called upon to endure not only in the course of play, but also by their
having been impressed into the book-binders’ service, which has in many
cases been the fortunate means of their being preserved to be prized
and studied at the present day; and there are valuable collections
in European museums which contain rare specimens of cards, not only
delicately painted like the most beautiful miniatures on parchment and
other materials, but also exquisitely engraved; and among them are some
of the first specimens of that art.
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.
Mr. Baring-Gould, in his “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,”
mentions the discovery in 1850 of a Gallo-Roman palace near Pau in
France. In one of the rooms the pavement consisted of squares which
were ornamented with crosses of different shapes. Those of Saint
Andrew “terminated in either a heart-shaped leaf or a trefoil.” Here
then may be seen the various devices adopted by the card-maker. On the
“Carreaux,” or diamond-shaped tiles, were displayed Clubs, Hearts,
and Spades, beneath the feet of the worshipper in his church or the
courtier in the palace; and to transfer the emblems to the card in
place of the symbols used by the Oriental was an easy matter. The
“Club,” as we name it, is a favourite emblem of the Trinity, which has
been used for centuries as its symbol; and we need not search for an
Agnes Sorel or a Saint Patrick as the first to use the clover-leaf, and
fancy that the French courtier meant to compliment the King’s mistress
by placing her device among the cards. It might just as well have
been directly the reverse, and that she, seeing how pretty the leaf
and how appropriate the pun on her name, might have adopted it from
the card pips. It is quite possible that beside the Tarot cards there
were others in use about the fifteenth century, and that their emblems
became favourites in France and Germany, while Italy and Spain clung to
those seen in the Saracen pack.
ODDS AND ENDS.
Among the other extravagant fashions of the French Court from the
time of Charles the Sixth to that of Louis the Sixteenth, that of
decorating the card-room, its furniture, accessories, and even the
cards themselves, was by no means the least. It was perhaps fitting
that the place in which enormous sums of money changed hands should
be decorated as a shrine to the God of Play, and it is certain that
they were luxuriously furnished and magnificently adorned. Under
Louis the Fourteenth the cloths were of green velvet embroidered in
gold and enriched with bullion fringes. The counters were of various
metals,—mother of pearl, or other valuable substances. We read of a
pack embroidered on white satin enriched with silver, and another
one engraved on mother of pearl. Some of the more luxurious among
the aristocracy ordered their cards from the most famous miniature
painters of the day, in order to differ as widely as possible from the
roughly produced and cheap cards used by the common people; and of
course for these cards enormous prices were given. The decorations of
the card-rooms were in harmony with the accessories of the tables, and
tapestries were designed and woven to accord with the scenes which they
surrounded; even within a few years one of the modern palaces in Europe
has been adorned with mural decorations which represented the court
cards of obsolete packs; and the four Knaves in picturesque costumes,
life size and beautifully designed and executed, surround the card-room.
The tables were at first covered with green cloths which hung down and
were held in place by their bullion fringes; but these covers were soon
discarded, and the cloth was carefully pasted on the top of the table.
Much ingenuity was expended in making the card-tables as handsome as
were all the other details of the room. They were inlaid with beautiful
woods, painted by celebrated artists, and richly ornamented in many
other ways. They are nearly always square or partly rounded in shape,
but are sometimes octagonal or three-cornered.
Mazarin seized on cards, which he was passionately fond of, as a
means of instructing the young King Louis, and adopted the educational
series, inducing the eight-year-old monarch to study history,
geography, and other sciences by their means. This early introduction
to cards led to their becoming the ruling passion of the life of that
“Grand Monarch;” and under his reign the rage for cards reached a great
height, and enormous sums were lost and gained. Mazarin was himself a
notorious gambler; and his niece, although left an enormous fortune
by her Cardinal uncle, died insolvent, the greater part of her money
having been lost at cards. When Louis Quatorze reached the age of
manhood, every evening from six until ten o’clock was passed in play.
Even when engaged in necessary business, the game proceeded, the King
deputing some of his courtiers to hold his cards during his absence.
The knights of the green cloth being in such favour, a card-ball was
proposed and given at Marley, Feb. 19, 1700, at which one dance was
performed by the courtiers, who were dressed like the court cards of
the pack. As Marley was the palace above all others in which gambling
was carried to the highest extent, it was, says the historian, “the
appropriate theatre for such an event.”
The rage for playing cards was at one time as great in England as in
France. James the First forbade cards in Scotland; but it was his
favourite amusement. Charles the First did not disdain to create
a monopoly of playing-cards by buying all those produced by the
Card-makers’ Company of London, and selling them out at a much higher
price. Cards sold in 1545 for twopence a pack, and they must have been
wretched specimens. The marriage of Charles to a French princess in
1629 may have introduced Piquet into England; it is mentioned in a book
printed in 1649, at the same time with Cribbage.
The Roundheads professed to despise all frivolous amusements, and
considered them sinful, although the early Christians evidently did not
look on Dice and such games in the same light, as recent excavations in
the Catacombs show that the graves there contained various implements
of sport. “Dice-counters and gambling-boards,” says a recent writer,
“have been discovered in Christian tombs”; and the boards, with their
gay and inspiriting inscriptions (“Victus leva te; ludere nescis; da
lusori locum,” “Domine, frater hilaris semper ludere tabula”), do not
differ at all from those with which the heathen had made merry. In the
Domitilla Catacomb has been found the tomb of a master in the art of
making Dice.
After the restoration of Charles the Second the court cards resumed
their sway, and from that time to the accession of Queen Victoria,
reigned supreme, from court circles down to the gypsies in their
encampment in the fields. The rage for play reached such a pitch during
the latter years of the reign of George the Third, that the Regent, his
brothers, and his friends were all deeply involved in debt.
A story is related of the famous Dowager Electress of Saxony, who
was devoted to the card-table and was not above taking advantage of
her position and using it when opportunity offered. She one evening
“committed some irregularity” (as cheating is termed when indulged in
by a person of exalted rank), and excited suspicions of her honesty by
her play. A courtier took notice of this, at which she expressed her
surprise; thereupon he remarked, “Pardon, madame, my suspicions could
not fall on you. _Sovereigns_ cheat only for _crowns_.”
Napoleon tried to while away the tedious hours of his captivity by
playing cards. His favourite games were Vingt-et-un, Piquet, and Whist.
The counters used for the last game were always of gold, and these
have been carefully treasured by the descendants of his jailers. A
nine of Hearts upon which he had written some English sentences is
also preserved. It is related that he never entered on any enterprise
or military operation without consulting a peculiar pack of cards,
which were not provided with the customary marks of suits, and in
fact were not divided into suits at all. These cards, which have been
carefully preserved, were sent to the author for inspection. They were
smaller than those generally used, and were printed in black on yellow
pasteboard. Each card was surrounded with the signs of the Zodiac,
and was divided by a black line drawn through its centre, and always
contained two little pictures, one above and one below this line.
Rings, Hearts, Roses, Cupids, Ladies, Kings, and Queens were displayed
on these cards; but it was evident that they were not intended to be
used for any game, and were only for purposes of divination. The cards
were torn, and showed marks of age; and if not the pack originally used
by the celebrated general, they may have resembled those he was said to
have consulted and believed in.
THE END.