BADEN-BADEN AND THINGS THEREIN.
At one time Baden-Baden was one of the most famous gambling places in
the world, but it is now simply a fashionable watering place, very like
Saratoga. It is beautifully situated in the valley of the Oos, at the
entrance to the Black Forest. During the time the gambling rooms
flourished, great pains were taken to make it as attractive as possible.
Long, wide avenues were laid out and planted with beautiful trees,
picturesque drives were made, and all the natural advantages were
improved a thousand fold, so that to-day it is one of the most beautiful
spots imaginable.
The buildings, formerly the scenes of fashionable riot and dissipation,
were built in the most elaborate manner and most lavishly decorated with
beautiful frescoes by most eminent artists.
Nature made Baden-Baden a natural pleasure and health resort, and
wherever men and women go for pleasure or health you may be sure of
meeting vice in almost every form. The pleasure seekers must be
perpetually stimulated, and those who haunt mineral springs to recover
health, generally lost by persistent following of vicious practices,
come expecting the waters to build them up to the resumption of the
vices that brought them down. Consequently they gamble.
A few years ago Baden-Baden was the head centre of gambling for the
world. The Frenchman, Englishman, German, Russian, American, Turk, and,
for that matter, men of all nations came here to drink the waters, take
the baths and gamble. Following in the train of the rich invalids came
the professional gamblers, hawks following pigeons everywhere.
The government gave the exclusive right to manage a
[Illustration: THE GREAT HALL.]
[Sidenote: A FEW LEGENDS.]
gambling house to one company, or rather one man. Originally a Frenchman
named Benezet had it, paying some forty thousand dollars a year for the
privilege of plucking fools, and when he died, leaving an immense
fortune, his son-in-law, Dupressoir, continued the business. The money
received by the government for this privilege was appropriated to the
beautifying of the city and the other mineral water resorts in the Grand
Duchy.
The gambling was done in an immense building which is now the
"Conversation-haus," and, if its walls could speak, many a tale, comic
and tragic, they could tell.
You are assailed with all sorts of legends concerning it. There was a
lady, of what nationality was never known, a woman who commenced
gambling at the age of thirty-six, who always came to the rooms closely
veiled, whose face was never seen. She played so much money invariably,
leaving the rooms when she had lost or won her limit. It was never
ascertained where she lodged, even. For twenty years she came to the
rooms twice each day, staking a Napoleon (four dollars) on each turn of
the wheel till she had lost or won fifty, and when that loss or that
winning was accomplished she glided out, only to reappear the next day.
There is a wild legend prevalent that this mysterious being's lover had
lost his fortune at the tables, and had blown his brains out as a
fitting finish to his folly, and that there was an irresistible impulse
that brought her to the scene of his death, and kept her there all her
life.
What interested Tibbitts the most in this legend was the statement that
the lover lost all his money, and then blew out his brains.
"Any man, or alleged man," said Tibbitts, "who would lose a fortune at
such a game as they played here, must have great faith in his
marksmanship, to try to hit his brains, no matter how short the range."
The Young Man who Knows Everything wanted Tibbitts to make plain the
point to the remark, and then the Professor had to go on and explain
that what Mr. Tibbitts intended was that a man who would gamble at all
must have an infinitesimal brain, so small, indeed, as to make it safe
from the best marksman. The young man pondered over it a minute, and
expressed himself satisfied.
There is another story of a woman, an old and haggard woman, who came
every day and staked a Napoleon. She would not play unless there should
be in the room a child, a young, fresh child; and she used to take the
baby, and put her Napoleon in its little hand, and have it place it on
the black or red, as the child's whim dictated. And it is said that she
generally won. Like all the rest of the mysterious beings of the
gambling hall, this eccentric old lady disappeared one day, and was
never seen again.
[Illustration: THE YOUNG MAN WANTED TIBBITTS TO MAKE PLAIN THE POINT.]
[Sidenote: THE REGULAR LEGEND.]
It made little difference to her successors. The croupier, that calm,
impassive man, raked in the Napoleons, or raked them out, the wheel
revolved, and the life or death of one habitué of the place made no more
difference than a footprint on the sands of the sea.
German students who, by extravagant living, encumbered themselves with
debt, and who were afraid to apply at home for more money, came hither
to make enough at gambling to restore themselves. They never did it. M.
Benezet was not paying forty thousand dollars a year rent for the
privilege of running a game at which improvident and extravagant young
men could make up their folly--not he. His game was to take what they
had left, without knowing or caring what became of them afterward.
The most common legend of them all is of the young man who walked calmly
into the room with one hundred Napoleons, all he had left, and staked
one piece after another, and lost invariably. Finally there was but one
left. Turning to his friend, he remarked calmly, "This is my life I am
wagering." He put it upon the black, the wheel revolved, he lost.
Without a word this calm young man went out, and hung himself with his
handkerchief to a tree, where his inanimate body was found the next
morning.
This young man is very plentiful in Baden-Baden, though not much more so
than the same kind of a fellow who, staking his last gold piece, draws a
pistol from his pocket, and shoots himself at the table, the croupier
paying no attention to it, and going on with the game as though it was a
regular part of it, and an everyday occurrence.
Tibbitts frowned upon this legend severely, holding it to be unworthy of
credence. "The young man," said Tibbitts, "would have gone out and
pawned his revolver for ten dollars, and taken another hack at it."
And then this young man with a lively imagination went on to show that
no matter how desperate the situation there is always a chance to get
out. His story was to this effect:
A young New Yorker had gone to Paris with some thousands of dollars
given him by his indulgent father, that he might see the world and study
the languages. He studied French with a young grisette whose
acquaintance he had made, and a very pleasant life he lived, till one
morning the two discovered that they hadn't a dollar between them left,
that he had spent in three months with his syren what was sufficient to
have supported him decently for three years. He dared not send home for
more money, he could not leave his friend (that's what they call it),
and they had not enough to buy another meal.
The pawn shops were resorted to, till everything they had was gone and
starvation stared them in the face.
They wept over it, and finally came to a conclusion. They loved each
other dearly, they could not live apart, and so they decided to die
together. She rushed out and pawned her last pair of stockings to
purchase charcoal; they closed all the cracks in the room and lighted
the coal, that its fumes might kill them in the regular Parisian style.
The girl died, but life was left in the young man. He rose and broke a
window with a boot--no, he had pawned his boots--but with something,
anyhow, and let in fresh air, which saved his life.
Then he turned and looked at the poor girl on the bed, her long hair
flung negligently over the pillow, her face not wasted by disease, but
plump and fresh as in life.
"Poor Fifine," he sighed in agony; "how beautiful she is, and how I
loved her and how she loved me! I shall never love again. From this time
out my life, should I live, will be a desert waste. Should I live? Alas!
I cannot, will not live. Why did I spring from that couch and break open
the window? I cannot live without her; I will die with her."
He commenced closing the window and looking for more charcoal, when
something occurred to him.
"Come to think, I won't die with her. Dying with her wouldn't do her any
good, and if I live, she, my love, will perpetually have something to
look down upon."
He merely walked down and reported a case of suicide, and after the
investigation claimed the body as the next best friend, which was all
right.
[Sidenote: THE END OF THE LEGEND OF PARIS.]
Then he sold the body to a medical college for dissection, for sixty
dollars, and bought a second-class ticket and went home to New York and
told his mother he had been robbed of his money, and got her to
intercede with the irate father, and is, I believe, living in
comparative luxury to-day."
"How could he have got out on the street, if he had pawned all his
clothes and his boots?" queried the Young Man who Knows Everything.
Tibbitts answered with asperity that there were so-called men everywhere
in the world who perpetually strewed the salt of fact over the flowery
fields of fancy. "You are the young man, I believe, who made me
miserable the other day, by unearthing the fact that there never was a
William Tell."
The Professor, after thinking the tale over awhile, said that such a
thing might have happened in Oshkosh, but never in Paris. In Paris the
young woman would have lived and sold the body of the young man and
started a café on the proceeds.
Then the young man remarked that revenge was a fool's luxury, and that
the New Testament precept about turning the other cheek, was not only
sound in religion, but was the highest good sense, as religion always
is. To nurse a hatred is more expensive than to keep a horse in feed or
a fine watch in repair.
The gambling came to an end finally, and the romance of Baden-Baden with
it. A decree withdrew the privilege of the establishment, another
prohibited the establishing of other places, and on one fateful night in
1872, at twelve o'clock, the bankers turned off their lights, and
Baden-Baden as a gambling resort was no more.
The old gambling house is now called the Conversationhaus and is used
for concerts and balls, and is the favorite rendezvous for the
fashionable world, especially during the time the band plays, in the
morning, afternoon and evening. Then the wealth and fashion residing in
Baden and representing all nationalities promenades the beautiful
avenues, or, making little parties, sips beer and laughs and flirts to
its hearts' content.
Near the Conversationhaus is the "Trinkhalle," where invalids, and those
who wish to be thought invalids, drink the famous mineral waters that
have made Baden celebrated all over the world. The rooms are
magnificently furnished, and on the arcade in front of the building are
some fine frescoes illustrating different legends of the Black Forest.
[Illustration: IN FRONT OF THE KURSAAL, AT BADEN.]
The peculiar waters of Baden-Baden come from a great many springs in the
hill-sides, and are conducted to the various bathing places in pipes,
and they are as hot as you want them. One of the springs is known as
Hell Spring, because of the temperature of the water, one would suppose,
but the Badenese have another reason for its name. Of course they have a
legend for it, which runs thus:
[Sidenote: THE LEGEND OF THE HELL SPRING.]
A great many centuries ago an irascible and very wicked old man who
possessed the ground on which the spring is, had, as a matter of course,
a beautiful and supernaturally good daughter. By the way, I never could
understand why excessively wicked men in legends always had so sweet a
lot of daughters, but I suppose it is necessary in order to have
legends.
This daughter was beloved by the son of a neighboring noble who was at
feud with her father, and, as a matter of course, the old man opposed
the match. The present hot spring was then as cold as ice and a most
delicious water for drinking, of which the old man was very fond, which
statement proves the legend to be false. No German noble in this or any
other period of the world's history ever knew whether the water on his
estate was good for drinking or not. He may have tested it for other
purposes, but never for a beverage. He prefers wine or beer.
One day going down to his pet spring he found his girl there, and with
her her lover. He was enraged, and when the young man told him he loved
his daughter and would wed her, he exclaimed with a horrible oath:
"Wed her! You may wed her when this spring is as hot as hell, and when
that happens I will drink to your nuptials in its waters!"
No sooner said than done. The spring changed from its lovely greenish
blue to a sulphurous and salty color. Great jets of gas with an
unpleasant smell issued, and the water boiled up quite as hot as the
place the profane old man had indicated as a standard. And Satan
himself, with tail and hoofs, and everything complete, appeared, from
where none of the three could determine, and politely handed him a
goblet of the boiling water.
He had sworn an oath, and there was no going back upon it. So he took
the goblet and swallowed the contents and rolled over in agony and died,
as I should suppose any one would.
The young man married the girl, and I doubt not his descendants are
interested in the bath houses supplied from the springs.
It isn't much of a legend, indeed with a little practice I believe I
could write a better one myself, but it is as they gave it to me.
[Illustration: THE SWIMMING BATH.]
[Sidenote: UP THE MOUNTAIN.]
The grand bathing houses are on a scale of magnificence that is truly
wonderful, and one almost feels like shamming illness simply to enjoy
their luxury. Nothing that money can buy, and in Europe as in America,
it will buy almost anything, has been spared to make them as attractive
to the eye and the other senses as possible. They make up Baden's stock
in trade, and Baden is too good a merchant not to have attractive wares
for sale.
One of the favorite excursions from Baden is up the hill to the south of
the city to the old castle, the walls of which are said to have been
built in the third century, when the Romans constructed fortifications
here. From the twelfth century till the completion of the new castle
nearer the city, the old Schloss was the residence of the Margraves of
the Duchy.
The road leading to the castle winds up the Battert, giving some
beautiful views of the valley, with Baden, rich with its luxuriant
foliage, nestling at the foot of the Black Mountains, whose dark profile
stretches away off far to the north.
Before reaching the steep portion of the ascent, the ladies of the party
were provided with donkeys.
The Professor, whose age and avoirdupois rendered steephill climbing a
matter of great difficulty, determined that he would ride.
A diminutive donkey, scarcely larger than a good sized Newfoundland dog,
was assigned to him, and a most ludicrous sight it was as the party made
its start up the hill.
A gentleman six feet in height, with very long legs and a remarkably
protuberant abdomen, arrayed in a very ill-fitting coat, light trowsers,
a tall hat, and enormous spectacles, with an immense cotton umbrella
under one arm, is not a sight to inspire respect, even when it is
traveling as infantry.
But take that figure and put it astride of a donkey so small that the
rider's legs have to be drawn up to keep the feet off the ground, and
have that donkey a perverse and mischievous animal (most of them answer
to this description), and it is about as ludicrous a sight as was ever
vouchsafed to mortal ken.
Each donkey is led or driven, as the case may be, by a boy, and the
German boy has all the elements of mischief in him that any other boy
possesses. And so when this especial boy saw that the entire party were
laughing at the Professor, he wisely determined to gain popularity by
adding to the merriment. And so he would wink at the people following,
and twist the donkey's tail, and the intelligent animal, knowing what
was expected of him, would kick up his heels, and the Professor, one
hand busy with the bridle and the other with the umbrella under his arm,
would objurgate as much as a Professor dared.
[Illustration: THE DONKEY ENJOYED IT HUGELY.]
The donkey enjoyed it hugely, for he kicked up his heels with delight,
and pranced from one side of the road to the other in an ecstacy of
pleasure.
The portly gentleman didn't seem to think it very funny, although at
last he was compelled to join in the general laugh that went up at his
expense.
[Sidenote: TO THE OLD SCHLOSS.]
Finally he beat the boy and the donkey both. When the donkey would kick
up behind he simply dropped both feet to the ground and brought him to
anchor; and when he attempted a shy to one side, one foot on the ground
held him to his business; and catching the boy at the trick he took him
by the arm, and, with a grip that long years of flagellating boys had
perfected, pulled him up in front of him, and everything was pleasant
again.
[Illustration: THE LICHTENTHAL AVENUE--BADEN.]
As we toiled up the long hill the gathering clouds presaged a rain
storm. Then they broke, and as we reached the old ruin the sun came out
with great brilliancy, and gave us a magnificent view up and down the
broad, fertile valley.
But, unexpectedly, before we had time to go through the various rooms of
the castle the rain began to fall in torrents, which was uncomfortable,
the roof having long years ago succumbed to time, which has no more
respect for a margrave's castle than it has for a laborer's hut. Time is
no aristocrat.
We sought shelter in a room that had been fitted up as a restaurant, and
then we were treated to a genuine storm right from the Black Forest. The
wind howled around the open spaces of the ruined wails, the rain dashed
against the window panes in fitful gusts, while above all other sounds
could be heard the creaking and moaning of the trees all around us, as
they were bent and swayed by the storm. It required but a little stretch
of the imagination to fill the room with gallant knights, and to believe
it was the din and clatter of battle we heard without.
[Illustration: PROMENADE IN BADEN-BADEN.]
We were sitting on the ground on which knights and ladies in the
centuries past had sat and feasted. There was not an inch of space
within a half mile of us that had not its story. Mailed knights in that
very room had
"Carved their meat in gloves of steel,
And drank red wine with their visors down."
[Sidenote: WAR AND CARDS.]
And possibly their spirits were hovering over us. If they were, we did
not know it; they did not materialize. Instead of the mailed knights and
beardless pages and fair ladies of the middle ages, there was a party of
Americans in tall hats and short coats, ladies in the latest possible
Parisian walking dresses, and instead of the glorious game of war it was
a simple game of euchre, which the men played with the same earnestness
that characterizes them at home in their business, and the ladies with
that utter disregard of rule that characterizes feminine card playing
everywhere. It is needless to observe that in the matter of wine the
example of the old knights was followed, only we had no visors.
[Illustration: CHARCOAL BURNERS IN THE BLACK FOREST.]
A party of Americans playing cards in the castle of a warlike king!
Well! well! There are steamboats on Loch Katrine; there will be a
railroad to Jerusalem, and the holy places will yet be illuminated with
the electric light. There is no room to-day for sentiment.
This castle was built, originally, by the Romans, and fell into the
hands of the Margrave of Baden in 1112. It was necessary in that day to
have these strongholds, from which the margraves could issue and make
war upon their neighbors, that being their principal business. It was
continued as a residence for the Baden potentates till 1689, when Louis
XV. of France demolished it, leaving it, less the ivy that has grown
over it, as it is to-day.
Its principal use now is to give employment to the donkeys to get to it,
and the selling of wine and refreshments to the tourists who hunger
after the delightful view it affords.
The new Friedrichsbad is an imposing edifice built against the hillside
upon which the springs are located. The exterior is a fine specimen of
the Renaissance style of architecture, and is embellished with a great
many fine statues, busts and medallions.
The interior is a marvel of completeness and elegance, being finer in
all its details than any similar bathing establishment in the world. The
wood work is all massive and elegant; the walls and ceilings are
artistically frescoed; the bath tubs, large swimming baths, are cut out
of solid marble, and are so arranged that the bather can go from one to
another, securing any desired temperature without inconvenience.
The water comes from springs on the hillsides, at a temperature of 144°
Fahrenheit, and is conveyed by pipes throughout the building, the pipes
being so arranged that the water is gradually cooled. In this way one is
enabled to bathe in any kind of water he desires. The yield is upwards
of one hundred gallons a minute, and are said to be among the most
efficacious mineral springs known, the solid ingredients, chiefly
chloride of sodium, amounting only to three per cent.
[Sidenote: BATHS IN BADEN.]
In this magnificent structure, there are the common bath tubs, hewn out
of solid blocks of marble and completely let into the floor, with steps
leading down to them; large hip baths, supplied with a continual stream
of mineral water; an electric bathroom for inhaling the thermal water;
baths for the cold water treatment and the cold shower baths; vapor
baths, hot air baths, swimming baths of different degrees of
temperature, supplied also with shower baths the temperature of whose
water can be regulated by the bather, and vapor baths in boxes.
After taking as many of these as he desires, and having been rubbed in a
room lurid with hot air, the bather is conducted to a large room where
he is enveloped in a warm bath cloak. Then he is taken to a large,
luxuriously furnished room where he lies down for half or three-quarters
of an hour.
When he emerges from the building, he feels like a new man--or says he
does, which is the same thing.
When The Young Man who Knows Everything made that remark, Tibbitts
replied promptly that he most earnestly hoped the change would be
permanent. "My young friend, if you feel symptoms of getting back to
your original self, take more baths."
Baden merits all the good things said of it. It is a delicious spot, and
if one had nothing to do in life but enjoy it, I know of no place where,
with money, he could get more out of it. Its people are hospitable, and
its physicians will humor you to any disease you choose. If there is
nothing the matter with you, they will prescribe just as cheerfully as
though you had all the ills that human flesh is heir to, and will pocket
their fees with a grace unexcelled. They have had vast experience with
hypochondriacs, and know all about it.