MONTE CARLO.
‘The Beauty Spot of the Riviera’ is the flattering title which a
resident English physician has given to his book upon Monte Carlo. It is
getting difficult nowadays to give a new name to a place which has been
raved about, reviled, flattered, slandered, discussed, and described _ad
nauseam_. That it is a paradise is a fact as widely advertised as that
somebody’s soap is matchless for the complexion, and that somebody
else’s mustard is the best. It is a paradise--a fool’s paradise. All
that Nature could do to make Monte Carlo beautiful she has done. She has
painted the lily and adorned the rose in her endeavour to make the
famous mount queen of the Riviera. Monte Carlo is a beautiful poem set
to music; but the poem is the one in which the singer tells us that ‘all
save the spirit of man is divine.’ When I arrived in Monte Carlo, my
first impression was that I had made a mistake, and taken a ticket for
Kempton Park; but the scenery was slightly against such a theory. I
looked at the sea, and then I thought that in a fit of absence of mind I
might have got mixed on the railway and in my dates, and that I had been
landed at Brighton during the Sussex fortnight. The sun was hot, the sea
was blue, and the bookmakers and the backers that one is accustomed to
meet at a race meeting were airing themselves in light costumes and
yellow boots along the principal promenades. But palm-trees, and marble
staircases, and cacti and eucalypti, and prickly pear-trees, and sunny
mountain slopes dotted with white villas are not the characteristic
features of London-super-Mare. I gradually awoke to the fact that I was
on the Mediterranean, and at Monte Carlo in January; but you can
understand my being a little bit mixed at first when I tell you that the
only people I met during the first half-hour of my sojourn in the
principality were either English bookmakers, English backers, or English
racehorse owners.
Let me briefly trace the interesting history of a place which is now
world-famous, and is becoming every year more and more a place of
English resort. In the old days, when the railway came no further than
Nice, someone had permission from the Prince of Monaco to keep a
roulette-table in the old town. There were so few customers that the
game did not pay, and it was on the point of being given up when Blanc,
knowing that the doom of the German gaming-tables was imminent, began to
look about for a spot in which he could carry on his business when his
German premises were closed. He came to Monaco, and saw the situation.
He made an offer for the concession, took it over, and when the German
tables were closed he transported his business to the shores of the
Mediterranean.
All the world knows how the affair prospered, how Blanc died, how his
daughter married Prince Roland Bonaparte, and how the affair was turned
into a company. But what all the world does not know is that since
Blanc’s death the management has steadily degenerated, until it has
become absolutely objectionable.
A special Providence seems to watch over this delightful, romantic,
wicked, enchanting little spot. Monte Carlo escaped damage from the
earthquake which shattered the neighbouring places, and she is always
spared the snow and ice which occasionally remind one of winter in Nice.
She seems, indeed, to bear a charmed life, for nothing affects her
prosperity, and nothing damages her beauty. I fell an instant victim to
her wiles. I had not been in the place half an hour before I wanted to
come and live there for ever. Every turn reveals some new beauty, every
hour brings some fresh pleasure, and you begin to wonder how it is
possible that there can be so many melancholy looking people in such a
heavenly spot, unless you remember that the little ball rolls from
morning till night, and that the majority of people who come to Monte
Carlo come to gamble, and, as a natural consequence, to lose their
money.
From noon until eleven o’clock at night, despising the glorious scenery,
the tropical vegetation, the balmy air, and the glorious sunshine, the
great bulk of the people who come to Monte Carlo crowd round the
roulette and trente-et-quarante tables in a series of close, stuffy, and
gloomy rooms. The air and the sunshine are rigidly excluded. A dim,
religious, artificial light falls upon the tables and the faces of the
players. All is forgotten in the greed for gold. Faces are flushed,
hands tremble, bosoms heave, and the gold passes slowly and surely into
the coffers of the bank. Those who have lost fall out and go their way,
with heavy hearts, out into the mocking sunshine and the beauteous Eden
in which the ‘establishment’ has concealed its serpent. The winners stay
on, and plunge and plunge again, only to come to the inevitable end; it
is only a question of time. The unlucky lose at once, the lucky win at
first, only to make their ultimate loss the more bitter.
I have the whole place to myself--always excepting the gambling rooms
and the post-office. You can mostly find plenty of people losing all
their money at the former, and wiring home for more at the latter. I
came with the firm intention of climbing the mountain, basking in the
sunshine, taking long walks by the blue Mediterranean, and generally
enjoying the beauties of the poisoned paradise without paying toll to
the Strangers’ Club and Sea Baths Company (Limited). For a whole day I
resisted the temptation to play. I drank in the warm air, I feasted my
eyes on orange groves and avenues of palms, and gardens gay with the
flowers that come to us only in summer. I climbed the mountain, and
looked out over the hills dotted with white villas, and I looked down
upon the sea that lay like a lake of still blue paint far below. I
picked oranges and lemons from the boughs that hung down over the white
mountain roadways, and in the lightness of my heart I whistled ‘The Man
who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,’ and shook my fist defiantly at the
palatial building which has drawn all men unto the rocky home of the
Grimaldis--with the accent on the rocky. I gambolled on the green turf
like a lamb, instead of gambling on the green cloth like a donkey--and
twenty-four hours afterwards a man with a stern set face and flashing
eyes stood opposite that palatial establishment and cursed it in five
different languages, specially studied up for that occasion. In spite of
all his resolutions, he had gone in ‘just to look on,’ and he had put
down five francs ‘just for the fun of the thing,’ and it had ended--ah,
you can guess how it had ended--that man had won 5,000 francs, and that
man was the man who didn’t mean to play.
Then, like all winners, I went back again and again to the rolling ball
that gathers all our moss. I didn’t mind losing--in fact, I only lost
the money I had won--but I hated myself for passing sunny mornings and
moonlight nights in a heated atmosphere, amid exciting and unhealthy
surroundings. It was so lovely out of doors, but Nature, decked in her
fairest garb, wooed me in vain. It is so with almost everyone who comes
to Monte Carlo. There is no one anywhere else, but the rooms are
crowded. The grounds are deserted; there is never a soul upon the beach.
Nobody ever goes out in a boat. Even the ocean at Monte Carlo is for
ornament, and not for use. And it is an ocean which, anywhere on the
English coast, would be a fortune to the proprietors of rowing boats and
sailing vessels and bathing-machines.
Still, in spite of my annoyance at my own weakness in yielding to the
evil influence of the place, I have managed to amuse myself and take a
few notes, other than those handed to me by a croupier on the end of a
rake.
One day there was an amusing incident in the rooms. An Englishman
arrived early, and, sitting down, crossed his legs, and stuck one foot
out in an attitude of ease. Suddenly there was a wild rush of everybody
to the tables, and Italian barons, Spanish countesses, and Russian
princesses fought with each other to get their gold and silver pieces on
to 17. The croupiers stared, the inspectors looked nervous, and when 17
came up the entire staff seemed petrified. What had happened? Had the
wheel been got at? Had some clever trick been played? Why had everybody
rushed to back 17? The croupiers looked about and saw every eye directed
at the Englishman, who, finding himself the object of so much attention,
blushed violently, and burst into a profuse perspiration.
Then a roar of laughter went round the room, and the croupiers and the
inspectors, and even the solemn attendants in livery, joined in it. The
mystery was explained. On the sole of the Englishman’s boot was the
number 17 in chalk. He had just come from his hotel, and that was the
number of his room, and the number chalked on the soles of his shoes
that the boots might recognise them and place them outside the right
door. We have heard of a man putting his own shirt on a horse, but it
isn’t every day that an entire company of gamblers put somebody else’s
boots on a number at roulette.
There have been the usual number of suicide stories flying about Monte
Carlo. Last night two young Germans were discovered in the gardens about
midnight; one had a pistol in his mouth, and the other had a clasp-knife
open, with the point pressed against his heart. When they were seized
they declared they were about to commit suicide because they had lost
everything at the tables.
But a German gentleman came forward who had heard the lads say to each
other a quarter of an hour before they were arrested, ‘Let us do it.
Someone will be sure to come along and see us, and we shall get a bit to
go away.’ This kind of trick is of the common or Monte Carlo garden
order, and has long since ceased to impose on the Casino officials.
In the good old days of M. Blanc, it was the custom (so the story goes),
directly a suicide was found, to stuff his pockets full of bank notes.
This was done to prove that his losses at play were not the cause of his
hurried departure from the shores of time. The last person who received
this generous treatment was, I believe, an American. He was found lying
in one of the quiet alleys of the beautiful grounds, with an empty
bottle, labelled ‘Poison,’ by his side. The secret agents of the bold
Blanc instantly stuffed his pockets full of gold and notes, preparatory
to giving information to the police. No sooner had they filled him as
full of lucre as he could hold, than the suicide leapt to his feet,
raised his hat, exclaimed, ‘Thank you very much!’ and went off to enjoy
himself with his newly-acquired wealth.
A morning in the little post-office that stands above the sea on the
terrace at Monte Carlo, and looks like the Paris Morgue’s understudy,
may be passed with profit by the student of men and manners. One day,
when the mistral (probably having found out that I had come to Monte
Carlo for the benefit of my health) was blowing its worst, I went into
the post-office and sat down in a chair and wrote telegrams to the
sovereigns of Europe, couched in brotherly language. I am in the habit
of doing this sort of thing occasionally when I feel sad. I never send
the telegrams, but leave them lying on the desk, saying to myself aloud
in the language of the country, ‘Ah, no; after all, I will write.’ It is
wonderful the respect with which you are treated in a Continental health
resort when it gets about that you have telegraphed to the Czar of
Russia, ‘Sorry can’t dine with you Wednesday, old fellow; gout keeps me
here;’ or to a Prince of the House of Hohenzollern, ‘Come and take
potluck with me Sunday week, if you are passing.’
Once in the old days before the war, when one could put one’s gulden on
the board of green cloth at Ems, at Wiesbaden, at Baden-Baden, and at
Homburg, I was caught in a storm in the woods above Ems, and, spying a
stranger standing under a dripping tree, I offered him half my umbrella.
When the storm was over, he thanked me and went his way. That night at
the tables we met again; he recognised me, and stopped and spoke to me,
and asked me if I had had good luck. It is astonishing how polite they
were to me at the tables after that. Although I only played in modest
silver the croupiers would do their best to get me a seat, and treated
me with the greatest distinction. I had entertained a Czarewitch under
my umbrella unawares. The gentleman who had publicly asked me if I was
having good luck was the heir to the throne of all the Russias. I have
never since had a chance of chatting publicly with royalty, and have had
to fall back upon sending it telegraphic messages, or, rather, leaving
telegraphic messages addressed to it lying about unfinished on the desks
of Continental post-office bureaux.
But in writing about the sovereign I am wandering from the subject. I
went into the post-office one day and sat down at a table littered with
spoilt telegraph-forms. I picked up some of them and read them. They
were most of them little life-dramas in themselves. One ran: ‘Dear Aunt
and Cousins,--I have finished my life’s journey. This is the bourne from
which one traveller will never return. Farewell.’ Here was a hint at a
Monte Carlo tragedy. The next spoilt telegram I picked up was more
definite. The tragedy was complete: ‘Alphonse died at seven this
morning. Break gently to his mother.’ There was a little comic relief in
another one: ‘Send me fifty. Hôtel de Paris, return post. Am dead broke,
and living on my watch. I only brought a silver one.’ While I was
turning over these telegrams, the writers of which had evidently on
second thoughts couched their messages in other words, I heard a female
voice exclaim, with a pronounced London accent, ‘Does anybody here speak
English?’ I looked up, and beheld a young lady in a black hat and large
ostrich feathers, and a silver chain and locket. I at once proffered my
services. ‘I want to know if I can send £500 through the post to
London.’ I explained that one can send a million if one wishes in a
registered letter. ‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ said the young lady.
‘I’ve won it, and got it changed into English notes, and I want to send
it to my mother. I’m not going to let ’em have it back again at the
table--not me.’ The young lady then went to the counter, and, with my
assistance, registered a letter containing £500 to Mrs. Hopkins,
somewhere in the Caledonian Road, and, honouring me with a smile of
thanks, went out gaily on a pair of those trodden-down high heels which
are peculiar to the feminine toilette of Great Britain.
Her place at the _guichet_ was immediately taken by an English clergyman
in a brown straw hat and alpaca umbrella. He didn’t speak a word of
French, and he wanted a post-office order for four-and-threepence,
payable in the Walworth Road. He asked about three hundred questions of
the clerk, who did his best to understand him, and finally tendered for
the order two French francs, two Italian lire, and wanted to make up the
rest in English penny postage-stamps. When the clerk objected, the
clergyman argued, and was especially indignant at the rejection of the
Italian coins, maintaining that he had received them in the Principality
of Monaco. Finally, after taking up nearly an hour of the clerk’s time,
and keeping twelve people waiting, he departed without the order, and
with the loudly-expressed intention of writing to the _Times_ on the
subject.
There were applicants of every nationality applying for letters at the
Poste Restante. Many a one that morning did I see turn away with a
white, dazed face when the clerk shook his head and said, ‘Il n’y a
rien, monsieur.’ The anxiously expected remittance had not come, and
Monte Carlo is a bad place to be in when you have exhausted your funds
and forgotten to make your retreat safe by taking a return ticket. Many
of those who received registered letters opened them eagerly, and with
feverish hands drew forth the bank-notes, thrust them into their
pockets, and went off almost at a run along the broad pathway that leads
to the gates of--well, ‘the rooms.’ A crowd of anxious faces does he
gaze on day after day, this clerk who sits behind the _guichet_ of the
Poste Restante at Monte Carlo; and some sad, wild messages must the
other clerk read who takes in the telegrams of the gamblers far from
home. It isn’t every day that a Miss Hopkins steps jauntily in to send a
‘monkey’ to her mother in the Caledonian Road.
One beautiful sunny afternoon I went over to Mentone. Sitting on the
parade in the sunshine, it was difficult to imagine that it was the end
of January. It was a day that an Englishman would have been proud of in
August. I asked the landlord of the hotel where I lunched if the growing
popularity of Monte Carlo had not injured Mentone. ‘Oh no, not at all,’
he replied. ‘On the contrary, we have a great number of English people
who come here because it is so close to Monte Carlo. They live here, and
go to the rooms every day. No one suspects you of gambling when you are
having your letters addressed to Mentone.’ There is no doubt that Monte
Carlo is not an address which everybody would care to give who leaves
London for the benefit of his or her health.
I missed the train back from Mentone to Monte Carlo, and, not caring to
hang about for two hours after the sun had gone down, I took a victoria
from the public stand and drove back over the mountains. It was a nice
drive in the twilight, but weird and lonely withal. Once in a gloomy
gorge, when we came suddenly on an encampment of fierce-looking gipsies,
I felt a little uncomfortable, and had visions of being carried off by
brigands to a cave; but when we began, after a steep ascent, to go down
a precipice at full gallop, I thought of nothing but my neck. The
driver cracked his whip, and the horse flew like the wind. We swayed
from side to side, and every moment I thought I should go over, and be
found mixed up with trunks of trees and bits of rock on the beach below;
but the horse was a surefooted little beast, and when I remonstrated
with the driver he only laughed, and said he had driven that road for
ten years and had never gone over the side of a precipice yet.
The last part of the journey was done by moonlight. I have no doubt it
was very beautiful and romantic, but I don’t care about it. There is a
bit of roadway near Roquebrune which would try the nerves of a Blondin,
and I never walk along it in broad daylight without turning giddy. When
we got to that I insisted upon getting out and walking, and I was glad
that I did. To avoid a piece of rock which had fallen, my charioteer
took the extreme outside edge, and, walking behind, I saw one hind-wheel
go actually off the ground and hang in the air. Had the horse stumbled
or stopped, I should have had no fare to pay that night. Luckily he made
a bound forward as he felt the carriage tilt, and the situation was
saved. That steep bank was _not_ the bank that broke the man at Monte
Carlo.
I made up my mind that I would never take another moonlight drive over
the mountains as long as I lived. For three nights afterwards I dreamt
that I was rolling down a precipice, and woke up in such a state of
abject terror that I had to get up and draw the curtains, and look out
at Monte Carlo bathed in moonlight, lying silent and peaceful as a City
of Dreams.
One morning, unable to go to sleep again, I sat at the window and saw
the sun rise. I never wished so much for the power of word-painting as
then. I would give a good deal to be able to describe that scene. As I
looked out upon it, it seemed to me a sin that such a glorious spot
should be the hell of Europe--the hotbed of all that is evil in human
nature. The flaunting Casino, with its gaudy roof of blue and red and
yellow, seemed like a painted harlot leering with a bold and brazen face
as the fair earth woke and smiled at the kiss of her bridegroom the sun.
But when I looked at it in this way, the last louis I had to lose had
been gathered in by the remorseless rake of the croupier. Probably ‘the
Successful Gambler’ would have seen that sunrise in a different light.
Everything is done to _force_ the visitor into the bad atmosphere of the
hot, unventilated gambling-rooms. No outside attractions are provided or
allowed. Everything that may give pleasure to the visitor who does not
wish to gamble is taboo. Even the railway is in the official clutches,
and the means of escape from the place are made as difficult as
possible. The Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Railway is, in the hands
of the Casino people, made to injure the surrounding towns. You can get
from Nice to Monte Carlo, for example, easily enough, but you find it
very difficult to get back again. The hotel-keepers of Nice complain
bitterly of what are called ‘Les trains Blanc,’ which are so arranged
that the Nice visitor who goes to Monte Carlo cannot get back to Nice
for dinner. There is an afternoon train, but it is ‘_facultatif_,’ which
means that it only runs when the administration chooses.
I met a young fellow the other day at the tables who at one time was
betting in thousands, and losing his £5,000 a night at baccarat, and was
the most notorious plunger in England. He told me he had been cleared
out at trente-et-quarante. ‘That’s what I’ve got to get through the week
with now,’ he exclaimed playfully, as he showed me two francs and a
bunch of keys. The next day he borrowed a louis and turned it into £50.
The day after that he was ‘broke’ again, and the story goes that he went
to bed without any dinner. I saw him yet again, and he had borrowed
another five francs, and played it up into a thousand francs in the
morning, only to be cleared out again before night.
It was this same young fellow who came to me and told me confidentially
that he believed everybody was stony-broke. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, my
boy,’ he said, ‘I’ve asked about forty fellows to change me a cheque for
£50, and there isn’t one of them that has enough to do it.’ I smiled.
Poor lad! If he had had more experience of the world he would have
understood why all his former friends and associates, and even the
wealthy men who had shared the bulk of his once vast fortune among them,
had become so suddenly short of cash. Cheques are not changed with
impunity at ‘Charley’s Mount.’
There has been a real suicide at Monte Carlo. There is nothing more
difficult than to arrive at the facts connected with Monte Carlo
scandals. Everything that is unpleasant, or that is likely to increase
the prejudice against the pastime of the Principality, is hushed up with
the skill which comes of long practice in the art of concealment.
The place at which the suicide was committed was a small house situated
in the Condamine at Monaco. In front of it an Italian labourer was at
work in the street. With this man I engaged in conversation, and asked
him if he had heard of a young couple committing suicide. The reply was,
‘I know nothing.’ Then I told him what I knew, and rattled some loose
silver in my pockets. ‘Ah, as the Signor knows so much it cannot matter
what I tell him,’ said the man, and then he pointed out to me the window
of the room in which the young couple had come to their end. ‘Ah, I saw
them often,’ he said, ‘this last few days, while I was at work on the
road here. They used to come out arm-in-arm. They were very loving, and
I said to myself, “It is a newly-married couple.”’
Having fixed the position of the room well in my eye, I entered the
hotel, and found it practically empty. The proprietress came out to
receive me. I explained that I was looking for rooms for some friends of
mine. Could I see which apartments were vacant? ‘Yes, certainly.’ I was
taken into most of the rooms, but none suited until I found myself in
the apartment of the romantic suicide. I said nothing to the lady, nor
she to me. The room was a small but comfortable one. Two wooden beds
stood side by side. These were the beds on which two days previously the
lovers had stretched themselves to die. The sun shone in at the open
window; the blue Mediterranean glinted below, and as far as the eye
could see all was peace and beauty and the joyousness of life. It was
from these windows that the young couple had taken their last look upon
earth. They had looked out upon the sunny land and the deep blue sea
with a fixed purpose of self-destruction in their hearts--with the
letter already written which was to tell their friends the story of
their last days. It was to this pleasant little room in which I stood
that they returned on their last night together, with their last hope
gone, with the knowledge in their hearts that when the sun rose again
over the palm groves and orange-trees and the white cliffs and smiling
seas they would have passed from this world to eternity. What a last
walk in the moonlight that must have been!--the man of twenty-nine, the
woman of nineteen--lovers, fugitives from their homes--she a married
woman, he a married man, and---- But let me tell it you, beginning,
middle, and end--this perfect French tragedy, this curious study of
morals and manners and Monte Carlo, this romance of the passions, this
little life-drama taken ‘palpitating’ from the pages of the modern
Boulevard novelist.
A young married man of Lyons fell in love with a young married woman.
They met secretly, adored each other, and agreed to fly together--to put
the seas between themselves and their families. But there was a slight
difficulty in the way. They had very little money for a long journey,
and they wanted to be far, far away--in America for choice. Then the
idea came to the man that they would take their small capital of a few
hundred francs and go to Monte Carlo, and make it into a fortune--a
fortune which would enable them to live in peace and plenty on a far-off
shore. So it came that one day, with a small box and a portmanteau, the
fugitives arrived at Monte Carlo, and put up in this little hotel, where
for eight francs a day you can have bed and board.
They had only a few hundred francs with them. In the letter which they
have left behind they explained that from the first their arrangements
were complete. They foresaw the possibilities of the situation. They
would play until they had won enough to go to America, or they would
lose all. And if they lost all they would die together, and give their
friends no further trouble about them.
They were a few days only in Monte Carlo. They risked their louis only a
few at a time, and they spent the remainder of the days and evenings in
strolling about the romantic glades and quiet pathways of the beautiful
gardens, whispering together of love, and looking into each other’s
eyes.
The end came quickly. One evening they went up in the soft moonlight to
the fairy land of Monte Carlo. They entered the Casino. They had come
to their last few golden coins. One by one the croupier’s remorseless
rake swept them away, and then the lovers went out of the hot, crowded
rooms, out from the glare of the chandeliers and the swinging lamps,
into the tender moonlight again. Down ‘The Staircase of Fortune’
arm-in-arm they went, along the glorious marble terraces that look upon
the sea, on to where at the foot of the great rock on which Monaco
stands there lies the Condamine. It was their last walk together. The
lovers were going home to die.
That night, in some way which I was unable to ascertain, the guilty and
ruined man and woman obtained some charcoal and got it into their
bedroom. They then closed the windows and doors, and prepared for death.
They wrote a letter--a letter which an official assured me was so
touching that, as he read it in the room where they lay dead, the tears
ran down his cheeks. Then the girl--she was but a girl--dressed herself
in snowy white, and placed in her breast a sweet bouquet of violets.
Then the charcoal was lighted, and the lovers laid themselves out for
death, side by side, and passed dreamily into sleep, from sleep to
death--and from death to judgment.
These are the facts of ‘The Romantic Suicide at Monte Carlo.’ It is not
a moral story; it is not a new story. I have told it simply as it
happened.
One morning I went over to breakfast with a friend of mine at
Roquebrune, a picturesque point near Monte Carlo. The proprietor showed
me over his villa and his grounds. While we were in the back garden a
Frenchman, who rented a villa in the neighbourhood, came in, in a
towering rage, to complain of my friend’s cat trespassing on his
grounds. After a heated discussion, the Frenchman exclaimed angrily,
‘Very well, sir, I shall lodge my complaint with the mayor. Where is the
mayor?’ My friend’s gardener, who was busy digging up new potatoes,
suddenly looked up, and, raising his battered hat, exclaimed with
dignity, ‘M’sieu, je suis le Maire de Roquebrune.’ Tableau and curtain.