A Crying Need For Cribbage

Wherein a Former Week-End Guest Rises in Revolt Against the Latest Form of Parlor Torture

COREY FORD

IT is high time this nation went hack to Cribbage. I don't want to have to speak of this again. From now on I wash my hands of the matter. I have spent a great deal of time and effort, the past year or so, trying to discourage the influx of obnoxious Parlor Games that have made the American Week-End what it is today; and my whole campaign seems merely to have put the industry on a sounder financial basis than ever before in its history. I have leveled my lance repeatedly and conscientiously against these Cross-Word Puzzle Books, and CharacterAnalysis Books, and Palmistry Books; and as a result of my attack the sales of these books have mounted to such staggering proportions that the overjoyed publishers, Mr. Simon and Mr. Schuster, have been encouraged this month to bring out still another. There seems to be only one way out. Cribbage.

Things used to be so nice when everybody played Cribbage. A Cribbage Party was my idea of a dandy evening. A week-end was a week-end, in those days. None of your Mah Jong. No Twenty Questions. Nothing like Astrology, or Numerology, or Hand-writing Tests, or Laddergrams, or any of the other devices for Morbid Introspection in the Home. You knew just what you were in for. After dinner Colonel Blarvis would set down his glass of port, stroke his white moustache, and murmur to his guests: "Shall we join the ladies for Cribbage?"; and I would simply unbutton my shoes, coil up under the diningroom table, and tear off a pleasant little nap. That was Cribbage. Egad, that was living.

EVERYTHING is different now. The young people don't seem to have as good a time somehow as we folks used to have. Frankly, I don't know what we're coming to. Delmonico's torn down; and the old bicycle-rack gone from in front of the Public Library (or the Aquarium, as we used to call it then); and now Cribbage. Nowadays—it must be the War—house-parties employ instead elaborate books and charts of games to entertain their guests; and as a result the American WeekEnd has become the absolute and unqualified bore I have been predicting right along. It is all their own fault. I warned them. And if they ever want to find me, they know where I'll be: right here in the chimney corner, all by myself, playing Cribbage.

And of all the books which have brought the American Week-End to such a pretty pass, the latest and by all odds the most obnoxious is that curious volume, just released, in which Mr. Simon and Mr. Schuster with characteristic modesty have been persuaded to reveal at last how they and a few of their friends, or "celebrities", have a good time. One look at these pages, and I confess I am licked. I do not know of any volume in recent years which has built up such a depressing total of dulness, nor presented a more devastating picture of our Better Minds at Play. Here, in these intimate flashes of a celebrity's Home

Life, we have the illuminating spectacle of Mr. Schuster whiling away an evening telling jokes, Mr. Simon amusing himself doing card-tricks, and Mr. Sherwood making whoopee by tossing playing-cards one after another into a derby hat. Not only are we informed that this is how our Undeniably Clever Minds amuse themselves of an evening; we are given long and exhaustive instructions how to go and do likewise. It never seems to have occurred to any of them to go home and get a little sleep.

There is, for example, Mr. Swope's game of Murder, a suggestive title which unfortunately is never quite carried out. There is Dr. Spaeth's Charades. And there is Mr. Broun's favorite Parlor Pastime called Essays, which is confessedly built on the innocent principle of making as many people as possible as unhappy as possible,— a spirit incidentally that is admirably reflected throughout the book. The burden of this gay sport is as follows, according to Mr. Broun: The guests write their names on little slips of paper and drop them into a hat. From this hat each guest in turn selects a name, and spends the next twenty minutes composing an anonymous essay on that person, describing his or her character in the most unpleasant terms, being rude and catty whenever possible, and mentioning anything personal and private which is qualified to make the subject of the essay uncomfortable. The pleasure of this game, Mr. Broun points out gleefully, may be enhanced if the person you are maligning happens to be your best friend. The more that he trusts you, in fact, the funnier it is when you turn on him. When the essays are read aloud, the party is said to be a riot.

Considerable fun, no doubt; but in carrying it out to its logical conclusion might suggest—unless the plan prove a little too red-blooded for the Undeniably Clever Minds who composed the book—that the guest thus maligned be privileged in turn to invite the author of the essay out onto the center of the carpet and punch him squarely upon the nose. As a method of insult this is slightly less sophisticated and clever than writing an essay about him behind his back, to be sure, and consequently it may appeal less to those who relish the original game; but it does have one advantage. There is always the chance that the person thus socked will turn out to be the host.

And so the evidence piles up, incident by incident, celebrity after celebrity, until we are left no choice but to assume that these Undeniably Clever Minds in their off-moments are not quite bright. The total impression of Intellectual Degeneration in America which this book presents is simply colossal. At last we realize to what depths of dulness this passion for Parlor Games has carried us as a nation; and in the face of such devastation I reiterate my Cassandra wail: It is high time we went back to Cribbage.

"OH, HAVE YOU SEEN THE MUFFIN MAN?"

This sample Parlor Game is a favourite pastime at Corey Ford's palatial residence in Larchmont Gardens. Here Mr. Ford invites a few friends like Texas Guinan, Vina Delmar, Walter Winchell, Bebe Daniels, Isabel Patterson, Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, Nicholas Murray Butler and John Riddell for a rousing evening of "Oh, Have You Seen the Muffin Man (the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man)?", or Cribbage. Nobody shows up, and so they all have a swell time. The rules of Cribbage are as follows: The guest3 sit in a circle with their knees facing inward, and sing the first seven verses of the following song, which are all alike. At the end of the seventh verse they all shout "Muffin":

Although the original song is reproduced above, Frank Sullivan often entertains his friends with a crude "take-off" or parody entitled: "Oh, Have You seen the Crumpet Man (the Crumpet Man, the Crumpet Man)?", which is nowheres near as much fun, and isn't Cribbage at all. Frank just calls it Cribbage. It is really Lotto.

I DO not pretend to be an authority on how to play Cribbage. As a matter of fact, I have never played Cribbage in my life. In fact, that is one of the outstanding attractions of Cribbage: the less you know about it, the more you enjoy it. This is its first advantage over all the other games. If you don't play it at all, you have the time of your life.

And the rules are equally vague. Cribbage (the Cribbage I mean, anyway; there is an old-fashioned Game of the same name which is played on a board with little pegs, but it is much too complicated for me) may be played according to almost any rules, so long as the outcome of the game is the same. It is the objective that counts in Cribbage. My Cribbage, anyway.

For example, when such celebrities as Alexander Woollcott, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, Harry Hansen, Ed Wynn, Mae Murray, Dr. Straton, Fannie Brice, John Farrar, and the Boston Chapter of the D.A.R. are gathered together at the home of Vera, Countess of Cathcart, we play it as follows: After distributing pencils and paper, the players are divided into groups of two, the first being called "A" and the second, to avoid jealousy, also being called "A". These groups then write down rapidly any word that comes into their head starting with any initial that comes into their head, provided they thought of the initial before they thought of the word. For example, F. P. Adams thinks of "C" and writes down the word "Cigar". Miss Lynn Fontanne thinks of "S" and writes down "Shuberts". Mr. Mencken thinks of "I", and writes a hook. When each guest has written all the words he can think of that start with initial letters, these words are placed in a derby hat, and the owner of the hat puts it on and walks home. The rest of the guests then do likewise.

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This is called Cribbage.

On the other hand, when such celebrities as Gertrude Ederle, Gilbert Seldes, Lane Bryant, Fay Templeton, the Marx Brothers, Prof. William Lyon Phelps, Percy Crosby, Frances Newman, Bobbie Arnst and Prince William of Sweden are gathered together of an evening at the home of Mrs. Fiske, a very different form of Cribbage is played. Three packs of playing-cards are spread out, face downward, and someone (such a celebrity, let us say, as Otto Kahn) selects any card. He does not look at this card, but tears it up and puts the pieces in his vest-pocket. The next person in turn selects a card, tears it up, and rams it down inside his shoe. The third person selects a card, chews it up and swallows it. This is continued on down the line, each person selecting a card and disposing of it in some like manner, until there is but one card left. The last player removes this card face-downward, so that no one may see it, and goes home with it tucked in his wallet. The rest of the party then go to their respective homes and wonder all night what card it was. No one ever finds out.

This is also called Cribbage.

A third game of Cribbage is that played at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Spaeth, and is extremely popular among such celebrities as Dorothy Parker, Trader Horn, Helen Hayes, Marc Connelly, Nunnally Johnson, Esther Howard, Tom Heeney, Claudette Colbert, Gil Gabriel, Pauline Lord, Clara Bow, Grover Whalen and other Undeniably Clever Minds that form this famous Westport Colony. The guests at the party all think of the first word that leaps naturally into their minds, such as "Home". They next proceed to act it out by syllables, one group taking the first syllable, the next the second syllable, another the third syllable, and so forth. For example, such celebrities as Margot Asquith and Gene Tunney are called upon to act out the first syllable. This is accomplished by having Mr. Tunney pose with a gold-fish aquarium on his head and an umbrella in his hand, while Lady Asquith reclines on her stomach on the piano-stool and spins around rapidly, reciting verses from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

When all the syllables of the word "Home" have been acted out in this manner, the entire company enacts the word as a whole. This is done as follows: Each of the guests goes upstairs, packs his bag, bids Dr. and Mrs. Spaeth a fond farewell, walks rapidly to the station and takes the first train back to the city. In this way Dr. and Mrs. Spaeth guess the word, and everybody wins.

It may be observed, of course, that all these forms of Cribbage are alike in one respect: the objective of each one is to get home. With Parlor Games what they are, and books like What'll We Do Now? on the market, the advantages of such a game are only too apparent. In fact, the prospect of further week-ends has led me to invent my own method of playing Cribbage:

The rules of Cribbage, as I play it myself, are absurdly easy. Whenever I receive an invitation to a Week-End, I tear it once lengthwise and once across, and murmur: "Cribbage". As a result, I am already home before I start. By following this simple formula, you can't lose.