by Marcus Katz
The first edition of the deck is extremely rare; only three or four copies of the very first deck are known to exist. It was a mystery as to why this was the case when perhaps many hundreds of the deck would have been printed in the first run. In recent years, the mystery was resolved when one of the surviving decks was auctioned with an original publisher’s letter included in the sale. The letter was a recall notice, asking any purchaser of the first print—which had a “rose and lily” design on the back—to return the deck for a replacement from a second printing if they were unhappy with it. It appears that the card back of the first deck was not properly glued to the front of the cards, and quickly separated in use. As a result of this recall, we presume that most decks were returned, destroyed, or soon replaced with the “brown crackle” back of the second printing, within months.
So the “rose and lily” version is extremely rare, followed by the “PAM-A” brown-back version and then others following. The first “copycat” version of the deck appeared within ten years, in 1918, when L. W. de Laurence produced The Illustrated Key to the Tarot and a deck, both of which were identical to Smith and Waite’s original work. There were other versions created from the original designs, such as the Albano-Waite in 1968.
In recent years there have been many redrawn and recoloured versions of the deck.
The Gaze of the Great Beast
Aleister Crowley was a man who did not pull his punches. He had little time for the “constant pomposities” of his “crapulous contemporaries,” particularly Waite. He even published an obituary for Waite, “Dead Waite,” before poor Arthur had even died. In it Crowley depicted Waite as a swindler, suffering from “chronic crapititis” in his writing, and loving obscuring things for no other reason than his own vanity in his “sham medieval jargon.” Crowley claims that he cannot stand for learning more “Waitese,” a language of affectation and archaism. He also snubs Waite’s scholarship and grammar.
Crowley also reviewed the Waite-Smith deck on its release, and it is worth quoting his review in full:
Mr. Waite has written a book on fortune-telling, and we advise servant-girls to keep an eye on their half-crowns. We have little sympathy or pity for the folly of fashionable women; but housemaids need protection—hence their affection for policemen and soldiers—and we fear that Mr. Waite’s apologies will not prevent professional cheats from using his instructions for their frauds and levies of blackmail.
As to Mr. Waite’s constant pomposities, he seems to think that the obscurer his style and the vaguer his phrases, the greater initiate he will appear. Nobody but Mr. Waite knows “all” about the Tarot, it appears; and he won’t tell. Reminds one of the story about God and Robert Browning, or of the student who slept, and woke when the professor thundered rhetorically, “And what ‘is’ Electricity?” The youth jumped up and cried (from habit), “I know, sir.” “Then tell us.” “I knew, sir, but I’ve forgotten.” “Just my luck!” complained the professor, “there was only one man in the world who knew and he has forgotten!”
Why, Mr. Waite, your method is not even original.
When Sir Mahatma Agamya Paramahansa Guru Swamiji (late of H. M. Prisons, thanks to the unselfish efforts of myself and a friend) was asked, “And what of the teaching of Confucius?”—or any one else that the boisterous old boy had never heard of—he would reply contemptuously, “Oh, him? He was my disciple.” And seeing the hearer smile would add, “Get out you dog, you a friend of that dirty fellow Crowley. I beat you with my shoe. Go away! Get intellect! Get English!” until an epileptic attack supervened.
Mr. Waite, like Marie Corelli, in this as in so many other respects, brags that he cares nothing for criticism, so he won’t mind my making these little remarks, and I may as well go on. He has “betrayed” (to use his own words) the attributions of some of the small cards, and Pamela Coleman [sic] Smith has done very beautiful and sympathetic designs, though our own austere taste would have preferred the plain cards with their astrological and other attributions, and occult titles. (These are all published in the book “777,” and a pack could be easily constructed by hand. Perhaps we may one day publish one at a shilling a time!) But Mr. Waite has not “betrayed” the true attributions of the Trumps. They are obvious, though, the moment one has the key (see “777”). Still, Pamela Coleman Smith has evidently been hampered; her designs are cramped and forced. I am infinitely sorry for any artist who tries to draw after dipping her hands in the gluey dogma of so insufferable a dolt and prig.
Mr. Waite, I believe, is perfectly competent to produce indefinite quantities of Malted Milk to the satisfaction of all parties; but when it comes to getting the pure milk of the Word, Mr. Waite gets hold of a wooden cow.
And do for God’s sake, Arthur, drop your eternal hinting, hinting, hinting, “Oh what an exalted grade I have, if you poor dull uninitiated people would only perceive it!”
Here is your criticism, Arthur, straight from the shoulder. Any man that knows Truth and conceals it is a traitor to humanity; any man that doesn’t know, and tries to conceal his ignorance by pretending to be the guardian of a secret, is a charlatan.
Which is it?
We recommend everyone to buy the pack, send Mr. Waite’s book to the kitchen so as to warn the maids, throw the Major Arcana out of window, and play bridge with the Minor Arcana, which alone are worth the money asked for the whole caboodle.
The worst of it all is: Mr. Waite really does know a bit in a muddled kind of way; if he would only go out of the swelled-head business he might be some use.
But if you are not going to tell your secrets, it is downright schoolboy brag to strut about proclaiming that you possess them.
Au revoir, Arthur.
—The Equinox vol. I, no. III, 320–322
A further review consolidates this statement of Waite attempting to produce something from secret information without breaking his oaths:
It is an awkward situation for any initiate to edit knowledge concerning which he is bound to secrecy. This is the fundamental objection to all vows of this kind. The only possible course for an honest man is to preserve absolute silence.
Thus, to my own knowledge Mr. Waite is an initiate (of a low grade) and well aware of the true attribution of the Tarot. Now, what I want to know is this: is Mr. Waite breaking his obligation and proclaiming himself (to quote the words of his own Oath) “a vile and perjured wretch, void of all moral worth, and unfit for the society of all upright and just persons,” and liable in addition to “the awful and just penalty of submitting himself voluntarily to a deadly and hostile current of will … by which he should fall slain or paralysed as if blasted by the lightning flash”—or, is he selling to the public information which he knows to be inexact?
When this dilemma is solved, we shall feel better able to cope with the question of the Art of Pamela Coleman [sic] Smith.
It is obvious from these reviews that the work of Pamela was secondary to the attacks on Waite from an “initiated” perspective. It is ironic too that in later years Crowley himself would create a tarot deck in much the same way—with a woman artist—and yet it would hardly be considered “austere” by his own stated preference.
The Landscape of the Deck
There is no doubt that the landscape of the deck is that imagined by Pamela and not designed or directed by Waite. The landscape has the nature of a singular dream—one where scenes are almost connected, but there is no consistent geography. We know that Pamela painted and sketched Winchelsea in an idealised form several times, and that Winchelsea is the outer landscape of the deck—but what of its inner and far more secret landscape?
The secret is surprising: the landscape of the deck was actualised by Pamela some six years prior to the tarot project, in a painting for the first issue of her Green Sheaf periodical in 1903. An image entitled The Hill of Heart’s Desire appears in this slim volume and it was also published in the Lamp re
view, in the same year (1903, 421). The image features the idealised Winchelsea (with Tower Gate) in the centre of the scene and the overall landscape accompanies a poem.
26. The Hill of Heart’s Desire, by Pamela Colman Smith, 1903. (Illustration courtesy of Koretaka Eguchi, private collection.)
It is both the landscape and the poem that set the inner nature of what would six years later become the tarot; even a cursory glance will show many similarities to the landscape of the deck. We see the loving couple in the foreground, later to appear on the 2 of Cups and 10 of Cups, and their cottage is to the left, from the same viewpoint we see in the deck.
Beyond that is the Tower, and to the upper right we see the ships setting sail as they will do in the 2 and 3 of Wands. We can even view them from the same perspective if we go up the castle building on the hill just below.
Further down on the right we see a church, the setting of the 3 of Pentacles, perhaps, and the two monks consulting on the path below. Elsewhere in the landscape we see shades of a wandering Fool and a Knight on horseback. Whatever the specific characters, the landscape, with its flowing rivers and idealised towns (from which the Charioteer will ride) is certainly that which is reproduced within the later deck.
The poem to which Pamela was responding is an English translation of an Irish poet, presented by Lady Gregory in The Green Sheaf. The poet was Anthony Raftery (1784?–1835) and he was blind; he is drawn by Pamela to the left of the landscape. The translation is more general than later versions, but we give it here in full, as it provides the context for Pamela’s depiction of the landscape it describes:
After Christmas, with the help of Christ, I will never stop if I am alive, I will go to the sharp-edged little hill. For it is a fine place, without fog falling, a blessed place that the sun shines on, and the wind does not rise there, or anything of the sort.
And if you were a year there, you would get no rest, only sitting up at night and eternally drinking.
The lamb and the sheep are there, the cow and the calf are there, fine land is there without heath and without bog. Ploughing and seed-sowing in the right month, and plough and harrow prepared and ready; the rent that is called for there, they have means to pay it; oats and flax are there, and large cared barley; beautiful valleys with good growth in them, and hay. Rods grow there, and bushes and tufts, white fields are there and respect for trees; shade and shelter from wind and rain; priests and friars reading their book; spending and getting is there, and nothing scarce.
The full poem is available in a new translation online and continues the theme of a perfect place.72 That place is Killeaden, in County Mayo, and more specifically, Lis-Ard, the “blessed place” spoken of by Raftery as the “sharp-edged little hill.”73 It is regarded widely as a faerie-place.
It is a place that “overcame the world by its good qualities” and where there is “no sickness, no disease, no plague, no death.” This idealised landscape is one Pamela returned to several times.
According to Yeats, The Green Sheaf encouraged contributors “to draw pictures of places they would have liked to live in and write stories and poems about a life they would have liked to have lived.”74 However, as well as painting a utopian vision, Pamela was far more interested in “pictures, verses, ballads of love and war; tales of pirates and the sea … ballads of the old world,” as she wrote on the title page of The Green Sheaf. It is these that she also went on to include in her tarot images, despite, we suspect, what Waite may have intended or indicated to her.
27. Lucilla, by Pamela Colman Smith, 1903. (Illustration courtesy of Koretaka Eguchi, private collection.)
Smallhythe Place
An American visitor to Ellen Terry’s cottage in Smallhythe remarked that it was simply a “charming old world place,” and it is certainly an archetypal English cottage. The garden is full of white roses, sunflowers, a poplar tree, and a terrace. It is a distinctive sloped-roof barn building, and theatrical productions were later staged there by Terry’s daughter, Edy.
Photographs of the cottage when Pamela was there show visitors, family members, and a few local characters enjoying the garden, playing with the dog, trying to hold Snuffles the cat for a portrait, or playing cricket on the lawn. Other photographs show the gang laughing as they erected the terraces or reached for fruit in the trees with long sticks—the very scenes that would later be immortalised by Pamela in cards such as the 4 and 5 of Wands.
At the time Pamela was drawing the deck, she was staying with Ellen Terry at Smallhythe, Kent. A renowned Shakespearian stage actress, Terry was born in Coventry, England in 1847. Ellen acted on stage from a very early age and married at the young age of sixteen the Victorian painter George Frederick Watts (the first of three marriages), Symbolist painter and very highly regarded by pre-Raphaelite painters.
28. Smallhythe Place, photograph by authors.
Ellen Terry was anything but conventional, and this is clearly demonstrated by the thirty years age difference between her and Watts. The relationship did not last, and she became involved with the architect Edward William Godwin, whom she never married but lived and fathered two children with (resulting in a bit of a scandal at the time). These children, Edy (Edith) and Edward Gordon Craig, in adulthood would become professional contacts and friends with Pamela through their art—stage and costume design. When this relationship ended, Ellen Terry met and began a professional relationship or very good friendship with the famous actor and manager Sir Henry Irving of the Lyceum Theatre in London. It was through the Lyceum Theatre’s US tour that her and Pamela’s paths would cross. Ellen Terry purchased Smallhythe Place in 1902 and it became her bolt-hole and place where she could relax with friends and fellow actors.
29. Pamela and Ellen Terry. (Courtesy of the National Trust, used under license.)
A visitor to Smallhythe Place wrote that he “felt that the house was very much like her,” in that “there was something of wildness in her nature, something almost fey, which assorts well with this brave old house … I thought when I was there the other day in Spring, that it was all very like her … like her in the sunshine that irradiated it, and in the gaiety of its yellow wallflowers.” 75 Many friends and visitors to Smallhythe would have been attracted to these characteristics and it is most likely Pamela Colman Smith felt this also. Ellen Terry was known for all these things and an incredible warmth of nature that attracted many to her. The Smallhythe group welcomed them with open arms; she and the house embodied the 10 of Cups as if saying “all is well, you are home at last; abide in my sanctuary.”
30. Pamela and Friends, at Smallhythe Place. (Courtesy of the National Trust, used under license.)
We know now that Smallhythe Place was most likely where Pamela visited when she was working on her tarot deck, and we know that she was very close to Ellen Terry. Terry was very much an inspiration and a support to Pamela, and Smallhythe influenced the images Pamela created for the deck. In doing so, it could be said that the deck embodies Smallhythe Place, Ellen Terry, and the surrounding Winchelsea. In doing so it captures the essence of a time and a place, as well as the people who knew and loved Pamela Colman Smith for her wild, fey nature.
The novelist Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) wrote that Smallhythe Place was a “Gypsy encampment of which Edith Craig is its ‘Romany matriarch.’” 76
Tower Cottage
Ellen Terry invested the profits from her Nance Oldfield play into buying the freehold for Tower Cottage, Winchelsea, where she lived between 1896 and 1899. On moving to Smallhythe, she kept Tower Cottage as a rental property, and it is possible Pamela stayed there rather than at Smallhythe. Terry sold the cottage in 1914.
The stunning view from Tower Cottage down to the sea impressed Ellen so much that she felt moved to describe it in the following words to an artist friend of hers: “It is just a dream of a dream” and that “down a little Garden path from this Bay window is my Look-Out … on August
nights with a full pale moon.” She then stressed to her friend, the painter Joe Evans, that it was so special that he would like it, but as an “artist … you could see it & paint it.” It is not difficult to stretch one’s imagination a little and imagine that Ellen could have professed the same sentiment to Pamela.
31. The Idealized England, from A Book of Friendly Giants, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, 1914. (Illustration courtesy of authors, private collection.)
32. If You Will Look, from A Book of Friendly Giants, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, 1914. (Illustration courtesy of authors, private collection.)
She was not alone in her affection for Winchelsea; it had been a known Victorian artist colony frequented by the Pre-Raphaelites artists. These included Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. In 1854, Millais painted The Blind Girl and The Random Shot; in The Blind Girl, we see the same landscape that inspired Pamela—the little houses in the distance capped by a rainbow. It is the landscape of the 10 of Cups, where under an everlasting rainbow everyone lives a contented life. Rossetti was so inspired by the area that he and his family set up home in Winchelsea. This whole area was a landscape with hidden secrets for those who would look.