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• Playing the Dummy:Maugham, Smartphones, and the End of Elegance
• Eric Bronson

I

On the Russian Trans-Siberian train from Vladivostok to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), an American businessman won't stop talking for the entire ten-day journey. In his story, "A Chance Acquaintance," W. Somerset Maugham describes this 1917 meeting between Ashenden, a British character loosely based on himself, and the chatty American, named Harrington. The two passengers are blissfully unmoved by the revolution unfolding all around them. Ashenden casually suggests the two of them try and find another pair to pass the time playing bridge. Harrington refuses. "It beats me how an intelligent man can waste his time card-playing," Harrington asserts, "and of all the unintellectual pursuits I have ever seen it seems to me that solitaire is the worst. It kills conversation. Man is a social animal and he exercises the highest part of his nature when he takes part in social intercourse."¹ Ashenden doesn't understand the American's distaste for playing cards, especially bridge. "'There is a certain elegance in wasting time,' said Ashenden . … 'Besides,' he added with bitterness, 'you can still talk.'" [End Page 477]

Like many of his fictional characters, Maugham enjoyed eloquent, "time-wasting" games like bridge. Unlike solitaire, bridge encourages social interaction. Once, when his confounded bridge partner confronted Maugham with evidence that his high-class opponents were cheating, Maugham was nonplussed. "They gave us double Martinis to start with," he noted, "a slap-up lunch with a particularly good bottle of white Burgundy and old brandy with our coffee."² The dishonesty was irrelevant. For Maugham, a good bridge game, like the attendant conversation, should help temper one's moral outrage and skim over the unruly passions that so often plague our public and private lives. Elegance, for Maugham, meant presenting the appearance of calm and respectability, especially when such presentations conflicted with one's more turbulent emotions.

In Maugham's short story "The Three Fat Women of Antibes," the women around the bridge table desperately try to keep up appearances, both physically and emotionally. When passionate arguments inevitably threaten to undo the air of genteel conversation, Lena, the newest addition to the table, states, "I think it's such a pity to quarrel over bridge. … After all, it's only a game."³ But while it might be true that bridge is "only a game," Maugham took games seriously. Parlor games like bridge were spaces to practice and perfect the social mores on which colonial hierarchies were solidified. In Maugham's England, the game of life required an elegant performance of the many roles the genteel class was expected to play. That performance was predicated on a relentless effort to keep up ordinary appearances by regulating emotional displays. As Maugham wrote in a 1944 article for Good Housekeeping, a good bridge game rewards people who are "truthful, clearheaded, and considerate," characteristics essential "for playing the more important game of life."⁴

More than any other card game, bridge is built on conventions. Etiquette dictates how cards are shuffled, passed, and played. While there is always some room for surprise and risk, everyone around the table needs to know the bidding and playing conventions to ensure the best possible game. In every hand a silent partner, known as the dummy, lays their cards face up, thereby taking themself out of the action.

The persistence of such conventions is a holdover from the game of whist, the predecessor of bridge. In an early-nineteenth-century story, "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist," essayist Charles Lamb describes an elderly whist player who enjoys the elegant waste of time that such long card games encourage. While dances and parties help build social skills around untrustworthy passions, card games like whist, and later bridge, [End Page 478] were more like "a long meal; not like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships." This kind of congeniality mattered to serious people like Mrs. Battle, people who "despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things."⁵

The game of bridge...

中文翻译：

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扮演假人：毛姆、智能手机和优雅的终结

以下是内容的简短摘录，以代替摘要：

• 扮演假人：毛姆、智能手机和优雅的终结
• 埃里克·布朗森

我

在从符拉迪沃斯托克开往彼得格勒（现圣彼得堡）的俄罗斯横贯西伯利亚的火车上，一位美国商人在整个十天的旅程中不停地说话。毛姆 (W. Somerset Maugham) 在他的小说《一次偶然的相识》中描述了 1917 年阿申登（一个大致以他本人为原型的英国人物）和健谈的美国人哈灵顿 (Harrington) 的这次会面。两名乘客幸福地对周围展开的革命无动于衷。阿申登漫不经心地建议他们两个尝试再找一对打桥牌来打发时间。哈灵顿拒绝了。哈灵顿断言：“一个聪明人怎么会浪费时间去玩牌，这让我很困惑，在我见过的所有非智力活动中，纸牌是最糟糕的。它扼杀了谈话。人是一种社会性动物。”当他参加社交活动时，他就发挥了他本性的最高部分。” ¹阿申登不明白美国人对扑克牌的厌恶，尤其是桥牌。“‘浪费时间有一种优雅的感觉，’阿申登说。……‘此外，’他苦涩地补充道，‘你仍然可以说话。’” [第 477 页完]

像他的许多虚构人物一样，毛姆喜欢桥牌等雄辩的、“浪费时间”的游戏。与纸牌游戏不同，桥牌鼓励社交互动。有一次，当他困惑的桥牌搭档向毛姆提出他的高级对手作弊的证据时，毛姆感到困惑。“他们首先给了我们双份马提尼酒，”他指出，“这是一顿美味的午餐，还有一瓶特别好的勃艮第白兰地和老白兰地，搭配我们的咖啡。” ²不诚实行为无关紧要。对于毛姆来说，一场好的桥牌游戏，就像随之而来的谈话一样，应该有助于缓和一个人的道德愤怒，并消除经常困扰我们公共和私人生活的不守规矩的激情。对毛姆来说，优雅意味着表现出平静和受人尊敬的样子，尤其是当这种表现与一个人更加动荡的情绪发生冲突时。

在毛姆的短篇小说《安提比斯的三个胖女人》中，桥牌桌周围的女人拼命地试图在身体和情感上保持外表。当激烈的争论不可避免地威胁到优雅谈话的氛围时，最新加入的莉娜表示，“我认为在桥牌上争吵真是太遗憾了……毕竟，这只是一场游戏。” ³虽然桥牌可能“只是一种游戏”，但毛姆却认真对待游戏。像桥牌这样的客厅游戏是实践和完善巩固殖民等级制度的社会习俗的空间。在毛姆时代的英国，生活的游戏需要优雅地扮演上流阶层所扮演的许多角色。那场表演的基础是通过调节情绪表现来不懈地努力保持平常的外表。正如毛姆在 1944 年为《好管家》发表的一篇文章中所写的那样，好的桥牌游戏奖励那些“诚实、头脑清醒、体贴”的人，这些品质对于“玩人生中更重要的游戏”至关重要。⁴

与其他纸牌游戏相比，桥牌更注重惯例。礼仪规定了如何洗牌、传递牌和打牌。虽然总是有一些惊喜和风险的空间，但桌子周围的每个人都需要了解投标和比赛惯例，以确保尽可能最好的比赛。在每手牌中，都有一个沉默的伙伴（称为明手）将牌面朝上，从而使自己退出行动。

这些惯例的持续存在是桥牌前身惠斯特游戏的延续。在十九世纪早期的故事《巴特尔夫人对惠斯特的看法》中，散文家查尔斯·兰姆描述了一位老年惠斯特玩家，他享受如此长时间的纸牌游戏所鼓励的优雅的浪费时间。虽然舞蹈和聚会有助于培养围绕不值得信赖的激情的社交技能，但像惠斯特和后来的桥牌这样的纸牌游戏，[结束第 478 页]更像是“一顿丰盛的晚餐；不像卡德里尔，一场抓举的盛宴。一两个橡皮可能会配合——延长了一个晚上的时间。他们给了时间来建立根深蒂固的友谊。” 这种志趣相投对于像巴特尔夫人这样严肃的人来说很重要，他们“鄙视肤浅，看得比事物的颜色更深刻”。⁵

桥牌游戏...