RONAN SHEEHANreviews The Last Champion: The Life of Fred Perry;By Jon Henderson; Yellow Jersey Press; 292pp, £18.99
THIS BIOGRAPHY of Fred Perry, Wimbledon champion 1934-36, marks the centenary of his birth.
No Englishman since and few before him had won the All-England Mens Singles Championship. As one barren year succeeds another, Perry’s memory is perhaps more, rather than less, revered by the home crowd. Why cannot the country which codified this game, like so many others in Victorian times, produce out of its teeming population another champion?
Perry wore long white trousers and played mostly on grass courts. The trousers are gone – and there’s not much grass around either. Dublin’s tennis grass oases, like the Old Fitzwilliam on Lad Lane or Norwood on Sandford Road, where before the war you could have watched Irish champion Littleton Rogers, who ran Perry to five sets at Bournemouth in 1934, have melted into the urban desert.
Sports biographies can be robotic exercises. This is a labour of love, intelligence and exemplary literary skill by a veteran tennis correspondent. An essential theme of the story, one which is a perennial theme in English writing, is how the class divisions of English society affect the hero. Fred’s father, Sam, from Stockport in Lancashire, dedicated his life to the co-operative movement and was twice elected Labour MP. He supported Irish independence.
Henderson’s portrayal of an endearing English socialist unfolds in parallel with the portrait of his son. Fred was world table tennis champion at 19. His mentor in this was Ivor Montagu, a prominent British communist with a passion for table tennis. Henderson notes that Wimbledon in the 1930s nurtured public schoolboys and their ethos and implies that Perry’s success owed much to the guidance of these two oppositional figures and was achieved in spite of the establishment toadies who ran Wimbledon.
In offering a thorough account of Perry’s career, Jon Henderson is never repetitive and never uses the cliches of the trade. This is remarkable, given that there are so many matches involved and that the vocabulary of tennis is limited. Relief is offered by switches of location and culture, as when Britain took the Davis Cup from France. Here the writer can refresh himself among metaphors deriving from Henri Lacoste’s Four Musqueteers and whatever you’re having yourself on the Boul’ San Mich.
Turning professional disqualified Perry from playing in the Davis Cup and so brought British hegemony to an end. It involved him in a gruelling series of 61 matches on the trot across the United States with his friend and rival, the hugely talented, enigmatic Ellsworth Vines.
In LA, tennis players and movie stars mingled. Perry’s good looks and superb physique made him shine in this company. Helen Vinson, an American actress, was first of his four wives. The back of the book’s jacket features a glorious photo of a smiling, Brylcreamed, swimming-trunks clad Perry gazing into the sparkling eyes of a sportily attired Marlene Dietrich.
Perry’s youthful ascent to greatness did not portend an Icarus-like fall. He was variously sportswear manufacturer, tennis commentator and promoter of the game abroad, notably in the Soviet Union where once he received a suitcase full of caviar.
Wimbledon honoured Perry in 1984, the 50th anniversary of his first Wimbledon win, with a statue by David Wynne and the Fred Perry Gates.
When he died, in 1995, Saint Paul’s Cathedral offered a thanksgiving service. His ashes were afterwards placed beneath the statue.
The boy from Stockport had been granted membership in perpetuum.
Ronan Sheehan's novel Tennis Playerswas published by Co-Op Books in 1977.