ORIGIN AND HISTORY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 138, 13 June 1931, Page 19

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

In "Playing Cards: A History of the Pack," W.- Gurncy Benham gives no hints oti the playing of bridge or of any other card game. His very profusely illustrated book is in the main a history of tho designs on.'the cards—almost an exposition on the theory of evolution. Tho present customary British cards are shown to bo in almost every detail descendants of Sixteenth-century French "or Spanish pictures; but many.generations of copy : ing, sometimes unintelligent, have sprinkled them with what a zoologist would call atrophied organs. t Some of theso atrophied organs disappeared when, tho introduction of double-headed cards, about 1810, cut off the lower half of each picture; but some survive. For instance, the orb now hangs in the air in front of the King. of Clubs; the hand grasping- it has gradually. vanL ished. Mr. 'Benham ventures to' suggest to tho card-makers that the hand might bo restored, and that the King of .Clubs himself, at present a lackadaisical creature, might have again the "haughty mien described in the "Rape of tho Lock." The Knave of Hearts, top, might carry his original baton instead of his. present absurd leaf; and the nondescript object which the Knave of Spades carries, sometimes explained as a dog-catcher, might become again the head of his pike.

But Mr. Benham has not much hope that his suggestions will be adopted. Card-players aro an intensely conservative and superstitious race. He quotes from the Rev. E. J. Taylor a stqry to the effect that a card-maker supplying a certain London ehib ventured to improve one'detail of th,o designs. Soon the .secretary of the club brought all the packs back, and said: "I cannot imagine what you were thinking of;- ; all our members say they have no luck with-these cards." How all lost and none won the story docs not say, but the manufacturer had to, go back to the old pattern in every .detail, baffled by the same temperament which bafflesl reformers of our .weights and measures; our spelling, and many other things more important than cards. . ■.'■

Th.e v author.;; differs -from many authorities as to the origin of playing cards, holding that they came neither from the vague, "East 5?-nor from the more definite.Egypt. Ho thinks some forgotten entertainer, probably Italian, about 1320, first hit on. the idea that twenty or thirty pictures of kings, acorns, chalices, etc., could be made into a pastime for dull evenings. These, with number cards added, became the Tarot packs of seventy-eight to ninetyseven cards, from which the piquet packs of France and Britain, with thirty-sis to fifty-two cards, are the chief descendants^ ■ . ■

There is much unusual information in this. book, a perusal of which certainly adds interest to the designs on the fifty-two pieces of paste-board which, most of us uso so extensively these win,ter evenings, even if it is only for beans and.not pence that wo play. ,--.... .-.•.