A FIVE MONTHS' INTERLUDE
A Venture on the Riviera--Monte Carlo--Life in a Villa at
Beaulieu--A Gambler's Suicide--A Gambler's Funeral
One May morning in London, when I had just completed a fortnight of
political speaking in Fifeshire, a friend of mine, Ernest Beckett
(afterward the second Lord Grimthorpe), came in a state of obvious
excitement to see me, and talk, so he said, about something of great
importance. He had, it appeared, been spending some weeks in the south
of France, and was full of a project the value of which had, so he said,
been amply proved by experiment. To me at first sight it seemed no
better than lunacy. I could not for some time even bring myself to
consider it seriously. This project was to play a new system at Monte
Carlo. It was a system founded on one which, devised by Henry
Labouchere, had been--such was Beckett's contention--greatly improved by
himself, and he and a companion had been playing it with absolutely
unbroken success. The two, with only a small capital in their pockets,
had won during the course of a week or so something like a thousand
pounds--not in a few large gains (for in this there would have been
nothing to wonder at), but by a regular succession day after day of
small ones. They had tested the system further by applying it, after
their departure, to the records, published daily in a Monte Carlo
journal, of the order in which colors or numbers had turned up
throughout the day preceding at some particular table. Adjusting their
imaginary stakes, in accordance with the rules of the system, to these
series of actual sequences, the two experimenters had discovered that
their original successes were, as a matter of theory, infallibly
reproduced. So certain, said Beckett, did all this seem that he would
himself be in a position to secure some thousands of pounds of capital
for the purpose of renewing the enterprise on a very much larger scale.
He would not be able till Christmas to go out to Monte Carlo himself,
and for several reasons he desired to remain at first in the background;
but the capital in question would, he said, include a sum sufficient to
defray the expenses of a few suitable friends, who would set to work
meanwhile, and be entitled, as a business matter, to a share of the
eventual profits. The coadjutors whom he had in view were myself, the
late Lord Greenock, Charles Bulpett, and Charles Edward Jerningham.
Moreover, as everything would depend on a correct calculation of the
stakes--the amount of which at each coup would vary with the results of
the coups preceding--and as this calculation would often be extremely
complicated, and have in every case to be made with extreme rapidity, a
good deal of preliminary practice on the part of the intending players
would be necessary. Would this little group of players be, as he hoped,
forthcoming? I still regarded the project as something of the wildcat
kind; but I was struck by the undoubted success of Beckett's own
experiments, actual and theoretical, so far; and, as the four players
would at all events lose nothing, even if they gained nothing, by
renewing them, I and the three others at last consented to take part in
the venture.
As soon, therefore, as the London season was over we began our
preparations, which would necessarily be somewhat lengthy. From the
beginning of August up to the end of October we met again and again at
Beckett's house in Yorkshire, our proceedings being shrouded in
serio-comic secrecy. In order that we might perfect ourselves in the use
of our mathematical weapons, each day after breakfast the dining-room
table was cleared and covered with a large green cloth divided into
numbered spaces, like the green roulette board at Monte Carlo. In the
middle of this was placed a large roulette. Rakes were provided of the
true Monte Carlo pattern. One of us played the part of croupier, while
to each of the others was allotted a certain number of counters
indistinguishable in aspect from twenty-franc gold pieces. Each of us
made his own calculations on cards provided for the purpose; each day we
played solemnly for four hours on end, and then examined the results. We
sometimes varied this routine by taking one of the Monte Carlo records,
our croupier not turning the wheel, but calling out the numbers or
colors seriatim which had actually turned up at the tables on this day
or that. The general results were, I must say, most extraordinary. On
only two occasions did the operations of an entire day leave any of the
players bankrupt or without a substantial gain, though they all started
their work at different moments, and the actual details of the staking
were in no two cases the same. Throughout a long series of these
experimental meetings, the winnings were as a whole about 20 per cent.
daily on the total capital risked.
Encouraged by these results, we had no sooner mastered the system as a
mathematical scheme than we promptly made arrangements for beginning the
work in earnest. We all thought it desirable that, until it was crowned
with success, our enterprise should remain unknown to anybody except
ourselves. It was therefore settled that our journey should take place
at once--that is to say, about the end of October, at which time Monte
Carlo would be nearly empty, and we should run least risk of
encountering loquacious acquaintances or of having our secret stolen
from us by inquisitive and sinister rivals. We accordingly secured in
advance--since all the great hotels at the time in question were
closed--a suite of four bedrooms and a sitting room at a small
establishment called the Hotel de Russie. Its appointments, when we
arrived, proved to be so simple that the floor of the restaurant was
sanded; but the rooms upstairs were comfortable; and not even at the
Hotel de Paris could anything better have been found in the way of wine
or cooking.
Accordingly on a certain night we, the four precursors, were duly
assembled on the platform of Victoria Station; and Beckett, with the air
of a conspirator, appeared at the last moment, thrust into our keeping
certain notes of credit, and gave us his blessing as we seated ourselves
in the continental train. Had we been agents of a plot organized to
convulse Europe we could not have been in a condition of greater and
more carefully subdued excitement, though there was not absent from any
of us an underlying sense of comedy. In the dead of night we were having
supper at Calais, and, scanning the few other travelers who were engaged
in the same task, we were rejoicing in a sense of having escaped all
curious observation, when Jerningham gripped my arm and said: "Did you
see the man who has just gone through the door? Wasn't he your friend
W----?" He had named one of the most intimate of the Catholic
connections of my family, who was, moreover, the greatest gossip in
Europe. Never would a dear friend have to us been less welcome than he.
Happily, however, I was able to assure Jerningham that his fears were
groundless, and we settled ourselves in peace among the cushions of the
Paris train without having seen a soul who was otherwise than a
stranger to all of us. Having reached the Gare du Nord at six o'clock in
the morning, we scrutinized the faces at the exit with the same
gratifying result.
Thus freed from anxiety, we enjoyed at the Hotel Continental a prolonged
sleep, which was haunted by pleasing dreams. By eight o'clock that
evening we found ourselves at the Gare de Lyon, disposing our belongings
in a compartment of the wagon-lit which ended its course at Ventimiglia.
My own arrangements having been made, I was smoking a cigarette in the
corridor when a well-known voice over my shoulder was ejaculating my
Christian name. I turned round, and there was the very friend whom
Jerningham had identified but too correctly at Calais. I took the bull
by the horns. I greeted him with the utmost enthusiasm; and when he
asked me what I was doing I told him that I and three companions were
going to amuse ourselves in the south of France till Christmas, and
should--such, I think, was my phrase--have "a look in" at Monte Carlo as
one incident of our program. I begged him to come and be introduced to
my friends, as soon as our compartment was in order, and I managed
meanwhile to inform them as to what had happened. In due time he visited
us. He was full of good spirits and conversation, and one of the first
facts that he communicated to us was that he was on his way to Monte
Carlo himself, to play an infallible system. With sublime presence of
mind we expressed a hope that we might meet there, adding that, if we
did, he might find that the place had seduced us into trying a little
system likewise. He was, however, so much taken up with his own that he
had no time or inclination to propound any questions as to ours; and
when he got out at Nice he never suspected that, so far as play was
concerned, we were more than casual triflers.
When we reached Monte Carlo it was dark. The only vehicle in waiting was
the omnibus of the Hotel de Russie; and into its well of blackness one
other passenger followed us. Four hearts were at once set beating by the
thought that this man might be a spy, who had already heard of our
enterprise, and whose mission was to appropriate or else to thwart our
secret. The following day two of us drove into Nice and deposited our
notes of credit at one of the most important banks, the manager looking
at us with an oddly repressed smile, as though he detected in us a new
contingent of dupes. We went back to Monte Carlo armed with two small
steel safes, one for such capital as was needed for our immediate
purposes, the other for our prospective winnings. Jerningham, who had a
curious talent for initiating intimacies everywhere, had meanwhile
managed to ascertain from somebody that, if we desired to secure
preferential civility from the croupiers, the right thing to do was to
make each of them a present of fairly good cigars, gifts of money being
naturally not allowed. This was done, and ultimately we began our play
feeling as children do when they first put their feet into sea water.
We played in couples, one player calculating the stakes, the other
placing them on the table. The couples were to play alternately, one
giving place to another as soon as the winnings amounted to fifty
pounds. When the total winnings of both reached a hundred pounds we
stopped. We played it for that day no longer.
For three weeks the whole thing went like clockwork. We ground out our
daily gains--a hundred pounds on an average--as though they were coffee
from a coffee mill. But at the beginning of the fourth week the fates
were for the first time against us. We lost in the course of a morning
about half the sum which it had cost us the labor of three weeks to win.
We were not, however, daunted. We resolved that for the future no couple
of players should bring into the rooms more than five hundred pounds,
and should this sum be lost we would suspend our proceedings for the day
and start afresh next morning. This arrangement being made, our
successes began again. A risked capital of five hundred pounds regularly
yielded a return of 10 per cent. in not much more than an hour, and we
had nearly recovered the whole of our previous loss when a catastrophe
occurred owing to causes which had not come into our calculations. One
of our couples, not finding that they were winning as fast as they had
hoped to do, completely lost their heads, and began throwing money on
the tables without any system at all. The result was that in less than a
quarter of an hour every penny which they had brought with them had
disappeared. Beckett, as the only person who could possibly lose through
the enterprise, was promptly consulted by telegram. His answer was that
he was coming out himself in a month or so, and begged us to stay where
we were, but to suspend our play till the situation could be discussed
more fully. By this prudent decision on his part I was not myself
displeased; for system-playing, even when successful, I discovered to be
a very tedious matter.
Meanwhile, in respect of amusements, we four were by no means derelicts.
Empty as Monte Carlo was, some villas were already occupied, one of
these being Le Nid, of which Laura, Lady Wilton was the mistress--a
woman whose hospitalities were no less agreeable than herself. Having
found out enough about us to show her that we were at least presentable,
she inaugurated an acquaintance with us by sending a little box to
myself, which proved to contain, on being opened, something in the
nature of a valentine. It contained a spray of mimosa packed in cotton
wool, and lying like an elf among the petals was a little sleeping bat.
Lady Wilton a week before had appeared as the Evening Star at a fancy
ball at Nice. In return for her valentine I bought a microscopic puppy,
which, packed in cotton wool and inclosed in a box as the bat was, was
transmitted to her by a florist with a card attached to its person, and
bearing the words, "From the bat to the Evening Star." Among other
friends whom I discovered at Monte Carlo, I may mention a certain family
whom I had once known well at Homburg, but had never seen again till
now--a father, a mother, and an eminently beautiful daughter. Their home
at Monte Carlo was a villa, small, but so curtained with velvet that it
looked like a French jewel box. It was smothered in Banksia roses, and
it overlooked the sea. By one of its windows the daughter would play the
harp.
At length Beckett arrived, bringing his wife with him. Apart from the
matter of the system, their coming effected a change which to me was
extremely grateful. The Becketts and I before long migrated from Monte
Carlo, and took a villa between us for a couple of months at Beaulieu.
As for the system, Beckett, who was by no means disheartened, played it
himself for many nights in succession, and ultimately admitted that
there were defects in it which its late breakdown had revealed rather
than caused. Not long afterward he was persuaded into adopting another,
commended to him by Butler Johnson, once a prominent Member of
Parliament. This system, mechanical rather than mathematical, was based
on the assumption that the roulettes used at Monte Carlo were in all
probability not accurate implements--that the bearings, unless
constantly rectified, would soon be so worn with use that the wheel
during a long enough period would bring out certain numbers in more than
their due proportion. Hence, anyone backing these--so the argument
ran--was necessarily bound in the long run to win. This conclusion,
reached by a feat of _a priori_ reasoning, was due to the ingenuity of
an English engineer called Jaggers, and it was verified by the fact that
a system having this mechanical basis was ultimately, with astounding
success, played by a syndicate of persons who, before the officials of
the Casino managed to detect its nature, had won no less than eighty
thousand pounds between them. The secret, however, was found out at
last. Before the players were aware of it, the construction of the
roulettes was amended. Each was built up of a number of interchangeable
parts, the construction of no wheel being for any two days the same. The
spell was broken; the players began to lose. One or two of them,
suspecting what had actually happened, withdrew from the enterprise and
carried off their gains along with them. Less prudent and more sanguine,
the rest persisted till all that they had gained was gone. An Italian
professor of mathematics, however, declared that, despite the officials,
he had discovered how this system might be revived in a new and more
delicate form; and Beckett, with renewed hopes, was induced to finance
for a time the second experiment out of some of the capital which he had
got together for his first. The money, however, melted away as though by
a slow hemorrhage; before very long he refused to produce more, and the
history of both systems thus came to an end.
But the pleasantness of our life at Beaulieu was sufficient to
counterbalance the disappointments inflicted on us by Fortune at the
gaming tables. Our fantastic villa was embowered in flowers and foliage.
Buginvillaeas made a purple flame on the walls. An avenue of palms led
down from the house to the flashings of a minute harbor, on which
fishing boats rocked their gayly painted prows, while woods of olive
made a mystery of the impending hills behind. Friends and acquaintances
from Cannes often came to lunch with us, Alfred Montgomery and the
Duchess of Montrose among them. Beckett's spirits rose. Singularly
sensitive as he always was to poetry, I could hear him (for the walls
which divided our rooms were thin) reciting passages from "Paradise
Lost" in his tub. Though he had done with systems, he, his wife, and I
frequently went to Monte Carlo for dinner, our inducements being mainly
the chance of meeting friends whose scrutiny we no longer feared, and
the beauty of the homeward drive by the Lower Corniche road. The
Prince's palace, pale on its rocky promontory, seemed like some work of
enchantment as we swept by in the moonlight, and our horses carried us
into strange, fantastic solitudes, with mountainous woods on one side
and the waves just below us on the other. In stillnesses broken only by
the noise of our own transit, the murmur of the waves was merely a
stillness audible, as they whispered along crescents of sand with a
sound like a sleeping kiss.
The Becketts, however, had to go back to England some weeks sooner than
they expected, and I was left till the expiration of our lease, to
occupy the villa alone. It was during the weeks for which I was thus
left to myself that a letter reached me from St. Andrews, announcing
that if I wished to retire I was honorably free to do so, as a suitable
substitute had been found. The news was extremely welcome to me. I had
many books with me at Beaulieu, for the most part dealing with economic
and social science; and once more, when I was left to myself, the study
of these absorbed me, and led me to begin the planning of a kind of
political novel, of which I shall speak presently. But my solitude was
not enlivened by political speculation only. Two or three times a week I
went to Monte Carlo to enjoy the society of the R----s in their villa,
which I have already described, and which, still remains in my memory as
associated with flowers and harp strings. Out of my intimacy with the
R----s an incident arose which may be regarded as a fitting conclusion
to the drama of Monte Carlo, so far as I myself was concerned with it.
The R----s had a friend, Mrs. P----, a not very prosperous widow, who
was spending the winter and spring with them. She was far from
beautiful, and her manners perhaps were deficient in polish, but her
temper was singularly sweet. She was willing to oblige everybody. She
accompanied Miss R---- and myself on many interesting expeditions, and
was pleased by our seeking her companionship. Otherwise she was much
alone, and was left to amuse herself; her only amusement--so I gathered
from her chance conversation--being the winning or losing of a
five-franc piece at the tables. One day, when I called at the villa, I
saw by the butler's face that something unusual must have happened. I
learned a few minutes later that Mrs. P---- was dead. The cause of her
death turned out to have been this. Having begun her exploits at the
gambling rooms with winning or losing a five-franc piece occasionally,
she had, unsuspected by anybody, succumbed by slow degrees to the true
gambler's passion. In order to gratify this, everything she could
sell--and it was not much--she had sold. Not many hours ago she had
placed her last louis on the table, and had seen it disappear under the
traction of the croupier's rake. She had nothing left in her bedroom but
the clothes which she had worn yesterday, a hairbrush, and a bottle of
laudanum. The bottle that morning had been found in her hand, empty. The
last incident of my visit to Monte Carlo was her burial. In the mists of
a rainy morning a surpliced English clergyman saw her put out of sight
and mind in a little obscure cemetery. There were only two mourners. I
myself was one; Miss R----, with her fair hair and her black dress, was
the other.
A few days later I left Beaulieu for England by way of the Italian
lakes. I had managed to hire at Nice a great old-fashioned traveling
carriage--a relic of pre-railway days. By way of a parting dissipation I
picked up the R----s at their villa, and took them with me as far as San
Remo. There I joined the train, the R----s going back in the carriage.
Next morning I was at Cadennabia, and Monte Carlo and the system, and
Beaulieu and its Buginvillaeas, were behind me.