Alfred Wallace: Moving Day

So OK.  Since I’m not in school, and don’t have a job, my sense of what day it is has been a little wonky as of late.  It occurred to me over a day after the fact that I had a column I had to write last week…at the time, I was waist-deep in boxes.  I still am.  It doesn’t seem to end, somehow…’course, that hasn’t stopped me yet.  Below the fold, some of the usual folderol plus some other glimpses of games in old American periodicals.

By the time you read this—assuming I set the date and time correctly—I’ll have moved out of my Springfield apartment.  As of this moment (Tuesday afternoon) it frankly seems impossible.  It’s as though with every box I pack, another box’s worth of junk takes its place.  It’s at times like this that I wonder if I should have gone to Arkansas, where I at least could have moved in a more leisurely manner…

One thing that brightened my day while moving was finding my old copy of Knizia’s En Garde, the original Abacus version.  I think I’ve played this game more than any other; I carried it in my backpack through much of college and played it quite often.  It’s all beat to heck—but still intact!  I have Duell, and I’ve played it a few times, but it doesn’t have quite the same joy as the Abacus version, for me.  It’s partly the “look” of the game; I liked the minimalist (but still classy) Abacus art more than the more grandiose Duell approach.  I packed En Garde in my messenger bag (the backpack’s replacement) for old time’s sake.

On to old—really old—gaming news.

One of the perennial problems with boardgaming’s image is the notion that “designer” games are synonymous with games for children, leaving traditional games (chess, backgammon, etc) for adults.  Occasionally, there are news reports about games, which are more eagerly read by gamers, I think, than the Outside World.  It has been thus for some time.  In 1891, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a quite long article by Herbert Burdett, lavishly illustrated, entitled “Some Indoor Games—Recreations that have Come Into Favor of Late Years—Many of them are Novel.” It discussed several games that had attracted a wide audience.  It began with some of the purple prose common to the period:

Of late years indoor games for adults as well as children have achieved a popularity that would be probably not the least astonishing of modern developments to our great grandfathers if those respected but departed personages could return to this mundane sphere.  Men and women the civilized world over devote whole evenings to games that, to the careless observer ignorant of their possibilities, seem trivial perhaps, but many of which are as “scientific” as billiards or chess, for example.

So, yes, we’ve been getting sidelong glances for some time now.  The article went on to mention that games seem to be most popular in New York.  The author suggested that this may be because “the strategy and mental skill required in many of the games appeal especially to the trained brains that are naturally to be found in greater numbers in the largest centres of population.”

Burdett described many games, most of which have disappeared from view, except for Halma (in its current guise as Chinese Checkers) and Tiddledy Winks (Burdett favored a variant that supposedly simulated tennis). 

Burdett wrote that there was a craze for games around 1873.  I’m still tracking that one down; I haven’t found much yet.  I did find one column from the Pittsfield Sun (reprinted from Cassell’s Magazine) of 1872, though, discussing toys. “Nuremberg is the great seat of the metal toy trade,” he wrote, “such as leaden soldiers in boxes, locomotives and railroads.  Leaden toys, as a rule, are not to the taste of healthy, robust lads; indoor games seldom are.” Insert your own joke about the physical culture of the stereotypical Game Geek here.  He continues: “There is something derogatory and feminine in sitting round a table setting up toy soldiers.  Boys who indulge in such amusements are either weaklings or of an effeminate disposition.”

There are other articles, from around the same time, depicting girls playing with toy soldiers as a normal (if perhaps not the most common) turn of events.  Now, of course, “war toys” are seen as excessively aggressive and masculine.  (1885 is the earliest suggestion I could find that banning the sale of toy soldiers would usher in universal world peace, but surely that’s an older idea.) Gender and games have an interesting relationship through history.

Speaking of…

In 1879, Harper’s Monthly published an article by Porte Crayon (a notable illustrator of the era, the nom de crayon of David Hunter Strother), which began with a discussion of the difficulties inherent in a husband playing a game with his wife:

It was in the spring of 1836, while I was still in the public service, and stationed in a Southern city.  Society was extinct, official duties merely nominal, and wife and I tried to while away the weary evenings with the old-fashioned game of cribbage.  But it is a dull business for husband and wife to play antagonistically at cards (or at any other game), for when by shrewd calculation one makes a long sequence at play, or by good luck is enabled to show a full hand of sevens and eights, a glance at the vexed countenance of his vis-à-vis is always sufficient to quench his exultation, and he feels a sort of guilty humiliation in accepting the advantage accorded by blind fortune over the gentle being whom he has solemnly vowed to love, cherish, and protect.  On the other hand, no one who piques himself ever so modestly on his skill and manhood enjoys being beaten continually, to say nothing of the impolicy of allowing his life partner to acquire a habit of supremacy even in matters apparently so innocent and insignificant as parlor games.

That sense of unease in games between men and women would, of course, persist for some time.  I’ve read several annotated chess games between men and women, and especially among Eastern Europeans in the fifties and sixties the men often sought a draw, as (for reasons I don’t quite grasp) beating a woman would almost be as shameful as losing!

I can’t let this episode go without a brief mention of Crokinole.  First, as to cost.  In 1904, one could buy a “very nice” octagonal board at Wannamaker’s for a buck—that’s maybe twenty or thirty dollars today.  I did find one picture of a game in progress, and it’s actually viewable by anyone on the internet, for once.  It’s from an 1890s magazine article about the Hampton Institute, one of the many controversial “Indian Schools” of the period.  The photo shows a group of boys sitting around a Crokinole table.  I think it does a good job of showing the tension, drama, and I daresay excitement that galvanizes everyone playing or watching a game.  You can see for yourself here.

© 2007 Alfred Wallace

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Comments:

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Classic post Alfred. One of your finest. Posted by Iain Cheyne on Jul 27, 2007 at 10:16 AM | #

What a terrific column.  Did male readers blanche at the “effeminate” and “weak” references?  Did female readers react similarly? Every time I think we have not yet done enough to break down gender biases, something like this comes along to remind me how far we’ve come.  I leave encouraged. Posted by Christopher Bartlett on Jul 27, 2007 at 12:26 PM | #

Many thanks! “Did male readers blanche at the “effeminate” and “weak” references?  Did female readers react similarly?” It’s always hard to tell for sure, but my guess is that most men and women would have read that without much bristling.  (Male gamers, of course, probably would have objected...) There were some people with attitudes more like ours today, but they’d have been a minority of both sexes. Posted by Alfred Wallace on Jul 28, 2007 at 12:51 PM | #

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