" Whisk " and " Swobbers " W HEN not long
ago Sir Edmund Davis had special playing cards designed by Mr. Edmund Dulac, it seemed that a fashion of old times might well be revived, and that many people would follow his example and have their own. special cards made and decorated by artists of note.
The origin of playing cards goes back a long way in our history, and most of our games are based upon those played by our ancestors many .years ago.. Whist has an ancient, though unaristocratic . lineage, for it began in the servants' hall, where it was variously called " Whisk " and " Swabbers." Not until 1743, howeVer, were its rules and principles as now known drawn up and established academically in the Crown Coffee House in Bedford Row by a set of players, of whom Edward Hoyle was one. Hoyle was so fascinated with the game of whist that lie immediately set about a publicity campaign to popularize it among the Quality, and wrote the lines beginning :— " Whilst Ombre and Quadrille at court were used And Basset's power the city dames amused, Imperial Whist was yet but light esteemed, And pastime fit for none but rustics deemed."
Modern poker is a variant of the old game of Maw, which was . a favourite pastime with James I. and suc- ceeded Primero, a Spanish game much played at Court in Tudor times. Maw has been known under many names since. It was called Five Cards in Ireland, All Fours in Kent, and Post and Pair in the West of England: The game is undoubtedly the ancestor, in the direct line, of modern Poker, while Euchre is an offshoot of the old French ]carte. Noddy, another game played at the Stuart Court, has survived as Cribbage.
Mr. Dulac was following in the footsteps of many a mediaeval craftsman when he turned his hand to decorating playing cards, but, whereas his intent was purely decorative, many of the old craftsmen had an educational scheme behind their work. It is odd to think, in these times of informative cigarette cards, that as long ago as 1518, a Franciscan friar, named Murner, published first a Logica Memorativa, a method of teaching logic with a pack of cards, and later designed cards giving a summary of civil law. In 1656, an Englishman named Jackson wrote a work called The Scholar's Sciential Cards, which purported to teach reading, writing, grammar and arithmetic by means of cards and card games. Later still, in the early eighteenth century, packs of cards called The Genteel Housekeeper's Pastime were common. These were described as " the Mode of Carving at Table, represented in a Pack of Playing Cards, by which anyone of Ordinary 'Capacity may learn how to carve in Mode, all the usual dishes of Flesh, Fish, Fowl, and Baked Meats, with the several Sauces and Garnishes to Every Dish of Meat." _ It is difficult to discover the precise date at which cards came into common use in Europe. The earliest mention of them one finds is of a payment for the painting of a pack for Charles VI. of . France, in the accounts of his treasurer, Poupart, in 1392. Their origin_ is probably Asiatic. They certainly existed in China many centuries before they became known in the Western world. In the early days of their European history they were much in use as fortune-telling instrumentS. Reading fortunes from a pack of cards is an amusing accomplishment still practised by many people to-day for the entertainment of their friends, and, before the suppression of professional clairvoyants, the possession of a pack of cards was just as important an item of the charlatan's kit as the crystal globe that was seldom absent from their properties.
I have cut and laid the cards—a much bethumbed and ancient pack, covered with zodiacal signs---under the necromantic eye of a Bond Street seer not so long ago, and remembered as I did so that painting in the Museum at Nantes (said to be Van Eyck's) showing Philip the Good, afterwards King of Spain, consulting a fortune- teller, and eagerly drinking in the story which the cards foreshadow. Cartomancy was an ancient art, and its earliest European expounder was probably Francesco Marcolini, whose work on the subject was printed in Venice in 1540.
• We owe our tax on imported foreign playing cards to Charles I., who granted a royal charter to the London Makers in 1628, and prohibited the importation of cards from abroad, but the old edict of Henry VII., forbidding the playing of cards by the servants and apprentices, except at Christmas time, has long since been forgotten.
JOSEPHINE VINCENT.
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