What is a ‘game of ombre’? What is
the Cardgame a parody of? Point out the martial metaphors in Pope’s description
of the game in The Rape of the Lock.
Answer: Ombre (from Spanish hombre, meaning 'man’)
is a fast-moving seventeenth-century trick-taking card game for three players.
Its history began in Spain around the end of the 16th century as a four-person
game. It is one of the earliest card games known in Europe and by far the most
classic game of its type, directly ancestral to Euchre, Boston and Solo Whist.
Despite its difficult rules, complicated point score and strange foreign terms,
it swept Europe in the last quarter of the 17th century, becoming Lomber
in Germany, Lumbur in Austria and Ombre (originally pronounced
'umber') in England, occupying a position of prestige similar to contract
bridge today.
In Canto III of Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Belinda challenges the Baron to Ombre, a popular card game among wealthy people at that time. After the afternoon’s pleasant conversation at Hampton Court Palace, Belinda sits down to play cards with the Baron and another man. They play ombre, a three-handed bridge with some features of poker. Pope describes the game as a battle: the three players’ hands are “three bands [prepared] in arms,” troops sent to “combat on the velvet plain” of the card table. Like the commander of an army, Belinda reviews her cards, declares spades trumps, and sends her cards into combat. She meets with early success, leading with her high trumps. The suit breaks badly when “to the Baron fate inclines the field”. He retains the queen of spades with which he trumps her king of clubs.
