John Roberts, at the time of which I write, was within seven years of three-score and ten. But he was not old in the decrepit or senile sense of the word. Indeed not! Cicero might have known of him when he wrote:"Old age is the consummation of life, just as of a play."
It is true that his hair and beard were white; he had need of glasses when reading or writing; and was troubled with a slight deafness; but the virility of the man rose superior to such touches from the hand of time. His expressive eyes still flashed with more fire than one sees in the windows of the souls of most men. His active brain projected plans with the fecundity of tireless youth. His mind was as receptive of new ideas as if he had his playing career before instead of behind him. His spirit was magnificently defiant of his years. His figure, trim and alert, neat as a well-raked field in brown autumn, preserved to the full his tradition of dressing the part to perfection, which seems beyond the ken of many fine cuemen of today.
I remember one evening, after a glowing day in late August, in that lovely place that he had down in glorious Devon, John Roberts began to practise so that he might give the best that was in him to the public that he never disappointed. This would be some forty years after his first victory in the championship, and to most of us it would seem that he was honourably entitled to excuse himself from the drudgery of practice before engaging in a bout of exhibition billiards. But John Roberts did not think so. He had no mind to lag superfluous on the stage. He knew his part, from entrance to exit, as none has known it since, for as a billiard showman he was so incomparable that with his passing the art was lost. So he practised, did this giant of the game, rendering diligent service to the game beautiful, when he of all men might have claimed a mastery of the whole art of billiards.
The evening was warm with the languor of restful repose, the air almost heavy with the fragrance of the many-hued flowers that John loved to grow and have about him. A piano, played exquisitely well by hands instinct with music, tempted one to linger and listen in sweet content. It was a perfect evening for the calm enjoyment of the autumn of life; and who had more right to repose than this great maker of billiard history, this missionary of the cue who had shown the game at its best to many nations, encircling the earth in its service, visiting India alone no fewer than seventeen times, and never sparing himself in his efforts to display our billiards as a game of superlative artistry? It seemed a breaking away from the fitness of things that he should bestir himself to practise in the midst of his slippered ease, the more so as his home environment harmonized so perfectly with his real personality. For John Roberts at home laid aside the dominating autocrat of the board of green cloth, and revealed an inner self which loved little children, dumb animals, pretty flowers, and all the simple things of life that are choicely good.
But on this particular evening the master cueman had work to do, and he shirked it not. The exact manner of his working can only be described when language is capable of explaining that art which conceals art, for of such was the billiards of John Roberts. It was so effortless, so rhythmic in its flowing mastery, that as I watched him I could only gaze and wonder. Engrossed in his work, John seemed to conjure the ivories into obeying the scoring mood that swayed him. He was never in difficulties, simply because they did not exist for him. His cuemanship was so amazing that one shot seemed as easy as another. It was all the same to him whether he tapped the red down as it hung on the verge of a pocket, or made a daring screw cannon which brought the cueball round in a swinging curve over a full six feet of table space. If the balls ran together, he coaxed them; if they ran wide, he forced them; if they ran well, he cajoled them; if they ran badly, he mastered them; never beaten, never done, never looking twice.
Thus he played, and the break totalled nearer five hundred than four when failure at a long range loser from hand brought it to a tragic end. Yes, a "tragic" end, for the red ball was struck absolutely on the wrong side when it was less than a foot from the right top pocket and presented a hazard well within the game of a ten break exponent, the tragedy being that it was his sight, for he was sixty three, that had brought him down at such a stroke. So ended the "practice spin" of a man of his years. I shall never see such billiards again, and I have seen the best that every living player can offer. There are those who contend that we have to-day players capable of beating John Roberts at his best, that such even existed when he was a power in the land of the living. Maybe, maybe not, it matters nothing now. The man is dead, better leave it at that. What soul hath he who would sully laurels lying on a tomb? "De mortuis nil nisi bonum."