THE GAME OF WHIST.*
SINCE the fulmination of Mr. Gladstone's latest bull against the impiety of gambling in all shapes, we presume that Lord Rosebery's dealing with ' Ladas ' and Sir Visto ' on the one hand, and that shilling points and half-crowns on the rubber on the other, must stand excommunicate throughout the serious world. Elevated at his share in turning out a latter•day Government, but depressed by the feeling that its head owned racehorses like himself, melancholy at the refusal of a statue after so many years of harmless quiescence—grati- fied by the fidelity of the Nonconformists, perplexed and interested by the modern development of Home-rule, militant towards the House of Lords, and very doubtfully pleased with Mr. Swinburne's ode,—the shade of Oliver Cromwell must be in a mixed condition of feeling as to the bear- mgs and meanings of impiety. As man may be almost as distinctly classified as a betting animal, as he may as a cooking animal, Mr. Gladstone's definition is more far- reaching in its consequences than even he may have reflected when he made it. Dr. Pole's book is a work quite elaborate in its impiety. To those of the outer world who take it up, that outside ring of whist-players to whom the game is in itself an enduring pleasure, even when played by their own feeble lights in their own irregular way, so unorthodox as to verge upon piety, we fear that it will be rather a dis- tracting study. To the initiated, familiar with the latest meaning and development of the much-discussed signals for trumps, it will at once conjure up favourite ideas and renew cherished associations.
Dr. Pole treats the evolution of the game as seriously as a Darwin. It arose some three centuries ago from small begin- nings; and by a gradual process, brought about by the influence of powerful and earnest minds, it developed, as he tells us, into
• The Evolution of Whist a Study of the Progressive Changes selvieh the Came has Passed Through from its Origin to the Present Time. By Willa' an Pole, F.B.S.• xw .Dos Oxon. London: Lonsonans. Green. and Oq
a structure of great intellectual interest. At different epochs it took different forms of some duration for the time being, which to a certain extent remain still in existence. Four games of whist in four different degrees of development survive to tell the tale. " A game at cards, requiring close attention and silence, vulgarly pronounced whisk," is Dr.
Johnson's characteristic description of the classic sport, which Daines Barrington, writing in 1786, frankly calls " whisk " without qualification. That the true name was " whist !"—from an interjection demanding silence, and so onomatopreic in the olden sense, appears to be the agreement of authority. " At a time when French was the current language in England," says a delightful work of our neigh- bours on the subject, " the people had become so infatuated with one of their games at cards that it was prohibited after a certain hour. But parties met clandestinely to practise it ; and when the question, Voulez-vous jouer P' was answered by ' Oui !' the master of the room added the interjection St,' to impose silence. This occurred so often that oui-st ' became at length the current appellation of the game." This divinely imaginative discovery that the name, if not the game, was really French, at that extraordinary period when French was the English mother-tongue, dues as much credit to its inventor as the call for trumps itself.
In the reader who turns the leaves of this pleasant little work over for amusement rather than instruction, and finds himself perpetually conscience-stricken by the revelation of blunders of which he is constantly guilty at the game, under the naive conviction that they were the right thing to do, Dr. Pole's manual will rouse mixed feelings. Must he instil its teachings into the inferior persons with whom he sits down to play ? Or should he try to take a mean advantage of his newly acquired little knowledge, and once more prove it to be a dangerous thing by signalling in vain for trumps, or leading low cards from a new point of view, where his still primitive partner expected a high one ? If the partner has not advanced beyond the idea, acquired " either by his own intuition or by some vague kind of instruction or tradition, the idea that he has some consideration to give to his partner, whose interests are bound up with his own, and that this consideration is manifested by returning his partner's lead," the platform from which Dr. Pole starts in his view of the aspiring player, it will be better to make no use of the new store of knowledge. Dr. Pole has a gentle laugh at the excellent ladies who lead triumphantly from their aces, and at the universal dread of leading trumps which rises from some obscure kind of theory that they count higher if they come in at the end ; but he is as kind with them as a great man can afford to be. " Primitive and unpretentious as this sort of game is," he says, " it is played by enormous numbers of domestic players, who find incidents enough in it to amuse them for hours together." It is an innocent form of entertainment, with due deference to Mr. Gladstone, and it is probable that it "follows fairly the general mode of play in the infancy of the game."
For the lovers of stronger meat there is plenty to interest in the history of the gradual growth to the elaborate form of science which whist has now assumed amongst its real professors. The warm discussion which at first arose round the fairness or unfairness of the call for trumps, now, of course, definitely settled in favour of the first theory, on the simple ground that amongst players of a certain calibre the meaning of the call is evident to all four—for which very reason its first inventor has been much led to doubt, not its fairness, but its utility—is connected with a close inquiry into the fair limits of conjecture and certainty in reference to this undoubted king of card-games, and with pieces of instruction which will fairly bewilder the domestic player who attempts to understand them, and leave him to practise and enjoy his simple game under the aegis of " Why should he not ? More intellectual forms may be found ; but if he lacks either the capacity or inclination to learn them, it is his affair." What the book before us undoubtedly does provide, is a via media for the large number of players who would like a certain knowledge of what may be called the technical " openings " of the game, similar to that which can be acquired of the "openings" at chess. And this much, we think, it is the duty of everybody to acquire, who wishes either to appreciate or enjoy the game at all, and to impart the necessary help and pleasure to those with whom he may be called upon to play. A very excellent summary of the simple rut s for his guidance may be found in Dr. Pole's book, amongst the accounts of Hoyle, the true father and inventor of the scientific game; of " Cavendish," the instructor ; and of the most famous of players, James Clay. It will be interesting also to note how far the game has spread and travelled from its undoubtedly English home. In America, needless to say, the players have bettered the instruction in their usual fashion, and three appendixes attached to the volume give us the constitution of the American Whist League as revised and adopted by the Fourth American Whist Congress held at Philadelphia, May 22nd to 26th, 1894, with a long list of laws, both of the play and of " etiquette" of the game, adopted by a previous Congress at Chicago. This strikes us as an overstrained worship of the game, though characteristic enough of the present day. Characteristic, too, is the fact that the Americans have revived and encouraged professional teaching as practised by Hoyle, and that their principal paid instruc- tors have been women, who abound among the best players in America, while they have been always rare in England. Miss Kate Wheelock, of Milwaukee, has held classes of one hundred and fifty members, and goes periodically "on tour," while Mrs. M. Jenks has acquired an enviable fame. Observation, memory, promptness of decision, and soundness of judgment, are the four leading qualities whose necessity Dr. Pole im- presses upon the readers who are content to follow his simpler, though not less earnest, guidance. Such qualities as these should be enough to lead a man to high distinction. But we believe it to be none the less true of whist as of other things, that the almost exclusive devotion which the highest success in it requires, is apt to negative, and not to assist, success in other, if we may not say greater, walks of life. Many of those whom the world has agreed to call great men have been very fond of their rubber; but we fancy that their names are not to be found on the list of those who have become great whist-players.
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