Tricks Upon the Cards

In 1929 Harold Evans wrote in a magic magazine: “Charles Dickens described all sorts of wandering theatrical folk...but he never drew a pen picture of a conjurer.” Fifty years later, Steven Tigner similarly writes in another conjuring periodical: “It is surely strange, given his magical interests and knowledge, that among the hundreds of characters in Dickens’ novels, not one is a magician... even an amateur.”

Like much which has been written in the magical literature about Charles Dickens, this isn’t so. A revealing, if admittedly very short, pen picture of a conjurer does occur in The Old Curiosity Shop. 
Little Nell and her Grandfather are staying at an inn when two travellers arrive. One of them is “a silent gentleman who earned his living by showing tricks upon the cards...”

There is more; but I will stop at this point to analyse the very interesting choice of words that Dickens uses to describe the profession of his character: instead of saying that he performed card tricks, he writes tricks upon the cards. 

At first reading it seems to be a uniquely Dickensian phrase – but is it?

The answer is no; as it can be traced back at least to the 16th-century Italian nobleman, and Renaissance court conjurer,
Hieronymus Scotti. He performed in front of Queen Elizabeth on 12th May 1602; and a journalist wrote at the time about “an Italian at court that doth wonderful tricks upon the cards”.

The next reference I found is in one of the rarest of all magic books, the 17^th century A Candle in the Dark, where it uses the phrase Tricks upon the cards and dice. Tricks upon the Cards is also incorporated into a title heading in the 18^th century book The Compleat Gamester.

My favourite reference comes in an article published a year later, where the writer seamlessly segues from the “scandalous practice” of singing ballads to gentry allowing “their daughters, to frequent the Kitchen”, which inevitably leads to “kissing...dancing...and to show Tricks upon the cards.”

After 1800, the phrase is increasingly hard to track down; but there is a mention in another article, written in 1845, significantly four years after The Old Curiosity Shop. “Did you ever see a conjurer at a fair shewing off tricks upon the cards?” 

So, in spite of its apparent rarity in literature, it’s clear that the expression was still in usage when Dickens wrote his pen portrait.

By contrast, the earliest reference I can find to the term 'card tricks' is in 1778 - and relates to animals, rather than humans performing them: "The droll performance of the little conjuring horse and learned dog, both of which exhibit card tricks equal to the best performance."  Nevertheless it clearly wasn't that common an expression, as books on magic up to around 1850 went around the houses in not using the term: these included Feats with Cards, Tricks with Cards, Tricks on Cards, Recreations with Cards and Popular Tricks & Changes in Cards.

When it comes to non-magic books, the earliest I can find the term is in 1850, in an American book about New York. Here it seems to be associated with conning people, rather than as entertainment: “Often card-tricks or thimbles are introduced, and the conspirators bet carelessly and largely against each other.”  And for conjuring books, it is 1855, when a Hand-Book of Magic was published -  which had a section called Exposure of the Card Tricks.

Clearly the term rapidly caught on; and in 1876 it became a title of a book, Cards and Card Tricks. Books with Card Tricks in the title soon proliferated and continue to the present day. 

Just some of the various titles over the years have been Card Tricks without Sleight of Hand, New Era Card Tricks, Howard Thurston’s Card Tricks, Modern Card Tricks without Apparatus, The Book of Card Tricks, Card Tricks without Skill, Encyclopaedia of Card Tricks, Scarne on Card Tricks, Self-Working Card Tricks and Life, Death & Other Card Tricks - to name just a few.

Sadly the term Tricks upon the Cards has passed into history; but to my mind it still has a ring about it which deserves remembering and preserving.