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playing cards
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4678
Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 11:33 am ]
Post subject:  playing cards
Just thinking about Diana Skelton in Bride and (barely)Changes - she plays contract bridge at the CS, and is finally withdrawn by her father after she loses money gambling in the holidays and steals to pay the debt. Then you have Elma Conroy playing cards on Sunday at the finishing branch, and she is also one of the sophisticated bad girls of the series.

As someone who knows absolutely nothing about cards, I was wondering about how playing cards is depicted by EBD, or how it would have been viewed at the time she was writing. She associates card-playing with two bad characters, but I can't decide whether it's seen as a bad thing in itself (because with Elma, it's playing on Sunday that's the problem, and with Diana, while she's actually at the school, the prefects seem primarily worried about where she and her friends are playing bridge - ie if they are sneaking off somewhere out of bounds), or whether it's just in certain circumstances. Bride says, when she hears of the bridge sessions, that she herself plays canasta or something at home - do different card games have different connotations? Are some seen as more sophisticated/louche/unsuitable for girls or women than others? Do we ever see adult women playing cards? Does EBD actually disapprove of them on principle, and if so, why? Gambling? Unladylike? Unchristian?
Author:  Jennie [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:21 pm ]
Post subject: 
Certainly, when I was young, the Lord's Day Observance Society inveighed regularly against playing cards on Sundays, as they did against any other form of enjoyment, such as playing any games.

The dangers inherent in playing bridge for example are that people play for money, and that is considered to be gambling, especially frowned upon on Sunday.

Lots of older people would not even read a Sunday newspaper, considering it to be against the word of the Lord, as was reading for pleasure in any form.
Author:  Theresa [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:43 pm ]
Post subject: 
I always thought that bridge, moreso than other card games, had a bit of the air of the lady gambler about it. Easy to get caught up in it--starting out with society games, play with the wrong people and begin the spiral into gambling addiction.

When I was a small child (in the 90's) my mother and maternal grandparents taught me games like gin-rummy and canasta and we used to gamble with pennies or matchsticks, but bridge would have been absolutely out of the question.
Author:  Alison H [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:43 pm ]
Post subject: 
Playing certain card games has traditionally been frowned upon because of its association with gambling - although AFAIK there's no legal protection regarding gambling debts, there were several high-profile court cases over "debts of honour" involving "louche" aristocrats :lol: in Victorian times, and there are various well-known "baddie" fictional characters (e.g. Mr Wickham in Pride and Prejudice) who run up debts at cards. Presumably canasta and other games that the girls play fall outside that category?

As Jennie said, card playing on a Sunday was frowned upon in EBD's time. I could be wrong here but I think that that's a Protestant idea rather than a Catholic idea.

There's a similar storyline in one of the Dimsie books - I forget which one it is, but it was similar to the Diana storyline in that "bad" girls were having secret card sessions and the "good" girls frowned upon it.
Author:  Theresa [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:48 pm ]
Post subject: 
I believe it was a Protestant thing, if only because my Catholic grandparents always played cards and such on Sundays after church and a hot lunch, and I'm given to understand they had done so for all of their lives.

It's Dimsie Goes Back, and the cards thing is the most obvious manifestation of a general 'going down' of the Jane Willard since Dimsie's time. In Dimsie Goes to School we also see the effects of bridge playing and getting caught up with the wrong crowd on Dimsie's mother. DFB was very anti-bridge!
Author:  MaryR [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:39 pm ]
Post subject: 
Alison H wrote:
As Jennie said, card playing on a Sunday was frowned upon in EBD's time. I could be wrong here but I think that that's a Protestant idea rather than a Catholic it.

Certainly, as a Catholic, I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties playing cards what ever day it was. No distinction was made if it was Sunday, even though we had been to Mass. But then we weren't gambling - unless you count matchsticks! :lol:

That could be why I allowed Nell and the staff at Millies to play cards on a Sunday in Hilda's Revenge - didn't even occur to me, and it should have done, if I had followed EBD's rules. :roll:
Author:  Kate [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:49 pm ]
Post subject: 
My local area is mostly Catholic (ie the vast majority)and there was a local card game every Sunday night when I was growing up - and it was a tradition that went back quite a while, certainly to the fifties. :) Twenty-five, not poker, but money definitely changed hands.
Author:  Lesley [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
Could it perhaps be a class thing? That no well brought up girl of their class would consider playing cards on a Sunday irrespective of whether they were Catholic or Protestant?
Author:  janem [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:34 pm ]
Post subject: 
My father's family who were Welsh Chapel-goers played cards on Sunday but were always prepared to sit on them if the doorbell rang in case it was the minister or one of the more pious neighbours. They played around a table with the big bible in the centre ready to be grabbed and opened at any random page!

It was definitely frowned upon
Author:  Alex [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:42 pm ]
Post subject: 
Lots of the CS pupils have cards to play Patience with, Naomi in particular springs to mind and Althea knows 175 (OK blatantly not true but a large number is cited) kinds of Patience. Also there is the Impertinent Questions incident which presumably uses normal playing cards. So presumably it is the gambling that is the problem. In the film Gosford Park they play cards...bridge or whist I think?
Author:  Tara [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 11:47 pm ]
Post subject: 
Playing cards was definitely sinful in my Welsh Non-Conformist evangelical background, whatever day of the week it was! I still can't play anything more sophisticated than Snap or Donkey :D . I presume it was the connection with gambling, in the same way that the teetotalism was based on the fact that, in a working class community, the men drank the money and the kids went barefoot.
Author:  Emma A [ Fri Jun 20, 2008 12:26 pm ]
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Playing cards for money was not frowned on, it was the failure to pay your debts ("debts of honour", as opposed to oweing, say, tradesmen money for a new wig, for example) that was utterly dishonourable. Bridge was seem in the early 20th century as a highly civilised game, and the hallmark of any normal middle/upper class person, man or woman. The amount one could win or lose did of course depend on your fellow players and what stakes you had agreed. Heyer and Christie have bridge as an integral part of at least two of their whodunnits (Duplicate Death and Cards on the Table respectively), but other authors writing at that time considered bridge to be quite unexeptionable.

I guess that EBD's horror was due to the fact that there had been card playing on a Sunday, and the fact that Diana had contracted debts of honour for which she had no means of paying.
Author:  jennifer [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:54 am ]
Post subject: 
They definitely play for money in Jane Austen - skipping out on your debts is frown on, though.
Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:34 pm ]
Post subject: 
Bridge, I think, can be played for money but isn't always. I don't play, and have no idea of learning, but am in a definite minority in my family! Who play a lot, but not, as far as I can see, for money.

EBD, a child of her age, may well have disliked the gambling aspect. I wonder what she'd have made of televised poker tournaments?!
Author:  Kathy_S [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:35 pm ]
Post subject: 
I think there are three issues here.

1. Gambling. The extent to which it is/has been frowned upon varies, from acceptance as long as it is recreational and doesn't involve going beyond one's means, through "only in a good cause" (charity raffles and bingo as a perennial church fundraiser), to never under any circumstances. However, I suspect Diana's getting into debt serious enough to "require" jewelry theft wouldn't be considered appropriate for anyone, and at the time the "unladylike" card would make the disapprobation even stronger. Some card games would have been more associated with gambling than others.

2. Frivolity. There are and have been denominations that frown upon cards in general, on the basis that one shouldn't waste God-given time on frivolous pursuits. I don't think EBD falls into this category, given that she seems to have no problem with other card games, dancing (if mainly country dancing), etc.

3. Sunday
What is and isn't appropriate for "keeping holy the Sabbath" has also varied a lot over time and place. Think of the extremes of Elsie Dinsmore, or the scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder in which Pa tells how much more difficult it was in his childhood, or Anne of Green Gables declaring 'Ben Hur' too exciting for Sunday. In terms of cards, I know special decks with Bible characters were produced for Sunday amusements, since (in some quarters) ordinary cards weren't proper. However, I can't gauge what would have been considered appropriate for British schoolgirls in the early 50s, though it's clear EBD believes in setting Sunday apart. I know when I was growing up in the 60s, my religion teacher presented the Bad Family who *shock* washed the car together and went grocery shopping, as opposed to the Good Family, who went to Mass and then on a family picnic. At home we were supposed to go to Mass, play more quietly, and avoid homework, though the anti-homework edict ultimately lost to the pressure to do well.
Author:  JayB [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:48 pm ]
Post subject: 
In addition to all those, I think there's also the issue of age. What might be acceptable for an adult or even an older girl isn't necessarily appropriate for a sixteen year old. Largely, I suppose, because a sixteen year old doesn't have the money for serious gambling, and doesn't have the judgement to know when to stop.

As Diana was a minor, I don't think her debts would have been enforceable in law - but I suppose a threat to tell her father would be bad enough to her.
Author:  Karry [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:54 pm ]
Post subject: 
When I was young (gosh, this akes me feel ancient!) I was not allowed to play out on a Sunday, my mum did not hang washing out, and we wouldnever have dreamed of shopping - I can remember the shock/horror in our village when the local co-op started opening on the Lord's day! This was in the Midlands, in the 1960s! I did not thing that the embargo of playing cards was unusual!
Author:  Kathy_S [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 8:22 pm ]
Post subject: 
Yes, at home in Maryland, the laws against all but a few mom-and-pop businesses opening on Sunday were only lifted in 1987. And just last weekend someone told me in a rather shocked voice that they would never go shopping on Sunday. (Note: This was in response to her discovery that I was, as usual, going straight from church to the grocery store. I look at it as saving two miles on the bicycle.)
Author:  Miriam [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 8:56 pm ]
Post subject: 
Alex wrote:
Lots of the CS pupils have cards to play Patience with, Naomi in particular springs to mind and Althea knows 175 (OK blatantly not true but a large number is cited) kinds of Patience.


Erm, seventeen. :lol:

Can anyone here name seventeen types of Patience?
Author:  Kate [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 10:41 pm ]
Post subject: 
There are about 400 listed in Wikipedia! I can name quite a few, mostly because there were loads on my old PC.
Author:  Mia [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 10:51 pm ]
Post subject: 
Miriam wrote:
Alex wrote:
Lots of the CS pupils have cards to play Patience with, Naomi in particular springs to mind and Althea knows 175 (OK blatantly not true but a large number is cited) kinds of Patience.


Erm, seventeen. :lol:

Can anyone here name seventeen types of Patience?


Wikipedia can probably name more than 175!. :lol:

ETA: Snap Kate! Oh how funny!

I do like card games. Canasta is my favourite. The Rutherfords play it in Genius.
Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Sun Jun 29, 2008 5:24 pm ]
Post subject: 
Kathy_S wrote:
I know when I was growing up in the 60s, my religion teacher presented the Bad Family who *shock* washed the car together and went grocery shopping, as opposed to the Good Family, who went to Mass and then on a family picnic.


I'll never forget coming home from Church with a friend and walking past someone washing their car, and the friend saying loudly, "Oh look, there's someone worshipping his idol!"
Author:  Dreaming Marianne [ Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:57 pm ]
Post subject: 
Our minister refers to shopping on Sunday as "Satan shopping" (love it!)
Author:  Alex [ Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:08 pm ]
Post subject: 
Miriam wrote:
Alex wrote:

Lots of the CS pupils have cards to play Patience with, Naomi in particular springs to mind and Althea knows 175 (OK blatantly not true but a large number is cited) kinds of Patience.



Erm, seventeen.


Well, I didn't have the book nearby. Seventeen seems somehow unimpressive now, especially with Wikipedia references.

Edit: html fixed, Róisín
Author:  Sunglass [ Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:52 am ]
Post subject: 
And I just noticed in Does It Again that four of the staff are playing Ten-Rummy in the mistresses' room at night, among all the knitters and novel-readers, and it all gets quite fractious, with Miss Armitage, I think, losing badly. Only EBD omits to tell us that she had to hand over half her salary to whoever won the game, obviously. Though that's how I'm imagining it...
Author:  tiffinata [ Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:58 pm ]
Post subject: 
My great-grandmother was a baptist and got really angry with my mother in the early 50's because she was eating sweets on a sunday! I think her words were 'you'll go to hell' She was also the type of woman who refused to put a penny in the gas meter on a sunday. But in her later years she'd watch the sunday service on television, then turn over and watch the wrestling!

My husband's family never played cards at all. His grandfather was a anglican minister and used to beat the children if he caught them playing cards. Needless to say they learnt not to get caught.
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