Detached View of a Professional Billiard Match

Although outplayed by Smith five times, Inman again (at Glasgow) measured cues with his doughty opponent and at last won. The above clever cartoon, by Tom Webster, in which the immortal "Oliver Twist" incident is parodied, appeared some little time ago in The Daily Mail, and is here, by kind permission, reproduced.

For two hours I sat in a cool, dimly-illuminated tavern under the Picton Library and watched Smith and Inman play billiards. My interest in these experts was merely frivolous, and dates from the time when I saw certain wicked little cartoons by an artist who gives one to understand that billiard matches between Inman and Smith are an absorbing and amusing study. Perhaps they are, but one has to be that particular artist to discover it. Ordinary people are so intent on the game that they hardly notice the players at all.

Besides, these two players are studiedly impersonal. They are both small men with deliberate and aloof expressions, and a calm, self-contained and passionless way of going about their job. They play as if they were wound up.

The surprising thing seems not that they should make such long breaks, but that breaks so long should ever have any end. One feels—as a novel by Dostoevsky makes one feel —the acute discomfort of losing one's grip on time. Suppose this particular break of Smith's — or Inman's — were to go on, and on, and on... for ever and ever, Amen! Awful and recurring idea! Whenever it comes I very nearly get up and make a dash for William Brown Street and sunshine.

But all breaks do, at length, come to an end. Instead of Smith there is Inman, instead of Inman, Smith.

Smith is slightly the less phlegmatic; not quite the perfect automaton. He permits himself a fleeting smile of acknowledgment when the applause after a difficult stroke is exceptionally loud. Occasionally, when the balls show signs of developing a will of their own, he looks a bit annoyed. He even has a definitely human way of studying difficult positions with a slight gape.

But Inman manifests neither pleasure nor annoyance. When he misses a stroke he merely studies the tip of his cue in melancholy surprise as though he demanded of it why it has played such a silly trick on him.

And one can well believe that the cue is far more whimsical and irresponsible than Inman. Unaccountable disasters should very properly be laid to its account.

Like most people who don't play billiards, but "mean to take it up some day," I have always thought of the game as jolly— a game that keeps people up late and sends them home well pleased with life and themselves.

There is even a faint flavour of recklessness, which is definitely attractive, about any game played on a green baize table with red and white balls. Green, red, and white are delightfully dissipated colours. But ruthless experts like Inman and Smith rob billiards of their jollity— or imagined jollity. If they are enjoying the game they disguise it very well. On the other hand, one cannot think they are not enjoying it. They merely play.

After they have played for two hours they stop—even earlier, I believe, if either has reached his limit of points short of that time. And the end of play is the breaking of a spell. These two clock-work people, who seem as though they had been wound up to walk so many miles round a table, suddenly come to life.