All right, people have sometimes said to me, you were lucky enough to have a billiard-table on the spot - but how come you were able to reach it?
It is true that there are some activities, such as playing the double bass, which can only be attempted when you have grown to a certain size. And billiards is similar - at least on a full-size table, which measures 12 feet by 6 feet and stands between 2 feet 8 inches and 2 feet 10 inches high. No one could fairly describe me as tall (I would not like to count the number of shots I have had to stretch for in my time) and I was similarly proportioned when I began to play at the age of ten or eleven. On the face of it, then, it would not be possible for me to use a cue properly; rather, I would be waggling it about somewhere around shoulder level - not a style calculated to improve your play or to lengthen the life of the cloth!
I have heard it suggested from time to time that I used to stand on an orange box or a small stool to play my shots, carrying it around the table with me for each shot. I can only say that anyone who suggests that as a serious possibility has not much experience of billiards. Or of boys. Just think about it: after deciding on your next shot you hop off the box, you pick it up (still clutching your cue), walk round to the other side of the table with it, put it down and hop up on to it again before playing the stroke. Then you hop off the box... Even the keenest youngster could surely not survive that sort of palaver with his enthusiasm for the game intact.
No, my ability to play at such an early age - an ability which was to make all the difference to my whole life - was the purest piece of luck. And for it I have to thank a man of whom I know nothing, the previous tenant of the Queens Hotel.
He was clearly an efficient and thoughtful organiser and in setting up the billiard-room was concerned about the spectators; unless they have a good vantage point it is difficult for them to appreciate fully what is happening on the table. The solution at which he arrived was perfectly simple: he sank the table several inches into the floor. This meant that the average player had to bend over to a greater degree than normal - though in those days he was hardly likely to appreciate the difference. What was important from my point of view was that it enabled me to play quite a lot of shots and, when the cue ball was near the cushion rail, without even having to use the rest.
I practically lived at that table.
Every weekday morning, before leaving for the council school nearby, I used to knock the ivory billiard-balls around the table. Quite often I would be so engrossed that I would not notice that the time was clicking by with the speed of a good billiards break. My school punctuality record was consequently lamentable and I was frequently taken to task by my teacher. After racing home at lunchtime and wolfing down my mother's marvellous home cooking I would again be playing billiards. In the evenings I would often find customers using the table and I therefore had to be content to act as score-boy. But I was not beyond adding a few points surreptitiously to the score of the leader, thus hastening the end of the game and the moment when I could seize the table for myself.
I was always disappointed if I found the table in use. But Monday was predictably the blackest day of the week for that was the day, come rain or come shine, that my father and his pork butcher friend Tommy Fletcher would hog the table for the whole day, playing for a few shillings a game. There was not even any point in my watching, for my father could never have earned a living as a billiards tutor; he never made more than a 20 break in his life. Nor was his Monday performance with Tommy Fletcher improved by the fact that they both drank whisky steadily until one or the other was too tight to carry on. This used to be pretty late in the day; they were both much better drinkers than players.
Nevertheless my father was perfectly capable of noticing that his one and only son (my brother Fred having not yet come into the world) was displaying a natural aptitude for the game which with practice was developing into quite a technique. With his own natural aptitude for gambling it was therefore not long before he arranged for me to partner him against another local publican and his son. The match was 100 points up for £5 a side and was very closely contested. I recall vividly that it fell to me to make what could have been the winning shot - and to accomplish it I had to stand on a chair and use the long rest. But I made it. To celebrate, my father used the flyer to buy me my own set of ivory billiard-balls.
Whether prompted by this particular performance or not I do not know, but it occurred to my father that I had a talent which would benefit from proper instruction. Here fate took another hand in my career. For at just this time a man from Normanton in Yorkshire arrived in Chesterfield to open a billiard-saloon with about sixteen tables, and it was rapidly observed by the cognoscenti that he was far superior as a player to anyone ever seen in the locality before. Naturally, it was not long before my father got to know of him, and he paid him a visit to discuss the possibility of giving me lessons. Finally I was taken down to meet the man myself.
His name was Ernest Rudge. And it was the finest introduction I ever had.
Ernest - Mr Rudge to me then - was a great fellow for whose efforts on my behalf it is difficult adequately to express my gratitude. We kept up a life-long friendship until he died at the age of eighty-nine after several years' illness. I only hope that he felt able to share in the fruits of the success which I managed to achieve, thanks to his influence on me both as a billiards player and a person. For in those formative years of my life I came a great deal under his wing. He became a sort of second father.
Not that he was without success himself. It was not long before he let part of his billiards premises to a cinema operator and, seeing its popularity, Ernest Rudge and Co. took the cinema business over. He was able to accumulate a considerable amount of property in Knifesmithgate and Elder Way which enabled his activities to expand both in size and in scope. He founded Victoria Enterprises Ltd., becoming its chairman and managing director, and at one stage the facilities he offered to Chesterfield included not only a billiard-hall and the Victoria cinema - the first in the area to be wired for sound - but the town's largest ballroom, a café, a snack bar and confectioner's shop. And he still had enough property left over to be able to lease it to a variety of shopkeepers and tradesmen.
Where Ernest, at the outset purely a billiards player, got his ability as an entrepreneur from I cannot say - but he surely had it in abundance. It hardly came as a surprise therefore that in 1957 when Ernest sold Victoria Enterprises to the Rank Organisation it fetched £225,000. Within months Rank changed the cinema's name to the Gaumont. It did not seem to improve matters however; the movies were replaced by bingo in 1965.
But Ernest, as a married man in his early thirties, was only just setting out on this commercial road when I first knew him. His house in Shaftesbury Avenue, just off Ashgate Road, in Chesterfield was not a large one but I thought it was very pleasant and Mrs Rudge was always extremely charming. Ernest had built a private billiard-room at the bottom of his garden and it was there that I used to go for my lessons. My keenness can be appreciated from the fact that to reach his house I had to take a tramcar as far as it went and then trudge a further mile and a half to his front door.
In the billiard-room was a Riley table, beautifully designed in mahogany, with full two-inch slates and wide cushion rails. Later, when Ernest had another house built, he took the table with him, but I have often wondered what happened to it after that. On this table I would have my morning lessons practically every day, since by this time I was nearing the end of my schooling, and then Ernest would leave to go down to his billiard-saloon in town. But he trusted me sufficiently to allow me to continue practising on my own and Mrs Rudge often asked me to stay for lunch so that I could carry on in the billiard-room in the afternoon. To be precise I was not quite on my own during these sessions since their first daughter Mary, who was about five years old, would frequently come in and throw the balls out of the pockets for me. This was particularly helpful in those early days because I was developing my red ball game at billiards and after two strokes this would normally have entailed my walking round the table to retrieve the two whites which I was using as cue balls. Mary must have saved me many miles of walking.
But though Ernest was generous he was not indulgent. He was a teetotaller with a high collar and high principles. And he was a strict disciplinarian when it came to my play. He never allowed me to play aimlessly and if he ever caught me fooling around he would send me home on the instant. This did, I regret to say, happen on one or two occasions and was a terrible punishment for me; I was almost heartbroken as I walked the mile and a half back to the tram. But I think it was the finest lesson I could have been given. It made me play seriously at all times - and with the intense concentration which was to prove, I feel sure, my greatest asset.
Thanks to the tuition and incessant practice my game was coming on by leaps and bounds. In 1913, at the ripe old age of twelve, I made my first 100 break. The local paper devoted a small paragraph to my feat and is the first press cutting I ever collected. It said simply: 'Although only twelve years of age, Master Joe Davis, of Whittington Moor, is fast aspiring to championship honours in the billiard world. When playing a friendly game with Mr I. Dickens, the well-known Chesterfield player, at the Victoria Billiard Hall, Chesterfield, on Saturday, he made breaks of 70, 79 and 102 by excellent all-round play.' I was the happiest lad in Derbyshire that night, though my father, true to his style, was sparing with his praise.
Perhaps this served notice on Mr Dickens of the shape of things to come. He was holder of the Chesterfield and district amateur billiards championship, a competition for which I had precociously entered in 1912 and 1913. It was at the next time of asking that I succeeded in wresting the title from him. The game of 1,500 points, starting on level terms, was spread over three evenings. At the outset, on Tuesday evening, I was a trifle worried since my opponent led at the 100 mark. But soon afterwards I found form and surged ahead to finish the session with 500 points as against Dickens' 329. The next night I again put together a good few breaks and ran out leading by 1,000 to 735 so that on the Thursday night I had only to hang on to this lead to win the title. The game ended with me arriving at 1,500 while Dickens was on 1,229. Handing me the trophy, a gold medal and set of billiard-balls for the highest break of the tournament (115) , Mr T. J. Roberts, chairman of Chesterfield Amateur Billiards Association, said he hoped that I would some day be seen in a higher sphere in the billiard world'. I was so happy that I was speechless but luckily this did not matter since my father was on hand to make the necessary noises on my behalf. I do not know what he said. At the time I was floating about a mile up in the sky over the Victoria saloon.
My mother knew nothing about billiards (and later in life, though she followed the fortunes of myself and my brother Fred, I doubt whether she ever learned to distinguish properly between billiards and snooker). But she supported my efforts and as a reward for winning the championship she gave me a cue and case which I treasured for many years.
Ernest Rudge, in his rather more knowledgeable way, also expressed satisfaction. I cannot help thinking that it was his enthusiasm for my emerging ability that encouraged him to stage several professional matches in the town. The first that I remember was between George Gray, the phenomenal red ball player from Australia, and Claude Falkiner from nearer home in Featherstone. Both were only young players. Indeed Gray was in his late teens, but he was making breaks in the thousands every week. Often he would pot his opponent's white so that he could carry on unimpeded with his shots in-off the red.
The match went on all week in afternoon and evening sessions. By this time school had written me off as a dead loss so that I was granted every afternoon off officially to act as spot-boy and unofficially to watch the experts at work. Falkiner had the most delightful touch but he was no match for the thrusting young Australian.
Gray was brought to England by his father who kept him under strict control. He was sent to practise every morning and was sent to bed soon after an evening session. George was under contract to E. J. Riley and Co., the Accrington table-makers, who made all the arrangements for his tour. The deal was that on top of his normal fee he would collect £100 every time he made a thousand break - and at the time he was pretty well the only player to make thousand breaks. On an earlier tour, in 1910-11, Gray notched up no fewer than twenty-three such breaks, the highest being 2,196 unfinished. It was an expensive talent for Riley's to adopt. Gray also had a habit of catching the headlines by making record breaks. This he did innumerable times all over the country. It just so happened that each time he passed his record he did so by only a few points, leaving himself a good chance of another break. It was quite a little cottage industry.
Gray played with composition, rather than ivory, balls since the Australian climate does not suit the ivories. I believe he played in the professional billiards championship only once with ivory balls, and was hopelessly beaten by Tom Reece. There is no doubt that part of the secret of George Gray's success lay in the composition balls. As all the British players discovered when we finally abandoned ivories in the late twenties, they were much more consistent and very reliable. The Australians had been hogging this advantage for years without us really cottoning on!
Shortly after Gray's Chesterfield visit his father put him under contract to the great John Roberts (Junior), who had been in his prime around the turn of the century. Roberts was an aloof man and with strangers was very much on his dignity. The tale is told of an incident which took place when he was touring India. He arrived at a small village hall and was appalled to be asked by the marker to play a game with him. 'No, no. Not at all, not at all,' he replied. 'Well sir,' persisted the marker, 'I'll make a game of it. I'll give you forty in a hundred. I always do that with people round here.' Roberts, incensed at this, fished in his pocket and held under the marker's nose his visiting card, plainly bearing the inscription: 'John Roberts, world billiards champion'.
The marker, only slightly abashed, replied: 'I see. Well, in that case I will only give you twenty.' Whether it was Roberts's temperament or Gray's that was to blame I cannot say but the two soon had a disagreement and after the outbreak of the First World War Gray decided to return home. For some reason, however, he never got as far as the antipodes. He stopped off at Singapore where he finally married and lived for many years.
During the week that he was playing Falkiner, Gray was asked by Ernest Rudge to look over my play on the table one morning and to give him an opinion. Unfortunately for me, Gray played with both eyes perfectly over the cue - in fact his was the finest two-eyed stance I ever saw, better even than that of Walter Donaldson. As I played with only the left eye along the cue Gray thought my game was terrible. His verdict: 'The boy will never be a good player until he alters his sighting.'
This cast me into great gloom since Gray was unquestionably the finest player I had seen up to that time and his views were obviously to be taken seriously. Ernest Rudge took him seriously, too, but refused to be downcast - or at least he never communicated any depression to me. He set to work in an attempt to alter my style, arranging a large mirror at the end of the table so that I could keep an eye - or rather two eyes - on my stance. But I found I simply could not play two-eyed and concluded that if I had to carry out what I felt to be the totally unnatural head-swivelling operation for every stroke I might as well give up the game.
Luckily, however, after some months spent in ruining what style I had, Ernest arranged another high-class professional match in Chesterfield, again, I believe, largely for my benefit. This time it was between Tom Reece who, with his arch-rival Melbourne Inman, was one of the great characters of the profession and Willie Smith, a future champion and a strong and forthright personality himself.
I was again allowed time off school to act as spot-boy. And, better still, I was allowed to play Reece one afternoon session while Willie Smith popped over to Middlesbrough to apply for a licence to open a public billiard-room. But it was Willie who was particularly helpful, passing on a number of tips. And, crucially, it was Willie who was asked by Ernest Rudge for a second opinion on my stance at the table. Without my knowledge he looked me over for about half an hour, and at the end, pronounced his terse opinion. His verdict came like a release from a prison sentence: 'The kid's all right,' he said. 'Let him play his own road.'
What Willie Smith, Ernest Rudge, George Gray and I did not know was - as I found out not long afterwards - that I naturally played one-eyed because, to some extent, I indeed had only one eye. A specialist explained to me years later that my right eye is what is known as a 'lazy' eye, which means it is not much use for focusing. No doubt it could have responded to treatment at an early age but I must admit that it has never inconvenienced me in any way. Indeed, the specialist told me that the condition could actually be advantageous in my profession. I got a direct sighting of the balls whereas the usual focusing of two eyes is a slightly inaccurate method since most people have one eye stronger than the other.
Though fifteen years my senior, Willie later on became a great friend as well as rival, providing me with many engagements. Among his repertoire of jokes was a much-used one which hearkened back to that distant day in Ernest Rudge's billiard-hall. 'It's a good job for the rest of us,' he used to say 'that Joe doesn't have two good eyes!'