From the pen and library of Henry Hucks Gibbs

I am not the first to collect and studying gaming literature. It is always a special thrill for me to get a copy of a book that belonged to one of the earlier great collections. This essay will focus on one such collector, Henry Hucks Gibbs, Lord Aldenham (1819-1907). Gibbs had a stunning library, of which gaming literature was only a small part. Catalogues of the library were published in 1888 and 1914. ; Sotheby's sold books from the library at auction in 1937 and books turn up in the trade every now and then. A few of them have made their way to me.

Before looking at some gaming books from the Aldenham Library, let us discuss Gibbs as a gaming author. He wrote The Game of Ombre in 1874, with later editions in 1878 and 1902, all privately published.

1874 The Game of Ombre
Levy [1454]

Ombre is a 17th century Spanish card game for three players, which evolved into the four-player game of Quadrille, the subject of a 1744 treatise by Hoyle. About Gibbs's book, bibliographer Jessel wrote:

A full and lucid description of this excellent game. It is a misfortune that the work has never been published, for there is even to-day a constant demand for information on the details of Ombre. (p110)

uncolored proof
(click to enlarge)

As it was privately published every copy I've seen but one has been inscribed by Gibbs to the recipient—and the one without inscription is the most interesting copy of all. It is Gibbs's own copy of the first edition from the Aldenham Library, with many features that distinguish it from other copies of the first edition.  It contains two versions of each of the plates, a colored copy with text and borders such as the one pictured above, and an uncolored proof, such as is pictured at right. Gibbs's copy also contains a proof of an introduction to the second edition and of a supplementary chapter that did not appear until the second edition—an account of Belinda's game of ombre as described in Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock.

Gibbs inscription
Levy [1178]

Gibbs letter
Levy [1347]

Two inscriptions from other copies are pictured to the left. In the top photograph, Gibbs presents a first edition to Margaret Eliza Adams, while below is a letter from Gibbs to Lady Alwyne pasted into a second edition. The letter discusses obtaining Spanish cards for playing Ombre as well as scoring counters.


 

Bindings from the
Aldenham Library
Levy [1491] [1701]
[1712] [1454]

Back to Gibbs as a collector—the Aldenham library must have been magnificent. Gibbs generally had the books rebound in gentlemen's Victorian bindings, some of which are pictured at right. From left to right, the books are:

• Richard Seymour. The Court Gamester. Third edition. 1722. Morrell binding.
• William Payne. Maxims for the Game of Whist. A new edition. 1778. Morrell binding.
• Alexander Thomson. Whist, A Poem in Twelve Cantos. Second edition. 1792. Unknown binding.
• Gibbs. The Game of Ombre. 1874. Zaehnsdorf binding. 

I purchased the two with Morell bindings years apart and from different sources. I was struck to see that they are decorated with the same floral tool in the spine panels.

The books themselves are worthy of discussion. I described Seymour as a predecessor to Hoyle and noted that his section on Ombre (along with that on Piquet) was the earliest set of rules for a card game sufficiently detailed to teach the game. Gibbs undoubtedly consulted this copy of Seymour as he wrote his own book on Ombre. It is also the copy collated by Julian Marshall in his bibliography of the Gamesters (p382). This is certainly one of my most treasured books because of its associations with Gibbs and Marshall.

I have another book with similar provenance, though I cannot picture it here as it is off at the binder's for conservation. The book is Thomas Mathews, Advise to the Young Whist Player, 1804, the third important book on whist after Hoyle and Payne. Only two copies of the first edition survive. Mine bears an inscription in Gibbs's hand "Aldenham. 1901. Given me by Julian Marshall." Indeed the provenance is even better, both earlier and later. Julian Marshall bought a copy of Mathews's first, almost certainly mine, at the 1900 Sotheby's auction of books from the estate of Cavendish, whom I have anointed the successor to Hoyle. I purchased the book from the collection of Dr. Albert Ferguson, who wrote a couple of bridge books and put together an important collection of gaming books about which I shall write later. When I look at the Mathews, I see a line from Cavendish to Marshall to Gibbs to Ferguson and then to me.

Payne's Maxims is the first significant book on whist published after Hoyle's treatise and was incorporated into the Charles Jones edition of Hoyle's Games Improved beginning in 1779. Thomson is a minor Scottish poet, and one can get a taste for his poem from a short excerpt:

Whist, then, delightful whist, my theme shall be,
And first I'll try to trace its pedigree,
And shew what sage and comprehesive mind
Gave to the world a pleasure so refin'd:

The copies of Payne and Thomson are also ex-library Albert Ferguson.

Bookplate of Gibbs
(click to enlarge)

Books from the Aldenham Library are easy to spot as they bear an armorial bookplate with the words "Aldenham House. Herts." I hope I've succeeded in sharing the excitement good provenance adds to collecting. What is most astonishing is that none of the sellers of these books noted the provenance in their catalogues. When the books arrived, the bookplate provided a delightful surprise!

References:

• Frederic Jessel. A Bibliography of Works in English on Playing Cards and Gaming. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1905. Available for download (6MB).  
• Julian Marshall, "Cotton and Seymour's 'Gamesters.'"  Parts 1 and 2, Notes and Queries, 6th ser., 9 (April 26, 1884):321-3, (May 17, 1884): 381-3. Available for download (70MB).

The Nature of Gaming Literature (part 2)

Part 1, found here, discusses (1) existential writing, (2) rules, and (3) remedies. I continue in this essay with (4) strategy, its subset for partnership games, (4a) partnership agreements, and (5) cheating. My goal in discussing this scheme is to discuss in what ways Hoyle's writing was new and to give some context for discussing other important books about gaming such as Cotton and Seymour.

Strategy

While game rules are sufficient for legal play, they are not sufficient for good play. The long title Hoyle's Whist treatise promise "some rules, whereby a beginner may, with due attention to them, attain to the playing it well." In my vocabulary, these are not rules, but strategy. Consider the first of Hoyle's "general rules to be observed by beginners":

When you lead, begin with the best suit in your hand; if you have a sequence of king, queen and knave, or queen, knave and ten, they are sure leads...(page 11)

While you are allowed to play any of the thirteen cards in your hand, Hoyle offers advice about which is the most likely to be successful.

Cotton offers no strategic advice in The Compleat Gamester; nor does Seymour in The Court Gamester despite his thorough description of rules. This, I believe, is Hoyle's major breakthrough--I know of no earlier strategic writing about cards games (although examples exist for chess and trictrac).

Partnership Agreement

Partnership games such as whist or bridge pose an additional strategic complexity--good play requires partners to make agreements (and disclose them to the opponents) so the partners can communicate about their hands (based on the card played and not by other means; see cheating, below). Hoyle's first rule continues, "...begin with the highest of the sequence, unless ..." So Hoyle is suggesting leading the K from KQJx. The trick-taking power of each of the honors is the same, but Hoyle is implicitly saying that the lead of the K denies the A and promises the Q. This is a matter of partnership agreement and partners may choose different agreements (as some do in bridge when they play Rusinow leads).

In retrospect, Hoyle did a big disservice to gaming literature by failing to distinguish between strategy and partnership agreement. He really didn't have a chance of getting it right--it took almost 150 years to get the two concepts disentangled. Unfortunately, the failure to distinguish between strategy and partnership agreement persists in beginning bridge books to this day. Even worse some beginning books fail to distinguish among rules, strategy, and partnership agreements; some beginners think they are breaking the rules of bridge if they open with less than 13 points!

Cheating

I said that remedies applied only to inadvertent irregularities. Intentional breaches of rules are cheating and are not covered by the laws. As Cavendish put it "There is a popular belief that card-laws are intended to prevent cheating. This belief, however, is altogether erroneous. the penalty for cheating is exclusion from society." (Clay's Decisions, and Card-Table Talk, p117)

Hoyle never discussed cheating or the means of detecting in, a theme that was common in Cotton's The Compleat Gamester and The Annals of Gaming.

Conclusion

There are certainly other categories I have not considered here. A common theme of early literature about games is the morality of gaming, surely another topic. One of the things I like about the Hargrave bibliography which I criticized here, is it classification of the literature (though she frequently put books in the wrong category).

I wrote this essay to highlight the role of Hoyle and I do think my list of categories helps us appreciate his contributions. Cotton's earlier writing was primarily existential with a good dose of cheating. Seymour set down rules and remedies for two card games and is, I think, under-appreciated for his contributions. Hoyle assumed knowledge of rules and dealt with remedies; he was the first to do so for whist. While I do wish he had distinguished partnership agreements from strategy, Hoyle was the first to discuss strategy for any card game. All-in-all, I think his reputation as the father of whist is well deserved.

The Nature of Gaming Literature (part 1)

Obviously, I've looked at a lot of books on gaming. For this essay, I want to jump above the minutia of cancels or the effect of copyright law on Hoyle's body of work and discuss gaming literature more abstractly. The goal, however, will tie back to Hoyle, by showing in what ways Hoyle's work broke new ground.

When I see a discussion of, say, whist in a book, I mentally place it into one or more of these categories: (1) existential; (2) rules; (3) remedies; (4) strategy; (4a) partnership agreement (5) cheating. This is my model and my definitions--others may differ and I'd be eager to hear other points of view. Let me discuss each in turn.

Existential

Existential writing, my term, does little more than document a game's existence. While this may sound trivial, it is actually important historically to learn both when a game was introduced and who played it. For example, the long list of games played by Rabelais's Gargantua tells us something of the games that were known in the 1530s. The references to whist in Jane Austen indicate that it was a society game in the early 19th century. Cavendish makes much use of existential sources in his historical treatments of whist and piquet.

Existential sources can also date the vocabulary of a game. For example what contract bridge players called a "cross-ruff" was known to Hoyle as a "see-saw," a term that in bridge means something completely different.

Rules

By rules, I mean detailed instruction about how to play the game legally. For example, the rules of whist are trivial, given concisely on the wonderful website pagat.com. Knowing only what is written in those half dozen short paragraphs, you could begin to play whist immediately. You would play poorly, of course, but legally. I find it fascinating that these rules are nowhere clearly expressed in any whist book I know! All the writers from Hoyle to Cavendish and beyond assume the reader knows the mechanics of the game, a thought made explicit by Cotton in The Compleat Gametser, noting that "every child almost of eight years old has a competent knowledge" of whist.

Seymour's Court Gamester, (1718, with a later edition available for download) is a rare exception, providing rules for the games of ombre and piquet. Is there any earlier example in English of a set of rules for a game?

Remedies

It is easy to violate the rules of a game inadvertently. The dealer can give the wrong number of cards to a player or expose a card while dealing. A player may show his cards to a partner or opponent, may play out of turn, or may fail to follow suit. In backgammon, a player may move the incorrect number of pips, or play a checker forgetting that he has another on the bar. These irregularities happen with sufficient frequency, that the over time a set of remedies has evolved to restore equity.

I particularly like the chapter title Seymour uses to describe the remedies at Piquet: "Of the Accidents which happen at this Game, and the Penalties which attend them." (page 84). Hoyle's Laws of Whist are really such remedies:

I: If any person plays out of his turn, it is in the option of either of his adversaries to call the card so played, at any time in that deal, provided it does not make him revoke; or if either of the adverse party is to lead, he may desire his partner to name the suit he chooses to have him lead, and when a suit is then named, the partner must play it if he has it. (Laws of Whist)

It is interesting to realize that today, when playing games on a computer, violations cannot happen and remedies are unnecessary. A well-designed program will not permit an irregularity!

More on Strategy, Partnership Agreement and Cheating in the next essay.

The Predecessors of Hoyle

In 1742 Hoyle published A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist and followed up quickly with books on backgammon, piquet, and quadrille. His writing remained the standard English gaming literature for more than a hundred years. I have looked at the successors to Hoyle (here and here), but what was there before Hoyle? What did his writing displace?

frontispiece from
The Compleat Gamester
Levy [1737]

 

In 1674, an anonymous book appeared called The Compleat Gamester whose title continues "Or, Instructions How to Play at Billiards, Trucks, Bowls, and Chess. Together with all manner of usual and most Gentile Games either on Cards or Dice. To which is added, The Arts and Mysteries of Riding, Racing, Archery, and Cock-Fighting." The thirty eight chapters discuss twenty card games, six games of the backgammon family, and, as is evident from the long title, some outdoor recreations. 

The Compleat Gamester neither teaches the rules of the games it discusses, nor treats strategy. An extract from the section on whist is typical:

Ruff and Hounours (alias Slamm) and Whist, are games so commonly known in England in all parts thereof, that every child almost of eight years old has a competent knowledge in that recreation, and therefore I am unwilling to speak any thing more of them than this, that there may be a great deal of art used in Dealing and playing at these games which differ very little one from the other. (page 114)

Much of the book teaches how to detect cheating, here again from the section on whist:

He that can by craft over-look his adversaries game hath a great advantage, for by that means he may partly know what to play securely; or if he can have some petty glimpse of his partner's hand. There is a way by winking, or the fingers to discover to their partners what honours they have, as by the wink of one eye, or putting one finger on the nose or table, it signifies one honour, shutting both eyes, two; placing three fingers or four on the table, three or four honours. (page 117)

Of course such cautions can equally be read as a manual on how to cheat.

The book was reprinted and reissued with regularity over the next 50 years. Julian Marshall (1884) and Thomas Marston (1970) provide starting points for a descriptive bibliography of the Gamesters, though more work is required. The book was reissued in 1676 and further editions appeared in 1680 (reissued in 1687 as Instructions How to Play at Billiards, Trucks, Bowls, and Chess), 1709, and 1710. In 1713 a new edition appeared under the title Games Most in Use in England, France and Spain (reissued as The Compleat Gamester in 1721). Two more editions appeared in 1725 and 1726.

The Court Gamester
Levy [1491]

In 1719 the notorious bookseller Edmund Curll hired Richard Seymour to produce The Court Gamester, a title which must have been intended to compete and cause confusion with The Compleat Gamester. Further editions appeared in 1720, 1722, 1728, and 1732. The Court Gamester covered three games only--Ombre, Piquet, and Chess. One could certainly learn to play ombre or piquet from the book as the rules are clear, though there is no discussion of strategy. Chess is treated much more briefly.

In 1734, Curll joined with the copyright owner of the Compleat Gamester to bring out a book that combined and expanded both texts under the title The Compleat Gamester in Three Parts. It is from the preface to this book that we learn who wrote the original Gamester in 1674: "The second and third parts of this treatise were originally written by Charles Cotton Esq; some years since, but are now rectified according to the present standard of play." (page viii) Cotton is best know as the author of portions of Isaac Walton's The Compleat Angler.

New editions of the consolidated version of The Compleat Gamester appeared an 1739 and 1750. In 1754 a final edition appeared edited by Charles Johnson. Julian Marshall (1889) dissects the changes made by Johnson and determines that they are thinly disguised plagiarisms of Hoyle and of contemporary French gaming books. So Hoyle's text displaced Cotton's in the final realization of The Compleat Gamester. More importantly, Hoyle's sales displaced the Gamesters to become the standard English work on gaming for more than a century.

References

•  Julian Marshall, "Cotton and Seymour's 'Gamesters.'"  Parts 1 and 2, Notes and Queries, 6th ser., 9 (April 26, 1884): 321-3, (May 17, 1884): 381-3. Available for download.
• Julian Marshall, "Books on Gaming." Part 11, Notes and Queries, 7th ser., 8 (December 21, 1889): 482-3. Available for download. 
• Thomas E. Marston, "Introduction" to The Compleat Gametser. Barre: Imprint Society. 1970