The King of Games

A history and description of Billiards. Samuel May, Billiard Table manufacturer. 1867

In Europe, billiards has for centuries been called the game of Kings. In this country, it is regarded as the King of games. Though practised by all classes, it is eminently the pastime of the gentleman. Says one of the reading journals at the West;

“Times have indeed bravely altered since that day, not, even now, very long past, when billiards vas a game to be played in the garret, behind closed doors, and when all outside mention of the game was to be made in a whisper. Fifteen years ago, and among the steady-going people of the land, billiards was but a species of gambling. For a youth to engage in its mysteries would be to incur something worse than a parental frown—at school or at college it was ground for expulsion, and in business, was proof positive that the young tyro was on his downward course. The days of this regime have passed, however, and billiards, like many another pastime tabooed of Puritanism, has taken its place among the healthful, intellectual, invigorating, and “gentlemanly” games of the land.

“Regarded by itself alone, and separated from all other surroundings, there is something in the polished, richly-carved tables, the judicial green baize covers, the round glossy balls, and average demeanour of the players which is attractive. To a person of any refinement, billiard-rooms are no places for brawls and disturbances. The movements which the playing of the game demands are not of the violent order, but one, for the most part, of a gentle, graceful, dignified nature, such as ladies even could not object to. The loud collision of balls and their occasional bouncing from the table to the floor are but the evidences that the player is a beginner, or that he was not cut out for a genuine billiard-player, and uniformly disappear as he advances in proficiency. There is no more pleasant and wildly exciting scene than a match-game of billiards between two masters of the art. The game is of such a nature—it is all before the eye, one can grasp it all at a glance, can at any time know the exact situation—as to be of scarcely less interest to the spectator than to the participant. There is something in the soft click of the balls as manipulated by a skilful player—in the skill with which scattered balls are brought together, in the “nursing” of them after they are thus secured—which, while forbidding any boisterous applause, yet provokes the most intense interest in the game. Indeed, the excitement caused by a scientific game of billiards, though necessarily suppressed in its expression, is scarcely less to player or spectator than that of the most hazardous game of chance.

“Billiards is a game susceptible of constant improvements; at least it has been, during its past history. There are many, no doubt, who have seen the uncouth pictures of the game and the tables as they were a hundred years ago. The three-cornered tables, with their board surfaces and hard unyielding cushions—if they deserved to be called cushions—were such as would make the player of to day weep with vexation. Contrast these with the elegantly-fashioned tables of the present day, with the firm slate bed, with surface so deadened that the motion of the ball across the table produces no perceptible noise, with the nicely-adjusted cushions, whose reaction, both in direction and force, one may calculate to a fraction, and which alone of all surfaces may be said to have realized in practice the truth of the theory that action and reaction are equal, or that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.

“The game is a fascinating, a captivating game. What else would keep the player who has just finished his sport still at the table, “punching” the balls around, trying all sorts of experiments, reviewing his late game, trying where he could have improved it, and framing schemes for the next trial. What else would induce the amateur to snatch a half an hour from his business, to rush to the billard-room, “just to play one game?” What else could so have taken hold of all ranks and conditions of society? And what else could have induced our dainty ladies, with their keen perception of the graceful and the refined, to brave the edict of society and favour It with their countenance? There is no doubt that it is captivating—indeed, if it has a fault, it is most too captivating.