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A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the
rigour of the game." This was the celebrated wish of old
Sarah Battle (now with God) who, next to her devotions, loved
a good game at whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters,
your half and half who have no objection to take a hand, if you
want one to make up a rubber: who affirm that they have no pleasure
in winning; that they like to win one game, and lose another;
that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table,
but are indifferent whether they play or no; and will desire an
adversary, who has slipt a wrong card, to take it up and lay another.
These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One of these
flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said, that they
do not play at cards, but only play at playing at them.
Battle was none of that
breed. She detested them, as I do, from her heart and soul; and
would not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself
at the same table with them. She loved a thorough-paced partner,
a determined enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions. She hated
favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her
adversary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a
good fight: cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards)
"like a dancer." She sate bolt upright; and neither
showed you her cards, nor desired to see ours. All people have
their b]ind side -- their superstitions: and I have heard her
declare, under the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit.
I never in my life --
and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of it -- saw her
take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play: or snuff
a candle in the middle of a game; or ring for a servant, till
it was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous
conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed,
cards were cards: and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her
fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman
of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to
take a hand, and who, in his excess of candour, declared, that
he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then,
after serious studies, in recreations of that kind! She could
not hear to have her noble occupation, to which she wound up her
faculties, considered in that light . It was her business, her
duty, the thing she came into the world to do, -- and she did
it. She unbent her mind afterwards -- over a book.
Pope was her favourite
author: his Rape of the Lock her favourite work. She once did
me the favour to play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated
game of Ombre in that poem; and to explain to me how far it agreed
with, and in what points it would be found to differ from, tradrille.
Her illustrations were apposite and poignant; and I had the pleasure
of sending the substance of them to Mr. Bowles: but I suppose
they came too late to be inserted among his ingenious notes upon
that author.
Quadrille, she has often
told me, was her first love; but whist had engaged her maturer
esteem. The former, she said, was showy and specious, and likely
to allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of
partners -- a thing which the constancy of whist abhors -- the
dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille -- absurd
as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where
crown and garter give him no proper power above his brother-nobility
of the Aces; -- the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced,
of playing alone --above all, the overpowering attractions of
a Sans Prendre Vole, -- to the triumph of which there is certainly
nothing parallel or approaching, in the contingencies of whist
; -- all these, she would say, make quadrille a game of captivation
to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game
: that was her word. It was a long meal; not, like quadrille,
a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in duration
with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to
cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance-started, capricious,
and ever fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of
quadrille, she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral
embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel;
perpetually changing postures and connexions; bitter foe, to-day,
sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a breath
-- but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, steady,
deep-rooted, rational, antipathies of the great French and English
nations.
A grave simplicity was
what she chiefly admired in her favourite game. There was nothing
silly in it, like the nob in cribbage -- nothing superfluous.
No flushes -- that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable
being can set in -- that and one should claim four by virtue of
holding cards of the same mark and colour, without reference to
the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions
of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as pitiful
an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised
superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things.
-- Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniformity
of array to distinguish them: but what should we say to a foolish
squire, who should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry
in red jackets, that never were to be marshalled -- never to take
the field ? -- She even wished that whist were more simple than
it is; and, in my mind, would have stript it of some appendages,
which, in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even
commendably allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding of
the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit always trumps
? Why two colours, when the mark of the suits would have sufficiently
distinguished them without it? --
"But the eye, my
dear Madam, is agreeably refreshed with the variety. Man is not
a creature of pure reason -- he must have his senses delightfully
appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where the
music and the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker
spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out. -- You, yourself,
have a pretty collection of paintings -- but confess to me, whether,
walking in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear Vandykes,
or among the Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your
bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that
you have it in your power to experience most evenings over a well-arranged
assortment of the court cards? -- the pretty antic habits, like
heralds in a procession -- the gay triumph-assuring scarlet --
the contrasting deadly-killing sables -- the `hoary majesty of
spades' -- Pam in all his glory! --
"All these might
be dispensed with; and, with their naked names upon the drab pasteboard,
the game might go on very well, picture-less. But the beauty of
cards would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is
imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere gambling.
-- Imagine a dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on,
instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest
arena for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts
and turneys in ! -- Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers
-- work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, -- or
as profanely slighting their true application as the arrantest
Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little shrines for the
goddess) -- exchange them for little bits of leather (our ancestors'
money) or chalk and a slate!" -
The old lady, with a
smile, confessed the soundness of my logic; and to her approbation
of my arguments on her favourite topic that evening, I have always
fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage board,
made of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old
Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought with
him from Florence -- this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds,
came to me at her death.
The former bequest (which
I do not least value) I have kept with religious care; though
she herself, to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with
cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her
say, -- disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to it.
She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce "go
" -- or "that's a go." She called it an ungrammatical
game. The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber
(a five dollar stake), because she would not take advantage of
the turn-up knave, which would have given it her, but which she
must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring "two
for his heed." There something extremely genteel in this
sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born.
Piquet she held the
best at the cards for two persons, though she would ridicule the
pedantry of the terms -- such as pique -- repique -- the capot
-- they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But games for two,
or even three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate,
or square. She would argue thus -- Cards are warfare; the ends
are gain, with glory. But cards are war, in disguise of a sport:
when single adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too palpable.
By themselves, it is too close a fight; with spectators, it is
not much bettered. No looker on can be interested, except for
a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money; he cares not for
your luck sympathetically, or for your play. -- Three are still
worse; a mere naked war of every man against every man, as in
cribbage, without league or alliance; or a rotation of petty and
contradictory interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and
not much more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille. --
But in square games (she meant whist) all that is possible to
be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the incentives
of profit with honour, common to every species -- though the latter
can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where
the spectator is only feebly a participator. But the parties in
whist are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to
themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse
than nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality or
some interest beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising
stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold -- or even an interested
bystander witnesses it, but because your partner sympathises in
the contingency. You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are
exalted. Two again are mortified; which divides their disgrace,
as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) your
glories. Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to
one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by
multiplying the channels. War becomes a civil game. -- By such
reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed to defend her
favourite pastime.
No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play
at any game, where chance entered into the composition, for nothing.
Chance, she would argue -- and here again, admire the subtlety
of her conclusion! -- chance is nothing, but where something else
depends upon it. It is obvious, that cannot be glory. What rational
cause of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace
a hundred times together by himself? or before spectators, where
no stake was depending? -- Make a lottery of a hundred thousand
tickets with but one fortunate number -- and what possible principle
of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain
that number as many times successively, without a prize ? -- Therefore
she disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was
not played for money. She called it foolish, and those people
idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances.
Games of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a
stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for glory,
they were a mere setting of one man's wit, -- his memory, or combination
-- faculty rather -- against another's; like a mock-engagement
at a review, bloodless and profitless. -- She could not conceive
a game wanting the spritely infusion of chance, -- the handsome
excuses of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner
of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire
her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes
of Castles, and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue,
(and I think in this case justly) were entirely misplaced and
senseless. Those hard head-contests can in no instance ally with
the fancy. They reject form and colour. A pencil and dry slate
(she used to say) were the proper arena for such combatants.
To those puny objectors
against cards, as nurturing the bad passions, she would retort,
that man is a gaming animal. He must -- always trying to get the
better in something or other -- that this passion can scarcely
be more safely expended than upon a game at cards: that cards
are a temporary illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but
play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are
at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily concerned
as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of
dream-fighting; much ado; great battling, and little bloodshed;
mighty means for disproportioned ends; quite as diverting, and
a great deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious games
of life, which men play, without esteeming them to be such.-
With great deference
to the old lady's judgment on these matters, I think I have experienced
some moments in my life, when playing at cards for nothing has
even been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the best
spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, play a game at piquet
for love with my cousin Bridget -- Bridget Elia.
I grant there is something
sneaking in it; but with a tooth-ache or a sprained ancle, --
when you are subdued and humble, -- you are glad to put up with
an inferior spring of action,
There is such a thing
in nature, I am convinced, as sick whist. -
I grant it is not the
highest style of man -- I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle
-- she lives not, alas! to whom I should apologise.
At such times, those
terms which my old friend objected to, come in as something admissible.
-- I love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing.
I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning
amuse me.
That last game I had
with my sweet cousin (I capotted her) -- (dare I tell thee, how
foolish I am ?) -- I wished it might have lasted for ever, though
we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade
of play; I would be content to go on in that idle folly for ever.
The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle
lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the
game was over: and, as I do not much relish appliances, it should
ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing.
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