It was a strange ordinance of the age that made watering-places equally
the resort of the sick and the fashionable, the dyspeptic and the
dissipated. One cannot readily see by what magic chalybeates can
minister to a mind diseased, nor how sub-carbonates and proto-chlorides
may compensate to the faded spirit of an _ennuyée_ fine lady for the
bygone delights of a London or a Paris season; much less, through what
magnetic influence gambling and gossip can possibly alleviate affections
of the liver, or roulette be made a medical agent in the treatment of
chronic rheumatism.
It may be replied that much of the benefit--some would go farther, and
say all--to be expected from the watering-places is derivable from
change of scene and habit of living, new faces, new interests, new
objects of curiosity, aided by agreeable intercourse, and what the
medical folk call ‘pleasant and cheerful society.’ This, be it known, is
no chance collocation of words set down at random; it is a _bona fide_
technical--as much so as the hardest Greek compound that ever floored an
apothecary. ‘Pleasant and cheerful society!’ they speak of it as they
would of the latest improvement in chemistry or the last patent
medicine--a thing to be had for asking for, like opodeldoc or Morison’s
pills. A line of treatment is prescribed for you, winding up in this one
principle; and your physician, as he shakes your hand and says ‘good-
bye,’ seems like an angel of benevolence, who, instead of consigning you
to the horrors of the pharmacopoeia and a sick-bed, tells you to pack
off to the Rhine, spend your summer at Ems or Wiesbaden, and, above all
things, keep early hours, and ‘pleasant, cheerful society.’
Oh, why has no martyr to the miseries of a ‘liver’ or the sorrows of
‘nerves’ ever asked his M.D. where--where is this delightful intercourse
to be found? or by what universal principle of application can the same
tone of society please the mirthful and the melancholy, the man of
depressed, desponding habit, and the man of sanguine, hopeful
temperament? How can the indolent and lethargic soul be made to derive
pleasure from the hustling energies of more excited natures, or the
fidgety victim of instability sympathise with the delights of quiet and
tranquillity? He who enjoys ‘rude health’--the phrase must have been
invented by a fashionable physician; none other could have deemed such a
possession an offensive quality--may very well amuse himself by the
oddities and eccentricities of his fellow-men, so ludicrously exhibited
_en scene_ before him. But in what way will these things appear to the
individual with an ailing body and a distempered brain? It is impossible
that contrarieties of temperament would ever draw men into close
intimacy during illness. The very nature of a sick man’s temper is to
undervalue all sufferings save his own and those resembling his. The
victim of obesity has no sympathies with the martyr to atrophy; he may
envy, he cannot pity him. The man who cannot eat surely has little
compassion for the woes of him who has the ‘wolf,’ and must be muzzled
at meal times. The result, then, is obvious. The gloomy men get together
in groups, and croak in concert; each mind brings its share of
affliction to the common fund, and they form a joint-stock company of
misery that rapidly assists their progress to the grave; while the
nervously excited ones herd together by dozens, suggesting daily new
extravagances and caprices for the adoption of one another, till there
is not an air-drawn dagger of the mind unfamiliar to one among them; and
in this race of exaggerated sensibility they not uncommonly tumble over
the narrow boundary that separates eccentricity from something worse.
This massing together of such people in hundreds must be ruinous to
many, and few can resist the depressing influence which streets full of
pale faces suggest, or be proof against the melancholy derivable from a
whole promenade of cripples. There is something indescribably sad in
these rendezvous of ailing people from all parts of Europe--north,
south, east, and west; the snows of Norway and the suns of Italy; the
mountains of Scotland and the steppes of Russia; comparing their
symptoms and chronicling their sufferings; watching with the egotism of
sickness the pallor on their neighbour’s cheek, and calculating their
own chances of recovery by the progress of some other invalid.
But were this all, the aspect might suggest gloomy thoughts, but could
not excite indignant ones. Unhappily, however, there is a reverse to the
medal. ‘The pleasant and cheerful society,’ so confidently spoken of by
your doctor has another representation than in the faces of sick people.
These watering-places are the depots of continental vice, the licensed
bazaars of foreign iniquity, the sanctuary of the outlaw, the home of
the swindler, the last resource of the ruined debauchee, the one spot of
earth beneath the feet of the banished defaulter. They are the
parliaments of European blackguardism, to which Paris contributes her
_escrocs_, England her ‘legs’ from Newmarket and Doncaster, and Poland
her refugee counts--victims of Russian cruelty and barbarity.
To begin--and to understand the matter properly, you must begin by
forgetting all you have been so studiously storing up as fact from the
books of Head, Granville, and others, and merely regard them as the
pleasant romances of gentlemen who like to indulge their own easy
humours in a vein of agreeable gossip, or the more profitable occupation
of collecting grand-ducal stars and snuff-boxes.
These delightful pictures of Brunnens, secluded in the recesses of wild
mountain districts inaccessible save to some adventurous traveller; the
peaceful simplicity of the rural life; the primitive habits of a happy
peasantry; the humble but contented existence of a little community
estranged from all the shocks and strife of the world; the lovely
scenery; the charming intercourse with gifted and cultivated minds; the
delightful reunions, where Metternich, Chateaubriand, and Humboldt are
nightly to be met, mixing among the rest of the company, and chatting
familiarly with every stranger; the peaceful tranquillity of the spot--
an oasis in the great desert of the world’s troubles, where the
exhausted mind and tired spirit may lie down in peace and take its rest,
lulled by the sound of falling water or the strains of German song --
these, I say, cleverly put forward, with ‘eight illustrations taken on
the spot,’ make pretty books--pleasant to read, but not less dangerous
to follow; while exaggerated catalogues of cures and recoveries, the
restoration from sufferings of a life long, the miraculous list of sick
men made sound ones through the agency of sulphurates and sub-
carbonates, are still more to be guarded against as guides to the spas
of Germany.
Now, I would not for a moment be supposed to throw discredit on the
efficiency of Aix or Ems, Wiesbaden or Töplitz, or any of them. In some
cases they have done, and will do, it may be hoped, considerable benefit
to many sufferers. I would merely desire to slide in, amidst the
universal paen of praise, a few words of caution respecting the _morale_
of these watering-places; and in doing so I shall be guided entirely by
the same principle I have followed in all the notes of my ‘Loiterings,’
rather to touch follies and absurdities than to go deeper down into the
strata of crimes and vices; at the same time, wherever it may be
necessary for my purpose, I shall not scruple to cut into the quick if
the malady need it.
And to begin--imagine in the first place a Grand-Duchy of such moderate
proportions that its sovereign dare not take in the ‘Times’ newspaper;
for if he opened it, he must intrude upon the territory of his
neighbours. His little kingdom, however, having all the attributes of a
real state, possesses a minister for the home and a minister for the
foreign department; it has a chancellor of the exchequer and a
secretary-at-war; and if there were half a mile of seaboard, would
inevitably have a board of admiralty and a _ministre de la marine_. It
is also provided with a little army, something in the fashion of
Bombastes Furioso’s, where each arm of the service has its one
representative, or that admirable Irish corps, which, when inquired
after by the General of the District, ‘Where is the Donegal Light
Horse?’ was met by the answer of, ‘Here I am, yer honour!’ And though
certainly nothing could possibly be more modestly devised than the whole
retinue of state, though the _fantassins_ be fifty, and the cavalry
five, still they must be fed, clothed, and kept in tobacco--a question
of some embarrassment, when it is considered that the Grand-Duchy
produces little grain and less grass, has neither manufacture nor trade,
nor the means of providing for other wants than those of a simple and
hard-working peasantry. There is, however, a palace, with its
accompaniments of grand maréchal, equerries, cooks, and scullions--a
vast variety of officials of every grade and class, who must be provided
for. How is this done? Simply enough, when the secret is once known--
four yards of green baize, with two gentlemen armed with wooden rakes,
and a box full of five-franc pieces. Nothing more is wanting. For the
mere luxury of the thing, as a matter of pin-money to the grand-duchess,
if there be one, you may add a roulette-table; but _rouge et noir_ will
supply all the trumpery expedients of taxation, direct and indirect. You
neither want collectors, custom-houses, nor colonies; you may snap your
fingers at trade and import duties, and laugh at the clumsy contrivances
by which other chancellors provide for the expenditure of other
countries.
The machinery of revenue reduces itself to this: first catch a Jew. For
your petty villainies any man will suffice; but for your grand schemes
of wholesale plunder, there is nothing like an Israelite; besides, he
has a kind of pride in his vocation. For the privilege of the gambling-
table he will pay munificently, he will keep the whole grand-ducal realm
in beer and beetroot the year through, and give a very respectable privy
purse to the sovereign besides. To him you deliver up all the nations of
the earth outside your own little frontier, none of those within it
being under any pretext admitted inside the walls of the gambling-house;
for, like the sick apothecary, you know better than to take anything in
the shop. You give him a carte-blanche, sparing the little realm of
Hesse-Homburg, to cheat the English, pigeon the Russians, ruin French,
Swedes, Swiss, and Yankees to his heart’s content; you set no limits to
his grand career of roguery; you deliver, bound, into his hands all
travellers within your realm, to be fleeced as it may seem fit. What
care you for the din of factories or the clanking hammers of the
foundries? The rattle of the dice-box and the scraping of the croupier’s
mace are pleasanter sounds, and fully as suggestive of wealth. You need
not descend into the bowels of the earth for riches; the gold, ready
stamped from the mint, comes bright and shining to your hand. Fleets may
founder and argosies may sink, but your dollars come safely in the
pockets of their owners, and are paid, without any cost of collection,
into the treasury of the State. Manchester may glut the earth with her
printed calicoes, Sheffield may produce more carving-knives than there
are carvers. _Your_ resources can suffer no such casualties as these;
you trade upon the vices of mankind, and need never dread a year of
scarcity. The passion for play is more contagious than the smallpox, and
unhappily the malady returns after the first access. Every gambler who
leaves fifty napoleons in your territory is bound in a kind of
recognisance to return next year and lose double the sum. Each loss is
but an instalment of the grand total of his ruin, and you have
contracted for that.
But even the winner does not escape you. A hundred temptations are
provided to seduce him into extravagance and plunge him into expense--
tastes are suggested, and habits of luxury inculcated, that turn out sad
comforters when a reverse of fortune compels him to a more limited
expenditure; so that when you extinguish the unlucky man by a summary
process, you reserve a lingering death for the more fortunate one. In
the language of the dock, it is only ‘a long day’ he obtains, after all.
How pleasant, besides, to reflect that the storms of political strife,
which agitate other heads, never reach yours. The violence of party
spirit, the rancour of the press, are hushed before the decorous silence
of the gaming-table and the death-like stillness of _rouge et noir_.
There is no need of a censorship when there is a croupier. The
literature of your realm is reduced to a card, to be pricked by the pin
of a gamester; and men have no heads for the pleasures of reading, when
stared in the face by ruin. Other states may occupy themselves with
projects of philanthropy and benevolence, they may project schemes of
public usefulness and advantage, they may advance the arts of
civilisation, and promote plans of national greatness; your course is an
easier path, and is never unsuccessful.
But some one may say here, How are these people to live? I agree at once
with the sentiment--no one is more ready to assent to that excellent
adage--‘Il faut que tout le monde vive, even grand-dukes.’ But there are
a hundred ways of eking out subsistence in cheap countries, without
trenching on morality. The military service of Austria, Prussia, and
Russia is open to them, should their own small territories not suffice
for moderate wants and wishes. In any case I am not going to trouble my
head with providing for German princes, while I have a large stock of
nephews and nieces little better off. All I care for at present is to
point out the facts of a case, and not to speculate how they might be
altered.
Now, to proceed. In proportion as vice is more prevalent, the decorum of
the world would appear to increase, and internal rottenness and external
decency bear a due relation to each other. People could not thus violate
the outward semblance of morality, by flocking in hundreds and tens of
hundreds to those gambling states, those _rouge et noir_ dependencies,
those duchies of the dice-box. A man’s asking a passport for Baden would
be a tacit averment, ‘I am going to gamble.’ Ordering post-horses for
Ems would be like calling for ‘fresh cards’; and you would as soon
confess to having passed a few years in Van Diemen’s Land as acknowledge
a summer on the Rhine.
What, then, was to be done? It was certainly a difficulty, and might
have puzzled less ingenious heads than grand-ducal advisers. They,
however, soon hit upon the expedient. They are shrewd observers, and
clever men of the world. They perceived that while other eras have been
marked by the characteristic designation of brass, gold, or iron,
_this_, with more propriety, might be called the age of bile. Never was
there a period when men felt so much interested in their stomachs; at no
epoch were mankind so deeply concerned for their livers; this passion--
for it is such--not being limited to the old or feeble, to the broken
and shattered constitution, but extending to all age and sex, including
the veteran of a dozen campaigns and the belle of a London season, the
hard-lined and seasoned features of a polar traveller, and the pale,
soft cheek of beauty, the lean proportions of shrunken age, and the
plump development of youthful loveliness. In the words of the song--
‘No age, no profession, no station is free.’
It is the universal mania of our century, and we may expect that one
day, our vigorous pursuit of knowledge on the subject will allow us to
be honourably classed with the equally intelligent seekers for the
philosopher’s stone. With this great feature of the time, then, nothing
was easier than to comply. The little realm of Hesse-Homburg might not
have attractions of scenery or society; its climate might, like most of
those north of the Alps, be nothing to boast of; its social advantages
being a zero, what could it possess as a reason--a good, plausible
reason, for drawing travellers to its frontier? Of course, a Spa!--
something very nauseous and very foul smelling, as nearly as possible
like a warm infusion of rotten eggs, thickened with red clay. Germany
happily abounds in these; Nature has been kind to her, at least
underground, and you have only to dig two feet in any limestone district
to meet with the most sovereign thing on earth for stomachic
derangements.
The Spa discovered, a doctor was found to analyse it, and another to
write a book upon it. Nothing more were necessary. The work, translated
into three or four languages, set forth all the congenial advantages of
pumps and promenades, sub-carbonates, tables d’hôte, waltzing, and
mineral waters. The pursuit of health no longer presented a grim goddess
masquerading in rusty black and a bald forehead, but a lovely nymph, in
a Parisian toilette, conversing like a Frenchwoman, and dancing like an
Austrian.
Who would not be ill, I wonder? Who would not discover that Hampshire
was too high and Essex too low, Devon too close and Cumberland too
bracing? Who would not give up his village M.D., and all his array of
bottles, with their long white cravats, for a ramble to the Rhine, where
luxurious living, belles, and balls abounded, and where _soit dit en
passant_, the _rouge et noir_ table afforded the easy resource of
supplying all such pleasures, so that you might grow robust and rich at
once, and while imbibing iron into your blood, lay up a stock of gold
with your banker? Hence the connection between Spas and gambling; hence
the fashionable flocking to those healthful spots by thousands who never
felt illness; hence the unblushing avowal of having been a month at
Baden by those who would flinch at acknowledging an hour in a ‘hell’;
and hence, more important than all, at least to one individual
concerned, the source of that real alchemy by which a grand-duke, like
Macheath, can
‘Turn all his lead to gold.’ Well may he exclaim, with the gallant
captain--
‘Fill every glass!’
Were the liquor champagne or tokay, it could not be a hundredth part as
profitable; and the whole thing presents a picture of ‘hocussing’ on the
grandest scale ever adopted.
The fifteen glasses of abomination demand a walk of half an hour, or a
sojourn in the Cursaal. The Cursaal is a hell! there is no need to mince
it. The taste for play is easily imbibed--what bad taste is not?--and
thus, while you are drawing the pump, the grand-duke is diving into your
pocket. Here, then--I shall not add a word--is the true state of the
Spas of Germany. As I believe it is customary to distinguish all writers
on these ‘fountains of health’ by some mark of princely favour
proportionate to their services of praise, I beg to add, if the Gross
Herzog von Hesse-Homburg deems the present a suitable instance for
notice, that Arthur O’Leary will receive such evidence of grand-ducal
approbation with a most grateful spirit, and acknowledge the same in
some future volume of his ‘Loiterings,’ only requesting to mention that
when Theodore Hook--poor fellow!--was dining once with a London alderman
remarkable for the display and the tedium of his dinners, he felt
himself at the end of an hour and a half’s vigorous performance only in
the middle of the entertainment; upon which he laid down his knife, and
in a whisper uttered: ‘_Eating_ more is out of the question; so I ‘ll
take the rest out in money.’