at Aix-la-Chapelle by the success of a plainly-dressed stranger, who,
after playing in modest stakes for some time, suddenly challenged the
bank for the whole of its capital, carelessly tossing his pocket-book
to the banker, that the latter might not question his ability to pay in
case he lost. The banker, surprised at the boldness of the adventurer,
and no less so at his ordinary appearance, at first hesitated to
accept the challenge; but on opening the book and seeing bills to a
prodigious amount, and on the stranger sternly and repeatedly insisting
on his complying with the laws of the game, with much reluctance he
shuffled the cards in preparation for the great event. Excitement ran
high, and all eyes were soon attentively riveted upon the trembling
hands of the affrighted banker, who, while the gambler sat unruffled
and unconcerned, turned up the card which decided his own ruin and the
other's success.
The bank was broken, and the triumphant stranger, with perfect coolness
and serenity of features, turned to a person who stood at his elbow, to
whom he gave orders to take charge of the money. "Heavens," exclaimed
an infirm old officer in the Austrian service, who had sat next the
winner at the table, "if I had the twentieth part of your success this
night I should be the happiest man in the universe." "If thou wouldst
be this happy man," replied the stranger briskly, "then thou shalt have
it"; and, without waiting for a reply, disappeared from the room. Some
little time afterwards the entrance of a servant astonished the company
with the extraordinary generosity of the stranger as with his peculiar
good fortune, by presenting the Austrian officer with the twentieth
part of the faro bank. "Take this, sir," said the servant, "my master
requires no answer"; and he suddenly left him without exchanging
another word.
The next morning all Aix-la-Chapelle was agog with the news that the
lucky and generous stranger was no less a personage than the King of
Prussia.
In more recent times Aix-la-Chapelle appeared only destined to end its
gambling days as a trap for incautious travellers, many of whom, in
consequence, never saw the Rhine, and returned to England with very
misty ideas about Germany.
About 1840 several other German pleasure-resorts began to include
gambling amongst the attractions offered to visitors. After the closing
of the Parisian gaming-houses the proprietors, who found the business
much too profitable to be tamely resigned, turned their gaze beyond
the Rhine, where a fair field for their exertions in the pursuit of
a livelihood presented itself. After many weary negotiations with
the several governments, a syndicate of bankers, with M. Chabert at
their head, simultaneously opened their establishments at Baden-Baden,
Wiesbaden, and Ems. It was a very hard contest between the Regents
and the Frenchmen before the terms were finally settled, and the
latter expended much money and many promises in getting a footing. But
they eventually succeeded, and a few years saw their efforts richly
rewarded. As they had a monopoly, they could do pretty much as they
pleased, and made very stringent and profitable regulations relative
to the _refait_ and other methods of gaining a pull. On the retirement
of M. Chabert with an immense fortune, the company was dissolved,
and M. Benazet became ostensibly sole proprietor of the rooms at
Baden-Baden. The terms to which he had to subscribe were sufficient
to frighten any one less enterprising than the general of an army of
croupiers; he was compelled to expend 150,000 florins in decorating
the rooms and embellishing the walks round the town; and an annual sum
of 50,000 florins was furthermore demanded for permission to keep the
establishment open for six months in the year.
At Baden-Baden a well-known figure for many years was the old
ex-Elector of Hesse, who made his money by selling his soldiers to
England at so much a head, like cattle, during the American War. The
Prince in question was easily to be recognised by the gold-headed and
coroneted rake he always had in his hand. A constant player, he was a
most profitable customer to the bank. Eventually, however, the superior
attractions of Homburg led him away. The Revolution of 1848 frightened
or angered him to death.
At Baden the bank at roulette had two zeroes, an enormous advantage,
which rendered the certainty of success in the long run, which the bank
must of course possess, almost ridiculously easy. Nauheim, on the other
hand, was modestly content to claim only a quarter of the _refait_ at
trente-et-quarante, a good deal less than that taken by the present
Monte Carlo tables. The keen competition of its rivals, Wiesbaden and
Homburg, was the cause of this generosity.
In the late 'sixties a gaming hero, M. Edgar de la Charme, created
a great sensation at Baden, where, for a number of days together, he
never left the gaming-room without carrying off a profit which usually
did not fall far short of a thousand pounds in English money.
At the end of several days of almost unparalleled good fortune, M. de
la Charme, reflecting that there must be an end even to the greatest
run of luck, packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, and strolled down
to the railway station, accompanied by some of his friends. There,
however, he found the wicket closed, there being still three-quarter's
of an hour before the departure of the train. "Well," he exclaimed, "I
will go and play my parting game," and, taking a carriage, drove back
to the Kursaal, though his friends made every effort to prevent him.
Arrived at the Casino, he sat down at the trente-et-quarante, where
in twenty minutes he broke the bank again. He then left, but, while
getting into his cab, caught sight of the inspector of the tables
walking to and fro under the arcades, and said to him in a tone of
exquisite politeness, "I could not think of going away without leaving
you my P.P.C."
The society at Baden was said to be as mixed as that frequenting the
Paris boulevards. There was indeed a good deal of Parisian Bohemianism
about this charming spot, which, since the closing of the tables,
has been forced to rely upon its proximity to the Black Forest and
other natural attractions--poor substitutes to the gambler for the
whirl of the roulette wheel and the chanting of the croupier at
trente-et-quarante.
The rooms which re-echoed to these exciting, if none too reputable
sounds, to-day seem somehow to present a rather sad and almost wistful
appearance. Surely, "if aught inanimate e'er grieves," the Kurhaus
must sigh for the vanished days of the Second Empire, and for the gay,
careless folk who thronged its halls, now so decorous and staid.
Old gamblers used to say that the croupiers at Baden were recruited
from the same families who had held the rake in the gambling-rooms
of the Palais Royal. Certain veterans were even pointed out as being
survivors of the great days of Frascati's and the Salon.
Baden made no pretence to any particular exclusiveness. Here all men
and women were equal, people sitting down cheek by jowl with any one
at trente-et-quarante or roulette, a practice not much in favour at
aristocratic Ems, where the fashionable lounger was more given to
tossing down his stake carelessly as he or she strolled through the
rooms.
Though the croupiers at Baden-Baden were generally above suspicion, the
bank was swindled by its employés on more than one occasion. A notable
instance was that of an official who was discovered to have carried on
a system of plunder for a long time with security. He used to slip a
louis d'or into his snuff-box whenever it came to his turn to preside
over the money department; he was found out by another employé asking
him casually for a pinch of snuff, and seeing the money gleam in the
gaslight.
On the whole the croupiers at Baden were admirable, sometimes
preserving their self-control under the most trying circumstances. On
one occasion when a young Englishman, of high repute and bearing an
honourable name, vented his rage at losing by breaking a rake over the
head of the croupier, the latter merely turned round and beckoned to
the attendant gendarme to remove his assailant and the pieces of the
rake, and then went on with his parrot-like "_rouge gagne, couleur
perd_."
The croupiers in general seemed to unite the stoicism of the American
Indian with the politeness of the Frenchman of the _ancien régime_.
Impassive under all circumstances they seemed to fear neither God nor
man; for when a shock of the earthquake of 1847 was felt at Wiesbaden,
though all the company fled in terror, they remained grimly at their
posts, preferring to go down to their patron saints with their
rouleaux, as an evidence of their fidelity to their employer. It is not
unlikely that they regarded the earthquake as a preconcerted scheme to
rob the bank!
The public buildings of Wiesbaden were charming, especially the
Kursaal, with its open "Platz," its colonnades and magnificent
ball-room, its "salons de jeu," reading-rooms, restaurant, and charming
gardens behind. Here were lakes, fountains, running streams, which
made it as pretty a place as any of its kind on the banks of the Rhine.
Towards the last days of the gambling at Wiesbaden the majority of the
players belonged to the middle and lower middle classes, leavened by a
very few celebrities and persons of genuine distinction. The general
run of visitors, indeed, was by no means remarkable for birth, wealth,
or respectability, and it used at that time to be said that all the
aged, broken-down courtesans of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin had agreed to
make Wiesbaden their autumn rendezvous.
One of the well-known eccentric notabilities of Wiesbaden at that time
was a certain Countess--an aged patrician of immense fortune, whose
very existence seemed bound up with that of the tables. She used daily
to be wheeled to her place in the "temple of chance," where she usually
played for eight or nine hours with wonderful spirit and perseverance.
A suite of eight domestics were in attendance upon her, and when she
won, which was not often, she invariably presented each member of her
retinue with--twopence! This was done, she would naively declare, "not
from a feeling of generosity, but in order to propitiate Fortune." On
the other hand, when she lost, none of them, save the man who wheeled
her home and who received a donation of six kreuzers, got anything at
all but hard words. Unlike her contemporary, a once lovely Russian
Ambassadress, she did not curse the croupiers loudly for her bad luck,
but, being very far advanced in years and of a tender disposition,
would shed tears over her misfortunes, resting her chin on the edge of
the table. This old lady was very intimate with one or two antediluvian
diplomatists and warriors, whom she used to entertain with constant
lamentations over her fatal passion for play, interspersed with bits
of moss-grown scandal, disinterred from the social ruins of a bygone
age. Radetzky, Paul Eszterhazy, Wrangel, and Blücher had been friends
of her youth; and, to judge from her appearance, no one would have been
surprised to hear that she had attended the Jeu du Roi in the galleries
of Versailles, or played whist with Maria Theresa.
Wiesbaden boasted a financier from Amsterdam, who usually played on
credit--that is to say, he pocketed his winnings, but, if he lost,
borrowed money of the banker, squaring his account, which was generally
a heavy one, at the end of the week. Another well-known character was
an English baronet, who always brought a lozenge-box with him. When
this was filled with gold he would leave the rooms. He seldom had to
remain long, for he possessed his own luck, and that of some one else
into the bargain.
Wiesbaden, like the other German gaming-places, was made virtuous by
compulsion rather than choice. When Nassau was annexed by the astute
Bismarck, the law which abolished legal gambling affected this place as
it did Homburg, Ems, and other Spas. It should, however, be added that
its provisions showed a scrupulous regard for vested interests.
As the fateful 1st of January 1873--the day on which all public gaming
throughout the German Empire was to cease--approached, there was
considerable excitement, not only amongst the usual frequenters of
the tables, but also amongst the general population of the place, who
fully realised the financial benefits which had accrued to them through
roulette and trente-et-quarante, the impending prohibition of which
they deplored.
At midnight on the 31st December 1872, after a hundred years of
existence, the Kursaal clock at Wiesbaden sounded the close of play.
There was considerable disorder in the rooms on the last night, the
place being converted into a bear-garden. During the last week the
rooms got so enormously thronged that the administration found it
necessary to admit only by tickets. 1872 was a splendid financial year,
for, after paying all the enormous expenses (5000 florins a day),
including the yearly tax of 200,000 florins to the Prussian Government,
the shareholders received interest on their capital at the rate of
107 per cent per annum. A number of the eighty or ninety croupiers
were retained by M. Blanc for service at Monaco, whilst the rest it is
believed went into trade.
On the last night an immense throng gathered in the rooms, eagerly
crowding round the tables. The play, however, was unusually dull, and
on the green cloth, which had usually been liberally sprinkled with
gold, only a few spare florins were to be seen. The croupiers did
their best to dispel the depression which hung over the gamesters;
and as the final moment approached, shouted louder and louder, adding
to their usual formula, "Faites vos jeux, Messieurs," the words "le
troisième dernier!"--the third last chance; "le deuxième dernier!"--the
second last; and finally "le dernier!" which seemed to sound like a
death-knell. Their appeals had little effect, the moment being of
such solemnity as to stifle all emotion and paralyse every movement.
Here and there some small stake was noiselessly placed on the table
by some timid and unfamiliar hand, but the audacious spirit of the
real gambler was for the moment lulled to rest, and no one seemed
eager to try a last serious struggle with the goddess of chance. The
closing of the gaming-tables was a veritable convulsion of nature as
regards Wiesbaden. On the 1st of January 1873 there was universal
confusion in hotel and lodging-house, and the streets were thronged
with departing travellers and overladen porters, while the railway
stations were blocked with eager applicants for tickets. With a haste
bordering on indecency the old gambling-saloons were taken possession
of by the municipal authorities, and stripped of their furniture;
windows and doors being thrown open to the air, and the halls, formerly
devoted to chance, handed over to a host of painters, white-washers,
and scrubbers. The green tables, which had caused so many emotions,
were thrown out, and cast into heaps, preliminary to being carted
away as old furniture. The results to the town were disastrous. Many
of the hotels fell into bankruptcy and were forced to close their
windows--their doors they might have left open, for there were no
guests to enter them.
The shopkeepers, more especially the jewellers, who generally were
pawnbrokers too, and all dealers in articles of luxury, were also great
losers by the change.
The joint-stock company, which had owned the tables, dissolved,
after having divided a large amount of surplus. The shareholders had
indeed no cause for complaint, yet one of the two directors took the
dissolution so much to heart that he soon after drank himself to death.
A few days after the cessation of play hardly a gambler remained in the
place.
One exception, however, there was, who for some years was pointed out
as a rare specimen of an extinct race by the few officials of the rooms
who had been retained as door-keepers and the like in the building from
which all life had fled.
Still clad in the torn, somewhat shabby livery of more prosperous days
when "Trinkgeld" was abundant, these men would describe to visitors
how this Englishman, a man bearing an historic name, had created a
sensation at the tables, where he had been notorious for his ill-luck.
To all appearance entirely ruined, he had suddenly been left some
twenty thousand pounds, which had soon followed the rest of his fortune
into the coffers of the bank. Reduced to his last florin, fortune for a
moment had seemed to relent, and he had left the rooms with about seven
thousand pounds in his pocket. Having deposited this at his banker's,
he had then declared his intention of never playing again--in less than
a week the sum had been withdrawn and lost.
His friends, now believing him to be incorrigible, settled upon him
a small allowance, which was paid quarterly, and with unfailing
regularity found its way to the green cloth.
Seemingly stunned by the closing of the rooms, this Englishman
lingered on for some years, mournfully marching about the spot which
had engulfed his fortune, the loss of which, however, caused him less
concern than being deprived of the means wherewith to gratify the
passion that had dominated his life.
All the gambling companies had to pay large sums in return for
the privileges which they enjoyed, but still they progressed most
successfully till they were frightened from their propriety by Monsieur
Blanc. This gentleman, after struggling against immense opposition on
the part of the Frankfort merchants, who were naturally alarmed at
the danger to which their _commis_ and cash-boxes would be exposed
by the proximity of a gambling-table, obtained a concession from the
Elector of Hesse to establish a bank at Homburg-von-der-Höhe. Play was
soon in full swing, with the additional attractions of being open
all the year round, and of having only a _trente-et-un après_ (known
as the _refait_) for the players to contend against. Some time after,
Wilhelmsbad was opened as a rival to Homburg, with no _après_ at all;
and the above mentioned, with the addition of Ems, Aix-la-Chapelle, and
Cöthen, formed the principal establishments where "strangers were taken
in and done for" throughout Germany.
Wilhelmsbad scarcely attracted the outside world at all, being
frequented almost exclusively by Germans. Wildungen might have been
called a child left out in the cold; the accommodation was indifferent,
and the place itself cheerless and devoid of charm, besides which it
was not so easy to get at. Modestly conscious of its slender claims
to consideration, the authorities presiding over the tables allowed a
minimum stake of 10 groschen (1 franc 25 cents), and only enforced a
tax of a quarter of the _refait_ at trente-et-quarante and a quarter
of the zero at roulette, a state of affairs which should have been far
from unfavourable to the players.
As a matter of fact, public gaming, whatever may be said against it,
left those places where it formerly flourished in a high state of
prosperity--the Kursaals and gardens of German health-resorts, such
as Homburg and Baden-Baden, owed their inception entirely to gaming,
whilst several other insignificant places were converted into agreeable
pleasure-resorts by the influence of trente-et-quarante and roulette.
In spite of the doubtful morality of the enterprise carried on by
the proprietors of the tables they certainly metamorphosed several
miserable German townlets into cities of palaces. They planted the
gardens; they imported the orange trees; they laid out the parks;
enclosed the hunting-grounds; and, as it were, boarded, lodged, washed,
and taxed the inhabitants. Homburg, for instance, was entirely the
creation of M. Blanc.
The story of the commencement of the immense fortune accumulated by M.
Blanc is curious.
One fine day in 1842 the two brothers Blanc, who were temporarily
disgusted with France owing to a daring and unsuccessful speculation
connected with the old semaphore telegraph (which electricity rendered
obsolete), arrived at Frankfort.
Their stock-in-trade consisted of a few thousand francs, a roulette
wheel, and an ancient croupier, a veteran of Frascati's who knew
everything worth knowing about gambling and cards.
The purpose of this visit was to convince the authorities of Frankfort
that their city would derive great benefit from affording facilities
for public play, but with this, however, they were not disposed to
agree. In consequence of its cool reception, the little party then
wended its way to the obscure village of Homburg, where the elder of
the two brothers, after some negotiations, obtained permission to set
the roulette wheel going in one of the rooms of the principal inn.
[Illustration:
GUIDE
DU SPÉCULATEUR
au
TRENTE-QUARANTE
et
A LA ROULETTE
avec la manière de faire
EN SIX MOIS PLUS DE =50= CAPITAUX.
1er Capital. 1,400 Florins. (3,000 Francs.)
Par un ancien notaire.
HOMBOURG-ÈS-MONTS. 1856.
LOUIS SCHICK, IMPRIMEUR-ÉDITEUR.
As at Monte Carlo to-day, infallible "guides" to success at the tables
were to be obtained in the Homburg book-shops. The above is a facsimile
of the title-page of one of the most curious of these booklets.]
The next year an exclusive concession was granted to the Blancs to
establish games of hazard within the dominions of the Landgraf. They
agreed to build a Kursaal, lay out public gardens, and pay about
40,000 florins (something over four thousand a year) to the Landgraf.
A company was formed, and soon the fashionable world flocked to
Homburg--ostensibly to drink the waters, but, in reality, to lose their
money at trente-et-quarante and roulette.
The general policy pursued by M. Blanc at Homburg was very similar to
that afterwards adopted at Monte Carlo, which is still in its essential
features followed by the present administration.
The hours allotted to play were from eleven in the morning to eleven at
night, which was also the case at Monaco up till quite recent years.
The proceedings at Homburg before play began, that is to say, the
counting of money and other preparations for the day's campaign, were
also much the same as at Monte Carlo, though the actual opening of
the rooms for play was more dramatic. As the clock struck eleven the
strains of martial music were heard and the doors of the "salons" were
thrown wide open, admitting a stream of people, amongst whom were many
officers, a note of colour being struck by their uniforms, which were
principally white or green.
In the early days of Homburg, owing to an extraordinary rainfall, a
flood of water once made its way into the gaming-rooms and caused the
players to beat a precipitate retreat. A fat old German Princess,
however, who was devoted to play, was too heavy to get out in time,
and had to be hoisted up on to one of the roulette tables, where she
placidly remained till matters were put right and the play had resumed
its normal course.
In the Kursaal were the Café Olympique, private rooms for parties, and,
most important of all, a big saloon and two smaller ones. Here from
eleven in the forenoon to eleven at night, Sundays not excepted, all
the year round, people from every part of the world came to throw their
gold and silver upon the tables.
As a town Homburg was practically created by the Kursaal. The
hotel-keepers and tradesmen lived by it as well as the Landgraf, whose
main source of revenue was derived from it. This sovereign, of course,
was practically sold to the Kursaal, the Board of Directors being the
real rulers of Hesse-Homburg. The prosperity which the advent of M.
Blanc had brought to his dominions cheered the declining years of this
Prince, who was the oldest reigning sovereign in Europe at the time of
his death, which occurred on the 24th of March 1866. He had attained
the great age of eighty-three when he expired in the arms of two
weeping widowed women--one his niece, the Princess Reuss, the other his
aged sister, the Dowager Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. This
event caused a temporary cessation of play, which had been continuous
since the 17th of August 1843.
The insidious fascination connected with gambling was once strikingly
exemplified at Homburg. The story, though a well-known one, will bear
repetition.