THE HOUSE OF CARDS

Evening Star, Issue 20054, 20 December 1928, Page 5

THE HOUSE OF CARDS

A LIVERY COMPANY’S TERCENTENARY Tim members of the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards recently celebrated privately the tercentenary of I lie granting of their Charter by Charles I. on October 22, 1628. [From ‘The Times.'] Card-making is now in so few hands in this country that -King Charles’s Charter could be muck more festively commemorated by card players. These should, at any rate, note the occasion As for the members of the Worshipful Company, they have in our days little or no connection with the trade. Once a year, however, at tho dinner which early in December follows the election of a new Master, their history is ro called to them by tho present of a specially designed pack; and it may bo taken for granted that tho design on this year’s pack will be based on the tercentenary. Another reminder is the company’s collection of playing cards in which tho fancies and even the freaks of past generations arc liberally represented. It is far too big a collection _to bo shown all at once to tho public, but frequently changed groups may be seen in the Guildhall Library. The visitor who keeps Ins eye on the exhibition frame may learn a good deal of the extraneous uses to which cards have been put. Perhaps tho most interesting is social and political satire; apparently players could spare a few moments for such distractions before newspapers were accessible and games a career.

That tho pictorial card is as old as the card itself cannot bo safely assumed, because students of the subject have never convinced themselves, and much less one another, of tho origin of what tho old monks considered tho devil’s most subtle device. China, India, Egypt, and Arabia all share tho disputed honour or ignominy of being tho inventors of card play. The Crusaders have been charged with borrowing cards from the _ Saracens, and tho Moors with bringing them into Spain. However that may be, tho learned ancients, alter having abused cards as a foe of tho human soul, lost very little time in adapting them to their own purposes. Logic, grammar, geography, and heraldry were among the branches of knowledge they sought to lengthen by inscription on tho cards’ back. There was much cunning in the method. Who can gauge the extent to which science was advanced, in a paucity of books, by tho “ scicntiall cards ’ ’P

Modern bridge players, it they should consider admonition or instruction a frivolous twist to a noble invention, will bo consoled by the reflection that it was dropped long ago. The abuse which called the Worshipful Company into existence was of a more familiar kind. In the reign of Edward IV. the English makers had complained that tho importation of foreign cards was injuring their trade; and they had been protected by Act of Parliament. Yet when Elizabeth ruled importation had developed into a monopoly Things grow so bad with tho London craftsmen, to whom was practically confined in England “ the art and trade of making of playing cards,” and they laid their grievances before James 1. He, though “ graciously inclined,” did nothing. So another attempt was made with diaries I.', who by granting a charter of incorporation left a particularly “ blessed memory ” to his petitioners. Their complaints and tho sanctioned remedy come home to this new era ol “safeguarding.” Not only were the King’s loving subjects hindered and hampered by tho continued importing of great quantities of foreign playing flards, but cheap and inferior goods were being manufactured here, and “ deceits and abuses committed by such as were inexpert at the trade, so that those who had attained to tho perlectiou of that art and skill were not able to maintain themselves, their wives and families.” Apprentices found no inducement to industry, and demoralisation followed on the absence of regulation. Still more clearly is the twen-tieth-century ring to be heard in the Preamble of the Charter:

Finding of how great use and con; sequence it is to the welfare of Our Kingdom that all manufactures and handicrafts should by all _ good and laudable means be cherished and maintained for the setting of our own people on work, and enabling them by their honest labours and industries to maintain themselves and their families for the public service of the Commonwealth. . . . Importation of playing cards was forbidden ; nobody but a freeman of the company was to make cards unless he should 'have served as apprentice for seven years “ in the said trade, art, or mystery and the Court of the Company was empowered to make orders, reform abuses, and punish offenders. In return the Crown took payment on every gross of cards. This payment is represented by the present Government duty of 3d on every pack, and the Inland Revenue wrapper replaces the old King’s Seal. The company, was promoted to the dignity of the Livery in 1792. Leave was given in 1903 to increase the membership to 150; it is now 110, having fallen so low in ,1880 as one freeman and a Livery of 23. One feature of the revival in recent years has been the production of packs on great national as well as private occasions. Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, the coronations of King Edward and King George, and various Royal tours within

the Empire have been commemorated in this way. But the company has never dealt its cards better than during the war, when it distributed more than 20,000 special packs among our sailors and soldiers, fighting or in hospital.