It was not until I was over fourteen that I touched a cue. My interest in the game first started through my father having a large billiard room in London, where I occasionally used to knock the balls about when I could get the place to myself.
From the outset the game had a fascination for me, and I soon acquired so much skill that my father gave up the idea of putting me into business, and set to work to cultivate my billiard playing. I took a post as a billiard marker in London, and after holding it for a year or two, went out to South Africa, and became marker at a hotel in Pietermaritzburg.
Here I had a magnificent all-round experience, for I had to play everyone who came along.
Under these conditions my game soon began to improve very rapidly, and towards the end of my time I was frequently handicapped by not being allowed to score any break under a hundred. As may be imagined, the fact that my form varied according to whom I was playing with often led to amusing incidents. I remember one day, while I was practising alone in the billiard room, an elderly man came in, and seeing that I was quite a boy, said he would give me thirty in a hundred if I would have a game with him.
He was quite a casual customer whom I had never seen before, and whom I never expected to see again, so, hoping to please him, I played a very poor game, and allowed myself to be beaten by about half-a-dozen points. We played several other games after that, only one of which was credited to me, and the result was that he went away highly pleased with himself, while I was the richer for a generous tip.
Now it happened that that evening I was playing a match for money with one of the best amateurs in the district, to whom I was conceding a long start. My friend of the afternoon came in towards the finish of this match, and just as my opponent was in the middle of a very nice forty break, which took him to within fifty of game, while I was a hundred behind him. Noting my opponent's fine break and my own apparently hopeless position, the newcomer, on being told that we were playing for money, did not hesitate to express him opinion that the match was a most unfair one, since I was obviously outclassed. How he opened his eyes you may imagine when I ran to my points with a break of 150 unfinished. I saw a good deal of him after that, but I don't think he ever quite forgave me for having taken him in so on that first afternoon.
There was a good deal of gambling at Pietermaritzburg. It was no unusual thing for me to have to mark games of snooker at five or ten shillings a ball, and I used often myself to join in at sixpence a point. Probably my most exciting experience during all the time that I was out there was upon an occasion when a rich customer, who was himself a very fine hazard striker, and who had beaten me for two or three games running, at sixpence a point, offered to play me a series of games for £1 a ball! As I was an exceedingly nervous youth, my feelings upon this proposition may be easily imagined. But I knew that I was better than he, so I made up my mind that if I was out after the first game I would stop—though even in that case I should probably have had to borrow several weeks' wages from my employer. Fortunately for me, I not only won the first game, but most of the games we played, and by the end of the evening I had cleared nearly a hundred pounds.
Stevenson has rarely played more sparkling billiards than when engaged in overtaking Peall in the handicap on April 24. During the two sessions he scored 1,300 to Peall's 710, Stevenson's breaks including nine of three figures, including a 300 and two 200's.