under the name of the Direction, which is the closest of close
corporations. It is eminently impersonal too, nobody knowing the names
of, or, indeed anything about, its members. Of course, its stock, like
that of some of our gas companies and banks in New York, is not to be
had, and is never quoted. The directors pay a license to the petty
governments under which the tables are kept, and which are largely
sustained thereby. The license varies materially. At Baden it is about
seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and the Direction, in addition
thereto, pays all the expenses of the Conversationshaus, whatever
is required for the preservation and improvement of the adjoining
grounds and gardens, and makes many other outlays, which must increase
the total sum to fully one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. At
Homburg the license is some fifty thousand dollars, and, moreover,
the Direction of the Cursaal lights the little town, keeps it in good
condition, supports its hospital and other charitable institutions.
At Ems and Wiesbaden, the government tax—for that is what the license
really is—is about sixty thousand dollars for the former, and forty
thousand dollars for the latter place.
[Sidenote: CAPITAL OF THE BANKS.]
The capital of the Direction is set down at from two million to one
million five hundred thousand dollars, though I seriously question if
much more than one tenth of the sum has ever been paid in. The tables
usually clear from two hundred and fifty thousand to five hundred
thousand dollars annually; the profits being larger, of course, at
Baden than at Ems, and varying with the season, and the luck of the
bank. Not long ago, the Homburg bank was broken five times during
the year, and yet the Direction, even then, declared a dividend,
it is said, of nearly twenty-five per cent. on their capital. The
income from the stocks of the German gambling companies is reputed to
be enormous, and I have met men in many foreign countries who were
credited by rumor with owning such shares. They had no visible means
of support, and still they lived luxuriously, even prodigally, merely
because they had had the good fortune to secure a small amount of
stock in the Cursaal or Curhaus.
The limitations and the percentage at _roulette_ and _rouge-et-noir_
are seldom taken sufficiently into account by the _galerie_, as the
bettors are named. Those, in the long run, will beat anybody and
everybody, whatever run of luck they may have now and then. The games
are based on an ultimate certainty, almost mathematical, in favor
of the bank, and the prevalent notion that the players can have any
permanent advantage is simply absurd. The chances on the side of the
bank are so many, that, in a given time, it must inevitably win, and
win largely. All the systems by which the _galerie_ expect to triumph
are utterly false and deceptious. They have done more, by a certain
speciousness, to lead men to their ruin, than anything connected
with the passion for hazard. They invariably fail, because of the
limitations in bets, and the percentage in favor of the tables; but
the advocate of the system very seldom reckons upon these great
drawbacks. This class of men believe that will happen which they wish
to have happen, and are therefore incapable of clear perception of
anything opposed to their theories and desires.
[Sidenote: THE ODDS AGAINST BETTORS.]
The one adverse fact, above any other, to bettors generally is,
that they very seldom, if ever, play as recklessly when they are
winning as when they are losing. The reason is that, in the latter
circumstances, they are endeavoring to win back their stakes, and are
consequently in more or less desperate mood; while in the former case
they are satisfied with what comes to them, and not tempted constantly
to augment their bets for the sake of getting even. Irrational and
ridiculous as it appears, there certainly seems to be such a thing as
a run of luck, good or ill. We have all experienced this many times,
albeit we may express the phrase in other words. On certain days
things go wrong with us, and on certain other days they flow smoothly
and prosperously, though we are wholly unconscious, on any of the
days, of doing aught except our best to accomplish desired results.
Sitting down to a game of whist in the evening, we find we cannot get
a good hand, shuffle or change the cards as we may. The next evening,
or the next morning, high cards and trumps come to us at every deal,
as if some good genius had arranged the deal for us. What is this but
a run of luck? In gambling, as every gambler knows, men are constantly
having such runs. Whatever card or color you lay your stake on is
almost sure to win to-day, and to-morrow almost as sure to lose. When
you are fortunate, you make your ventures with at least a moderate
degree of prudence. When you are unfortunate, your only thought is to
get back the money you have parted with, and you keep doubling your
stakes in the hope of achieving your purpose, instead of quitting the
table, as you ought, when you plainly discover that fate is against
you; or, in other words, that some mysterious and incomprehensible
influence thwarts your every purpose.
[Sidenote: SUPERSTITION OF GAMBLERS.]
Such inexplicable agencies or influences render gamesters
superstitious. Having seen the tribe in almost every part of
the world, I have always found them more or less tinctured with
superstition. No amount of facts or arguments will drive it out of
them, for by long indulgence it has grown to be next to an instinct.
They have implicit faith in luck of every kind—in lucky days, lucky
circumstances, lucky persons, lucky influences. Sometimes they will
not bet themselves, but will ask others to bet for them. Something
occurs in the morning which they interpret as a warning, and for
the remainder of the twenty-four hours they will not touch a card
or lay a wager. At the German baths this peculiarity is frequently
observed. A man in luck is pestered to bet for others, and is offered
a percentage if he will do so. This or that person is regarded as
unlucky, and a patron of the green cloth will not stand on the same
side of the table with him. A passing cloud, a chance-dropped phrase,
a change of position, or any one of a thousand nothings, will induce
a professional gamester to make, or prevent him from making, risks,
concerning which he has ordinarily no prejudice. The folly of play
is much surpassed by the folly of players, who become so permeated
with fancies, theories, and fanaticisms, that on the subject they
are specially interested in they are positively monomaniacs. I
have talked with old habitués of Homburg and Wiesbaden respecting
chances, coincidences, and systems, until I have discovered that
long attendance on and close watching of the treacherous tables had
absolutely turned their brains. They thought they were the shrewdest
and most sagacious of mortals, and pitied me supremely, because I
happened to have a little common sense in regard to _roulette_ and
_rouge-et-noir_, and because I would not believe that mere chance
should be treated as if it were a positive science.
No one can form any adequate conception of the mental vagaries,
bordering upon lunacy, of professional gamesters, until he has spent
several seasons at the German spas, and become intimately acquainted
with the men and women composing the _galerie_. Their entire conduct
is regulated by a desire to obtain luck. They strive to propitiate
fortune, as if it were, as the ancients believed, a personal agency,
subject to unaccountable whims and caprices. Many of their acts of
charity are done not so much from benevolence as from a notion that it
will influence favorably the issues of the games to which they are so
wedded. This is true not only of gamesters abroad, but of gamesters
everywhere. As a rule, they are far from intellectual, and hence
superstition meets with little resisting power when it has once begun
to encroach upon their understanding.
[Sidenote: DIFFERENT MOTIVES FOR PLAY.]
There are not only different classes of players, but players from
different motives. The object of the majority is merely mercenary:
they frequent the tables only to win money; they make hazard a
business, foolishly hoping to reduce it to something like a rule.
Other habitués of the springs bet for excitement, as they drink wine
and seek adventures. They are not avaricious. When they win largely,
they spend freely; and at the end of every season, whatever their
success, they are much behind the game. The members of the third order
are sufferers from ennui, and regard _roulette_ and _rouge-et-noir_
simply as a pastime. They have formed the habit of playing, and cannot
break it. Their stakes are small, generally; but they are devoted to
the tables, sitting there from eleven in the morning to eleven at
night,—the fixed time for the perilous sport,—and frequently do not
win twenty florins a week. A number of persons play because it is the
fashion, though they do not continue it long, for the same reason. The
game proves so magnetic that they either feel it a duty to abandon it
altogether, or they are drawn into it, and are very soon too weak to
resist its fascinations.
Very many, who have begun in the spirit of imitation, have grown to
be confirmed gamblers. One of the most infatuated players I have
ever known was a Spaniard, who went to Homburg to get rid of the
rheumatism, and who, after three seasons of abstinence, put down a
single napoleon, simply because he did not wish to seem odd. The
risking of that little coin has since cost him a small fortune; and if
he were to live a thousand years,—as he told me himself,—he could not
be near _rouge-et-noir_ without taking part in it.
[Sidenote: DIVERS NATIONALITIES AS GAMESTERS.]
America, or rather the United States, is more puritanic than other
countries. Gambling is regarded here quite differently from what it is
in Europe. Even our transpontine cousins, the English, are much more
addicted than we to play. They never have social whist parties without
betting at least enough to create an interest. The Germans, unless in
prosperous circumstances, are preserved from the habit of gambling
by their constitutional economy and thrift. The Latin nations have
a natural fondness for whatever turns upon chance. Of these people,
the Spaniards enjoy gambling most, and the French least, while the
Italians are but little behind the Spaniards in this particular. It
is safe to say that all three, hearing the spinning of the _roulette_
wheel, and the clinking of coin at _rouge-et-noir_, could not long
be kept from the seductive tables. The Russians—those who travel, at
least—love the green cloth, and figure prominently among its devotees.
Most of them have money, and are such ardent pleasure-seekers, at the
same time possessed of something like an American vanity for spending
and making display, that they rarely fail to participate in any
dissipation which offers.
[Sidenote: VIRTUES OF THE WATERS.]
It must not be supposed that all the frequenters of the spas indulge
in play; for many of them go there for recreation, and merely look
at the games. Then, as I have remarked, thousands visit the springs
for the benefit of the waters. That they have medical virtues cannot
be well questioned, after one is told, as I have been told, of
extraordinary cures by those who have been sufferers. Ordinarily, a
casual visitor, who rises late, sees very little of the invalids;
but if he has a liking for early morning air, and bends his steps
towards the pump-room (_Trinkhalle_), he will encounter men and women
afflicted with every variety of disease. He will observe them also
on their way to and from the baths,—young and old, dark and fair,
rich and poor, handsome and homely, cultivated and coarse, graceful
and awkward,—all in quest of the invaluable boon, which we never
appreciate until it has slipped away. There is something melancholy,
as well as grotesque, in the moving panorama of the distempered.
They walk with canes and crutches, are carried in invalid chairs or
wagons, and look so wan and rueful that I have often felt prompted to
apostrophize health as the sum of all blessings. There are young and
fair women, fragile from their birth, for whom there is not an atom of
hope, and who yet believe they may find some miraculous cure in the
baths for lack of constitution, and for inherited disease. The _bon
vivant_, peevish and irritable from the gout, limps along, and the
overworked man of brains, paralyzed on one side, is wheeled over the
pavement by the stupid lackey, unconscious that he is the possessor
of nerves or a stomach. The dyspeptic—of course an American—glowers
on everybody as he passes, but appears to hate no one as much as
himself. After having fancied himself cursed with every disease, and
after consulting physicians of the highest grade on both sides of
the Atlantic, he has come to Ems to test the virtue of the baths.
They have done him no good, for he will not be prudent either in his
diet or his habits; and he will go home with his mind made up that
all medicinal springs are humbugs. He is unaware that the cause of
his ailment is dyspepsia, and that it has gotten into his mind. On
Monday, he thinks he has consumption; on Tuesday, he fancies it is
liver complaint; on Wednesday, he is sure his kidneys are deranged;
on Thursday, no one can convince him that he is not suffering from
enlargement of the heart; on Friday, he declares he has the marasmus;
on Saturday, he swears nothing was the matter with him originally,
but that the infernal physicians have poisoned him; and on Sunday, he
contemplates suicide as a means of relief. The poor man is the victim
of bad cooking, for which our country is famous, and his excessive
haste in eating. If he had been born in France, and taken his meals at
the Paris restaurants, he would be to-day one of the most contented,
instead of the most miserable of men. Talk as we may, digestion is the
foundation of human happiness, and will keep us on good terms with
ourselves when an unsullied conscience and troops of friends are of no
avail.
[Sidenote: HYPOCHONDRIACS.]
Hypochondriacs are to be met at the celebrated baths, of course; for
wherever there are disordered bodies there are disordered minds. No
human creature is so ill as he or she who imagines an illness, since
the subtlest art of healing cannot reach the shadows of emptiness. I
remember an Englishman at Homburg, one of the most robust of fellows,
who, after quitting college, had begun reading medical works only to
convince himself that he had some deep-seated disease. His belief
stimulated his appetite for information. He pored over all the
pathological treatises he could find, and every week fancied that he
had some new ailment. He travelled everywhere, swallowed entire drug
stores, visited every watering-place in civilization. He had been
nearly twenty years in pursuit of the health he had never lost, when
I made his acquaintance at the Quatre Saisons. Happening to touch
on the subject of hygiene, I set him off upon countless theories,
and upon the bitterest denunciation of physicians. He informed me
confidentially that he had a serpent in his stomach, and that he felt
it every day gnawing his vitals. He felt sure that he had swallowed it
in an embryo state, years before, in India, and that he would never
be well until the reptile was by some means expelled. He was a man
of ruddy complexion, and of nearly two hundred pounds avoirdupois,
which induced me to tell him that serpents must agree with him, and
that, if he could swallow four or five more, he would live a thousand
years. He assured me he could not be mistaken, and that he had hope
that the water of a certain spring would insure his recovery. After
tasting of that particular spring, I expressed my conviction that no
well-regulated snake would endure being deluged by such an obnoxious
liquid day after day, and that his frequent draughts, without any
result, proved conclusively that the reptile was in his mind, and not
in his stomach. This style of bantering seemed to please him, and
when I made it clear to him that I was not a professional physician,
he was willing to follow my advice. I urged him to give up doctors
and medicines of every sort; to take a great deal of exercise, and to
cease thinking of himself as a valetudinarian. He promised to follow
my prescription for six months, and the ensuing winter I met him again
in Naples, a radically changed man. He had cleared his brain of all
its cobwebs, and thanked me heartily for the sagacious course I had
recommended. “I am delighted to know,” he added, “that you are not a
physician, for if you were, you couldn’t help being a fool.”
[Sidenote: STOUT WOMEN.]
The stout women on the shady side of life who visit the springs under
the impression that they are ailing are extremely amusing. They
must know they are shams; but they imagine that it is genteel and
attractive to be delicate; and so, notwithstanding their excellent
appetite and liberal proportions, they insist they are going into
decline, when their chief danger is from apoplexy. They will entertain
you by the hour with their lack of appetite, their loss of sleep, and
their extreme fragility. You may credit their story unless you happen
to see them at dinner, or hear them sleeping audibly on the sofa soon
after, or find them performing social duties which would tire out
Samson.
L.
GAMING AND GAMESTERS ABROAD.
FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC SUMMER RESORTS.—THE ADVANTAGE OF
THE FORMER.—MYSTERIOUS CHARACTERS.—A TRIO OF CELEBRATED
GAMESTERS.—THEIR EXTRAORDINARY HISTORY.—TRAGIC FATE OF A YOUNG
RUSSIAN OFFICER.—TEMPTATION, DESPAIR, AND SUICIDE OF A BEAUTIFUL
ENGLISH GIRL.—A LUCKY BANKER’S CLERK.—A HUNGARIAN HANGING HIMSELF
FOR A WARNING.—ECCENTRICITIES OF CROUPIERS.—A CALM-BLOODED
HOLLANDER.—THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET.—ROSE-STREWN ROADS TO RUIN.
For mere recreation and pleasure the foreign watering-places have
great advantages over those at home. Saratoga cannot be compared
to Baden any more than Long Branch to Biarritz. The promenades and
promenaders beyond the sea have far more pleasantness and variety; the
scenery is more picturesque, and the general comfort and satisfaction
immeasurably greater. There is much less of that desire of one to
outdo the other, much less feverish unrest, much less ambition and
anxiety for display. Each person lives according to his or her means;
has no heart-burnings or envy on account of people in more fortunate
circumstances. The gardens of the spas are delightful, and when the
bands play, as they do at stated intervals, and the fountains flash
in the sunbeams or the moonlight, and the gay throng passes to and
fro, and easy prattle is interspersed with merriment and laughter, all
the externals for enjoyment are furnished. The promenades, like the
gaming saloons, are as a gay masquerade. On them and in them are men
and women of every grade, and they all mingle together, though without
recognition, as a well-dressed and well-bred democracy. Balls and
concerts are given every week; and these, with dining, and wining,
and driving, and flirting, and the countless follies and jollities
of fashionable life, make the season pass swiftly in one round of
delicate dissipation and refined revelry. Such extremes and excesses
as we have are not observable there. The social tone is more elegant,
although a fairer outside may conceal darker and deeper deeps. To an
observer and student of human nature, the German spas are certainly
more attractive and retentive than our own summer resorts. They do not
weary you after a few days, or weeks at most, but draw you back to
them year after year with a freshness of flavor and the spice of a new
zest.
[Sidenote: MYSTERIOUS CHARACTERS.]
This continuity of charm is shown by the large number of regular
habitués which each of the four springs has. I have met at Baden and
Wiesbaden elderly couples who had been coming there since their early
marriage, and who regarded the places and the play as indispensable
to their contentment. You see there, season after season, mysterious
characters that you never see anywhere else,—men apparently wealthy,
with fine manners and a grand air, who, for aught you know to the
contrary, may be pirates or highwaymen. Eccentric women flock
there, too, about whom there are endless rumors, but no authentic
information. They may be duchesses or demi-mondists, actresses or
adventuresses, leaders of the ton or ladies of the sidewalk. So long
as they conduct themselves properly, no one cares to inquire who they
are or whence they come. The atmosphere of the Taunus and the Black
Forest is free, and not a taint of Puritanism is in it. They whose
position is fixed are so much assured thereof that they do not fear
any passing wind which may blow between them and their nobility.
[Illustration: GAMBLING SALOON AT BADEN.]
[Sidenote: REMARKABLE ADVENTURESSES.]
One of the oldest known frequenters of Homburg is the Countess
Kisselef, the former wife of the Russian minister to Rome. She has
never missed a season for forty years, and recently she has been a
permanent resident of the little capital. She must be seventy now;
is so broken in health, and infirm of body, that she is forced to
hobble about with a cane and a crutch. Age and debility have not,
however, lessened her passion for roulette, the only game she
plays. Her passion for it is ineradicable, and the story is, that
her husband long ago separated from her because she would not give
up gambling, to which she devoted the greater part of her income.
Having married her, it is said, for her fortune,—originally several
millions of roubles,—he was angry that she should risk at the tables
what he wished to use for himself. Her losses are reported to have
been immense,—I have heard them estimated at a million and a half
of dollars,—and yet she has quite enough left to enable her to bet
freely in the Cursaal. Her gray hair, aquiline nose, sharp chin, and
large and crippled figure are familiar to everybody. She is usually
one of the first persons seated at the table, and some minutes before
eleven o’clock you may see her helped into the room by the lackeys, or
some of her own servants. She occupies a particular chair, and she is
always in it, except when she goes to dinner and to sleep; taking no
rest even on Sunday, when the game is generally more animated than on
any other day.
The countess is very much attached to Homburg, where she has put up
many handsome buildings, opened several new streets, and in many ways
contributed to its improvement. Exceedingly homely as she is now,—she
reminds me of a feminine grenadier wounded in different campaigns,—she
is reputed to have been beautiful once, and to have been a fascinating
and dangerous coquette. Such tales are told of nearly all women known
in society who are noticeably ugly and obese. I can’t believe that
the Countess Kisselef could ever have been charming. I should sooner
expect her to break the bank at Homburg ten times a day in her present
old age, than think it possible for her to have broken a masculine
heart in all the freshness of her youth. A woman of her form and
feature might be formidable as a foe, but never perilous as a friend.
The aged countess has had her obituary written several times, but she
was still alive, and still watching the ivory ball, the last season,
and will be, I am sure, for many seasons to come. [The gambling tables
were closed last year because the license expired with 1872, and the
countess can hardly survive. Roulette has so long been her sustenance
that she must perish if deprived of it for many seasons.]
[Sidenote: A FORTUNATE WOMAN.]