A conversation with my father in 1919:
'Well, what are you going to make of your life, lad?'
'I'd like to become a professional billiards player. I've been playing very well and I've made a break of over 400.'
'Good. But what does Ernest Rudge think about it?'
'He's all for it.' 'Well we'd best try to line you up against some better players. Who do you think you could get to play.' 'There's that very good professional called Albert Raynor at Sheffield...' 'Right, we'll talk to him.'
End of conversation. Beginning of career.
So my first professional match was arranged. I met Raynor, a left-hander, at Brampton Coliseum, on the outskirts of Chesterfield, where in a week's match he conceded me 1,000 points in 7,000. It was just too generous; I ran out the winner by 145 points and, more important, I made eleven 100 breaks which boosted my confidence. True, the nation as a whole continued in blissful ignorance of this achievement, but, surprising though it may seem, the somewhat smaller world of billiards enthusiasts and practitioners sat up and took at least a little notice. Raynor, one of the foremost 'second division' players at that time, was well known throughout the provincial billiards circuit and also had a number of engagements in London. Very kindly, he mentioned my name to various influential people whom he met in the capital, and not long afterwards, in May 1920, I was invited by Harry Young, the billiards correspondent of the Daily Mail and Evening News, to take part in a tournament on behalf of St Dunstan's which he was organising. The venue was to be the great Mecca, the Holy of Holies, of the game: Thurston's in Leicester Square, London.
It is difficult to convey the charisma which Thurston's had for billiards devotees. The hall was built in 1901, the year I was born, as part of the headquarters of Thurston's, the celebrated firm of billiard-table makers founded in 1799. There were two revolutionary improvements made by Thurston's in the early nineteenth century which put them head and shoulders above any rivals. They were the introduction of slate beds instead of oak and, rather more fascinating, the introduction in 1835 of rubber cushions. Until that time the cushions were built up with layer after layer of list or felt, but although they were very resilient, John Thurston was not satisfied. He therefore brought out cushions of para-rubber. They were not, however, universally acclaimed; some players considered that the angles were not as accurate as from cushions made of list and, since the vulcanisation process had not been discovered, the rubber set hard in cold weather. Ingeniously - and almost incredibly - Thurston circumvented this second problem in 1838 by bringing out cushion warmers - zinc (later copper) tubes which were filled with hot water and placed alongside the cushions just before the game was due to start! Later, in 1845, when the vulcanisation process had been discovered and perfected, Thurston's took out letters patent for applying it to billiard-tables.
It was John Thurston, incidentally, who, in the middle of the century, drew up the first modern rules for billiards in conjunction with Jonathan Kentfield, the first recognised champion.
The hall which Thurston's opened in 1901 was not open to the playing public: it was reserved strictly for top-class tournaments and championships, a wonderful advertisement for Thurston's and a tribute to the game. Before the building was shattered by a German land mine in October 1940 (the famous table itself remaining, like St Paul's, intact) it was what Lords is to cricket, Wimbledon to tennis. The match hall itself was like a miniature House of Commons debating chamber or the smoking-room of a venerable London club - all oak panelling and plush seats. But unlike the Commons it was also remarkable for its ecclesiastical hush. During a game the lighting of a cigar or pipe, though almost a continuous process among the spectators, could be achieved only by the smoker curling up in an agonised ball. Behind the thickly-curtained windows players and spectators alike were cut off from the bustle and noise of the world in a silent oasis.
Some years later, in 1937, J. B. Priestley wrote what must surely be the greatest tribute to the game, called simply 'At Thurston's' for the Saturday Review. This described an afternoon's visit to Thurston's (actually to watch a match between myself and Tom Newman). During the early days of the Second World War, late on a warm balmy evening. I was in my bungalow at Pharaoh's Island, Shepperton, when this same piece was read on the programme And so to Bed - a programme which followed (and was meant, I think, to counteract) the depressing news bulletins. It is beautifully evocative of Thurston's and describes much more adequately than words of mine what Thurston's was and what Thurston's meant.
'Beyond the voices of Leicester Square,' Priestley began, 'there is peace. It is in Thurston's Billiards Hall, which I visited for the first time, the other afternoon, to see the final in the Professional (Billiards) Championship. Let me put it on record that for one hour and a half, that afternoon, I was happy. If Mr Thurston ever wants a testimonial for his Billiards Hall, he can have one from me. The moment I entered the place I felt I was about to enjoy myself. It is small, snug, companionable. Four or five rows of plush chairs look down on the great table, above which is a noble shaded light, the shade itself being russet coloured, Autumn to the cloth's bright Spring. Most of the chairs were filled with comfortable men, smoking pipes. I noticed a couple of women among the spectators, but they looked entirely out of place among the fat leather chairs of a West End club. I had just time to settle down in my seat, fill and light a pipe myself, before the match began.'
Priestley finished his article memorably: 'When the world is wrong, hardly to be endured, I shall return to Thurston's Hall and there smoke a pipe among the connoisseurs of top and side. It is as near to the Isle of Innisfree as we can get within a hundred leagues of Leicester Square.'
Amidst the billowing pipe smoke there was only one sound to be heard apart from the click of billiard-ball on billiard-ball. It was the quiet voice of the referee, Charlie Chambers.
Charlie was about my age when I first visited the table at Thurston's. As a boy, he had earned a crust by pushing a dinner trolley around a hotel dining-room while I was pushing the ivories round the billiard-table. But he seems to have made a hobby of learning the rules of billiards and snooker and his mastery of this esoteric subject somehow brought him to the attention of Melbourne Inman who in 1914 introduced him into the holy of holies as a ball-boy. In the best theatrical spirit, the occasion inevitably came when the referee appointed for a game could not make it and young Charlie stepped in. As far as I know he ever afterwards remained the proud holder of that famous chair marked Referee.
He was a small, lean, fragile-looking man, with a pronounced cranium, smoothed-down hair, rather protruding teeth and a hooked nose. Priestley describes his profile as being rather like that of the Mad Hatter.
During a game we players were hardly aware that Charlie was present. The scores he intoned in an impersonal voice which one heard only subconsciously. He saw everything yet managed himself to be unseen. In his stiff winged collar and wearing his immaculate white cotton gloves he would be everywhere, spotting the red, rolling the cue ball back to the player, and removing invisible specks of dust or chalk from the balls.
To memorise a great break he had to count the score, the hazards (that is, the in-offs and the pots, which were limited to a certain number) and the nursery cannons (which were also limited). He had to warn the player in due time for the line crossing limitation, watch for touching balls, scrutinise the infinitesimal contacts during nursery runs - as well as keeping the scoreboard and supplying the rest. He was the ideal referee.
He was total master of the rules and stuck firmly to his decisions despite attempts, at least early in his career, by some players to intimidate him. I had only one disagreement with him as a player and that was the one occasion when he called a foul against me for what he described as a push stroke. Certainly the cue ball and object ball were so close together that it seemed scarcely possible to play without a push shot, but that was one of the strokes that I could play better than practically anyone. There was no question of its being a foul - in my book, anyway.
Charlie's most tricky moment must surely have been over the sensational and now legendary 'pencil cue' affair. Alec Brown, playing Tom Newman at snooker, had been left with the cue ball tucked right in the middle of a pack of reds. So jammed in was it that no rest or spider rest could come to his aid. Alec, however, had provided against something like this one day happening and before the impassive gaze of Chambers, and to the astonishment of Newman and the audience, he produced from his waistcoat pocket a pencil with a cue tip on the end. Calmly, with one hand, he struck the cue ball with the pencil tip and moved it slightly. The significance of all this was that at the time no definition of a cue existed and Alec claimed that his pencil was consequently admissible. Charlie Chambers, called on, like a High Court judge, to make law, asked to examine the contentious piece of equipment. He ruled that it was not a cue and called a foul on Alec. This did not help poor Tom though, for, using his full-size cue, he in turn inevitably committed a foul by moving an intervening ball. (Later the rule was changed so that a player who committed a foul could be asked by his opponent to play the next shot himself.) The authorities upheld Charlie's ruling and this led to a new rule: 'A billiard-cue as recognised by the BA&CC shall be not less than three feet in length and shall show no substantial departure from the traditional and generally accepted shape and form.'
This brief moment of prominence apart, Charlie merged into the background like the Invisible Man. Yet during his lifetime he exerted an incalculable influence on the game and its practitioners. It was as if Thurston's had never existed, and could never exist, without him. After the destruction of Thurston's in 1940 Chambers vanished from the capital and was next heard of working in some factory in Gloucestershire. There he died, a year later, at the age of forty.
Such, then, was the rather deep pool into which I was to leap. It was certainly awe-inspiring and I duly felt pretty overawed as I contemplated my trip down to play in the St Dunstan's tournament. I had practised enough and had enough wins under my belt to feel reasonably confident of acquitting myself honourably, yet at that age it would be a pretty cold fish who did not feel the odd twinge of anxiety on his first game on the Wimbledon centre court or on his first appearance for England at Wembley.
What set my imagination racing as much as the thought of playing at Thurston's was life in London itself. Up to that time I cannot remember ever having travelled more than twenty-five miles from Chesterfield in any direction. So, when I set off by train from the great metropolis it was with Uncle Maurice by my side. We got off at St Pancras and caught a bus to the Regent Palace Hotel. I thought it a fabulous place - it seemed to have a million bedrooms, endless corridors, and beautiful marble halls and staircases. It was the most luxurious place I had ever seen, let alone been inside. Mind you, I thought to myself, at 8s 6d each for bed and breakfast it ought to be good.
At Thurston's my uncle and I were greeted by Harry Young, the organiser, who told us that my opening game would be against the tenacious Scottish champion Tom Aiken: 250 up with me receiving 100 start. Curiously, when I arrived at the match hall I felt quite at home. The conditions were magnificent: the lighting was perfect and the cloth, which Charlie Chambers brushed and ironed twice a day, felt like satin.
As Aiken and I approached the table a cathedral-like hush fell over the hail. This was my big moment. If I could play well before all the experts, newspaper correspondents and, perhaps most important, the management, I might be given a whole week's match and I would really be on my way. I did not, of course, aspire to play against the masters such as Melbourne Inman, Tom Reece, Willie Smith, Tom Newman and Claude Falkiner. The second division professionals would suit me - and there were plenty of good players to go at - Fred Lawrence, Tom Tothill, Arthur Peall and Tom Carpenter, for instance.
Tom Aiken broke off. I cannot honestly remember the stroke - whether he played to screw in off the red or simply for safety - but it allowed me straight away to play my first stroke on that famous table. It was a scoring stroke, and I surprised everyone in the hall, including myself, by going on to make a break of 147 (which, by a curious coincidence, is the maximum snooker break). Thus, with my 100 start, I was within three points of running out on my first visit. Needless to say, I soon notched them up to win, and the reporters, including Harry Young himself, gave me a lyrical write-up. 'A Rising Star', said one; 'Coming Billiards Champion', said another.
In the semi-final I had to meet the Midlands champion Fred Lawrence, a deliberate and cautious player and a very hard man to beat. This was the first of many encounters that we were to have on the green baize. Fred had been in the profession for some time and I was an up-and-downer so that, eventually, I was more than a match for him, but there was no doubt that I was the underdog on this occasion. Wily old Fred played the safety game against me, which was a department of tactics that I knew precious little about. Even so, I managed to get within a few points of game. But at this stage I countered one of his safety shots with a safety miss of my own to which Fred in turn replied by playing on to the red to leave another safety position. In the heat of the moment, with victory in sight, I gave another miss for safety, forgetting that you could not give two consecutive misses for safety. This was hardly the sort of point to escape the notice of Charlie Chambers - or anyone else for that matter. 'Foul,' Charlie called. The balls were re-spotted and Fred achieved a decent-size break to pip me at the post.
Nevertheless, I was not too despondent and Uncle Maurice and I stayed for the remainder of the tournament. It was a great thrill for me to watch for the first time the great players of the day. As this was a charity tournament my attendance and extended stay was all a charge on my father, but I learned a good deal from my scrutiny of the experts and my father was more than satisfied with the results of my first trip to London.
The management of Thurston's also expressed satisfaction in a tangible and very welcome form: they gave me a week's engagement to play against Arthur Peall. Arthur came from one of the game's distinguished stables, being the son of W. J. Peall, who at 5 feet 1 inch was known as the 'Mighty Atom'. W. J. spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for at one time he was the arch-rival of John Roberts (junior) and in 1890 made an astonishing break of 3,304, a break largely compiled of his speciality, the spot stroke - potting the red endlessly in one or other of the top pockets. In those days there was no limit to this stroke. He was present at the opening of Thurston's where he played the rather more subtle Harry Stevenson, and went on to meet Melbourne Inman and Tom Reece as they began to take over the centre of the stage. W. J. was a most likeable chap who often came to see me play in later years - and, unlike some of the other old-timers, he had many a good word to say for the younger practitioners. He could, I feel sure, have been an even more successful player if he had devoted more time to billiards and less to business. But he ran a very profitable pub in Streatham, the White House, which he sold and then bought back again, and had a financial interest in a couple of cinemas. He lived for many years in Brighton where he died, having clearly not misspent his youth, at the age of ninety-seven.
Arthur, his son, was always immaculately dressed, with starched cuffs even for his afternoon shows. He was a steady player but had a most unorthodox cue action. He held it very lightly and while addressing the cue ball he used a shaky-looking up and down movement instead of the normal piston-like action. When he delivered the cue he sent it forward, of course, but the entire procedure was decidedly odd. He was almost wholly a red ball player, albeit a very good one. He was conceding me 1,500 points in an 8,000 match but, as one commentator pointed out, this start was neutralised by the fact that Arthur practically lived at Thurston's and I was having some difficulty in getting the hang of the cushions - as did most newcomers to the table. Arthur managed to catch me at 4,650 points but I struck back straight away by compiling the biggest break of the match, 408, to go ahead again. Arthur later regained the lead but I stuck to my guns and eventually ran out the winner by 588 points. It was the first match that Arthur had lost in two seasons.
For this trip to London Uncle Maurice stayed at home; I was now deemed old enough to look after myself. So it was with the great aplomb born of having done it all before (i.e. once) that I caught the Tube from St Pancras and, my suitcase in one hand and my cue case in the other, bowled into the Regent Palace Hotel. At this point I got my come-uppance. They had no rooms vacant - a possibility which had never occurred to me. If I could not stay at the Regent Palace I was in a spot since my metropolitan expertise ended at their front door; I had no knowledge of any other London hotel. Happily, though, the receptionist came to my aid and suggested that I try the Piccadilly Hotel just opposite. So I bowled back out of the Regent Palace, trotted across the road and took a room. I did not ask the price since it seemed obvious that nothing could be more expensive than the Regent Palace. I learned how wrong I was half-way through the week from the Sporting Life's billiards writer George Reed. He asked me where I was staying and whistled incredulously when I told him. 'You won't get enough here in a week to pay for two nights at the Piccadilly," he said, adding darkly: 'You wait till you get the bill!' At which point I cut down on my eating - and just about managed to scrape home to Chesterfield with the coppers kindly left me by the Piccadilly.
On my next trip to London I asked Fred Lawrence, whom I was playing, where he found to stay. His answer was a revelation: 'A boarding house in Clapham.' So that was how it was done!
He said that he was always well looked after by a very pleasant landlady so I asked whether she could put me up as well. He took me down to Clapham and although the landlady had only an attic room vacant it was as clean as the well-known new pin. We agreed on 30/- for the week - including tea and toast for breakfast - and when I got in at night there was always a piece of cheese and bread and butter waiting for me on the table. I stayed at the same place for many years afterwards. But I was eventually given a better bedroom!
I think I must have become over-confident after my win over Arthur Peall. I began to hit a bad patch; nothing was going right for me on the table and my form began to deteriorate. Peal beat me pretty soundly at a further meeting, but perhaps most disappointing of all was my failure, in April 1921, in my first championship, the Midland Counties Billiards Championship, for which I had been entered by Ernest Rudge with the support of Willie Smith. In the final I played 'at home', in the Victoria Billiard Hall, against Fred Lawrence, for two years the holder of the trophy. For the first three days I had the edge and was several times well ahead. Then, on the Thursday, I muffed a few shots and fell behind. It was only thanks to a good rally during the evening session that I got back into the match, only 32 points behind Fred. But that was it. Friday was a disaster day for me and although Fred was not playing brilliantly he had only to plug away with his usual consistency to draw clear. He kept this up on Saturday and reached his 7,000 points with me in the dim distance on 6,134.
My father, who had by this time been made an alderman, presided at the championship. It would obviously have been pleasant for him to call upon the Mayor to present the trophy and stakes of £50 a side to his own son, there in the heart of Chesterfield. But, alas, he was denied this moment of reflected glory and it was Fred Lawrence who took away the cup for the third time. I remember that his wife had just given birth to a son and he said that she wanted to have the baby photographed in the cup. For me there were words of commiseration from the Mayor, hopes that I would fare better in the future and a consolation prize from the directors of E. Rudge and Co. Ernest must have been disappointed too, though he did not show it too much. But no one was more fed up than me. And to cap everything that Saturday was my twentieth birthday! I think it is fair to say, and not making excuses, that part of my bad form during this period was due to attacks of lumbago which were plaguing me from time to time. An odd complaint because the first steps along one's chosen path, whether successful or unsuccessful, have an inherent significance, and stick out in the mind. But in between there are, of course, many many more matches and exhibitions (if one is lucky, anyway) which are not in the slightest bit significant.
On radio or TV I have sometimes heard interviews with men and women from different walks of life - famous theatrical people, say - and have been struck by the comparatively small number of productions they have been in during their career; nine months in such-and-such a play, followed by a year and a half in something else, then six months on tour, etc. Each one of such events, consuming a measurable part of someone's life, is thereby memorable in its own tight. A game of billiards or snooker is, obviously, a much briefer event altogether. Even an important tournament would probably last only a week, and at the end of a busy year it was sometimes hard to remember them all. There were never many professionals in the top ranks and we used to spend our lives touring round playing each other in ever-differing combinations, year in year out. It was like shaking a kaleidoscope which contained only a few pieces.
It is not my intention in this book to dwell ad nauseam on these many matches, musing on the vicissitudes of fortunes, recalling brilliant shots into the top pockets and blaming muffed shots on bad cushions. I will mention only those which were landmarks in my career, those which have attached to them some amusing incident (there were quite a few) or those which were memorable for some other personal reason. That should be quite enough - even for the enthusiasts.
In the last category falls a game which I played quite early on against the Northern champion Tom Tothill, from Bury in Lancashire. It was my father who arranged it. He realised that in the billiards world a young player could not make a name unless he competed against the best players and showed his ability, and yet, on the other hand, he could not get a game against the top men unless he had already proved himself. My father's solution came easily to him: money talks. He issued a challenge to Tothill for £50 a side, playing on level terms at 15,000 up. It was my first big money match and took place at the Orme Hall, in Manchester, where we were contracted to 'share the profits of the gate receipts, if any'. This last phrase was a dauntingly realistic one for the attendance proved to be only moderate. Though Tom was well liked in his own patch the challenger from over the Pennines was obviously not rated too much of a draw in Manchester. Tom was a good deal older than myself, heavily built and a happy-go-lucky sort of chap. I often heard him whistling or humming a tune quietly under his breath while he was actually playing. But despite his years in the business he bad never really been taken up by the London establishment and at that time was as keen as I was to get games and publicity.
Later he was taken up by J. P. (Jack) Mannock, who was quite a character in his own right. Jack had been a good second-class pro, with the advantage of being rather better educated than most of us. He opened a couple of billiard-rooms in London catering for the 'carriage trade', and personally tutored gentlemen in the finer skills of the game. Later he rented the billiard-rooms at the Northumberland Hotel from the management and formed them into a billiards club, again for patrons of quality. This business was going very nicely until the Government (Jack always blamed it on Lloyd George personally) commandeered the hotel during the First World War and in effect threw Jack out on to the street. Luckily for him, however, Burroughes and Watts, with whom he had always been on good terms, decided to open a new hail in the heart of clubland - the St James' Hall at the top end of St James Street - and Jack they considered had the right style to be its manager. It was in this capacity that he was in a position to offer us players gainful employ. He was particularly fond of Tothill, since Tom was a colourful outgoing character living a somewhat complicated private life, and so gave him many matches in which I quite often found myself lined up as his opponent. At the St James' Hall, I remember, we used to begin our games at about nine o'clock at night so that the gentlemen spectators could roll out of their clubs after dinner and watch the play - though I suspect that a good percentage of them simply snoozed away cloaked in cigar smoke. (The smoke, I can report, was of excellent quality.)
Horatio Bottomley, a great enthusiast of the game, was a frequent spectator at our duels and after watching us play he always took us to Le Paraquet restaurant where we had sandwiches and champagne - neither of which Tom Tothill and I felt inclined to refuse. Eventually Bottomley sponsored Tothill in that he allowed him to stay at his Sussex home, The Dicker, where he practised on his billiard-table. I think Tothill spent a year to eighteen months in this luxurious lifestyle. Bottomley also paid Tom's expenses, entrance fees to championships and so on. This was an undreamed-of opportunity for anyone but, sadly, Tothill's private life caught up with him. Finally he did the proverbial moonlight flit, leaving behind a goodly number of angry ladies and subsequently turned up in Canada. More happily, I heard that he continued quite a successful playing career there before retiring to San Francisco where he died.
On that ill-attended early meeting between Tothill and me in Manchester I was beaten rather badly - Tothill's winning margin being somewhere in the region of 2,000 points. But I did manage to make the highest break of the match and set a new personal record of 495 points, 480 of them off the red. Then, on the verge of 500, I made a mess of a comparatively simple stroke. My father, who was watching to see what happened to his son, and his money, exploded in anger. 'I could have made that ruddy shot myself,' he said. 'Yes, you probably could,' I replied. 'But what about the other 495?'