"EXCEEDINGLY AMIABLE AND AGREEABLE.""EXCEEDINGLY AMIABLE AND AGREEABLE."
The captain and I exchanged looks; the steward was waiting upon us with cocked ears, and that menial, deaf expression of face which makes you know every word is being greedily listened to. We might therefore make sure that before the first dog-watch came round all hands would have heard that the Major had a diamond in his cabin intended for the Queen of England, and worth fifteen thousand pounds. Nay, they'd hear even more than that; for in the course of his talk about the gem the Major praised the ingenuity of the Asiatic artisan, whether Indian or Chinese, and spoke of the hiding-place the two natives had contrived for the diamond as an example of that sort of juggling skill in carving which is found in perfection amongst the Japanese.
I thought this candour highly indiscreet: charged too with menace. A matter gains in significance by mystery. The Jacks would think nothing of a diamond being in the ship as a part of her cargo, which might include a quantity of specie for all they knew. But some of them might think more often about it than was at all desirable when they understood it was stowed away under a plank, or was to be got by tapping about for a hollow echo, or probing with the judgment of a carpenter when the Major was on deck and the coast aft all clear.
We had been three weeks at sea; it was a roasting afternoon, though I cannot exactly remember the situation of the ship. Our tacks were aboard and the bowlines triced out, and the vessel was scarcely looking up to her course, slightly heeling away from a fiery fanning of wind off the starboard bow, with the sea trembling under the sun in white-hot needles of broken light, and a narrow ribbon of wake glancing off into a hot blue thickness that brought the horizon within a mile of us astern.
I had charge of the deck from twelve to four. For an hour past the Major, cigar in mouth, had been stretched at his ease in a folding chair; a book lay beside him on the skylight, but he scarcely glanced at it. I had paused to address him once or twice, but heshowed no disposition to chat. Though he lay in the most easy lounging posture imaginable, I observed a restless, singular expression in his face, accentuated yet by the looks he incessantly directed out to sea, or glances at the deck forward, or around at the helm, so far as he might move his head without shifting his attitude. It was as though his mind were in labour with some scheme. A man might so look whilst working out the complicated plot of a play, or adjusting by the exertion of his memory the intricacies of a novel piece of mechanism.
"STRETCHED AT HIS EASE IN A FOLDING CHAIR.""STRETCHED AT HIS EASE IN A FOLDING CHAIR."
On a sudden he started up and went below.
A few minutes after he had left the deck, Captain North came up from his cabin, and for some while we paced the planks together. There was a pleasant hush upon the ship; the silence was as refreshing as a fold of coolness lifting off the sea. A spun-yarn winch was clinking on the forecastle; from alongside rose the music of fretted waters.
I was talking to the captain on some detail of the ship's furniture; when Major Hood came running up the companion steps, his face as white as his waistcoat, his head uncovered, every muscle of his countenance rigid, as with horror.
"Good God, captain!" cried he, standing in the companion, "what do you think has happened?" Before we could fetch a breath he cried: "Someone's stolen the diamond!"
I glanced at the helmsman who stood at the radiant circle of wheel staring with open mouth and eyebrows arched into his hair. The captain, stepping close to Major Hood, said in a low, steady voice:—
"What's this you tell me, sir?"
"The diamond's gone!" exclaimed the Major, fixing his shining eyes upon me, whilst I observed that his fingers convulsively stroked his thumbs as though he were rolling up pellets of bread or paper.
"Do you tell me the diamond's been taken from the place you hid it in?" said Captain North, still speaking softly, but with deliberation.
"The diamond never was hidden," replied the Major, who continued to stare at me. "It was in a portmanteau.That'sno hiding-place!"
Captain North fell back a step. "Never was hidden!" he exclaimed. "Didn't you bring two native workmen aboard for no other purpose than to hide it?"
"It never was hidden," said the Major, now turning his eyes upon the captain. "I chose it should be believed it was undiscoverably concealed in some part of my cabin, that I might safely and conveniently keep it in my baggage, where no thief would dream of looking for it. Who has it?" he cried with a sudden fierceness, making a step full of passion out of the companion-way; and he looked under knitted brows towards the ship's forecastle.
Captain North watched him idly for a moment or two, and then with an abrupt swing of his whole figure, eloquent of defiant resolution, he stared the Major in the face, and said in a quiet, level voice:—
"I shan't be able to help you. If it's gone, it's gone. A diamond's not a bale ofwool. Whoever's been clever enough to find it will know how to keep it."
"SOMEONE'S STOLEN THE DIAMOND!""SOMEONE'S STOLEN THE DIAMOND!"
"I must have it!" broke out the Major. "It's a gift for Her Majesty the Queen. It's in this ship. I look to you, sir, as master of this vessel, to recover the property which some one of the people under your charge has robbed me of!"
"I'll accompany you to your cabin," said the captain; and they went down the steps.
I stood motionless, gaping like an idiot into the yawn of hatch down which they had disappeared. I had been so used to think of the diamond as cunningly hidden in the Major's berth, that his disclosure was absolutely a shock with its weight of astonishment. Small wonder that neither Captain North nor I had observed any marks of a workman's tools in the Major's berth. Not but that it was a very ingenious stratagem, far cleverer to my way of thinking than any subtle, secret burial of the thing. To think of the Major and his two Indians sitting idly for hours in that cabin, with the captain and myself all the while supposing they were fashioning some wonderful contrivance or place for concealing the treasure in! And still, for all the Major's cunning, the stone was gone! Who had stolen it? The only fellow likely to prove the thief was the steward, not because he was more or less of a rogue than any other man in the ship, but because he was the one person who, by virtue of his office, was privileged to go in and out of the sleeping places as his duties required.
I was pacing the deck, musing into a sheer muddle this singular business of the Maharajah of Ratnagiri's gift to the Queen of England, with all sorts of dim, unformed suspicions floating loose in my brains round the central fancy of the fifteen thousand pound stone there, when the captain returned. He was alone. He stepped up to me hastily, and said:—
"He swears the diamond has been stolen. He showed me the empty case."
"Was there ever a stone in it at all?" said I.
"I don't think that," he answered, quickly; "there's no motive under Heaven to be imagined if the whole thing's a fabrication."
"What then, sir?"
"The case is empty, but I've not made up my mind yet that the stone's missing."
"The man's an officer and a gentleman."
"I know, I know!" he interrupted, "but still, in my opinion, the stone's not missing. The long and short of it is," he said, after a very short pause, with a careful glance at the skylight and companion hatch, "his behaviour isn't convincing enough. Something's wanting in his passion and his vexation."
"Sincerity!"
"Ah! I don't intend that this business shall trouble me. He angrily required me to search the ship for stowaways. Bosh! The second mate and steward have repeatedly overhauled the lazarette: there's nobody there."
"And if not there, then nowhere else," said I. "Perhaps he's got the forepeak in his head."
"I'll not have a hatch lifted," he exclaimed, warmly, "nor will I allow the crew to be troubled. There's been no theft. Put it that the stone is stolen. Who's going to find it in a forecastle full of men—a thing as big as half a bean perhaps? If it's gone, it'sgone, indeed, whoever may have it. But there's no go in this matter at all," he added, with a short, nervous laugh.
We were talking in this fashion when the Major joined us; his features were now composed. He gazed sternly at the captain and said, loftily:—
"What steps are you prepared to take in this matter?"
"None, sir."
His face darkened. He looked with a bright gleam in his eyes at the captain, then at me: his gaze was piercing with the light in it. Without a word he stepped to the side and, folding his arms, stood motionless.
I glanced at the captain; there was something in the bearing of the Major that gave shape, vague indeed, to a suspicion that had cloudily hovered about my thoughts of the man for some time past. The captain met my glance, but he did not interpret it.
When I was relieved at four o'clock by the second mate, I entered my berth, and presently, hearing the captain go to his cabin, went to him and made a proposal. He reflected, and then answered:—
"Yes; get it done."
After some talk I went forward and told the carpenter to step aft and bore a hole in the bulkhead that separated the Major's berth from mine. He took the necessary tools from his chest and followed me. The captain was now again on deck, talking with the Major; in fact, detaining him in conversation, as had been preconcerted. I went into the Major's berth, and quickly settled upon a spot for an eye-hole. The carpenter then went to work in my cabin, and in a few minutes bored an orifice large enough to enable me to command a large portion of the adjacent interior. I swept the sawdust from the deck in the Major's berth, so that no hint should draw his attention to the hole, which was pierced in a corner shadowed by a shelf. I then told the carpenter to manufacture a plug and paint its extremity of the colour of the bulkhead. He brought me this plug in a quarter of an hour. It fitted nicely, and was to be withdrawn and inserted as noiselessly as though greased.
I don't want you to suppose this Peeping-Tom scheme was at all to my taste, albeit my own proposal; but the truth is, the Major's telling us that someone had stolen his diamond made all who lived aft hotly eager to find out whether he spoke the truth or not; for, if he had been really robbed of the stone, then suspicion properly rested upon the officers and the steward, which was aninfernalconsideration: dishonouring and inflaming enough to drive one to seek a remedy in even a baser device than that of secretly keeping watch on a man in his bedroom. Then, again, the captain told me that the Major, whilst they talked when the carpenter was at work making the hole, had said he would give notice of his loss to the police at Cape Town (at which place we were to touch), and declared he'd take care no man went ashore—from Captain North himself down to the youngest apprentice—till every individual, every sea-chest, every locker, drawer, shelf and box, bunk, bracket and crevice had been searched by qualified rummagers.
"THE CARPENTER THEN WENT TO WORK.""THE CARPENTER THEN WENT TO WORK."
On this the day of the theft, nothing more was said about the diamond: that is, after the captain had emphatically informed Major Hood that he meant to take no steps whatever in the matter. I had expected to find the Major sullen and silent atdinner; he was not, indeed, so talkative as usual, but no man watching and hearing him would have supposed so heavy a loss as that of a stone worth fifteen thousand pounds, the gift of an Eastern potentate to the Queen of England, was weighing upon his spirits.
It is with reluctance I tell you that, after dinner that day, when he went to his cabin, I softly withdrew the plug and watched him. I blushed whilst thus acting, yet I was determined, for my own sake and for the sake of my shipmates, to persevere. I spied nothing noticeable saving this: he sat in a folding chair and smoked, but every now and again he withdrew his cigar from his mouth and talked to it with a singular smile. It was a smile of cunning, that worked like some baleful, magical spirit in the fine high breeding of his features; changing his looks just as a painter of incomparable skill might colour a noble, familiar face into a diabolical expression, amazing those who knew it only in its honest and manly beauty. I had never seen that wild, grinning countenance on him before, and it was rendered the more remarkable by the movement of his lips whilst he talked to himself, but inaudibly.
A week slipped by; time after time I had the man under observation; often when I had charge of the deck I'd leave the captain to keep a look out, and steal below and watch Major Hood in his cabin.
It was a Sunday, I remember. I was lying in my bunk half dozing—we were then, I think, about a three-weeks' sail from Table Bay—when I heard the Major go to his cabin. I was already sick of my aimless prying; and whilst I now lay I thought to myself: "I'll sleep; what is the good of this trouble? I know exactly what I shall see. He is either in his chair, or his bunk, or overhauling his clothes, or standing, cigar in mouth, at the open porthole." And then I said to myself: "If I don't look now I shall miss the only opportunity of detection that may occur." One is often urged by a sort of instinct in these matters.
I got up, almost as through an impulse of habit, noiselessly withdrew the plug, and looked. The Major was at that instant standing with a pistol-case in his hand: he opened it as my sight went to him, took out one of a brace of very elegant pistols, put down the case, and on his apparently touching a spring in the butt of the pistol, the silver plate that ornamented the extremity sprang open as the lid of a snuff-box would, and something small and bright dropped into his hand. This he examined with the peculiar cunning smile I have before described; but owing to the position of his hand, I could not see what he held, though I had not the least doubt that it was the diamond.
"SOMETHING SMALL AND BRIGHT DROPPED INTO HIS HAND.""SOMETHING SMALL AND BRIGHT DROPPED INTO HIS HAND."
I watched him breathlessly. After a few minutes he dropped the stone into the hollow butt-end, shut the silver plate, shook the weapon against his ear as though it pleased him to rattle the stone, then put it in its case, and the case into a portmanteau.
I at once went on deck, where I found the captain, and reported to him what I had seen. He viewed me in silence, with a stare of astonishment and incredulity. What I had seen, he said, was not the diamond. I told him the thing that had dropped into the Major's hand was bright, and, as I thought, sparkled, but it was so held I could not see it.
I was talking to him on this extraordinary affair when the Major came on deck. The captain said to me: "Hold him in chat. I'll judge for myself," and asked me to describe how he might quickly find the pistol-case. This I did, and he went below.
I joined the Major, and talked on the first subjects that entered my head. He was restless in his manner, inattentive, slightly flushed in the face; wore a lofty manner, and being half a head taller than I, glanced down at me from time to time in a condescending way. This behaviour in him was what Captain North and I had agreed to call his "injured air." He'd occasionally put it on to remind us that he was affronted by the captain's insensibility to his loss, and that the assistance of the police would be demanded on our arrival at Cape Town.
Presently looking down the skylight, I perceived the captain. Mackenzie had charge of the watch. I descended the steps, and Captain North's first words to me were:—
"It's no diamond!"
"What, then, is it?"
"A common piece of glass not worth a quarter of a farthing."
"What's it all about, then?" said I. "Upon my soul, there's nothing in Euclid to beat it. Glass?"
"A little lump of common glass; a fragment of bull's-eye, perhaps."
"What's he hiding it for?"
"Because," said Captain North, in a soft voice, looking up and around, "he's mad!"
"Just so!" said I. "That I'll swear tonow, and I've been suspecting it this fortnight past."
"He's under the spell of some sort of mania," continued the captain; "he believes he's commissioned to present a diamond to the Queen; possibly picked up a bit of stuff in the street that started the delusion, then bought a case for it, and worked out the rest as we know."
"But why does he want to pretend that the stone was stolen from him?"
"He's been mastered by his own love for the diamond," he answered. "That's how I reason it. Madness has made his affection for his imaginary gem a passion in him."
"And so he robbed himself of it, you think, that he might keep it?"
"That's about it," said he.
After this I kept no further look-out upon the Major, nor would I ever take an opportunity to enter his cabin to view for myself the piece of glass as the captain described it, though curiosity was often hot in me.
We arrived at Table Bay in twenty-two days from the date of my seeing the Major with the pistol in his hand. His manner had for a week before been marked by an irritability that was often beyond his control. He had talked snappishly and petulantly at table, contradicted aggressively, and on two occasions gave Captain North the lie; but we had carefully avoided noticing his manner, and acted as though he were still the high bred, polished gentleman who had sailed with us from Calcutta.
The first to come aboard were the Customs people. They were almost immediately followed by the harbour-master. Scarcely had the first of the Custom House officers stepped over the side when Major Hood, with a very red face, and a lofty, dignified carriage, marched up to him, and said in a loud voice:—
"I have been robbed during the passage from Calcutta of a diamond worth fifteen thousand pounds, which I was bearing as a gift from the Maharajah of Ratnagiri to Her Majesty the Queen of England."
The Customs man stared with a lobster-like expression of face: no image could better hit the protruding eyes and brick-red countenance of the man.
"I request," continued the Major, raising his voice into a shout, "to be placed at once in communication with the police at this port. No person must be allowed to leave the vessel until he has been thoroughly searched by such expert hands as you and yourconfrèresno doubt are, sir. I am Major Byron Hood. I have been twice wounded. My services are well known, and I believe duly appreciated in the right quarters. Her Majesty the Queen is not to suffer any disappointment at the hands of one who has the honour of wearing her uniform, nor am I to be compelled, by the act of a thief, to betray the confidence the Maharajah has reposed in me."
He continued to harangue in this manner for some minutes, during which I observed a change in the expression of the Custom House officers' faces.
Meanwhile Captain North stood apart in earnest conversation with the harbour-master. They now approached; the harbour-master, looking steadily at the Major, exclaimed:—
"Good news, sir! Your diamond is found!"
"Ha!" shouted the Major. "Who has it?"
"You'll find it in your pistol-case," said the harbour-master.
The Major gazed round at us with his wild,bright eyes, with a face a-work with the conflict of twenty mad passions and sensations. Then bursting into a loud, insane laugh, he caught the harbour-master by the arm, and in a low voice and a sickening, transforming leer of cunning, said: "Come, let's go and look at it."
"I HAVE BEEN ROBBED.""I HAVE BEEN ROBBED."
We went below. We were six, including two Custom House officers. We followed the poor madman, who grasped the harbour-master's arm, and on arriving at his cabin we stood at the door of it. He seemed heedless of our presence, but on his taking the pistol-case from the portmanteau, the two Customs men sprang forward.
"That must be searched by us," one cried, and in a minute they had it.
With the swiftness of experienced hands they found and pressed the spring of the pistol, the silver plate flew open, and out dropped a fragment of thick, common glass, just as Captain North had described the thing. It fell upon the deck. The Major sprang, picked it up, and pocketed it.
"Her Majesty will not be disappointed, after all," said he, with a courtly bow to us, "and the commission the Maharajah's honoured me with shall be fulfilled."
The poor gentleman was taken ashore that afternoon, and his luggage followed him. He was certified mad by the medical man at Cape Town, and was to be retained there, as I understood, till the arrival of a steamer for England. It was an odd, bewildering incident from top to bottom. No doubt this particular delusion was occasioned by the poor fellow, whose mind was then fast decaying, reading about the transmission of the Koh-i-noor, and musing about it with a mad-man's proneness to dwell upon little things.
FIG. 16.FIG. 16.
FIG. 17.FIG. 17.
The "foolish business" of Heraldry has supplied the motive for numerous packs of cards. Two only, however, can be here shown, though there are instructive examples of the latter half of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries from England, Scotland, France, Germany, and Italy. The example given in Fig. 16 is English, of the date of 1690, and the fifty-two cards of the pack give us the arms of the different European States, and of the peers of England and Scotland. A pack similar to this was engraved by Walter Scott, the Edinburgh goldsmith, in 1691, and is confined to the Arms of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and the greatScottish families of that date, prepared under the direction of the Lyon King of Arms, Sir Alexander Erskine. The French heraldic example (Fig. 17) is from a pack of the time of Louis XIV., with the arms of the French nobility and the nobles of other European countries; the "suit" signs of the pack being "Fleur de Lis," "Lions," "Roses," and "Eagles."
FIG. 18.FIG. 18.
Caligraphy, even, has not been left without recognition, for we have a pack, published in Nuremberg, in 1767, giving examples of written characters and of free-hand pen drawing, to serve as writing copies. We show the Nine of Hearts from this pack (Fig. 18), and the eighteenth century South German graphic idea of a Highlander of the period is amusing, and his valorous attitude is sufficiently satisfying.
FIG. 19.FIG. 19.
Biography has, too, its place in this playing-card cosmography, though it has not many examples. The one we give (Fig. 19) is German, of about 1730, and is from a pack which depicts a series of heads of Emperors, poets, and historians, Greek and Roman—a summary of their lives and occurrences therein gives us theirraison d'être.
FIG. 20.FIG. 20.
Of Geographical playing cards there are several examples in the second half of the seventeenth century. The one selected for illustration (Fig. 20) gives a sectionalmap of one of the English counties, each of the fifty-two cards of the pack having the map of a county of England and Wales, with its geographical limitations. These are among the more rare of old playing cards, and their gradual destruction when used as educational media will, as in the case of horn-books, and early children's books generally, account for this rarity. Perhaps the most interesting geographical playing cards which have survived this common fate, though they are theultima rarissimaof such cards, is the pack designed and engraved by H. Winstanley, "at Littlebury, in Essex," as we read on the Ace of Hearts. They appear to have been intended to afford instruction in geography and ethnology. Each of the cards has a descriptive account of one of the States or great cities of the world, and we have taken the King of Hearts (Fig. 21), with its description of England and the English, as the most interesting. The costumes are those of the time of James II., and the view gives us Old London Bridge, the Church of St. Mary Overy, on the south side of the Thames, and the Monument, then recently erected at the northern end of the bridge to commemorate the Great Fire, and which induced Pope's indignant lines:—
"Where London's column, pointing to the skiesLike a tall bully, lifts its head and—lies."
"Where London's column, pointing to the skiesLike a tall bully, lifts its head and—lies."
The date of the pack is about 1685, and it has an added interest from the fact that its designer was the projector of the first Eddystone Lighthouse, where he perished when it was destroyed by a great storm in 1703.
FIG. 21.FIG. 21.
Music, too, is not forgotten, though on playing cards it is seen in smaller proportion than other of the arts. To the popularity of the "Beggar's Opera" of John Gay, that satirical attack upon the Government of Sir Robert Walpole, we are indebted for its songs and music appearing as themotifof the pack, from which we give here the Queen of Spades (Fig. 22), and the well-thumbed cards before us show that they were popular favourites. Their date may be taken as nearly coincident with that of the opera itself, viz., 1728. A further example of musical cards is given in Fig. 23, from a French pack of 1830, with its pretty piece of costume headgear, and its characteristic waltz music.
FIG. 22.FIG. 22.
France has been prolific in what may be termed "Cartes de fantaisie," burlesque and satirical, not always designed, however, with due regard to the refinements of well-behaved communities. They are always spirited, and as specimens of inventive adaptation are worth notice. The exampleshown (Fig. 24) is from a pack of the year 1818, and is good of its class.
FIG. 23.FIG. 23.
FIG. 24.FIG. 24.
Of these "Cartes de fantaisie," each of the card-producing countries of Europe has at different dates produced examples of varying degrees of artistic value. Although not the best in point of merit, the most generally attractive of these are the packs produced in the years 1806-7-8 and 9, by the Tübingen bookseller, Cotta, and which were published in book form, as the "Karten Almanack," and also as ordinary packs. Every card has a design, in which the suit signs, or "pips," are brought in as an integral part, and admirable ingenuity is displayed in this adaptation; although not the best in the series, we give the Six of Hearts (Fig. 25), as lending itself best to the purpose of reproduction, and as affording a fair instance of the method of design.
FIG. 25.FIG. 25.
In England numerous examples of these illustrated playing cards have been produced of varying degrees of artistic merit, and, as one of the most amusing, we select the Knave of Spades from a pack of the year 1824 (Fig. 26). These cards are printed from copper-plates, and are coloured by hand, and show much ingenuity in the adaptation of the design to the form of the "pips."
FIG. 26.FIG. 26.
FIG. 27.FIG. 27.
FIG. 28.FIG. 28.
Of the same class, but with more true artistic feeling and treatment than the preceding, we give the Deuce of Clubs, from a pack with London Cries (Fig. 27), and another with Fables (Fig. 28), both of which date from the earlier years of the last century, the former with the quaint costume and badge of a waterman, with his cry of "Oars! oars! do you want a boat?" In the middle distance the piers of Old London Bridge, and the house at its foot with overhanging gallery, make a pleasing old-time picture. The "Fables" cards are apparently from the designs of Francis Barlow, and are probably engraved by him; although we find upon some of them the name of J. Kirk, who, however, was the seller of the cards only, and who, as was not uncommon with the vendor of that time, in this way robbed the artist of what honour might belong to his work. Both of these packs are rare; that of the "Fables" is believed to be unique. Of a date some quarter of a century antecedent to those just described we have an amusing pack, in which each card has a collection of moral sentences, aphorisms, or a worldly-wise story, or—we regret in the interests of good behaviour to have to add—something very much the reverse of them. The larger portion of the card is occupied by a picture of considerable excellence in illustration of the text; and notwithstanding the peculiarity to which wehave referred as attaching to some of them, the cards are very interesting as studies of costume and of the manners of the time—of what served to amuse our ancestors two centuries ago—and is a curious compound survival of Puritan teaching and the license of the Restoration period. We give one of them in Fig. 29.
FIG. 29.FIG. 29.
The Ace of Clubs, shown in Fig. 30, is from a pack issued in Amsterdam about 1710, and is a good example of the Dutch burlesque cards of the eighteenth century. The majority of them have local allusions, the meaning of which is now lost; and many of them are of a character which will not bear reproduction. A better-known pack of Dutch cards is that satirizing the Mississippi scheme of 1716, and the victims of the notorious John Law—the "bubble" which, on its collapse, four years later, brought ruin to so many thousands.
FIG. 30.FIG. 30.
FIG. 31.FIG. 31.
FIG. 32.FIG. 32.
FIG. 33.FIG. 33.
FIG. 34.FIG. 34.
Our space forbids the treatment of playing cards under any but their pictorial aspects, though the temptation is great to attempt some description of their use from an early period as instruments of divination or fortune telling, for which in the hands of the "wise man" or woman of various countries they are still used, and to which primary purpose the early "Tarots" were doubtless applied; but, as it is among the more curious of such cards, we give the Queen of Hearts from a pack of the immediate post-Commonwealth period (Fig. 31). The figure is called Semiramis—without, so far as can be seen, any reason. It is one of a mélange of names for cards in which Wat Tyler and Tycho Brahe rub shoulders in the suit of Spades, and Mahomet and Nimrod in that of Diamonds! In the pack we find the Knave of Clubs named "Hewson" (not the card-maker of that name), but he who is satirized by Butler as "Hewson the Cobbler." Elsewhere he is called "One-eyed Hewson." He is shown with but one eye in the card bearing his name, and as it is contemporary, it may be a fair presentment of the man who, whatever his vices, managed under Cromwell to obtain high honours, and who was by him nominated a member of the House of Lords. The bitter prejudice of the time is shown in the story which is told of Hewson, that on the day the King was beheaded he rode from Charing Cross to the Royal Exchange proclaiming that "whoever should say that Charles Stuart died wrongfully should suffer death." Among thequasi-educational uses of playing cards we find the curious work of Dr. Thomas Murner, whose "Logica Memorativa Chartiludium," published at Strassburg in 1507, is the earliest instance known to us of a distinct application of playing cards to education, though the author expressly disclaims any knowledge of cards. The method used by the Doctor was to make each card an aid to memory, though the method must have been a severe strain of memory in itself. One of them is here given (Fig. 32), the suit being the German one of Bells (Schnellen).
It would seem that hardly any branch of human knowledge had been overlooked in the adaptation of playing cards to an educational purpose, and they who still have them in mind under the designation of "the Devil's books," may be relieved to know that Bible history has been taught by the means of playing cards. In 1603 there was published a Bible History and Chronology, under the title of the "Geistliche Karten Spiel," where, much as Murner did in the instance we have given above, the cards were used as an aid to memory, the author giving to each of the suit signs the distinctive appellation of some character or incident in Holy Writ. And more recently Zuccarelli, one of the original members of our Royal Academy, designed and etched a pack of cards with the same intention.
In Southern Germany we find in the last century playing cards specially prepared for gifts at weddings and for use at the festivities attending such events. These cards bore conventional representations of the bride, the bridegroom, the musicians, the priest, and the guests, on horseback or in carriages, each with a laudatory inscription. The card shown in Fig. 33 is from a pack of this kind of about 1740, the Roman numeral I. indicating it as the first in a series of "Tarots" numbered consecutively from I. to XXI., the usual Tarot designs being replaced by the wedding pictures described above. The custom of presenting guests with a pack of cards has been followed by the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards, who at their annual banquet give to their guests samples of the productions of the craft with which they are identified, which are specially designed for the occasion.
THE ARMS OF THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF MAKERS OF PLAYING CARDS, 1629.THE ARMS OF THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF MAKERS OF PLAYING CARDS, 1629.
To conclude this article—much too limited to cover so interesting a subject—we give an illustration (Fig. 34) from a pack of fifty-two playing cards ofsilver—every card being engraved upon a thin plate of that metal. They are probably the work of a late sixteenth century German goldsmith, and are exquisite examples of design and skill with the graver. They are in the possession of a well-known collector of all things beautiful, curious, and rare, by whose courteous permission this unique example appears here.
From a Photograph.
Lord Houghton, whose appointment to the post of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland came somewhat as a surprise, is a Yorkshire landowner, and a son of the peer so well known both in literary and social circles as Richard Monckton Milnes, whose poems and prose writings alike will long keep his memory alive. This literary faculty has descended to the present peer, his recent volume of poems having been received by the best critics as bearing evidence of a true poetic gift. Lord Houghton, who served as a Lord-in-Waiting in Mr. Gladstone's Government of 1886, is a rich man and the reputed heir of Lord Crewe; he has studied and travelled, and has taken some share, though hitherto not a very prominent one, in politics. He is a widower, and his sister presides over his establishment.
AGE 16. From a Sketch in Crayons by Himself.AGE 16. From a Sketch in Crayons by Himself.
AGE 30. From a Photo. by G. W. Wilson, Aberdeen.AGE 30. From a Photo. by G. W. Wilson, Aberdeen.
AGE 40. From a Photo. by Fredelle & Marshall.AGE 40. From a Photo. by Fredelle & Marshall.
PRESENT DAY. From a Photo. by Raymond Lynde.PRESENT DAY. From a Photo. by Raymond Lynde.
Mr. John Pettie was born in Edinburgh, and exhibited his earliest works in the Royal Scottish Academy. He came to London at the age of twenty-three, and at the age of twenty-seven was elected an A.R.A. His election to the distinction of R.A. took place when he was thirty-four, in the place of Sir Edwin Landseer. Mr. Pettie's portraits and historical pictures are within the knowledge of every reader—his armour, carbines, lances, broadswords, and pistols are well-known features in every year's Academy—for his subjects are chiefly scenes of battle and of military life. His first picture hung in the Royal Academy was "The Armourers," He has also painted many subjects from Shakespeare's works; his "Scene in the Temple Gardens" being one of his most popular productions. "The Death Warrant" represents an episode in the career of the consumptive little son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour. In "Two Strings to His Bow," Mr. Pettie showed a considerable sense of humour.
From a Painting.
AGE 17. From a Painting by A. Winterhalter.AGE 17. From a Painting by A. Winterhalter.
AGE 40. From a Painting.AGE 40. From a Painting.
PRESENT DAY. From a Photo. by Russell & Sons.PRESENT DAY. From a Photo. by Russell & Sons.
Princess Mary Adelaide, daughter of H.R.H. Prince Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge, the seventh son of His Majesty King George III., married on June 12th, 1866, H.S.H. the Duke of Teck, whose portrait at different ages we have the pleasure of presenting on the opposite page. The Duchess of Teck and her daughter Princess Victoria are well known and esteemed far beyond their own circle of society for their interest in works of charity and the genuine kindness of heart, which render them ever ready to enter into schemes of benevolence. We may remind our readers that a charming series of portraits of Princess Victoria of Teck appeared in our issue of February, 1892.