Whist-players have long been suffering acutely
from three uncertainties—uncertainty of the laws,
uncertainty of decisions, and uncertainty of authority.
The laws are ninety-one in number, and, in “Cavendish
on Whist,” are supplemented by forty-three explanatory
notes and a couple of suppositions, which again have
been further explained—if explain is the right word
in this connection—by innumerable irresponsible
decisions. Now, though it may be Utopian to expect such
a badly-worded jumble of laws and definitions ever to
be superseded by an intelligible code, is it impossible
to have these decisions based on a principle of some
kind, or, at any rate, for them to be consistent with
themselves?
At one time the decider has confined himself to the
strictest letter of the law, at another time he has
strained it to breaking; sometimes he has read the
laws one with another; sometimes he has taken one and
left the other out in the cold; sometimes he appears
arbitrarily to give his decision out of his own head,
quite irrespective of any law whatever; and finally,
and worst of all, after consistently maintaining
one position for years and years, until—rightly or
wrongly—some doubtful point is settled, he suddenly
turns round, with his tail where his head always used
to be, flatly contradicts himself, and throws it once
more into confusion.
The usual excuse for a _volte face_ of this kind is,
“that this is a free country, where every man has a
right to change his opinions;” and I never hear that
dreadful exordium without instinctively making for the
door, knowing from bitter experience that mischief
is brewing. “That judges themselves differ, and the
judgment of one court is often over-ruled by another,”
this also is, I am afraid, true, though it has no
bearing on the matter in hand; for here we have a judge
who, on his appointment to the bench—granting, what
is strongly disputed, that a Whist arbitrator is a
judge and has a bench—having found a well-established
precedent and taken it for his guide in numerous
judgments, one fine day reverses it without notice and
without leave to appeal.
To show that I am not making random accusations, I give
three examples—there are others in stock, but these
appear sufficient for my immediate purpose:—
I. “The cards are cut. In taking up the packs, I join
the two packs, but leave one card on the table; this
card would have been the middle, not the bottom card.
I claim a fresh cut; my adversaries claim that it is a
misdeal. Am I entitled to a new cut or not?” Answer,
No. 1. “We think you cannot make your adversary cut
a second time. We do not think that when you left a
card on the table it could be said that there was any
confusion in the cutting, and unless you can make out
that what you did amounted to confusion in the cutting,
it is a misdeal.”
Answer, No. 2. “The claim is void. There is nothing
in the laws or the custom of the table to make this
a misdeal.” Both these decisions are by the same
authority. A more recent authority says, “According to
the old rules, a misdeal might have been claimed; but
not now, under Law 34.” The explanation is ingenious,
if not ingenuous; but it is open to the objection that,
as the first decision is dated December, 1873, nine
years after the present laws came into force, it is
scarcely water-tight.
II. If A asked B whether he had any of a suit in which
B had renounced, and B, instead of replying, turned
and quitted the trick, and was subsequently brought to
bed of one or more, his silence, combined with turning
and quitting the trick, was ruled to be an answer in
the negative within the meaning of the Law and he had
revoked.
This is a decision of Clay’s; and though disputed
at the time, was the settled practice of Whist for
fourteen or fifteen years.
Three or four years ago this decision was reversed,
and authority has now taken its stand upon the literal
interpretation of Law 74.
III. Some little time since my opinion was asked on
this point. It was sent to me by a friend in Australia.
“A and B _v._ Y and Z. Eleven tricks have been played.
At the twelfth trick A leads a Heart, Y plays a Club,
B plays a Spade. Before Z has played, Y throws down
his last card, which turns out to be a Heart. Has he
revoked?”
Being mortally afraid of putting my foot in it, I much
prefer to leave the mysterious borderland between
sanity and insanity to experts in lunacy; however,
in the sacred cause of friendship, I screwed up my
courage, and, with considerable trepidation, gave
an opinion to this effect. “It appears to me that Y
certainly—this sounds unpleasantly like slang, but such
is not my intention—revoked if the club was a trump,
and, probably, if it was a card of a plain suit, for in
playing his last card he either led or abandoned his
hand, which has always been held to be an act of play
establishing the revoke.”
The question was next submitted to three of the
best-known and most-respected authorities in this
country—all champion deciders—whom we will call P. Q.
R. P. replied, “Unless clubs are trumps I do not think
Y. has revoked. He has not played again. He has exposed
a card. If clubs were trumps I think he has played
again (am not sure). The case is not sufficiently
stated for a positive opinion.”
Q. and R. did not regard it as insufficiently stated
in any way, and they had no hesitation in saying that
Y had not revoked.
When by the next mail it turned out that hearts were
trumps, when, consequently, the revoke was a shade
more doubtful than before, while P made no further
sign, Q and R came to the unanimous conclusion that Y
had revoked. The authority at the Antipodes who ruled
originally that there was no revoke, remains in the
same mind up to the present time.
Is this “vacillating and inconsistent,” or is it not?
Here in a not very complicated difficulty—if only there
was any agreement on first principles, we have
(_a_) A benighted outsider thinking a revoke is
established, because a well-known decision overrides
the law;
(_b_) An intelligent colonist thinking it is not
established, because he considers the law to override
the decision.
(_c_) Authority No. 1 giving a somewhat uncertain
sound, but on the whole inclining to the belief that
it is either a revoke or it is not; evidently a man of
judicial mind.
(_d_) Authorities 2 and 3, while never in doubt for
a moment, first affirming a thing to be white, and
afterwards, when it has been bleached and is to some
extent whiter than before, with unabated confidence
affirming it to be black; and there an important
question, involving the highest penalty known to the
law, rests.
If the force of absurdity can go beyond this, then “it
can go anywhere and do anything.”
The facts are in a nutshell. Either _Y_, when he threw
his card up, abandoned his hand, or he did not. If he
did, and _if that is an act of play which establishes a
revoke_, then he revoked; if he did not, he had merely
to say so, _cadit quæstio_; the card is an exposed
one—“just that, and nothing more.” Only we have one,
or rather two little difficulties to get over. Does
abandoning the hand establish a revoke? and, if it
does, is the decision authoritative—that is to say, of
compulsory obligation?
Who the original decider was, or who gave him authority
to make a penal enactment in the teeth of Laws 58 and
73, I do not know. All I do know is that the decision
must not be fathered on Clay, for his case 8, “_A_ has
revoked; _his claim of the game_ and throwing down his
cards must be held as against himself as an act of
playing,” is not on all fours; it occupies much firmer
ground.
Here are two well-matched decisions, “Silence is
an answer.” “Throwing down the cards establishes a
revoke,”—of course, with the proviso that one has
been made—both strain the law; both entail the revoke
penalty; the only difference is that one is in the
_ipsissima verba_ of Clay, the other is a mangled
excerpt; if the strong one has been quietly and
surreptitiously burked, why, in the name of ordinary
patience, does the weaker survive?
If decisions are retreating all along the line to a
safer standpoint on the letter of the law, well and
good; only tar them all with the same brush, and take
some means to let the public know it.
Before the lamented demise of the Westminster Papers,
disputed points were argued at length; whether in the
number of counsellors there was wisdom, or whether
too many cooks spoiled the broth, in either event we
heard both sides. Question and answer could be found
together, and if the decision did not invariably
commend itself to our intelligence, we at any rate knew
what the decision was, and that was the main point; but
now our position has changed greatly for the worse.
The present practice of Whist—a direct incentive to
gambling—is this; whenever any doubt arises, instead
of being able to lay their hands upon the recorded
decision and settle it at once, the parties concerned
first make a bet of one or more sovereigns and then
write to the _Field_. On the ensuing Saturday afternoon
a certain amount of money changes hands; two people
are wiser, but the increase of wisdom is confined to
themselves, and at the very next table the same process
is repeated; while numerous quiet, well-meaning people
like myself, who never bet, never know anything at
all; for such answers as these, “X. It is a revoke,”
“A. S. S. You cannot call on Z to pass it,” partake
very much of the nature of Valentines in that, however
interesting they may be to the recipient, they arouse
no corresponding emotion in the world at large.
Lastly, with regard to the authority.
Whist-players are law-abiding to a degree, and
sufferance is the badge of all their tribe; but still
they would like to know how the authority obtained what
the imperfect Member for Northampton is so fond of
calling his mandate; whether by divine or hereditary
right, by competitive examination, by election, by
appointment from the Crown, or whether he sits upon
us by “the good old rule, the simple plan” _of force
majeure_ as the Old Man of the Sea sat upon Sindbad.
Bartholomew Binns, an official with the highest
credentials, after being selected from numerous
candidates, and receiving a mandate from the sheriffs
of London and Middlesex, has his decisions reviewed by
twelve good men and true, and reporters are present
who publish them through the length and breadth of the
land? How is our executioner appointed? Who reviews
his decisions? How are they promulgated? Not that it
matters to me, personally. When my fatal Monday comes
round and _sus. per coll._ is written under my name in
the family archives, I do not imagine it will trouble
me much whether the operator was born great, has
achieved greatness, or has had greatness thrust upon
him. I do not object to the instrument, I object to the
system; but many Whist-players are more fastidious,
and protest strenuously against being treated worse
than other criminals. They hold that the position of a
functionary who takes upon himself to decide important
questions of law, and to upset old-established
precedents, and manufacture new ones on his mere _ipse
dixit_, should be very clearly defined, and that if one
man is to unite in his own proper person the attributes
of prophet, priest and king—three single gentlemen
rolled into one—he should be duly anointed, consecrated
and crowned, _ad hoc_.
For questions involving common courtesy, for insoluble
verbal quibbles, for ethical questions of this type,
“Ought A to sit quietly at the table while his partner
B picks Z’s pocket? and if he ought, is it right for
him to share the plunder?” and for the host of minor
cases which constantly arise, and for which no law
could possibly provide, no better arrangement than the
present could be devised. As long as maniacs exist in
the land, klepto-, dipso-, homicidal, or Whist—offences
must come, and in disposing of them—where a cadi is
the only effective treatment that can be openly
suggested—the editor of the _Field_ is _facile
princeps_,
In faith he is a worthy gentleman,
Exceedingly well read.
Only if he is to be the _de facto_ authority in _all_
cases, why not give him the three sanctions just
mentioned, and make him the authority _de jure_?
Then—as the _Field_ is not a Whist gazette, and
can scarcely be expected to devote its columns to
advertising gratuitously every legislative change,
and any space it has to spare is used rather for
elaborating the ceremonial than for settling the
laws of the cult—in token of our esteem, let us club
together and present him with a piece of chalk, a
duster, and a black board, to be set up in some
easily-accessible spot—say, the middle of Pall
Mall, or St. James’s-street. Make it the official
notice-board! When new decisions are created let
them be legibly inscribed upon it, _coram populo_!
When well-known decisions are abrogated let them be
carefully rubbed out at once. Since the Bastille was
destroyed and _lettres de cachet_ with it, there has
been no authority without a notice-board; the Salvation
Army has its “War Cry,” and the Pope himself, when he
propounds a new dogma, propounds it _ex cathedrâ_.
That is one remedy. Though it is not perfect it has
two advantages—it is inexpensive, and if in future any
of us should still remain in ignorance, we should be in
ignorance by our own fault, and not by misfortune; and
at any rate it is a more simple and less tortuous plan
than upsetting well-known decisions in an unofficial
newspaper, while new editions of our two standard
Whist-books are subsequently brought out without one
word of comment or warning.
The alternative remedy—by no means novel, it has been
suggested, _usque ad nauseam_, and I only bring it
forward again because at present confusion is worse
confounded than it has ever been in my recollection—is
for the leading clubs to appoint a small committee of
representative Whist-players, with power to revise any
decisions they may see fit; and when they have revised
them either to append them to the laws of Whist, or to
place each decision as a rider under its own particular
law, and every such decision should be final.
Questions of strict law should never have been
submitted to an arbitrator at all; they should have
been cleared up long ago by the legislators themselves;
though important, they are not very numerous, and
as they have been well threshed out, and all their
difficulties are known, the entire matter might be
completed in a few hours. Why should London wait?
The constitution of Whist and the constitution of our beloved country
are both at the mercy of a grand old man of exuberant verbosity, each
of whom is able, in some extraordinary way, to persuade himself that
the side of any question on which he happens to be looking, is not only
the right side, but that it positively has no other, in spite of the
fact that in previous stages of his existence, he has himself, both
recognised and vehemently supported that other side.
For twelve years our despot—a despotism worse than Russian, which is
tempered by assassination—has had no rival near the throne; for five
he has absolutely had nobody even to contradict him, and what is the
upshot? Why this:
[2]
THE EDIFICE WHEN LAST THE MODERN SUBSTITUTE.
SEEN IN 1879.
1. That the strongest suit 1. That the longest suit
should generally be led. should always be led.
2. That with a bad hand—which 2. That with any kind of
unfortunately is a hand, you have merely to
quite a normal condition—a pick out the four suit, which
strengthening card, or the is the normal suit, and lead
head of a short suit, should it.
generally be led.
3. That the penultimate 3. That (as far as the innumerable
is a useful lead when there exceptions permit)
is a reasonable prospect of the penultimate of a
bringing the suit in. five suit should always be
led.
4. That no greater mistake 4. That you should always
can be made, than to give the table information
imagine it is desirable in of the exact length of your
every case to give information suit.
to your partner.
5. This being entirely a 5. That with suits from
new extension, except as a five to thirteen, the top card
joke, what view would have but three should be led.
been taken of it five years
ago it is impossible to say
positively; but I have my
own opinion.
6. That the discard, when 6. That the discard, when
the adversary declares the adversary declares
strength in trumps, is a protective strength in trumps, is from
discard, to prevent the strongest suit, and is a
him, if possible, from establishing direction to the discarder’s
any suit. partner to lead that suit.
That the aphorism, discard
from the strong suit, is
very imperfect and misleading.
7. That when an honour 7. That if an honour is
is led, if the second player led, the second player
holds a higher honour and should never head it except
not more than three of the with the ace.
suit, he should head the
trick.
Always doubtful of my own arithmetic, I am indebted for the following
figures to a little boy who has recently passed the Fourth Standard at
an adjacent Board-school. He informs me that during the last decade
three and a quarter inches of small print have been devoted by the
editor of the _Field_ to explaining that the modern rule of play at
Whist is to discard from your best protected suit, when trumps are
declared against you; twenty-one square inches to supporting the usual
lead of a small card, from ace to four; and three square inches to
reversing Clay’s and his own long-established decision, that silence is
an answer; seventy-eight square inches to minute directions when not
to lead trumps from five; three hundred and fifty-eight square inches
to explaining what a convention is, and one acre, two roods, and eight
perches—be the same more or less—to articles and hands purporting to
illustrate the American leads, and placing the sheep on the right and
the goats on the left, we have:—