Part II.
“Post tenebras lux.”—Pintsch.
There is one method of forced discarding which is often extremely useful; it is simple to a degree and always practicable; it has been in use for some years, and is approved of by all the good whist-players I have ever come across.
If you have a really strong suit to discard from—a suit that you can order your partner to lead you—signal in it, and throw away the highest card you safely dare.
This was first brought to my notice by Mr. Proctor, and—like Newton’s apple, Columbus’s egg, and many other great discoveries—is almost obtrusively obvious when it is once pointed out.
It is no new invention, for it has been the well-known practice of whist from primæval times.
Possibly known in the cave of Neanderthal.
Its inhabitants, when they had a really powerful suit, discarded an unnecessarily high card. With a quint major, they discarded the ace; with a quart to a king, they discarded the king, and so forth.
Here is a declaration of absolute strength at the very moment it is required; no uncertainty as to whether it is a protective discard, or mere length; it is also flexible,[28] for you can use your own judgment; give the information; conceal it for a time if you think fit, or withhold it altogether.
Minor details—such as that when only one discard is available, a high card would in all probability indicate strength, while a low one (though it might indicate length) would do nothing of the kind, but rather the opposite; and its use under many circumstances, even when your partner is leading trumps—if not at once obvious to your own unassisted intelligence, are better left to the professional development-mongers.
Having a rooted antipathy to formulating an interminable series of minute regulations for exceptional cases, a practice which has done irreparable injury to whist, far be it from me to trench upon their preserve.
The convention I have shown to be venerable, and I believe it to be perfectly legitimate.
Here I begin to tread upon delicate ground, for though whist is entirely made up of conventions, many different views are held as to what a convention is (see note page 60), and when it is and is not legitimate.
Between the Albert Club and the Bloomsbury back parlour there is a great gulf fixed—
“Virginibus puerisque canto,”
and it would be a life-long regret to me if I seduced them from the paths of rectitude.
Still, for practical purposes, I should imagine that a mode of play which is known, or open to be known by all players, and which contravenes neither the laws nor the etiquette of whist, fulfils all the necessary conditions; at all events, it satisfies my moral sense.
If, in addition, it is conducive to trick making,—as it undoubtedly is—I hail it with effusion.
With innumerable treatises; treatises on developments, on counting number, on exceptional play; treatises philosophical and treatises mathematical; with exercises in simple addition; with arrangements for exorcising superfluous winning cards as elaborate as if winning cards were enemies of the human race, and a direct emanation from the evil one, the time has arrived, if possible, to import a little common-sense into the game, and to make an effort to win an occasional trick.
LECTURE VI.
——
THE ELEVEN RULE (by desire).
——
“Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger
My tale had been longer.”
This lecture, though quite irrelevant, is given to gratify the curiosity of many youthful enquirers.
The eleven rule (which only applies to American leads) is simply this: that, if under favourable circumstances, you add certain integers together and the result should be eleven, then you shall see what you shall see. (It can scarcely be called a novelty, for it seems to have been well known to Virgil,
“Magnus ab integro sœclorum nascitur ordo.”)
Bearing this cardinal fact firmly in mind, supposing a deuce is led—and it is ex rei necessitate a fourth best; this is the favourable circumstance just referred to—then, if you hold nine higher cards of the suit, you add nine to the pips on the deuce, and if you add it correctly and it comes to eleven, you play the lowest of your superior cards, and (with the proviso the suit is trumps) win the trick.
Though it is scarcely an epoch-making discovery,[29] still it is true, and that in these days of the new journalism is something to be thankful for.
There is one example of this rule in the “Field” which is to me a source of perennial joy.
The second player who holds the ace, the king, the queen, the knave, and the eight of hearts, to his own enquiry which card he ought to play on the six led, replies, “I say the eight!”
Now, though certainly 6 + 5 = 11, and the rule—as I have already admitted—is true, this play does not commend itself to my intelligence, and I should advise you not to trouble your youthful brains about the later rounds of a plain suit—when the leader, to your own certain knowledge, has from four to eight, and you yourself follow holding five, including a quart major. If you win the first four tricks in it, you will do as much as you can reasonably expect, and will have done enough for glory.
O sancta simplicitas! That eight, so innocently stepping to the front, has done more to reconcile me to human nature than anything that was ever done by Jonas Chuzzlewit.
May it continue to retain its evergreen faith unspotted of the world!
“May no ill dreams disturb its rest,
No deeds of darkness it molest,”
and that it may never be rudely awakened to find a serpent in its Eden, and the harmless looking six a singleton, is my fervent prayer.
I have mentioned that this kind of thing is not whist as played in this country, and it is by no means certain it will long be the whist of any country; for I hear that in the American Whist Club of Boston, “they have now quite chucked the American leads,” and one of the later Cavendishes has propounded this singular view; “I have the craze for giving information in such an acute form that I should like to be allowed to show my whole hand to the whole table before the first lead, on the condition that my cards are not to be called.” I presume all the hands must be exposed, otherwise this is merely an offer to back his partner against his two opponents at single dummy, and there is nothing particularly sporting in that.
If, then, this doctrine and position is a rule of faith and not merely a pious opinion—and pious opinions have a nasty knack of becoming extended into principles—the devotees of the new game will, it is to be hoped, at once relegate its uninviting literature to the nearest dust-bin, and all with one accord, in pairs (like the wooden animals in your Noah’s ark), betake themselves to double-dummy; where, happily, elaborate schedules of leads are not required; where extensions of principle are unknown, and where “faith is lost in sight.”
LECTURE VII.
——
THE PETER AND ITS PECULIARITIES.
——
“Petrus nimium admiratur se.”—Eton Grammar.
“The base vulgar do call.”—Shakespeare.
Some years ago a simple piece of mechanism, to which somehow or other very undue importance has been attached, was introduced to the Whist world; you play a higher card before a lower one—unnecessarily—to indicate that you hold good trumps, and want them out.[30]
You can want this for two reasons:
(1) Because you have the seven best trumps. There is no objection to your signalling here, though it is quite uncalled for; if you have the game in your own hand, you can either lead the lowest but two of six, stand on your head, or execute any other—what it is the odd fashion to call—convention the authority of the day may think fit to invent, as long as you do not come into collision with law 5.[31]
(2) Because you have a good trump hand, and the fall of the cards shows that unless you get them out, your winning cards or your partner’s will be ruffed. Here is a good legitimate reason, but when everything is going nicely, and your partner making the tricks, that you should interfere with this merely because you have five trumps—or nine for the matter of that—is the height of absurdity. It may be an interesting fact for him to know, on the second round of a plain suit, that you hold five trumps, just as there are numerous other interesting facts which he may also ascertain at the same time, e.g., that you have led a singleton, that you hold no honour in your own suit, and so on, but none of them justifies him in ruining his own hand and devoting his best trump to destruction.
You ought to understand the signaller to say, “Get the lead at any cost the first moment you can, play your highest trump, and you shall see something remarkable.”[32]
This is rather a large order, and when you find as the result of your best attempts to execute it, that that promised something is not uncommonly the loss of the rubber, though it will be a shock to you at first, you will soon get accustomed to it.
It is even a dangerous practice to signal when the adversaries will most likely have the lead on its completion; they at once adapt their play to the circumstances. I have seen innumerable games of whist not won, and many a game lost, by absurd signalling; still Whist players suffering from Peter on the brain constantly refuse to ruff a winning card in order to disclose a signal in the discard. If they wanted trumps led, it occurs to the ordinary mind that the simplest plan would be to win the trick and lead them, and as they decline to do so, the only conclusion is that they regard signalling for the mere sake of signalling to be in itself so noble an end that, to attain it, it is worth while to announce to their opponents that they had better save the game at once, and at the same time to present them with at least one trick towards it.[33]
“O scenes surpassing fable, and yet true.”
“By Heaven! he echoes.”—Othello.
If you only want the odd trick, signalling is about the safest way to miss it. Any two decent players would, in a vast majority of cases, get on exactly as well if the Peter had never been invented, while two bad players—assuming they can possibly miss the game with all the trumps—generally do so by its assistance.[34] Where it would be useful is when, with moderate strength in trumps, and the cards declared in your favour, you want trumps led at all hazards. Unfortunately, if at such a crisis as this, your partner is not equal to leading them without a call, he is certain not to see it, although he is missing all the other points of the game in what he calls looking for it. This looking for a Peter is an oddly-named and peculiar form of amusement appertaining not only to Bumblepuppy, but also to Whist. Among all those people who have attended the University Boat Race during the last half-century, I apprehend not one went to look for it, they went to see it, and just as you would see that race, so you should see the signal. Never look for it! look at it! It is just as obvious as any other circumstance that occurs in the play; instead of this, after much looking, it is generally overlooked altogether.
Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ.
They come to look, and end by making spectacles of themselves.[35]
If you must look for it, at any rate don’t look for it in the last trick; you would scarcely look for the Boat Race as you were going to church the next day. Still, Cowper—though he clearly disapproves of the signal and calls it senseless—seems, if he is to be annoyed with it, to advocate this—
“’Tis well if look’d for at so late a day
In the last scene of such a senseless play.”
What the signal for trumps ought to be, and what strength in trumps justifies a signal are clearly laid down by Clay.
If you see a call and hold the ace and any number of trumps, play the ace—there can be no danger of dropping your partner’s king—and if you had originally more than three, continue with the lowest; but if you are quite sure that leading trumps is the only way to miss or lose the game, don’t lead them at all. Often as, in obedience to my partner’s call, I slam in an ace and play my best trump, Elaine’s despairing cry rises to my lips,—
“Call and I follow, I follow, let me die.”
This important fact is too much lost sight of: that the object of Whist is not so much to lead the lowest but one of five, or to signal, as to win the game; these and other fads may or may not be means to that end, but the end itself they emphatically are not; in their inception, at any rate, they were intended to be your instruments. Don’t let this position be reversed; whether, like fire, they are always good servants may be open to argument, but their resemblance in the other respect is perfect.
One aspect of signalling has been overlooked in all the treatises on Whist. I have seen a player of great common-sense and acute observation signal having three small trumps and a short suit, and by this means induce his watchful opponents to force him to make them all. I do not recommend such devious courses to you, even if they are lawful in a Christian country (of which I have doubts); they are only practicable when you are playing very good Whist, and this, as Clay says, can only be the case when you thoroughly know your men.
Hair-splitting about the legitimacy of the Peter is beyond the scope of these remarks; what is lawful is not necessarily expedient: this the Apostle Paul pointed out, long before either the foundations of New Orleans were laid, or Columbus discovered America; but when Professor Pole—who appears to have been acquainted with the present mode of signalling for forty years (Fortnightly Review, April, 1879), and for nine has advised learners with five trumps always to ask for them (Theory of Whist, page 65)—begins at this eleventh hour to find fault with the practice, and to have his suspicions that it is immoral; this is the Gracchi complaining of sedition with a vengeance.
“A merciful Providence fashioned him holler,
A purpose that he might his principles swaller.”
In this year of grace, good players have long known that signalling is by no means an unmixed benefit, but rather an edge-tool dangerous to play with,[36] while it has been so long rampant that it has permeated the very lowest strata. If at such a time as this—when all the tenth-rate Whist players in Christendom and Jewry not only think they know all about it, and consider it in itself the quintessence of science, when many of them by constant practice have actually acquired such skill that their hesitation in playing first a ten and then a deuce is sometimes scarcely perceptible—the professor imagines that any words of his can put a stop to it, his courage is only equalled by that of the well-known Mrs. Partington with her mop. A child may start an avalanche; but once started it runs its appointed course, and in one respect it is preferable—it is sooner over—for there is no instance recorded in history of an avalanche keeping on for forty years.
In bumblepuppy the proceedings are so complicated and peculiar, they must be seen to be appreciated; but there are five common forms you should be acquainted with.
(1) After you have had a lead or two and got rid of your winning cards, you can begin signalling for somebody to lead a trump;[37] if somebody obliges you, and you win the trick, lead another suit, and wait till somebody else leads trumps again—continuing to signal in the intervals.
(2) You can signal in your own lead, and I don’t know that there is any objection to your expecting that your partner will attend to it—assuming he ever comprehends what you are driving at.
(3) You can signal without any trump at all.
(4) You can signal without intending to do so.
(5) If by any odd chance there should be no signal about, you can imagine there is and act accordingly.
To obviate the evident disadvantages and mutual recrimination which might ensue from such vagaries, if you really intend to signal, it is usual to take the following precautions:
(1) Always signal with your highest card.
(2) Pause before you play it.
(3) Put it down not only with emphasis, but in a special corner of the table mutually agreed upon beforehand. (Note,[30] [page 59].)
(4) As soon as the trick is turned, ask to see it. (See [note] to [Law 91]).
“Why the wicked should do so,
We neither know, nor care to do.”
LECTURE VIII.
——
FALSE CARDS, LOGIC, LUCK.
——
“And shall we turn our fangs and claws
Upon our own selves without cause,
For what design, what interest,
Can beast have to encounter beast?”—Hudibras.
There are three kinds of false cards—
(1) Those that deceive everybody;
(2) Those that deceive your opponents only;
(3) Those that deceive your partner only; and a sparing use of the two first—especially towards the end of a hand—is often advantageous;[38] but in playing cards that deceive everybody, you must be prepared to take entire charge of the game yourself, or you will probably have your conduct referred to afterwards. The third is sacred to bumblepuppy.
One thing is very certain, that the original leader is never justified in playing a false card.
Clay’s conclusion does not altogether harmonize with his premises—a very unusual circumstance with him—for after objecting strongly to false cards on high moral grounds, and prefacing his remarks by the expression of a touching belief that in no other position of life would anybody tell him what is untrue, he ultimately arrives at the delicious non sequitur, that if your partner is very bad, or holds miserably weak cards, or towards the end of a hand, you may often play a false card with advantage: why you should do what you know to be wrong, because another person is bad, or weak, or because you hold four cards and not thirteen, or even because such nefarious conduct may benefit yourself, he does not explain, and in default of that explanation he appears stronger as a whist player than a moralist. But the logic of whist is a thing per se, utterly dissimilar to any known form of argument;[39] it finds vent in such syllogisms as “You ought to have known I had all the spades, I led a diamond,” or, “I must have the entire suit of clubs, I discarded the deuce;” though the usual reply is “the deuce you did,” this is merely paltering with a serious subject; the only effective argument is to throw something at the speaker’s head—the argumentum ad hominem—(of course this would create more or less unpleasantness at first, but the speaker would soon find his level, if you hit him hard enough) “unfortunately this discipline by which such persons were put to open penance and punished in this world—that others admonished by their example might be afraid to offend”—has fallen into desuetude; until the said discipline be restored again, which—although it is much to be wished[40]—can never be until the present reprehensible practice of screwing candle-sticks, match-boxes, and all reasonable missiles into the table be done away with, you have two courses open to you:
(1) You can give an evasive answer;[41]
(2) You can pretend to be deaf; this is a capital plan, as it gives you the option either of being unaware anybody spoke, or of totally misunderstanding him.[42] There is an utter inability to see that any question can possibly have two sides, evidenced by such remarks as “My finesse was justifiable, yours was bad play.”[43] The two prepositions, post and propter, are constantly mistaken for one another—it seems to be thought that because they both govern the accusative case, their meaning is identical, or, to speak more correctly, convertible.
But you must be prepared to contend against other things besides false cards and curious logic; there is a fiend often reported to be present in the card-room, known by the name of “Luck,” and you ought to be acquainted with two of the common stratagems for circumventing him; it is by no means unusual to see two obese elderly persons—who have just lost a rubber by revoking, ruffing each other’s winning cards with the thirteenth trumps, forgetting to score honours et id genus omne—after first roundly anathematizing this malefic spirit, taking precautions against such things happening again by slowly and painfully rising from their respective chairs, and at great personal inconvenience, changing places with each other; this is one way; another is to throw away several additional shillings in the purchase of new cards; turning your chair round and sitting down again is also supposed to have an emollient tendency.
That there is such a thing—though stupidity is often mistaken for it—is, to my mind, as undoubted as that there are birds; but whether one or the other is to be caught by putting salt on its tail—without taking other precautions—must be left to that right of private judgment already mentioned. (Page 34.)
It is true the Swan of Avon sings—
“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to Heaven,”
but he was only a literary person, not a whist player; and if a careful exercise of your judgment satisfies you that either calling (and paying) for new cards, or wearing out the seats of your knickerbockers by dodging from chair to chair, is a specific for want of memory and attention, so let it be: whatever conclusion you arrive at, it is your duty to respect your seniors.
LECTURE IX.
——
WHIST AS AN INVESTMENT.
——
“None alive can truly tell
What fortune they must see.”—Sedley.
In “the Art of practical Whist” you will see capital invested in Whist compared to consols; don’t run away with the idea that there is any such resemblance; those numerous foreign securities or limited companies nearer home where you receive no interest and lose your principal—or those public conveyances suggested by the elder Mr. Weller—would be much closer analogues.
Whist is not a certainty; neither is it true that you will every year find your account exactly square on the thirty-first of December—it is a popular fallacy devised by those who win, to keep the losers in good spirits.
“Maxima vis est phantasiæ.”
An old friend of mine—veracious as men go, and always considered of fairly sound mind and free from delusions, though a very inferior whist-player—has often assured me that he won over three thousand points for three years running (close on ten thousand in the aggregate); if this statement is correct, and I have no reason to doubt it—I often played with him, and he almost invariably won—it is manifest that, after paying for the cards, some of us when we called at the bank for our dividends, must have had to go empty away.
I have played whist—club, domestic, or bumblepuppy—pretty regularly for a quarter of a century, and the only conclusion I have arrived at so far, is the very vague one that I shall either win or lose—I don’t know at all which—for five years in succession, or multiples of five.
For the first ten years I won considerably, for the next five I lost considerably, then for another five I won slightly, and the last five (I am thankful to say I am now getting well into the fifth) I have lost again.[44]
I have no doubt things equalise themselves in the long run, the difficulty is that I am unable to give you any idea, even approximately, what the duration of a long run is.[45]
During a part of that first period, extending over a year and a quarter, I played long whist—five points to the bumper—more than fifty times, and never but once won less than twelve points. If we may believe Herodotus, in his day the end was not always visible from the beginning, and so it is now. I have won rubbers against all the cards, and with all the cards I have lost them.
Sometimes I cannot lose a rubber, sometimes I cannot win one; at one time cards will beat their makers, at another the makers will beat the cards, and these results occur without rhyme or reason, in defiance of any system of play. Don’t imagine for a moment that I suggest play is of no consequence, I merely say that you will frequently see the cards or the players run wild, and that the actual result—winning or losing—is beyond your own control.
“In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of man.”—Shakespeare.
I have known twenty-four successive rubbers lost, and I have won seventeen more than once. I have lost nine hundred and thirty points in two months, and a hundred and fifty-four in two days. I have lost a bumper in two deals, holding one trump each hand and with the same partner, the same seats, and the same cards won the next rubber but one in two deals, again holding one trump in each hand.
I have seen a player with no trump and no winning card lose a treble, and the very next hand, again with no trump and no winning card—assisted to some extent by his partner—score nine, and on one melancholy occasion my partner and myself were unable to raise a trump between us; as a set-off to this, I ought to admit that we once held them all.
Though I have never seen it myself, that the dealer should give each member of the parti an entire suit is becoming as common an object of the sea-shore as our old friend the sea-serpent. Fortunately, overpowering cards do not always win. A hand of thirteen trumps has been known to make only one trick; it occurred in this wise.
A, B, Y, and Z were playing in a train, and A dealt himself the whole suit of hearts: Y led the king of spades; B played the ace; Z followed suit, and A ruffed.
B, “an arbitrary gent,” ejaculated “Trump my ace!” at once took up the trick and, with his own twelve cards, threw the lot out of the window.
“The rest is silence.”
I have held three Yarboroughs in two hours (a Yarborough is a hand containing no card above a nine), and a hand with no card above a seven at least twice. There was a hand recently at Surbiton with no card above a six. With ace, knave, to five trumps, two kings, and trumps led up to me, I have lost by five cards, and with queen, knave, 10, 8, 3, 2, diamonds (trumps), spade king, ace and king of hearts, ace, king, queen and another club, and the original lead, I lost the odd trick; and, most incredible of all, I know a very good player who, on three consecutive Saturdays, lost an aggregate of over three hundred points.
I have played a set match, and, although I never bet, as I fancied we had a shade the best of the play, and the other side made the liberal offer of six to four, it tempted me, I took it and won five rubbers running. I once cut about the best player I know six times consecutively. My partner laid six to five to commence with, and as we won the first game—a single—he gave five to two, and that was the only game we won in those six rubbers.
One of the two finest players I ever met lost twenty-eight consecutive rubbers; feeling aggrieved at this ill-treatment he swore off for a fortnight, and then lost twelve more.
Busses—not Funds—is much nearer the mark. Irrespective of the time of day, you can either go to bed when you have won two rubbers, or when you have lost them; you can persevere to the bitter end either when you are winning or when you are losing; you can take any of the measures mentioned in the last lecture, or adopt any other system you please; but there is one rule with no exception: though no earthly power can prevent your winning or losing, the actual amount of that gain or loss always depends upon yourself and your partner; if you should ever lose eighty or a hundred points at one sitting, that deplorable result will never take place without your active connivance; a trick lost here and a trick lost there, an exposed card or something of that kind—the consequence is always intensified when you are losing—will just make the difference every now and then between winning and losing a rubber.
During the bad forty-eight hours I had when I lost a hundred and fifty-four points, I was attending carefully to the play, the cards were abominable, and, making no allowances for what might have happened if my partner and I had only been omniscient, simple little mistakes of the kind just mentioned accounted for thirty-two of those points.
If there is such a thing as luck—and I believe there is—don’t lie down and let it kick you.
Always play with reasonable care and attention:—if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well—and when you hold cards which you do not consider quite equal to your deserts, instead of playing worse on that account—as most people do—take a little extra care.
If your pocket money gives out, or you feel that your cards are too bad for endurance, give up playing altogether; but if you continue to play don’t exacerbate your misfortunes by your own shortcomings; it is bad enough to retire to your crib with empty pockets, without a guilty conscience in addition.
LECTURE X.
——
ON THINGS IN GENERAL.
——
“‘The time has come,’ the walrus said,
To talk of many things.’”
To become a fair whist-player[46] no wonderful attributes are required; common sense, a small amount of knowledge—easily acquired—ordinary observation of facts as they occur, and experience, the result of that observation—not the experience obtained by repeating the same idiotic mistakes year after year—are about all. To save you trouble, the experience of all the best players for the last hundred years has been collected into a series of maxims, which you will find in any whist book. These maxims you should know,[47] but though you know every maxim that ever was written, and are “bland, passionate, deeply religious, and also paint beautifully in water-colours,” if among your other virtues the power of assimilating facts as they occur is not included, this will not avail you in the least.
Bumblepuppy—according to its own account—demands much more superfine qualities, e.g., inspiration, second-sight, instinct, an intuitive perception of false cards and singletons, and an intimate acquaintance with a mysterious and Protean Bogey called “the Game”—in short everything but reason[48]—(all these fine words, when boiled and peeled, turn out sometimes to mean ordinary observation, but more usually gross ignorance). So much for its theory; its practice is this—
Practice of Bumblepuppy.
“This is an anti-Christian game,
Unlawful both in thing and name.”—Hudibras.
(1) Lead a singleton whenever you have one.
(2) With two small trumps and no winning card lead a trump.
(3) Ruff a suit of which your partner clearly holds best, if you are weak in trumps.
(4) Never ruff anything if you are strong.
(5) Never return your partner’s trump if you can possibly avoid it, unless he manifestly led it to bring in a suit of which you led a singleton.
(6) Deceive him whenever you get a chance.
(7) Open a new suit every time you have the lead.
(8) Never pay any attention to your partner’s first discard, unless it is a forced discard (page 32); lead your own suit.
(9) Never force him under any circumstances unless you hold at least five trumps with two honours; even if you lose the rubber by it, play “the Game!”
(10) Devote all your remaining energies to looking for a signal in the last trick. If you are unable to discover which was your partner’s card—after keeping the table waiting for two minutes—enquire what trumps are, and lead him one on suspicion.
——————
Play all your cards alike without emphasis or hesitation; how can you expect your partner to have any confidence in your play when it is evident to him from your hesitation that you have no confidence in it yourself?
If your partner renounces, and you think fit to enquire whether he is void of the suit, do so quietly; don’t offer a hint for his future guidance by glaring or yelling at him.
Don’t ask idiotic questions; if you led an ace, and the two, three, and four are played to the trick, what is the use of asking your partner to draw his card? If you hold all the remaining cards of a suit, why enquire whether he has any?
Don’t talk in the middle of the hand.[49] However you may be tempted to use bad language—and I must admit the temptation is often very great—always recollect that though your Latin grammar says “humanum est irasci,” the antidote grows near the bane, for—at the bottom of the very preceding page—it also says “pi orant taciti.”
“’Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain.”—Pope.
According to the wisest man who ever lived, “he that holdeth his peace is counted wise, and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.” Such a reputation appears cheap at the price; but—if you are of the opinion of J. P. Robinson that “they didn’t know everything down in Judee”—you can call your partner any names you like as soon as the hand is over.[50] You need not be at all particular what for, any crime of omission or commission, real or fancied, will do; if, after the game is ended, you discover that it might have been saved or won by doing something different, however idiotic, grumble at him.[51]
It is quite legitimate to revile him for not playing cards he never held; if he should have the temerity to point out that the facts are against you, revile the facts.
If there is a really diabolical mistake in the case, and you happen to have made it yourself, revile him with additional ferocity.
But never forget this! Before you proceed to give your partner a piece of your mind, always call your honours! for by neglecting this simple precaution, you will often lay yourself open to a crushing rejoinder; experto crede!
Failing any other grievance, you can always prove to demonstration—and at interminable length—that if his cards, or your cards, or both your cards, had been just the reverse of what they were, the result would have been different; this certainly opens a wide field for speculation, but it is neither an instructive nor entertaining amusement, though it kills time. “Oh, take one consideration with another, the whist-player’s lot is not a happy one.”
There is a theory which, according to some evil-disposed persons, may easily be made too much of—the injury to yourself being remote and doubtful, while the gratification of annoying him is certain and immediate—that abusing your partner, as having a tendency to make him play worse, is a mistake from a pecuniary point of view; of course it is a mistake, but not for such a paltry reason as that; take a higher stand-point! Whether you are winning or losing
“You should never let
Your angry passions rise.”—Watts.
Don’t cry!
“Ill betide a nation when
She sees the tears of bearded men.”
And you will have a beard yourself some time, if you don’t lead the penultimate of five. (See page 21.) Without exciting the slightest sympathy on the part of an unfeeling public, crying deranges the other secretions; the Laureate says tears are idle, and professes ignorance of their meaning; if he played whist he would know that they injure the cards and make them sticky.
Don’t play out of your turn, nor draw your card before that turn comes.
Don’t ride a hobby to death! In ordinary whist three prevailing hobbies are so cruelly over-ridden that I am surprised the active and energetic Mr. Colam has never interfered: these are—
(1) The penultimate of a long suit.
(2) The signal for trumps.
(3) Not forcing your partner unless you are strong in trumps—under any circumstances.
The first is, in the majority of cases, a nuisance;[52] the second is stated to simplify the game and to cause greater attention to be paid to it—practically the entire time of the players is taken up, either in devising absurd signals or in looking for and failing to see them: the third is responsible for losing about as many games as anything I am acquainted with, though the constant and aimless changing of suits runs it close.
Is it any reason—because you have no trumps—that you should announce that circumstance early in the hand to the general public and prevent your partner making one? If he has them all, you cannot injure him; if he has not, the adversaries will play through him and strangle him: why is it that you are afraid to let your partner make a certain trick, though you are never afraid to open a new suit?
An impression is abroad that there is somewhere a law of whist to this effect: “Never force your partner at any stage of the game unless you yourself are strong in trumps.” Now there is no such thing.
Let us see what the authorities say on the point. “Keep in mind that general maxims pre-suppose the game and hand at their commencement, and that material changes in them frequently require that a different mode of play should be adopted.” “It is a general maxim not to force your partner unless strong in trumps yourself. There are, however, many exceptions to this rule, as
(1) If your partner has led a single card.
(2) If it saves or wins a particular point.
(3) If great strength in trumps is declared against you.
(4) If you have a probability of a saw.
(5) If your partner has been forced and did not lead trumps.
(6) It is often right in playing for an odd trick.
If your partner shows a weak game force him whether or not you are otherwise entitled to do it.”—Mathews.
With a weak trump hand force your partner:
“(1) When he has already shown a desire to be forced, or weakness in trumps.
“(2) When you have a cross ruff.
“(3) When you are playing a close game as for the odd trick, and often when one trick saves or wins the game or a point.
“(4) When great strength in trumps has been declared against you.”—Cavendish.
“Do not force your partner unless to make sure of the tricks required to save or win the game;
“Or, unless he has been already forced, and has not led a trump;
“Or, unless he has asked to be forced by leading from a single card, or two weak cards;
“Or, unless the adversary has led, or asked for trumps.”—Clay.
“Unless your partner has shown great strength in trumps, or a wish to get them drawn, or has refused to ruff a doubtful card, give him the option of making a small trump, unless you have some good reason for not doing so, other than a weak suit of trumps in your own hand.”—Art of Practical Whist.
With these extracts before you, perhaps you will dismiss from your mind the popular fallacy, that you are under any compulsion to lose the game, because your trumps are not quite so strong as you could wish.
Make a note of this.
Maxims were not invented for the purpose of preventing you from either saving or winning the game, though it is their unfortunate fate to be epitomized and perverted out of all reasonable shape: the ill-advised dictum, “Suppose the adversaries are four, and you, with the lead, have a bad hand. The best play is, in defiance of all system, to lead out your best trump;” was comparatively innocuous till some ingenious person, with a turn for abbreviation, altered it into “Whenever you hold nothing, lead a trump!” Use your common sense.[53]
I have gone into this matter at considerable length, because I am convinced that however many people, once affluent, are now in misery and want, owing to their not having led trumps with five—Clay gave the number as eleven thousand—a far larger number have been reduced to this deplorable condition, by changing suits and refusing on principle to save the game by forcing their partner.
Before quitting the subject, there is another branch of it worthy of a little consideration: when your partner by his discard has shown which is his suit, and you hold two or three small cards in it, however strong you may be in trumps—unless everything depends on one trick—do you expect to gain much by forcing him and making yourself third player? though it is usual to play in this absurd way, is there any objection to first playing his suit and—as, ex hypothesi, you are strong in trumps—forcing him afterwards?
Play always as simply and intelligibly as you can!
In addition to your partner not being able to see your cards—in itself a disadvantage—he is by an immutable law of nature, much inferior in perception to yourself; you should bear this in mind and not be too hard on the poor fellow.
Never think![54] Know! Leave thinking to the Teuton:
“A Briton knows, or if he knows it not,
He ought.”—Cowper.
After the game has begun, the time for thinking has passed: as soon as a card is led it is the time for action, the time to bring to bear your previously acquired knowledge.
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.
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.
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.
If “to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the sun,” also “a time to lose and a time to cast away.”—Ecclesiastes, chap. 1, verse 1-6: it seems clear to me there must be a time for bumblepuppy.
Some people deny this, they say that the argument proves too much; they point out that Shakespeare says there are
“Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
and that as this could not apply to bumblepuppy, these passages only show that it was unknown when they were written.
Another argument of theirs against the antiquity of bumblepuppy, based on the passage “in all labour there is profit,” is altogether fallacious and unworthy of consideration; they admit the labour but deny the profit. This must have had its origin east of Temple Bar, where it is held there is no profit unless it assumes a pecuniary form. But the repressing your innate tendency to profane swearing, curbing your evil passions generally, and the cultivation—under considerable difficulties—of nearly all the cardinal virtues, as inuring to your moral well-being, are a profit of the most positive kind;[61] to be able to give a definite answer to the long-standing conundrum “is life worth living?” is something.
However, you can draw your own conclusion, the extract from Shakespeare is—I confess—difficult to get over, still, when Solomon makes use of these remarkable words “a time to lose and a time to cast away,” I fail to see what he could have had in his mind, unless it was this very game.
At any rate one thing is clear, bumblepuppy exists now, and is not a pretty game (there can be no two opinions about that); neither—judging from the demeanour and language of its exponents—is it a pleasant game. I append a hand, which is, I think, the finest specimen of it I ever saw. Judge for yourself. I had jotted down a few further remarks on this repulsive subject, but on reading them over, they seem to be not only inconsistent with that extreme reverence which is due to the young, but absolutely unfit for publication.
“Quod factu fœdum est, idem est et dictu turpe.”
R. I. P.
The two games are now before you, let me conclude the lecture with one more extract from my favourite classic.
Utrum horum mavis accipe.
——