A Billiards Marathon
The least interesting evening I ever spent in a billiard-room provided me with one of my most lasting memories. Sometime in the summer of 1907 I was in London for county cricket at Lords, or the Oval, or maybe it was Leyton or Catford. The day's work over and my "copy" duly dispatched over the private wire from the Fleet Street office of my newspaper, I was tempted to spend a quiet hour at the billiard-hall of Messrs. Burroughs and Watts, in Soho square, where Tom Reece was busily exploiting the cradle cannon or anchor stroke. It did not occur to me at that time that in future years I might be able to claim that I had seen some part of the highest break that will ever be made at English billiards.
It was of course, a huge farce, a burlesque of the game, but there was no rule of billiards at that time barring the stroke, and so Reece played two sessions a day for five weeks, from June 3rd to July 6th, scored 249,552 consecutive cannons, and made a break of 499,135 unfinished, which is duly accredited in the records of the game. Though he deliberately killed it by his monumental feat, Reece was not the inventor of the anchor cannon. That distinction belongs to an ex amateur champion, the late W. A. Lovejoy, who inflicted it on the public in January of 1907. When the inventor, who was not quite in the first-class of professionals, whom he joined after his Amateur success, made a break of 1,211 by means of the stroke, and Reece, who became its chief demonstrator, ran up thousands as quite regular occurrences, I wrote that; "Given the necessary physical endurance, there is no reason why a first-class player should not make 20,000," and added; "The most astounding feature in connection with this boom in cannons is the fact that though high-class professional billiards has been played in public for forty years the cradle has not been discovered, or at all events exploited, until this year, and that it should have been made famous by players who are not yet at the head of their profession. There must be possibilities in the game even yet undiscovered. As for the cradle cannon it is already doomed - Tom Reece has killed it." I was only a little premature in March when that comment was written, the actual killing was deferred to June and July, when Reece made professional billiards for the moment a laughing stock. Some strange stories are told of those 86 hours of appalling monotony at Messrs.Burroughs and Watts hall. One writer has said that Reece's nominal opponent, W. Chapman, of Birmingham, went home at least a week before the end of the effort, and another asserts that he retired a month before the marathon was finished. All I can say on this point is that at the session of which I was a spectator, Chapman was the orthodox opponent, sitting in shirt sleeves, cue in hand, whilst Reece was knocking up the score at about a hundred points a minute, and the marker calling the tally in the approved fashion if in a tone that suggested unutterable weariness of the whole business. I have often speculated as to whether Chapman did actually sit in the same attitude (as of one ready at a moment's notice to take his place at the table) and in the same chair throughout the whole of those weary weeks. If so, it was feat of endurance almost equal to that of Reece himself, and Reece, a one-time aspirant as a Channel swimmer, so it used to be said, was a difficult man to swim against for sheer staying power. I am inclined to think, however, that before the end Chapman's chair must have been vacant. That belief is strengthened by the story told by Reece himself to my friend Mr. George Nelson of Leeds, who, in one of his fine billiard articles in the Yorkshire Evening Post, said he once asked how many points were made at a session, and this was Reece's reply, "Oh! I was not particular to a thousand or two. I generally used to play on until the audience had gone. One day though, a fellow played me a dirty trick. He got in the far corner of the room, and I went on making hundred after hundred and kept having a look at him; but he never offered to go. At last I felt too tired to go on and so put my cue down, as he still did not move I went and had a look at him. I found him fast asleep."
It has been argued that on several occasions during this long-drawn-out agony Reece failed to cannon. With the object balls tight up against the cushions, almost in the jaws of the pocket, and contact made by means of a double kiss, I can well imagine that in the early part of the break the close attention of the marker would be desirable. But I saw the balls lifted from the table, and the wear of the cloth had been such that there was now a distinct channel from ball to ball. Only a miscue could have brought the break to an end after a few thousand points had been scored - and obviously Reece did not miscue. I have seen the old spot-stroke master, W. J. Peall, give an exhibition of his specialised shot until he was tired; I have seen the young Australian George Gray, make his thousand break by means of the losing hazard into the middle pockets; and I have seen Walter Lindrum, Tom Newman, and Joe Davis, running the balls round the table in endless nursery cannons. There was monotony in all this, yet I would love to see them all again. But no more anchor cannons, though I was permitted to see the quota of Reece's break free, gratis, and for nothing. There was an attendant on the door of the hall, but she -1 think it was a lady - waved away my offer of payment for admission. That refusal to accept a fee for a sporting event remains an amazing memory. It is in my experience unique. I have seen two famous editors of, "Wisden," the late Mr. Sydney Pardon and the late Mr. Charles Stewart Cain, who must have been as well-known on the cricket grounds of London as Jack Hobbs, pay at the turnstiles of two of these London grounds because they had overlooked the formality of carrying their Press-passes, and the story has been told that a badgeless Mr. R. T. Jones (Bobby Jones) put down his half-crown at the entrance to a golf course on the day on which he won the Open Championship.