Playing Games in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America , livre ebook

Playing Games
in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America
SUNY series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

Pamela K. Gilbert, editor
Playing Games
in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America
edited by
ANN R. HAWKINS, ERIN N. BISTLINE, CATHERINE S. BLACKWELL, and MAURA IVES
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hawkins, Ann R., editor | Bistline, Erin N., editor | Blackwell, Catherine S., editor | Maura Ives, editor.
Title: Playing games in nineteenth-century Britain and America / edited by Ann R. Hawkins, Erin N. Bistline, Catherine S. Blackwell, and Maura Ives.
Description: Albany : SUNY Press, 2021. | Series: SUNY series, studies in the long nineteenth century | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021028910 (print) | LCCN 2021028911 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438485553 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438485560 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Games—Great Britain—History—19th century. | Games—United States—History—19th century. | Amusements—Great Britain—History—19th century. | Amusements—United States—History—19th century. | Great Britain—Social life and customs—19th century. | United States—Social life and customs—19th century.
Classification: LCC GV75 .P63 2021 (print) | LCC GV75 (ebook) | DDC 790.0941—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028910
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028911
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the ever inventive and lovely Ann Donohue. This book began with her idea and encouragement.
Contents
L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION From Snapdragon to Three-card Loo: Rediscovering Nineteenth-Century Games
Ann R. Hawkins, Miles A. Kimball, Erin N. Bistline, Allison Whitney, and Catherine S. Blackwell
Section I: Games in Motion
C HAPTER O NE Bodies in Play: Boxing, Dance, and the Science of Recreation
Kristin Flieger Samuelian and Mark Schoenfield
C HAPTER T WO Baseball in the Frame of Gilded-Age America
Matthew Von Vogt
C HAPTER T HREE “We are only horses and don’t know”: Sport and Danger in Fox Hunting
Erin N. Bistline
Section II: Communal Games
C HAPTER F OUR “The Memory Game”: Play, Trauma, and Great Expectations
Sean Grass
C HAPTER F IVE Seeing Victorian Culture through Croquet’s “Treacherous Wire Portal”
Catherine S. Blackwell
C HAPTER S IX Acting Charades in 1873: Girls and the Stakes of the Game
Heather Fitzsimmons Frey
Section III: Playing the World
C HAPTER S EVEN Dangerous Games: The Advent of Wargaming in the Nineteenth Century
Andrew Byers
C HAPTER E IGHT The United States as Wonderland: British Literature, U.S. Nationalism, and Nineteenth-Century Children’s and Family Board and Card Games
Michelle Beissel Heath
C HAPTER N INE Gaming the Great Exhibition of 1851: Children’s Board Games, Display, and Imperial Power
Megan A. Norcia
C HAPTER T EN Teetotum Lives: Mediating Globalization in the Nineteenth-Century Board Game
Siobhan Carroll
Section IV: Books, Boards, and Other Objects
C HAPTER E LEVEN What Did They Play, and What Does This Say?: A Quantitative and Cultural Analysis of British Collected Games in the Nineteenth Century through the Games Research Database
Maurice Suckling
C HAPTER T WELVE Professor Hoffmann’s Victorian Puzzles and Stage Magic
Andrew Rhoda
C HAPTER T HIRTEEN “An Endless Round of Delights”: Materializing the Toy Theatre
Jennie MacDonald
C HAPTER F OURTEEN The Game of Authors, 1861–1900: A Case History
Maura Ives
C ONTRIBUTORS
G ENERAL I NDEX
G AMES I NDEX
Illustrations
Figures 2.1 Captain Adrian C. Anson of the Chicago White Stockings appears in a suit rather than a uniform. 2.2 In Goodwin’s 1888 chromolithograph, Captain Anson, in a brilliant blue shirt, is identified by his position (1st base) and his team, Chicago White Stockings. 2.3 The reverse of Goodwin’s 1888 card shows Anson among other “Champions” from baseball and other sports. 2.4 In Goodwin’s 1888 chromolithograph, King Kelly, wearing a red tie, is identified by his position (center field) and his team, the Boston Beaneaters. 2.5 The reverse of Goodwin’s 1888 card shows Kelly among other “Champions” from baseball and other sports. 2.6 Captain Adrian C. Anson holds a bat aloft in Allen Ginter’s 1887 card. 2.7 The reverse of Allen Ginter’s 1887 card shows Anson among other “World’s Champions” from baseball and other sports. 2.8 King Kelly is presented here against the pastoral baseball diamond common in the 1887 Gold Coin card set. 2.9 The reverse of Buchner’s Gold Coin 1887 image of Kelly reminds purchasers: “Continue to save the wrappers. They are valuable.” 5.1 “Croquet” from an 1863 issue of Punch’s Almanack depicts several women playing croquet with their skirts lifted to show their ankles. 5.2 “Oh, How Kind!!” from an 1865 Punch, or the London Charivari pokes fun at unattractive “goloshes.” 5.3 “The Game of Croquet” from an 1865 Peterson’s Magazine featured striped, bordered, and embroidered petticoats. 5.4 In this untitled image from the 1869 Girl of the Period Miscellany , a flirtatious “Mai[d] of the Mallet” taps her male partner’s ball with her toe. 9.1 Henry Smith Evans identifies himself as a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society on his Crystal Palace Game. 9.2 Henry Smith Evans’s Crystal Palace Game depicts the deaths of Englishmen at the hands of South Pacific islanders. 9.3 Henry Smith Evans’s Crystal Palace Game includes a scene of the taking of slaves. 9.4 William Spooner’s A Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 satirizes the Exhibition, its goals, and its visitors. 9.5 In William Spooner’s A Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851, players “take” or “pay,” adding value to the life of humanity or detracting from it. 9.6 William Spooner’s A Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 highlights how technological innovation can destroy humanity. 10.1 The advertisement on the slipcover for Walker’s New Geographical Game Exhibiting a Tour Through Europe directed interested players to the publisher’s wares. 10.2 Walker’s New Geographical Game Exhibiting a Tour through Europe required players to compete to be the first to successfully land on the final square. 10.3 The McLoughlin Brothers’s 1890 Game of Round the World capitalizes on the press generated by Nellie Bly’s successful whirlwind tour of the globe. 11.1 Data from Tables 11.1 and 11.2 represented in percentages. 11.2 Data from Tables 11.3 and 11.4 represented in percentages. 11.3 Data from Table 11.5 represented in percentages. 13.1 On the left, Captain Clarence presents a miniature theatre to Master Jacky, and on the right, the boys work on their performance. 13.2 On the right of John Leech’s illustration for Young troublesome , the boys set their toy theatrical on fire. 13.3 Title sheets, such as this one from The Castle of Otranto; or, Harlequin the Giant Helmet, highlight the practices of nineteenth-century pantomimes. 13.4 The scenery sheets from J. K. Green’s 1841 The Castle of Otranto; or, Harlequin the Giant Helmet, were adapted from the original theater backdrops. 13.5 Sheets from J. K. Green’s 1841 Harlequin the Giant Helmet suggest how some of the pantomime “tricks” looked in performance.
Tables 11.1 Game types shown in the 873 nineteenth-century listings on GARD 11.2 A categorization of listings with unclear game types on GARD 11.3 Categories for the listings that are described as “probably” 11.4 Breakdown of unclear listings in GARD 11.5 Board games breakdowns from previous tables organized in order of frequency
Acknowledgments
Our thanks to Richard E. Porter for his careful reading of the full manuscript and his thoughtful copyediting and to Allison Whitney, who began the project with Ann Hawkins before other obligations drew her away. Ann Hawkins would like to also thank Miles Kimball who never fails to offer support and who reads everything well.
Introduction
From Snapdragon to Three-Card Loo: Rediscovering Nineteenth-Century Games
ANN R. HAWKINS, MILES A. KIMBALL, ERIN N. BISTLINE, ALLISON WHITNEY, AND CATHERINE S. BLACKWELL
They met for the sake of eating, drinking, and laughing together, playing at cards, or consequences, or any other game that was sufficiently noisy.
—Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility 1
Readers of nineteenth-century literature and letters—or twenty-first-century Regency romance 2 —encounter a world filled with games. Consider Anthony Trollope’s The Warden , where the progress of a game of whist is described with a rhetoric reminiscent of the Iliad :
With solemn energy do they watch the shuffled pack, and, all-expectant, eye the coming trump. With what anxious nicety do they arrange their cards, jealous of each other’s eyes! […] Now thrice this has been done, thrice has constant fortune favored the brace of prebendaries, ere the arch deacon rouses himself to the battle; but at the fourth assault he pins to the earth a prostrate king, laying low his crown and sceptre, bushy beard, and lowering brow, with a poor deuce. (51)
Or consider Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice , where card games reveal character and deepen situation. 3 Lady Catherine De Bourgh prefers the complicated strategies of quadrille, while her daughter Anne plays the less rigorous cassino (Austen, Pride 172; Hoyle). 4 Mrs. Bennet has a “rapacity for whis[t],” while Lydia Bennet loves the luck involved in “a noisy game of lotter