THE VISITING CARD

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 20

THE VISITING CARD

SURVIVAL OF THE VICTORIAN AGE.

One of the penalties of moving into the country, and pitching one's camp in a fresh neighbourhood, is the small deluge of cards which may descend upon one (writes Josephine Vincent in the "Daily News"). You may not beliovo it, but it is so, for it is an experience that has recently befallen me. Years of living in a town flat had deadened all my early recollections of the visiting card. There one merely uses tho things as a convenience for business purposes, to make oneself known when calling upon strangers, or in shops to save the trouble of spelling out one's name and. address. But in the country they still exist as social counters, and I shudder to think that my prestige may demand the mugging up of all that old lorß of how many cards it is politic to, leave for oneself, one's husband, one's children, dogs, cattle, poultry, and other domestic fry. The custom of leaving cards began in a delightfully informal way, and was imported into England from Paris nearly two centuries ago. Card-playing was then at its height, and most people carried a pack constantly; so, failing to find a friend at home, what could be raoro convenient than to scribble a name or a message or an invitation upon tho back of an ordinary playing card and leave it to tell its own tale? Later the card custom grew apace, encouraged by enterprising tradesmen, who made up assorted packs for sale, decorated with designs, floral, pastoral, and monumental. Then notable dandies and ladies of fashion with a flair for expressing their individuality in terms of their personal belongings had their names engraved upon cards specially designed for them, and collections of many of these delightful monstrosities still exist. The nineteenth century saw the decline of the picturesque and the rise of the plain pasteboard, and. that harassing number complex, which must have .been tho bugbear of the first nouveaux riches. Now in the twentieth, cards are almost forgotten, except in the county and the country, and other such centres of early Victorian survival.