The Square of Sevens Part 1

The Square of Sevens.

by E. Irenaeus Stevenson.

Preface

"'Tis easy as lying."--_Hamlet_

It is safe to presume that even the most inquisitive book-hunters of the present day, and few of the fellows.h.i.+p during two or three generations past, have encountered the scarce and curious little volume here presented, as in a friendly literary resurrection-- Robert Antrobus's "The Square of Sevens, and the Parallelogram."

Its mathematical t.i.tle hardly hints at the amus.e.m.e.nt that the book affords. With its solemn faith in the gravity of its mysteries, with its uncertain spellings and capital-icings such as belong to even the Eighteenth Century's early part, with its quaint phrases and sly observations (all the time sticking strictly close to business), it has a literary character, as well as me occult, that is quite its own.

Fortune-telling with cards and belief in fortune-telling with cards-- like a hundred greater and lesser follies of the mind--were straws floating along the current of British life, intellectual and social, during the reign of George the Second. This was the case, in spite of the enlightening influences of religion, science, and philosophy.

Modish society was addicted to matters over which argument was hardly worth while--in which respect we find modish society the same in all epochs. Our ancestresses particularly were often charming women, and almost as often sensible women; but, like the men of Athens, they were too superst.i.tious. Often were they such in a fond and amusing degree. Lady Betty or Lady Selina--for that matter, even Sir Tompkin and my lord Puce--might be spirited men and women of the world. But they did not repudiate the idea of ghosts. They abhorred a mirror's breakage. They disliked a Friday's errand. They shuddered over a seven-times sneeze or at a howling dog at midnight. And the gentle s.e.x, especially, would and did tell fortunes almost as jealously as play quadrille and piquet. Let us be courteous to them. Let us remember that Esoteric Buddhism, Faith Healing, and Psychic Phenomena were not yet enjoying systematic cultivation and solemn propagandism; and that relatively few dying folk were allowed to "go on with their dying" as part of a process of healing which excludes medicine and insists on the conviction that the invalids are not ill!

But to our "Square of Sevens"--with which even a Gallio may deign to be diverted--especially if in using it the air is found to be full of coincidences. The story of the book is already alluded to, as odd. The inquisitive reader may be referred to "certain copies only." Therein, "inserted by Afterthought on the Author's part"

(and therefore in a mere fraction of whatever represented the extremely small edition of the work), may be sought the "Prefatory Explication, made for the Benefit of My Friends, Male and Female." In recounting the origin of the manual, its author is candid, but at the same time too long-winded for quoting entire.

Enough to say, as the subst.i.tute for a lengthy tale of facts, that prior to the year 1731 the author of "The Square of Sevens," Mr.

Robert Antrobus, "a Gentleman of Bath," was called in the month of November to pa.s.s sundry months in Tretelly, that antique but still lively little town of Cornwall. He describes himself as "exceedingly vexed and inconvenienced by Summons on my Affairs connected with the Parcelling of a piece of Property, unexpectedly acquired." Mr. Antrobus--who, by-the-bye, may perhaps be a.s.sociated in the memories of readers of minor Eighteenth-Century correspondence with such notables of the day as William Pitt, Dr. Johnson, Admiral Byng, Mark Akenside, William Pulteney, the Duke of c.u.mberland, and many others of the time--was a shy, silent man of wealth. Also was he one of considerable learning, out of the way and other, including an interest in gypsies and gypsy language remarkable for the period.

He lodged at "the only Inn of any suitability" in the place. Thereby be made an unexpected acquaintance. Before a week had elapsed, he became much interested in the fact that under the same roof, but in more b.u.mble quarters than his own, was lying and dying another stranger in the place. This was a man of some forty years, known only as "Mr. George." His home is not a clear matter, nor that he had any relatives except a little girl of six or seven years old, his child. It is likely that in alluding to him in the "Prefatory Explication" mentioned, Mr. Antrobus disguised what was already obscure, and that "Mr. George" of the "troublesome Talk of the Inn-people" is an abbreviated pseudonyme.

Mr. Antrobus was a humane and benevolent man, as well as an inquisitive one. He delicately a.s.sisted to make the sick guest more comfortable in his wasting body. He won his confidence, genuinely compa.s.sionated his anxieties, and presently pledged himself to a most kindly office--the care and provision in future for the child soon to be fatherless; long before this time motherless. Whether she was motherless by the actual death of the parent, or not, Mr. Antrobus did not learn, or does not tell. But he did learn, by a confession, that "Mr. George" was really George X--, a gypsy, and one withal of unusual education and breeding.

More remarkable still, he was a gypsy intensely embittered against' a race from which he had lived for many years wholly withdrawn. The cause of such sentiments and renegade existence good Mr. Antrobus "tryed in vain, with much Delicacy" to discover. At the clearest, it appeared to him to date from the dying man's marriage and from some stormy period of his career. In any case, the renunciation of "Mr. George" in lot and part in gypsydom was of savage sincerity. He would not tolerate the idea of his child being left open to such influences; and, as a matter of her happy fortune in meeting with our kind Bath antiquarian, she never encountered them.

Recognising in his benefactor not only a generous man, but one genuinely interested in the whole topic of gypsy life, character, and affairs (moderately studied at the time preceding a Borrow or a Leland), "George X--" entertained Mr. Antrobus "for hours and dayes" in what must have been an extraordinarily free parliament.

It discussed not merely the concerns in general, but the secrets, of Egypt. "Mr. George" bad travelled much. He bad acquired a deal of special knowledge delightful to Antrobus. It is provoking that Antrobus did not commit more of it to paper. But, among other matters, Mr. Antrobus was enlightened on the secrets of looking into _dukkeripens_ in a degree of minuteness that few gorgios enjoy.

As part of this last confidence--the rarest from one of the Blood-- did George X-- disclose in course of certain seances the "Square of Sevens," that most particular and potent method of prying into the past and present and future. In it figures the wonderful "Parallelogram," with its "Master Cards," "Influences," and so on-- which our book records. Moreover, George X-- declared that whereas most of his race can or will use only corrupted or quite frivolous versions of it, this statement set its real and rare self forth with the utmost purity, value, and completeness, in a degree "known to only a few of all the families of Egypt." As such a weighty bit of Black Art did Mr. Antrobus make its details into a book. As such he printed it. Doubtless he thought that a betrayed secret may lawfully be re-betrayed as fully as possible.

Nevertheless, it was not so much of a re-betrayal. For less than what a publisher of this day would call one fair-sized edition of "The Square of Sevens," printed for Antrobus by the great John Gowne, of The Mask book-shop, has ever appeared. And, to account for the semi-privacy surrounding the little work, must be set forth the dolesome incident of a printing-house fire burning, "all except about a dozen or so of copies," before there had been any "distribution of the Book" among the author's "Friends, Male or, Female, or to the Publick." By some sudden change of his own mind or his conscience, Mr. Antrobus did not order any new edition. The prefatory "Afterthought" mentioned may be found, only if stuck in some of the copies of the volume--doubtless by quick and clumsy after-pastings.

Why Antrobus did not give the volume real currency is not known.

That he was urged to do so is certain. It is likely, however, that about this same time some pecuniary losses withheld him from such expensive bobbies as printing books. He returned to Bath, and died there in 1740. We have no particulars of the event, nor are there more than allusions to it in the journal of the date or in the letters of contemporaries. Lady Lavinia Pitt, however, mentions the disease as the smallpox, then so much dreaded.

He left no family--except his young ward, the mysterious daughter of "Mr. George"--of the Tretelly Inn. To her Antrobus had given his name, and she inherited half his estate. Shortly after her kind guardian's death she married an Exeter gentleman of high family.

Her father, "Mr. George," died in the course of Mr. Antrobus's stay at Tretelly.

To some beaux and belles of the reigns of George II. and George III. this book, originating in the conversation of another George-- George the Unknown--could well seem an interesting matter. All the more might it be so in view of its scarceness, from the first.

There are no more copies of it, despite the fact that fas.h.i.+onable dilettanti in things occult have borne it in mind. Could anything be more characteristic of Horace Walpole than to find him in a letter, from serene Strawberry Hill, confessing--to no purpose--that he is "desirous of getting hold of that d.a.m.ned queer old woman's fortune-telling book, by Bob Antrobus." In the Diary of the sprightly Louisa Josepha Adelaide, Countess of Bute (afterward so unfortunate a wife and an even more unfortunate mother), she describes a droll scene at a Scotch castle one evening, in which the unexpected statements of "The Square of Sevens" as to the lives and characters of the company "put to the blush several persons of distinction" who rashly tempted its wisdom--especially including the aged Earl of Lothian. For what Lady Morgan thought of it, and the characteristic story of the peculiar terms on which she offered "to sell her copy to Archbishop Dacre," the reader is referred to the Bentijack Correspondence.

It is on its face a model method of fortune-telling with cards; easily the first for completeness and directness. Our author, in a letter to his cousin, Henry Antrobus, quotes the eminent Brough as styling it not only the most authoritative little book on its topic, certainly the most interesting one; hit the only volume on the subject "which is not a confusing and puerile farrago of nonsense-- troublesome to look into and unsatisfactory to acquire."

Certainly our ancient enthusiasts record can be learned and used systematically, exactly as is the case with such excellent and approved systems of chiromancy as Mr. Heron-Allen's and others.

It may be thought fortunate for modern students of card-divination that the work has survived, so complete and clear. Its discreetness, too, is delightfully adroit, when it suggests that its tenses, past, present, and future, are not as definite as one might desire.

There is no copy of the hook in the British Museum, nor in the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale, nor in any public collection of America, England, or France that I can name. One worn but perfect MS copy is to be found in a private library in the United States. Another might yet be sought in far Australia, if still owned by descendants of Mr. Antrobus's young ward. Only by a special personal interest in the matter, and with a sense of risk to an heirloom, I am permitted to make the ma.n.u.script for this edition.

Undoubtedly, as "R.A.," Mr. Antrobus dressed the mystic "Significances" of the cards in the book's "Tavola" in English less blunt and uncultivated than they came to his ears from the lips of the dying "George--." But that he took no other liberties of the least consequence is pretty certain. He respected the "Supernaturall" here, as in his grave brochure on the c.o.c.k Lane Ghost, which spectre, alas! mightily took him in. And, by the way, the reader will please observe in his pages here following that though the method of "building" and so of forming the "Square,"

and of "reducing" it, seems at first glance bothersome and complicated, it is only a childishly easy performance in the way of making a square of seven rows of seven cards, and then of making the rows only three cards deep, at most! Crazy superst.i.tion and the aim at mummery have added the details of process that seem tedious. And, really, they are not ineffective in a drawing-room.

What we read of thus as carefully put together, conscientiously printed as a thing to be taken with seriousness, in its author's time, may in our social day serve a lighter end--and entertain the parlor, rather than awe the boudoir. With this intent, as well as in offering something of a literary curio, the present Editor a.s.sists it toward the glimpses of--not the moon, but the electric chandelier. And its Nineteenth-Century sponsor hopes that many curious and pleasant "fortunes" may be read by it; and that in its pages the ominous Spade, the mischief-working "Influencing-Card," the stern "Master-Card," the evil "Female or Male Enemy," and the "Vain and Amoratious Man" (who must be ever, indeed, a terrible combination to endure) may not be frequently encountered--in any case, that along with many other troubles and trials, such unpleasing meetings may not come outside the vagaries of a pack of cards.

E. IRENAEUS STEVENSON.

New York, 1896.

BRADAMANTE. But is this authentic? Is it an original? Is it a true, original thing, sir?

GRADa.s.sO (_making a leg_). Madam, 'tis as authentic as very authenticity itself--'tis truth's kernel, originality's core--provided you are but willing to believe it such.

BRADAMANTE. Sir, you quibble.

GRADa.s.sO (_making a leg_). Madam, 'tis precisely in my vocation to quibble,--and delicately.

From _The Superglorious Life and Death of Prince Artius: A Tragedy_. Act LI., sc. li.

THE SQUARE OF SEVENS

_Of the Preparing of the "Square of Sevens" from which is made the Parallelogram; with the due Shuffles, Deals, and Disposals thereto_.

Take a Pack of Fifty-Two Cards, Shuffle the same well, Seven times. Then present the Pack to the Person whose Queries you seek to answer, who accordingly shall be called your _Querist_.

Therewith must your _Querist_ chuse from the Pack, without seeing the cards in it--three several Cards, which are to be called his _Wish-Cards_; the same being chosen with a Cut between each Choice. The _Querist_ must not seek to see these same Wish-Cards; they are to be laid apart on the Table, or left to Repose in the _Querist's_ care, till all that followeth of the _Square_, the _Parallelogram_, and the _Reading_ be ended.

Of the Dealing of a _First Seven_ Cards.

Again take in hand your Pack and Shuffle it yet smartly, there being Forty-nine Cards now left in it. Proceed next earnestly to Deal them forth on the table in the following Order and Manner, and without first seeing their Faces. And be solicitous of laying them down just as they shall come, Faces upward, in a Downward and Oblique Line; taking them from the Topmost of the Pack until you have laid forth Seven, Cards. And while you cruise and lay down the same, and indeed during all that here ensueth of Directions for your following, avoid foolish Conversation and sottish Pleasantries with those about you;

---- 1 ---- ---- 2 ---- ---- 3 ---- ---- 4 ---- ---- 5 ---- ---- 6 ---- ---- 7 FIG. 1 ----

having your mind serious to your task. (Fig. I.)

Shuffle again; and therewith from the store of the Pack add to the above Seven Cards, a Dealing of _Six_ more, to be taken from the Bottom of the

---- ---- 13 ---- ---- ---- 12 ---- ---- ---- 11 ---- ---- ---- 10 ---- ---- ---- 9 ---- ---- ---- 8 ---- ---- FIG. 2 ----

Pack, chusing these also without knowledge of Suits or Values.

They shall be laid in an ascending Border of _Six_, to the Right Hand of your first Series. (Fig. 2.)

Again Shuffle; and deal out

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 14 ---- ---- ---- ---- 15 ---- ---- ---- ---- 16 ---- ---- ---- ---- 17 ---- ---- ---- ---- 18 ---- ---- ---- 19 FIG. 3 ---- ----