The Strand Magazine/Volume 5/Issue 26/Peculiar Playing Cards

by George Clulow

Layout 4

II.

HE "foolish business" of Heraldry has supplied the motive for numerous packs of cards. Two only, however, can be here shown, though there are instructive examples of the latter half of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries from England, Scotland, France, Germany, and Italy.
Fig. 16.
Fig. 17. The example given in Fig. 16 is English, of the date of 1690, and the fifty-two cards of the pack give us the arms of the different European States, and of the peers of England and Scotland. A pack similar to this was engraved by Walter Scott, the Edinburgh goldsmith, in 1691, and is confined to the Arms of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and the great Scottish families of that date, prepared under the direction of the Lyon King of Arms, Sir Alexander Erskine. The French heraldic example (Fig. 17) is from a pack of the time of Louis XIV., with the arms of the French nobility and the nobles of other European countries; the "suit" signs of the pack being "Fleur de Lis," "Lions," "Roses," and "Eagles."

Fig. 18.

Caligraphy, even, has not been left without recognition, for we have a pack, published in Nuremberg, in 1767, giving examples of written characters and of free-hand pen drawing, to serve as writing copies. We show the Nine of Hearts from this pack (Fig. 18), and the eighteenth century South German graphic idea of a Highlander of the period is amusing, and his valorous attitude is sufficiently satisfying.

Fig. 19.

Biography has, too, its place in this playing-card cosmography, though it has not many examples. The one we give (Fig. 19) is German, of about 1730, and is from a pack which depicts a series of heads of Emperors, poets, and historians, Greek and Roman—a summary of their lives and occurrences therein gives us their raison d'être.

Fig. 20.

Of Geographical playing cards there are several examples in the second half of the seventeenth century. The one selected for illustration (Fig. 20) gives a sectional map of one of the English counties, each of the fifty-two cards of the pack having the map of a county of England and Wales, with its geographical limitations. These are among the more rare of old playing cards, and their gradual destruction when used as educational media will, as in the case of horn-books, and early children's books generally, account for this rarity. Perhaps the most interesting geographical playing cards which have survived this common fate, though they are the ultima rarissima of such cards, is the pack designed and engraved by H. Winstanley, "at Littlebury, in Essex," as we read on the Ace of Hearts. They appear to have been intended to afford instruction in geography and ethnology. Each of the cards has a descriptive account of one of the States or great cities of the world, and we have taken the King of Hearts (Fig. 21), with its description of England and the English, as the most interesting. The costumes are those of the time of James II., and the view gives us Old London Bridge, the Church of St. Mary Overy, on the south side of the Thames, and the Monument, then recently erected at the northern end of the bridge to commemorate the Great Fire, and which induced Pope's indignant lines:—

"Where London's column, pointing to the skies
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and—lies."

Fig. 21.

The date of the pack is about 1685, and it has an added interest from the fact that its designer was the projector of the first Eddystone Lighthouse, where he perished when it was destroyed by a great storm in 1703.

Fig. 22.

Music, too, is not forgotten, though on playing cards it is seen in smaller proportion than other of the arts. To the popularity of the "Beggar's Opera" of John Gay, that satirical attack upon the Government of Sir Robert Walpole, we are indebted for its songs and music appearing as the motif of the pack, from which we give here the Queen of Spades (Fig. 22), and the well-thumbed cards before us show that they were popular favourites. Their date may be taken as nearly coincident with that of the opera itself, viz., 1728. A further example of musical cards is given in Fig. 23, from a French pack of 1830, with its pretty piece of costume headgear, and its characteristic waltz music.

France has been prolific in what may be termed "Cartes de fantaisie," burlesque and satirical, not always designed, however, with due regard to the refinements of well-behaved communities. They are always spirited, and as specimens of inventive adaptation are worth notice. The example shown (Fig. 24) is from a pack of the year 1818, and is good of its class.

Fig. 23.
Fig. 24.

Of these "Cartes de fantaisie," each of the card-producing countries of Europe has at different dates produced examples of varying degrees of artistic value. Although not the best in point of merit, the most generally attractive of these are the packs produced in the years 1806-7-8 and 9, by the Tübingen bookseller, Cotta, and which were published in book form, as the "Karten Almanack," and also as ordinary packs. Every card has a design, in which the suit signs, or "pips," are brought in as an integral part, and admirable ingenuity is displayed in this adaptation; although not the best in the series, we give the Six of Hearts (Fig. 25), as lending itself best to the purpose of reproduction, and as affording a fair instance of the method of design.

Fig. 25.

In England numerous examples of these illustrated playing cards have been produced of varying degrees of artistic merit, and, as one of the most amusing, we select the Knave of Spades from a pack of the year 1824 (Fig. 26). These cards are printed from copper-plates, and are coloured by hand, and show much ingenuity in the adaptation of the design to the form of the "pips."

Of the same class, but with more true
Fig. 26.
Fig. 27.
Fig. 28. artistic feeling and treatment than the preceding, we give the Deuce of Clubs, from a pack with London Cries (Fig. 27), and another with Fables (Fig. 28), both of which date from the earlier years of the last century, the former with the quaint costume and badge of a waterman, with his cry of "Oars! oars! do you want a boat?" In the middle distance the piers of Old London Bridge, and the house at its foot with overhanging gallery, make a pleasing old-time picture. The "Fables" cards are apparently from the designs of Francis Barlow, and are probably engraved by him; although we find upon some of them the name of J. Kirk, who, however, was the seller of the cards only, and who, as was not uncommon with the vendor of that time, in this way robbed the artist of what honour might belong to his work. Both of these packs are rare; that of the "Fables" is believed to be unique. Of a date some quarter of a century antecedent to those just described we have an amusing pack, in which each card has a collection of moral sentences, aphorisms, or a worldly-wise story, or—we regret in the interests of good behaviour to have to add—something very much the reverse of them. The larger portion of the card is occupied by a picture of considerable excellence in illustration of the text; and notwithstanding the peculiarity to which we have referred as attaching to some of them, the cards are very interesting as studies of costume and of the manners of the time—of what served to amuse our ancestors two centuries ago—and is a curious compound survival of Puritan teaching and the license of the Restoration period. We give one of them in Fig. 29.

Fig. 29.

The Ace of Clubs, shown in Fig. 30, is from a pack issued in Amsterdam about 1710, and is a good example of the Dutch burlesque cards of the eighteenth century. The majority of them have local allusions, the meaning of which is now lost; and many of them are of a character which will not bear reproduction. A better known pack of Dutch cards is that satirizing the Mississippi scheme of 1716, and the victims of the notorious John Law—the "bubble" which, on its collapse, four years later, brought ruin to so many thousands.

Fig. 30.
Fig. 31.

Our space forbids the treatment of playing cards under any but their pictorial aspects, though the temptation is great to attempt some description of their use from an early period as instruments of divination or fortune telling, for which in the hands of the "wise man" or woman of various countries they are still used, and to which primary purpose the early "Tarots" were doubtless applied; but, as it is among the more curious of such cards, we give the Queen of Hearts from a pack of the immediate post-Commonwealth period (Fig. 31). The figure is called Semiramis—without, so far as can be seen, any reason. It is one of a mélange of names for cards in which Wat Tyler and Tycho Brahe rub shoulders in the suit of Spades, and Mahomet and Nimrod in that of Diamonds!
Fig. 32. In the pack we find the Knave of Clubs named "Hewson" (not the card-maker of that name), but he who is satirized by Butler as "Hewson the Cobbler." Elsewhere he is called "One-eyed Hewson." He is shown with but one eye in the card bearing his name, and as it is contemporary, it may be a fair presentment of the man who, whatever his vices, managed under Cromwell to obtain high honours, and who was by him nominated a member of the House of Lords. The bitter prejudice of the time is shown in the story which is told of Hewson, that on the day the King was beheaded he rode from Charing Cross to the Royal Exchange proclaiming that "whoever should say that Charles Stuart died wrongfully should suffer death."
Fig. 33.
Fig. 34. Among the quasi-educational uses of playing cards we find the curious work of Dr. Thomas Murner, whose "Logica Memorativa Chartiludium," published at Strassburg in 1507, is the earliest instance known to us of a distinct application of playing cards to education, though the author expressly disclaims any knowledge of cards. The method used by the Doctor was to make each card an aid to memory, though the method must have been a severe strain of memory in itself. One of them is here given (Fig. 32), the suit being the German one of Bells (Schnellen). It would seem that hardly any branch of human knowledge had been overlooked in the adaptation of playing cards to an educational purpose, and they who still have them in mind under the designation of "the Devil's books," may be relieved to know that Bible history has been taught by the means of playing cards. In 1603 there was published a Bible History and Chronology, under the title of the "Geistliche Karten Spiel," where, much as Murner did in the instance we have given above, the cards were used as an aid to memory, the author giving to each of the suit signs the distinctive appellation of some character or incident in Holy Writ. And more recently Zuccarelli, one of the original members of our Royal Academy, designed and etched a pack of cards with the same intention.

The arms of the worshipful company of makers of playing cards, 1629.

In Southern Germany we find in the last century playing cards specially prepared for gifts at weddings and for use at the festivities attending such events. These cards bore conventional representations of the bride, the bridegroom, the musicians, the priest, and the guests, on horseback or in carriages, each with a laudatory inscription. The card shown in Fig. 33 is from a pack of this kind of about 1740, the Roman numeral I. indicating it as the first in a series of "Tarots" numbered consecutively from I. to XXI., the usual Tarot designs being replaced by the wedding pictures described above. The custom of presenting guests with a pack of cards has been followed by the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards, who at their annual banquet give to their guests samples of the productions of the craft with which they are identified, which are specially designed for the occasion.

To conclude this article—much too limited to cover so interesting a subject—we give an illustration (Fig. 34) from a pack of fifty-two playing cards of silver—every card being engraved upon a thin plate of that metal. They are probably the work of a late sixteenth century German goldsmith, and are exquisite examples of design and skill with the graver. They are in the possession of a well-known collector of all things beautiful, curious, and rare, by whose courteous permission this unique example appears here.