The Long and Perilous Road to the Mansion of Happiness

In 1840, you avoided Idle Hands by spending one enjoyable and instructive evening drilling your children on obscure facts, and the next teaching them to contemplate the Wages of Sin. By 1940, Fun was a lot more fun.

The Wall Street Journal had an article two weeks ago about the history of American board games. Although both board games and card games are ancient (the origins of Parcheesi go back literally thousands of years!), the rise of board games in America goes back about two centuries. There were many traditional games played in the young United States, like chess, cribbage, and backgammon, but the first-known American board game was Travellers’ Tour Through the United States (1822).  In Travellers, players had to answer geographical questions to advance through the then-24 states, aiming to win by being the first to reach New Orleans.

At the Needham History Center, we have, I am happy to say, numerous 19th and 20th century games in our collections. For example, there is Gaskill’s Popular Historical Game, or, History Made interesting for Young and Old (“Evenings Made Merry and Instructive. A Revolution in the Way of Learning History. A Useful Study and a Delightful Sport.”)  Whew! And all that on the lid of a box that measures 3” x 4.” The game consists of cards with a year at the top, the name of a famous person who was alive in that year, and three important events that took place during his lifetime.  The basic rule is that a player is told the name and the three events (but not the dates), and has to guess the year in question (within 10 years).  Here’s one to try:

Sir Isaac Newton

1. 1. 1. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes drives from France many industrious and wealthy Protestants.
      2. Enameled pottery made (St. Cloud).
      3. The Eddystone Lighthouse completed.

And no, you do not get to Google “Edict of Nantes.” The answer, obviously, is 1689 – the Edict of Nantes was 1685, enameled pottery was first made in 1688, and the Eddystone Light, on the coast of Cornwall, was completed in 1694. Bet you didn’t know that. OK, I didn’t either, but I have the answer card in front of me.  I also learned that the microscope was invented the same year that cotton was first planted in the US (1621), that the Saracens introduced the mariner’s compass into Europe from China around 1285, that the first saw mill in Germany dates to 1427, and that friction matches replaced the tinder box in 1834.

American board games really began to take off in the mid-1800s. This was, in part, because improvements in printing technology made production less costly; and because industrialization was creating a middle-class with leisure time.  By far, the most influential of the early American board games was The Mansion of Happiness, published in 1843 by W. & S.B. Ives Co. of Salem, MA. The Mansion of Happiness (“An Instructive, Moral, and Entertaining Amusement”), was is like a moralistic (OK, a more moralistic) Game of Life, with a little bit of Mystery Date thrown in. Or, in their words:

“At this amusement each will find / A moral fit t’ improve the mind.

And shows (while Vice destruction brings) / That Good from every virtue springs.” 

The game was so virtuous that it eschewed dice (“the bones of the Devil”) in favor of a spinner called a teetotum,** which was a numbered disc on a spindle. Players spun the teetotum to advance along the spiral path toward the goal – The Mansion of Happiness. But the journey was hard, and along the way you could meet with setbacks or advantages. For example, if you landed on one of the Virtues (Piety, Chastity, Temperance, etc) you got to move ahead an extra six spaces; but if you landed on Vices such as Audacity, Cruelty, Immodesty, or Ingratitude you had to go back to your former space until your next turn, and (as the Rules state) “not even think of Happiness, much less partake of it.”

The punishment spaces (Poverty, the Whipping Post, House of Correction, Prison, and Ruin, etc) are skipped over and not counted as you pass them, because “it would be cruel to punish a person for merely passing such a place.”  However, landing on such a spot incurs a penalty – if you land on Passion, you must move to The Water to cool yourself off; landing on Idleness sends you back to Poverty; if you land on A Robber, you must move to The House of Correction and lose two turns; and if you land on The Summit of Dissipation (yikes!) you move to Ruin.

The rules of Mansion were incredibly complicated, with numerous different rewards/penalties depending upon where you landed. Jill Lepore, in her book The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death (2012), said that she tried to play it, but that there were so many setbacks that the game was difficult to complete.

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness. 

–Herman Melville (1819-1891)

But that may actually have been a feature, not a bug.  Objectively, there was nothing Fun about this game. Fun was not even a consideration. Leisure for children was suspect – Idle Hands are the Devil’s Playthings – so games like Mansion were really an extension of moral education. Your struggle to reach the goal of the game was just a pale comparison to your struggle to reach the real Mansion of Happiness – Heaven.

The Mansion of Happiness was succeeded by a similar game, The Checkered Game of Life. And if that name rings a bell, read on. The Checkered Game of Life was the first game published by Milton Bradley (also in Salem), in 1861. Like Mansion, players advanced by landing on the Virtues and lost ground on the Sins. Unlike Mansion, however, The Checkered Game of Life required strategy. Players could choose in which direction their move took them, using the virtues (Honesty, Industry, Bravery) to acquire benefits (Happiness, Fame, Government Contracts).  But the main difference in the two games is that The Checkered Game of Life aspired to worldly goals, as well as spiritual goals – Industriousness leads directly to Wealth, Bravery leads to Honor, but Intemperance leads to Poverty.  While The Mansion of Happiness was a spiritual journey toward Heaven, The Checkered Game of Life was a physical journey, from Infancy to the goal of Happy Old Age (50 years old…).  Success was reached through virtuous living, but the fruits of success were material.

Milton Bradley celebrated its 100th anniversary by issuing a reimagined version of its original game – now called The Game of Life (1960).  Like its predecessor, The Game of Life represents a journey from youth to old age, this time in a little plastic car that follows a winding road that can lead to financial prosperity or ruin. But while Checkered nodded to both God and Mammon, The Game of Life was pure materialism. Reflecting the sensibilities of a prosperous post-WW2 America, success meant accumulating wealth through investments and education, and the careful deployment of insurance policies to minimize risk. Failure meant bankruptcy.  “Virtues” were the actions that earned money, and “Sins” were the bad decisions that caused you to lose money.  At the end, all players were required to stop at the Day of Reckoning, where you paid for your sins – in Dollars. The winner was the first player rich enough to enter Millionaire Acres. In a nod to its earlier version, the game used a spinner rather than dice.

Like The Game of Life, the other 20th century games in our collection reflect a middle-class sensibility of goods and services. Touring was a sort of American version of Mille Bornes; players raced around the countryside while dealing with flat tires and empty gas tanks. The delightful Game of Needham was a fundraiser form of Monopoly, where you shop at familiar local stores (many now gone –  Calverts! Bergson’s!) The Campbell Kids led you around the supermarket to buy soup and other yummy canned products. The first one to buy everything on the list was the winner. The Campbell Soup Company was a pioneer in using branded merchandise tie-ins to build customer loyalty (I still have my silver-plated Campbell Kid soup spoon!). This game was a triumph of mid-20th century consumerism.  The road-journey format had been transformed from seeking Heaven, to seeking a generalized Prosperity, to seeking Company-Branded Products.

In 1840, you avoided Idle Hands by spending one enjoyable and instructive evening drilling your children on obscure facts, and the next teaching them to contemplate the Wages of Sin.  By 1940, Play had become an imperative in itself – relief from the stress of work or school, an engine of imagination and creativity, a crucial component of mental health. Leisure had triumphed.

When children pretend… A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.   

—Fred Rogers (1928–2003)

**The similarity to “teetotal” was not accidental.

The Mansion of Happiness, The Checkered Game of Life, and others are currently on display in the Needham History Center’s exhibit,  “The Game of Life: the Serious Business of Children’s Games.”