Bridge over troubled waters

John Graham

CULBERTSON by John Clay

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.95 Name: Ely Culbertson.

Date of birth: 1891, Romania, son of American mining engineer and Russian mother. US Nationality.

Education: The universities of Yale, Cor- nell, Stanford, Paris and Geneva.

Qualifications: Fluency in Russian, En- glish, French, German, Czech, Spanish and Italian; reading knowledge of Slavo- nic, Polish, Swedish, Danish and Norwe- gian; classical knowledge of Latin and Greek. Good at cards.

Criminal record: Various arrests for re- volutionary activities in Russia, Europe and Mexico.

Marital status: Various.

Hobbies: Women, bridge, talking to Ber- trand Russell, drinking champagne at Crockford's (New York).

Profession: Saviour of the world.

For many years the name of Culbertson was synonymous with the game of bridge. He was the leading authority from 1926 (the year after the game had been in- vented) until 1937, when his team was beaten by the Austrians in the first full world championship. More or less single- handedly he transformed bridge from a pastime played by a few devotees in Manhattan clubs to the internationally popular game it is today. One of the reasons for the game's fascination is that its entire history is embraced by people still living, playing, and winning today. Cul- bertson has been dead 30 years, but Rixi Markus, for instance, was a member of that Austrian team, and her appetite for the game is undiminished.

But as John Clay's new and deeply- researched biography makes clear, Cul- bertson was far more than a card-player. Certainly, he developed the first compre- hensive and logical bidding system, estab- lished a top-class team around himself and his wife Josephine, and beat all corners for ten years. He was famous for nerve and showmanship, for his frequent insults and consequent litigation, for making and los- ing various fortunes. His flamboyant chal- lenges and publications made the money; his flamboyant life style lost it.

But there was much more to the man than a smoke-filled room and the gentle fall of the pasteboards. At the age of 16 he had been a member of the Social Revolu- tionary Party in its abortive revolution of 1907. Wounded by the Cossacks and arrested by the authorities, he learned cards from fellow Party members in prison by the Black Sea, as they awaited the firing squad. Culbertson somehow managed to finesse the bullet, but his friends were executed, including the revolutionary girl he idolised.

His family were rich, and Culbertson was able to go to America, determined to realise his revolutionary ideals somehow. He organised strikes of immigrant workers in the Canadian northwest, and rode the rails as a hobo down to California. He did indeed enroll at Stanford — just as he also enrolled at all the other universities listed above — but attended only briefly. Despite his many matriculations, curricular disci- pline was not really Culbertson's speed, and you will search the archives of the world in vain for any mention of E. Culbertson, Bachelor of Arts.

Something more interesting always in- tervened. In 1912, for instance, it was a peasants' revolution in Mexico, another spell in jail, another bullet finessed, cour- tesy of the US Vice-Consul. There was nothing for it but a boat to Cuba and thence to Spain. Naturally the boat was full of Spanish anarchists intent on assassinat- ing King Alfonso XIII. Naturally Culbert- son saw the inside of another jail, and had to leave the country. Twenty-five years later he partnered the exiled king in the Grand Hotel in Rome. Chaps will do anything for a game of bridge . . .

The Russian Revolution of 1917 wiped out the family fortune, and Culbertson spent a relatively settled period in Paris earning his money at cards. Most gamblers play cards until the money runs out, but with Culbertson it was the other way round: when the money was finally gone, in the early 1920s, he began to take cards seriously, and the rest is history.

Until, that is, the late 1930s, when the Austrians won the world bridge cham- pionships and Charles Goren was emerging to challenge Culbertson's supremacy in America. Culbertson grew tired of bridge, and turned back to his original love, international politics. His rigid habit of reading improving books for an hour every night had exposed him to all important political and philosophical thought. He had become an extremely well self-taught man, and his political insights were remarkable.

As early as 1935, for example, he pre- dicted that war between the great Euro- pean powers was inevitable within five years. Russia and America would be drawn in, and when the war was over they would be the only two great powers left in the world, permanently at each other's throats. An international peace umbrella was needed, and he would set out to create one, which he termed the World Federa- tion.

He proposed international control of decisive weapons, and a quota for each major nation in tactical forces to ask as international peace-keeping forces. He successfully lobbied the US Congress and individual figures such as Bertrand Russell, who became a close friend. His secretary Cynthia was later to marry Arthur Koestler.

Culbertson considered the UN Charter deeply flawed (because of the veto), and lobbied for its reform through much of the 1940s. He was disappointed that his politic- al ideas failed to emulate his bridge ideas in the matter of public sanction, and died in 1955, broke and after years of poor health. John Clay has done this unusual and romantic man justice, and neatly calls him a minor but illuminating character who reflected the age he lived in. He has dug up a remarkable quotation from Bertrand Russell: 'The most psychologically in- teresting man it has ever been my good fortune to know is Ely Culbertson.'

Alas, Clay cannot escape one criticism. Bridge-playing readers be warned: the author's research is far better than his bridge. There are a few historical bridge deals scattered through the book, but his comments on them are often nonsense. Ah well, you can't win 'em all. Ely would have understood.