silence, and though it is advisable for many reasons that it should be
played with reasonable quiet, it is not at all compulsory to conduct
yourself as if in the monastery of La Trappe; you have a perfect
right—as far as the laws of whist are concerned—to discuss at any time
the price of stocks, the latest scandal, or even the play going on,
“provided that no intimation whatever, by word or gesture, be given as
to the state of your own hand or the game.”—_Etiquette of Whist._
At bumblepuppy you had better waive this right altogether, for if under
any circumstances you open your mouth, you will infallibly put your
foot into it. Even here, the bumblepuppist is not consistent, for while
constantly laying down the extraordinary law—in a very loud voice—that
whist is silence, he considers the carrying out of that law much more
incumbent on the rest of the table than himself.
[50] “Avoid playing with those who instruct, or rather find fault while
the hand is playing. They are generally unqualified by ignorance, and
judge from consequences; but if not, advice while playing does more
harm than good.”—_Mathews._
“The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”—_Shakespeare._
“Talking over the hand _after_ it has been played is not uncommonly
called a bad habit and an annoyance, I am firmly persuaded it is one of
the readiest ways of learning whist.”—_Clay._
[51]
“O dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”
And still the generation of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife.
“The education of the whist-player is peculiar. How he becomes a
whist-player nobody knows. He never learns his alphabet or the
catechism or anything that he ought to do. He appears full-grown,
mushroom-like. He remembers someone blowing him up for doing something
he ought not to have done, and somebody else blowing him up for
doing something else, and he is blown up to the end of the chapter.
This phase of being blown up is varied by grumbling sometimes aloud,
sometimes _sotto voce_; so that the whist-player is reared on scolding
and grumbling as other youngsters are reared on pap. Truly this is a
happy life. Some men grumble on principle because it is a national
privilege, and they avail themselves of the Englishman’s birthright.”
“A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies:
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss,
More peevish, cross, and splenetic
Than dog distract, or monkey sick.”—_Hudibras._
“Some do it because they believe that if they grumble enough, it
will bring them luck. Some do it in the hope that they will excite
sympathy, and that their friends will feel for their ill-fortune,
which, by-the-bye, whist-players never do. Some grumble to annoy their
friends, and we are bound to say these succeed.”—_Westminster Papers._
“The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook;
And the land stank—so numerous was the fry.”—_Cowper._
[52] “They are intent on some wretched crotchet like the lowest but
one.”
“Every time he can lead a lowest but one, no matter what the state of
the game or the score, that lead he is sure to make, and we believe
there are some neophytes who would lose their money with pleasure if
they could only tell their partners afterwards that they had led the
lowest but one.”—_Westminster Papers._
[53] “Common sense (which in truth is very uncommon) is the best sense
I know of. Abide by it; it will counsel you best.”—_Chesterfield
Letters._
[54] This is at first sight a rather appalling proposition, but the
advice I give you I have always endeavoured to follow myself, and I am
not a solitary case, for in the _Nineteenth Century Review_ for May,
1879, I find the writer of one of the articles is in the same boat;
this thoughtful writer—he must have been thoughtful, otherwise his
lucubration would not have been accepted—says: “I have given up the
practice of thinking, or it may be I never had it.”
[Illustration]
LECTURE XI.
——
THINKING.
——
“With some unmeaning thing, that they call thought.”—_Pope._
“Think, and die.”—_Shakespeare._
NEVER think!
Unless you have some remarkably good reason for taking your own course,
do as you are told. If your partner leads a small trump, and you win
the trick, return it at once:
“Gratia ab officio, quod mora tardat, abest.”
This is a much more simple and satisfactory plan than to proceed to
think that he may have no more, or that the fourth player must hold
major tenace over him; no one will admit more readily than I do that
you are much the better player of the two, still, allow him to have
some idea of the state of his own hand.
Don’t think whenever you see a card played that it is necessarily
false.—“_Nil sapientiæ odiosius acumine nimio._”—_Seneca._
As, on the whole, true cards are in the majority, you are more likely
to be wrong than right, and the betting must be against you in the long
run.
“My business and your own is not to inquire
Into such matters, but to mind our cue—
Which is to act as we are bid to do.”—_Byron._
If you are blest with a sufficiently sharp eye to the left, you may
occasionally _know_ that a card is false, but knowledge acquired in
that way I should not describe as thinking; I should use a quite
different expression.
With the military gentleman who anathematized intellect I deeply
sympathize. Profound thought about facts which have just taken place
under your own eye is the bane of whist.
Why imitate Mark Twain’s fiery steed? Why, when it is your business to
go on, “lean your head against something, and think?”
Whether you have seen a thing or not seen it, there can be no necessity
for thought; recondite questions—such as whether the seven is the best
of a suit of which all the others but the six are out, or whether a
card is the twelfth or thirteenth—can be answered by a rational being
in one of two ways, and two only; either he knows, or he does not know,
there is no _tertium quid_; the curious practice of gazing intently at
the chandelier and looking as intelligent as nature will permit—if not
more so—though it is less confusing than going to the last trick for
information, and imposes upon some people, is no answer at all;[55]
this, in whist circles, is called, or miscalled, _thinking_. It is not
a new invention, for it has been known and practised from the earliest
times. “There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes; and their
eyelids are lifted up.”—_Proverbs, chap._ 30, _verse_ 13, B.C. 1,000.
Pecksniff, who had an extensive acquaintance with the weaknesses of
human nature, knew it; you and all other schoolboys are adepts at it.
In Greek the very name of man—ανθρωπος—was derived from this peculiar
method of feigning intelligence, and it was by no means unknown to the
Romans.
“Pronaque cum spectent animalia cœtera terram,
Os homini sublime dedit cœlumque tueri.”
But, however ancient and venerable the practice may be, it is one
of those numerous practices more honoured in the breach than in the
observance; surely, looking on the table is more in accordance with
the dictates of common sense than attempting to eliminate unknown
quantities from a chandelier. In the one you have gas and probably
water; on the other—lying open before you—the data required. I have
now endeavoured, not to teach you either whist or bumblepuppy, but to
point out a few of the differences between them, and to start you on
the right road. The first is a game of reason and common sense, played
in combination with your partner; the second is a game of inspiration,
haphazard, and absurdity, where your partner is your deadliest enemy.
I have made a few extracts from Mathews—partly because I do not like
novelties merely because they are novelties—partly to convince the
bumblepuppist (if anything will convince him) that when he tells me
the recognised plan is a new invention, introduced by Cavendish for
his especial annoyance, he does not know what he is talking about;
and partly to show you that since that book was written—eighty years
ago—the main principles of Whist are almost unaltered.
The chapter on etiquette is since his time; but, although the game has
been cut down one-half, take away from Mathews his slight partiality
for sneakers—to be accounted for by the possibility of his partner at
that remote period being even a more dangerous lunatic than yours is at
present, and the consequent necessity for playing more on the defensive
(for leading singletons, whatever else it may do, and however it may
damage the firm, does not injure the leader)[56] take away from the
play of to-day its signal, its echo, and its penultimate of a long
suit; (all excrescences of doubtful advantage for general purposes,
and the last two more adapted to that antediluvian epoch when human
life was longer)—and the continuity of the game is clear.[57] Whether
Whist would gain anything by their omission I am unable to say; the
attention, now always on the strain in _looking_ for its accidents,
would have a spare moment or two to devote to its essentials; whether
it would do anything of the kind is another matter.
Those followers of Darwin and believers in the doctrine of evolution,
to whom it is a source of comfort that an ascidian monad and not Eve
was their first parent, must find the Whist table rather a stumbling
block: they will there see uncommonly few specimens of the survival of
the fittest. A cynic with whom I was once conversing on this subject,
remarked that they were much more likely to come across the missing
link.
The philosopher of Chelsea long since arrived at the unsatisfactory
and sweeping conclusion, that the population of these islands are
mostly fools, and he has made no exception of the votaries of Whist.
Still, it has the reputation of being a very pretty game, though this
reputation must be based to a great extent on conjecture; for apart
from its other little peculiarities—on some of which I have briefly
touched—its features are so fearfully disfigured by bumblepuppy, that
it is as difficult to give a positive opinion as to say whether a woman
suffering from malignant small-pox might or might not be good looking
under happier circumstances. The sublime self-confidence expressed in
the distich—
“When I see thee as thou art,
I’ll praise thee as I ought,”
has not been vouchsafed to me, but if ever I obtain a clear view of it,
I will undertake to report upon it to the best of my ability.
You may have heard that if you are ignorant of Whist you are preparing
for yourself a miserable old age: it is by no means certain that a
knowledge of it—as practised at this particular period—is to be classed
with the beatitudes.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Making passes in the air with your hand, as if you were about to
mesmerise the table, is another favourite stratagem.
[56] The difference here is more apparent than real; Mathews, with
considerable limitations, advocates leading singletons; now-a-days the
practice is decried, but I regret to say that as far as my experience
goes, the principal obstacle to leading a singleton is not having a
singleton to lead.
[57] “We expect that Cavendish very often must have objected to that
ancient plagiarist Mathews for stealing his ideas.”
“If their ideas are not identical, it is rather difficult to find where
one begins and the other ends.”—_Westminster Papers._
“I contend that there is no essential difference between modern and
old-fashioned whist, _i.e._, between Hoyle and Cavendish, Mathews and
J. C.”—_Mogul._
[Illustration]
LECTURE XII.
——
TEMPER.
——
“O tempora! O mores!”
“To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of
the Stoics.”—_Bacon._
I AM afraid that you will hear at the whist table a good deal about
temper, unless you are particularly fortunate; that so-and-so is
good-tempered, or the reverse; that if we were all better tempered,
something or other might be different, and similar platitudes. Now
these mostly start on the utterly false assumption that everybody is
equally subject to the same annoyances.
“Tender and delicate persons must needs be oft angry;
they have so many things to trouble them, which more
robust natures have little sense of.”—_Ibid._
That the greatest exponent of Bumblepuppy has necessarily the longest
temper goes without saying—of course he has! He has nothing to ruffle
him, for he has everything his own way; he plays as he thinks fit
(supposing him to think at all, or ever to be fit); if his partner
makes a mistake it is any odds he never sees it; _de non existentibus
et non apparentibus eadem est ratio_; here is one cause of equanimity.
If it is any amusement to him—and I presume it is, otherwise he would
not do it—from his cradle to his grave to play a game of which he knows
absolutely nothing, and if in pursuit of that amusement he thinks it
worth his while to take a certain amount of his own and his partner’s
capital, and to throw it in the street, why should he lose his temper?
Although he has paid his money, he has had his choice—another cause of
equanimity.
Ah Sin played a game he did not understand, and remained quite calm
and unperturbed, though he was a heathen and an Asiatic; while his
antagonist disgraced our common Christianity by letting his angry
passions rise because things were going against him.
If both partners, then, are of the same mind and the same
calibre—either bad or good—to quote an American author, “all is peas,”
and like the place
“Where brothers dwell and sisters meet
Quarrels should never come.”
The difficulty begins to arise when one of the partners fails to
see things altogether in the same light as the other. He may be so
unfortunately constituted (cross-grained the other would say) that he
is unable to derive any amusement from the game unless it is played
with a modicum of intelligence; it is just possible that instead of
considering gold as dross, as an accursed thing to be got rid of at
the earliest opportunity, he may be actuated by a depraved love of
filthy lucre, and a sordid desire for gain; such conditions are to be
deplored, but they exist and must be reckoned with.
When his partner proceeds to run amuck, he misses the point of the
joke; his perverted moral sense revolts against paying half the money,
and the other man having all the choice; probably, for a time, he keeps
his mouth tightly shut, but his _collaborateur_ is not to be eluded
in that way; he demands not merely the passive, but the active assent
of his victim, and sooner or later, after the perpetration of some
particularly atrocious _coup_, inquires with the bland and childlike
smile of the heathen already referred to, “Partner, I think we could
not have done better there?” What is to be done now? Silence is not
an answer; it used to be, but has been disestablished. Are you to
agree with him? Are you to state what is false? Are you to dissent and
be informed you are always finding fault? (Shakespeare’s retort is
neat and worthy of him: “You have always been called a merciful man,
partner;” but we are not all Shakespeares.) Or is it the best course
at once to resort to active measures, and throw at him the first thing
that comes to hand?
The worm must turn some time or other; it may turn the other cheek, but
that is only temporising; no worm has more than two cheeks, and when
it has had them both slapped, what is it to do then? We come to an
_impasse_.
The copy-books used to tell us—for anything I know they may do so
yet—copy-book aphorisms have a marvellous vitality, and you have seen
them since I have—that “patience is a virtue” (I think virtue ought
to have a capital V), and, as an abstract proposition, the statement
is probably as true and more grammatical than “There’s milestones on
the Dover Road”; but what is the use of it? The question is, will it
wash? The two best known examples of this virtue are the Patriarch
Job and the patient ass. Whether the Patriarch was well advised in
enduring his friends so long, and whether he endured them on account
of his patience, or whether the bodily affliction from which he was
notoriously suffering at the time, incapacitated him from taking
energetic steps to expel them from his bed-room, are questions
difficult to decide so long after the event. I express no opinion of my
own; let the dead past bury its dead: _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_; but
the donkey is a different matter; he lives in our own times, and I know
him well; he touches me nearly; and I unhesitatingly affirm that the
only benefit—if benefit is the proper term—he has ever derived from his
long-suffering, has been to be invariably imposed upon in consequence.
Casa Bianca on the burning deck is another case in point; he did score
to a certain extent, for owing to his patience his widowed mother
escaped an undertaker’s bill, while he himself is known to this day in
the nursery as “the noble boy”; but to the more mature observer, in
whom the ambition to be called names is dead, the game is hardly worth
the candle; while you yourselves will be called quite enough names
at the whist table without being cremated; not to mention that the
majority of you probably prefer pudding to praise.
Some irritable people go so far as to apply language of a condemnatory
character to the inanimate cards; as it is impossible to arouse any
emotion either of pleasure or anger in their breasts, this seems absurd
and a waste of energy. It must be bad form to excite yourself without
causing annoyance to others, and should certainly be avoided.
Believing luck to be strictly personal, it appears to me that calling
for new cards is an unnecessary display of temper and throwing good
money after bad.
We may take it, speaking generally—for it is not always the case—that
the worse a man plays, the less visible is his bad temper; the converse
fortunately does not hold good, for many good players have really
wonderful tempers.
One curious circumstance is that want of perception and thickness of
mental cuticle are usually looked upon by the unfortunate possessors
as proofs of good temper, and boasted of as such. This is not the case
in other afflictions. I once knew a man with a Barbadoes leg, and
though its circumference much exceeded that of mine, he never made any
offensive comparisons.
In Bath I have seen scores of invalids—mostly naval and military men,
naturally warlike—they were all seated decorously in the local chairs;
and when they dismounted and hobbled into the club, they did not go
about brandishing their crutches and bragging that they had refrained
from assaulting us innocent civilians; on the contrary, I always found
them most courteous and friendly.
To sum up the matter; we are all worms of some kind, and we all turn
more or less when we are trodden upon, if we perceive it. The denser
the worm, the more slowly he turns. While some ill-conditioned ones
turn under all circumstances, some of the most highly-organised are
scarcely ever known even to wriggle. Apparently harmless ones sometimes
turn most suddenly and ferociously. Those most trodden upon—unless
quite _hors de combat_—turn most.
Finally, many congenitally mal-formed worms, and worms suffering from
amaurosis, cerebral ramollissement, myxædema, and other dreadful
diseases, are not only unaware of their critical state, but are
actually proud of it, and look upon it as a proof of their amiable
disposition.
[Illustration]
LECTURE XIII.
——
DETERIORATION OF WHIST, ITS CAUSES AND CURE.
——
“Past and to come seem best; things present worst.”—_Shakespeare._
IN my time I believe Whist has on the whole deteriorated,[58] it
mistakes means for ends, is more tricky, more difficult, more
cantankerous; with regard to common mistakes—inability to hold a few
cards without dropping them on the table, or to play them one at a
time; inability to count thirteen, to recollect the best card, or
whether it was your opponents, your partner, or yourself who first led
a suit; winning your partner’s trick, or not winning your adversary’s;
leading out of turn, revoking, and so on—there is not much difference.
As long as I can recollect, Whist has been gorged with these, and
neither the hydraulic ram nor any other of the improved mechanical
appliances of the present day can squeeze into a thing more than it
will hold. Architects of card-rooms are to blame for a good deal of
this bad Whist; it is impossible to play in a badly lighted, or a badly
ventilated room. Whist players have often told me exactly what they
require, and it is very odd they cannot have it.
With a large fire, the room hermetically sealed, and everybody smoking,
the temperature should never exceed sixty-one-and-a-half degrees, nor
be below sixty. There must be neither doors (they admit draughts)
nor windows: windows are open—allow me to withdraw that offensive
word—windows are exposed to two objections, (1) some scoundrel,
regardless of consequences, might lower or raise the sash; (2) instead
of being placed in the ceiling or the floor—where you would naturally
expect to find them—they are always at the side of the room, and no
whist player can see a card with the windows in such a position.
Candles do not give sufficient light, and gas is unbearable; a
suggestion to try an attic with a skylight fell through (not through
the skylight—I mean the suggestion failed), because no one was able to
go upstairs; a lift would overcome that objection, but the temperature
difficulty remained.
This only applies to clubs; curiously enough, in small stuffy
back-rooms in private houses, gas never causes head-ache, and neither a
mephitic atmosphere nor a temperature of 120° is at all disagreeable.
Joking apart, the _fons et origo mali_ is Law 91, and not only the
head and front of the offending, but its barrel and hind quarters as
well.[59]
Since the introduction of signalling, the subsequent petrolatry, and
all the elaborate functions of that cultus, an exaggerated importance
(increasing in geometric ratio with every additional convention) has
been attached to the last trick—the only place where, by universal
consent, anything can reasonably be “looked for”—and if you, after
seeing the cards played, informing your partner which is yours (of
course, in answer to his enquiry), gathering the trick and arranging it
neatly, should imagine you have done with it, you will be the victim of
a fond delusion—using “fond” in the old acceptation of the word. First,
your partner will ask to see it at least twice, then your opponents,
one or both, will probably grab at it without asking, and put it back
in a dishevelled condition; it is useless to specify what their mental
state must be, and unfortunately, by the time all these irritating
performances have been gone through and you have again arranged the
trick symmetrically, you will find yours is not all you could wish. You
can avoid some of these annoyances by allowing your partner to gather
the tricks, but from his slovenly mode of doing so, you will never
be able to see how many he has; and just as you are endeavouring to
concentrate your attention at a critical point, it will be distracted
by your having to make an intricate calculation how the game stands,
the data being the cards remaining in your hand, and two confused
heaps on the table; as long as this is permitted, whist is out of the
question, and you feel inclined to say with the Divine Williams,
“Let him have a table by himself.”
One of the principal uses of the new method of suspended animation
will turn out to be, that all decent whist players will have to submit
themselves to it, and remain, arranged in rows on shelves, until that
law is abrogated.
The number of shelves required will not appreciably affect the timber
trade.[60]
In the good time coming, promised by the poet to those of you who wait
a little longer, when the present inspired, convention-ridden, and
last-trick-inspecting generation is in the silent tomb or cremated, as
the case may be, and a new school—basing its play on common sense and
attention—has arisen, there may be an improvement; but as I am not an
optimist I cannot join in the aspiration of the little girl whose world
was hollow and whose doll was stuffed with sawdust; therefore, though
this improvement, like the millennium, may be looming in the more or
less remote future, I see no sign of it at present.