"The Game of Billiards" - Michael Phelan, 1856

The Noble Game of Billiards

This game is peculiarly in harmony with the mechanical genius of our people; it combines science with gymnastics, teaching the eye to judge of distances, the mind to calculate forces, and the arm to execute with rapidity and skill whatever the mind and eye combine to dictate for its execution; it expands the chest while giving grace and elegance to the form, and affords even to the illiterate mind a practical basis for the appreciation of mathematical and geometric truth. [...]

...the game, like that of chess, has an eastern origin; the Templars brought it back with them from the Holy Land, and it soon became the favorite amusement and means of health to which the cloistered monks of that period were permitted by their superiors to have recourse: and however much, in these latter days, it may have come to be regarded as a "carnal amusement," we have abundant evidence that it was cradled in the monasteries, which were then the fountain heads, and only sources of the Christian faith. [...]

...we find that the unfortunate Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, complains in a letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow, dated Fotheringay, and written the very evening before her death, that her "Billiard table has just been taken away from her, as a preliminary step to her punishment." Doubtless, Mary having been married to the Dauphin of France, was introduced to the game during her stay in Paris.

You see, therefore, ladies, that you will run no risk of being considered "too masculine in your tastes," if you devote yourselves to this delightful household recreation.

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The Frenchman, whose artistic eye and mathematical genius make him the best military strategist of all the European nations, is also by far the most brilliant billiard player to be found in the world... [...] But alas! his success is his destruction... [...] For single strokes of almost miraculous adroitness he puts forth all the skill he is master of; but for the patient foresight and self-restraint which is necessary to a prudent management of the balls, he is utterly unfit. [...]

The Englishman, on the other hand, in this, as in almost everything else, is the direct reverse of his late imperial and imperious ally: he looks to the result, and does not care the snap of one of his portly fingers by what means the victory has been gained, so long as it is his... [...] ...though his game is a very strong one, and perhaps of the two more safe than the Frenchman's, still it is marred by excess of caution, and numberless counts are lost from the timidity which will not stretch forth its hand to grasp them. [...]

Halfway between these two, and combining the peculiarities of each, stands the American billiard player. With much of the Frenchman's vivacity, and all his hardihood, his conceptions are bold enough to seize all the possible advantages of a stroke, and his manipulation, though less delicate than the Frenchman's, is superior to the Englishman's in quickness, ease and force. [...]

...we cannot be accused of flattery or self-praise when we simply state a fact, which every observer of experience must have long since noted: to wit, that the Frenchman is the most brilliant, the Englishman the most careful, [but] the American the most successful - and therefore, if that be any argument, as it is commonly admitted to be the most conclusive - the very best of billiard players.

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On the Machinery of Billiards

We will suppose that our reader is a perfect novice in the noble game - one who does not know a billiard from a faro table, but imagines that there is a very dangerous similitude between the morals and appearance of the two.

Let us now strive to dissipate his ignorance.

THE BILLIARD TABLES... [...] Formerly each table had a "passe" or iron arch affixed to it, through which the balls, at particular periods of the game, were obliged to be played; but this obstructive and uesless appendage has long since disappeared, and its place is supplied by what is called the "string," - an imaginary line drawn across the top of the board, midway between the corner and side pockets. [...]

THE CUE is a long, straight, tapering pole of well-seasoned white ash, tipped with leather, varying in length from five feet to five feet five inches, and in weight from seven to twenty ounces. It is very desirable to establish uniformity in everything connected with the game, as otherwise a change of instruments may disarrange our previous calculations... [...]

... Monsieur Mengaud, to whom we are indebted for the present wonder-working capabilities of the cue, was a professional billiard player, who had frequent reason to lament the "miscues" or false strokes which were unavoidable, where hard wood came in contact with slippery ivory. To soften down the harshness of his stroke and to avoid these slips, he conceived the idea of covering the end of his cue with leather; and we can only compare the discoveries which followed, to those made by Aladdin, when in attempting to clean the lamp of the genii, he rubbed it, and found that by rubbing he had created a spell which placed an army of magicians under his control. [...]

These miracles, as they then seemed, have since become familiar and explainable. Their exact principles and practice will be illustrated in our subsequent engravings; and, with such simple instructions as we mean to give, the merest neophyte of the present day will be enabled, after a few experiments, to perform such strokes as would have won him a wide renown in the days of his respected grandfather.

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