical writing for his commentary on tennis strategy and male bodies. These sources suggest that, for Tilden, intimacy remained psychological rather than physical. I then provide an overview of male tennis physicality prior to Tilden’s emergence as a celebrity athlete. I incorporate descriptions of Tilden’s tennis performances and their combinations of kinetic “masculine” athleticism and “feminine” dance. I also analyze his self-identification as an “artist”—a term that frustrated onlookers often used to explain his theatrical difference from his male opponents. I acknowledge the limitations of depending on Tilden’s journalistic and autobiographi­ cal writings in attempting to elucidate his opinions about tennis and its meanings for male sexuality and athleticism. As a man who pursued the advantages of celebrity and public favor through much of his adult life, he had much to risk in providing explicit clues about possessing taboo desires. Accordingly, he was never appreciably open about the intimate details of his life, and the historical record will never offer certainty about his sexual prac­ tices or the precise motivations for his athletic career. Because of the absence of sources documenting Tilden’s actual sexual desires and experiences, my argument— like those of many other researchers describing the histories of sexual minorities— remains circumstan­ tial, the result of interpreting various signs and reading them against the prevailing ideolo­ gies and material realities in the 1920s.8 I analyze Tilden’s career as a way of suggesting one non-heterosexual man’s exercise of agency in this period. Never wishing to make his sexual desires public, he at least recognized the gender constraints of tennis in the 1920s and located a means of self-expression within them. Beyond the concerns of one individual’s sexuality, the shifts and inconsistencies of Tilden’s on-court persona also underscore the performativity of Anglo-Americanism, class, and masculinity in the interwar years, while raising the possibility that desire could shape the ways in which these identity markers were embodied. Refined Courtships: Intimacy and Tennis Masculinity After the sport gained favor among the upper classes in England and, subsequently, the , tennis placed its male participants in a precarious position with regard to their gender. On one hand, early tennis advocates celebrated the sport for its promotion of self-confidence and hearty exercise among players— something not always present in the team sports that elite males favored.’’ On the other hand, observers in the late nine­ teenth century sometimes cautioned men against playing tennis, arguing that it lacked the vigor necessary for healthy male development. The fact that women could participate in “lawn” tennis as early as the 1870s helped account for the sport’s initial popularity.10 The occasional intermingling of the sexes on tennis courts suggested to some that the sport might not be sufficiendy robust for men. A letter appearing in the Harvard Crimson in 1878 reflects concerns regarding the possibility of tennis undermining ideal male citizenship, contending that it was “well enough for lazy or weak men, but men who have rowed, or taken part in a nobler sport, should blush to be seen playing Lawn Tennis.”" Theodore Roosevelt embodied the contradictions of tennis’ gendered meanings— the man who popu­ larized the “strenuous” life played the sport regularly, yet he ordered the construction of a twenty-foot-high canvas fence around the court on the White House lawns, allowing for privacy and, presumably, the continuing public perception that Roosevelt favored more rugged pursuits, like horseback riding and hunting.12 By the 1920s, though, commentators began valorizing tennis as a perfect activity to add vitality to a class of white American men whose sedate professional lives compromised their masculine worth. Tennis was both an antidote to the drawbacks of living in the early twentieth-century leisure class and a motivating force in pushing white men toward pro­ ductivity and success in the modern workplace. G.W. Hillyard’s “Forty Years of First Class Lawn Tennis” outlined the benefits of tennis for the “modern” man, contending that a “weary and fagged” office worker could “in an hour or so . . . get as much sweating exercise, in one o f its most delightful forms, as he wants.” For Hillyard, tennis was a draw among men who demonstrated a desire for upward mobility, having secured a position in an office but still requiring a “cheap” means of exercise. Perhaps most crucially, tennis provided its benefits efficiently; men could supposedly get on and off the court “quickly,” leaving enough time for business and home life.13 Hillyard’s tennis-playing office workers eventually felt it necessary to protect their sport from the dual threats of professionalism and working-class athleticism. Throughout much of the 1920s, tennis remained an amateur sport. At the most basic level, the amateur sporting code suggested that the players in question competed for benefits other than money. By the turn of the twentieth century, the very wealthy began constructing a class identity around their participation in leisure activities that had to remain useless— mem­ bers of the upper class performed their elite status by playing sport for sports (and no others) sake.14 In the United States, tennis was initially played almost exclusively at cricket and croquet clubs, thereby ensuring a white, elite hegemony for the sport through the early decades of the twentieth century.15 As sociologist E. Dibgy Baltzell observes, a class code of honor dominated “Anglo-American social systems” during the period between the American Civil War and World War II. This honor code, shared with their English breth­ ren, offered elite white American men “an ethical ideal which guided the gentleman’s total way of life, on the sporting field as well as in the courtroom or boardroom.”16 In amateur athletic competition with members of their own class, privileged white men saw ideal opportunities to exhibit and reinforce their shared status as cultivated gentlemen. Even as professionalism became increasingly attractive to accomplished athletes in other sports, members of tennis’ governing body— the United States Lawn Tennis Asso­ ciation (USLTA)— clung to the amateur sporting ideal, reinforcing a class and racial hege­ mony that guarded against working-class and immigrant populations who were increas­ ingly adopting sport as a leisure activity.17 Sport had taken on new meanings for working-class men who felt increasingly disempowered by supervisors and efficiency ex­ perts. After its publication in 1911, ’s The Principles o fScientific M anagem ent helped exacerbate the tightening of spatial and temporal constraints placed upon laborers at the workplace. In response to their increasingly compromised sense of masculine worth, working-class men helped transform leisure from a luxury enjoyed by a moneyed minority to a supposedly necessary antidote to the emasculating stresses of work. According to Marxist and queer theorist Kevin Floyd, sport emerged as “the aggregate arena in which masculinity is put on display, quantified, measured, the site of a relief from deskilling that is also a highly mediated product of deskilling.”18 As working-class men turned to sport to be timed, officiated, and measured in order exhibit their masculinity, bourgeois male tennis players attempted to retain a measure of refinement in their athleticism. Sport historian Richard Lake has discussed the ways in which tennis’ role in cultivating an honor code among elite men in the late nineteenth century functioned differently than that of other sports like football and rugby. Gaining its popularity on the lawns of the privileged, rather than on public schoolyards, tennis mores favored aggression and competitiveness less than the exhibition of chivalrous “gentle­ manly” conduct. Winning was important for male players but not at the expense of main­ taining sportsmanship and physical control.19 Through the 1920s, the members of the USLTA mostly wished to preserve this ethos by associating the sport with healthy exercise, competition, and camaraderie; to play for money meant cheapening these more meaning- fill rewards. For the Northeasterners who populated country clubs in the early twentieth century, tennis was not simply an expression of physical capabilities— it was an activity shared by men and women whose refinements separated them from the “rabble” who participated in and patronized supposedly cruder sports, such as boxing and baseball.20 The importance of tennis in cultivating an elite Anglo-American masculinity in the generations before Tilden’s ascendance could be evidenced in the bodies of many promi­ nent players from the era. As cultural historian John Kasson has argued, widely viewed male figures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often associated physical ideals with a white bourgeois identity, thereby suggesting that masculinity could only approach perfection when performed by “gentlemen” of high social standing. Observers could find social class inscribed on the white male form, often through “the incessant cultivation of classicism.” By invoking classical art through public performances, upper­ class white men could reassert their claims on idealized masculine identity.21 Tennis’ early male stars appeared in front of audiences prepared to demonstrate beauty and precision, with formal attire and attention to graceful movement. Wimbledon champions Willie and Ernest Renshaw embodied British gentlemanly behavior on court and, later, British sporting heroes R.F. (Reggie) and H.L. (Laurie) Doherty helped establish the sartorial codes that favored immaculate grooming and white attire for male players around the turn of the twentieth century.22 Tilden’s recollections of seeing Bostonian Nathaniel W. Niles take the court for an exhibition match in 1909 convey how style and form combined to present audiences with images of modern masculine civility: He was one of the Boston Niles’—and, as might be expected, a classicist of the finest kind. Every stroke a model, every move a picture, his game represented old school tennis at its best. Niles strode out to the court, every crease in his trousers perfect, his shirt tailored to the last word, every hair in place. Around his brow was an immaculate white handkerchief to catch any drop of perspira­ tion that might arise after undue exertion.23 Male tennis players could perform the supposed aesthetic and physical superiority of the white body through dress, control, and easeful motion.24 Tilden also expressed an investment in sportsmanship and comportment during matches throughout his career, yet he seemed drawn to tennis for reasons other than reinforcing the class and racial codes with which the sport was associated. Tilden’s writings about tennis convey an appreciation for the m en ta l aspects of the sport. He was not the only player to write about the tactics of the sport, but he was among the earliest theorists of tennis psychology. For Tilden, tennis was “a mental cocktail of a very high ‘kick.’” A key component of the sport was “understanding the workings of your opponent’s mind, and gauging the effect of your own game on his mental viewpoint, and understanding the mental effects resulting from various external causes on your mind.”25 This awareness of another man’s game— his flaws and strengths, and familiarity with his body language— could generate a pleasurable “kick” that provided Tilden’s match play with an intensity that transcended the abstract virtues associated with amateur sport. Tennis allowed Tilden to experience intimacies with other men that did not entail physical contact or behaviors that audiences could easily categorize as “homosexual” in the years he played competi­ tively. Such intimacies were vital for a man who possessed a strong aversion to bodies— particularly the female variety. His mother—who had lost three of Tilden’s older siblings to diphtheria— remained convinced that young Bill was sickly and weak throughout his childhood. He quickly learned from her that women were the sources of potential venereal disease, and even his later homosexual experiences reflected an unenthusiastic attitude about physical contact with other adults.26 The intimate knowledge of a male opponents emotional and physical fluctuations, as well as his responses to those fluctuations, could potentially compensate for the intimate bodily contact that Tilden had long avoided. Tilden’s conceptualization of tennis psychology reveals an appreciation for an unspo­ ken familiarity that forms between male opponents. “Tennis,” he observed, “is a game of intimate personal relation. You constantly find yourself meeting some definite idea of your opponent A great player not only knows himself, in both strength and weakness, but he must study his opponent at all times.”27 The distinctiveness of his opponents’ bodies and looks did not go unnoticed— in short poems published in Racquet magazine, he often commented on the physical attributes and attire of male players, from “Bunny” Austins shorts to ’s popularity among female fans.28 For some observers, Tilden’s awareness of an opponents physical and psychological attributes could remain troublingly interconnected. In his 1921 Wimbledon final against underdog South African Brian Norton, Tilden was extremely ill and had to make abrupt changes in strategy in the third set. Former player asserted that “[c]learly Norton had a deep infatuation for Tilden” and the “many connoisseurs who were present. .. all accept the fact that a deep, psycho­ logical, probably homosexual, relationship affected the results.”29 Norton lost the match after a commanding early lead, and Tilden opined that Nortons letdown in the third and fourth sets resulted from sympathizing with Tilden’s condition. Tilden received “cat calls” from the crowd after attempting to work around his illness with a series of drop shots. The audiences animosity, according to Tilden, “upset Norton far more than me.”30 Another observer similarly identified “an over-Quixotic chivalrousness” from Norton, “inducing him to slacken his efforts, not wishing to inflict the humiliation of a three-set defeat on a sick opponent, admired friend, and past mentor.”31 Despite coming back and nearly win­ ning the title in the fifth set, Nortons behavior discomfited some observers because, even if sportsmanship allowed for the expression of concern for an ailing opponent, he went beyond the bounds of chivalry by losing his competitiveness during a two-set stretch. Tennis fans expected a certain degree of intimacy between men, particularly those who partnered in doubles tournaments. According to one contributor to the USLTA peri­ odical American Lawn Tennis, doubles partnerships were analogous to marriages: Just like in married and mixed doubles life, you must be two to form a men’s double, as well as you must agree, to be happy in both combinations.. . . The partner once found, you begin to act as if you were engaged, so to say.... From that day forward the partners owe each other faithfulness, constancy, help, like husband and wife. And as every association needs a leading man, one of them must be captain of the team. . . . The captain once chosen, you must obey him; discipline is the first quality of the soldier.32 If players upset this balance of marital power, however, the partnerships in question could confound gender expectations among spectators. Two years after their dramatic Wimbledon meeting, Norton and Tilden won the United States Doubles Championship together. Their partnership, while generally greeted warmly by spectators, also raised eyebrows as a result of the disparate personalities on display. Brian Norton (left) and Bill Tilden be­ fore the Men’s Doubles Championships Í miblw Champion» of |Im I nilrd State» in 1923. American Lawn Tennis, 1 Sep­ Wi llnm T I I lui. »nd, kIv«*h Hrlim I. (' Vort-*n I l>< lim! i*«nfidi'nii»l. confident anc cheerful \ta u a i* »»f a,Iv tec at the Untfwmiil t'rlifcd < its .»* the niurkilM tember 1923, p. 386. C o u r t e s y o f t h e cm ch w ith \* II Inin-. mikI \Yn«hluiru I»-Win T !•!«•:* »n il ta III» partner • l.ef» (¡■i, « ml th« v wieil U n i t e d S t a t e s T e n n is A s s o c ia t io n .

Tilden, who received criticisms throughout his career for being a relatively self-ab­ sorbed doubles player, adopted a noticeably domineering role while competing alongside Norton. The on-court relationship seemed charming so some: one observer noted that Tilden “carried Norton along with him, until the dapper little man caught the inspiration and scaled heights that had never been in his ken before. ’ 3 However, another commenta­ tor was far les; enthusiastic about the sight of Tilden “nursing” Norton, supposing that a “conservative element might have ecciied at some of Tilden’s exhortations to his part­ ner.”34 Whether competing with or against one another, Norton and Tilden found in tennis the means of enacting dramas of volatility, with Nnrton playing the role of unsteady subordinate and Tilden the role of imperious, yet vulnerable protagonist. T ilden formed his most successful doubles team with Frank Hunter, and observers often commenced on their marked emotional investment in one another’s athletic perfor­ mances. Hun :er could not keep himself from occasionally coaching Tilden from the stands during the latter’s singles matches, and while watching Tilden losing against at Wimbledon in 1927, Hunter was spied casting “heart-ringing” glances toward his doubles partner.35 Their involvement in each others games became fodder for journalists wishing to document the unique intimacies that sport could forge between men. American Lawn Tennis detailed Tildens investment in H unters Wimbledon singles play: “But Damon, it seems, is lost unless his Pythias is near at hand. When Frank was playing Fritz Mercur in the semi-final on Friday, he sent forth a cry to the Macedonians.. . . New vigor entered into Franks play” after Tilden arrived, “and he won the third and fourth sets with a bit to spare.”36 The Damon and Pythias myth had, in at least one late nineteenth-century novel, come to signify homosexual bonds between men, a fact perhaps not lost on hyper-literate sportswriters of the time.37 Tildens relationships with other players— Hunter and Norton in particular—were characterized by a psychological intensity that observers attempted to explain with narratives sanctioning mentorships between men, yet also connoting intima­ cies that were unmentionable among the sports bourgeois fans. Youth, too, proved integral in structuring Tildens relationships with other players. His role as a tennis instructor provided Tilden with the most intimate friendships of his life— those with teenage boys. His male students often became his closest companions, traveling with him to tournaments and receiving numerous gifts.38 In relationships that often paralleled his teaming with Norton in 1923, Tilden frequendy insisted on partnering with his protégés in doubles tournaments. Sandy Wiener and Junior Coen had the longest tenures as his teenage teammates. Neither of these players seemed particularly remarkable in singles play, but they earned Tildens favor and he preferred their company on court to that of most older, higher-ranked players.3'3 In these partnerships, Tilden once again adopted his overbearing persona, receiving criticism for “covering up” excessively and not allowing the youths to “rip more often.”40 Tildens relationships with Wiener and Coen remained, by all accounts, chaste, yet these pairings seemed to some observers to contain an unusual

Sandy Wiener (left) and Tilden pictured at a White House appearance in 1923. American Lawn Tennis, 15 May 1923, p . 5 9 . C o u r t e s y o f t h e U n it e d St a t e s T e n n is A s s o c ia t io n . intensity. The editor of American Lawn Tennis considered the Tilden-Wiener team “a ro­ mance of the court” that “may become the most famous of all tennis romances.”41 Invoking the Greeks, he attempted to account for Tilden’s preoccupation with part­ ners who were noticeably younger and less skilled than himself: “[W]hy does Big Bills tutoring, etc., of Junior [Coen] get that young man ‘in Dutch’ with his fellow players and yet improve his game immeasurably? The second question will not be dignified with a reply, while the first one is ridiculously easy— human nature is still what it was in the time of the Athenians and Aristides who was ostracised.”42 Any pleasure that Tilden derived from such partnerships remained covert; most observers deemed these pairings respect­ ably paternal and instructional, and as George Chauncey has argued, prior to the 1930s men seeking intimacies with other men were likely to be considered “normal” as long as they did not publicly dress or behave in manners stereotyped as “effeminate.”43 Yet with their apparent Greek overtones, these companionships could potentially contain traces of sexual intimacy. Tildens background in terms of class, ethnicity, and geography helped dilute the potential radicalism of his investment in the homosocial male intimacy of tennis. Tilden seemed poised to uphold the standards of East Coast American aristocracy by virtue of his birthplace alone. He was born in the Tilden family mansion known as Overleigh, pur­ chased by his father who was a prominent businessman. In addition to the Tilden family’s wealth and English heritage, the fact that Overleigh stood less than three hundred yards from the main gates of Philadelphia’s venerated Germantown Cricket Club ensured that Tilden would enjoy all the privileges of a gentleman in his athletic endeav­ ors.44 With easy access to Philadelphia’s elite sporting venues—some of which hosted national championships— young Tilden bore witness to sport as an exercise of class status, particularly among white m en.45 Tilden also voiced a profound ambivalence with regard to the changes in class com­ position of American tennis. On the one hand, he repeatedly applauded the democratiza­ tion of modern sport as necessary to the development of quality tennis. “Seldom does a really top athlete come from the top social rung,” he claimed. “High society’s children too often lack the concentration and power of sustained effort essential to make the first-rate competitor.”46 On the other, he expressed nostalgic recollections of the elite players he idolized as a child. “Tennis in the early 1900’s was a game o f‘society,’” he acknowledged. It had a kind of cultured atmosphere which did not endear it to the general public— a distinctive quality that is gone forever, taking something priceless from the game I rejoice in the roughneck competition that has grown up in the last twenty years— some of which I hope 1 have contributed— yet I loved the old traditions and admired the men and women who carried the tennis banner as an emblem of honor.47 If the new “roughneck” style of play required the erosion of class exclusivity, it also threat­ ened elite codes of conduct that fostered abstract virtues such as “honor.” In terms of personal style, Tilden helped ensure that ideal tennis masculinity would remain thoroughly well-to-do. While he professed to care little for fashion, his adherence to formal dress codes endeared him to fans belonging to elite social circles. His rise to prominence in 1920 led to laudatory remarks about his wardrobe choices— during his appearance at Wimbledon that year, The Times claimed that “his jumpers are the topic of the teatable [tic].”48 During his amateur career, Tilden was not one to challenge the trends of donning flannel pants and long-sleeved Oxford shirts. Heat and humidity were less of a concern than remaining eye-catching—a conviction that compelled him to sport a silk muffler before the beginning of matches and a camels hair coat during warm-ups.49 Tilden realized that whoever emerged victorious in the tennis establishments search for its first modern celebrity would have to look the part, paying heed to the privileging of Anglo- Saxon heritage wrapped in expensive collared shirts and creased pants. Tilden, then, capitalized on many of the changes that tennis underwent in the early decades o f the twentieth century while, on several levels, providing reassurance to mem­ bers of the tennis establishment who felt their influence on the sport diminishing at an alarming rate. His adherence to the codes of gentlemanly sportsmanship occasionally came across to some observers as superficial—American tennis fans were initially turned off by his brash and imperious demeanor, few other players attempted to match his luxurious globetrotting, and the USLTA suspended him multiple times for flouting the amateur rule that prohibited players from getting paid for journalistic writing. Ted Tinling claimed that Tilden differed from tennis heroes of previous generations by arrogantly “command [ing] people to admire him through the challenges of his personality,” yet he achieved his fame, in part, by demonstrating for Eastern tennis fans the enduring worth of a particular type of tennis socialization that valued robust male camaraderie alongside racial and class exclu­ sion in the name of presumed Anglo-American superiority.50 He dominated the sport through much o f the 1920s with playing styles derived from athletes who grew up far from the country clubs of the East Coast, but his general adherence to the rituals of competitive tennis and his uncontested class and racial status helped preserve a fragile Anglo-American hegemony through decades of cultural contestation within the sport. Queering Tennis Movement: The Unruly Tilden Body The 1910s marked an important transitional period with respect to the dominance of Northeastern upper-class masculinity in tennis. The popularity of the sport had spread westward, and a number of up-and-coming players hailed not from the country clubs of the East but from public courts in California. Tournament play in the 1910s featured dramatically contrasting styles: the form-conscious Easterners combating the speedier, more aggressive approach of middle-class West Coast youths. Even before the Californian onslaught, several prominent players implemented strategies (for example, volleying) that forced opponents to move away from their baseline posing. The desire for aggressive com­ petition introduced increasingly rigid gender hierarchies to the sport—by the end of the nineteenth century, authors of instructional texts believed that volleys, lobs, overhead serves, and other shots were beyond the abilities of female players.51 But the West Coast men who refused to remain on the baseline instituted additional changes on levels that went beyond mere strategy—their differences in terms of class, region, and physicality ushered in new models of masculinity that shirked the formal aesthetics of previous play­ ers. The speed and scrambling of new tennis champions in the 1920s consolidated the changes to tennis masculinity that emerged in the 1910s. Bill Tilden was, by far, the most prominent of these athletes. Tilden's identity outside of heterosexual male norms played an integral role in shaping his ideas about tennis strategy and physicality. Tilden simulta­ neously gave expression to what he considered his “artistry” and introduced new potenti­ alities for male tennis athleticism in a manner palatable to fashionable tennis audiences in the 1920s. Incorporating a desire to associate himself with males who— through youth and background— did not fit easily into the social environs of country clubs and elite tennis circles, Tildens on-court performances paradoxically marked both a continuation of nineteenth-century ideals pertaining to tennis’ gentlemanly image and a conduit for a cruder, more reckless expression of manliness in a sport more accustomed to precision and style. Tildens ascent to championship tennis began with a willful rejection of heterosexual masculinity. Spurning marriage, fatherhood, and conventional business pursuits, he posi­ tioned himself to challenge assumptions that moneyed white men should settle down to professions, breadwinning, and not taking leisure too seriously. At the age of twenty-six, he had achieved some success in the sport, reaching the national finals in consecutive years but failing to regularly threaten the top American player, . His biographer, Frank Deford, underscores the impracticality of his decision to continue playing tennis: “Any normal, twenty-six-year-old man with a family and a mortgage would have gone back to tending the store at this point,” but Tilden recommitted himself to the sport, relocating to Providence, Rhode Island, in order to develop a more well-rounded game. His renewed investment in tennis entailed introducing an entirely new grip for his back­ hand drive— a radical decision at that stage of his career.52 By 1920, at the age of twenty- seven, he was the national champion. Commentators believed that Tildens bachelordom could offer him a distinct edge over his closest rivals. After winning his second national title in 1921, the editor of A m eri­ can Laivn Tennis observed that by remaining unmarried, Tilden held “a considerable ad­ vantage over his fellow top-grade men. He is more his own master, freer to come and go as he pleases.”53 To some observers, Tilden excelled precisely because of his decision to not define himself according to home and office life. “Tildens absolute devotion to lawn ten­ nis finds comparison only in the realm of the arts,” argued another writer. “Tilden the Artist” proved that “[gjeniuses for the most part do not successively marry, settle down, raise a family and live on to a harmless anecdotage.”53 In this sense, the term “genius” was used to account for Tildens (or any “artist’s”) deviation from capitalist production and heterosexual reproduction. Even if Tilden never identified as homosexual, his commit­ ment to the sport required and, in part, resulted from his existence outside prevailing gender and sexual norms. Tilden also instituted alternatives to conventional tennis masculinity at the level of the body and movement. He consciously styled his game in a manner that countered the baseline poses that characterized the dominant aristocratic play he witnessed during the decades of his youth. In his autobiography M y Story (1948), Tilden commented on the most influential player with respect to perfecting his own tennis style. Maurice McLoughlin led the California charge of the 1910s, and Tilden found himself drawn not only to the more aggressive approach he witnessed in McLoughlin’s matches but also the new model for male physicality that resulted. In his recollections of seeing McLoughlin play for the first time in 1909, in an exhibition against Nathaniel N. Niles, Tilden conveyed the con­ trasts in tennis masculinities of the early twentieth century: Then out trudged an awkward, rather sloppy-looking kid, with an unruly mop of (laming red hair and a devastating grin— Red Mac. . . . McLouglin had stormed the net, swatted anything he could get a racket on, and sweated and yelled by turns. He had enjoyed the whole thing, though he looked bedraggled, wet to the skin and thoroughly disreputable. Mr. Niles, on the other hand, had finished the match still every inch the fashion- plate. The creases undisturbed in trousers, his shirt unstained, his headband dry~he had vindicated the old school tradition. The score? O h, yes; McLoughlin won 6-0, 6-0. That was my immediate downfall. Until then I had been a disciple of the Larned-Clothier-Niles school of beautifully produced ground strokes, but now I knew my destiny. I was feted to be another McLoughlin.” As an inspiration for Tildens tennis, McLoughlin offered movement that both coun­ tered that of Eastern elites and captured the boyishness that preoccupied Tilden through­ out his life. Not only did McLoughlin fail to embody the “classicist” ideal, he seemed completely uncomfortable with it. With his youthful awkwardness, McLoughlin was natu­ rally predisposed to use his body more recklessly than Niles. Moreover, McLoughlin's “disreputable” appearance generated a feeling of desire in Tilden, who located McLoughlin's worth as a tennis player at the level of a sweaty, “unruly” body.’6 Non-elite backgrounds, youth, and physical “unruliness” would constitute the male image that proved tennis’ usefulness to Tilden in his attempts to work through his particular desires. Freedom of movement— the “unruly” use of the body—was an essential component of Tilden’s tennis style. In his estimation, male tennis players approached perfection when they were less concerned with striking particular poses than with loosening their limbs and employing their bodies for the sole purpose of demonstrating a variety of maneuvers and athletic feats. This new physical emancipation for male tennis players not only disturbed gendered meanings of 1920s athletics; Tilden also offered performances that, in their liberating potential, suggested a sexual identity that existed outside the rigid boundaries of heterosexuality established for men in the early twentieth century. In this sense, Tilden's movements in 1920s tennis matches constituted what performance studies scholar Jonathan Bollen has termed “queer kinesthesia,” the “marshalling of kinesthetic resources that disar­ ticulate ways of moving from the demand for consistently gendered performance.” Tilden's kinesthetic peculiarities can be viewed as what Bollen has described as “an enacted cri­ tique, in some cases a kind of parody, of a heterosexual model of desire that operates on the logic of morphological difference.”57 In movement, Tilden ignored the contemporary assumptions that male leisure served the purpose of increasing workplace efficiency and that white bourgeois and working-class athleticism had to remain distinct from one an­ other. Observers frequently noted Tilden's unconventional gender performance, both dur­ ing and in between points. One writer who detailed Tilden's physical presence at the peak of his amateur career noted that he walks at a fast pace taking very short steps for one so tall, and has a decided sway to his shoulders and much swinging of arms. ... As he approaches the line in readiness to serve he will toss his head back a little to keep his long hair out of his eyes, and then, pulling at his sleeves a bit, he lets go his powerful delivery.58 His comportment stood out to some observers as particularly prim and affected. In a panel created in 1936 for the gymnasium on the Queen M ary luxury liner, cartoonist Tom Webster drew images of major tennis stars from previous decades.

Tom Webster, panel on the Queen M ary luxury liner, 1936. Represented from left to right (after the nineteenth-century couple on far left) are , Tilden, , , and . American Lawn Tennis, 20 April 1936, p. 38. C o u r t e s y o k t h e U n t t e d S t a t e s T e n n is A s s o c ia t io n .

He depicted all of the male players involved in action shots, with the exception of Tilden who appeared daintily holding a racket and ball, with his shoulders exaggeratedly shrugged.59 This panel suggests that by the mid 1930s, Tilden had become as noteworthy for his dandified presence on tennis courts as for his athletic prowess. — one of his professional opponents in the 1930s— had a prickly relationship with Tilden and some­ times mimicked his rivals physical tendencies during his matches “by walking to receive service with mincing steps and then holding up his hand until he was all set.”60 His affectations drew gentle mockery, yet they could also reinforce his status as a modern celebrity. As performance studies scholar Joseph Roach has argued, the quality that endears certain figures to audiences “intensifies when a charismatic performer takes over the typifying marks of gender from the opposite sex, ensuring the prominence of transvestism in the greatest theatrical traditions, but also attracting the routine suspicion of the authorities on grounds of ontological subversion.”61 Tilden’s poses and “mincing” movement might have attracted “suspicion” (or derision, in the case of Lott), but—with their play on prevailing gender norms— they also placed his tennis matches in the realm of the theatrical. Even if spectators found that his appearances during matches entailed a compromised masculinity, Tilderis performances of gender upheaval would continue to intrigue audiences, even after aging prohibited him from dominating the sport. Tilden adopted the speed and variety of shots introduced to tennis by Maurice McLoughlin and his West Coast contemporaries but added a concern for elegance and delicacy that many observers compared to dance. “He has a funny way of pointing his toe just back of the line as he begins his service,” observed one commentator, “somewhat like a toe-dancer, i.e., with toe, foot and leg in a perfect straight line in front of him.”62 By the 1920s, such allusions could associate the men in question with movements that destabi­ lized “masculine” identities. J.E. Crawford Flitch, among others, articulated the challenges dance presented to the demonstration of masculinity, contending that “dance, in any other sense than that of a ball-room accomplishment, is generally regarded as unsuited to the masculine character.... And a man himself would as a rule rather be caught in the act of stealing than of dancing alone or with his fellows.”63 By moving male tennis movement toward a style that could be compared to dance, Tilden proved that aggression and mas­ tery did not have to be qualities that were entirely blunt and crude. Player Manuel Alonsos claim that watching Tilden s footwork “was like seeing Nijinsky dance across the net” underscores the gender ambivalence of Tilden’s athletic performances.64 As cultural critic Kevin Kopelson has argued, Nijinsky—by combining artistic gestures with athletic mastery—offered observers of his performances a measure of both grace and strength in a single body that defied contemporary gender categories. European audiences recognized an “unmarked female impersonation” from Nijinsky, “a titillating transgender performance not designed to be seen as such, not predicated on a costume change, and not intended to enable the performer to pass as a woman.”65 By making correlations between Tilden’s movements and dance, observers placed him in a category of performance in which the body rid itself of the constrictions of gender conformity. Like Nijinksy, Tilden frequently received the label of artistic “genius”— “a masculine classification that,” accord­ ing to Kopelson, “paradoxically, authorizes men to express typically feminine emotions”— helping to account for the extent to which his body remained uncooperative with respect to the expectations of common visible masculinity.66 Moreover, Nijinsky’s dances, like Tilden’s amateur play, provided a model for sexual desire that involved neither physical contact nor love for a single object-choice. Nijinsky’s performance as a tennis player in a piece entitled Jeux involved multiple groupings and regroupings with two female dancers. The work, with its portrayal of recurring separations and emotionless physical intimacy, presents desire as an isolating, individualized experi­ ence. The amorphous groupings suggest the instability of sexual identity, while Nijinsky’s climactic use of a tennis ball to prevent any sexual release between the participants recu­ perates desire at the expense of actual intercourse.67 For Kopelson, Jeu x is “an aesthetic desublimation of the sport’s [sublimated] sexuality,” emphasizing the implicit desire of the participants over their athletic feats.68 In the middle of a tennis match, full “desublimation” would not be an option for Tilden, yet, with his aversion to physical contact, he would not have it any other way. In Jeux, Nijinsky exploited the desire always already present in tennis—the same desire that Tilden might have experienced with his male opponents or playing partners. Moving tennis matches toward exhibitions of shot-making, unfettered male physicality, and gentlemanly sportsmanship, Tilden helped remodel the sport in ways that reinforced the importance of athletic prowess while also enabling him to experi­ ence pleasures comparable to those felt by a “genius” dancer in flight.69 Commentators frequendy turned to the terms “genius” and “artist” in efforts to ac­ count for the differences between Tilden and his contemporaries who, in the 1920s, were more likely to eventually marry and turn their backs on competing for championships. For his part, Tilden took these labels seriously. His popular nickname, “Big Bill,” implied coarse athleticism but contradicted Tilden’s belief that his participation in the sport con­ stituted more than just an exercise in robust male physicality.70 He adopted advice given to him by singer Mary Garden as his personal “creed”: “You are an artist in tennis. An artist always knows better than anyone else when they are right.. . . W in or lose, right or wrong, be true to your own art.”71 Sport provided him with an audience for his “art,” thereby reinforcing his approach to tennis as more than a rehearsal of simple mechanics. “Sport too has its galleries and hams,” he observed: Like the actor, the athlete lives by public performances, exhibits himself in the public eye, thrives on public applause. The difference, if I may be allowed a conceit, is that actors make a play out of work whereas athletes make work out o f play.72 Tilden's conceptualization of himself as an artist helped him cultivate an athleticism that opposed the physical limitations placed upon workers under scientific management. His advocacy of variety countered the prevailing mentality that the male laborer should focus on single tasks in order to maximize productivity. Tilden became the first player to achieve noteworthy success deploying his “cannonball” serve and adding bursts of speed to an all-court game, yet he also contended that relying exclusively on sprinting and muscle resulted in limited effectiveness and bored galleries.73 In March of 1919, American Lawn Tennis printed an article in which Tilden offered readers advice that challenged prevailing views about concentrating on “fundamentals.” “The ability to vary one’s game,” he ar­ gued, “is largely mental. One must change one’s mental attitude with every change of stroke.”7* In Tildens estimation, the sport of tennis necessitated intellectual adaptability and the incorporation of diverse skills— he was so determined to demonstrate his mastery of multiple strokes that he frequently adjusted his game plan in order to hit shots that he had not yet utilized in a given match.75 Maintaining a sense of drama sometimes took precedence over all else— some observers felt that he threw points, games, and even entire sets, just to prove that he could dominate his challengers and overcome any deficit.76 In this sense, Tilden, more than any player before him, embodied the image of the well- rounded American male, averse to the deskilling and uncritical privileging of efficiency so valorized by proponents of scientific management. Commentators ffequendy imagined his matches as contestations between his own transcendent abilities and the mechanized attack of his opponents. Tildens sense of occa­ sion and showmanship differed from his peers’ more mundane approach to tournament matches— as one Wimbledon commentator claimed, “[h]is wonderful play is the prod­ uct, not of a nerveless machine, but of a sensitive instrument strung to its highest pitch by the calls of a great event.”77 Even in a loss to French player Rene Lacoste, the latter was the equivalent of “a machine against a god of the courts; and just as Jove might have dashed himself vainly against the rocks of Olympus, so Tilden was unable to find a flaw in the armor of his opponent.”78 In the context of a 1920s American athletic culture that valo­ rized the machine-like feats of rivals such as Bill Johnston, Tilden represented an unpre­ dictable and unfettered aesthetic alternative. Johnston’s ground stroke technique stood in stark contrast to the style of play that Tilden advocated. According to one observer, “Tilden is nearly always doing stunts with the ball— and rarely are two successive shots alike. . . . He is as certain to do the unlooked-for as Johnston is to do the obvious.”79 When his opponents seemed unable to deviate from strategies determined before matches, Tilden demonstrated physical and intellectual nimbleness that observers could not explain with scientific analysis. According to an Am erican L aw n Tennis editorial, Tildens “Napoleonic characteristic of formulating plans on the spur of the moment, or of sud­ denly changing those made, and of adapting himself to the conditions that confronted him” constituted “genius” that differed from other styles that were more comprehensible and more easily replicated by students of the game.80 The spectacle of Tilden s varied shots often rendered his opponents’ focus on technique dull by comparison. “Tilden has the lightness and quickness of footwork and stroke play of a tiger, with all its feline grace and swift, paralyzing blows,” noted a Wimbledon spectator, while his opponent “reminds one of the well-oiled, rhythmic, if not artistic, working of a steam hammer or the piston rod of a steamship, as one sees it when gazing at the engine room.”81 As tennis’ dominant player, Tilden blunted enthusiasm for rivals who adopted a more efficient, utilitarian style. In terms of both his movement and his rejection of a career and family life that would have signaled conventional white male accomplishment, Tilden’s sporting body offered visual challenges to the logic that measured masculinity according to performed efficiency and heterosexuality. Unsurprisingly, Tilden’s sexual desires— his most obvious challenge to heteronormative masculinity—were never acknowledged by the sportswriters who covered his amateur career. Some anecdotal reports have suggested that USLTA officials were aware of Tilden’s sexuality and therefore wished to limit his public appearances.82 Yet only after his arrests in the 1940s did his private life come to overshadow his athletic accomplishments. In the social climate of postwar America, this development led to ostracism from acquaintances and erasures of his past tennis dominance from public memory. However, soon after Tilden’s death in 1953, Vladimir Nabokov offered a tenuous homage to the former champion. In L o lita (1955), the title character’s tennis instructor is, according to literary scholar Tim Harte, “a veiled portrait” ofTilden— a character noted for his advanced age and his prefer­ ence for the company of groups of young ball boys. In his narration, Humbert Humbert ultimately overlooks the coach’s sexual propensities and instead finds himself awed by the “divine delicacy of absolute power” in the latter’s ground strokes.8’ Through Humbert, Nabokov acknowledged the former champion’s sexual desires and allowed for the possibil­ ity that they contributed to, rather than hindered, his “divine” athletic form. In the final pages of his autobiography, Aces, Places and Faults (1938), Tilden com­ mented on his transition from amateur play to professionalism in a way that underscores the performativity of his version of tennis masculinity. He contended that “the play is the thing” in tennis— athletes only attain meaning for themselves by competing before audi­ ences and embodying ideal sportsmanship as thoroughly as possible. With his will to win increasingly dwindling in the 1930s, he no longer found it pleasurable to force his body into the mold of youthful gentlemanliness that he had previously prized. “I know that the one great difference in my tennis over the past ten years,” he wrote, “has been my unwill­ ingness to take the punishment I used to take gladly.”84 Tennis fans marveled over Tilden’s athleticism for the same reasons they occasionally expressed frustration with it: he evi­ denced complete dedication to an activity that once held the reputation of a trivial pas­ time, while he also offered performances of “artistic” movement that confounded those who associated respectable white masculinity with physical restraint and white-collar suc­ cess. Devoting his life to leisure and his “art” in the name of cultivating youthful male bonds was, paradoxically, hard work—an exacting performance he could not sustain for­ ever. K e y w o r d s : B ill T il d e n , t e n n is , masculinity , q u e e r h ist o r y

'Arthur Voss, Tilden and Tennis in the Twenties (Troy, N.Y.: The Whitson Publishing Company, 1985), xii-xiii. 2Karen Crouse, “Bill Tilden: A Tennis Star Defeated Only by Himself,” New York Times, 30 August 2009, sec. F, p. 5. 3John Carvalho and Mike Milford, “’One Knows That This Condition Exists’: An Analysis of Tennis Champion BillTilden’s Apology for His Homosexuality,” Sport in History 33 (2013): 564. Trank Deford, Big Bill Tilden: The Triumphs and the Tragedy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 20. 'According to court testimony, Tilden had two heterosexual encounters in his life, only one of which involved intercourse. He had regular homosexual encounters for five or six years with a boy start­ ing at the age of ten, followed by “the same kind of a relationship” with a classmate at the University of Pennsylvania. Ibid., 211. 6In this regard, I am countering the E. Digby Baltzell’s claim that Tilden’s approach to tennis “was but a reflection of the unwritten ideals of his whole class and generation.” See E. Digby Baltzell, Sporting Gentlemen: Mens Tennis from the Age o fHonor to the Cult o fthe Superstar (New York: Free Press, 1995), 216. 7My explanation of sexuality as a point of view—a crucial factor in determining how individuals perceive and interact with the world—is highly indebted to the description of the same phenomenon that appears in Robert A. Schanke and Kim Marra, Passing Performances: Queer Readings o f Leading Players in American Theater History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 3. "For an explanation of why and how scholars in gay and lesbian history often construct “circum­ stantial cases,” see ibid., 7-8. ’For instance, see Herbert William Wrangham Wilberforce, Lawn Tennis (London: George Bell & Sons, 1908), 1. John Moyer Heathcote also found that tennis “demands from a player confidence in his own power and courage in playing an uphill game.” John Moyer Heathcote, with Edward Oliver Pleydell- Bouverie and Arthur Campbell Ainger, Tennis (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1890), 85. l0Voss, Tilden and Tennis, 2. "Q uoted in A1 Ennis, “This Thing Called Love,” Racquet, September 1935, p. 12. "Baltzell, Sporting Gentlemen, 33. "Commander G.W. Hillyard, “Forty Years of First Class Lawn Tennis,” quoted in “A Man’s Game,” American Lawn Tennis, 15 May 1925, p. 107. "Donald J. Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality 1880-1910 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), 127-129. "Voss, Tilden and Tennis, 2. l6Baltzell, Sporting Gentlemen, 35. "Gary Cross, A Social History o fLeisure since 1600 (State College, Pa.: Venture Publishing, 1990), 145. "Kevin Floyd, The Reification o fDesire: Toward a Queer Marxism (Minneapolis: University of Min­ neapolis Press, 2009), 110-111. "Robert J. Lake, “Gender and Etiquette in British Lawn Tennis 1870-1939: A Case Study o f‘Mbced Doubles,’” InternationalJournal o fthe History o fSport 29 (2012): 693. 20Voss, Tilden and Tennis, 73-74. 2lJohn F. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 33. "Voss, Tilden and Tennis, 16-18. "William T. Tilden II, My Story: A Champions Memoirs (New York: Heilman, Williams & Co., 1948), 31. 24The slimmer, softer physiques of male tennis players were not in complete discordance with con­ temporary ideals of the white American male body, which sometimes privileged limberness and flexibil­ ity. See Harvey Green, Fit For America: Health, Fitness, Sport and American Society (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 262. “ Tilden quoted in “Revised Edition of The Art of Lawn Tennis,” American Lawn Tennis, 5 Septem­ ber 1931, p. 54. 26Deford, B ig B ill Tilden, 191. 27William T. Tilden, Aces, Places and Faults (London: Robert Hale, 1938), 262. •“Untitled poems, found in William T. Tilden II, Racquet, November 1934, p. 35; and Racquet, March 1935, p. 27. 29Ted Tinling with Rod Humphries, Love and Faults: Personalities Who Have Changed the History o f Tennis (New York: The Crown Publishing Group, 1979): 73-74. ’“Tilden, Aces, Places and Faults, 43. ’‘Capt. B.H. Liddell-Hart, “Story of 1921 English Championships,” American Lawn Tennis, 15 Julyl921, p. 215 (hereafter ALT). 32Lieut. Etienne Micard, “Doubles Play Critically Considered,” ALT, 15 February 1919, pp. 376- 377. ’’“Tilden and Norton: U.S. Doubles Champions,” ALT, 1 September 1923, p. 376. ’’“Extracts from ‘America Re-visited,’” ALT, 15 October 1923, p. 484. These observations are at­ tributed to sportswriter A. Wallis Myers. ’’“S.W.M.,” “After the Great Match,” ALT, 20 July 1927, p. 251. ’““Damon and Pythias,” ALT, 20 September 1929, p. 516. 37See Alan Dale, A Marriage below Zero (New York: G.W. Dillingham, 1889). ’“Deford, B ig B ill Tilden, 49-51. 3,Coen actually became the youngest ever member of an American team at age fifteen, due in no small part to Tilden’s urgings with the USLTA. Ibid., 68. 40H.S. Scrivener, “The Riviera in Review," ALT, 20 April 1930, p. 12. 4IS. Wallis Merrihew, “Doubles Teams,” ALT, 1 August 1925, p. 306. 42S. Wallis Merrihew, “Intimate Talks with My Readers,” ALT, 20 April 1930, p. 42. ’’George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making o fthe Gay Male World, 189 0 -1 9 4 0 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 13. According to Ted Tinling, Tilden’s elite Philadelphia background helped him avoid moral censure. See Tinling, Love and Faults, 66. 44Baltzell, Sporting Gentlemen, 168-169. ’’Ibid., 25. ’“Tilden, M y Story, 145. 47Ibid„ 29. ’“Quoted in Deford, Big Bill Tilden, 14. ’’Ibid., 26-27, 63. ’“Tinling, Love and Faults, 69, 79-80. ’’See “Tilden Ought to Know Better,” ALT, 20 May 1936, p. 22. For an analysis of instructional texts and their authors’ opinions about female players performing particular shots, see Lake, “Gender and Etiquette,” 696-699, 702. 52Deford, B ig B ill Tilden, 35-36. ” S. Wallis Merrihew, “The Champions Pass,” ALT, 15 October 1921, p. 452. ’’Edward Stillman, “Tilden the Artist,” ALT, 20 January 1931, p. 686. ’’Tilden, M y Story, 31. ’“Tilden, Aces, Places and Faults, 22. ’’Jonathan Bollen, “Queer Kinesthesia: Performativity on the Dance Floor,” Dancing Desires: Cho­ reographing Sexualities On and O ff the Stage, ed. Jane C. Desmond (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 309. ’"Lawrence B. Rice, “Wm. T. Tilden, 2nd; Master Player,” ALT, 15 May 1922, p. 58. ’’“For a Giant Liner," ALT, 20 April 1936, p. 38. “ “Some Highlights on Tilden Troupers," ALT, 20 March 1935, p. 21. 6'Joseph Roach, I t (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 11. “ Rice, “Wm. T. Tilden, 2"d,” p. 58. “ Quoted in Paul B. Franldin, “The Terpsichorean Tramp: Unmanly Movement in the Early Films of Charlie Chaplin,” Dancing Desires, ed. Desmond, 60. “ Quoted in Deford, Big B ill Tilden, 102. “ Kevin Kopelson, The Queer Afterlife o/Vaslav Nijinsky (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 38. “ Ibid., 66. “ Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 62-63. “ Kopelson, The Queer Afterlife, 185. “ Here, I borrow from Kopelson’s suggestion that Michael Jackson, in his Remember the Tim e music video, might perform “the blissful act of a pleasurable and truly liberated body” without love, sex, or the “implication of death.” Ibid., 78. ’“Erik N. Jensen, Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 2010), 31. Jensen compares Tilden’s nickname to that of German player . The latter’s reputation as “TheTennis Gentleman” implied “well-bred sophistication,” as opposed to “Big Bill’s “towering athletic frame and forceful strokes.” ’’Tilden, Aces, Places a n d Faults, 200-211. ’’Tilden, M y Story, 280. ’•’Deford, Big Bill Tilden, 101. Some observers tended to agree: watching a Tilden professional match in the fall of 1934, “a lady player of twenty years’ experience. . . informed the crowd in general that it was not tennis, as the rallies weren’t long enough.” See E.J. Gillow, “Pros at Southport,” ALT, 20 October 1934, p. 18. 74Wm. T. Tilden II, “Variety Is Essential for Tennis Strokes,” ALT, 15 March 1919, p. 408. ’’See Sidney B. Wood, Jr., “Backhand Drive— Vital to Success,” Racquet, November 1934, p. 36. 7i,Tinling, Love and Faults, 75. ” Capt. B.H. Liddell-Hart, “Story of 1921 English Championships,” ALT, 15 July 1921, pp. 214- 215. ’"“Rene Lacoste Wins American Title for Second Time,” ALT, 20 September 1927, p. 440. ’’Alexander H. Frey, “Concerning Form,” ALT, 15 July 1921, p. 240. ““Editorial, ALT, 1 August 1920, p. 278. 81 Liddell-Hart, “English Championship Story Concluded,” ALT, 1 August 1920, p. 265-266. Tilden’s opponent in this match was Australian . “’Marshall Jon Fisher and Ted Tinling have argued that members of the USLTA—wishing to avoid scandal and to promote a “masculine” image for tennis— feuded with Tilden because they were aware of his sexuality. Marshall Jon Fisher, A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poisedfor War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009), 151; Tinling, Love a n d Faults, 80. “’Tim Harte, “Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports,” Nabokov Studies 12 (2009/2011): 162-163, 162 [QUOTATION]. There are few other literary representations of Tilden, though one noteworthy exception is the recent play Big B ill (2003). For a description, see Rich­ ard Hornby, “Gay Plays,” Hudson Review 57 (2004): 282-283. “ Tilden, Aces, Places a n d Faults, 297.