Floor Games Redux

Reprint published by Monroe St. Press, 2016

I downloaded a copy of Floor Games in ebook form a few years ago. The text was complete, but it lacked the original's photographs. As I've been thinking a lot about layouts these days, I wanted to find a copy that had the photos as I was curious to see what Wells was talking about. I recently bought a 2016 reprint published by Monroe St. Press that contained both Floor Games and Little Wars, and included all photos for both. 

Overall it's an excellent edition with complete text and an interesting introduction by E. M. Spencer on where these books fit into play and wargaming history (you may recall such a thoughtful introduction was sadly missing from the reprint of Hobbs' Pictorial House Modelling). 

In the introduction Spencer reminds the reader that Floor Games was a key inspiration in the development of Margaret Lowenfeld's 1929 World Technique and Sandplay therapies in the field of child psychology, which are still in use today. There's even a Canadian association devoted to Sandplay. 

My only quibble with this reprint is that the photos in Floor Games seem a little coarse, and stair-stepping is visible in a few. Little Wars has better resolution photos.

Quibbling aside, I'm glad I bought this edition because the photos are an eye-opener. So much so that now when I give Floor Games a reading, to me it appears like a very early treatise on how to build rather interesting model railway layouts using lots of scratchbuilding and an eclectic mix of found objects. And it has a very expansive view of what constitutes operation, more expansive than what we're used to today. I recommend having a look at the photos in the book and comparing them with the photos of Aldo Cosomati's layout in the December 1933 edition of The Model Railway News. The enthusiasm, creativity, organization, and variety of Wells' and Cosomati's approaches are strikingly similar even though the implementation details are different. 

Scratchbuilding? In 1911? Wells states that the he didn't like the city building toys available in stores:

Of course, it goes without saying that we despise those foolish, expensive, made-up wooden and pasteboard castles that are sold in shops - playing with them is like playing with somebody else's dead game in a state of rigor mortis.

What he and his sons used instead were a vast collection of wooden blocks that measured 4 1/2" x 2 1/4" x 1 1/8" made by a carpenter, and handed down to them by some friends who had outgrown the toys. Wells and sons used them much like people use Lego today, to build all manner of things they could imagine. Lego didn't exist then, although various sorts of wooden building blocks did, and I imagine making your own blocks was a cost effective means of getting a lot of them.  And, honestly, take a look at the photos of the model cities on pages 10 to 12 of the reprint, and you can see for yourself the imagination and detail achieved with those blocks and planks. 

Speculating, I'd say that Wells would look down on using Pretty Village toy buildings, and was a guy who didn't truck with store bought stuff, but was a scratchbuilder at heart, and wanted to instil the pleasures of scratchbuilding in his sons :-)

Speaking of building blocks, I'm reading Brenda and Robert Vale's Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings published in 2013, and surprisingly it has a lot to say about building block toys of the 19th and 20th centuries. I didn't realize such a simple toy had such a long and interesting history. More later when I've finished the book.

One thing you'll also notice in the Floor Games photos is that there are soldiers all over the game's terrain as well as military related items even though war games aren't being played. I think that's because in 1911 there wasn't the vast choice of miniature figures and civilian accessories we have today, and Wells and sons made do with what they had as Wells explains in great detail. Wells expresses a desire for civilian figures, especially since they'd turn the game away from "swashbuckling soldiery" and open up game play to "much more fun":

Then we have "beefeaters," (Footnote: The warders in the Tower of London are called "beefeaters"; the origin of the term is obscure) Indians, Zulus, for whom there are special rules. We find we can buy lead dogs, cats, lions, tigers, horses, camels, cattle, and elephants of a reasonably corresponding size, and we have serval boxes of railway porters, and some soldiers we bought in Hesse-Darmstadt that we pass off on an unsuspecting home world as policemen. But we want civilians very badly. We found a box of German from an exaggerated curse of militarism, and even the grocer wears epaulettes. This might please Lord Roberts and Mr. Leo Maxse, but it certainly does not please us. I wish, indeed, that we could buy boxes of tradesmen: a blue butcher, a white baker with a loaf of standard bread, a merchant or so; boxes of servants, boxes of street traffic, smart sets, and so forth. We could do with a judge and lawyers, or a box of vestrymen. It is true that we can buy Salvation Army lasses and football players, but we are cold to both of these. We have, of course, boy scouts. With such boxes of civilians we could have much more fun than with the running, marching, swashbuckling soldiery that pervades us. They drive us to reviews; and it is only emperors, kings, and very silly small boys who can take an undying interest in uniforms and reviews.

Overall I'm glad I bought a copy of Floor Games with photos. I suspect there're things in the photos I'm not appreciating right now, so it might still have surprises in future readings. Also, those photos in Little Wars are intriguing and I need to give it a read too.