XXXIVMUSIC OF THE SPHERES
When I was a small boy in Hartford, I often used to see Mark Twain standing in the open air in his shirt-sleeves, the eternal cigar in his mouth and a billiard cue in his hand. The billiard room was on the top floor of his house and a tiny balcony projected from one of the windows; nearly all dwellings built in the seventies had strange abscesses of that kind. While his opponent was shooting, Mark would come out on that platform for a breath of air. Billiards was the only game he cared for; he was by no means fond of exercise. He always said, “Never stand up when you can sit down; never sit down when you can lie down.” Many years later, when he was living in New York, he often attended professional billiard matches and the spectators often looked away from the table at Mark’s superb leonine head and noble old face.
Another famous contemporary writer also found his only recreation in billiards—this was Herbert Spencer. Every afternoon he wouldgive himself and the unknowable a rest and go to the Athenæum Club in London for a game, where his own cue is still preserved as a memorial. If none of his cronies was available, he would challenge a stranger. His philosophy afforded no balm in defeat. On one occasion when he was beaten badly he put his cue in the rack and remarked testily that to play billiards well was an accomplishment; to play it too well was the sign of a misspent life.
It is rather strange, since most of our American games are derived from the English, that we should have taken billiards from France. Few games are more uncommon in the United States than English billiards; cricket is not nearly so unusual a spectacle.
Almost every American boy wants to play billiards. When I was fourteen one of my schoolmates found a man who wished to sell a small table—it had rubber tubes for cushions—but the price was prohibitive, twenty dollars. Our total assets were seventy-five cents. We remembered that my friend’s sister had received a twenty dollar gold piece as a birthday present. Of what possible use could it be to her? We persuaded her to donate it to the good cause, and if any one thinks that our powers of persuasion were extraordinary, he thinks accurately, for Isubsequently persuaded her to become my wife. We bought the table and set it up in my house late one Saturday night, too late, alas, to play. Father would not allow me to touch it on Sunday, and early Monday morning I had to be off to school. We got out at four o’clock, made straight for that table and played till eleven at night, not stopping to eat.
I know of no game at which professional skill has developed more rapidly than at billiards. It seems incredible, but only fifty years ago there were four balls on the table and the ordinary friendly game was 34 points! Almost any professional today could run a thousand points—indeed he could go on indefinitely.
I regret that the beautiful game of cushion-caroms, so common in the eighties among the professionals, has become obsolete. In that game there could be no nursing, because one had to make the cue ball hit the cushion either before making the carom or after hitting the object ball. The gentlemen of the green cloth who were most proficient at this game were Vignaux, the Frenchman, and the Americans, “Jake” Schaefer, father of the present expert of that name; Slosson, Sexton and Sutton. In Allyn Hall at Hartford I saw a great match between Vignaux and Schaefer. M. Vignaux was alarge man and very dignified; in his evening clothes he looked like a prime minister. Mr. Schaefer was so small that Maurice Daly used to call him the little shaver. They were formally introduced to the spectators by the referee, who remarked with immense unction, “Mr. Schaefer has never in his life played with his coat on; he asks the kind permission of the audience to remove it.” This privilege was granted with fervent applause. When the game began to go against him, M. Vignaux also removed his swallowtail.
At that time the highest run that had ever been made at cushion-caroms was 77, which had been accomplished by Sexton. On this night, by dazzling open-table play, Schaefer made a run of 70. He was called the Wizard, because he played with extreme rapidity, exactly the opposite of Slosson, who was known as the Student.
Now the popular professional game is the balkline, 18.2. A recent champion is Edouard Horemans of Belgium, who won the title from young Schaefer in a hair-raising match at San Francisco. Horemans is a left-handed player and in every respect a worthy champion. His rail play is phenomenal. I saw him give an exhibition on his first visit to America in 1920 and it was clear that he was a dangerous competitor.
Who is the greatest player in history? It is hard to say, but I suspect there never was a greater player than Napoleon Ives. He was one of the first to use a cue weighing more than twenty ounces and was all but unbeatable. Schaefer (senior) once beat him with the anchor shot, which was afterward barred. Unfortunately, tuberculosis cut Ives off in his prime. The heated room, the chalk dust and the excitement of close contests were too much for him.