Christmas country, games for houses
Country Life, Saturday 17 December 1898
Our beneficent Santa Claus, catering for our Christmas-tide entertainment, has a whole new field thrown open to his kindly energies when he finds himself in a house that has a billiard-table. It is not that the game of billiards itself, so serious and so scientific, if it is to be played scientifically, comes at all under the category of Christmas games—though in this connection we may perhaps express, by the way, a little surprise that so few Britons whose houses may not give them space for an English table have thought it worth while to put up a French table, that takes not half the room and gives a game that, properly understood, is even more scientific than the English game. For the present we are with Santa Claus and a merry-hearted party in the billiard-room, and have before us such a choice of games that we are only puzzled with which to begin.
There is “battle.” Balls, equal in number to that of the players, which is unlimited, are set out, half at easy striking distance from the top of the table, and half at like convenient distance from the bottom. A chalk line is ruled from middle pocket to middle pocket. Then play begins, each in turn, one of each side alternately, the object being on each side to play all the balls to the half of the table nearer to them, and each side is allowed to play with any bail that is on its own side of the chalk line. In this game a good billiard player has a great advantage.
Other games with the cue are “snooker” pool, and golf on the billiard-table, i.e., holing the red ball, spotted originally 0:1 the middle spot, and there respotted after each pocketing, in each of the pockets of the table in turn, with the white ball originally played from baulk. Any round of the six pockets done in twelve is a passing good one, but success in this again requires the skill of a fine billiard player.
More suitable to a party of motley sexes and ages are those games where the hand takes the cue’s place. Such is the game called “pockets,” where one, starting from one corner pocket, strives to trundle the ball into each pocket of the table successively quicker than another starting from another corner. Then there is “fives,” where two or three on a side can play, each side playing alternately. Any player, of the side whose turn it i$, is allowed to take the ball, and the object is to strike the ball with the hand into a certain corner pocket of the table, generally the left-hand far corner as you look from baulk. The ball is served from the right-hand middle pocket, must touch the spot end cushion, and again touch the side cushion above the left hand middle pocket. Otherwise it is a “fault,” and two faults put out the hand. The scoring is as in fives, and a modification of the game is to make it score a point against the side whose turn it is to play if they allow the ball to touch the baulk end cushion. In no case must the ball be allowed to stop. If it cease rolling, a point is scored against the side that should have played it, and striking off the table is equivalent to striking out of court at fives.
This is a game that makes no light call on the athletic energies. It may well be followed by gentler exercise. Draw a circle of chalk, 6in. or so in radius, round the pyramid spot.
Then, with your company divided into sides as before, you may aim to get as near this spot as possible, pushing the balls with the hand from one of the baulk end corners. It is a rule of the game that the ball must strike two cushions before hitting another ball or coming to rest. If it fail to do this the stroke is foul, and the ball is removed. Each player is followed by a player on the other side, and the game is, in fact, like curling on a billiard-table, with the modification that the ball must hit two cushions before it can score. No ball outside the circle counts, and within the circle all balls count to the side that played them there, provided no ball of the other side be nearer the spot.
This game may be varied according to the fancy and ingenuity of your Santa Claus. Playing to put the balls within a semi circle chalked round one of the middle pockets is one of the most frequent variations.
And here, for the sake of the owner of the table, we may give a warning—that in all these games of pushing the ball by hand a lady’s sharp-cornered bangle or bracelet is a dangerous weapon ; dangerous, in some measure, to the other players in so energetic a game as fives, but especially dangerous to the cloth in all of them.
So Santa Claus will have led his party a merry round, and by this time there may be those who will think a little quiet sitting exercise in the drawing-room not amiss. And even there the universal provider is not at an end of his resources, for with paper and pencil he may do much to keep the company well amused. The most common, and perhaps the least interesting, of these paper games that suggests itself, is the time-honoured game of “Consequences.” There are others not quite so hackneyed. There is the game of all writing a question on a slip of paper, passing the slip, folded over, to the next neigh bour, who writes a noun, folds the paper, and passes it on again. Then the crux of the matter arrives, for each has now to compose a verse in rhyme answering the question and bringing in the noun that he or she finds written on the paper.
The incongruity of the nouns and questions, and often the poetic capabilities of the versifiers, give occasion for much Homeric laughter when Santa Claus reads out the verses. Composition of impromptu “nonsense rhymes,” after the manner of the good Mr. Lear, is a game of similar kind, that gives opportunity for some pleasant personal references to the members of the party.
Parody making on well-known proverbs is amusing if the talent of the party be of a calibre to make the parodies passable; but the merit of many of these paper games is that the most desperate attempts are often the most successful in the ultimate end of general amusement. Especially is this the case in the drawing games, where each is given full licence to illustrate a familiar scene from history, or other well-known incident. William Tell shooting at the famous apple, the no less famous apple watched in its fall by Newton, or the alarm raised by the geese on the Capitol, are among the dramatic scenes that seem to occur most readily to the invention of the artists.
But our Santa Claus, as we have said, must needs be a person of infinite ingenuity and invention, by his very assumption of the role. It would be an impertinence to him to suppose that we have exhausted, in these few suggestions, all the resources that are available to his talents. We have but hoped that, to one here and there that is qualifying for the role, we may have pointed out a line for the direction of his energies, in the assurance that he will not fail to carry it out to better ends than any that our uninspired imagination can prescribe for him.