The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims Volume 1 Part 17

A year or so pa.s.sed away, and one day a lady presented herself at the old house of Osborne--now no longer theirs--inquiring for young Osborne.

She was directed to his new place of business; being no other than his betrothed, who loved him as pa.s.sionately as ever, and to whom her father had accounted for the non-fulfilment of the engagement in a very unsatisfactory manner. Of course Osborne could not fail to be delighted at this proof of her devotedness; the meeting was most affectionate on both sides; and, with the view of coming to a decision respecting their future proceedings, they adjourned to an hotel in the vicinity. Here, whilst seated at a table and in earnest conversation, the young lady's father rushed in, and instantly shot down Osborne, who expired at his feet. With a frantic shriek the poor girl fell on the body of her betrothed, and finding a poniard or a knife concealed in his breast, she seized it, instantly plunged it into her heart, and was soon a corpse beside her lover.

CHAPTER X. LADY GAMESTRESSES.

The pa.s.sions of the two s.e.xes are similar in the main; the distinctions between them result less from nature than from education. Often we meet with women, especially the literary sort, who seem veritable men, if not so, as the lawyers say, 'to all intents and purposes;' and often we meet with men, especially town-dandies, who can only be compared to very ordinary women.

Almost all the ancients had the bad taste to speak ill of women; among the rest even that delightful old Father 'of the golden mouth,' St Chrysostom.(94) So that, evidently, Dr Johnson's fierce dictum cannot apply universally--'Only scoundrels speak ill of women.'

(94) Hom. II.

Seneca took the part of women, exclaiming:--'By no means believe that their souls are inferior to ours, or that they are less endowed with the virtues. As for honour, it is equally great and energetic among them.'

A foreign lady was surprised at beholding the equality established between the men and women at Sparta; whereupon the wife of Leonidas, the King of Sparta, said to her:--'Do you not know that it is we who bring forth the men? It is not the fathers, but the mothers, that effectually form the heart.'

Napoleon seems to have formed what may be called a professional estimate of women. When the demonstrative Madame de Stael asked him--evidently expecting him to pay her a compliment--'Whom do you think the greatest woman dead or alive?' Napoleon replied, 'Her, Madame, _WHO HAS BORNE MOST SONS_.' Nettled by this sarcastic reply, she returned to the charge, observing, 'It is said you are not friendly to the s.e.x.'

Napoleon was her match again; 'Madame,' he exclaimed, 'I am pa.s.sionately fond of my wife;' and off he walked. a.s.suredly it would not mend matters in this world (or the next) if all men were Napoleons and all women de Staels.

If we consider the question in other points of view, have there been, proportionally, fewer celebrated women than ill.u.s.trious men? fewer great queens than truly great kings? Compare, on all sides, the means and the circ.u.mstances; count the reigns, and decide.

The fact is that this question has been argued only by tyrannical or very silly men, who found it difficult to get rid of the absurd prejudices which retain the finest half of human nature in slavery, and condemn it to obscurity under the pretext that it is essentially corrupted. Towards the end of the 15th century a certain demented writer attempted to prove that women do not even deserve the t.i.tle of reasonable creatures, which in the original sounds oddly enough, namely, _probare nit.i.tur mulieres non homines esse_. Another, a very learned Jesuit, endeavoured to demonstrate that women have no souls! Some say that women surpa.s.s us in wickedness; others, that they are both worse and better than men.

That morbid wretch, Alexander Pope, said, 'Every woman is at heart a rake;' and a recent writer in the _Times_ puts more venom in the dictum by saying, 'Every woman is (or likes) at heart a rake.' Both these opinions may be set down as mere claptrap, witty, but vile.

But a truce to such insults against those who beautify the earth; _THEIR_ vices cannot excuse ours. It is we who have depraved them by a.s.sociating them with excesses which are repugnant to their delicacy.

The contagion, however, has not affected all of them. Among our 'plebeians,' and even among n.o.bility, many women remind us of the modesty and courage of those ancient republican matrons, who, so to speak, founded, the manners and morals of their country; and among all cla.s.ses of the community there are thousands who inspire their husbands with generous impulses in the battle of life, either by cheering words of comfort, or by that mute eloquence of duties well fulfilled, which nothing can resist if we are worthy of the name of men. How many a gambler has been reformed by the tender appeals of a good and devoted wife. 'Venerable women!' one of them exclaims, 'in whatever rank Heaven has placed you, receive my homage.' The gentleness of your souls smooths down the roughness of ours and checks its violence. Without your virtues what would we be? Without YOU, my dear wife, what would have become of me? You beheld the beginning and the end of the gaming fury in me, which I now detest; and it is not to me, but to you alone, that the victory must be ascribed.'(95)

(95) Dusaulx, _De la Pa.s.sion du Jeu_.

A very pretty anecdote is told of such a wife and a gaming husband.

In order to simplify the signs of loss and gain, so as not to be overburdened with the weight of gold and silver, the French players used to carry the representation of their fortunes in small boxes, more or less elegant. A lady (who else could have thought of such a device?), trembling for the fate of her husband, made him a present of one of these dread boxes. This little master-piece of conjugal and maternal affection represented a wife in the att.i.tude of supplication, and weeping children, seeming to say to their father--_THINK OF US!_....

It is, therefore, only with the view of avenging good and honourable women, that I now proceed to speak of those who have disgraced their s.e.x.

I have already described a remarkable gamestress--the Persian Queen Parysatis.(96)

(96) Chapter III.

There were no gamestresses among the Greeks; and the Roman women were always too much occupied with their domestic affairs to find time for play. What will our modern ladies think, when I state that the Emperor Augustus scarcely wore a garment which had not been woven by his wife, his sister, or grand-daughters.(97)

(97) Veste non temere alia quam domestica usus est, ab uxore et filia nepotibusque confecta. Suet. in Vita Augusti.

Although deeply corrupted under Nero and the sovereigns that resembled him, the Roman women never gambled among themselves except during the celebration of the festival of the Bona Dea. This ceremonial, so often profaned with licentiousness, was not attended by desperate gambling.

The most depraved women abstained from it, even when that mania was at its height, not only around the Capitol, but even in the remainder of the Empire.

Contemporary authors, who have not spared the Roman ladies, never reproached them with this vice, which, in modern times, has been desperately practised by women who in licentiousness vied with Messalina.

In France, women who wished to gamble were, at first, obliged to keep the thing secret; for if it became known they lost caste. In the reign of Louis XIV., and still more in that of Louis XV., they became bolder, and the wives of the great engaged in the deepest play in their mansions; but still a gamestress was always denounced with horror. 'Such women,' says La Bruyiere, 'make us chaste; they have nothing of the s.e.x but its garments.'

By the end of the 18th century, gamestresses became so numerous that they excited no surprise, especially among the higher cla.s.ses; and the majority of them were notorious for unfair play or downright cheating.

A stranger once betted on the game of a lady at a gaming-table, who claimed a stake although on a losing card. Out of consideration for the distinguished trickstress, the banker wished to pay the stranger as well; but the latter with a blush, exclaimed--'Possibly madame won, but as for myself, I am quite sure that I lost.'

But if women cheated at play, they also frequently lost; and were often reduced to beggary, or to what is far viler, to sacrifice, not only their own honour, but that of their daughters.

Gaming sometimes led to other crimes. The Countess of Schwiechelt, a young and beautiful lady from Hanover, was much given to gambling, and lost 50,000 livres at Paris. In order to repair this great loss, she planned and executed the robbery of a fine coronet of emeralds, the property of Madame Demidoff. She had made herself acquainted with the place where it was kept, and at a ball given by its owner the Hanoverian lady contrived to purloin it. Her youth and rank in life induced many persons to solicit her pardon; but Buonaparte left her to the punishment to which she was condemned. This occurred in 1804.

In England, too, the practice of gambling was fraught with the worst consequences to the finest feelings and best qualities of the s.e.x. The chief danger is very plainly hinted at in the comedy of _The Provoked Husband_.

_Lord Townley_.--'Tis not your ill hours that always distract me, but, as often, the ill company that occasions those hours.

_Lady Townley_.--Sure I don't understand you now, my lord. What ill company do I keep?

_Lord Townley_.--Why, at best, women that lose their money, and men that win it; _or, perhaps, men that are voluntary bubbles at one game, in hopes a lady will give them fair play at another._

'The facts,' says Mr Ma.s.sey,(98) 'confirm the theory. Walpole's Letters and Mr Jesse's volumes on George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, teem with allusions to proved or understood cases of matrimonial infidelity; and the manner in which notorious irregularities were brazened out, shows that the offenders did not always encounter the universal reprobation of society.

(98) History of England, ii.

'Whist was not much in vogue until a later period, and was far too abstruse and slow to suit the depraved taste which required unadulterated stimulants.'

The ordinary stakes at these mixed a.s.semblies would, at the present day, be considered high, even at the clubs where a rubber is still allowed.

'The consequences of such gaming were often still more lamentable than those which usually attended such practices. It would happen that a lady lost more than she could venture to confess to her husband or father.

Her creditor was probably a fine gentleman, or she became indebted to some rich admirer for the means of discharging her liabilities. In either event, the result may be guessed. In the one case, the debt of honour was liquidated on the old principle of the law-merchant, according to which there was but one alternative to payment in purse. In the other, there was likewise but one mode in which the acknowledgment of obligation by a fine woman would be acceptable to a man of the world.'

'The pernicious consequences of gambling to the nation at large,'

says another writer, 'would have been intolerable enough had they been confined to the stronger s.e.x; but, unfortunately, the women of the day were equally carried away by this criminal infatuation. The disgusting influence of this sordid vice was so disastrous to female minds, that they lost their fairest distinction and privileges, together with the blushing honours of modesty. Their high gaming was necessarily accompanied with great losses. If all their resources, regular and irregular, honest and fraudulent, were dissipated, still, _GAME-DEBTS MUST BE PAID!_ The cunning winner was no stranger to the necessities of the case. He hinted at _commutations_--which were not to be refused.

"So tender these,--if debts crowd fast upon her, She'll p.a.w.n her _VIRTUE_ to preserve her _HONOUR!_"

Thus, the last invaluable jewel of female possession was unavoidably resigned. That was indeed the forest of all evils, but an evil to which every deep gamestress was inevitably exposed.'

Hogarth strikingly ill.u.s.trated this phase of womanhood in England, in his small picture painted for the Earl of Charlemont, and ent.i.tled '_Picquet, or Virtue in Danger_.' It shows a young lady, who, during a _tete-a-tete_, had just lost all her money to a handsome officer of her own age. He is represented in the act of returning her a handful of bank-bills, with the hope of exchanging them for another acquisition and more delicate plunder. On the chimney-piece are a watch-case and a figure of Time, over it this motto--_Nunc_, 'Now!' Hogarth has caught his heroine during this moment of hesitation--this struggle with herself--and has expressed her feelings with uncommon success.