Billiards and the Empire
Some day an historian will write a notable volume on the part games have played in the formation of the British Empire. It is a peculiar characteristic of our race that we have taken our games with us to the uttermost parts of the earth. And may we not claim that the fine sporting spirit which alone makes any game worth playing is one of the corner stones of our Empire? Wherever a Briton has carried the flag he has taken with him his games and their traditions, even as the Romans of old took their military attributes and their marvellous engineering skill. If a couple of dozen Englishmen get together in any part of the world they are soon anxious to arrange a cricket match, and when an infant community grows out of the tin shanty.stage a billiard table is demanded. This has always been the case, and the billiard table, mute and unobtrusive, has been connected with many a stirring scene in our "rough island story."
On this page we reproduce a picture of The Billiard Room at the Residency, Lucknow, after the attack, 1857. The table was a Thurston's. Unfortunately, there is no exact date fixed to "the attack" mentioned. But why be pedantic about a date when we know that the Residency at Lucknow was "attacked" times out of number by artillery fire and musketry from the repulse at Chinhut until the final subjection of the city by our troops. Yet, somehow, this picture of the shattered billiard room does not associate itself in our mind with the actual fighting. Outram, Havelock, Sir Colin Campbell, and many other famous names are welded into the glorious history of the brilliant feats of arms which held Delhi during the dark days of '57. But the broken billiard table standing in the shot-torn room hardly suggests the mad charge of the infuriated Highlanders, the hacking of the Ghurka knives, the thrust of the vengeful lance, the crash of the naval guns, the rattle of musketry, and the roar of field and horse artillery. No, it does not bring these things within our mental ken. They reek of the fray under the open sky, when the blood is hot, and death and wounds pass almost unregarded until the battle fury is spent. But the billiard table suggests an even more terrible side of war, it shows us warfare with the glamour off, it brings to mind the tragic and sombre home life of that beleaguered garrison.
Within earshot of that billiard room, Sir Henry Lawrence, the first commander of the garrison, was mortally wounded on July 2nd, 1857. He was on his bed, and an officer was reading some papers to him, when he was hit by an enormous piece of shell, and his left leg nearly taken off below the thigh. That was how death burst into the domestic routine of the Residency, how it thrust its grisly hand into the daily round of ordinary incident of which that billiard table once formed a part. What it really meant is brought right home to every human heart by the following extract from the diary of one of the devoted ladies who went through the siege of Delhi from first to last:—"July 3rd -Friday - I was upstairs all day, nursing Sir Henry, who still lingers in extreme suffering; his screams are so terrible, I think the sound will never leave my ears; when not under the influence of chloroform, he is quite conscious, and J. has just been reading to him all day psalms and prayers, as he was able to hear them. He several times repeated them after him in quite a strong voice. Once we thought he was going, but he rallied, and has taken an immense quantity of arrowroot and champagne during the day. Once when I was feeding him he looked at me so hard, as if he was trying to remember who I was. The firing has never ceased for a second the whole day. July 4, Saturday. Sir Henry L. died at a quarter past eight this morning. His end was very peaceful, and without suffering. J. was with him. I came into the room a minute after he had breathed his last; his expression was so happy one could not but rejoice that his pain was over. Half-an-hour before he died, his nephew, Mr. George Lawrence, was shot through the shoulder in the verandah. I have been nursing him to-day, poor fellow; it was so sad to sec him lying there in the room with his uncle's body, looking so sad and suffering. About twelve I was obliged to ask J. to have the body carried outside, so he called some soldiers to help carry the bed into the verandah. When they came in, one of the men lifted the sheet off poor Sir Henry's face, and kissed him."
Let the same graphic pen tell of another scene: — Sept. 26, Saturday. Yesterday evening, on the eighty-eighth day of the siege, our long-looked-for and so often despaired of ' relief ' arrived. Never shall I forget the moment to the latest day I live. It was most overpowering.
We had no* idea they were so near, and were breathing air in the portico as usual at that hour, speculating when they might be in, not expecting that they could reach us for several days longer, when suddenly, just at dark, we heard a very sharp fire of musketry quite close by, and then a tremendous cheering; an instant after, the sound of bagpipes, then soldiers running up the road, our compound and verandah filled with our deliverers, and all of us shaking hands frantically, and exchanging fervent "God bless yous" with the gallant men and officers of the 78th Highlanders. Sir James Outram and staff were the next to come in, and the state of joyful confusion and excitement is beyond all description.
The big, rough-bearded soldiers were seizing the little children out of our arms, kissing them with tears rolling down their cheeks, and thanking God they had come in time to save them from the fate of those at Cawnpore. We were all rushing about to give the poor fellows drinks of water, for they were perfectly exhausted; and tea was made in the Tye Khana, of which a large party of tired, thirsty officers partook, without milk or sugar, and we had nothing to give them to eat. Everyone's tongue seemed going at once with so much to ask and to tell, and the faces of utter strangers beamed upon each other like those of dearest friends and brothers.
The Mutiny over, trade and prosperity returned to the Indian Empire, and billiard tables spread from one end of the "Shiny East" to the other. Years ago, billiard tables in sections were taken on the backs of mules to outlying hill stations, and the writer once heard a distinguished officer of Artillery, long since retired, tell of the bitter chagrin he and his fellow subalterns experienced when their eagerly expected billiard table arrived by mule transit with one of the slates hopelessly cracked. This meant waiting for months while a fresh slate was brought from home and taken to its up-country destination by a route, where, as Kipling expresses it:
"There's a wheel on the Horns o' the Mornin' and a wheel on the edge o' the Pit, An' a drop into nothin' beneath you as straight as a beggar can spit."
In other parts of the Empire billiard tables quickly followed the pioneers of civilisation, and in South Africa, especially, the game became very popular, and took a firm hold of the community. Therefore, it is not surprising that when the Boer War broke out, a billiard table, another of Thurston's, by the way, felt the effects of bombardment.
The damage is very well shown in the photograph forming the frontispiece of this number, and both from the date of the incident and the extent of the wreckage the writer is inclined to think that the luckless table must have suffered from the impact of a projectile from the 6-inch Creusot gun, which threw shells filled with melinite, and weighing nearly 100 pounds each, into Kimberley.
The South African Champion
Cecil Harverson first won the championship of South Africa away back in the "all-in" days. This was in 1893, when he defeated W. Laxson by 325 points in an "all-in" game of 1,000 up. The next year, however, Laxson turned the tables most effectively in a spot-barred contest for the championship by scoring 1,000 points while Harverson was putting together 575. But in 1895 Harverson twice defeated Laxson for the championship of South Africa, in spot-barred games of '2,000 and 5,000 respectively. A year later he defeated A. Freeborough, another aspirant for the championship, and as far as we know there is no likelihood of any player in South Africa disputing his right to the title during his present visit.