Mah Jong in Britain, 1923

Among the books and booklets I find it hard to resist when I am foraging in second-hand bookshops (admittedly quite a large category) are those about old board or card games. This is irrespective of whether I have ever played them: I just like the arcane history, the mysterious diagrams, the very specialism of the subject.

Thus it was that I found a peculiar fascination in a book about the second move in chess, a theme so particular that I felt sure it must be an elaborate allegory or code. Then I found in Glastonbury, where else?, a facsimile of a monograph on the magical origins of chess, with discussions of Indian cosmology and Moorish sorcery, whose thesis made me more suspicious still of the second move book.

This interest had been fostered as I pursued Ancient Mysteries by a booklet produced by the Cambridge geomancer Nigel Pennick, entitled Pagan Prophecy & Play (1984). Nigel had conducted a game of human chess, using volunteers, at the Faerie Fair in Lyng, Norfolk in the 1980s. His study covered ancient Celtic, Saxon and Norse games.

But even quite modern games may still have their interest. In the bookshop opposite the churchyard and Giant’s Grave in Penrith, Cumbria, was a box entitled The Game of Sky, with sun and moon cards with faces and an elaborate, not to say astrological, set of rules. You rather felt that if the cards fell the wrong way there might be cosmic convulsions.

I did, however, manage to put back in its obscure niche in another Cumbrian emporium a book entirely devoted to Cat’s Cradle string games from across the world, which bore the signature on the free front endpaper of a Squadron Leader in Iraq in World War 1, though now of course I feel I ought to have got it.  If in doubt, do is a good motto for book-collectors.

It was not, however, in the first instance a book that alerted me to the monographs on Mah-Jong that began to appear in Britain one hundred years ago, in 1923, but rather a charming postcard of a ring-tailed lemur.

There was a great fashion for Mah Jong (also spelt Mah Jongg) in that year. The scholar and translator Herbert A Giles claimed to be one of the first to introduce it to Britain, in the late 19^th century, but it did not then become popular. There had been earlier attempts to introduce other Chinese games to Britain. Diplomat William Henry Wilkinson developed the ancient card game Khanhoo using adapted playing card type images, in The Game of Khanhoo (Goodall, 1891). Wilkinson was the British Consul-General in various Chinese and Korean ports and cities, and a keen collector and historian of card and board games.

He was also the author of A Manual of Chinese Chess, based on his columns in the North China Herald, Shanghai, and printed at that newspaper’s office (1893): this describes the different board, pieces and moves in that version of the game, based on a 17^th century manual, The Secrets of the Orange Grove.

Later, there was an attempt to introduce the strategy game Go, with the publication of Goh or Wei Chi: A handbook of the game and full instructions for play by Horace Fabian Cheshire, with an introduction and critical notes by Prof. T. Komatsubara. This was issued by the author himself in Hastings in 1911.  Cheshire was a local chess-player and there is a note about him at the Hastings & St Leonards Chess Club website, which suggests he may have formed a Goh Club there too, perhaps the first in Britain.

Though Go/Goh may have made some headway among board game cognoscenti, it did not attract attention in the way Mah Jong was to do. Possibly the very simple equipment – effectively just stones (or counters) and a grid – yet highly complex permutations made it seem somewhat austere.

Mah Jong, however, with its ornate sets of decorated tiles, and its vocabulary of Dragons and Great Winds and Peacocks and Flowers, evidently appealed to the delight in Chinoiserie among the fashionable, shown in the taste for the fiction of Thomas Burke, Ernest Bramah and others. Soon Mah Jong was seen as a thrilling house-party alternative to Bridge, Charades and other conventional pastimes. Publishers, games companies and composers rushed to be in on the craze.

It was the wealthy Courtaulds of Eltham Palace who named their ring-tailed lemur Mah-Jongg, because of the fashion for the game. They had purchased him from Harrods pet department in 1923, and adapted aspects of their home to suit his tastes and requirements. The Palace shop offers picture postcards of the languid creature lounging in a bespoke deck-chair aboard their yacht.  

Dance bands, very hot in the early Twenties, soon picked up the trend. George Gershwin provided the music for a 1923 song called ‘Mah Jongg: A Perfect Lady’, with words by B G De Silva. Lester Stevens wrote ‘Mah Jongg Blues’, while J Bolduc also composed a ‘Mah Jong Blues’ (with one g), while the otherwise unknown F Strumillo issued ‘Mah Jongg; Fox Blues’ and Cecil Cowles offered a piece simply entitled ‘Mah Jong’. Meanwhile, the stage was not behind-hand: The Prince of Mah Jong. A musical comedy in two acts, etc. [1924] was the work of N. Fraser Allan while Russian émigré Olga Racster devised a Mah Jong ballet.

The fad seemed to peter out in a year or two, as the In Crowd of the Twenties moved on to fresh fancies, but mentions of it do crop up occasionally in passing in fiction of the interwar period.

Some Early Mah Jong Publications in Britain

Mah Jongg A Complete Guide To The Fascinating Game From China. By ‘East Wind’. George Routledge & Sons Ltd London 1923

Mah Jong And How To Play It By Chiang Lee. Thomas De La Rue and Co, [1923]. The company also issued The Pocket Guide to Mah Jong

Mah Jong in Plain English, a 46pp guide, McBain & Co, 1923          

Mah Jong Do's and Don’ts, etc. By Eileen Beck.  Methuen & Co, 1923.

Mah Jong and how to play it. By “Etienne,” etc. [55pp]. Methuen & Co, 1923.

Mah Jong Rules of the Queen's Club [London]. Queen's Club,1924.

The Official Standardised Rules of the Mah-Jongg League Limited: Mah-Jongg Rules for Playing in the Chinese Manner. By Olga Racster. Heath Cranton, 1924

Mah Jongg: how to play and score. Arranged by an English enthusiast of the game. (C. M. W. Higginson.) Second edition. J. Jaques & Son, [1924].

(Mark Valentine)