The Search for New Games in the late 19th century

Th th he second half of the 19 century and the early years of the 20 saw a huge enthusiasm for sports and games of all kinds. In the years before radio and the Tci nema, and long before television, parlour games in general, and card games in particular, had their heyday. Game producing companies grew in size and the range of products produced for their customers was immense. For years, whist dominated the card playing scene, alongside the smaller enthusiasms for bezique, piquet, and cribbage.

Any number of publications under the name of Hoyle, Foster and others provided rules of play for many dozens of games which might help to meet the almost insatiable desire for something new to play and to amuse.

I have written elsewhere on this website about Poker patience, Cribbage patience, and the repackaging of Cooncan as Kuhn Khan in order to create a more exotic image. All three had limited appeal at the time. Patience, once introduced into the English card game literature, had an explosion of interest and is still very popular over 170 years later.

th th Yet, combing through my library of 19 and early 20 century books and pocket guides on card games, I could not help but notice the many attempts made by games producers to find and promote the “next big thing” in game play. Judging by their efforts to supply the necessary materials for play, some of these games were successful and lasted for a while at least; others came and went very quickly indeed. Some were old games which had been “re-discovered” and promoted afresh; some were variants of older games with new rules or more cards to make them more interesting, and still others were invented specifically to try to meet the market need for something new and exciting.

In this article I have identified a handful of such games for which some information about their origin and development is available. There are others for whom the name alone provides evidence of their earlier existence. In most cases it is difficult to see why some new games became popular and survived whilst others faded and were quickly lost.

The most obvious example of the evolution of a well-known game into something new and successful was Whist as it evolved, via Biritch, into Bridge (bridge-whist), Auction Bridge and eventually into Contract. According to Jessel , a four-page publication entitled “Biritch, or Russian Whist” appeared anonymously in 1886 with “No place of printing or publication mentioned; apparently the first printed description in English of the Game of Bridge”. This game, along with others published at around this time, could have sunk without trace had it not been picked up and promoted by an influential card player and the rest, as they say, is history. For an account of how Biritch came to be introduced into the Portland Club by Lord Brougham in 1894 read “Boaz’s” account quoted by Julian Laderman in his excellent “Bumblepuppy Days” , pp. 144-5. The publication described by

Jessel is reproduced in full in Julian Laderman’s book, Appendix 3. Similar evolution impacted Bezique evolving into Polish Bezique and Chinese Bezique as rules changed and the number of cards expanded from two truncated packs (64 cards) to 6 packs and more elaborate playing conditions. There were contemporary efforts to add a bidding phase to Piquet but without the success achieved by Bridge and Bezique.

Above: Advertisement for Drôle, a new card game with a Drôle Board and rules by “Cavendish.”

Above: The 1870 De La Rue Pocket Guide to Calabresella by “Cavendish.”

Above: Advertisement for Calabresella, a three-player card game supplied in boxes with a guide by “Cavendish.”

Above: Advertisement for Casse-tête, Fifty-Up and Word-Making and Word-Taking, games marketed by Goodall & Son.

But what of the less obvious examples where one or other of the major companies (Goodall & Son and De La Rue) attempted to promote something “new” but which never really caught on? I have attempted to present some of these in some kind of date order.

Most, but not all are card games. ^[1] Co., 1905 ^[2] “Drôle” first appears in Jessel as “Drôle. The Imperial Game at Cards”, J.J. Sale, Manchester, 1869” in folio form and with no author attributed. Whatever the origins of the game, by the following year this advertisement for “a new game for two” appeared in the back of De La Rue’s Pocket Guide to Écarté (1870).

Cavendish, as ever, was responsible for the rules and playing guide. But this was not just a brief publication suggesting how the game could be played but was obviously associated with a substantial investment in the equipment (The Drôle Board) required in order to play. With a top price of 42/- this was clearly a significant piece of kit!

I have been unable to trace any evidence of this game after 1870, either a written account or an example of the board used to play it. It was not one of the many games promoted by Goodall & Son in their pocket guides. I can only assume that once launched by DLR, it sank without trace.

“Check” The entry in Jessel’s bibliography reads: “The game of Check. Rules and directions for playing. Goodall & Son, London, 1869”. This name and date is confirmed by Michael H. Goodall who adds “no inventor known”. But Jessell, in brackets under this heading, writes, without further explanation: “Euchre. Apparently the first description of the game published in England!” I can only presume that Jessel regarded the “new”

game Check to be a rebranded version of Euchre, although as I have been unable to track down a copy of the Goodall publication, I am not (yet) in a position to verify this.

Nevertheless, it seems likely that “Check” was indeed Goodall’s attempt to rebrand Euchre for the English market. If so, it appears to have been unsuccessful under this name as I can find no further references to it after 1869.

Above: The New Pastime Word Making and Word Taking game box, supplied by Thos. De La Rue & Co.

Above: Letter cards and rule book from Word Making and Word Taking.

Above: Goodall & Son advertisement for Khanhoo, promoted as a new Chinese card game.

Above: Khanhoo markers in two colourways, produced by Goodall & Son.

“Calabrasella” was promoted in England by Thos. De La Rue in 1870 with publication of their Pocket Guide (by Cavendish). The aforementioned game Drôle was advertised in the back pages. But whereas Drôle appears to have been an invention, Calabrasella has its origins in Italy and is promoted as such in the Guide which claims in the Preface by way of justification “There is no good card game for three players popular in England. The want of such a game has often been remarked”. ^{[3] [4] [5]} Design 3, Brown on cream. ^[6] Once again, boxed sets of Calabrasella cards, together with the Cavendish Guide, and instructions were also marketed.

This “new” game also had no competitive response from Goodall & Son and other companies, and no significant enthusiasm from the British public. I can find no evidence of further promotions after its initial launch, although it is one of a large number of game variants included in R. F. Foster’s various games compendia. In his handbook , published 35 years after the DLR publication, he includes this delightful quote. “This is a very popular game with the middle classes and the unoccupied clergy in Italy, and it is one of the very few good games of cards for three players. If the game were better known, the author is sure it would become a great favourite”. Despite this endorsement, there is no evidence that the game ever really took off in Britain.

By 1886, Goodall’s pocket Guide to Backgammon was advertising three games - . Casse-tête, Fifty-up and Word-Making and Word-Taking. Domestic enthusiasm for new games was not confined to cards although the ubiquitous card-playing guru, “Cavendish” was behind all three.

Of these, Word-Making and Word-taking (1886) appears to be the closest of the three to a card game with 300 letters printed on enamelled card. In its original form the game used cardboard letter tiles that have the upper-case letters on one side and the lower case letters on the other. And there were a variety of ways in which they could be used. At first sight, as far as I can tell from an internet search, this game was by far the ^[7] eighty-nine games”, Simkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., London; Thomas D. Morison, Glasgow.

most successful of the three having a much longer life and versions being produced by a range of game publishers including Goodall & Son, De La Rue, Jacques, Chad Valley, Spears and the like. Here is an early example of the “new” game from De La Rue.

However, whether the game published by others in later years under this name was in any respects the same as that advertised in 1886, or whether the name alone continued to be used, is unclear. I can, for example, refer to McLoughlin’s 1900 game of this name described in an excellent and informative internet post by Jenny Kyle. Here, the cards used in play and the details of the game described seem a long way from the reversible letter cards produced in 1886.

Above: Advertisement for Penchant, described as a new two-player game by Mudie & Sons.

Above: The Penchant card-game booklet by Jack Smarte, published by Chas. Goodall & Son.

Above: Goodall & Son advertisement for Penchant, including its boxed sets and scoring markers.

Above: Advertisement for Quinto, a new card game invented by Professor Hoffmann.

Khanhoo was another Goodall & Son attempt to promote a “new” game for the British public, although, in this case, the game was far from new. Its Chinese origins appear to go back to 1130 AD with authorised rules presented in the name of Emperor Kao Tsung.

It was adapted for an English-speaking audience by William Henry Wilkinson , British Consul General in China and Korea in the mid-1890s. It was he who was commissioned to write the Pocket Guide for Goodall, published in 1891.

As with many of their other “new” game launches, Goodalls did not hold back. They attempted to capitalise on the game’s Chinese origins and, as can be seen from this advert, produced a variety of boxed sets in prices varying from 2/6 to 10/6 containing ^{[8] [9]} also wrote about the origin of playing cards and was an enthusiastic collector of cards, part of his collection being housed at the British Museum.

cards, their “book of rules” and specially designed Khanhoo scoring markers (based on their more familiar whist marker design).

Once again, despite its august background, and substantial promotional effort, there is no record of the game catching on in England.

Penchant is first advertised in the second edition of Foster’s Whist Manual, 1891, (pictured below, left) in the form of a new book by the originator of the game, John Smith McTear, writing under the pseudonym Jack Smarte”. It is promoted as “The first new game for two players, played with ordinary Cards, since the introduction of Bezique about thirty years ago”. The quoted comments range from the Daily Telegraph which describes it as “An interesting Game of the Bezique order” to Lady’s Pictorial which likens it to Bezique but with “more variety in it, more play, and much more amusement”.

This game appears to have been picked up by Goodall and Son for whom game- designer “Jack Smarte” prepared a summary of the game published in 189310. Then, as can be seen from the advert on the right, Goodall once again did everything possible to promote it. Boxed sets were available in enamelled card or leatherette. New markers were produced in enamelled card or wood (mahogany and satinwood). The game was subsequently summarised by R. F. Foster in his Hoyle and his “Handbook to the Card Games” alongside a host of other variants of Bezique. But despite the efforts of Goodall and Son it never really captured the public imagination and interest appears to have been short-lived.

Above: The Hindooly card game, marketed by Chas. Goodall & Son as a new three-player game.

Above: Advertisement for Homo, a two-player game played on an ordinary draught board.

Ombre. It is difficult to know where Ombre fits into this discussion of 19 Century games which were promoted but failed, in varying degrees, to thrive. Ombre appears to have been an extremely popular game across Europe in the 17 Century and is reputed to be the first card game in which a trump suit was established by bidding rather than by the random process of turning the first card of the stock. Jessel identifies three examples of publications between 1660 and 1665 which describe and promote “The Royal Game of Ombre”. David Parlett in his beautifully researched and exceptionally detailed description of the history of the game11 records that the game became so popular in England from the mid-17 century that parliament considered passing and Act against the playing of Ombre. Yet enthusiasm for the game waned and it was quickly dropped over the years

from updated Hoyles and other games compendia. The game was so out of fashion by the second half of the nineteenth century that none of the major game producing companies were prepared to revive it. This was despite the efforts of Henry Hucks Gibbs (Lord Aldenham). In 1874 he had printed, for private circulation, an 87-page account of “The Game of Ombre”, to which he added a further 20 page supplementary chapter in the following year. He followed this up in 1878 with a second edition and a third edition in 1902. Still none of the companies were prepared to revive the game, which seems odd in the context of a world desperate to present new (or newly fashioned old) games to a public eager for something different. This was a bewildering decision even at the time. Jessel in 1904 writes of Gibbs’ third edition “This is

“a full and lucid description of this excellent game. It is a misfortune that the work has never been published, for there is even today a constant demand for information on the details of Ombre”. Perhaps someone somewhere missed a trick (no pun intended) in failing to remarket Ombre, and we will probably never know why.

Quinto appears to have had a longer life than some in that it first appears as a Goodall & Son pocket guide in 1907 and is still being advertised (below) in 191212. It was presented as “A new and original card game invented by Professor Hoffmann”. The advert includes some remarkable reviews including the Sporting Life’s assessment that “Quinto is expected to become a keen rival of Bridge”. Vanity Fair described it as “A game which ranks with Bridge and has come to stay”. Both of these assessments have proved unfounded and yet both reviews may say more about the contemporary early assessments of Bridge as a new variant of Whist than about Quinto itself. With hindsight, we know that both judgements were wrong but they say a lot about how bridge was regarded at the time - just one of a number of “new” games being tried out, with no idea

how things would turn out. ^{[10] [11] [12]} Hindooly is another such game described in detail by Simon Wintle. “Hindooly was invented by Randolph Alexander Glen (1875-1934) and published by Chas Goodall & Son Ltd in c.1904. The name may reflect the fact that there was a popular trend for all things Asian, particularly Chinese, from around 1885.“ Goodalls went to considerable lengths to develop and promote this game, including the design and production of a sixty card pack of cards with four new suits, a pocket guide and other promotional material. It was promoted as “The best card game for three yet invented” and yet I can find no evidence that this effort was rewarded with significant sales or a lasting legacy. Homo is my personal favourite from the name alone! It dates from 189714 and it is a

board rather than card game. A few new games survived and are still around today; most came and went in short order and are only witnessed in the literature by the equivalent of a vapour trail. If anyone could have accurately predicted which would succeed and which would fail the games world would have been a very different place and the game producers very much richer than they were. ^{[13] [14]}