The Decline and Fall of Whist.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10, 9 March 1907, Page 45

The Decline and Fall of Whist.

By

EDWARD DICEY, C.B.

in “Pall Mall.”

Amongst the things “they do not manage better in France,” I should certainly include clubs. Across the Channel a club is, in fact, if not in name, not a place of social gathering, but a house of call for eard-players. I need hardly say that our English clubs are based upon an entirely different system. It would be difficult to lay down any logical principle upon which the laws with regard to card-paying are administered with us; but it. may be fairly said that social intercourse is the reason-of-being of the vast majority of our British clubs. There are very few, if any, of our clybs in which there are not card-rooms, or rooms where a eerttain small number of the members do not play cards regularly throughout the year; but I am convinced that in most of the clubs with which I have had the pleasure of being familiar, either as member or visitor, many of the members do not even know where the card-room is situated. Carnes of pure chance, such as Imccarat, are almost unknown within Club-and, and up to about half a-dozen years ago I should have said whist was the one game habitually played there.

Few events have so much upset my belief in the stability of human institutions as the collapse of whist. 1 have been told that old Baron Martin, while on circuit, was in the habit, when ordering dinner, of asking the landlord to get a bottle of wine; and when the host inquired what wine was wished for, the judge invariably replied, “What wine? There is only one wine and that is port.” In much the same way, if I had been asked a few years ago to play a game of cards, I should have taken it for granted that I was asked to play whist. It was, till the other day, “the” game, I can recall numerous attempts to depose it from its ascendancy. It must have been in the early ’sixties that poker was introduced into Loudon by General Schenk, then Ambassador of the United States. The fact that the Minister, who represented America during the Alabama negotiations, should be best known in. London as the instructor of English society in the art of bluffing, offended the susceptibilities of his follow-country-men, and he was recalled from London. Somehow the fate of its exponent nipped the poker mania in the bud. I doubt in any case it having had a long run in. our country. The art of bluffing is simple in itself; but to practice it with success requires an astuteness not congenial to the British intellect. Anyhow poker lost its vogue; and whist once more recovered its pristine supremacy. A few years ago this supremacy was again threatened by bezique. The game seemed to have dropped from the skies. People will tell you seriously that it was never heard of till it was played in London. Only the other day I read a statement that “Rubicon Bezique” was first introduced as a new discovery into England by Mr. Henry Brougham. To my own personal knowledge it was played, as “Cayenne,” in France, and as “Britseh” in Russia, Constantinople, and the: Levant twenty years before bezique markers could be bought in London. Socially both poker and bezique were in turn the fashion of the day. But neither of them ever made their entrance into Club-land. There whist remained the game. I had known it in its palmiest days when dames Clay and George Payne were its most celebrated players, and up to ten years ago it remained the one game which was played at ordinary elubs and private houses. I can remember, too. -when four-handed cribbage seemed likely to return to its old popularity, and when it used to be played night after night at the Garrick and the Cocoa Tree Club. But though so high an authority as Mr. Russell Walker always declared it to lie a game requiring more skill than whist, the taste for it died away. Changes of fashions are common enough. But I never knew of a change so sudden as that which deposed whist, in the course of a little over twelve months, as “the” game of English cardplayers. All the pundits of the cardtable were dead against it. I myself, though I had no right whatever to claim to be anything more than a member of the rank and file of players, was very loath to believe that the 'supremacy of whist was really on the eve of destruction. Still, as 1 noticed how in everj

elub with which I was acquainted, directly or indirectly, the whist table was desertd for that of bridge; how member after member who had declared, that whatever others might do, they themselves would remain faithful to the old game, dropped away one by one; and how the few who kept their word got to be regarded as old fogies who had fallen behind the times, my conviction began to be shaken, and I soon realised that bridge had come to stay.

It may seem absurd to talk of pathos in the exchange of one game of cards for another, yet I can say truly’ there was something pathetic in the spectacle of how the few Abdiels of whist, “faithful amidst the faithless,” haunted the card-rooms trying in vain to get players to make up a rubber, while the bridge tables were crowded to overflowing. The burden of their complaint might best have been voiced as “Othello’s occupation's gone.” Sentimental regret has, however, little to do with affecting the force of any popular movement, and public opinion—or perhaps I ought to say popular taste—had decided that whist must be replaced by bridge. Necessity compelled me to desert the losing cause. To play the part of “Athanasius contra mundum” has never been consonant to my’ disposition of character. Moreover, when once I became accustomed to bridge, I recognised the force of its superior fascination, and if any attempt were made to revive the dead game of whist, I for one should wish no success to its revival. In this I am only one of an overwhelming majority of card-players. Indeed, as far as I know, there is not a single important London club in whose card-room whist is now played regularly. While, however. I accept the desertion of our old historic game, and have eontrlibuted in my humble way to its acceptance, I can never forget the pleasant bygone days associated with it in my memory. Much may lie said against card-playing. The limits of space, however, would alone prohibit my’ entering upon the moral aspect of card-playing as an occupation. All I need say here is that I am grateful to it for much time spent pleasantly, for many acquaintances I am glad to have made, and for not a few friendships. I have no reason to think that ..ny experience was an exceptional one, or that it is not shared by numbers of card-players, provided they frequent clubs where the stakes are not high in proportion to the average incomes of the players. To recall only a few of the men whom I learnt to know as a card-player, I would take only’ the names of those who have passed away —Anthony Trollope, James Payn, Charles Reade, Abraham Hayward, Lord .Sherborne, Spencer Percival, Charles Lever, Charles Romilly, Baron Solwyns, Sir Erskine Perry, Lord Shand, W. E. Forster, Sir Henry Thompson, Lord Morris, Robert Keeley, Sir John Millais, Lord Russell of Killowen, O’Niel, Vai Prinsep, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Captain Hamilton, Lord Wolseley, Sir Alexander Grant, Professor Poole, Fred Clay: and so on, for I must make an end somewhere. I know of no occupation in which men display’ much of their true temper and character as they do at cards. If I had daughters or sisters to marry, I should certainly try to make the acquaintance of their expected husbands at the card-table. Of the names I have above mentioned, Anthony Trollope, “Rude blustering Boreas,” as his club nickname was, and W. E. Forster at first sight might appear unsympathetic, and I daresay, to those who only knew them as ordinary’ club acquaintances, they’ remained so to the end. But when you met them in the daily familiarity’ of the card-room, where you studied them as partners and adversaries, you soon, if you were gifted with any appreciation of character, came to the conclusion lint they were singularly lovable and kind-hearted men. It was only late in life that the author of our School Board system learnt to play whist. He was never a good play er. I may say that to the last he remained a very bad player. But no ill-luck and no amount of hostile criticism from his partners ever semed to diminish Ida personal delight in the game. For reasons I should find it difficult to explain there was, I think, more general conversation at whist than is the case at bridge, where talk is almost exclusively reserved to the vicissitudes of contest. In the whits ora, any cardplayer who was willing to talk during the liauses of the game could find good fellow-players ready to chat with him. 1 must not fail to add one peculiar

recommendation of my favourite pursuit. It affords not only more or less innocent occupation to idle men, but it provides mental relaxation to men harassed by public or private affairs. I remember, one afternoon in the troubled days of the Fenian agitation, “Buckshot Forster,” then First Secretary of State for Ireland, coming into a club card-room looking more haggard, more worn, and more tired than usual. But after he had begun to play, his whole aspect changed and he became a different man. lie talked, laughed, and joked till the time we broke up for dinner. It so happened we walked away together from the club, and as we parted he turned round to me and said. “Do you know 1. start for Ireland this evening? 1 feel like a lost soul who had been let out for a. day from hell and was now beginning his journey back.” I quote this incident not for its historic interest, but because it shows how cards can for the time being drive away care. I can truly say that those afternoons, when men of eminence such as those whose names 1 have cited met together to play cards and interspersed the game with interesting talk and good humoured chaff, and where the stakes played for were not sufficiently high in proportion to the means of the players to create undue excitement on the part of either winners or losers, are numbered in my memory amongst my pleasantest recollections. Card-playing also gives an observer an insight into one of the many curious phases of human nature—the almost universal belief in luck even amidst educated men of more than average intelligence. Probably only very few of the personages whose names I have mentioned would not have repudiated the assertion that they believed in luck; and yet I can recall hardly one who had not some crochet of his own that could be justified only on the ground that the fall of the cards may be intluenced by unknown causes which can in our present state of knowledge only be described as belonging to the category of luck, One player I knew well -I must admit he also believed in astrology—who assolutely refused to play cards during one special month in each year, because he had reason to believe that that month was unlucky to him. Yet ho was one of the most level-headed card-players I have known, and in ordinary matters a man of great common sense. I have known others who thought that if anybody touched their chairs while playing, the trick brought them bad cards; others who were convinced it was unlucky to change winning seats or winning cards; others who changed their chairs three times round to change the luck when it was going dead against them; others who held that whenever the nine of diamonds was turned up by them in dealing, they were certain to lose the game, and that the turn of a black deuce showed they were certain to hold good cards; others, again, who, when their luck was out, entertained the idea that to have fresh packs of cards would change the sequence of the cards in their own favour, and who testified their faith by ordering fresh cards at their own expense.

I do not say that these superstitions of the card-table had any firm hold on the minds of the players who entertained them. Their belief, if J may use the metaphor, never solidified, but always remained in a fluid state. Still, these beliefs* had sufficient grasp upon their minds to induce them, other things being equal, to follow their individual fads in order to change the run of their luck. 1 was at one time intimately acquainted with a elub were the stakes played for comparatively high and the play was consequently very good; and where the players were, with hardly an exception, hard-headed men who were keen about winning, and who wen* at the same time a singularly social, kindly, and liberal-minded body of men. Amongst the members were a very pleasant, quiet old gentleman, whose only occupation was to spend his days at his club, and (‘Specially in its cardroom. At the period when I first knew him he had ceased playing cards himself, but was extremely fond of watching other people play. He was the most inoffensive of spectators, never made comments or criticisms, and simply amused himself in watching the fall of the cards. Gradually, however, experience showed —or was imagined to show—that any player whose cards he overlooked held bad hands with, ns it was asserted, an extraordinary regularity. He had no

interest in the game; no possible ex* planation could be offered of how hia presence in the neighbourhood of the cardtablp could possibly affect the cards dealt out to the players. No motive could be suggested why, even if he had some inexplicable influence on the deal, he should always exercise it to the detriment of the player whose fortunes ho was watching, but the run of illluck he brought with him was such that player after player objected to his neighbourhood. an objection which he always deferred with perfect good humour. Ila invariably asked permission beforehand before sitting down beside a player, and the moment the player held bad cards he offered, without being asked," to leave the table an offer whi. li. 1 am ashamed to say. was invariably accepted. To put the fact plainly, he was tabooed from watching card playing, because he was supposed to bring ill luck by the mere fact of his vicinity. The truth of this statement I can vouch for from my own observation. L cite the fact only as a proof that cardplayers are as a rule believers in luck; that is, men who believe their chances of winning or losing may be affected by influences of which they can offer no reasonable explanation. If you ask for my own belief. I should say that on this subject I am a complete Agnostic. I neither believe nor disbelieve, and 1 close this cursory article on cards at clubs with the remark that card-playing has strengthened my faith in Hamlet’s dictum that “There arc more things in heaven and earth. Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy!” But beyond this, I go no further one way or the other.