Robert Southey

Cards.—Whist.—Treatises upon this Game.—Pope Joan.—Cards never used on the Sabbath, and heavily taxed.—Ace of Spades.

The English cards are, like the French, fifty-two in number. They differ from them in the figured cards, which are whole-length, and in the clumsiness of their fabric, being as large again, thick in proportion, and always plain on the back. Our names for the suits are retained in both countries; and as only with us the names and the figures correspond, and our words for cards (naypes) is unlike that in any other European language, we either invented or first received them from the Orientals.

Gambling, dancing, and hunting are as favourite pastimes among the English as among savages. The latter of the sports must of course be almost exclusively the amusement of men; dancing requires youth, or at least strength and agility; but old and young, hale and infirm, can alike enjoy the stimulus of the dice-box or the card-table.

Fashion, which for a long time appointed the games in this country, as it does every thing else, seems here at last to have lost its fickleness. Ombre, Basset, and Quadrille had their day; but Whist is as much the favourite now as when it was first introduced. Casino came in from Italy, like the opera, and won over many females; but, like the opera, though it became fashionable it never was fairly naturalized, and whist still continues peculiarly the game of the English people. It suits the taciturnity and thoughtfulness of the national character; indeed its name is derived from whish, a word, or rather sound, which they make when they would enjoin silence.[5] Not a word is spoken during the deal, unless one of the party, happening to be of irascible temper, should find fault with his partner—for people of the politest manners sometimes forget their politeness and their manners at cards. The time of dealing, if silence be broken, is employed in discussing the politics of the last deal. Whatever the stake may be, the men usually increase it by betting with some by-stander upon the issue of the rubber, the single game, and sometimes the single deal; and thus the lookers-on take as much interest in the cards as the players themselves.

A certain person of the name of Hoyle wrote a treatise upon the game, about half a century ago, and laid down all its laws. These laws, which, like those of the Medes and the Persians, alter not, are constantly appealed to. Few books in the language, or in any language, have been so frequently printed, still fewer so intently studied. Compendiums have been made of a pocket-size for the convenience of ready reference; these are very numerous; the most esteemed is by Short.[6] But though these laws are every where received as canonical, an old Welsh baronet who used to play cards six days in the week, and take physic on the seventh, chose some few years since to set up a heresy of his own in opposition. It consisted in reducing the number of points from ten to six, allowing no honours to be counted, and determining the trump by drawing a card from the other pack, so that the dealer had no advantage, and all chance was as far as possible precluded. Whether this was considered as savouring too much of equality and Jacobinism I know not, but he made few proselytes, and the schism expired with him. He himself called it Rational Whist; his friends, in a word of contemptuous fabrication, denominated it his whimsy-whamsy.

Of the minor games I have only noticed two as remarkable, the one for its name, which is Pope Joan; a curious instance of the mean artifices by which the heretics still contrive to keep up a belief in this exploded fable. They call her the curse of Scotland; so the legend, fabulous as it is, has been still more falsified. The other game is called a fear;[7] each person stakes a certain sum, a card is named, and the pack spread upon the table; each draws one in succession, and he who draws the lot loses and retires: this is repeated till the last survivor remains with the pool. The pleasure of the game consists in the fear which each person feels of seeing the fatal card turned up by himself, and hence its name.

Their great poet[8] speaks of an old age of cards as the regular and natural destiny of his countrywomen,—what they all come to at last. This is one of the effects of their general irreligion. When I have seen a palsied old woman nodding over these Devil's-books, as the puritans call them, I could not but think how much better her withered and trembling hands would be employed in telling a bead-string, than in sorting clubs and spades; and it has given me melancholy thoughts, to think that the human being whom I beheld there with one foot in the grave, had probably never a serious thought upon any other subject. The more rigid dissenters, and especially the Quakers, proscribe cards altogether; some of the old church people, on the contrary, seem to ascribe a sort of sacredness to this method of amusement, and think that a Christmas-day cannot be duly celebrated without it. But a general and unaccountable prejudice prevails against the use of them on Sundays. I believe that half the people of England think it the very essence of sabbath-breaking.

Nothing is taxed more heavily than cards and dice, avowedly for the purpose of discouraging gambling. Yet the lottery is one of the regular Ways and Means of government; and as men will gamble, in some shape or other, it should seem that the wisest thing a government can do, is to encourage that mode of gambling which is most advantageous to itself, and least mischievous to the people. If cards were lightly taxed, so as to be sold as cheaply here as they are in our country, the amusement would, as with us, descend to the lowest class of society, and the consumption be increased in proportion. The revenue would be no loser, and the people would be benefited, inasmuch as some little degree of reflection is necessary to most games; and for those who now never think at all, it would be advancing a step in intellect and civilization, to think at their sports. Besides this, cards are favourable to habits of domestication, and the mechanic would not so often spend his evenings in the chimney corner of the alehouse, if he could have this amusement by his own fire-side.

All the insignia of taxation are conferred upon the ace of spades, which is girt with the garter, encircled with laurels, and surmounted with the crown, the king's name above, and his motto beneath; but under all, and over all, and around all, you read every where "sixpence, additional duty!" which said sixpences have been laid on so often, that having no room for their increase upon the card, they now ornament the wrapper in which the pack is sold with stamps. Once in a farm-house where cards were so seldom used that a pack lasted half a century, I saw an ace of spades, plain like the other aces: they told me it was always made so in former times; a proof that when it was chosen to bear these badges of burthensome distinction, quadrille, or some one of its family, was the fashionable game.