'What's on the cards?' A question common enough when the actual
knowledge of the moment does not afford a positive answer; a question,
too, which has an origin taking us back to the earliest use of playing
cards. But to how many of those to whom playing cards as a means of
recreation are familiar is it known what _may_ be found on the cards?
Yet upon these "bits of painted cardboard" there has been expended a
greater amount of ingenuity and of artistic effort than is to be found
in any other form of popular amusement. Pope's charming epic, "The Rape
of the Lock," gives us, in poetic form, a description of the faces of
the cards as known to him and to the card-players of his time:--
"Behold four kings in majesty revered,
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;
And four fair queens, whose hands sustain a flower,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r;
Four knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads and halberds in their hand."
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
It is not our purpose to historically trace the evolution of cards--this
is a subject beyond the reach of the present article--but a look farther
afield will give us evidence that during the last three centuries there
has been a constant adaptation of cards to purposes which take them
beyond their intention as the instruments for card playing only. The
idea that playing cards had their origin in the later years of Charles
VI. of France may be disposed of at once as a popular error, though it
is true that the earliest authentic examples which still exist are
parts of the two packs of cards which were produced for the amusement of
that King, by the hands of Jacques Gringonneur, and of which seventeen
are preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris.
These are the most early forms of playing cards, and are known as
"Tarots" (as distinguished from "Numerals," or cards which have the
consecutively marked "suit" signs), and which had evidently a purpose
outside the ordinary games of playing cards as known to us. The "Tarot"
pack consists variously of seventy-two, seventy-seven, or seventy-eight
cards, including the "Tarots," which give them their distinctive name.
"Tarot" as a game was familiar three centuries ago in England, but is so
no longer, although it has a limited use in other parts of Europe still.
One of the "Tarot" cards, of the Bibliotheque Nationale, "La Mort," is
shown as the first of our illustrations (Fig. 1).
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
Familiar to those who are conversant with the literature of playing
cards will be the Knave of Clubs, shown in Fig. 2, which is one of the
fragments of a pack of cards found, in 1841, by Mr. Chatto, in the
wastepaper used to form the pasteboard covers of a book. These cards are
printed in outline from wood blocks and the colour filled in by
stencilling, a method employed in the manufacture of cards down to a
very few years ago. The date of these cards may safely be taken as not
more recent than 1450, and they are most interesting as being coeval
with, if not antecedent to, the most early form of printed book
illustration as shown in the "Biblia Pauperum."[B] The archaic drawing
of the features, with its disregard of facial perspective, and the
wondrous cervical anatomy, do not lessen our admiration of the vigour
and "go" shown in this early example of the art of the designer and wood
engraver.
It is in interesting relation to the knaves of a pack of cards to note
the curious conservatism which has belonged to them during the last four
centuries and a half. In a MS. in the British Museum, written in the
year 1377, the monkish writer, in a moralization on the life of man,
suggests its resemblance to a game of cards; and he gives us a
description and the attributes of some of the cards. Of those which we
now know as knaves, he says two of them hold their halberds or arms
downwards and two of them upwards--a distinction which is retained on
many of the playing cards still manufactured.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
In Fig. 3 we have one of the cards from a series of "Tarots" of Italian
origin, also preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and which may be
dated about 1470. These are very beautiful in design, and indicate that
they were thought worthy of the employment of the highest artistic
talent.
We have an example of a somewhat more modern date in the Knave of
Diamonds (Fig. 4), in which the costume and character point to the early
part of the sixteenth century as the period of their production. This
also is from a fragment discovered in the boards of an old book--a
source which may be commended to the watchfulness of the bookbinder, as
the bindings of old books are still likely to provide other interesting
examples.
[Illustration: FIG. 5]
Before us are parts of two packs of cards which were discovered in
Edinburgh, in 1821, pasted up in a book of household accounts, one of
its leaves bearing the date of 1562; and it would be no great stretch of
fancy to believe that they were taken to Edinburgh by some follower of
Mary Queen of Scots on her return to Scotland a year before this date.
These cards are of Flemish make; on one of them is the name "Jehan
Henault," who was a card-maker in Antwerp in 1543, and in passing we may
remark that at this period there was a considerable trade between London
and France in playing cards of Flemish manufacture. Old playing cards
may be looked for in most unlikely places; a few years ago two nearly
complete packs were found wedged in an old cross-bow, for the purpose of
securing the bow where it had worked loose in the head; they were of
sixteenth century manufacture, and had doubtless been the means of
relieving the tedium of many a weary watch or waiting, in field or
fortress, before they found their resting-place of a couple of centuries
in the obsolete missive weapon where they were discovered.
We find on many cards some attempts at portraiture. Thus we have in Fig.
5 Clovis as the King of Clubs, but depicted in a costume of the time of
Henry IV. of France, the card itself being of that period. This, as well
as Fig. 4, is from a pack of fifty-two "Numeral" cards, printed from
wood-block and stencilled in colour.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
Returning to "Tarots," we have in Fig. 6 (Le Fou) one of the cards
designed by Mitelli about 1680, it is said to the order of a member of
the Bentivoglio family (parts of whose armorial bearings are to be found
on many of the cards), for the "Tarrocchini di Bologna," a special form
of the game of Tarot, a series of spirited designs of vigorous and
careful drawing, and the most artistically valuable of any of the Tarots
with which we are acquainted. In them not only the Tarot series but the
ordinary suits display a quaint conception and generally elegant design.
It is curious to note that in the eleven packs or parts of packs of
these Bolognese cards which we have met with in various parts of Europe
there is not any uniformity of manufacture, but while the designs are
the same and evidently produced from the same copper plates, the making
of them into cards for the purpose of play bears indication of what
might be termed a "domestic" manufacture. For some time the game was
interdicted in Bologna, and it is possible that this may have induced a
surreptitious production and illicit sale of the cards. Fortunately, the
interdict did not prevent the preservation to us of this interesting
series.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
At different periods between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, but
notably in the two earlier of them, card "suits" have been used other
than the familiar ones of Hearts, Spades, Clubs, and Diamonds, and much
ingenuity and imagination have been exercised upon them. Among the most
beautiful of such cards we take the set designed and engraved by Virgil
Solis, the celebrated Nuremberg artist and engraver, in which the suit
signs are Lions, Peacocks, Monkeys, and Parroquets. In Fig. 7 we have
the Ace of Peacocks. The aces are lettered with the distinctive
suit-titles of the German cards, viz., "Grun," "Eicheln," "Schellen,"
and "Herzen." The pack consists of fifty-two, divided into four suits of
thirteen cards each; the date of these cards is between 1535 and 1560,
and they are an important and valuable item in the artistic history of
playing cards.
Another example of this variation in the suit signs, as well as of a
variation from the ordinary rectangular form, is to be found in the
round card (Fig. 8), of a somewhat earlier date than the preceding,
where the suits are Hares, Parrots, Pinks, and Columbines, and which
when complete make also a pack of fifty-two, the value of the cards
following the sequence of King, Queen, and Knave being indicated by the
Arabic numeral at the base of and the Roman figure at the top of each,
the card shown being the Six of Hares.
[Illustration: FIG. 8]
In both of them there is a great decorative facility and clever
adaptation to the form of the card. To indicate the coincidence of idea,
in the next (Fig. 9) we have a round card from India--one of the "Coate"
cards of a pack, or more properly series, of 120 cards. The material
used in their manufacture is matted vegetable fibre coated with lacquer
and painted by hand. Most of the playing cards of Persia are also round,
and are similarly decorated by the same means. About a dozen years ago
round playing cards were patented in America as a novelty, in ignorance
of the fact that cards of that shape had probably been in common use in
the East, centuries before the discovery of that great and inventive
country!
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
As an illustration (Fig. 10) of the suit signs of Southern Europe, we
take a card from a Portuguese pack of 1610, the "Cavalier de Batons"
(Clubs); the other suit signs are Swords, Coins, and Cups. The anatomy
of the charger and the self-satisfied aspect of the Cavalier are
striking; and as to the former, we are reminded of the bizarre examples
of hippic adornment which, on a summer Bank Holiday, may be seen on the
road to Epping Forest.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
Among the secondary uses to which playing cards have been applied, we
find them as political weapons. Among such cards are those which were
produced to commemorate what is historically known as the "Titus Oates
Plot" in 1678, one of the most prominent incidents being the murder of
Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who is here shown (Fig. 11), carried on a horse,
the day after his murder, to Primrose Hill, where the body was put into
a ditch, the carrying on the horse and the discovery in the ditch being
shown as coincident. They were produced, probably, as one of the means
of inflaming the public mind against the Roman Catholics, which led to
the execution, among others, of the Viscount Stafford in 1680. As
illustration of costume and of stirring incident, these cards are, apart
from their intention, an admirable and interesting series, and are worth
study from their historic and artistic aspects.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
We come now to playing cards designed as methods of education, of which
a considerable number have been produced--and which cover the widest
possible range--from cookery to astrology! In the middle and latter half
of the seventeenth century, England, France and Germany abounded in
examples, the most attractive being the series of "Jeux Historiques,"
invented by Desmarests, a member of the French Academy acting under the
instructions of Cardinal Mazarin--as aids to the education of the boy
King, Louis XIV. In Figs. 12, 13, 14, and 15 are given examples from the
four packs so designed, and they afford a good instance of the primary
use of cards being subordinated to the educational. The first of these
is the "Jeu de Fables," with representations and short notices of the
heroes and heroines of classic history, the four Kings being Jupiter,
Neptune, Pluto, and Saturn. The second is the "Jeu de Geographie," the
four suits being formed by the division of the world into four quarters,
each having its distinctive group of thirteen designs, with brief
geographical descriptions; Great Britain being shown as the Eight of
Hearts. If designed by an Englishman, it would surely have been as Queen
of that suit that our country would have appeared. We have then the "Jeu
de Rois de France," intended to teach the history and succession of the
Kings of France, whom we find depicted in their numeric order, from
Pharamond to Louis XIV., with the length of their reigns and short
biographies.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
The third and fourth of these packs are singular in consisting in the
one case of all Kings, and the other of all Queens, in the "Jeu de
Reynes Renommees," the famous Queens of history, from the Queen of Sheba
downward, furnishing the design, and who are classified under the
descriptions of Good, Wise, Holy, Clever, Brave, Happy, Cruel,
Licentious, Capricious, and Unfortunate; our Queen Elizabeth being
placed as "clever," and Mary Stuart as "unfortunate." They are beautiful
examples of design and workmanship, and are the work of the Florentine
artist-engraver, Stefano de la Bella.
(_To be continued._)