"'Tis easy as lying."--_Hamlet_
It is safe to presume that even the most inquisitive book-hunters of
the present day, and few of the fellowship during two or three
generations past, have encountered the scarce and curious little
volume here presented, as in a friendly literary resurrection--
Robert Antrobus's "The Square of Sevens, and the Parallelogram."
Its mathematical title hardly hints at the amusement that the book
affords. With its solemn faith in the gravity of its mysteries, with
its uncertain spellings and capital-icings such as belong to even the
Eighteenth Century's early part, with its quaint phrases and sly
observations (all the time sticking strictly close to business), it has
a literary character, as well as me occult, that is quite its own.
Fortune-telling with cards and belief in fortune-telling with cards--
like a hundred greater and lesser follies of the mind--were straws
floating along the current of British life, intellectual and social,
during the reign of George the Second. This was the case, in spite
of the enlightening influences of religion, science, and philosophy.
Modish society was addicted to matters over which argument was
hardly worth while--in which respect we find modish society the
same in all epochs. Our ancestresses particularly were often
charming women, and almost as often sensible women; but, like
the men of Athens, they were too superstitious. Often were they
such in a fond and amusing degree. Lady Betty or Lady Selina--for
that matter, even Sir Tompkin and my lord Puce--might be spirited
men and women of the world. But they did not repudiate the idea
of ghosts. They abhorred a mirror's breakage. They disliked a
Friday's errand. They shuddered over a seven-times sneeze or at a
howling dog at midnight. And the gentle sex, especially, would
and did tell fortunes almost as jealously as play quadrille and
piquet. Let us be courteous to them. Let us remember that Esoteric
Buddhism, Faith Healing, and Psychic Phenomena were not yet
enjoying systematic cultivation and solemn propagandism; and
that relatively few dying folk were allowed to "go on with their
dying" as part of a process of healing which excludes medicine
and insists on the conviction that the invalids are not ill!
But to our "Square of Sevens"--with which even a Gallio may
deign to be diverted--especially if in using it the air is found to be
full of coincidences. The story of the book is already alluded to, as
odd. The inquisitive reader may be referred to "certain copies
only." Therein, "inserted by Afterthought on the Author's part"
(and therefore in a mere fraction of whatever represented the
extremely small edition of the work), may be sought the "Prefatory
Explication, made for the Benefit of My Friends, Male and
Female." In recounting the origin of the manual, its author is
candid, but at the same time too long-winded for quoting entire.
Enough to say, as the substitute for a lengthy tale of facts, that
prior to the year 1731 the author of "The Square of Sevens," Mr.
Robert Antrobus, "a Gentleman of Bath," was called in the month
of November to pass sundry months in Tretelly, that antique but
still lively little town of Cornwall. He describes himself
as "exceedingly vexed and inconvenienced by Summons on my
Affairs connected with the Parcelling of a piece of Property,
unexpectedly acquired." Mr. Antrobus--who, by-the-bye, may
perhaps be associated in the memories of readers of minor
Eighteenth-Century correspondence with such notables of the day
as William Pitt, Dr. Johnson, Admiral Byng, Mark Akenside,
William Pulteney, the Duke of Cumberland, and many others of
the time--was a shy, silent man of wealth. Also was he one of
considerable learning, out of the way and other, including an
interest in gypsies and gypsy language remarkable for the period.
He lodged at "the only Inn of any suitability" in the place. Thereby
be made an unexpected acquaintance. Before a week had elapsed,
he became much interested in the fact that under the same roof,
but in more bumble quarters than his own, was lying and dying
another stranger in the place. This was a man of some forty years,
known only as "Mr. George." His home is not a clear matter, nor
that he had any relatives except a little girl of six or seven years
old, his child. It is likely that in alluding to him in the "Prefatory
Explication" mentioned, Mr. Antrobus disguised what was already
obscure, and that "Mr. George" of the "troublesome Talk of the
Inn-people" is an abbreviated pseudonyme.
Mr. Antrobus was a humane and benevolent man, as well as an
inquisitive one. He delicately assisted to make the sick guest
more comfortable in his wasting body. He won his confidence,
genuinely compassionated his anxieties, and presently pledged
himself to a most kindly office--the care and provision in future
for the child soon to be fatherless; long before this time
motherless. Whether she was motherless by the actual death of the
parent, or not, Mr. Antrobus did not learn, or does not tell. But he
did learn, by a confession, that "Mr. George" was really George
X--, a gypsy, and one withal of unusual education and breeding.
More remarkable still, he was a gypsy intensely embittered
against' a race from which he had lived for many years wholly
withdrawn. The cause of such sentiments and renegade existence
good Mr. Antrobus "tryed in vain, with much Delicacy" to
discover. At the clearest, it appeared to him to date from the dying
man's marriage and from some stormy period of his career. In any
case, the renunciation of "Mr. George" in lot and part in gypsydom
was of savage sincerity. He would not tolerate the idea of his child
being left open to such influences; and, as a matter of her happy
fortune in meeting with our kind Bath antiquarian, she never
encountered them.
Recognising in his benefactor not only a generous man, but one
genuinely interested in the whole topic of gypsy life, character,
and affairs (moderately studied at the time preceding a Borrow or
a Leland), "George X--" entertained Mr. Antrobus "for hours and
dayes" in what must have been an extraordinarily free parliament.
It discussed not merely the concerns in general, but the secrets, of
Egypt. "Mr. George" bad travelled much. He bad acquired a deal
of special knowledge delightful to Antrobus. It is provoking that
Antrobus did not commit more of it to paper. But, among other
matters, Mr. Antrobus was enlightened on the secrets of looking
into _dukkeripens_ in a degree of minuteness that few gorgios
enjoy.
As part of this last confidence--the rarest from one of the Blood--
did George X-- disclose in course of certain séances the "Square of
Sevens," that most particular and potent method of prying into the
past and present and future. In it figures the wonderful
"Parallelogram," with its "Master Cards," "Influences," and so on--
which our book records. Moreover, George X-- declared that
whereas most of his race can or will use only corrupted or quite
frivolous versions of it, this statement set its real and rare self
forth with the utmost purity, value, and completeness, in a degree
"known to only a few of all the families of Egypt." As such a
weighty bit of Black Art did Mr. Antrobus make its details into a
book. As such he printed it. Doubtless he thought that a betrayed
secret may lawfully be re-betrayed as fully as possible.
Nevertheless, it was not so much of a re-betrayal. For less than
what a publisher of this day would call one fair-sized edition of
"The Square of Sevens," printed for Antrobus by the great John
Gowne, of The Mask book-shop, has ever appeared. And, to
account for the semi-privacy surrounding the little work, must be
set forth the dolesome incident of a printing-house fire burning,
"all except about a dozen or so of copies," before there had been
any "distribution of the Book" among the author's "Friends, Male
or, Female, or to the Publick." By some sudden change of his own
mind or his conscience, Mr. Antrobus did not order any new
edition. The prefatory "Afterthought" mentioned may be found,
only if stuck in some of the copies of the volume--doubtless by
quick and clumsy after-pastings.
Why Antrobus did not give the volume real currency is not known.
That he was urged to do so is certain. It is likely, however, that
about this same time some pecuniary losses withheld him from
such expensive bobbies as printing books. He returned to Bath,
and died there in 1740. We have no particulars of the event, nor
are there more than allusions to it in the journal of the date or in
the letters of contemporaries. Lady Lavinia Pitt, however,
mentions the disease as the smallpox, then so much dreaded.
He left no family--except his young ward, the mysterious daughter
of "Mr. George"--of the Tretelly Inn. To her Antrobus had given
his name, and she inherited half his estate. Shortly after her kind
guardian's death she married an Exeter gentleman of high family.
Her father, "Mr. George," died in the course of Mr. Antrobus's
stay at Tretelly.
To some beaux and belles of the reigns of George II. and George
III. this book, originating in the conversation of another George--
George the Unknown--could well seem an interesting matter. All
the more might it be so in view of its scarceness, from the first.
There are no more copies of it, despite the fact that fashionable
dilettanti in things occult have borne it in mind. Could anything be
more characteristic of Horace Walpole than to find him in a letter,
from serene Strawberry Hill, confessing--to no purpose--that he is
"desirous of getting hold of that damned queer old woman's
fortune-telling book, by Bob Antrobus." In the Diary of the
sprightly Louisa Josepha Adelaide, Countess of Bute (afterward so
unfortunate a wife and an even more unfortunate mother), she
describes a droll scene at a Scotch castle one evening, in which the
unexpected statements of "The Square of Sevens" as to the lives
and characters of the company "put to the blush several persons of
distinction" who rashly tempted its wisdom--especially including
the aged Earl of Lothian. For what Lady Morgan thought of it, and
the characteristic story of the peculiar terms on which she offered
"to sell her copy to Archbishop Dacre," the reader is referred to the
Bentijack Correspondence.
It is on its face a model method of fortune-telling with cards;
easily the first for completeness and directness. Our author, in a
letter to his cousin, Henry Antrobus, quotes the eminent Brough as
styling it not only the most authoritative little book on its topic,
certainly the most interesting one; hit the only volume on the
subject "which is not a confusing and puerile farrago of nonsense--
troublesome to look into and unsatisfactory to acquire."
Certainly our ancient enthusiasts record can be learned and used
systematically, exactly as is the case with such excellent and
approved systems of chiromancy as Mr. Heron-Allen's and others.
It may be thought fortunate for modern students of card-divination
that the work has survived, so complete and clear. Its discreetness,
too, is delightfully adroit, when it suggests that its tenses, past,
present, and future, are not as definite as one might desire.
There is no copy of the hook in the British Museum, nor in the
Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, nor in any public collection of
America, England, or France that I can name. One worn but
perfect MS copy is to be found in a private library in the United
States. Another might yet be sought in far Australia, if still owned
by descendants of Mr. Antrobus's young ward. Only by a special
personal interest in the matter, and with a sense of risk to an
heirloom, I am permitted to make the manuscript for this edition.
Undoubtedly, as "R.A.," Mr. Antrobus dressed the mystic
"Significances" of the cards in the book's "Tavola" in English less
blunt and uncultivated than they came to his ears from the lips of
the dying "George--." But that he took no other liberties of
the least consequence is pretty certain. He respected the
"Supernaturall" here, as in his grave brochure on the Cock Lane
Ghost, which spectre, alas! mightily took him in. And, by the way,
the reader will please observe in his pages here following that
though the method of "building" and so of forming the "Square,"
and of "reducing" it, seems at first glance bothersome and
complicated, it is only a childishly easy performance in the way of
making a square of seven rows of seven cards, and then of making
the rows only three cards deep, at most! Crazy superstition and the
aim at mummery have added the details of process that seem
tedious. And, really, they are not ineffective in a drawing-room.
What we read of thus as carefully put together, conscientiously
printed as a thing to be taken with seriousness, in its author's time,
may in our social day serve a lighter end--and entertain the parlor,
rather than awe the boudoir. With this intent, as well as in offering
something of a literary curio, the present Editor assists it toward
the glimpses of--not the moon, but the electric chandelier. And its
Nineteenth-Century sponsor hopes that many curious and pleasant
"fortunes" may be read by it; and that in its pages the ominous
Spade, the mischief-working "Influencing-Card," the stern
"Master-Card," the evil "Female or Male Enemy," and the "Vain
and Amoratious Man" (who must be ever, indeed, a terrible
combination to endure) may not be frequently encountered--in any
case, that along with many other troubles and trials, such
unpleasing meetings may not come outside the vagaries of a pack
of cards.