Where/How to Buy a Marseilles Deck in England - 1853?

Miren

I decided to use tarot as one of the elements in my NaNoWriMo book. It's been a challenge using the Marseilles instead of Rider-Waite, but fun.

Anyway, I had a character who lived in Italy and France, so it's not really a problem for her to have acquired one. But she's going to give a deck to my main character and I have no idea where a person in Bath, England, in 1853 would have acquired a deck.

Any ideas? I'm considering having her write to an old friend in France, but anyone knows what kind of places one might find one in England? It'd be fun to include a trip to some sort of store, even if they had to go to London.
 

Lillie

They would go to Madame Moffat's Emporium of the Wonderful and the Strange.

It was located in London on the corner of Threadneedle Street and Finch Lane.
In medieval times Threadneedle street was known as 'Gropecunt lane' and was the abode of prostitutes.

Mrs Moffat herself was, on her mothers side, a direct descendant of those prostitutes whilst on her fathers side she was descended from a long line of alchemists.

She sold many and varied things in her shop, including hands of glory, graveyard dirt and stuffed alligators.
She also sold her daughters who she would rent out by the hour.

Her regular customers referred to her as 'The other old lady of Threadneedle street' because of the amount of money that was said to cross her counter.

If you wanted a deck of tarot cards, she would be the one to ask.

No.

Sadly I just made her up.
But I wish she was real.

Threadneedle street is real, including it's medieval name.

Good luck finding out the true answer. You have me curious now!
 

Miren

Makes me think of Terry Pratchett's "Seamstresses," though they were from Seattle.

I may make up something like that anyway--I think I'd have to send her to London to do it, it could be fun. I'm just hoping for something real the base it off of at the least. We'll see.

This is the kind of historical info that it's tough to find with Google or even access to academic databases (which I have). Nobody writes about buying tarot decks in England in the 1850s. ...until now.
 

philebus

You might like to have a search through Google Books. I'm sure that I've seen one or two 19th century books there that enthuse about and give accounts of tarot games. By that time, the use of French suited cards was on the rise but many countries, including France, still played the games with the Italian designs (and still do).

As the occult tarot had yet to reach British shores (it was at that time limited only to France to my knowledge) I would suggest that a card game enthusiast or specialist game supplier would be the most likely way to obtain a pack at that time.
 

Lillie

Probably a secondhand book seller would be your best bet.
As London and Bristol (close to Bath) are both ports they would have stuff coming in from Europe via sailors.

This is a description of london booksellers from 1865

The book stalls are, perhaps, the only really picturesque shops, reminding one of the olden time, extant. There is a keeping about these stalls which is quite delightful; all the books seem to have acquired by companionship such a family likeness; such a dingy old-world appearance. It would be too great a stretch for the brain to imagine the time when they were wet from the press, and guiltless of those old mouldy stains, like maps of out-of-the-way countries, scattered over their pages. And then the stallkeepers — they say that foxes and other wild animals of the desert grow to the colour of the sand; so it is with the old stall-keeper, there he stands, his face the colour of a vellum MS., and his body bound in cloth the hue of that musty volume of "Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs."
The only thing out of keeping with the book-stalls is that sharp little face peering out of a peep-hole between the books, like a spider watching for a heedless fly. There is a cunningness about the book-stall boy unworthy of the old-fashioned, trustful, respectable dulness of the presiding spirit in ancient spectacles. And then the old pinched-up faces that daily poke over the books, withered men, in camlet cloaks up to their knees, with great bunching umbrellas under their arms, poking out to the infinite danger of passers-by. How they moon over the ragged, dirty surface of the book-range, "Anything new to-day, Mr. Maggott?" "Nothing particular, Mr. Wormy." The same question and the same answer have been exchanged every day these last twenty years. "Anything new to-day?" Lord love you; none of those camlet gentry would look at anything that was not drilled through like a honeycomb, and as old as the parish steeple. But, alas! the genuine old book-stall is getting rarer and rarer; the gloomy hollow space, in the dim distance of which the old tomes were faintly discovered, have been parted off from us by glaring plate glass.
The very books in some of the new shops seem to have suffered a resurrection: old editions, published "at ye Sunne, over against ye Conduit, in Fleete Street," issue afresh from the press ; the genuine originals, that have lain on dusty shelves for a couple of centuries, are aghast at seeing the very counterparts of themselves arise, in all the pristine beauty of youth, and push them from their stools. It is a wonder to me that Tonson and other ancient publishers don't bustle out of their graves at the sight of their old copyrights revived again, and kicking, in this low, degenerate age, when cabmen and others of the vulgar can command the books that, in their time, were soiled by no thumbs meaner than those of dukes and duchesses.

Andrew Wynter 1865

I don't know is it could be shown that London booksellers occasionally sold tarot decks, but it would be absolutely impossible to prove that they didn't.

Another option would be a pawn shop.
 

Miren

philebus said:
You might like to have a search through Google Books. I'm sure that I've seen one or two 19th century books there that enthuse about and give accounts of tarot games. By that time, the use of French suited cards was on the rise but many countries, including France, still played the games with the Italian designs (and still do).

As the occult tarot had yet to reach British shores (it was at that time limited only to France to my knowledge) I would suggest that a card game enthusiast or specialist game supplier would be the most likely way to obtain a pack at that time.

Thanks! One of the reasons I knew she had to have lived abroad was the general lack of tarot in England at this point from what I'd read. I need to work on finding images of an Italian deck (I've been spending so much time working on reading pip cards and not just imposing Rider-Waite onto them that I've neglected looking for an Italian deck) because she learned to read in Italy, but my idea is that she discovered the Marseilles decks in France and decided to go with them--perhaps her friends were doing it. But I'd like to write a scene where she shows the MC her original deck.

I'll hit up Google books and see what else I can find about their use at the time in regular circles.

And Lillie, ports are a great suggestion, thanks! :)
 

Lillie

Just earlier than you want there was a bloke called John Denley who was involved in the occult world in london.

He had an occult bookshop but he seems to have shut up shop around 1840.

His stock could have filtered down to a bookseller where someone might find a deck along with some of the tarot/occult works of the time De Geblin/Etteilla that sort of thing.

Denley here.
http://danharms.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/in-search-of-john-denley/
 

philebus

If your character is reading with tarot cards, then you probably need to tie it to France - tarot reading wasn't really practiced outside of France until the end of the 19th century.

With regards to an Italian connection, you will need to search the History forum here, as I believe an unrelated tradition of reading tarot cards had come about in Bologna by this time using the Tarocchino (or Tarocco Bolognese), which is a pack with a reduced number of pips and a unique arrangement of trumps. The advantage of the Bolognese route is that we just don't know much about that tradition - even now, so there is much greater scope for artistic licence.
 

Le Fanu

Miren said:
(I've been spending so much time working on reading pip cards and not just imposing Rider-Waite onto them that I've neglected looking for an Italian deck) because she learned to read in Italy, but my idea is that she discovered the Marseilles decks in France and decided to go with them--perhaps her friends were doing it. But I'd like to write a scene where she shows the MC her original deck
You could tie this up very nicely...

The Soprafino dates from the mid-1830s, almost exactly the time when your heroine was in Italy. This is the deck she would have learnt on. Fits your timeline perfectly...
 

Miren

Thanks, Lillie, that could be helpful--if nothing else for a shopkeeper to mention that s/he has some of John Denley's collection, even though that's not what they're there after.

philebus - artistic license, that's handy. :)

Mille grazie, Le Fanu! Sometimes history makes the story harder, but sometimes it's just perfect. Bookmarking. :) The Lovers in that deck is especially interesting--at a glance it looks like the young man is being torn between the woman he loves and service to his liege.