The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims Volume 1 Part 13

(78) Murray, _ubi supra_.

Mr Sala in his interesting work, already quoted, furnishes the completest account of Hombourg, its Kursaal, and gambling, which I have condensed as follows:--

'In Hombourg the Kursaal is everything, and the town nothing. The extortionate hotel-keepers, the "snub-nosed rogues of counter and till,"

who overcharge you in the shops, make their egregious profits from the Kursaal. The major part of the Landgrave's revenue is derived from the Kursaal; he draws L5000 a year from it. He and his house are sold to the Kursaal; and the Board of Directors of the Kursaal are the real sovereigns and land-graves of Hesse Hombourg. They have metamorphosed a miserable mid-German townlet into a city of palaces. Their stuccoed and frescoed palace is five hundred times handsomer than the mouldy old Schloss, built by William with the silver leg. They have planted the gardens; they have imported the orange-trees; they have laid out the park, and enclosed the hunting-grounds; they board, lodge, wash, and tax the inhabitants; and I may say, without the slightest attempt at punning, that the citizens are all _Kursed_.

'In the Kursaal is the ball or concert-room, at either end of which is a gallery, supported by pillars of composition marble. The floors are inlaid, and immense mirrors in sumptuous frames hang on the walls.

Vice can see her own image all over the establishment. The ceiling is superbly decorated with bas-reliefs in _carton-pierre_, like those in Mr Barry's new Covent Garden Theatre; and fresco paintings, executed by Viotti, of Milan, and Conti, of Munich; whilst the whole is lighted up by enormous and gorgeous chandeliers. The apartment to the right is called the _Salle j.a.panese_, and is used as a dining-room for a monster _table d'hote_, held twice a day, and served by the famous Chevet of Paris.

'There is a huge Cafe Olympique, for smoking and imbibing purposes, private cabinets for parties, the monster saloon, and two smaller ones, where _FROM ELEVEN IN THE FORENOON TO ELEVEN AT NIGHT, SUNDAYS NOT EXCEPTED, ALL THE YEAR ROUND_, and year after year--(the "administration" have yet a "_jouissance_" of eighty-five years to run out, guaranteed by the incoming dynasty of Hesse Darmstadt), knaves and fools, from almost every corner of the world, gamble at the ingenious and amusing games of _Roulette_, and _Rouge et Noir_, otherwise _Trente et Quarante_.

'There is one table covered with green baize, tightly stretched as on a billiard-field. In the midst of the table there is a circular pit, coved inwards, but not bottomless, and containing the Roulette wheel, a revolving disc, turning with an accurate momentum on a bra.s.s pillar, and divided at its outer edge into thirty-seven narrow and shallow pigeon-hole compartments, coloured alternately red and black, and numbered--not consecutively--up to thirty-six. The last is a blank, and stands for _Zero_, number _Nothing_. Round the upper edge, too, run a series of little bra.s.s hoops, or bridges, to cause the ball to hop and skip, and not at once into the nearest compartment. This is the regimen of Roulette. The banker sits before the wheel,--a croupier, or payer-out of winnings to and raker in of losses from the players, on either side.

Crying in a voice calmly sonorous, "_Faites le Jeu, Messieurs_,"--"Make your game, gentlemen!" the banker gives the wheel a dexterous twirl, and ere it has made one revolution, casts into its Maelstrom of black and red an ivory ball. The interval between this and the ball finding a home is one of breathless anxiety. Stakes are eagerly laid; but at a certain period of the revolution the banker calls out--"_Le Jeu est fait. Rien ne va plus_,"--and after that intimation it is useless to lay down money. Then the banker, in the same calm and impa.s.sable voice, declares the result. It may run thus:--"_Vingt-neuf, Noir, Impair, et Pa.s.se,"

"Twenty-nine, Black, Odd, and Pa.s.s the Rubicon_" (No. 18); or, "_Huit, Rouge, Pair, et Manque_," "Eight, Red, Even, and _NOT_ Pa.s.s the Rubicon."

'Now, on either side of the wheel, and extending to the extremity of the table, run, in duplicate, the schedule of _mises_ or stakes. The green baize first offers just thirty-six square compartments, marked out by yellow threads woven in the fabric itself, and bearing thirty-six consecutive numbers. If you place a florin (one and eight-pence)--and no lower stake is permitted--or ten florins, or a Napoleon, or an English five-pound note, or any sum of money not exceeding the maximum, whose multiple is the highest stake which the bank, if it loses, can be made to pay, in the midst of compartment 29, and if the banker, in that calm voice of his, has declared that 29 has become the resting place of the ball, the croupier will push towards you with his rake exactly thirty-three times the amount of your stake, whatever it might have been. You must bear in mind, however, that the bank's loss on a single stake is limited to eight thousand francs. Moreover, if you have placed another sum of money in the compartment inscribed, in legible yellow colours, "_Impair_," or Odd, you will receive the equivalent to your stake--twenty-nine being an odd number. If you have placed a coin on _Pa.s.se_, you will also receive this additional equivalent to your stake, twenty-nine being "Past the Rubicon," or middle of the table of numbers--18. Again, if you have ventured your money in a compartment bearing for device a lozenge in outline, which represents black, and twenty-nine being a black number, you will again pocket a double stake, that is, one in addition to your original venture. More, and more still,--if you have risked money on the columns--that is, betted on the number turning up corresponding with some number in one of the columns of the tabular schedule, and have selected the right column--you have your own stake and two others;--if you have betted on either of these three eventualities, _douze premier, douze milieu_, or _douze dernier_, otherwise "first dozen," "middle dozen," or "last dozen," as one to twelve, thirteen to twenty-four, twenty-five to thirty-six, all inclusive, and have chanced to select _douze dernier_, the division in which No. 29 occurs, you also obtain a treble stake, namely, your own and two more which the bank pays you, your florin or your five-pound note--benign fact!--metamorphosed into three. But, woe to the wight who should have ventured on the number "eight," on the red colour (compartment with a crimson lozenge), on "even," and on "not past the Rubicon;" for twenty-nine does not comply with any one of these conditions. He loses, and his money is coolly swept away from him by the croupier's rake. With reference to the last chances I enumerated in the last paragraph, I should mention that the number _EIGHT_ would lie in the second column--there being three columns,--and in the first dozen numbers.

'There are more chances, or rather subdivisions of chances, to entice the player to back the "numbers;" for these the stations of the ball are as capricious as womankind; and it is, of course, extremely rare that a player will fix upon the particular number that happens to turn up. But he may place a piece of money _a cheval_, or astride, on the line which divides two numbers, in which case (either of the numbers turning up) he receives sixteen times his stake. He may place it on the cross lines that divide four numbers, and, if either of the four wins, he will receive eight times the amount of his stake. A word as to _Zero_. Zero is designated by the compartment close to the wheel's diameter, and zero, or blank, will turn up, on an average, about once in seventy times. If you have placed money in zero, and the ball seeks that haven, you will receive thirty-three times your stake.'

The twin or elder brother of _Roulette_, played at Hombourg, _Rouge et Noir_, or _Trente et Quarante_, is thus described by Mr Sala:--

'There is the ordinary green-cloth covered table, with its brilliant down-coming lights. In the centre sits the banker, gold and silver in piles and _rouleaux_, and bank-notes before him. On either hand, the croupier, as before, now wielding the rakes and plying them to bring in the money, now balancing them, now shouldering them, as soldiers do their muskets, half-pay officers their canes, and dandies their silk umbrellas. The banker's cards are, as throughout all the Rhenish gaming-places, of French design; the same that were invented, or, at least, first used in Europe, for crazy Charles the Simple. These cards are placed on an inclined plane of marble, called a _talon_.

'The dealer first takes six packs of cards, shuffles them, and distributes them in various parcels to the various punters or players round the table, to shuffle and mix. He then finally shuffles them, and takes and places the end cards into various parts of the three hundred and twelve cards, until he meets with a _court card_, which he must place upright at the end. This done, he presents the pack to one of the players to cut, who places the pictured card where the _dealer_ separates the pack, and that part of the pack beyond the pictured card he places at the end nearest him, leaving the pictured card at the bottom of the pack.

'The dealer then takes a certain number of cards, about as many as would form a pack, and, looking at the first card, to know its colour, puts it on the table with its face downwards. He then takes two cards, one red and the other black, and sets them back to back. These cards are turned, and displayed conspicuously, as often as the colour varies, for the information of the company.

'The gamblers having staked their money on either of the colours, the dealer asks, "_Votre jeu est-il fait?_" "Is your game made?" or, "_Votre jeu est-il piet?_" "Is your game ready?" or, "_Le jeu est pret, Messieurs_," "The game is ready, gentlemen." He then deals the first card with its face upwards, saying "_Noir;_" and continues dealing until the cards turned exceed thirty points or pips in number, which number he must mention, as "_Trente-et-un_," or "_Trente-six_," as the case may be.

'As the aces reckon but for one, no card after thirty can make up forty; the dealer, therefore, does not declare the _tens_ after _thirty-one_, or upwards, but merely the units, as one, two, three; if the number of points dealt for _Noir_ are thirty-five he says "_Cinq_."

'Another parcel is then dealt for _rouge_, or _red_, and with equal deliberation and solemnity; and if the players stake beyond the colour that comes to _thirty-one_ or nearest to it, he wins, which happy eventuality is announced by the dealer crying--"_Rouge gagne_," "Red wins," or "_Rouge perd_," "Red loses." These two parcels, one for each colour, make a _coup_. The same number of parcels being dealt for each colour, the dealer says, "_Apres_," "After." This is a "doublet," called in the amiable French tongue, "_un refait_," by which neither party wins, unless both colours come to _thirty-one_, which the dealer announces by saying, "_Un refait Trente-et-un_," and he wins half the stakes posted on both colours. He, however, does not take the money, but removes it to the middle line, and the players may change the _venue_ of their stakes if they please. This is called the first "prison," or _la premiere prison_, and, if they win their next event, they draw the entire stake. In case of another "_refait_," the money is removed into the third line, which is called the second prison. So you see that there are wheels within wheels, and Lord Chancellor King's dictum, that walls can be built higher, but there should be no prison within a prison, is sometimes reversed.

When this happens the dealer wins all.

'The cards are sometimes cut for which colour shall be dealt first; but, in general, the first parcel is for _black_, and the second for _red_.

The odds against a "_refait_" turning up are usually reckoned as 63 to 1. The bankers, however, acknowledge that they expect it twice in three deals, and there are generally from twenty-nine to thirty-two coups in each deal. The odds in favour of winning several times are about the same as in the game of Pharaon, and are as delusive. 'He who goes to Hombourg and expects to see any melodramatic manifestation of rage, disappointment, and despair in the losing players, reckons without his host. Winners or losers seldom speak above a whisper; and the only sound that is heard above the suppressed buzz of conversation, the m.u.f.fled jingle of the money on the green cloth, the "sweep" of the croupiers'

rakes, and the ticking of the very ornate French clocks on the mantel-pieces, is the impa.s.sibly metallic voice of the banker, as he proclaims his "_Rouge perd_," or "_Couleur gagne_." People are too genteel at Hombourg-von-der-Hohe to scream, to yell, to fall into fainting fits, or go into convulsions, because they have lost four or five thousand francs or so in a single coup.

'I have heard of one gentleman, indeed, who, after a ruinous loss, put a pistol to his head, and discharging it, spattered his brains over the Roulette wheel. It was said that the banker, looking up calmly, called out--'_Triple Zero,' 'Treble Nothing_,'--a case as yet unheard of in the tactics of Roulette, but signifying annihilation,--and that, a cloth being thrown over the ensanguined wheel, the bank of that particular table was declared to be closed for the day. Very probably the whole story is but a newspaper _canard_, devised by the proprietors of some rival gaming establishment, who would have been delighted to see the fashionable Hombourg under a cloud.

'When people want to commit suicide at Hombourg, they do it genteelly; early in the morning, or late at night, in the solitude of their own apartments at the hotels. It would be reckoned a gross breach of good manners to scandalize the refined and liberal administration of the Kursaal by undisguised _felo-de-se_. The devil on two _croupes_ at Hombourg is the very genteelest of demons imaginable. He ties his tail up with cherry-coloured ribbon, and conceals his cloven foot in a patent-leather boot. All this gentility and varnish, and elegant veneering of the sulphurous pit, takes away from him, if it does not wholly extinguish, the honour and loathing for a common gaming-house, with which the mind of a wellured English youth has been sedulously imbued by his parents and guardians. He has very probably witnessed the performance of the "Gamester" at the theatre, and been a spectator of the remorseful agonies of Mr Beverly, the virtuous sorrows of Mrs B., and the dark villanies of Messieurs Dawson and Bates.

'The first visit of the British youth to the Kursaal is usually paid with fear and trembling. He is with difficulty persuaded to enter the accursed place. When introduced to the saloons--delusively called _de conversation_, he begins by staring fixedly at the chandeliers, the ormolu clocks, and the rich draperies, and resolutely averts his eyes from the serried ranks of punters or players, and the Pactolus, whose sands are circulating on the green cloth on the table. Then he thinks there is no very great harm in looking on, and so peeps over the shoulder of a moustached gamester, who perhaps whispers to him in the interval between two coups, that if a man will only play carefully, and be content with moderate gains, he may win sufficient--taking the good days and the evil days in a lump--to keep him in a decent kind of affluence all the year round. Indeed, I once knew a croupier--we used to call him Napoleon, from the way he took snuff from his waistcoat pocket, who was in the way of expressing a grave conviction that it was possible to make a capital living at Roulette, so long as you stuck to the colours, and avoided the Scylla of the numbers and the Charybdis of the Zero. By degrees, then, the shyness of the neophyte wears off. Perhaps in the course of his descent of Avernus, a revulsion of feeling takes place, and, horror-struck and ashamed, he rushes out of the Kursaal, determined to enter its portals no more. Then he temporizes; remembers that there is a capital reading-room, provided with all the newspapers and periodicals of civilized Europe, attached to the Kursaalian premises. There can be no harm, he thinks, in glancing over "Galignani"

or the "Charivari," although under the same roof as the abhorred _Trente et Quarante;_ but, alas! he finds _Galignani_ engaged by an acrid old lady of morose countenance, who has lost all her money by lunch-time, and is determined to "take it out in reading," and the _Charivari_ slightly clenched in one hand by the deaf old gentleman with the dingy ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and the curly brown wig pushed up over one ear, who always goes to sleep on the soft and luxurious velvet couches of the Kursaal reading-room, from eleven till three, every day, Sundays not excepted. The disappointed student of home or foreign news wanders back to one of the apartments where play is going, on. In fact, he does not know what to do with himself until table-d'hote time. You know what the moral bard, Dr Watts says:--

"Satan finds some mischief still, For idle hands to do."

The unfledged gamester watches the play more narrowly. A stout lady in a maroon velvet mantle, and a man with a bald head, a black patch on his occiput, and gold spectacles, obligingly makes way for him. He finds himself pressed against the very edge of the table. Perhaps a chair--one of those delightfully comfortable Kursaal chairs--is vacant. He is tired with doing nothing, and sinks into the emolliently-cushioned _fauteuil_.

He fancies that he has caught the eye of the banker, or one of the gentlemen of the _croupe_, and that they are meekly inviting him to try his luck. "Well, there can't be much harm in risking a florin," he murmurs. He stakes his silver-piece on a number or a colour. He wins, we will say, twice or thrice. Perhaps he quadruples his stake, nay, perchance, hits on the lucky number. It turns up, and he receives thirty-five times the amount of his _mise_. Thenceforth it is all over with that ingenuous British youth. The Demon of Play has him for his own, and he may go on playing and playing until he has lost every florin of his own, or as many of those belonging to other people as he can beg or borrow. Far more fortunate for him would it be in the long run, if he met in the outset with a good swinging loss. The burnt child _DOES_ dread the fire as a rule; but there is this capricious, almost preternatural, feature of the physiology of gaming, that the young and inexperienced generally win in the first instance. They are drawn on and on, and in and in. They begin to lose, and continue to lose, and by the time they have cut their wise teeth they have neither sou nor silver to make their dearly-bought wisdom available.

'At least one-half of the company may be a.s.sumed to be arrant rascals--rascals male and rascals female--_chevaliers d'industrie_, the offscourings of all the shut-up gambling-houses in Europe, demireps and _lorettes_, single and married women innumerable.'

In the course of the three visits he has paid to Hombourg, Mr Sala has observed that 'nine-tenths of the English visitors to the Kursaal, play;' and he does not hesitate to say that the moths who flutter round the garish lamps at the Kursaal Van der Hohe, and its kindred Hades, almost invariably singe their wings; and that the chaseer at _Roulette_ and _Rouge_, generally turn out edged tools, with which those incautious enough to play with them are apt to cut their fingers, sometimes very dangerously.

The season of 1869 in Hombourg is thus depicted in a high cla.s.s newspaper.

'Never within the memory of the oldest inhabitant (who in this instance must undoubtedly be that veteran player Countess Kisselef) has the town witnessed such an influx of tourists of every cla.s.s and description.

Hotels and lodging-houses are filled to overflowing. Every day imprudent travellers who have neglected the precaution of securing rooms before their arrival return disconsolately to Frankfort to await the vacation of some apartment which a condescending landlord has promised them after much negotiation for the week after next. The morning promenade is a wonderful sight; such a host of bilious faces, such an endless variety of eccentric costumes, such a Babel of tongues, among which the shrill tw.a.n.g of our fair American cousins is peculiarly prominent, could be found in no other place in the civilized world. A moralist would a.s.suredly find here abundant food for reflection on the wonderful powers of self-deception possessed by mankind. We all get up at most inconvenient hours, swallow a certain quant.i.ty of a most nauseous fluid, and then, having sacrificed so much to appearances, soothe our consciences with the unfounded belief that a love of early rising and salt water was our real reason for coming here, and that the gambling tables had nothing whatever to do with it. Perhaps, in some few instances, this view may be the correct one; some few invalids, say one in a hundred, may have sought Hombourg solely in the interest of an impaired digestion, but I fear that such cases are few and far between; and, as a friend afflicted with a mania for misquotation remarked to me the other day, even "those who come to drink remain to play."

'Certainly the demon of Rouge et Noir has never held more undisputed sway in Hombourg than in the present season; never have the tables groaned under such a load of notes and rouleaux. It would seem as if the gamblers, having only two or more years left in which to complete their ruin, were hurrying on with redoubled speed to that desirable consummation, and where a stake of 12,000 francs is allowed on a single coup the pace can be made very rapid indeed. High play is so common that unless you are lucky enough to win or rich enough to lose a hundred thousand francs at least, you need not hope to excite either envy or commiseration. One persevering Muscovite, who has been punting steadily for six weeks, has actually succeeded in getting rid of a million of florins. As yet there have been no suicides to record, owing probably to the precautionary measures adopted by a paternal Administration. As soon as a gambler is known to be utterly cleared out he at once receives a visit from one of M. Blanc's officials, who offers him a small sum on condition he will leave the town forthwith; which viatic.u.m, however, for fear of accidents, is only handed to him when fairly seated in the train that bears him away, to blow out his brains, should he feel so inclined, elsewhere. One of the most unpleasant facts connected with the gambling is the ardour displayed by many ladies in this very unfeminine pursuit: last night out of twenty-five persons seated at the Roulette table I counted no fewer than fifteen ladies, including an American lady with her two daughters!

'The King of Prussia has arrived, and, with due deference to the official editors who have described in glowing paragraphs the popular demonstrations in his honour, I am bound to a.s.sert that he was received with very modified tokens of delight. There was not even a repet.i.tion of the triumphal arch of last year; those funereal black and white flags, whose sole aspect is enough to repress any exuberance of rejoicing, were certainly flapping against the hotel windows and the official flagstaffs, but little else testified to the joy of the Hombourgers at beholding their Sovereign. They manage these things better in France.

Any French _prefet_ would give the German authorities a few useful hints concerning the cheap and speedy manufacture of loyal enthusiasm. The foreigners, however, seem determined to atone amply for any lack of proper feeling on the part of the townspeople. They crowd round his Majesty as soon as he appears in the rooms or gardens, and mob the poor old gentleman with a vigour which taxes all the energies of his aides-de-camp to save their Royal master from death by suffocation. Need I add that our old friend the irrepressible "'Arry" is ever foremost in these gentlemanlike demonstrations?

'Of course the town swarms with well-known English faces; indeed, the Peers and M.P.s here at present would form a very respectable party in the two Houses. We are especially well off for dukes; the _Fremdenliste_ notifies the presence of no fewer than five of those exalted personages.

A far less respectable cla.s.s of London society is also, I am sorry to say, strongly represented: I allude to those gentlemen of the light-fingered persuasion whom the outer world rudely designate as pickpockets. This morning two gorgeously arrayed members of the fraternity were marched down to the station by the police, each being decorated with a pair of bright steel handcuffs; seventeen of them were arrested last week in Frankfort at one fell swoop, and at the tables the row of lookers-on who always surround the players consists in about equal proportions of these gentry and their natural enemies--the detectives. Their booty since the beginning of the season must be reckoned by thousands. Mustapha Fazyl Pasha had his pocket picked of a purse containing L600, and a Russian lady was lately robbed of a splendid diamond brooch valued at 75,000 francs.(79)

(79) Pall Mall Gazette, Aug. 1869.

But the days of the Kursaal are numbered, and the glories or infamies of Hombourg are doomed.

'The fiat has gone forth. In five years(80) from this time the "game will be made" no longer--the great gambling establishment of Hombourg will be a thing of the past. The town will be obliged to contend on equal terms with other watering-places for its share of the wool on the backs of summer excursionists.

(80) In 1872.

'As most of the townspeople are shareholders in this thriving concern, and as all of them gain either directly or indirectly by the play, it was amusing to watch the anxiety of these worthies during the war between Austria and Prussia. Patriotism they had none; they cared neither for Austrian nor Prussian, for a great Germany nor for a small Germany. The "company" was their G.o.d and their country. All that concerned them was to know whether the play was likely to be suppressed.

When they were annexed to Prussia, at first they could not believe that Count Bismarck, whatever he might do with kings, would venture to interfere with the "bank." It was to them a divine inst.i.tution--something far superior to dynasties and kingdoms....

'For a year the Hombourgers were allowed to suppose that their "peculiar inst.i.tution" was indeed superior to fate, to public opinion, and to Prussia; but at the commencement of the present year they were rudely awakened from their dreams of security. The sword that had been hanging over them fell. The directors of the company were ordered to appear before the governor of the town, and they were told that they and all belonging to them were to cease to exist in 1872, and that the following arrangement was to be made respecting the plunder gained until that date. The shareholders were to receive 10 per cent. on their money; 5000 shares were to be paid off at par each year, and if this did not absorb all the profits, the surplus was to go towards a fund for keeping up the gardens after the play had ceased. By this means, as there are now 36,000 shares, 25,000 will be paid off at par, and the remaining 11,000 will be represented by the buildings and the land belonging to the company, which it will be at liberty to sell to the highest bidder.

Since this decree has been promulgated the Hombourgers are in despair.

The croupiers and the clerks, the Jews who lend money at high interest, the Christians who let lodgings, all the rogues and swindlers who one way or another make a living out of the play, fill the air with their complaints.

'Although no doubt individuals will suffer by the suppression of public play here, it is by no means certain that the town itself will not be a gainer by it. Holiday seekers must go somewhere. The air of Hombourg is excellent; the waters are invigorating; the town is well situated and easy of access by rail; living is comparatively cheap--a room may be had for about 18_s_. a week, an excellent dinner for 2_s_.; breakfast costs less than a shilling. Hombourg is now a fixed fact, and if the townspeople take heart and grapple with the new state of things--if they buy up the Kursaal, and throw open its salons to visitors; if they keep up the opera, the cricket club, and the shooting; if they have good music, and b.a.l.l.s and concerts for those who like them, there is no reason why they should not attract as many visitors to their town as they do now.'(81)

(81) Correspondent of _Daily News._

AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

The gaming at Aix-la-Chapelle is equally desperate and destructive.