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.