For the last five or six years the champion has made no very long break nor any great number of successive ‘spots,’ whilst his son, Joseph Bennett, and Cook, especially the last-named, have frequently put together a very big score off the balls. People at last began to realise the idea that the title of ‘second-best player in England’ would not long satisfy one or two of the colts, and were not altogether surprised when Cook challenged his old master for 500l. a-side. Roberts took a long time to reply to this cartel, and it was believed that another walk-over would take place—for as yet there had never been a match for the championship; but at length he made up his mind for one effort to retain his place, and they agreed to play on February 11. Prior to that day a meeting of the leading professionals was held. Rules were drawn up for future contests ... and some important alterations were made in the construction of the tables to be used in matches for the championship, with what results we shall presently see.
The match was played in the large concert room at St. James’s Hall.
Just before eight o’clock the spectators settled down into their places, and the scene was a truly remarkable one. The table, which looked very small in such a huge hall, was of course placed in the centre, and, about three yards from it, a cordon was formed by a scarlet rope, so that a ‘clear course’ was secured for the combatants, even if ‘no favour’ could not be guaranteed. Outside this rope the tiers of benches began, and sloped up to the galleries. Every seat was occupied, and the galleries themselves accommodated a very large number of spectators, many of whom had provided themselves with opera glasses, anew concomitant to a billiard match, but a very necessary one on this occasion. Shortly after eight o’clock the calls of ‘time’ became very loud and impatient, and, with a view of creating a diversion, someone who appeared to have the chief management of the affair began to weigh the balls. He spun out this operation in very clever fashion, and kept the people quiet for nearly ten minutes; but at last they grew tired of seeing him hold up the scales, and remain immovable, apparently wrapped in astonishment that the balls should exactly balance each other, and the noise became worse than ever. At length the two men appeared, without their coats, and apparently ‘eager for the fray.’ They were received with uproarious applause, which seemed to delight Roberts immensely.
At the beginning of the game caution prevailed, and the tight pockets puzzled both men.
At 127 Cook made six ‘spots,’ the longest run of the evening; but the new-fashioned table seemed to have quite destroyed his pet stroke. The red ball required to be played with the greatest care, or it did not go in, and, owing, we imagine, to the change in the locality of the spot, it seemed almost impossible to secure position for the second stroke, even if the first came off. Both men had several tries at it; but they could make nothing of their old friend, and the last half of the match was practically played ‘spot hazard barred.’ The contrast in the style of the two was very noticeable, Roberts’s being as clumsy and awkward as Cook’s was pretty and elegant, the latter playing, as someone near us observed, ‘a very genteel stroke.’ The men were very level at about 450, and then the champion got in, with Cook’s ball and the red almost touching each other, and quietly dribbled them down the table, making six or seven very pretty cannons in succession. He followed this up with a regular ‘gallery’ stroke, potting the red at railroad pace, and making a cannon off two or three cushions, which brought down the house. A break of 22 by Roberts made his score 494 against 495. The announcement of ‘517 all’ produced great cheering; however, 44 and 49 by Cook soon placed him in front again, and, as soon as he passed 600, there was a short interval.
The men soon came back, Roberts decorated with a cross, ‘wearing it for the last time,’ as one of Cook’s backers grimly remarked. A magnificent ‘all round’ 80 took the young one to 785. The knowledge of strength shown in this break was truly wonderful, and there was a thin ‘loser’ in it which even Roberts felt compelled to applaud. There was soon a gap of a couple of hundred points between them, and the champion kept looking up mournfully at the figures at the end of the hall. He never lost heart, however, and, laying himself down to his work, began to creep up again. Cook’s score stood still for some little time, and the old man’s backers got very excited. Roberts now made 62, his longest break during the game, and two or three other good runs brought him close to Cook, whom he passed, the score being called 1,041 to 1,037 in favour of Roberts: but a 31, finished with a double baulk, placed Cook well in front again, and, when his score stood at 1,133, he made a horribly fluky cannon, and ran right out, with a succession of the easiest and prettiest strokes we ever saw, a winner by 117 points.
Here I prefer to take leave of John Roberts, sen.; for, although he occasionally played in public for several years after, he never again exhibited anything approaching his best form. It almost seemed as though he had wound himself up for one great effort to retain his supremacy, and that he never recovered from the consequent reaction: added to which he was then fifty-five years of age, and had consequently seen his best day. In his prime he was a man of extraordinary strength of constitution, and performed several feats of endurance which probably no professional player of the present day could approach. Perhaps the most remarkable of these was accomplished in 1846, when he had rooms in Glasgow, and an amateur, who was in the habit of frequenting them, made a match to play him on the following conditions: Roberts was to concede sixty points in each hundred, mark the game, hand the rest, spot the red, take the balls out of the pockets, &c., and in fact do the work of both player and marker. They were to continue playing until one of them stopped voluntarily or through exhaustion; but I have been unable to ascertain whether or not they were allowed to eat and drink during the progress of the match, though the probability is that there were no restrictions in this respect. The stakes were ten shillings per game: whoever gave in first was to forfeit 25l. and all claim to anything he might have won. Roberts was at that time in full play, and doing strong work round the table for several hours in each day; but his opponent could not have been far behind him in this respect, and must have been a remarkably game man into the bargain, for he struggled on for forty-three consecutive hours before Nature gave way, and he fainted from exhaustion. In that time no fewer than 125 games were played, and Roberts won a good stake, every penny of which he had certainly earned. Differing entirely from Kentfield in this respect, he possessed extraordinary power of cue and a wonderfully strong wrist, which enabled him to perform all sorts of curious feats, such as knocking both balls off the table and making them reach the end of a long room before touching the floor. His worst fault was a too flashy style of play, and I shall always believe that he would just have beaten Cook in the great match for the championship if he had kept himself a little quieter during the game; but he could not resist incessantly chaffing his friends, chalking bets on the floor, &c. Comparison between Roberts’s form and that of the leading players of the present day would be most unfair to the old man. Had he lived fifty years later than he did, and enjoyed all the advantages of the improvements that have been made in the accessories of the game, as well as the opportunities that leading players enjoy of constant practice, it is certain that he would have been found right in the front rank. He had a real genius for the game, and was a great player.
Immediately after winning the championship Cook had a very busy time of it. He played John Roberts, jun., the best of twenty-one games of pyramids, the result being that, after they had won nine games each, Roberts secured the next two and won the match, which virtually decided the championship at pyramids. Then Cook toured for a few weeks, and, in the course of an exhibition game with S. W. Stanley at Totnes, made the hitherto unparalleled break of 512. On April 14, 1870, just two months after he had wrested the championship from the elder Roberts, Cook lost it to Roberts, jun. The length of the game was wisely reduced from 1,200 points to 1,000, and Cook was beaten by very nearly half the game. This is one of the few contests for the championship that I did not witness, and I have never been able to understand the result; for, although Roberts won by 478 points, and scored his thousand in three hours and four minutes, which was the fastest time recorded for a three-inch-pocket table until the last match ever played for the championship fifteen years later, a 47 was the best break he made during the whole evening! Of course, it must be remembered that the winner had the table virtually to himself, for Cook must have been utterly and hopelessly out of form. Six weeks later, Alfred Bowles, of Brighton, a contemporary of Roberts, sen., challenged the winner. It is probable that Bowles, though I believe he is still alive, had then passed his best day, for the result of his plucky challenge was disastrous. He played a good, sound old-fashioned sort of game, devoting himself chiefly to runs of losing hazards in the middle pockets, but had not the smallest pretensions to meet a man of the class of Cook or Roberts on even terms, and never possessed the least chance all through the game. The next challenger, however, was of very different calibre, and the battle between Roberts—as I have now taken leave of the father, it is needless to constantly repeat the distinguishing ‘junior’—and Joseph Bennett was about the most obstinately contested of the entire series. It lasted for four hours and three-quarters, and Bennett, with repeated safety misses and double baulks, at last fairly wore down his formidable opponent, and won by 95 points. Thus ended 1870, a truly remarkable year, which not only witnessed the first match ever played for the championship, but in which the title was actually held by four different men.
To trace the progress of the game minutely from this point to the present time, and to attempt even to mention the principal matches that have been played, would occupy too much space, and I must, therefore, content myself with giving slight sketches of the chief players from 1870 to 1895, alluding to a few of the most remarkable matches. At the earliest possible moment—the two months which were allowed when the conditions governing contests for the championship were drawn up—Roberts played a second match with Bennett, and had no difficulty in regaining his title, as he won by 363 points in the very fast time of three hours twenty-two minutes. Cook was the next challenger, and, although he only got home by 15 points—a really nominal victory—this was the beginning of his marked superiority to any other player, and for exactly four years all efforts to wrest the championship from him proved futile. On November 29, 1872, during an exhibition match at his rooms in Regent Street, he made the previously unheard-of break of 936, which included no fewer than 262 consecutive spot hazards. This break was, of course, made on an ordinary table. From 1871 to 1875 was undoubtedly the very zenith of Cook’s career. During those four years he stood right out by himself, and could defeat all comers on any class of table. The strongest point of his game was unquestionably his wonderful delicacy of touch. Brilliant forcing hazards, and winning hazards made at railroad speed, so irresistibly fascinating to the gallery, possessed little attraction for him, and he was the first man who seemed fully to realise what might be done by delicately nursing the balls and bringing them together, time after time, with perfect strength. Even when at his best, however, he was never too consistent a player; there were occasions when he was completely ‘off,’ and, if he happened to be caught on one of these days, quite a second-rate performer could beat him easily. His personal popularity was simply unbounded, and it would have taken a remarkably strong nature to have resisted all the temptations to which he was exposed. No man ever lost a finer chance of an exceptionally brilliant and successful career. He must have made much money, but when the end came, it found him penniless. I have no wish, however, to dwell on his weaknesses, amiable as most of them were; rather let me record to his credit that no professional billiard-player has ever possessed a higher character for unimpeachable honesty, and that, in his prosperous times, he was never known to turn a deaf ear to appeals for assistance.
It is quite time, however, to introduce the third and only other man that ever held the championship cup presented by the leading billiard-table makers in 1870. I refer, of course, to Joseph Bennett, who is three or four years older than Roberts, and was playing in public before either Cook or his great rival. He rapidly acquired a wonderful knowledge of the game, for he was barely eighteen when he was engaged at Leeds to play and teach. During his stay there he played his first important match. It was with W. Moss; the game was 1,000 up for 100l. a-side, and Bennett won by upwards of 500 points. Possibly this success induced him to turn his thoughts Londonwards again; at any rate, he shortly afterwards returned there. His first metropolitan match was with Dufton; then he played a couple with Herst, winning one and losing the other: but it was the great four-handed match in which he and Charles Hughes so decisively beat old Roberts and Dufton that first brought him into prominent notice.