Many hundreds of his customers sought his advice when they were about to travel or
Many hundreds of his customers sought his advice when they were about to travel, or about to study a subject, as to what they should read. He was discerning, impatient of badly written books, keenly interested in good authors and had not the slightest hesitation in telling customers not to waste their time, even if it meant that his shop was deprived of a sale.Even in a city where a large number of the citizens have an extensive knowledge of antiquarian books he was highly regarded and frequently to be seen enjoying himself at auction. However Jacobs did claim the Wimbledon crown in 1936 when she defeated Hilde Sperling, of Denmark, 6-2, 6-4, 7-5. Jacobs was also runner-up to Dorothy Round in 1934.
Jacobs won only one of her 11 head-to-head meetings with Moody and that was in the US national final at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in 1933. It was tainted by controversy when Moody retired with a back injury when trailing 8-6, 3-6, 3-0. It was her first defeat since 1926.Jacobs went on to win four successive US titles, from 1932 to 1935, and in 1936 was ranked No 1 in the world.
She should have beaten Moody in the 1935 Wimbledon final where she held a match point in the deciding set but everything went against her. She lost the point and the next three games for the match.Stockily built, Jacobs was a great fighter. She had a powerful service and smash and a sound backhand, but she never learned to hit a flat hand drive, despite her friendship, and some coaching, from the great tennis player Bill Tilden.Jacobs played a big part in the US run of successes over Great Britain in the now-defunct Wightman Cup from 1927 to 1939. Such was her popularity at home that she was named America’s best sportswoman in 1943. She was a pioneer of female players wearing shorts; having been refused permission to wear them at the Wightman Cup in 1933, she appeared in shorts later that year at the US championships.During the Second World War, Jacobs joined the US navy intelligence service and reached the rank of commander, one of only five women to do so In 1947 she became a professional player. She also became a prolific writer of tennis books and schoolgirl stories, a farmer and a sportswear designer. “I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, exactly, but I think it did help my German,” she says.
“They kept taking me to the beach, and trying to make me windsurf,” one man remembers. “But all I wanted to do was read Nietzsche and smoke cigarettes.”Caroline Marsh, as an unsophisticated 15-year-old growing up in the country, was rather dazzled by the smart youth culture and coffee bars of Frankfurt when she went to stay with her exchange, Birgit. It is possibly the worst time in their lives to expect them to strike up a rapport with an outsider – particularly one selected by their parents. I have yet to meet anyone who actually liked their “exchange”. At best, they are tolerated; at worst, ignored – like the French boy I heard of who spent his entire stay with an English family helping their gardener.Teenagers are predisposed to dislike anyone outside their own immediate circle, particularly if they do not share the same fads and fashions. Provided the two teenagers concerned are approximately the same age, it is assumed that they will be only too happy to spend a month or so in each other’s company.Generally, however, they are not. I gritted my teeth for her return stay that summer, and afterwards vowed never to see her again.
Foreign exchanges of that kind have, for generations, been cherished by aspiring middle-class parents as the way to give their children a head- start in a language.
As most children know, an apology has a kind of magic in it, but it is a magic that only works if the apology is accepted in the same spirit in which it is offered.. And the effect on my Italian? I learnt some new words for things to eat, and was once commended for my use of the subjunctive, but the only extended conversation I had was with Rosangela’s three-year-old cousin. You could understand Mr Bennett’s reasoning here, but what he said actually wasn’t true – only a few weeks before this statement President Clinton had done precisely that. Our one major excursion was to a scrubby mountainside outside Turin: too sick to walk with the others, I was left behind in a mountain cabin, and reduced to reading almost the whole of Women In Love. Much of it I passed, alone, on the balcony of her flat, where I was confined like a child with its toys, and fed occasional tit-bits from her mama’s kitchen. As a 16-year-old preparing for O-level Italian, I once spent a fortnight with a sullen, pale-faced girl from Turin It was one of the longest fortnights I have ever known.