by Barbara Vrachnas (Original)
Sir Walter Scott in his 1827 Chronicles of Canongate wrote about the futility of card-playing and gambling and how such activities place the player in a perpetual stasis, “dribble[ing] away life in exchanging bits of painted pasteboard round a green table, for the piddling concern of a few shillings.” Such behaviour, Scott indicates, “can only be excused in folly or superannuation” (28). Like card-playing, the sport of gambling and shooting were amongst the Victorians’ favourite games. These games seemed to have fascinated many Victorian authors such as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Antony Trollope, and Benjamin Disraeli. Even though Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes warned of the temptation and danger in mere mindless activity, sports had always been a gentlemanly prerogative (Mitchell 326). What games one could play—and where one could play them—depended heavily on one’s gender.
