It seems that the rise of modern gaming in England may be dated from the
year 1777 or 1778.
Before this time gaming appears never to have assumed an alarming
aspect. The methodical system of partnership, enabling men to embark
large capital in gambling establishments, was unknown; though from that
period this system became the special characteristic of the pursuit
among all classes of the community.
The development of the evil was a subject of great concern to thoughtful
men, and one of these, in the year 1784, put forth a pamphlet,
which seems to give 'the very age and body of the time, his form and
pressure.'(64)
(64) The pamphlet (in the Library of the British Museum) is
entitled:--'Hints for a Reform, particularly of the Gaming Clubs. By a
Member of Parliament. 1784.'
'About thirty years ago,' says this writer, 'there was but one club in
the metropolis. It was regulated and respectable. There were few of the
members who betted high. Such stakes at present would be reckoned very
low indeed. There were then assemblies once a week in most of the great
houses. An agreeable society met at seven o'clock; they played for
crowns or half-crowns; and reached their own houses about eleven.
'There was but one lady who gamed deeply, and she was viewed in the
light of a phenomenon. Were she now to be asked her real opinion of
those friends who were her former _PLAY_-fellows, there can be no doubt
but that they rank very low in her esteem.
'In the present era of vice and dissipation, how many females attend the
card-tables! What is the consequence? The effects are too clearly to
be traced to the frequent _DIVORCES_ which have lately disgraced our
country, and they are too visible in the shameful conduct of many ladies
of fashion, since gambling became their chief amusement.
'There is now no society. The routs begin at midnight. They are
painful and troublesome to the lady who receives company, and they
are absolutely a nuisance to those who are honoured with a card of
invitation. It is in vain to attempt conversation. The social pleasures
are entirely banished, and those who have any relish for them, or
who are fond of early hours, are necessarily excluded. Such are the
companies of modern times, and modern people of fashion. Those who are
not invited fly to the _Gaming Clubs_--
"To kill their idle hours and cure _ennui!_"
'To give an account of the present encumbered situation of many
families, whose property was once large and ample, would fill a volume.
Whence spring the difficulties which every succeeding day increases?
From the _GAMBLING CLUBS_. Why are they continually hunted by their
creditors? The reply is--the _GAMBLING CLUBS_. Why are they obliged
continually to rack their invention in order to save appearances? The
answer still is--the _GAMBLING CLUBS!_
'The father frequently ruins his children; and sons, and even grandsons,
long before the succession opens to them, are involved so deeply that
during their future lives their circumstances are rendered narrow; and
they have rank or family honours, without being able to support them.
'How many infamous villains have amassed immense estates, by taking
advantage of unfortunate young men, who have been first seduced and then
ruined by the Gambling Clubs!
'It is well known that the old members of those gambling societies exert
every nerve to enlist young men of fortune; and if we take a view of
the principal estates on this island, we shall find many infamous
_CHRISTIAN_ brokers who are now living luxuriously and in splendour on
the wrecks of such unhappy victims.
'At present, when a boy has learned a little from his father's example,
he is sent to school, to be _INITIATED_. In the course of a few years he
acquires a profound knowledge of the science of gambling, and before he
leaves the University he is perfectly fitted for a member of the _GAMING
CLUBS_, into which he is elected before he takes his seat in either
House of Parliament. There is no necessity for his being of age, as the
sooner he is ballotted for, the more advantageous his admission will
prove to the _OLD_ members.
'Scarcely is the hopeful youth enrolled among these _HONOURABLE_
associates, than he is introduced to Jews, to annuity-brokers, and to
the long train of money-lenders. They take care to answer his pecuniary
calls, and the greater part of the night and morning is consumed at the
_CLUB_. To his creditors and tradesmen, instead of paying his bills,
he offers a _BOND_ or _ANNUITY_. He rises just time enough to ride to
Kensington Gardens; returns to dress; dines late; and then attends the
party of gamblers, as he had done the night before, unless he allows
himself to be detained for a few moments by the newspaper, or some
political publication.
'Such do we find the present fashionable style of life, from "his Grace"
to the "Ensign" in the Guards. Will this mode of education rear up
heroes, to lead forth our armies, or to conduct our fleets to victory?
Review the conduct of your generals abroad, and of your statesmen
at home, during the late unfortunate war, and these questions are
answered.(65)
(65) Of course this is an allusion to the American War of Independence
and the political events at home, from 1774 to 1784.
'At present, tradesmen must themselves be gamblers before they give
credit to a member of these clubs; but if a reform succeeds they will
be placed in a state of security. At present they must make _REGULAR_
families pay an enormous price for their goods, to enable them to
run the risk of never receiving a single shilling from their gambling
customers.'
Such is the picture of the times in question, drawn by a contemporary;
and it may be said that private reckless and unscrupulous political
machinations were the springs and fountains of all the calamities that
subsequently overflowed, as it were, the 'opening of the seals' of doom
upon the nation.
Notwithstanding the purity of morals enjoined by the court of George
III., the early part of his reign presents a picture of dissolute
manners as well as of furious party spirit. The most fashionable of our
ladies of rank were immersed in play, or devoted to politics: the same
spirit carried them into both. The Sabbath was disregarded, spent often
in cards, or desecrated by the meetings of partisans of both factions;
moral duties were neglected and decorum outraged. The fact was, that
a minor court had become the centre of all the bad passions and
reprehensible pursuits in vogue. Carlton House, in Pall Mall, which even
the oldest of us can barely remember, with its elegant open screen,
the pillars in front, its low exterior, its many small rooms, its
decorations in vulgar taste, and, to crown the whole, its associations
of a corrupting revelry,--Carlton House was, in the days of good King
George, almost as great a scandal to the country as Whitehall in the
time of improper King Charles II.(66) The influence which the example
of a young prince, of manners eminently popular, produced upon the young
nobility of the realm was most disastrous in every way and ruinous to
public morality.
(66) Wharton, 'The Queens of Society.' Mem. of _Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire._
After that period, the vast license given to those abominable engines of
fraud, the E.O. tables,(67) and the great length of time which elapsed
before they met with any check from the police, afforded a number of
dissolute and abandoned characters an opportunity of acquiring property.
This they afterwards increased in the low gaming houses, and by
following up the same system at Newmarket and the other fashionable
places of resort, and finally by means of the lottery, that mode of
insensate gambling; till at length they acquired a sum of money nothing
short of _ONE MILLION STERLING_.
(67) So called from the letters E and O, the turning up of which decided
the bet. They were otherwise called _Roulette_ and _Roly Poly_, from the
balls used in them. They seem to have been introduced in England about
the year 1739. The first was set up at Tunbridge and proved extremely
profitable to the proprietors.
This enormous wealth was then used as an efficient capital in carrying
on various illegal establishments, particularly gaming houses, the
expenses of a first-rate house being L7000 per annum, which were again
employed as the means of increasing these ill-gotten riches.
The system was progressive but steady in its development. Several of
these conspicuous members of the world of fashion, rolling in their
gaudy carriages and associating with men of high rank and influence,
might be found on the registers of the Old Bailey, or had been formerly
occupied in turning, with their own hands, E.O. tables in the public
streets.
The following _Queries_, which are extracted from the _Morning Post_ of
July the 5th, 1797, throw considerable light upon this curious subject,
and show how seriously the matter was regarded when so public a
denunciation was deemed necessary and ventured upon:--
'Is Mr Ogden (now the Newmarket oracle) the same person who,
five-and-twenty years since, was an annual pedestrian to Ascot, covered
with dust, amusing himself with "_PRICKING in the_ belt," "_HUSTLING_ in
the hat," &c., among the lowest class of rustics, at the inferior booths
of the fair?
'Is D-k-y B--n who now has his snug farm, the same person who, some
years since, _DROVE A POST CHAISE_ for T--y, of Bagshot, could
neither read nor write, and was introduced to _THE FAMILY_ only by his
pre-eminence at cribbage?
'Is Mr Twycross (with his phaeton) the same person who some years since
became a bankrupt in Tavistock Street, immediately commenced the Man of
Fashion at Bath, kept running horses, &c., _secundum artem?_
'Is Mr Phillips (who has now his town and country house, in the most
fashionable style) the same who was originally a linen-draper and
bankrupt at Salisbury, and who made his first _family entre_ in the
metropolis, by his superiority at _Billiards_ (with Captain Wallace,
Orrell, &c.) at Cropley's, in Bow Street?
'Was poor carbuncled P--e (so many years the favourite decoy duck
of _THE FAMILY_) the very barber of Oxford, who, in the midst of the
operation upon a gentleman's face, laid down his razor, swearing that
he would never shave another man so long as he lived, and immediately
became the hero of the card table, the _bones_, the _box_, and the
_Cockpit?_'
Capital was not the only qualification for admission into the
Confederacy of Gambling. Some of the members were taken into partnership
on account of their dexterity in 'securing' dice or 'dealing' cards. One
is said to have been actually a sharer in every 'Hell' at the West-End
of the Town, because he was feared as much as he was detested by the
firms, who had reason to know that he would 'peach' if not kept quiet.
Informers against the illegal and iniquitous associations were arrested
and imprisoned upon writs, obtained by perjury--to deter others from
similar attacks; witnesses were suborned; officers of justice bribed;
ruffians and bludgeon-men employed, where gratuities failed; personal
violence and even assassination threatened to all who dared to expose
the crying evil--among others, to Stockdale, the well-known publisher of
the day, in Piccadilly.
Then came upon the nation the muddy flood of French emigrants, poured
forth by the Great Revolution--a set of men, speaking generally, whose
vices contaminated the very atmosphere.
Before the advent of these worthies the number of gambling houses in the
metropolis, exclusive of those so long established by subscription, was
not more than half-a-dozen; but by the year 1820 they had increased to
nearly fifty. Besides _Faro_ and _Hazard_, the foreign games of
_Macao, Roulette, Rouge et Noir_, &c., were introduced, and there was a
graduated accommodation for all ranks, from the Peer of the Realm to the
Highwayman, the Burglar, and the Pick et.
At one of the watering-places, in 1803, a baronet lost L20,000 at play,
and a bond for L7000. This will scarcely surprise us when we consider
that at the time above five hundred notorious characters supported
themselves in the metropolis by this species of robbery, and in
the summer spread themselves through the watering-places for their
professional operations. Some of them kept bankers, and were possessed
of considerable property in the funds and in land, and went their
_circuits_ as regularly as the judges. Most excellent judges they were,
too, of the condition of a 'pigeon.'
In a great commercial city where, from the extent of its trade,
manufacture, and revenue, there must be an immense circulation of
property, the danger is not to be conceived of the allurements which
were thus held out to young men in business having the command of money,
as well as the clerks of merchants, bankers, and others. In fact, too
many of this class proved, at the bar of justice, the consequence
of their resort to these complicated scenes of vice, idleness,
extravagance, misfortune, and crime. Among innumerable instances are the
following:--In 1796, a shopman to a grocer in the city was seduced into
a gaming party, where he first lost all his own money, and ultimately
what his master had intrusted him with. He hanged himself in his
bed-room a few hours afterwards.
In the same year, Lord Kenyon in summing up a case of the kind
said:--'It was extremely to be lamented that the vice of gambling had
descended to the very lowest orders of the people. It was prevalent
among the highest ranks of society, who had set the example to their
inferiors, and who, it seemed, were too great for the law. I wish they
could be punished. If any prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and
the parties are justly convicted, whatever may be their rank or station
in the country--though they should be the first ladies in the land--they
shall certainly exhibit themselves in the pillory.'
In 1820, James Lloyd, one of the harpies who practised on the credulity
of the lower orders by keeping a _Little Go_, or illegal lottery, was
brought up for the twentieth time, to answer for that offence. This man
was a methodist preacher, and assembled his neighbours together at his
dwelling on a Saturday to preach the gospel to them, and the remainder
of the week he was to be found, with an equally numerous party,
instructing them in the ruinous vice of gambling. The charge was clearly
proved, and the prisoner was sentenced to three months' imprisonment
with hard labour.
In the same year numbers of young persons robbed their masters to play
at a certain establishment called Morley's Gambling House, in the City,
and were ruined there. Some were brought to justice at the Old Bailey;
others, in the madness caused by their losses, destroyed themselves; and
some escaped to other countries, by their own activity, or through the
influence of their friends.
A traveller of the coachmakers, Messrs Houlditch of Long Acre, embezzled
or applied to his own use considerable sums of money belonging to them.
It appeared in evidence that the prisoner was sent by his employers to
the Continent to take orders for carriages; he was allowed a handsome
salary, and was furnished with carriages for sale. The money he received
for them he was to send to his employers, after deducting his expenses;
but instead of so doing, he gambled nearly the whole of it away. The
following letter to his master was put in by way of explanation of his
career:--'Sir,--The errors into which I have fallen have made me so hate
myself that I have adopted the horrible resolution of destroying myself.
I am sensible of the crime I commit against God, my family, and society,
but have not courage to live dishonoured. The generous confidence you
placed in me I have basely violated; I have robbed you, and though
not to enrich myself, the consciousness of it destroys me. Bankruptcy,
poverty, beggary, and want I could bear--conscious integrity would
support me: but the ill-fated acquaintance I formed led me to those
earthly hells--gambling houses; and then commenced my villainies and
deceptions to you. My losses were not large at first; and the stories
that were told me of gain made me hope they would soon be recovered. At
this period I received the order to go to Vienna, and on settling at the
hotel I found my debts treble what I had expected. I was in consequence
compelled to leave the two carriages as a guarantee for part of the
debt, which I had not in my power to discharge. I had hoped such success
at Vienna as would enable me to state all to you; but disappointment
blasted every hope, and despair, on my return to Paris, began to
generate the fatal resolution which, at the moment you read this,
will have matured itself to consummation. I feel that my reputation is
blasted; no way left of re-imbursing the money wasted, your confidence
in me totally destroyed, and nothing left to me but to see my wife and
children, and die. Affection for them holds me in existence a little
longer. The gaming table again presented itself to my imagination as the
only possible means of extricating myself. Count Montoni's 3000 francs,
which I received before you came to Paris, furnished me with the
means--my death speaks the result! After robbery so base as mine, I fear
it will be of no use for me to solicit your kindness for my wretched
wife and forlorn family. Oh, Sir, if you have pity on them and treat
them kindly, and do not leave them to perish in a foreign land, the
consciousness of the act will cheer you in your last moments, and God
will reward you and yours for it tenfold. Their sensibilities will not
cause them to need human aid. Thus I shall be threefold the murderer.
I thank you for the kindness you have rendered me; and I assure your
brother that he has, in this dreadful moment, my ardent wishes for his
welfare here and hereafter. I have so contrived it that you will see
a person at the Prince's tomorrow, who will interpret for you. In
mentioning my fate to him, you will not much serve your own interest
by blackening my character and memory. I subjoin the reward of my
villainies and the correct balance of the account. Count Edmond's
regular bills I have not received; his valet will give you them; the
others are in a pocket-book, which will be found on my corpse somewhere
in the wood of Boulogne.
'Signed, W. KINSBY.'
It appears, however, that the gentleman changed his mind and did not
commit suicide, but surrendered at the Insolvent Debtor's Court to be
dealt with according to law, which was a much wiser resolution.
To the games of Faro, Hazard, Macao, Doodle-do, and Rouge et Noir, more
even than to horse-racing, many tradesmen, once possessing good fortunes
and great business, owed their destruction. Thousands upon thousands
have been ruined in the vicinity of St James's. It was not confined to
youths of fortune only, but the decent and respectable tradesman, as
well as the dashing clerk of the merchant and banker, was ingulfed in
its vortes.
The proprietors of gaming houses were also concerned in fraudulent
insurances, and employed a number of clerks while the lotteries were
drawing, who conducted the business without risk, in counting-houses,
where no insurances were taken, but to which books were carried, as well
as from the different offices in every part of the town, as from the
_Morocco-men_, who went from door to door taking insurances and enticing
the poor and middling ranks to adventure.
It was gambling, and not the burdens of the long war, nor the revulsion
from war to peace, that made so many bankruptcies in the few years
succeeding the Battle of Waterloo. It was the plunderers at gaming
tables that filled the gazettes and made the gaols overflow with so many
victims.
A foreigner has advanced an opinion as to the source of the gambling
propensity of Englishmen. 'The English,' says M. Dunne,(68) 'the most
speculative nation on earth, calculate even upon future contingences.
Nowhere else is the adventurous rage for stock-jobbing carried on to
so great an extent. The fury of gambling, so common in England, is
undoubtedly a daughter of this speculative genius. The _Greeks_ of Great
Britain are, however, much inferior to those of France in cunning
and industry. A certain Frenchman who assumed in London the title and
manners of a baron, has been known to surpass all the most dexterous
rogues of the three kingdoms in the art of robbing. His aide-de-camp was
a kind of German captain, or rather _chevalier d'industrie_, a person
who had acted the double character of a French spy and an English
officer at the same time. Their tactics being at length discovered, the
baron was obliged to quit the country; and he is said to have afterwards
entered the monastery of La Trappe,' where doubtless, in the severe and
gloomy religious practices of that terrible penitentiary, he atoned for
his past enormities.
(68) 'Refexions sur l'Homme.'
'Till near the commencement of the present century the favourite game
was Faro, and as it was a decided advantage to hold the Bank, masters
and mistresses, less scrupulous than Wilberforce, frequently volunteered
to fleece and amuse the company. But scandal having made busy with the
names of some of them, it became usual to hire a professed gamester at
five or ten guineas a night, to set up a table for the evening, just as
any operatic professional might now-a-days be hired for a concert, or a
band-master for a ball.
'Faro gradually dropped out of fashion; Macao took its place; Hazard was
never wanting; and Whist began to be played for stakes which would have
satisfied Fox himself, who, though it was calculated that he might have
netted four or five thousand a year by games of skill, complained that
they afforded no excitement.
'Wattier's Club, in Piccadilly, was the resort of the Macao players. It
was kept by an old _maitre d'hotel_ of George IV., a character in
his way, who took a just pride in the cookery and wines of his
establishment.
'All the brilliant stars of fashion (and fashion was power then)
frequented Wattier's, with Beau Brummell for their sun. 'Poor Brummell,
dead, in misery and idiotcy, at Caen! and I remember him in all his
glory, cutting his jokes after the opera, at White's, in a black velvet
great-coat, and a cocked hat on his well-powdered head.
'Nearly the same turn of reflection is suggested as we run over the
names of his associates. Almost all of them were ruined--three out
of four irretrievably. Indeed, it was the forced expatriation of its
supporters that caused the club to be broken up.
'During the same period (from 1810 to 1815 or thereabouts) there was a
great deal of high play at White's and Brookes', particularly at Whist.
At Brookes' figured some remarkable characters--as Tippoo Smith, by
common consent the best Whist-player of his day; and an old gentleman
nicknamed Neptune, from his having once flung himself into the sea in
a fit of despair at being, as he thought, ruined. He was fished out in
time, found he was not ruined, and played on during the remainder of his
life.
'The most distinguished player at White's was the nobleman who was
presented at the Salons in Paris as Le Wellington des Joueurs (Lord
Rivers); and he richly merited the name, if skill, temper, and the most
daring courage are titles to it. The greatest genius, however, is not
infallible. He once lost three thousand four hundred pounds at Whist by
not remembering that the seven of hearts was in! He played at Hazard for
the highest stakes that any one could be got to play for with him, and
at one time was supposed to have won nearly a hundred thousand pounds;
but _IT ALL WENT_, along with a great deal more, at Crockford's.
'There was also a great deal of play at Graham's, the Union, the Cocoa
Tree, and other clubs of the second order in point of fashion. Here
large sums were hazarded with equal rashness, and remarkable characters
started up. Among the most conspicuous was the late Colonel Aubrey, who
literally passed his life at play. He did nothing else, morning, noon,
and night; and it was computed that he had paid more than sixty thousand
pounds for card-money. He was a very fine player at all games, and a
shrewd, clever man. He had been twice to India and made two fortunes.
It was said that he lost the first on his way home, transferred himself
from one ship to another without landing, went back, and made the
second. His life was a continual alternation between poverty and
wealth; and he used to say, the greatest pleasure in life is winning at
cards--the next greatest, losing!
'For several years deep play went on at all these clubs, fluctuating
both as to amount and locality, till by degrees it began to flag. It had
got to a low ebb when Mr Crockford came to London and established the
celebrated club which bore his name.
'Some good was certainly produced by the system. In the first place,
private gambling (between gentleman and gentleman), with its degrading
incidents, is at an end. In the second place, this very circumstance
brings the worst part of the practice within the reach of the law.
Public gambling, which only existed by and through what were popularly
termed _hells_, might be easily suppressed. There were, in 1844, more
than twenty of these establishments in Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and St
James's, called into existence by Crockford's success.'(69)
(69) Private MS. (Edinburgh Review, vol. LXXX).
Whilst such was the state of things among the aristocracy and those
who were able to consort with them, it seems that the lower orders were
pursuing 'private gambling,' in their 'ungenteel' fashion, to a very sad
extent. In 1834 a writer in the 'Quarterly' speaks as follows:--
'Doncaster, Epsom, Ascot, and Warwick, and most of our numerous
race-grounds and race-towns, are scenes of destructive and universal
gambling among the lower orders, which our absurdly lax police never
attempt to suppress; and yet, without the slightest approach to an
improperly harsh interference with the pleasures of the people, the
Roulette and E.O. tables, which plunder the peasantry at these places
for the benefit of travelling sharpers (certainly equally respectable
with some bipeds of prey who drive coroneted cabs near St James's),
might be put down by any watchful magistrate.'(70)
(70) Quarterly Review, vol. LII.
I fear that something similar may be suggested at the present day, as to
the same notorious localities.
Mr Sala, writing some years ago on gambling in England, said:--
'The passion for gambling is, I believe, innate; but there is, happily,
a very small percentage of the population who are born with a propensity
for high play. We are speculative and eagerly commercial; but it is rare
to discover among us that inveterate love for gambling, as gambling,
which you may find among the Italians, the South American Spaniards, the
Russians, and the Poles. Moro, Baccara, Tchuka--these are games at which
continental peasants will wager and lose their little fields, their
standing crops, their harvest in embryo, their very wives even. The
Americans surpass us in the ardour of their propitiation of the gambling
goddess, and on board the Mississippi steamboats, an enchanting game,
called _Poker_, is played with a delirium of excitement, whose intensity
can only be imagined by realizing that famous bout at "catch him who
can," which took place at the horticultural _fete_ immortalized by Mr
Samuel Foote, comedian, at which was present the great _Panjandrum_
himself, with the little round button at top, the festivities continuing
till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of the company's boots.
'When I was a boy, not so very long--say twenty years--since, the
West-end of London swarmed with illicit gambling houses, known by a name
I will not offend your ears by repeating.
On every race-course there was a public gambling booth and an abundance
of thimble-riggers' stalls. These, I am happy to state, exist no longer;
and the fools who are always ready to be plucked, can only, in gambling,
fall victims to the commonest and coarsest of swindlers; skittle sharps,
beer-house rogues and sharpers, and knaves who travel to entrap the
unwary in railway carriages with loaded dice, marked cards, and little
squares of green baize for tables, and against whom the authorities of
the railway companies very properly warn their passengers. A notorious
gambling house in St James's Street--Crockford's,--where it may be said,
without exaggeration, that millions of pounds sterling have been diced
away by the fools of fashion, is now one of the most sumptuous and
best conducted dining establishments in London--the "Wellington." The
semipatrician Hades that were to be found in the purlieus of St James's,
such as the "Cocoa Tree," the "Berkeley," and the "stick-shop," at
the corner of Albemarle Street--a whole Pandemonium of rosewood
and plate-glass dens--never recovered from a razzia made on them
simultaneously one night by the police, who were organized on a plan of
military tactics, and under the command of Inspector Beresford; and at
a concerted signal assailed the portals of the infamous places with
sledge-hammers. At the time to which I refer, in Paris, the Palais
Royal, and the environs of the Boulevards des Italiens, abounded with
magnificent gambling rooms similar to those still in existence in
Hombourg, which were regularly licensed by the police, and farmed under
the municipality of the Ville de Paris; a handsome per-centage of the
iniquitous profits being paid towards the charitable institutions of
the French metropolis. There are very many notabilities of the French
Imperial Court, who were then _fermiers des jeux_, or gambling house
contractors; and only a year or two since Doctor Louis Veron, ex-dealer
in quack medicines, ex-manager of the Grand Opera, and ex-proprietor
of the "Constitutionnel" newspaper, offered an enormous royalty to
Government for the privilege of establishing a gambling house in
Paris. But the Emperor Napoleon--all ex-member of Crockford's as he
is--sensibly declined the tempting bait. A similarly "generous" offer
was made last year to the Belgian Government by a joint-stock company
who wanted to establish public gaming tables at the watering-places of
Ostend, and who offered to establish an hospital from their profits; but
King Leopold, the astute proprietor of Claremont, was as prudent as his
Imperial cousin of France, and refused to soil his hands with cogged
dice.
The lease of the Paris authorized gaming houses expired in 1836-7;
and the municipality, albeit loath to lose the fat annual revenue, was
induced by governmental pressure not to renew it; and it is asserted
that from that moment the number of annual suicides in Paris very
sensibly decreased. "It is not generally known," as the penny-a-liners
say, "that the Rev. Caleb Colton, a clergyman of the Church of England,
and the author of "Lacon," a book replete with aphoristic wisdom, blew
his brains out in the forest of St Germains, after ruinous losses at
Frascati's, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu and the Boulevards, one
of the most noted of the _Maisons des Jeux_, and which was afterwards
turned into a _restaurant_, and is now a shawl-shop.(71) Just before the
revolution of 1848, nearly all the watering-places in the Prusso-Rhenane
provinces, and in Bavaria, and Hesse, Nassau, and Baden, contained
Kursaals, where gambling was openly carried on. These existed at
Aix-la-Chapelle, Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, Ems, Kissengen, and at Spa,
close to the Prussian frontier, in Belgium. It is due to the fierce
democrats who revolted against the monarchs of the defunct Holy
Alliance, to say that they utterly swept away the gambling-tables in
Rhenish-Prussia, and in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Herr Hecker, of
the red republican tendencies, and the astounding wide-awake hat,
particularly distinguished himself in the latter place by his
iconoclastic animosity to _Roulette_ and _Rouge et Noir_. When dynastic
"order" was restored the Rhine gaming tables were re-established. The
Prussian Government, much to its honour, has since shut up the
gambling houses at that resort for decayed nobility and ruined livers,
Aix-la-Chapelle. A motion was made in the Federal Diet, sitting at
Frankfort, to constrain the smaller governments, in the interest of
the Germanic good name generally, to close their _tripots_, and in some
measure the Federal authorities succeeded. The only existing continental
gaming houses authorized by government are now the two Badens, Spa (of
which the lease is nearly expired, and will not be renewed), Monaco
(capital of the ridiculous little Italian principality, of which the
suzerain is a scion of the house of "Grimaldi"), Malmoe, in Sweden,
too remote to do much harm, and HOMBOURG. This last still flourishes
greatly, and I am afraid is likely to flourish, though happily in
isolation; for, as I have before remarked, the "concession" or privilege
of the place has been guaranteed for a long period of years to come by
the expectant dynasty of Hesse-Darmstadt. "_C'est fait_," "It is all
settled," said the host of the Hotel de France to me, rubbing his hands
exultingly when I mentioned the matter. But, _Quis custodiet custodes?_
Hesse-Darmstadt has guaranteed the "administration of Hesse-Hombourg,
but who is to guarantee Hesse-Darmstadt? A battalion of French infantry
would, it seems to me, make short work of H. D., lease guarantees,
Federal contingent, and all. I must mention, in conclusion, that within
a very few years we had, if we have not still, a licensed gaming house
in our exquisitely moral British dominions. This was in that remarkably
"tight little island" at the mouth of the Elbe, Heligoland, which we so
queerly possess--Puffendorf, Grotius, and Vattel, or any other writers
on the _Jus gentium_, would be puzzled to tell why, or by what right. I
was at Hamburg in the autumn of 1856, crossed over to Heligoland one day
on a pleasure trip, and lost some money there, at a miniature _Roulette_
table, much frequented by joyous Israelites from the mainland, and
English "soldier officers" in mufti. I did not lose much of my temper,
however, for the odd, quaint little place pleased me. Not so another
Roman citizen, or English travelling gent., who losing, perhaps,
seven-and-sixpence, wrote a furious letter to the "Times," complaining
of such horrors existing under the British flag, desecration of the
English name, and so forth. Next week the lieutenant-governor,
by "order," put an end to _Roulette_ at Heligoland; but play on a
diminutive scale has since, I have been given to understand, recommenced
there without molestation.
(71) Mr Sala is here in error. Colton was a prosperous gambler
throughout, and committed suicide to avoid a surgical operation. A
notice of the Rev. C. Colton will be found in the sequel.
'We gamble in England at the Stock Exchange, we gamble on horse-races
all the year round; but there is something more than the mere
eventuality of a chance that prompts us to the _enjeu;_ there is
mixed up with our eagerness for the stakes the most varied elements
of business and pleasure; cash-books, ledgers, divident-warrants,
indignation meetings of Venezuelan bond-holders, coupons, cases of
champagne, satin-skinned horses with plaited manes, grand stands, pretty
faces, bright flags, lobster salads, cold lamb, fortune-telling gipsies,
barouches-and-four, and "our Aunt Sally." High play is still rife in
some aristocratic clubs; there are prosperous gentlemen who wear clean
linen every day, and whose names are still in the Army List, who make
their five or six hundred a year by Whist-playing, and have nothing else
to live upon; in East-end coffee-shops, sallow-faced Jew boys, itinerant
Sclavonic jewellers, and brawny German sugar-bakers, with sticky
hands, may be found glozing and wrangling over their beloved cards and
dominoes, and screaming with excitement at the loss of a few pence.
There are yet some occult nooks and corners, nestling in unsavoury
localities, on passing which the policeman, even in broad daylight,
cannot refrain from turning his head a little backwards--as though
some bedevilments must necessarily be taking place directly he has
passed--where, in musty back parlours, by furtive lamplight, with doors
barred, bolted, and sheeted with iron, some wretched, cheating gambling
goes on at unholy hours. Chicken-hazard is scotched, not killed; but a
poor, weazened, etiolated biped is that once game-bird now. And there
is Doncaster, every year--Doncaster, with its subscription-rooms under
authority, winked at by a pious corporation, patronized by nobles and
gentlemen supporters of the turf, and who are good enough, sometimes, to
make laws for us plebeians in the Houses of Lords and Commons. There
is Doncaster, with policemen to keep order, and admit none but
"respectable" people--subscribers, who fear Heaven and honour the Queen.
Are you aware, my Lord Chief-Justice, are you aware, Mr Attorney, Mr
Solicitor-General, have you the slightest notion, ye Inspectors of
Police, that in the teeth of the law, and under its very eyes, a
shameless gaming-house exists in moral Yorkshire, throughout every
Doncaster St Leger race-week? Of course you haven't; never dreamed of
such a thing--never could, never would. Hie you, then, and prosecute
this wretched gang of betting-touts, congregating at the corner of Bride
Lane, Fleet Street; quick, lodge informations against this publican who
has suffered card-playing to take place, raffles, or St Leger sweeps to
be held in his house. "You have seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar,
and the creature run from the cur. There thou might'st behold the great
image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office." You have--very well.
Take crazy King Lear's words as a text for a sermon against legislative
inconsistencies, and come back with me to Hombourg Kursaal.'