The pack painted by Gringonneur, which has already been fully described, is in Paris; but this is a Tarot pack, which seems to have been the one in use at the French Court just before playing-cards in their modern dress were adopted. The cards prepared for the use of the French King, which were the first to be divided into suits and marked with the symbols of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs, are also preserved in the same place.
In the print-room of the British Museum is a portion of a pack which has the German marks of suits. These cards are stencilled and not printed or painted, and are supposed to date from 1440. They were discovered, as so many others have been, in the cover of an old book. There is another pack dated 1790, manufactured by Rowley & Co. “In it the Spade” (to quote from Mr. Taylor) “is a kind of dagger, of a clumsy, inconvenient form. The Ace of Clubs is a clover-leaf in an oval. Diamonds clearly point to the original conventionalized form, being a veritable diamond, lozenge-shaped, with the facets of the cutting shown in relief. This idea of a quadrangular shape is involved in all the names of the Diamond suit, whether it be panes of glass or paving-tiles. Clubs,” he declares, “has always been an anomaly.”
The colours used in cards vary with the pips or the caprices of the card-makers. In the curious old pack mentioned by Mr. Singer, which dates from 1500 and perhaps earlier, there are only two colours used, and these were red and green; but they were not intended to mark the suits, they were used only on the costumes of the court-card figures. Some early Italian cards mentioned by Zani in his book entitled “Le Carte Parlante,” were executed with a pale ink of a grayish tint, while others were printed with very black ink.
The Germans now call two of their suits Roth and Grün, or Red and Green, the emblems of which are a heart and a leaf.
There is still in existence a curious pack of cards which were presented to Capt. D. Cromline Smith by a Brahmin of India in 1815, which is mentioned by Mr. Chatto. They were supposed to be a thousand years old. The Brahmin considered them to be a great curiosity, as they had been in his family from time immemorial. He did not know whether or not they were perfect, but believed that originally there were two more colours or suits. He said they were not the same as the modern cards, that none knew how to play with them, and that no books give any account of them. The pack consists of eight suits, each containing two honours and ten common cards. The backs are green, and they are painted in many different colours. Mr. Chatto remarks, that if they are even one hundred years old they must have been preserved with great care, and he is inclined to doubt their extreme antiquity.
The oldest set of French Piquet cards, known as the “Corsube pack,” which were invented about 1425, or nearly five hundred years ago, are engraved on wood and coloured. The outlines are printed in pale ink, and the colours appear to have been applied by means of a stencil. A beautiful pack engraved on copper in the latter quarter of the fifteenth century was not intended to be coloured, as the symbols which marked the suits distinguished them without resorting to different hues.
Among other useful inventions, cards have been made for blind people, on the surface of which the pips were raised so as to be easily distinguished by aid of the fingers.
Within the past twenty-five years various alterations have been made in the cards. The court or face cards have been cut in halves, and so arranged that whatever end turns up in the hand the heads are always uppermost. The old figures showing the whole body are now only made for Faro (or Pharaoh) players. The custom of placing the numbers of the cards in their left-hand upper corner has lately crept in, having been demanded by Poker players, who glance rapidly at their hands and close them before betting on them. These cards are known to the card-makers as “Indexed,” but are commonly called “Squeezers.”
Although M. la Croix has declared that Étienne la Vignolles, sometimes called La Hire, who is supposed to have arranged the pack with the pips of Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, and Spades, was inspired chiefly in his choice of these symbols by his heraldic knowledge and his military tastes, and that his Spades and Hearts were shields, and his Diamonds arrow-heads, it is worth noting that the Germans had chosen nearly identical devices to mark their suits, and that the Acorn is a Club, and Leaves and Hearts so closely resemble Spades and the French Cœur, that the similarity in form can hardly be due to a caprice of the card-maker or the fancies of a military man.
Cards have by many people been regarded for centuries with a superstitious awe, and accorded supernatural powers of divination; and it seems more probable that the devices were suggested by various symbols which were probably constantly before the eyes of men of the Middle Ages, particularly in churches or houses devoted to religious purposes.