Why does a billiard player shy at carrying his cue through the streets of London or any other city. If he has to play a heat in a handicap and there is no boy handy to transport it, he will hide it in a taxi even although the venue is but a few hundred yards away. It is not so with players of other games. The golfer is positively ostentatious carrying a flaming bag and flinging his tools about so that you shall see what he is. The cricketer never seeks to hide his identity, for besides his bag he has his flannels; the footballer will at times carry his boots outside his bag, and fishermen, bowlers, and hockey players all have their own ways of letting you know what they are going to do or have been doing; but the billiardist wishes it to be thought that he is just an ordinary or quiet sort of person out for an evening stroll or ride—anything but a billiard player.
Why should he play the coward, and what is wrong with the game, or does suspicion attach to the man who is seen in the streets with a cue? It is remarkable that billiards, the most scientific of all the games, should occasion such a disposition on the pan of some of its most enthusiastic players, but it is nevertheless a fact that a good many people who are very fond of the game and make no secret of that, will not be publicly identified with it. At the moment this attitude is stopping the progress of the Amateur Championships, and, until such ideas are rooted out, billiards will never come into its kingdom.
Of course, all this is handed down from the "bad old days," when a man who played well was regarded as a sharp or fly person, a ne'er-do-well, or one who had misspent his youth, and to some extent, although only slightly, such ideas pertain to this day. It is the fear of this, and nothing else, that causes many people to dissociate themselves from the public side of billiards, and which ideas the game's best friends are trying to break down. This constitutes the barrier that at the moment is stopping its progress.
Happily, there has been a move in recent years that speaks well for the future, and the killing of such ridiculous prejudices as to the game has been taken up in quarters where it was once cold-shouldered. The temperance party are fathering it and have entered into open competition with the publican by building large halls and letting out tables at 33 per cent. less than their rivals, whilst the workmen's institutes, which generally have a clergyman at their head, are not considered complete unless they contain a billiard table. Indeed, clergy are amongst the most enthusiastic followers of professional billiards.
Now all this is altering public opinion, and, even although it is starting at the wrong end and is anything but a desirable way of ridding the game of undeserved prejudice and bias, it is welcome. There is no doubt that billiards was at one time under suspicion, perhaps deservedly, for the public saloons were infested by a class of man who, compelled to live a hand-to-mouth existence, found a knowledge of billiards and the ability to play a part an easy and fairly certain way of gaining a livelihood; but those days are gone and the billiard sharp has died out. As a matter of fact, he found his living gone. There are, of course, verdant young men who think that they play well, and some clever people who manage to hide their best form until it pays to disclose it, and this always will be whilst human nature is what it is. But such things are not unknown in other pastimes and sports.
Billiards is no worse than other games, and there exist no good grounds why any pretence should be made about it.
There is no reason why a man who is going to play in a handicap should hesitate to carry his cue with him. It is as good a game as any of the others and calls for even greater mathematical skill and finesse. No man can say that a billiard cue is heavy or awkward to carry, and if the strong-winded ones will just rate their friends soundly upon their fears or cowardice, we shall be helping to put the game into its place.
It came as a positive joy to a number of men some years ago when the jointed cue came out, and that article must have saved some of them many pounds. They did not mind being regarded as flautists or water diviners or even photographers— and the little leather case that carries the divided stick does lend itself to such ideas—but to be thought a billiard player was too awful.
Inman once told me a story concerning his cue and billiard ball case that has the merit of being true. It occurred whilst he was touring South Africa, an engagement compelling him to take a cab to one of the mining centres outside Johannesburg.
As he stepped into the cab the jarvey remarked:
"There's a billiard chap named Inman going to play there to-night and they are making a fuss of him; but he can't beat Ferraro." And then looking at Inman's cases said: "I suppose you are going out to take the photograph."
Inman was not champion in those days, but at the same time he had a fairly good opinion of himself. What with being told that Ferraro could beat him and that he was a photographer, he took such a dislike to the cabman that at the finish of the journey there was the exact fare, and not a penny over.
V.M.M.