ENGLAND.
SOME of the most interesting collections of old playing-cards can be seen in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the South Kensington Museum, and the British Museum in London. The latter collection has a historian of its own; and the variety, number, and beauty of the packs in this place are minutely recorded, and form an interesting study by themselves. By their aid it is possible to note the various changes and modifications which have crept in among the costumes of the court, and the pips of the suit cards. The early packs seem to have been imported from Spain, as they bear the old symbols of coin, maces, swords, and cups. Other packs have been found which were stencilled with the grelots (bells) commonly found on the early German cards; but finally the French card came into common use, and these were adopted and have been universally accepted in England, and by her introduced into her colonies, so that these marks of Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades are found all over the globe.
Plate 10.
The English and American card of the present day differs slightly from those in use in France. The latter have discarded obsolete costumes and fanciful devices when designing the figures of the court cards, and the dresses are modernized, the faces are shaded, and the whole figure looks more like a pretty picture than the cherished card dear to the heart of the Englishman, whose Kings are dressed somewhat after the fashion of Henry the Eighth, the Queens like his mother, Elizabeth of York, and the Knaves in the costume adopted by the lower classes in the days of Chaucer.
It is perhaps to the overthrow of the court-card family during the French Revolution that this radical change in their costumes is due. When the monarchs of the suits were beheaded and their places taken by the sages, philosophers, etc., of the day, it was natural that the obsolete costumes should disappear with them, and that when the royalties of card-land returned to their thrones, the card-maker should adopt the costumes then in fashion in which to clothe the royal family. There having been no such disaster in England, the Kings of the cards have peacefully ruled for several hundred years, clad in the garments of their ancestors, which have only become quainter and more peculiar with the lapse of years, so that now they are often merely lines and dots, and are hardly to be recognized as ermine-trimmed garments which were originally covered with correct heraldic devices.
Plate 11.
The first introduction of cards into England (for it has never been claimed that they were invented there) is a matter of dispute; but it is probable that they were known in that country soon after the Second Crusade, at the latter end of the thirteenth century. A passage has been found in the Wardrobe Rolls of Edward the First (1278) which is pointed to by some writers who wish to prove that cards were adopted in England before they were known in other countries; and they claim that this is the earliest mention of a game of cards in any authenticated register. In this account is recorded the following passage: “Waltero Sturton ad opus regis ad ludendum ad Quatuor Reges viii. s. vd.” But it by no means follows that “Four Kings” meant cards; it might have been any game, and may have been intended for Chess played with four armies, each one headed by a king,—a game which is by no means obsolete, and which has already been described. Edward the First had served in Syria for five years before his accession to the throne of England, and some writers assert that he brought cards home with him; but Chaucer, who died in 1400, never mentions cards, although in enumerating the amusements of the day he says,—
“They dancen and they play at chess and tables.”
The year 1465 is the earliest date at which any positive mention is made of cards in England, and this was in a law which forbade their use except at certain specified times and seasons.
It is probable that cards first made their way into the country from Spain, as the oldest packs which have been found in England bear the symbols of cups, money, maces, swords; and the word spade (the Spanish name for one of their suits) seems to have become attached to the French pique after the cards of the latter nation became domiciled in the British Isles.
Mr. Singer, quoting from another author, says that “there is little doubt but that the cards used during the reign of Philip and Mary and probably the more early part of Elizabeth’s were Spanish, though they were afterwards changed for the French, being of a more simple figure and more easily imported.” The wars between England and France, during which the army of the former nation were in their sister country, may have led to the adoption of the French card; but it is strange that the costumes on the English cards should date from an earlier period than the reign of Mary or Elizabeth.
“Queen Elizabeth as well as her sister Mary,” says Mr. Chatto, “was a card-player,” and lost her temper over the game, in which she did not resemble Queen Anne of Austria, of whom one of her ladies-in-waiting, Madame de Motteville, says: “She played like a queen, without passion of greed or gain.” During Elizabeth’s reign, in 1582, the Master of the Revels was commanded “to show on St. Stephen’s day at night before her Majesty at Wyndesore a Comodie or Morral devised on a game of the cardes,” to be performed by the children of her Majesty’s Chapel. In the comedy “Alexander and Campaspe,” which was shown by the same children at Windsor before the Queen, was the following pretty little song, quoted by Mr. Chatto:—
“Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses. Cupid paid.
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother’s doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on ’s cheek (but none knows how);
With these the chrystal on his brow
And then the dimple of his chin;—
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes.
She won, and Cupid blind doth rise.
Oh, Love, has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?”
“It is probable that Primero was one of the earliest games of cards played in England,” says Mr. Singer; “and it continued to be the most fashionable one throughout the reigns of Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary, Elizabeth, and James.” Shakspeare makes Falstaff say,—
“I never prospered since I forswore myself at Primero;”
showing that it was a well known game at that period. “An alteration or improvement of this game became,” says the same author, “known as El Hombre (The man), or Ombre, which is the national game of Spain.” It was played generally by three persons, at small three-cornered tables; and these little card-tables are frequently found among collections of old furniture.
That Ombre, or its successor, Quadrille, was a fashionable game at no very ancient period, is proved by the inimitable description given in Cranford of the card-parties held in that mildewed little place. It says: “The drawing-rooms contained small tables, on which were displayed a kaleidoscope, conversation cards, puzzle cards (tied together to an interminable length with faded pink satin ribbon). The card-table was an animated scene to watch,—four old ladies’ heads, with niddle-noddling caps all nearly meeting over the middle of the table in their eagerness to whisper quick enough and loud enough, ‘Basto, madam, you have Spadille, I believe.’”
Plate 12.
A game much in favour among the common folks at the latter end of the sixteenth century was, says Singer, “an old one called Trump, which was probably the Triumfo of the Spaniards and Italians.” In that amusing performance “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” first acted in 1561, Dame Chat says to Diccon,—
“We sat at trump man by the fire;”
and afterward to her maid she says,—
“There are five trumps besides the Queen.”
Trump bore some resemblance to Whist or Ruff (another name for that game); and it is noticeable that these two words should still be used in playing Whist, and that both of them signify the same thing. We are told by Mr. Singer that Whist and Honours (alias Slam) were games commonly known in all parts of England, and that “every child of eight years old has competent knowledge in that recreation.”
In a book published in 1787, called “The Complete Gamester,” by Richard Seymour, Esq., we find the following sentence: “Whist, vulgarly called Whisk, is said to be a very ancient game among us, and the foundation of all English games upon the cards.” It was probably invented about the period of Charles the Second. Its original name was Whist, or the Silent game. It is believed that “it was not played upon principles until about 1736; before that time it was chiefly confined to servants’ halls. The rules laid down by the gentlemen who frequented the Crown Coffee House in Bedford Row were: ‘To play from a straight suit; to study your partner’s hand as much as your own; never to force your partner unnecessarily, and to attend to the score.’” At one time it was usual to deal four cards together. Horace Walpole, writing in 1767 from Paris, says: “The French have adopted the two dullest things the English have,—Whist and Richardson’s novels.”
The Whist-players of the last century would be astonished to see the developments a hundred years have made in this game. At the present time the books which have been written on it alone would fill a small book-case,—the one by “Cavendish,” who is the acknowledged authority on the game, having reached its seventeenth edition; and it has become so complicated that its rules require profound study, and so fashionable that teachers of its mysteries have sprung up in all directions. Several ladies have adopted the profession of Whist-teachers, and have found it a most profitable one. One person has reduced the system of teaching it to a science, and has also invented an arrangement by which “a singleton” can play a four-handed game of Whist. This is done by placing an ingenious combination of letters and figures on the backs of the ordinary playing-cards, which can be sorted according to these instead of being dealt in the usual way. The cards having been sorted are placed face downward on the table, and then turned up in regular order exactly as if played by four persons. As they have been arranged so as to illustrate certain styles of play or exemplify well known rules, the games they play are not only most amusing, but also instructive. The credit of this novel invention is due to Mr. Frederic Foster, a well known teacher of the noble game of Whist; and his pack is known as the “Self-playing Cards.”
The national games of the different countries are said to be: Italy, Minchiate; Germany, Landsknechtspiel, or Lansquenet; France, Piquet; Spain, El Hombre; America, Poker.