Playing Cards: History of the Pack and Explanations of Its Many Secrets

By W. Gurney Benham

First published in 1931, this vintage book explores the history and origins of playing cards from traditional English playing cards to tarot cards and card manufacturers in Britain and Europe. Extensively illustrated and full of interesting information, “Playing Cards” is highly recommended for those with an interest in the history of playing cards and is not to be missed by collectors of vintage literature of this ilk. Contents include: “Card Games”, “Preface”, “Many Theories About the invention of Playing Cards”, “The Tarot Cards”, “Varieties of the European Four-Suit Pack”, “Earliest References to English Playing Cards”, “Genesis of the English Pack”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on card games.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447481751

Book preview

Card Games

Playing cards were invented in Imperial China, and specimens have been found dating back as early the ninth century, during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Female players were some of the most frequent participants, and the first known book on cards, called Yezi Gexi (presumably written in the 860s) was originally written by a Tang era woman, subsequently undergoing additions by other Chinese scholars. By the eleventh century, playing cards could be found throughout the Asian continent. During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), characters from novels such as the Water Margin were widely featured on the faces of playing cards.

Playing cards first entered Europe in the early fourteenth century, probably from Egypt, with suits (sets of cards with matching designs) very similar to the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also known as disks or pentacles). These latter markings are still used in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese decks. The first documentary evidence of ‘card playing’ is a document written in Vitoria-Gasteiz (now Spain) in 1334, in which the ‘Knights of the Band’ (a Spanish military order who wore a red sash across their torso) were categorically prohibited from playing cards.

As can be seen from this short and potted history, card games have been in existence as long as the cards themselves; and hence have a long and varied history. The cards were first formalised into something closely resembling our modern deck in the seventeenth century, but the joker was only introduced by the USA in the 1870s. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker, a group of card games involving betting and primarily individual play).

A small number of card games played with traditional decks have formally standardized rules, but most are folk games whose rules vary by region, culture, and person.

Today, common categories of card games are ‘trick-taking games’, which are based on the play of multiple rounds, in each of which, each participant plays a single card from their hand, ‘matching games’, such as ‘Rummy’, or the children’s game, ‘go fish’, in which the aim is to acquire groups of matching cards, and ‘shedding or accumulation games’, the objective of which is respectively, to be the first player to discard all cards from one’s hand, or accumulate all cards in the deck. The popular game, ‘Uno’ is an example of the ‘shedding type’, and is one of the few games to be formally commercialised – in this case by the American company, Mattel. It should also be noted that card games do not necessarily need more than one player; Solitaire is perhaps the most famous of the one-player variety; a ‘patience game’ in which the original ‘tableau’ is cleared by moving all cards to ‘discard’ or ‘foundation piles.’

The popularity of card games has endured, and if anything increased, into the present day. Starting from the introduction of cards, and thereby games with cards in ninth century China, their use and relevance to human sociability has spread all over the globe, and is showing no signs of waning.

PREFACE

THE modern pack of British Playing Cards, though derived many centuries ago from France, has become a distinctive pack. With all its faults it is, in some ways, the best pack in the world. Its cousin, the modern French pack, is prettier. It preserves some ancient facts and fancies with French artistry. Above all it preserves the old names of the twelve portrait cards. But the effect is too sophisticated. The French pack has lost some of the family heirlooms. For the sake of prettiness it has become too modernised. The British pack has also been faithless to the past. Some of the family secrets it has lost entirely; others it has distorted beyond recognition. But the British pack has preserved better than the French the garb of antiquity, the quaintness and fascination and mystery of the original pack. The British Court Cards still seem to have stepped out of some legendary wonderland. The French cards have lost most of that delicious charm. The virtue has departed from them. Pleasing as they are in many ways they are not the old dream-cards of the Middle Ages.

Lately, by way of revenge, Time has played one of his humorous tricks. The ancient and now official French cardmakers, who trade under the name of B. P. Grimaud, of Paris, have issued a new pack, which is a close copy of the modern British pack, with all its faults of omission and commission. This French pack is called ‘Bridge Linen — Portrait étranger.’ Thus the British cards, copied four hundred years ago from a French pattern, have now been re-copied by a French maker, a pretty and unconscious compliment to their worth and individuality.

Misunderstandings and misstatements about playing cards, even amongst learned writers, are frequent. Examples are given in the introductory chapters of this book. In ‘The City Companies of London’ (1904), a valuable book by a versatile and accomplished antiquary, credence is given to the obviously impossible story that playing cards were ‘invented’ to solace Charles VI, the demented King, who reigned in France from 1380 to 1422. The author proceeds to quote Shakespeare to show the antiquity of the manufacture of playing cards in England. The passage quoted is the statement by Christopher Sly, in ‘Taming of the Shrew’ (Ind. sc. ii): ‘Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly’s son, of Burton-heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker?’

The trade of ‘cardmaker’ here mentioned has nothing to do with playing cards. It was an occupation frequently referred to in old records — the manufacture or furbishing of ‘cards’ (anciently teasels) for ‘carding’ (combing) wool. ‘Carduus’ is Latin for teasel or thistle. The ‘cardmakers’ who were purveyors of these primitive cards or teasels were usually pedlars or rustics. The old-fashioned ‘cards’ gave place to wire brushes, but carding has long been done by machinery, and the old ‘cardmakers’ are obsolete. But they still existed when the London ‘Company of Makers of Playing Cards’ was incorporated in 1628. To have used the expression ‘cardmakers’ then as applying to makers of playing-cards would have been a solecism. Nowhere in the Charter or in the early Ordinances of the Company is the word ‘cardmakers’ used for ‘makers of Playing Cards.’ As the other ‘cardmakers’ became obsolete the playing-card makers used the old name in the very different modern sense.

The present volume elucidates for the first time the origin and evolution of the British pack. It explains the secrets of the pack and shows up its peccadilloes.

Is it too much to hope that British and American makers will restore to the British pack of playing cards some of the long-lost or mutilated details? Players with cards are superstitiously conservative, but I do not believe they would object to the correction of some of the errors and absurdities which deface their cards. Even if these corruptions cannot be set right, one result of this publication may be to safeguard the British pack from any further unintelligent and unnecessary tamperings.

One of the chief objects of this book is to make players and also manufacturers of playing cards, in Great Britain and in America, jealous and zealous about this interesting and honourable heritage, which has been in our family for about five hundred years.

W. Gurney Benham

CHAPTER I

MANY THEORIES ABOUT THE

INVENTION OF PLAYING CARDS

WHEN the origin of a thing is remote and mysterious it has been the custom to attribute it to the Devil or to Asia.

Stonehenge has been assigned to Satanic origin, and up and down Britain we find devil’s punchbowls, devil’s kitchens, devil’s cauldrons, and the like.

In 1423 the Franciscan friar, Saint Bernard of Siena, in a famous sermon at. Bologna, stated that playing cards were the invention of the devil. They increased rapidly in popularity after this statement. Other divines favoured the same theory, with similar consequences. A hundred and fifty years after St. Bernard’s fiery outburst the Elizabethan puritan, John Northbrooke, in a treatise against gambling and theatre-going, published in 1576 or 1579, definitely asserted that playing cards were invented by the devil ‘that he might the easier bring in Ydolatrie among men.’ These allusions, whether intended literally or not, have a special interest and value, as will be shown in subsequent chapters.

ASIATIC GAMES —

POSSIBLE ANALOGY WITH CHESS

Almost with one accord modern writers have declared that playing cards, like the Wise Men, came from the East. It is certain that the Persians, the Chinese and the Hindustani had playing tablets or discs at an early period; also that in some cases these tablets or counters were ranged in ‘suits’ with painted devices showing royalties and rulers and various emblems. The date of these games, like other Oriental chronology, is doubtful. There is no clear evidence that they were earlier than the earliest European ‘tarots’ and playing cards.

On the other hand there is no doubt that Chess is of Asiatic origin. Though not of such extreme antiquity as was formerly supposed, Chess seems to have preceded any sort of playing cards or tablets. There is a vague resemblance between the four-handed game of Chess and the four-suited pack of cards. Whoever first devised playing cards may have been indebted to Chess for the general idea. But on the whole, there is no positive proof that the origin or inspiration of our European playing cards came from Asia.

‘CRUSADERS’ AND ‘GYPSY’ THEORIES

Nor is it ‘a well established fact’—as some recent writers have alleged—that playing cards were ‘brought into Europe by the Crusaders.’ There is not a shred of evidence in support of this assertion. The last of the crusades was ended in 1291 and there is no reference to playing cards in Europe until nearly a hundred years later.

As for that other favourite supposition that Gypsies introduced playing cards into Europe, there is decisive evidence to the contrary. The Gypsy race, falsely pretending to be of Egyptian descent, but more probably, like their language, of Hindoo origin, with mixture of many nationalities, did not extend their wanderings into Europe until after playing cards had become fairly well-established in European countries.

DRAGGING IN THE JEWS

It is to be noted that there is no reference to anything like playing cards in the literature or monumental records of ancient Greece, Rome, or Egypt, or any other nation of antiquity, and that there is no written evidence of their existence in Europe earlier than the fourteenth century.

An odd statement is made in an American Encyclopedia (New York, 1914) that ‘there is evidence that cards for playing games were in use in Egypt in the time of Joseph, but they do not appear among the Jews until after their return from the Babylonian exile.’ Until the alleged ‘evidence’ about these Egyptian cards ‘in the time of Joseph’ (an unknown period) is produced, we may venture to disbelieve this unsupported assertion. The reference to the Jews is perhaps a joke. There is no evidence of their using playing cards until at least 1300 years after the beginning of the Christian era, which was some time after their return from ‘the Babylonian exile.’

‘EX AFRICA SEMPER ALIQUID NOVI’

More than 2,000 years ago it was a saying amongst the Greeks and amongst the Romans, that something new or something bad might be expected always from Africa. And the fact that the earliest playing cards in Europe were very possibly those of Italy and Spain, which were in touch and often in conflict with the Moors and ‘Saracens’ (Arabs) would encourage the supposition—sometimes advanced—that playing cards might have originated in Africa, if there were any corroboration for such a theory. There is no such corroboration. The Koran warns all true believers to avoid wine and ‘lots’ (that is gambling), and images (by some people fancifully imagined to mean chessmen), and divination by arrows (said to have been practised by primitive Arabs). As to wine and gaming the Koran teaches that ‘their sinfulness is greater than their usefulness.’ Such prohibitions may or may not be an argument against the possibility of playing cards emanating from Mahometan sources. Certainly there is nothing which can be called evidence for such an unlikely guess.

THE WORD ‘NAIPES’

The chief argument for the ‘Saracenic’ or Moslem origin of cards is the Spanish name for playing cards—‘naipes.’ It is not found in Portuguese nor in any other Continental language. The etymology of this Spanish word is untraceable, but it has been imagined to come from the Hebrew and Arabic words, nabi, naba, nabaa, ‘which convey with them the idea of prophecy.’ No Eastern game, either of cards or of any other sort, bears any such name. ‘Naipes’ is quite as near the Spanish ‘Napoles’ for Naples, the Italian port from which playing cards may have originally reached Spain, though this etymology is only a little less far-fetched than the imaginary Arabic or Hebrew origin.

That theory was started by an obscure Italian chronicler, named Covelluzzo (died c. 1500), who states (according to Feliciano Bussi, in his History of Viterbo, the Italian city about 50 miles north-west of Rome):

‘In the year 1379 the game of cards was brought into Viterbo, which game came from Serasinia and is called amongst them Naib.’

What ‘Serasinia’ meant is open to question, but probably it was intended to designate the land of the Saracens—that is of the Arabs and Moslems—an indefinable territory.

Playing-cards were known in Italy before 1379 and the writer Covelluzzo may have had some knowledge, when he wrote (c. 1480), of the Spanish term ‘Naipes,’ then the established word in Spain.

The derivation of ‘tarot’ from the Egyptian is even less tenable.

It matters little whether the idea of playing-cards was suggested by Oriental tables or counters, or by chess. The European pack, whoever or whatever suggested it, is distinct and original. It is no good groping for the inventor. We may as well give up this conundrum, as we must give up others of the same sort. Who knows the original inventor of cricket, of football, of golf, or of draughts and dominoes? Of these, its greatest men, the world knows nothing. We cannot tell where the inventor of the European playing-cards lived or what language he spoke. Probably he wore a capacious gown with long loose sleeves, some sort of hood on his head and pointed shoes. For he seems to have lived about the year 1320. That gives our modern pack a continous history of over 600 years, which should be long enough to satisfy most people.

EARLY TAROT CARDS

FIG. 1 THE EMPEROR

Charlemagne and his two sons. (Atout No. 4). From a hand-painted Venetian Card, probably of about 1475. An ancient and unfounded tradition in France ascribed this card to the time of Charles VI, who reigned from 1380 to 1422. The card was supposed to be one of the pack supplied in 1392 for the diversion of the King during his madness, but it is now accepted that the card is at least 50 years later than his period.

FIG. 2

This card (Atout No. 16) is described in French as Maison de Dieu, or Maison Dieu. In our Old Law French Maison de Dieu meant a hospital monastery, hospital for cripples, etc., or almshouse. The picture suggests something very different. For further reference to this card see Fig. 6.

CHAPTER II

THE TAROT CARDS

THE earliest known playing cards in Europe seem to have been cards of the Italian variety, afterwards known as ‘Tarocchini’ or ‘Tarots.’ The packs consisted sometimes of 62 cards, sometimes 78, and sometimes 97.

The original pack seems to have been 78 cards, manufactured in Lombardy, and known as the Venice or Venetian pack. There were four suits, each with four picture cards—King, Queen, Knight and ‘Valet’—and ten numeral cards in each suit. This made 56 cards. There were 21 ‘atouts’ (trump-cards) (atutti in Italian) numbered one to twenty-one; and an unnumbered extra card called ‘The Fool’ (Le Fou). The 21 ‘atouts’ were:

FIG. 3 FORCE (No. 11)

FIG. 4 TEMPERANCE (No. 14)

1. The Mountebank (Bateleur)

2. The Popess (Papesse)

3. The Empress

4. The Emperor

5. The Pope

6. The Lovers (or the Lover)

7. The Chariot

8. Justice

9. The Hermit (or the Old Man)

10. The Wheel of Fortune (or Fortune)

11. Force

12. The Hanging Man (Le Pendu)

13. Death

14. Temperance

15. The Devil

16. The Hospital (?) (La Maison Dieu)

17. The Star

18. The Moon

19. The Sun

20. The Judgment

21. The World

In 1781 a French writer, Count de Gebelin, dealt fully with the Venetian tarot pack and endeavoured to prove that the 22 atutti cards had an affinity with Egyptian mysteries. Dr. Willshire in his Decriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum (1876) sets forth these theories, which are quaint and unconvincing.

A Florentine game, known as ‘Le Minchiate de Florence,’ comprised 97 cards. The pack had all the foregoing 21 ‘atouts’ except the so-called Hospital or House of God. The other 20 additional ‘atouts’ consisted of the 12 Signs of the Zodiac.

FIG. 5

THE HANGING MAN (Atout No. 12). This is perhaps meant for Judas Iscariot carrying two bags of money. One account says that Judas ‘went and hanged himself’ (St. Matthew 27, 5). In the Vulgate, the version which would be familiar to the designer, it is stated ‘laqueo se suspendit’ (he hanged himself in a noose or snare). In Acts 1, 18, it is said that he bought a field with the reward of his iniquity ‘and falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst.’

‘The Fool’ or ‘Misero’ completed the pack and with the 4 Suits (56) made the total 97.

The early packs, richly illuminated and painted by hand, must have been costly productions.

The four ‘suits’ in all these tarot packs were (1) Cups or chalices, (2) Swords, (3) Money, (4) Batons or clubs.

The ‘atouts’ or trump cards seem to have been specially called ‘tarots,’ thus giving the name