Over the course of this series we've looked at the wargaming of a number of well-known authors. Robert Louis Stevenson led us into this history, closely followed by H.G. Wells, who we often fondly refer to as the Father of Wargaming. His Little Wars is the classic text in our hobby because it was one of the first and because it remains one of the most fun to read -- not surprising from an author of his caliber. Stevenson and Wells weren't the only literati to participate in wargames, or to include them in their writing. We'll visit Wells again, but let's first look at some other examples.

I hesitate to bring this one up. T.H. White, author of The Once and Future King, gives us Darkness at Pemberley, a crime novel set in Cambridge University and Derbyshire, England. The story is one of murder and a ruthlessly brilliant killer who seems able to elude every effort of the police inspector and his civilian allies to end his reign of terror. Unfortunately, wargaming plays a merely momentary, and ephemeral role in the story. Unfortunate, because I picked up this story because of the wargame reference and, other than that reference, it is one of the worst books I've ever read! There's no point in reviewing its deficiencies here, but, if you'd like to see the wargaming reference, borrow it from a library, don't pay hard-earned cash for it. Please!

Actually, the wargaming part of the story is frustrating in its brevity. The description of the game is merely enough to whet one's appetite, then the story moves on. One can only imagine that even non-wargaming readers would have preferred a longer exposition on this aspect of the story in place of what actually came next. The wargame, as it turns out, is merely an excuse to introduce us to one of the main characters and his eccentricity. It occurs in a flashback to two years prior to the other events in the story when the inspector is on vacation and has his tire shot out by the fire of a butler's model artillery. An egalitarian master, this English gentleman plays wargames with the head of his household staff. Of course, we're most interested in the fact that they're using gunpowder in their gaming! And weapons powerful enough to shoot out the tire of a passing vehicle, at that.

Sir Charles, the gentleman in the tale, came to wargaming as a way to amuse himself after a stint in prison (wrongly accused, of course) caused his neighbors to shun him. He first used fleets of model ships on the small lake his estate contained, but when they were too battered to continue afloat, moved to land based gaming "and elaborated a game which had some of the interest of chess." (White, 100) His figures came from France and were of the highest quality with artillery specially produced by Basset-Lowke, a premiere model maker of the day which is still in business. "These pieces fired real shell, made of china, and had a very natural effect." (101)

Well, let's not summarize, here's the rest of the piece:

The battleground was divided by a high canvas sheet into two halves, and on either side of this sheet the combatants -- - Charles and Elizabeth [Charles' sister], or the butler -- entrenched their armies for two days prior to the battle. At zero hour the canvas was removed, and, after tossing for initiative the battle began. The rules became increasingly elaborate.

The contending armies moved in turn, each turn being reckoned at twenty-five points. These points were controlled by a table of movements. Thus for the loss of one point one cavalryman could advance ten yards, or one infantryman could advance three yards. The discharge of a howitzer cost five points. The white army might select to expend its turn by discharging five shell from the howitzers, and the black army might reply with a ten yards charge by twenty-five dragoons or a five yard charge by fifty. Or either side might split up its points ; firing one shell, advancing five cavalrymen ten yards, and fifteen infantrymen three yards. The adjustments became more and more delicately balanced, and the rules of capture more and more specialized.

The impetus of the attacking force was allowed for in a charge. Moves could be commuted and saved up for a mass attack. Tanks, machine guns, mines, flammenwerfers and even poison gas were introduced. Elizabeth and the butler found that protection was necessary. The combatants operated thereafter from behind triplex screens. (101-2)

Our inspector became a wargamer in the aftermath of losing his tire, not so much because of the game, but because he fell in love with Elizabeth. And can we blame him? After all she spent days in the trenches with toy soldiers! Too bad the rest of the story had to intrude, as these few paragraphs are the high point of the book. (OK, so I read too many rule books -- it's still the best written passage in the story.)

It's obvious that White had an intimate familiarity with this type of game. Tossing for initiative, the system of movement, and the relative values of various types of troops all demonstrate that White had probably been in the wargaming trenches himself. Certainly, he didn't create this out of whole cloth. It was a long, dreary walk to this part of the story, and I was disappointed that the game wasn't fleshed out more. I guess we're fortunate that White moved on to other literature. This brief glimpse of wargaming certainly wasn't worth the poor storytelling surrounding it.

G. K. Chesterton, the author of the Father Brown mystery stories, among many others, was a gamer as a child and admits, in his Autobiography to continuing play as an adult. His "No. 999 in the vast library-catalogue of the books I have never written" was a story of a successful businessman who was found out to be still playing with toys, specifically tin soldiers. Chesterton admits that he is this person, though perhaps not so successful in business as his possible hero, and laments that play isn't more prevalent among adults.(38-9) Our kind of guy. He makes another important point that others we looked at in the article on wargaming and children would dispute. Children, and one hopes, adults can tell the difference between playing Cops and Robbers and actually being a robber. While he doesn't specifically mention it, I'm sure that Chesterton would include playing with toy soldiers and rabid warmongering as distinguishable activities.

The New Machiavelli is a somewhat autobiographical novel of H.G. Wells. Its main interest to us is its descriptions of the protagonist's childhood and adolescent wargaming. This fortunate child was blessed with family who provided him with hundreds of hardwood blocks which were transformed in to cities, gun emplacements and fortresses to be fought over with the 200 odd lead soldiers they'd also provided on birthdays and on any other occasion he could successfully cajole them. Even as a child, he had to contend with the lack of space which afflicts most of us. The room where he played had to be cleaned, at least once in a while, and if he failed to heed the warnings of impending cleanliness, his soldiers often ended up tossed unceremoniously into boxes from which they hadn't come.

His soldiers included American Indians, who died when contacted by civilization, in the form of his mother's shoes. There were china Zulus, and it also briefly included "a detestable lot of cavalrymen, undersized and gilt all over, given me by a maiden aunt, and very much what one might expect from an aunt, that I used as Nero used his Christians to ornament my public buildings; and I finally melted some into fratricidal bullets, and therewith blew the rest to flat splashes of lead by means of a brass cannon in the garden."(15) His father was a surreptitious participant in these games, providing little extras like tigers hiding in the "bush", or suggesting props to help with constructing the scenes of the battles surging back and forth across the floor -- a bit of corrugated paper to serve as a tin roof, for example.(17)

In his teen years, our hero's interest in wargaming is rekindled when he meets a kindred spirit. They first cautiously share their mutual military imaginings where they create mental images of battles fought on the ground over which they're traveling. While this turns out to be more successful as a solitary activity, a trip to a wargame conducted by military officers leads them to creating a game of their own. Their game was fought with "nearly a couple hundred lead soldiers, some excellent spring cannons that shot hard and true at six yards, hills of books and a constantly elaborated set of rules."(79) Certainly we see shades of Little Wars here. The two friends kept their games secret from others among their acquaintances. "They would not have understood."(79) Wells mentions no adult wargaming in The New Machiavelli which was written about 14 years after Little Wars. Perhaps we see the reason for this absence in his Experiment in Autobiography where we learn that our hero has feet of clay.

Wells tells us, in this autobiography, of his adolescent days at school where, much as his hero in the earlier volume, he conducts great battles and campaigns in his daydreaming walks about the surrounding towns and countryside. "For many years my adult life was haunted by the fading memories of those early war fantasies."(75) This was the period when Little Wars appeared, and Wells tells of it with fond amusement. But now we lose him as he says that he feels he "grew up out of that stage". He then mentions Churchill, along with several other well known people who had similar youthful experiences, as remaining "puerile in their political outlook because of its persistence."(76) Now, one can't fault anyone else for developing a more pacific attitude after the horrors of World War I, but for Wells, whose arrogant naivetŽ led him to believe that he could with a conversation, or two, convince Joseph Stalin to change his ways, to call someone else puerile is an outrageous joke. (683)

In the end, Wells left us Little Wars, so we'll keep him as a somewhat tarnished member of our pantheon. His youthful enthusiasm gave us a delightful beginning to our history, but let's look to Chesterton, who wasn't afraid to acknowledge the value of play at all ages, and who saw the difference between playacting and reality as something that children and adults were capable of recognizing, as a more satisfactory member of the literary wargaming community.

References:

Chesterton, G. K. The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1936.
Wells, H. G. Experiment in Autobiography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1934.
Wells, H. G. The New Machiavelli. New York: Duffield, 1927.
White, T. H. Darkness at Pemberley. London: Gollancz, 1991, c1932.
http://www.bassett-lowke.com/about.htm
Chesterton: http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/pictures/index.html
Wells: http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/ ; http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/UK/index.html
White: http://www2.netdoor.com/~moulder/thwhite/

More Roots of Wargaming

Robert Louis Stevenson
H.G. Wells
Shambattle
Children and Toy Soldiers
Links Between Military Miniature Collecting and Gaming
Jack Scruby
1962
Table Top Talk Magazine
Naval Wargames Part 1
Naval Wargames Part 2
Air Wargames
Horse and Musket I
Napoleon Rides Again
Featherstone Again
Wargaming Literati