Chapter I: History of Billiards (1)

BY SYDENHAM DIXON

Just as there were ‘brave men before Agamemnon,’ so, doubtless, were there good billiard-players prior to Kentfield; but we hear very little about them. One of the few whose name has been handed down to posterity is John—generally known as Jack—Carr. He was originally marker for Mr. Bartley, the proprietor of the billiard-tables at the Upper Rooms at Bath. When business there was slack, Mr. Bartley and Carr used occasionally to amuse themselves by placing the red ball on the centre spot, and attempting to screw off it into one of the middle pockets without bringing the red ball back into baulk. Such a stroke would be easier under the conditions then existing of slow list cushions and rough baize cloths than it is now, and for a long time Mr. Bartley was the only person who could accomplish it. At last he confided to Carr that he did it by striking his own ball upon its side. It seems pretty clear, therefore, that Mr. Bartley was the inventor of the side stroke and screw; but he appears to have made very little practical use of his great discovery; whereas Carr, who soon outstripped his instructor in proficiency at this particular stroke, turned his knowledge to excellent account, and fairly astonished and mystified the frequenters of the billiard-room at Bath by the ease and certainty with which he brought off apparently impossible strokes. They were naturally anxious to learn the secret, and, after Carr had artfully roused their curiosity to its highest pitch by remaining obstinately silent on the subject for a considerable time, he gravely informed them that his wonderful powers were entirely due to the use of a certain ‘twisting chalk’ that he had recently invented, and had then on sale. The demand for small pill-boxes filled with powdered chalk at half a crown per box was naturally enormous, and for a long time the wily marker reaped a rare harvest. If, as some have supposed, this was the first introduction of the custom of chalking the tip of a cue, the half-crowns were well invested; but, unfortunately, the weight of evidence goes to show that chalk had been in common use for this purpose for some time prior to Carr’s smart stroke of business, and that he economically filled his valuable pill-boxes by grinding up some of the chalk provided by Mr. Bartley for the use of his customers.

What with the brisk sale of the famous ‘twisting chalk,’ and the immense advantage that his knowledge of the power of screw gave him over all rivals, Carr must have been making a great deal of money about this time. Unhappily for his own prosperity, however, he was a desperate and confirmed gambler, and all that he made out of ivory in one form was lost through ivory in another. He never could resist ‘flirting with the elephant’s tooth,’ and every shilling that he made was promptly lost at hazard. At last, fairly tired out by incessant losses scarcely broken by a single run of luck, and discontented with circumstances immediately connected with his professional pursuits, he determined to leave England and try his fortune in Spain. It might have been imagined that the latter country would have proved anything but a happy hunting-ground, and that the Dons, on falling victims to Carr’s powers of screw, might have taken it into their heads to lay down their cues and to finish the game with knives. However, the Bath marker was evidently an excellent man of business, and the Spanish billiard-rooms proved veritable El Dorados to him. He made a tour of the principal towns, and succeeded in easily beating everyone with whom he played. The feats he performed by means of the ‘side twist’—as the screw stroke was formerly termed—amazed all who saw him play, and he managed to amass a considerable sum. Still, the old passion was as strong as ever, and once more proved his downfall. Spain was even more amply furnished with gambling-houses than England, and, as Carr’s usual ill luck pursued him, all his doubloons vanished even more rapidly than they had been acquired; he was compelled to return home, and finally landed at Portsmouth almost in rags. ‘Whether’—to use Mr. Mardon’s own words, and it is to his excellent book that I am indebted for much of my information as to these early exponents of the game—‘players of those days were less particular than persons of the present period is not for me to determine; but it is no less strange than true that, even in so deplorable a garb, he no sooner made his appearance at the billiard-table than he met with a gentleman willing to contend.’ In the ‘gentleman willing to contend,’ Carr, in his hour of direst need, must have found a very foolish person, for no man of average sense would have lost seventy pounds to an individual whose appearance loudly proclaimed that he did not possess the same number of pence, and who, therefore, could not possibly have paid had the issue of the games gone the other way.

The _dénouement_ of this little episode fully confirms this idea. Quitting the room with the money in his pocket, Carr immediately proceeded to get himself fully rigged out in ‘a blue coat, yellow waistcoat, drab small-clothes, and top-boots.’ A little advice from the local Polonius was evidently sadly needed; the attire was probably ‘costly’ and may have been ‘rich,’ but it was certainly ‘express’d in fancy,’ and decidedly ‘gaudy.’ Arrayed in all this magnificence, Carr paid another visit to the same billiard-room on the following day, when he again encountered his victim. The latter being, according to Mr. Mardon, ‘a fine player and devoted to the game,’ lost no time in challenging the stranger to play. This match naturally resulted as the other had done, and Carr again won a considerable sum. When play was over the gentleman remarked that ‘he was truly unfortunate in having met with, on succeeding days, two persons capable of giving him so severe a dressing. Carr, making himself known, thanked the gentleman for the metamorphosis his money had occasioned, and wished him a good morning.’

In 1825, Carr played a match against ‘the Cork Marker,’ at the Four Nations Hotel, in the Opera Colonnade. The latter was considered a very fine player in his day, and it is curious that no one seems to have known his name, for he is invariably alluded to under this somewhat vague designation. They played three games of 100 up, and, although Carr won all three, he was evidently encountering a foeman worthy of his steel, as ‘the Cork Marker’ reached 92 in the first game, and 75 in the third. In the second, however, he only got to 49, as Carr suddenly astonished the spectators by making twenty-two consecutive spot strokes. This was naturally considered a most extraordinary feat, and, as an offer was at once made to back Carr against all comers for a hundred guineas a-side, he can fairly lay claim to being considered the first champion of billiards, or, at any rate, the first whose claim to the title rests upon anything like a solid foundation. Pierce Egan, in his ‘Annals of Sporting and Fancy Gazette,’ writes of him as the ‘father of the side stroke;’ and though, as I have previously narrated, Mr. Bartley was the discoverer of the stroke, Carr was undoubtedly the first man who realised its importance and turned it to practical account.

I have been unable to satisfy myself whether Bedford and Pratt, two fine players who flourished in the first half of the present century, were contemporaries of Carr, or belonged to a somewhat later period; this, however, is a matter of small consequence. According to Mr. Mardon, ‘each was celebrated for quietude of demeanour and elegance of style,’ and Bedford was ‘graceful and unassuming, excelling in winning hazards, whilst all [strokes?] are made without apparent effort;’ his best break was 159. The same author gives the following amusing anecdote of Pratt, which will well bear repetition:

One evening, when most persons were enjoying their claret by the
fireside, a gentleman presented himself in the billiard-room, where
Pratt was seated alone. To a request whether he was desirous of
playing, he replied in the affirmative. The lights were placed, and
the parties took their stations at the table. ‘What game, sir, would
you wish to play?’ ‘I will play,’ replied the stranger, ‘the game of
100 up; and, as it is my desire that you should be rewarded for your
trouble, I will play for sixpence!’ The game commenced; and, after the
gentleman had once or twice struck the balls, he left his opponent’s
ball near the red, which, fortunately for Pratt, being on the spot, he
continued to hole in the two corner pockets four-and-thirty times,
beating his liberal antagonist a love game, 100 up!

To return, however, to Carr. His challenge was soon taken up by Edwin Kentfield, of Brighton (better known as Jonathan); but Carr fell ill, and the proposed match never came off. Kentfield then assumed the title of champion, his claim to which was not disputed for four-and-twenty years. There is no doubt that Edwin Kentfield, who died in 1873, was very superior to most of his profession. He was a man of refined tastes, passionately devoted to horticulture, with which he was thoroughly conversant, and he had the shrewdness to see that the tables and all the accessories of the game which were in use when he began to play were very crude and imperfect, the tables having list cushions, wooden beds, and coarse baize coverings. He spent many years in improving tables, cushions, balls, cues, &c., and, thanks to his energy, and to the acumen of Mr. John Thurston—the founder of the present well-known firm of billiard-table makers, who thoroughly believed in Kentfield, and was always ready to support his views and carry out his suggested improvements—the old order of things was gradually superseded by rubber cushions, slate beds, and fine cloths.

All the newest improvements were naturally to be found in Kentfield’s Subscription Rooms at Brighton, the appointments of which were wonderfully perfect, considering the date. In 1839 he published ‘The Game of Billiards: Scientifically Explained and Practically Set Forth, in a Series of Novel and Extraordinary, but Equally Practical, Strokes.’ In his well-written and modest preface, Kentfield alludes to the ‘many alterations and improvements that have been successfully introduced, and which have so greatly contributed to the state of perfection to which this noble amusement has at length arrived.’ Compared with the tables that were in vogue before Messrs. Kentfield and Thurston began their improvements, their joint production did doubtless seem wonderfully perfect; yet this extract reads curiously in 1896, in the face of the extraordinary developments of everything connected with the game that have taken place within the last ten or fifteen years.

Kentfield was acquainted with the spot stroke, and played it well, considering the then existing conditions. He devotes a very short chapter in his book to it, and describes four different methods by which it can be made. There are now nine entirely different strokes which may be brought into use in the course of a long spot break; but doubtless, in his day, several of the varieties of the stroke were absolutely impossible, owing to the comparative slowness of the tables. He did not, however, approve of the spot stroke, nor consider it billiards, and on this point was evidently of the same mind as the younger Roberts, who has recorded his opinion that a constant succession of big spot breaks ‘would very soon kill the popularity and destroy the artistic position billiards has attained.’ The thoroughly genuine nature of Kentfield’s feelings on the subject may be judged from the fact that he caused the pockets of the tables in his rooms at Brighton to be reduced to three inches, in order to prevent spot strokes being made; and this, unless he materially increased the charge for each game, must have meant a considerable annual pecuniary loss to him. The table on which Kentfield constantly played is thus described: ‘The table in the Subscription Room is extremely difficult. It is, perhaps, the fastest in England, and has pockets of the smallest dimensions (three inches). The spot for the red ball is barely twelve inches from the lower cushion; the baulk circle only eighteen inches in extent. On many tables the spot is thirteen inches from the cushion; the baulk twenty-two.’ It seems singular that, quite thirty years before the first championship table was manufactured, Kentfield should have put up almost a fac-simile of it in his Brighton rooms; but probably John Roberts, senior, saw it there, possibly played upon it, and derived from it the idea of the table on which, in 1870, the championship was decided.

It is almost impossible, after this lapse of time, to form any trustworthy opinion as to the real strength of Kentfield’s game, and it would be manifestly unfair to draw comparisons between him and any player of more recent date than the elder John Roberts. Let us first take the evidence of Mr. Mardon on the subject; and I may here remark that Mr. Mardon’s book—which was a very great improvement on any of its predecessors dealing with billiards—appears to have been primarily written with the view of giving immortality to the author’s great game of 500 up with a Mr. Porker. This was played in Kentfield’s rooms. Mr. Porker, who conceded a start of 25 points, reached 495 to 475, and then Mr. Mardon ran out. A break of 25, even at the end of a game, does not seem such a very startling feat; still, it was evidently considered as such in those days, and a diagram is given of each of the nine strokes which were comprised in this historical effort. One or two of these were somewhat singularly played according to modern ideas. In one of them, for example, the red ball was near the left top pocket, into which it was very easy to screw, and his opponent’s ball was nicely placed about the middle of the table. Instead of making the losing hazard with a slow screw, which would have just brought the red ball down to the white, and left a capital chance of a good break, Mr. Mardon had a regular bang at it, doubled the red ball right down the table and up again, and, probably more by luck than judgment, finally left it almost in the jaws of the right-hand top pocket. This, however, is ‘another story,’ and I am keeping Mr. Mardon waiting an unconscionably long time in the witness-box to give his testimony as to Kentfield’s abilities as a player. He writes:

Were I to relate all the extraordinary performances of Mr. Kentfield
at the period when list cushions and pockets of large dimensions were
in vogue, the reader would imagine I was bordering on romance. On one
occasion, when playing the winning game, 21 up, Mr. Kentfield gave his
opponent 18 points, and won sixteen successive games. In playing the
winning and losing game, 24 up, he won ten games, his adversary never
scoring! The games were thus played: Mr. Kentfield, in playing off,
doubled the red ball for one of the baulk corner pockets, placing his
own ball under the side cushion. His opponent played to drop it into
the corner pocket, failed, and left on each occasion a cannon; that
was made, and the games were all won off the balls! At another time he
was playing the non-cushion game, 16 up. On going off he twisted his
ball into the corner pocket from the red and won in that manner six
games, his adversary not having a stroke! Desirous of ascertaining how
many games of 24 up could be played within the hour, he commenced the
task with a player of considerable eminence;[1] and they completed
thirty games within the specified time. Forty-seven games of 100 up
were also played in eight and a half hours. In a match that did not
exceed two hundred games, he beat his opponent eighty-five love games.

Even allowing that the ‘player of considerable eminence’ was out of form, and that Kentfield had the table virtually to himself, 720 points in an hour was amazing;[2] and even the longer test, which works out at the rate of about 550 points per hour, does not compare at all badly with the rate at which our best players score at the present day; so it seems curious that a performer of such ability should have continued for years playing games of 21 and 24 up, in which, as was almost sure to be the case, his opponent frequently never had a stroke. When John Roberts, senior, was fast coming into note as a great player, and people were beginning to compare his powers with those of Kentfield, Mr. Mardon thus expressed his opinion on the subject:

I have been given to understand, within the last few months, that Mr.
Roberts, superintendent of the billiard-rooms at the Union Club in
Manchester, is considered by his friends of that neighbourhood to be
equal to any player in England; and, in order to afford me an
opportunity of judging of his skill, balls have been placed in
situations of considerable difficulty, and I have been assured that
hazards thus presented came quite within his power of cue. I have also
been informed that, in playing a game of 100 up, his opponent, aware
of, and dreading, his ability, ran a coup at 96 love, hoping, by so
prudent and cautious a proceeding, to ensure winning the game. Mr.
Roberts, playing from the baulk circle, twisted into one of the corner
pockets from the ball upon the spot, and made from a break so
unpromising 102 points from the red ball alone! Admitting, however,
this information to be correct, still, wonderful and surprising
execution does not constitute either a sterling or a successful
player; and when I take into consideration the advantages to be
derived from playing the game called ‘One pocket to five,’ and learn
that Mr. Kentfield has played upwards of fifty thousand games with one
gentleman alone, I cannot but imagine that an experience so great,
united with his matchless skill, must not only elevate him above all
other players, but fully entitle him to the paramount laudatory
remarks with which his name will be found to be associated. When I
call to mind, and reflect upon, the wonderful execution displayed
while playing the commanding game over the table, and the game of one
pocket to one pocket _commanded_, I have no hesitation in saying that
on such occasions his power of cue has gone beyond what even the
imagination could embrace. I have seen him, like a man inspired,
accomplish stroke after stroke, hazards and cannons, against which I,
with my knowledge of the game, would have laid fifty to one! From his
cue I have witnessed that which I am confident I shall never see
again; and, although luminaries may shine forth in other spheres, Mr.
Kentfield, the electric light of mine, must, I think, dim their lustre
and keep them in the shade.

The only other witness I shall call is John Roberts, sen., who has left on record his opinion that Kentfield ‘played a very artistic game, but possessed very little power of cue. He depended on slow twists and fancy screws, and rarely attempted a brilliant forcing hazard. He gave misses, and made baulks whenever they were practicable, and never departed from the strict game.’ This was not written until many years after all rivalry between the two men had ceased, and may, therefore, probably be accepted as a calm and unprejudiced opinion. At first sight it is difficult to reconcile the entirely opposite views of Mr. Mardon and Roberts with regard to Kentfield’s power of cue. The truth probably lies between the two extremes, for the former’s judgment may have been slightly warped by intense admiration for his idol, whereas Roberts was possibly comparing Kentfield’s power of cue with his own, which was almost phenomenal. The highest break that Kentfield ever made was one of 196, and his best spot break 57 consecutive hazards. It may be taken for granted that neither of these breaks was made on his three-inch pocket table; nevertheless, they may still be regarded as very excellent performances. If, however, there are diverse views as to Kentfield’s powers as a player, I have only been able to discover one opinion as to his merits as a man. Whether or not we may feel inclined to accept the dictum that genius is ‘an infinite capacity for taking pains,’ I think there is little doubt that Edwin Kentfield was a genius at billiards, whilst in other respects it is quite certain that he set a brilliant example to the players who followed him.

During the last few years of Kentfield’s long and peaceful career, the fame of John Roberts was rapidly growing, especially in and near Manchester, and it became evident that at last, for the first time for four and twenty years, the champion would be called upon to defend his title. Roberts was born about 1815, and, as is bound to be the case with a really great player, had a cue in his hand long before he was tall enough to reach the table properly. Indeed, he was only nine years old when he began to play upon an old-fashioned table by Gillow, with a wooden bed and list cushions. This was at the old Rotunda, Bold Street, Liverpool, and he showed such remarkable aptitude for the game that in six months he could give points to most ordinary players. His precocious ability appears to have been unknown to his father, until one day the two played three or four games together, and the youngster won by many points. Instead of being delighted with this display of juvenile talent, the old man, who was possibly a bad loser, concluded that his son must have been devoting far too much time to the game, and, lacking the shrewdness to perceive the possibilities that lay before so skilful a lad, apprenticed him to a carpenter. The boy stuck to this trade for a couple of years; but his passion for billiards remained as strong as ever, and at the end of that time he ran away, thenceforth devoting himself entirely to what was unquestionably his proper vocation. His first engagement was as marker at Oldham, and it is evident that he must have improved very rapidly while there, for he could not have been more than fourteen years old when he played home and home matches with ‘Pendleton Tom,’ a professional player with considerable local reputation, and beat him in both. When he left Oldham he obtained a situation in Glasgow, and in 1844 played a match against John Fleming, a well-known billiard-table maker of that day, for 100_l._ a-side; and here he met with his first reverse of any importance. They were playing 500 up, and when the game was called ‘485 all,’ Fleming tried for a cannon and missed it, but fluked a six stroke and went out. Roberts then defeated Tom Broughton of Leeds, and this appears to have been his last match of any note during his sojourn in Glasgow. This ended in 1845, when he became manager of the billiard-rooms of the Union Club at Manchester, a position which he retained for seven years. This was very fortunate for him, as he no doubt had far more opportunities for practice than he had ever previously enjoyed, and it was while there that he learnt the spot stroke. The popular idea that he invented the stroke is, of course, an entire fallacy, for Kentfield, Carr, Pratt, and others were in the habit of playing it. It was taught to Roberts by Mr. Lee Birch, a member of the Union Club, who had seen it played in London, and, being one of the best amateur players of the day, soon mastered it to the extent of being generally able to make a dozen or fifteen consecutive hazards. It is curious, by the way, how many amateur players attain this standard of excellence and never get any farther. If a man can habitually make this number of spot strokes, nothing but steady practice is required to enable him to make runs of fifty, seventy, a hundred, or even more; yet not one in a thousand has the resolution or perseverance to take this necessary practice. With Roberts it was entirely different. He at once realised that the stroke must give an enormous advantage to any man who could play it with something like certainty. For six months, therefore, he devoted himself almost entirely to it, and spent hundreds of hours at the top of the table.

When a man who united a natural genius for the game with indomitable perseverance thus set himself to master a particular stroke, there could be only one result, and I should fancy it was then—strong in the confidence engendered by his ability to play this deadly stroke—that he first conceived the idea of bearding Kentfield in his den, and challenging his long-undisputed supremacy. Mr. Mardon’s account of the first meeting of the rivals is as follows: ‘Arriving in Brighton, Roberts called on Kentfield. He informed him at once, in a manly, straightforward manner, who he was, and expressed a desire of playing a friendly game. He neither sought disguise nor secrecy, and would willingly have shown the strength of his game to all who might have approached. Kentfield, on the other hand, was very desirous of avoiding publicity, and, taking Roberts into an adjoining room, locked the door and began a game.’ Then follow a few more lines in Mr. Mardon’s usual rather high-flown style, the meaning of which, translated into the vulgar tongue, is that Roberts speedily discovered that his opponent was not really doing his best. This did not at all suit the man who had come from Manchester on a voyage of discovery, and Mr. Mardon tells us that he thus expressed his opinion on the subject: ‘This, Mr. Kentfield, cannot be your game; to play such as this I can give forty in a hundred. If you are withholding your powers for the purpose of obtaining a bet, I am willing to recommence the game and to play you for five pounds.’ Those who knew the elder Roberts intimately may possibly accept this as the general purport of his remarks, but will entirely decline to believe that he did not express himself in far more vigorous and forcible language. As, however, Mr. Mardon states that the door of the room was locked, and that no one was present excepting the two principals, he could only have written his account of the scene from hearsay, and it differs considerably from Roberts’s own version of the interview. This, given in ‘Roberts on Billiards,’ runs as follows:

I remember perfectly my first meeting with Kentfield, better known as
‘Jonathan.’ It was in the beginning of 1849, at Brighton, where I went
on purpose to see him play. On entering his rooms I met John Pook, the
present proprietor of the Cocoa-tree Club, who was at that time his
manager. After sending up my name, Kentfield came in and inquired my
business. I told him that I was admitted to be the best player in
Lancashire, whence I had come to find out if he could show me
anything. He inquired if I wanted a lesson. I told him I did not, and
asked him how many in 100 would be a fair allowance from a player on
his own table to a stranger, provided they were of equal skill. He
replied ‘15;’ I told him I thought 20 would be nearer the mark, but I
was contented to try at evens. He said: ‘If you play me, it must be
for some money;’ on which, not to be frightened, I pulled out a
100_l._ note, and told him I would play him ten games of 100 up for
10_l._ a game. He laughed, and said I was rather hasty; and eventually
we knocked the balls about, and then commenced a friendly 100 on level
terms. He had the best of the breaks, and won by 40. In the second
game I pulled out a few north-country shots and won by 30, but he
secured the third. Then he put down his cue, and asked if I was
satisfied he could beat me. I said: ‘No; on the contrary, if you can’t
play better than this, I can give you 20 in 100 easily.’ He replied:
‘Well, if you want to play me, you must put down a good stake.’ I
asked how much, and he answered 1,000_l._ I said: ‘Do you mean
1,000_l._ a-side?’ Upon which he told me he thought I was a
straightforward fellow, and he would see what could be done. He then
sent Pook back to me, and I explained to him how things stood. He
replied: ‘You may as well go back to Lancashire; you won’t get a match
on with the governor.’

Accepting Roberts’s version of this historical meeting, one is forced to the conclusion that, if one of the two was not trying to win, it certainly was not Kentfield; for when a man loses two games out of three on level terms, and then calmly tells his victorious opponent that he can easily give him 20 in 100, it is certain that the loser must have been keeping a very big bit up his sleeve. Evidently Kentfield was fully alive to this, for all efforts to get him to make a match proved fruitless.

The fact of the matter undoubtedly was that Kentfield, who was many years the senior of the pair, felt that the coming man was too strong for him, realised that he had everything to lose and very little to gain by risking a contest, and preferred the title of ‘retired champion’ to that of ‘ex-champion.’

John Roberts, therefore, attained the first position in the world of billiards in 1849, and the following year, whilst he was still manager of the billiard-rooms at the Union Club, Manchester, played a great match of 1,000 up with Starke, an American. The latter was a remarkably fine nursery cannon player, and, getting the run of the balls in the early part of the game, reached 600 to 450, thus securing a formidable lead. Then it was that Roberts first reaped the reward of all the time and patience he had expended on the practice of the spot stroke. Wisely abandoning the all-round game, he devoted his energies to getting position at the top of the table; a break which included thirty-nine consecutive ‘spots’ took him to the front again, and another fine run of thirty-six red hazards gave him an easy victory. In a letter to ‘Bell’s Life’ on the subject of this match, one of the best contemporary judges of the game gave it as his opinion that ‘Kentfield showed good judgment in declining a match with Roberts, for, had they played upon a neutral table, he would have been defeated to a certainty.’ Even Mr. Mardon completely altered his mind with regard to the respective merits of the two players, and to his second profession of faith he probably remained steadfast until the day of his death; for, as comparatively recently as the early part of 1874, he wrote a letter to the ‘Sporting Life’ on the subject of billiards, in which he strongly maintained the superiority of old John over his son, William Cook, and Joseph Bennett.

It is doubtful whether, at the period of which I am now writing, the title of champion was of much pecuniary value to its possessor. He could only get an occasional match for money by giving a very long start, whilst such things as exhibition games seem to have been of very rare occurrence. In glancing over the files of ‘Bell’s Life’—the only sporting paper then in existence—of some forty years ago, one cannot fail to be struck with the way in which billiards is practically ignored; in fact, it was some time before I could find any allusion to the game. At last, in the issue dated February 22, 1852, I discovered the following announcement: ‘A silver snuff-box will be given by the proprietor of the Shakspere’s Head, Wych Street, Strand, to be played for by eight of the best players in London, on Tuesday next, at six o’clock. A gentleman from the country will be in attendance to play any man in London for from 25_l._ to 50_l._ the same night.’ The most rigid examination of the issue of the following week—in those days sportsmen had to content themselves with one sporting paper, which came out once a week—failed to discover the smallest record of the doings of ‘eight of the best players in London’ on that Tuesday evening, and the destination of the silver snuff-box might have been for ever lost to posterity but for the appearance of the following challenge: ‘Mr. John Dufton will play Mr. Farrell, the winner of the snuff-box at the Shakspere’s Head, Wych Street, on Tuesday last, a match at billiards, from 100 to 1,000 up, for 10_l._ or 20_l._ a-side. Money ready any evening at the above-named place.’ It is probable that the challenger was a relation of the well-known William Dufton, ‘tutor to the Prince of Wales,’ as he always proudly styled himself, though I must candidly confess that I had never previously heard either of him or of Farrell, entitled as each may have been to rank amongst the eight best players in London. It was not, however, the battle for the snuff-box that interested me. I was anxious to know how the countryman fared on his adventurous crusade, and had a suspicion that he may have turned out to have been no less a personage than the champion himself, this being just the sort of little joke that John Roberts always enjoyed. However, my curiosity on this point had to remain unsatisfied, and I ceased to be surprised that it should be so when I found that in the same issue of ‘Bells Life’—which in those days was supposed to devote a good deal of its space to events of general interest other than sporting—the death of Tom Moore, the sweetest singer Ireland ever produced, was dismissed in exactly five lines!

In this same year (1852) Roberts resigned the management of the billiard-rooms at the Union Club, which he had held for seven years, and took the Griffin Hotel in Lower Broughton, a suburb of Manchester. Soon after this he played two more matches with Starke at the American game, each of them being for 100_l._ a-side. It is noteworthy, as marking the rapid manner in which he had ‘come on’ in his play, that whereas, only two years previously, Starke had played him upon even terms, and at one stage of the game looked very much like beating him, it was now thought good enough to back Roberts to give a start of 300 in 1,000. This proved rather too big a concession; nevertheless, little mistake had been made in estimating the respective merits of the two men, for in the return match, in which the start was reduced to 275, the champion won very easily. The billiard history of the next few years is singularly uneventful, and there appear to have been few players good enough to have any chance with Roberts, even when allowed a long start. He, however, did not retain the Griffin Hotel very long, and, after leaving it, took billiard-rooms in Cross Street, Manchester. He must have been living there in 1858, when he played a match with John Herst in Glasgow, in the course of which he made a break of 186, which included a run of 55 consecutive spot strokes. Herst was a brilliant winning hazard striker, and played in very pretty and finished style. Great things were expected of him, and there is every reason to suppose that these expectations would have been realised, but he died almost at the outset of his career. In 1861 Roberts at length left Manchester, to become lessee of Saville House, Leicester Square, and he had not been there many weeks when he played a match with Mr. Downs, an amateur, to whom he conceded a start of 700 in 1,000. In the course of this game, which he won by 93 points, he made two very fine breaks of 195 (53 ‘spots’) and 200 (64 ‘spots’), and scored his thousand points in 2 hours 11 minutes, an excellent performance, notwithstanding the fact that he must have had the table virtually to himself. A rather curious episode occurred in the course of this game. Mr. Downs, in lieu of giving the customary miss at the beginning of the play, ran a coup, expecting that Roberts would give a miss, and very probably calculating that, with his big start, to give three and receive one was really judicious. The champion, however, instantly grasped the situation, and, without a moment’s hesitation, played hard at the red, and sent it and his own ball flying to the other end of the room. In those days there was no penalty for knocking a ball off the table, so Mr. Downs’s carefully calculated and promising scheme of running a succession of coups and receiving a series of misses was summarily nipped in the bud. It was at Saville House in March 1862 that Roberts made his famous break of 346, mainly composed of a series of 104 spot hazards. William Dufton was his opponent, and Roberts won the game in the remarkably fast time of an hour and three-quarters. This break was more than a nine days’ wonder, and never before or afterwards did Roberts make 300 off the balls in public—a feat that is now well within the compass of plenty of men who do not play well enough to get a couple of engagements per season in exhibition matches.

Two of the most prominent players in the ‘fifties’ and early ‘sixties’ were Alfred Bowles and Charles Hughes. Roberts considered the former to be the best player he ever met, and records that ‘no one yet has ever held me at the points as Bowles used to do.’ The points alluded to were 300 in 1,000; but it must not be forgotten that these remarks were written before William Cook, John Roberts, jun., and Joseph Bennett had come to the front. I never saw Bowles play until he challenged the younger Roberts for the championship and suffered an easy defeat. This was in May 1870, when the Brighton man had possibly seen his best day. He played a steady, old-fashioned game, but was hopelessly out-classed by young John, and, though he could play the spot stroke well, of course he had no opportunity of doing so on a championship table. From what I saw of the play of the two men, I should unhesitatingly place Charles Hughes before Bowles; but it would be ridiculous, with the very limited opportunities I had of forming an opinion, to oppose my judgment to that of Roberts; and certainly the results of two matches that were played in the early part of 1864 point strongly to the superiority of Bowles. In January of that year Roberts gave Bowles 300 in 1,000 for 100_l._ a-side—in those days 100_l._ a-side meant 100_l._ a-side, not that each man went through the solemn farce of staking his money, and received it back again at the end of the game, whatever the result might be—and was beaten by 109 points; whilst, two months later, the champion conceded Hughes 350 in 1,000, and beat him by no fewer than 243 points. There can be no doubt, however, that Hughes improved wonderfully between the date of this match and 1869, when he sailed for Australia. The weak point in his game was an irresistible inclination to go out for fancy cannons. He would be apparently well set for a really good break when he would neglect a comparatively simple shot for some elaborate cannon off three or four cushions, which he would either just miss or perhaps bring off, with the result of leaving the balls in an almost impossible position for a further score. He was gradually, however, getting over this propensity towards the close of his career, and undoubtedly played a very good game indeed at the time that he left England. Just prior to sailing he ran into the last three of a great professional handicap which took place at the ‘Nell Gwynne,’ Strand, in which, together with Cook and Roberts, jun., he started at scratch, whilst the champion owed 50 points, and, as there were as many as forty players engaged, this was a capital performance. He also won a handicap of 200 up, which was played to celebrate the opening of the Bentinck Club, upon the site of which the Vaudeville Theatre now stands. In this he received a start of 30 points, the champion owed 20, whilst his son and Cook had 20 each. The best thing he ever did, however, was accomplished in the last game he played in England. He sailed from Liverpool, and, as Roberts had gone down to see him off, the pair took advantage of the opportunity to play 1,000 up at the ‘Golden Lion,’ Deansgate, Manchester. Roberts, as usual, gave a start of 300, and had reached 736 against 794, when Hughes went out with a break of 206, which included 62 consecutive ‘spots.’ Being asked to finish the break, he added 21 more red hazards, and this 269 was a bigger run than anyone had put together since the champion had made his famous 346 about seven years previously. I can find no record of Hughes’s achievements in Australia, but he did not long survive his arrival in that country. As has been the case with too many other fine players, he lacked the resolution and strength of mind to take proper care of himself, and the lavish colonial hospitality which was thrust upon him at every turn speedily killed him.

In the limited space at my disposal it is manifestly impossible to follow the game closely, year by year, and I think the better plan will be to give a sketch of all the principal players, including some account of the most important matches that have taken place since 1870, at nearly all of which I have been fortunate enough to have been present. In ‘Roberts on Billiards,’ which was written towards the close of the author’s twenty-one years’ tenure of the championship, he names Charles Hughes, John Herst, Joseph Bennett, William Cook, and John Roberts, jun., as candidates for the title of second-best player, and adds, ‘probably the two best are William Cook and my eldest son.’ The first and second I have already dealt with; the other three, who kept the championship entirely between them during fifteen years, naturally demand more extended notice, as their doings really form the greater part of the history of billiards from 1870 onwards. Before coming to them, however, it will be better to dispose of what Roberts terms the third class, in which he includes William Dufton, L. Kilkenny, W. D. Stanley, W. E. Green, George Mulberry, Alfred Hughes, George Davis, W. C. Hitchin, Tom Morris, Harry Evans, and John Smith, ‘to any of whom I have been in the habit of allowing 350 in 1,000.’ Of these, I never saw Stanley—who, I fancy, was an elder brother of D. Richards and S. W. Stanley—Mulberry, Davis, Hitchin, or Smith play, and will not, therefore, write anything about them. With respect to Dufton, I feel bound to say that, in my opinion, he was a much overrated man. As I saw him perform for the first time in 1866, when it is possible that he may have been going off, I should have hesitated to write so plainly, had not my view of his lack of ability been fully confirmed by one who constantly played with him, and for whose judgment I have the highest respect. His long ‘jennies,’ on the making of which his reputation almost entirely rested, are now easily within the compass of any professional player, and he would never have made the name he did but for confining his play almost entirely to exhibition games with Roberts. These exhibition matches would naturally have lost much of their attraction if the champion had invariably won, so Dufton had his share of successes, and came to be regarded as being able to play Roberts with 350 points in 1,000; whereas it is perfectly certain that a start of half the game would not have brought them together when the scratch man was doing his best. L. Kilkenny kept pace fairly well with the remarkable development of the game that took place between 1870 and 1880, and managed to hold his own with a reasonable start from the rising stars. He possessed little power of cue and no brilliancy of execution, but played a sound, steady game, and, before spot-barred games became so universal, could generally be relied upon for a pretty good run of ‘spots’ when he obtained a favourable position. Deprived of the strongest part of his game, however, he soon fell out of the ranks. Alfred Hughes was a player of no class compared with his brother Charles, and Tom Morris, a left-handed man, with a somewhat flashy style, was only moderate. Harry Evans, on the contrary, was a thoroughly sound performer, who played an excellent all-round game, and, if he did not go out for gallery strokes, seldom or never missed an ordinarily simple one. Soon after his arrival in Australia he suddenly came out as quite a phenomenal spot stroke player, though he had never so distinguished himself in England, and he held the championship of that colony for many years, till quite recently deprived of it by Charles Memmott.

About 1866 John Roberts, jun., William Cook, and Joseph Bennett began to draw away from the ruck of billiard-players, and it did not require much foresight to predict that old John would shortly find a dangerous rival or two, though it was difficult at the time to believe that anyone would have the temerity to meet him upon even terms. In the October of that year a great four-handed match took place, the champion and Dufton attempting to give 200 in 1,000 to Charles Hughes and Joseph Bennett for 200_l._ a-side, an attempt in which they failed lamentably, being beaten by no fewer than 344 points. Though Hughes scored 497 points during the game, whilst Bennett only contributed 281, the major portion of the credit of the victory must be given to the latter, who, by the way, is the only surviving member of the quartet. Always remarkable for his fine generalship and wonderful knowledge of the game, Bennett never displayed these qualities to more advantage than on this occasion. He played in front of Roberts, and, although he made a few breaks of twenty or thirty, his sole mission was never to allow the champion a fair opening. Directly he had a stroke which it was not three to one on his making, he at once abandoned the break, and either put down the white and left a double baulk or else gave a miss. Roberts’s game, in fact, was so utterly cramped from start to finish that it was a remarkable feat on his part to make 488 points during the evening. In the meantime Hughes was thoroughly enjoying himself. Having only Dufton to follow him, and well knowing that it did not much matter what sort of a game he left on, he went out for everything, brought off all sorts of fancy cannons, and scored the fastest of the party. Poor Dufton’s show was a very lamentable one. From the style of game that Hughes was playing, he naturally left any number of good openings, but all that Dufton could total during the evening was 136. By Bennett’s clever strategy the four-handed match was virtually reduced to a single-handed battle between Hughes and Dufton, and this could only have had one result, even had they played upon level terms.

It was at the end of 1868 that William Cook and John Roberts, jun., between whom there was destined to be such keen rivalry for the next twelve or fifteen years, played their first match for money, Cook being at that time just nineteen years of age and his opponent two years older. The match took place at the Bentinck Club, and produced a very large amount of speculation. It is quite needless to give any description of the game, which Roberts won by 92 points, but it is noteworthy that his best breaks—at the all-in game, be it remembered—were 120 and 99, whilst Cook’s highest effort only reached 92. This contrasts very curiously with the state of affairs early in 1896, when, in a spot-barred game of 1,000 up, it would be quite safe to back a player of the calibre of D. Richards or H. W. Stevenson to make three breaks of upwards of a hundred each. In spite of this defeat, Cook’s friends did not lose faith in him, and, in his inmost heart, I believe that Roberts, sen., always rated Cook’s play at a higher level than that of his son. I remember having a chat with the old man on this subject at the Bentinck Club. Young John had just beaten Cook pretty easily in their heat of the handicap with which the opening of the club was celebrated, and this, coupled with his recent success in the match just referred to, led me to remark that there could be little doubt as to who would be future champion. ‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said the veteran with a shake of the head; ‘we’ve not seen the best of Cook yet.’ Before the end of that year his opinion was amply justified. In March a return match was played, in which, though the breaks on both sides were very small, Cook beat Roberts, jun., by 323 points, and when the former began playing again after the summer recess the improvement he exhibited was simply extraordinary. His beautiful delicacy of touch was more striking than ever, and he ‘nursed’ the balls with even more than his old skill; but in his anxiety to secure position he did not so frequently miss the immediate stroke, which had formerly been the weak point in his game. Then he had attained a proficiency in playing the spot stroke that entirely eclipsed anything that had previously been witnessed in this line, and three times in one week, with young Roberts as an opponent, he made upwards of three hundred off the balls. Two of these breaks—351 at the Royal Hotel, Dale Street, Liverpool, and 359 at the Prince of Wales’s Hotel, Moss Side, Manchester—beat the champion’s 346, which for seven years had been considered quite unapproachable. After this, Cook seldom played two games of 1,000 up without making a break of 300 in one of them, and left his old rival, John Roberts, jun., completely in the rear. There could only be one end to this series of remarkable performances, and in the autumn of 1869 Cook issued a challenge to play the champion, on or before January 1, 1870, a game of 1,000 or 2,000 up, level, for 500_l._ a-side. Some little time elapsed before the two men came to terms, and it was decided by a committee of the leading players of the day that matches for the championship should be played on a table with three-inch pockets, and with the spot 12½ inches from the top cushion, instead of 13¼ inches, the then customary distance. As Cook was a member of the committee which decided on this radical alteration in the table, it seems strange that he did not protest strongly against a measure which nearly every expert at once realised must deprive him of the strongest feature of his game—the spot stroke—but the reason was that he apparently did not realise the fact. Cook was then barely twenty-one years of age, but he ought to have had sufficient experience to have saved him from such a mistake. Before he had been playing on the new table for an hour, his error must have been brought home to him in very unpleasant fashion.

Just as the great battle at Farnborough between Sayers and Heenan was read about and eagerly discussed by all sorts and conditions of men who had previously professed the greatest disgust for prize-fighting, so the match between the veteran and his pupil excited intense interest, even amongst people who could scarcely define the difference between a winning and losing hazard. The Prince of Wales was present at St. James’s Hall, and, as no such scene had ever previously been witnessed at a billiard match, and may never be seen again, I need not apologise for reproducing part of a sketch of the memorable night contributed by myself at the time to one of the last numbers of the famous old ‘Sporting Magazine,’ which ceased to exist at the end of 1870: