A Man's Passion, Seen in the Cards by Jonathan Yardley
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The Washington Post May 2, 2006 Tuesday Final Edition Style; C08 , BOOK WORLD A Man's Passion, Seen in the Cards By Jonathan Yardley VULNERABLE IN HEARTS A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Contract Bridge By Sandy Balfour Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 204 pp. $22 The game of contract bridge -- a variation dashing men in tuxedos played for high and improvement upon auction bridge, itself stakes while sipping vodka martinis and an offspring of whist -- was introduced by seducing women of impeccable breeding Harold Stirling Vanderbilt "while on a and pleasingly fluid morals." cruise ship called the SS Finland sailing As that passage suggests, "Vulnerable through the Panama Canal in the fall of in Hearts" is, as Balfour acknowledges, "a 1925," Sandy Balfour writes. It was an book about bridge that [isn't] really about immediate hit with the three men with bridge at all." It is, as its subtitle says, about whom he played, and before long it was a hit fathers and sons, and about how a game can just about everywhere. It featured, according become not merely a metaphor for certain to Vanderbilt, "a number of new and aspects of their lives but also something far exciting features," all of which increased the more than a mere game. The rules and game's complexity and added "enormously," conventions of bridge fascinated Tom Vanderbilt claimed, to its popularity. Balfour, and he saw their deeper One of those who fell under the implications. "Everyone gets dealt some game's spell was a Scotsman named Tom cards," he said. "It's what you make of them Balfour. He learned the game as a youth in that counts. Just remember to trust trumps the 1930s and became an expert player after more than you trust your high cards," to moving during World War II to South which his son adds: "For Dad, character will Africa, where he spent the rest of his life, always count for more than wealth." Later, working as an engineer but concentrating his Balfour elaborates upon the point: greatest passion on the game he loved. At "It was his firm belief that the card the age of 28 he met a young woman "at that once played, even the wrong card, must stay almost obsolete social event, the bridge on the table as it does in bridge, a penalty evening at the home of a mutual friend," card the playing of which one's opponents married her and had three children, two sons may determine at their leisure, which is to and a daughter. He was a purposeful, say at the moment when it may extract from orderly, stubborn man who had a secret side your good self the greatest price. For just as that he expressed through bridge: "Although he loved its rules and their certainties, Dad he learned to play in Scotland and spent loved the fact that bridge has no particular most of his life in South Africa, the sort of etiquette of sympathy, and even the most bridge to which my father aspired, the brilliant players will be able to recount the bridge of elegant squeezes and dramatic intense, public, and drawn-out humiliation coups, had its spiritual home in the smarter of playing a mistakenly bid hand." clubs of London. He could imagine that the Tom Balfour was a very good player, In life as in bridge, success and failure not a brilliant one, but the quality of his play were "old friends to Dad, and he [treated] clearly matters less to his son than what it them both the same." He had the right said about him: "Bridge became a form of temperament for bridge and was expression for Dad, a kind of storytelling accomplished at those aspects of the game -- where the story is on a loop and repeats most notably bidding -- that require itself ad infinitum. It's how he talks concentration and purposefulness. about people. It's how he tells us about Sandy Balfour is himself a bridge himself." Thus, for example, he hated being player, but just to show that not all children dummy -- the person whose cards are on the are chips off the old block, his brother, table while his partner plays the hand -- David, "has never shown any interest in because he was "a natural 'hog' and believed bridge. Not a glimmer. Once when asked to that 'it was in my interest as well as his to let play he said he would rather bathe in soggy him play the hand,' " hogs being "those who lettuce, a vegetable to which he at that time want to play the hand no matter what the had a near pathological aversion." cost . a well-known phenomenon in Yet after their father's death in the bridge clubs." summer of 2003, David sat down for a For Tom Balfour, playing bridge "was round of bridge with the three other to enter a purer world and to leave behind surviving family members, and when he the noisy and dislocated distractions of other became declarer (the player who bids trumps worlds." He knew that the game "allows for and plays the dummy's hand and his own), the most exquisite cruelty and aggression as he ran out the cards with professional well as moments of extreme beauty," and he aplomb: a lovely moment on which Balfour appreciated all such moments as they arose. ends this lovely book. He understood perfectly the lesson absorbed The question remains, though: In this by Ely Culbertson, the first great bridge busy world in which contract bridge is no player and the person who, more than any longer so widely or so passionately played, other, spread the game around the world: will many readers be able to make "Everything is an opportunity. connections with "Vulnerable in Hearts"? Everything is possible. Wind and rain, The short answer is: absolutely. The lovely sunshine and snow -- all are the same for the title makes clear why. In contract bridge, a bridge player, for one's success in the game team that wins a game is thereafter depends not on whether you win or lose, but vulnerable because it is liable to higher on how you cope with what you have. You penalties if it loses but higher rewards if it are not playing the cards, but the people." continues to win. The phrase "vulnerable in Or, as Balfour writes elsewhere, hearts" thus has obvious meaning for bridge, "Each hand of bridge is a story. Character and no less obvious meaning for human and plot are determined in advance. Cutting relationships. That Sandy Balfour has for partners determines who will play the managed to connect the two is one of the hand. The deal decides with what. But the many strengths of this original, unusual and narrative unfolds only as each card is surprisingly moving book. played, and . the story is both physical and psychological." .