What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

by Daniel Pool

  It would seem, however, that the quadrille rapidly became a chore to be got through while you waited for the waltz to begin. A mid-century etiquette book advised that a young lady need know only the figures—not the steps—as she prepared to “walk” through it. It took so long, moreover, that a gentleman was advised to lay in a half hour’s store of conversation while the tedious figures were gone through. Punch noted in a satirical piece on the coquette that “she will walk a quadrille with a county member, but will not, if possible, waltz with any thing under a peer.”

  The Rules of Whist and Other Card Games

  One cannot seem to make it through any Jane Austen book without a brush with whist, speculation, quadrille, or casino. And not only Jane Austen. Dickens’s people play all-fours and Pope Joan, Trollope’s characters play whist, and in Vanity Fair Rawdon Crawley turns out to be an ecarte man. And what would the drawing rooms and card parties of nineteenth-century England have been without loo?

  What were these games like?

  Many games, such as whist, were to be played with a specific number of players. Others, however, like loo, commerce, and speculation, were “round games”; that is, theoretically, any number could play. The player on the dealer’s right was sometimes called the “pony,” the person on his left the “elder hand.” When the dealer dealt, say, five cards to every player, that was the player’s “hand.” (The dealer’s leftover cards were sometimes called the “stock.”) When each of the players played one of his or her cards in sequence in a round of play with everyone else, it was often called a “trick.” A “rubber” usually consisted of three or more games. As for the cards themselves, the highest suit in a game—sometimes determined at the game’s outset by simply turning over a card—was the “trump” suit. The little clubs or hearts or other emblems that marked the particular suit of a card were called the “pips”; in whist the jack, king, queen, or ace of the trump suit were sometimes called “honors.”

  All-Fours—Known as high-low-jack in America, in Dickens it seems to turn up as a game for somewhat raffish characters, like the doctor and his scruffy friend who play it in the Marshalsea Prison in Little Dorrit. There are two, sometimes four, players. The idea is to get the highest score with your six cards, the game being to ten or eleven points. The high trump, the low trump, the jack of trumps, and the highest number of pips each counts as one.

  Beggar My Neighbor—The game played by Pip, appropriately, the first time he encounters Estella at Miss Havisham’s. The two players divide the cards between them and then turn over their top cards in sequence. When one of them turns up an ace, king, queen, or jack, the other must give up, respectively, four, three, two, or one of his own cards, except that if in doing so he turns up an ace, king, queen, or jack, the other must play to him. The winner is the person who ends up with all the cards. The players begin to play in Great Expectations, and Miss Havisham’s vengeful delight can scarcely be contained—“Beggar him,” she cries, and at the end, says Pip, Estella “threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she despised them for having been won of me.”

  Casino—(also spelled cassino)—In Sense and Sensibility, a game played by Lady Middleton, who is somewhat lacking in inner resources. David Copperfield “used to go back to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr. Micawber; or play casino with Mrs. Micawber” when her husband was thrown in the King’s Bench Prison. Each of the two players (each may have one partner) is dealt four cards down. Beginning with the eldest hand, each player must match—and take—the card face up; or else build on it, e.g., play a 4 to a 3, so on the next round—if no one else can—he matches and takes them with a 7, or just puts down a card and takes nothing. You play until all the cards are used up or one player gets 21.

  Commerce—Basically, an old form of poker. Three cards are dealt down, which you can discard if you wish, and then you try to get three of a kind, a three-card straight flush, a flush of three, a pair and “point,” the latter being the biggest number of pips in one hand.

  Cribbage—A game that seems to have been associated with lengthy, subdued evenings of recreation among the elderly. Two players (generally) are each dealt six cards and then discard or “lay out” two of them into a “crib.” Cards are turned over, with each player in putting down his card trying to get a 15, a pair, a “sequence” (a straight), or 31. Points are recorded by moving pegs around a board with tiny little holes in it.

  Ecarte—A popular gambling game, played, not surprisingly, by Rawdon Crawley in Vanity Fair. Generally, a two-person game, though at one time played with spectators betting on the game. You deal five cards to each player after removing the 2s through 6s from the deck. Players may try to discard if they wish.

  Euchre—For two to four players. The 2s through 6s are removed from the deck and then five cards are dealt to each player. To be “euchred” is to get fewer than three tricks.

  Faro—A gambling game in which players bet on the order in which cards will turn up when dealt off the bottom of a deck. Except that they are not exactly “dealt.” The dealer uses a faro box—a machine with a spring in it that pops up the cards.

  Loo—A round game in which, apparently, play is best restricted to five to seven participants. Everyone gets three cards down, and an extra hand is dealt down for the benefit of all called a “miss.” The players make their bets before dealing is completed and then may put down their hand and take up the miss, pass, or play from their hand, the high card of the suit led or highest trump winning the trick.

  Ombre—An old-fashioned card game, probably already out of fashion in Jane Austen’s time, that took its name from the Spanish word for “man.” The ombre plays against the other two, each being dealt nine cards from a forty-card deck which has had the 8s, 9s, and 10s removed. The ombre gets to discard and also to designate the trump suit. The play is like whist.

  Patience—The game of solitaire.

  Piquet (also spelled picquet)—Two players are each dealt twelve cards from a pack with no 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, or 6s, the remaining eight cards being available for exchange. The elder hand then enumerates the cards in his hands, first by “point” (being the highest number of cards of one suit he holds and, if the other player has an equal number, “point” going to the player with the highest value in pips in those cards), then by a flush of three or more (e.g., “tierce,” “quart,” “quint”), then how many 4s or 3s of a kind he has, his opponent each time responding “not good,” “good,” or “equal,” corresponding to whether he can do better, worse, or the same. A number of tricks are played thus.

  Pope Joan—Apparently a convivial, cheerful game to be played on festive occasions—Christmas in The Last Chronicle of Barset—or within the family circle, as with the merry-makers at Dingley Dell in Pickwick. A round game, it drew its name from a supposed ninth-century female pope and was played with a deck that had no 8 of diamonds and with a board with divisions marked “Pope Joan,” “Intrigue,” “Matrimony,” “Ace,” “King,” “Queen,” “Knave,” and “Game.” The idea was to play the card next highest to the one that had just been placed on the table, those with various winning combinations getting stakes that had been placed in the different divisions of the board. At Dingley Dell, “when the spinster aunt got ‘matrimony,’ the young ladies laughed afresh, and the spinster aunt seemed disposed to be pettish; till, feeling Mr. Tupman squeezing her hand under the table, she brightened up.”

  Quadrille—“Mrs. Bates,” we are told in Emma, “was a very old lady, almost past everything but tea and quadrille.” It was a variation of ombre, which it replaced in popularity in the early 1700s. It was played by four people with a deck from which the 8s, 9s, and 10s had been removed.

  Speculation—A round game in which you ante up a set amount, the dealer anteing up double. Each player gets three cards, and another is turned face up to determine the trump. The players take turns turning up cards until someone has a higher card than the trump. He may then sell it, if he wis
hes. The holder of the highest trump takes the pot. In Mansfield Park Mary Crawford characteristically, while playing, “made a hasty finish of her dealings with William Price, and securing his knave at an exorbitant rate, exclaimed, ‘There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit. No cold prudence for me. I am not born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it.’ ”

  Vingt-et-un—Basically, the American game of 21, in which players try to get cards whose face value is 21 or as close to that number as possible without going over it.

  Whist—A game for two couples, the partners sitting opposite one another and each player being dealt thirteen cards. The first person puts down a card which the next person must match in suit if he can. Otherwise, he must play the trump suit or discard. The person who plays the highest trump or the highest card of the suit led wins the trick and leads for the next trick. Points are won according to the number of tricks played and, sometimes, the number of honors held, and a game is won by getting 5 or 10 points, depending on whether “short” or “long” whist is played. A “rubber” usually consists of the best two out of three games. Whist is the ancestor of bridge.

  Whist and round games seem to have been viewed, respectively, as instances of rather stodgy, reflective card playing on the one hand and a more lighthearted, boisterous sort of play on the other, as in the speculation game in Mansfield Park when “the round table was altogether a very comfortable contrast to the steady sobriety and orderly silence of the [whist players].” In Pickwick, similarly, “the rubber was conducted with all that gravity of deportment and sedateness of demeanour which befit the pursuit entitled ‘whist’—a solemn observance, to which, it appears to us, the title of ‘game’ has been very irreverently and ignominiously applied. The round-game table, on the other hand, was so boisterously merry as materially to interrupt the contemplations of [one of the whist players].”

  Calling Cards and Calls

  In the 1800s suddenly more people were trying to get into “society,” people who wanted to claim members of the elite as their friends or at least be acknowledged by them; people, in short, who wanted to be part of the social world of those who were the social world. What could the upper crust do with these pretenders?

  The calling card and the “morning calls” served as nice ways, if not to keep these social aspirants forever at a distance, at least to hold them off for a while and perhaps to screen those who would be allowed some entree from those who would not. Accordingly, the calling card and the morning call, or visit, flourished during most of the nineteenth century.

  The protocol for leaving cards was as follows: when you came to town, you drove around with your footman to the houses of those you wished to notify of your presence. (“The morning was chiefly spent,” we are told in Sense and Sensibility of Mrs. Jennings’s first day back in London, “in leaving cards at the houses of Mrs. Jennings’s acquaintance to inform them of her being in town.”) This was principally an activity of ladies. At each house, the footman took a small card bearing your name and two cards of your husband’s (yours for the mistress of the house and one of his for both the master and the mistress) and gave them to the butler, who would put them on a salver inside the front hall or, in less fancy establishments, perhaps on the mantelpiece. Visitors then had a chance to see whom the family numbered among its social circle and be suitably impressed. In Persuasion, for example, the anxious social climbers took care for “the cards of Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and the Hon. Miss Carteret, to be arranged where they might be most visible,” and when Becky Sharp receives cards from the marchioness of Steyne and the countess of Gaunt, “you may be sure they occupied a conspicuous place in the china bowl on the drawing-room table, where Becky kept the cards of her visitors.” (Mr. Gunter insults Mr. Noddy in The Pickwick Papers by refusing him his card “because you’ll stick it up over your chimney-piece, and delude your visitors into the false belief that a gentleman has been to see you, sir.”) If there were daughters living at the home you were calling on, you might leave separate cards for them and for any guests of the household, too. If you were calling with an unmarried daughter or daughters in tow, they did not generally leave cards of their own but you wrote their name or names under your own name on your card before handing it to the footman to be delivered. The object of all this, of course, was to renew—or solicit—acquaintance, and, of course, those who were suddenly wealthy or famous could expect to receive a deluge of cards, like Mr. Dorrit, who becomes suddenly allied with the fraudulent but immensely sought-after Mr. Merdle. “Cards,” says Dickens, “descended on Mr. Dorrit like theatrical snow. As the friend and relative by marriage of the illustrious Merdle, Bar, Bishop, Treasury, Chorus, Everybody wanted to make or improve Mr. Dorrit’s acquaintance.” In Our Mutual Friend the humble dustman Mr. Boffin is suddenly bequeathed an immense fortune: “Foremost among those leaving cards at the eminently aristocratic door before it is quite painted are the Veneerings—out of breath, one might imagine, from the impetuosity of their rush to the eminently aristocratic steps.” In addition, “the enchanting Lady Tippins leaves a card. Twemlow leaves cards. A tall custard-coloured phaeton tooling up in a solemn manner leaves four cards, to wit, a couple of Mr. Podsnaps, a Mrs. Podsnap, and a Miss Podsnap. All the world and his wife and daughter leave cards.”

  It was understood that the lady of the house was then socially obliged to return a card to you, or, if she wished, she could make a call and actually visit you. A call, of course, counted for more than the mere leaving of a card. Indeed, you might try to “call” in the first instance rather than merely leave a card, although in doing so, naturally, you took a risk of rejection that you didn’t when you merely left a card. Suppose you are bold, however; with a call, instead of merely leaving your card, you inquired if the lady were “at home.” She was free to peer out of her drawing-room window on the second floor, see you and then whisper an emphatic “no” to her servant. This was perfectly acceptable, and it was understood that many people were physically at home when they were not socially “at home,” although it was crass if they got caught. “She reached the house without any impediment, looked at the number, and inquired for Miss Tilney,” we are told in Northanger Abbey. “The man believed Miss Tilney to be at home, but was not quite certain. Would she be pleased to send up her name? She gave her card. In a few minutes the servant returned, and with a look which did not quite confirm his words, said he had been mistaken, for that she was walked out.” Catherine Morland leaves, we are told, “with a blush of mortification,” but “at the bottom of the street, however, she looked back again, and then, not at the window, but issuing from the door, she saw Miss Tilney herself.”

  If the lady of the house wished to see you, however, you were invited to come inside and enter the drawing room (on the first floor in town houses, the ground floor in country mansions), the room in which a lady always received her visitors. If you were a gentleman, you took your hat and riding whip with you (umbrellas could be left downstairs), presumably to show you did not intend to stay long.

  And nobody did, as a rule. If you were calling purely for the sake of formality (weddings, for example, demanded calls; “not to wait upon a bride,” says Mr. Woodhouse in Emma, “is very remiss”) you were expected to stay no more than fifteen minutes, and your call could be returned merely with a card. If another visitor appeared while you were making the polite chit-chat calls required, you eased your way slowly out, after an introduction—presuming it was to a socially inferior person, a social equal agreeable to being introduced, or a social superior who didn’t mind—had been effected. No refreshments were offered, at least until the advent of afternoon tea in the latter part of the century. Conversation was supposed to be light and touch on safe, general topics like the weather and certainly not on friends whom another, strange caller might not be presumed to know. If you were not well acquainted with the callee, you made your call between three and four o’clock. If you were somewhat
better acquainted, between four and five, and a good friend received you between five and six. These were all referred to as morning calls, notwithstanding the fact that they occurred in the afternoon or early evening, a carryover from the eighteenth century when “morning” often denoted the time before dinner, and dinner was often not until three or four in the afternoon. Certainly, no one but a great intimate would presume to actually call in the real morning, i.e., before one o’clock.

  When you left town, you submitted a card with PPC written on it, short for pour prendre congé, French for “I’m leaving,” and, if you were really new in town, you might sidestep this whole process by getting a letter of introduction from a friend to someone of prominence in the community. These were sometimes referred to as “tickets for soup” since they required as a minimum, generally, that the person receiving the letter invite the bearer to dinner.

  It will have been apparent that paying and receiving calls was largely a female enterprise, in large part because many men were at work, hunting or shooting (in the country), or at their clubs during the day. Men could pay calls as well; however, they did not receive them from ladies, unless those ladies were of dubious reputation. It was a very strict rule that no lady ever called on a gentleman except upon a business or professional matter. To do otherwise, as a mid-century etiquette book stiffly put it, “would be, not only a breach of good manners, but of strict propriety.” Thus, well as she knows Gabriel Oak, Bathsheba Everdene is in some doubt of the propriety of going to talk to him at the end of Far from the Madding Crowd after he announces he won’t work for her anymore. At his door, “she tapped nervously, and then thought it doubtful if it were right for a single woman to call upon a bachelor who lived alone, although he was her manager, and she might be supposed to call on business without any real impropriety.” The one obligatory time for a man to send out his own cards was upon his marriage, the receipt of the card signaling that you were respectable enough to be retained as a friend even though the new groom’s bachelor days were now over. “When a man marries, it is understood that all former acquaintance ends, unless he intimates a desire to renew it, by sending you his own and his wife’s card.”