UNDER SOUTHERN SKIES
For the gambler and the cocotte, the Riviera means merely Monte Carlo.
The gambler is drawn by the lure of the green tables in the splendid
Casino. The cocotte goes where the money-spending crowd is to be
found, where she may show her frocks and her jewels and her beauty,
where recklessness and extravagance and excitement are in the air. She
gambles, too, carelessly or cannily, according to her temperament, and
she loves to make a sensation on the terrace, in the Café de Paris, at
Ciro's, or best of all in the Casino, where the apparition that draws
attention from the piles of money on the green felt must be startling
indeed.
Incidentally she acknowledges that there are wonderful views and
dazzling sunshine and invigorating air outside the brilliantly lighted,
over-heated Casino, and that these things contribute to her enjoyment;
but she is not an ardent nature lover, this Parisienne, and she would
find the Riviera deadly dull without the life that centres round the
gaming tables.
Even the residential element and the smart hotel set of aristocratic
Cannes and Anglo-American Nice, of Cap Martin and Beaulieu and Cimiez
and Mentone, feel the fascination of M. Blanc's earthly paradise upon
the Monaco promontory and spend considerable time there in the course
of the season; but for this class the social season is as important as
the gambling, and Monte Carlo is but a single feature of the Riviera
scheme.
It has been said that Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo represent,
respectively, the world, the flesh, and the devil; and the
classification is roughly accurate. Cannes has the most exclusive
social life along the coast; its villas are occupied by folk whose
names rank high in the social blue-books of the European capitals;
the registers of its hotels bristle with sounding titles and its
swell clubs have membership lists calculated to impress anyone who
loves a lord. The Napoule Golf Club at Cannes has a Russian Grand
Duke for president and an English Duke for vice-president; and, on
the links, counts and barons, belted earls and multi-millionaires,
are thick as leaves in Vallambrosa. Even princes and potentates drive
off the tees and struggle in the bunkers. One sees rather more of
London than of Paris in the crowd, but there are Parisians, too,
and they are even more English than the English in their sporting
proclivities, for fashion is a more aggressive thing than nature.
The whole atmosphere is English at Napoule. From the architecture
of the picturesque timbered club-house to the h's of the servants,
everything has a fine British flavour, and save for the frocks of the
women and the fluent Parisian French dividing honours with English on
the links and in the club-house, there is little to remind the guest
that he is in France.
Down in the town, and along the famous Promenade de la Croisette,
there is a different story. Here, too, a large percentage of the
fashionable crowd is English, but the setting is French where it is
not Italian. The Croisette, the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, the
terrace at Monte Carlo, are three of the most beautiful, the most
fashionable, the most amusing promenades in the world, and the idler
may spend many profitable hours upon any one of the three; but each has
its distinctive flavour just as each of the three towns has its own
local colour and its own crowd, though all share alike in the sparkling
beauty of the Riviera summer land.
Yachting is an institution even more important than golf in the
programme of Cannes. The Cercle Nautique, one of the chief rendezvous
for the society set, is exclusive to the last degree, and out in
the beautiful harbour splendid sea-going yachts from all parts of
Europe and from America are anchored during the season. Some of the
yacht owners prefer living in hotels or villas during their sojourn
and use the boats for cruising only; but more live aboard their
floating palaces, and there is constant going and coming twixt yachts
and _quai_, to the immense entertainment of outsiders who get no
nearer than this to the social life at Cannes. Carriages roll up
to the landing and deposit wonderfully gowned women and men whose
names are whispered knowingly by the watching throng. Launches are
waiting to receive the load of fashion and celebrity. There is a
tableau of coquetry and chiffons, a shuffling of royal highnesses and
wealthy commoners, and the little boats move off toward the yacht,
where luncheon will be served on deck under the awnings, to the
accompaniment of tinkling mandolins and guitars.
There are worse things even for royalty than to sit at a violet-strewn
table under awnings that flap in the soft sea breeze of a sunshiny
February day, and, in the intervals of a luncheon prepared by an artist
for an epicure, to look off across dimpling blue water to a curving
white line of shore where promenaders make bright impressionistic
dashes of colour in the sunlight, and to the grove-embowered villas,
the imposing, many-pillared hotels, the mediæval little villages that
climb the verdure-clad mountains behind the town.
Cannes is lovely,--far lovelier than Nice in its natural scenery, but
Cannes is cold to tourists, dull for those who have not the open sesame
to its charmed social circle. The ordinary visitor will find Nice far
more gay. Here, too, there is an exclusive villa and hotel set, but
it does not dominate the situation as at Cannes. There is welcome
and entertainment for everyone at Nice. On the Promenade des Anglais
stroll men and women from all countries and all classes, and queer
groups collect at "la potinière," the gossip rendezvous which ends the
promenade. The new town with its public parks, its fascinating shops,
its luxurious hotels and modest hostelries, its gorgeous restaurants
and its cheap eating-places, its clubs, its gambling, its flower
markets, its tide of restless pleasure seekers, is as gay a place as
the world holds when the Riviera season is at its height, and though
one may live there cheaply or extravagantly, it would be difficult to
live there dully, unless one were a hardened misanthrope; for all
things woo to pleasant folly, and jollity is in the air.
To stroll from one's hotel to the famous promenade on a bright morning
is to snap one's fingers at carking care. The sunshine is such fluid
gold as no northern country knows, the air is fresh, intoxicating, full
of warring sea scents and flower perfumes, a sky wonderfully soft,
deeply blue is overhead, the Mediterranean is a marvellous changing
sea of turquoise and sapphire and amethyst and beryl, with here and
there high golden lights where the sun catches a ripple of foam. Boys
and girls hold out great handfuls of big, long-stemmed purple violets
to you and the fragrance comes sweet and heavy to your nostrils. Women
in light summer frocks stroll along the broad white walk, stopping to
chat with friends; on the roadway which the promenade borders, roll
luxurious private carriages, smart dog-carts, hired fiacres, hotel
wagons, all loaded with smiling folk, for one smiles perforce in this
world of sunshine and flowers and laughter.
On the inland side of the roadway is a line of hotels and villas and
cafés and shops, with tropical gardens breaking the line of gleaming
white buildings; and in those shops one may find the best that European
merchants have to offer to extravagant womankind; for the famous
jewellers and milliners and dressmakers of Paris, London, and Vienna
have branch establishments here, and the proprietors of the great
houses often spend the season in villas at Nice or Monte Carlo and
oversee in person their lively Riviera trade.
[Illustration: The Palace of Folly--Monte Carlo]
Paquin, Beer, Doeuillet, and their peers are familiar figures at Nice
and Monte Carlo; and these mighty ones of the fashion world may well
feel, with a glow of satisfaction, that they are responsible for much
of the glittering show that passes in review under their critical eyes.
Nice is not given over wholly to fresh air and promenading.
Down in the Casino of the jetty, a pavilion of many minarets which
opens off from the promenade and under whose foundations the sea washes
listlessly, there is gambling--trente et quarante, roulette, and, in
the more exclusive club-rooms to which one is admitted only by card,
baccarat; but gambling is an incident at Nice. All things save gambling
are incidental at Monte Carlo, and while a host of folk live in Nice
without playing at the jetty Casino or the municipal Casino, but few
visitors to Monte Carlo resist the fascination of the gaming tables.
There is always a crowd at the jetty Casino after luncheon, lounging,
gossiping, gaming, listening to the excellent orchestra; and the crowd
about the gambling tables is the mixed and motley crowd one always
finds in such a situation, but there are fewer smart folk at the trente
et quarante and roulette tables than one sees at corresponding tables
in Monte Carlo. The fashionables of Nice choose the baccarat club-rooms
for their rendezvous, and it is there that you must go to see modish
women and well-known men gossiping, flirting, and playing high.
There is a popular restaurant adjoining the gambling rooms,--a
gorgeous restaurant, brilliant with scarlet lacquer and Chinese
decorations, though chop suey is not on the menu,--and many of the
baccarat players dine or sup there; but there are so many places in
which to lunch or dine or sup in Nice that one may find a meal to suit
any palate, and a price to suit any purse.
The Helder has the same proprietor as Armenonville and the Café de
Paris, and much the same crowd. The Regence is the Helder's great
rival, and after these comes a long line of town restaurants, each with
its individual claim upon the diner's attention, while out on the hills
and all along the coast are famous hotel restaurants and cafés to which
the gay Nicois resort.
There is tea-drinking, too, and the places where women flock at the tea
hour are many, but while my lady of aristocratic Cannes is likely to
drink her tea at the Cercle Nautique or in some other exclusive haunt,
Madame of Nice frequents tea-rooms such as those of Paris; and tea hour
at a place like Vogades offers an interesting study in femininity,
though the crowd is frightfully mixed and, sometimes, unconscionably
gay.
It is during carnival time that gaiety becomes a trifle furious at
Vogades. The regular winter visitors and residents of Nice frown upon
King Carnival and dread his advent; but for the transient visitor the
show is an amusing one and the common folk of Nice throw themselves
into the celebration with a gay abandon that sometimes approaches
objectionable license. Who cares whether a few fastidious critics
are holding aloof from carnival gaieties when ninety per cent of the
motley populace of Nice is eating, drinking, dancing, and making
merry, when fun and folly are running riot, when all the town is ablaze
with garlands of electric lights and artificial flowers, when confetti
is raining through the air and grotesque figures fill the streets.
Vulgar, of course. All carnivals are vulgar and the line between mirth
and horse-play is easily crossed, but it is a pity not to see the
carnival at Nice at least once, and not to enter into the spirit of
the thing, without a handicap of aristocratic prejudices. The age of
spontaneous mummery is past and carnival foolery has a strained and
artificial note in this self-conscious day, but one may be merry in
Nice when King Carnival sits enthroned and a multitude, hiding its
irresponsibility behind masks, gives itself up to folly.
All through the season there are fêtes in Nice. The Battle of Flowers
is more like the real thing than is the Parisian imitation; the
Corso Automobile Fleuri brings out a brave array of flower-decorated
automobiles; the children's flower fête is the prettiest thing of its
kind in Europe; and there is a water fête in the bay of Villefranche,
where flower-decorated boats and floats loaded with musicians and
merry-makers swarm on the blue water, and flower battles rage amid
music and laughter and the murmur of the waves. Grim war-vessels are
usually lying in the harbour and the revellers row out to pelt the
monsters derisively with flowers and jests, and to aim violet bunches
impartially at the cannon's mouth and the ranking officer's head.
Yes, Nice is gay,--absurdly gay; and if, at its gayest, it is not
smart, still one will see the loveliest of Parisian toilettes in the
restaurants and the Casino, and on the promenade.
There are lovely villas in Nice, hidden away, even in the more
crowded parts of the town, among palms and aloes and banana trees and
eucalyptus, and gay with yellow mimosa and other flowering things while
behind the town on the hillsides are villas lovelier still, gleaming
white amid groves of orange and lemon trees and tropical vegetation,
and overlooking shore and sea. Wherever there is space for them flowers
grow, and every breath of air is sweet-scented. In the distance, beyond
the grey-green slopes where the olives thrive, are misty, snow-capped
mountains, and far away along the coast stretches the white thread
of the Corniche road, that road of marvellous views and picturesque
surprises, which is the heart's delight of the motor maniacs on the
Riviera.
Motoring is a passion with the Riviera crowd as with every holiday
crowd to-day, and though many of the roads are too steep and narrow
and rugged for motors, or even for comfortable driving, the few that
are practicable are beautiful enough not to grow monotonous. From one
resort to another, all along the coast, the automobiles go scudding,
and even the steep hills of Monte Carlo swarm with puffing cars. A
little danger more or less makes small impression upon the Monte Carlo
crowd. Skidding recklessly down hill is, figuratively speaking, the
metier of so many of the throng that haunts the Casino and fills the
great hotels.
Life at Monte Carlo is essentially sensational. A continual whirl of
excitement seems to be the ideal of the habitué, and the class that
centres there spends money recklessly, without reserve and without
calculation. There are gamblers who haven't the money to spend; but
they live cheaply at some one of the nearby resorts, where they may
lose themselves between Casino hours, and in the little town of fine
hotels and cafés and shops which clings to the skirts of the Casino,
life goes to a merry tune. Perhaps the unwholesome fever of the gaming
rooms infects the district; but, whatever the cause, Monte Carlo
sees little of the sanely joyous life that may be found at other
Riviera resorts. Everything is brilliant, luxurious, dramatic, but
of restfulness and simple pleasure the beautiful spot knows nothing,
and though, for a few days, even the fastidious traveller may be well
amused there, for a longer stay it is wise to go outside of the miasmic
circle.
The incongruity between drama and setting is one of the most striking
things about the place, though familiarity dulls the first swift
impression of the contrast. If ever man diverted God-given beauty to
the devil's uses, he has done it there upon the Monaco shore, and the
serpent was no more out of place in Paradise than is a gambling Casino
on that picturesque promontory overlooking the Mediterranean--but the
daughters of Eve have smiled upon the Casino as their ancestors smiled
upon the serpent, and though their gambling has been for smaller stakes
than hers, they have made a somewhat spectacular record of their own.
The feminine element at Monte Carlo is one of the most characteristic
and dramatic features of the resort. Nowhere else in the world will
one see women of all classes gambling openly and heavily; nowhere else
are the alpha and omega of feminine folly so sharply and obviously
contrasted--and so gaily and recklessly ignored. Around the tables,
from opening until closing hour, crowd women derelicts; each train that
stops at the station below the wonderful terraces brings more. The
veriest ingénue might read the stories of wreck and disaster, yet the
warning makes not the faintest impression upon the fair feminine craft
steering head on toward the rocks.
How can Fifi of the wonderful frocks and jewels guess that she will
lose once too often at the little green tables, that the day of adorers
ready and eager to pay her losses will pass, that youth and beauty will
make way for such shrivelled and haggard age as that of the painted and
bedizened harpies who haunt the gaming rooms, staking their few francs
and watching for opportunities of making way with the stakes of other
players.
For the average casual visitor to Monte Carlo, these hags of the Casino
are among the sharpest and cleanest cut of first impressions. Later one
grows used to them, ignores them, allows them to take their places in
the shifting human panorama that is in its way as fascinating as the
roulette and trente et quarante which brings the crowd together; but
at first these hideous old women of the furrowed faces plastered with
rouge, of the furtive eyes, of the loose lips, the trembling claw-like
hands, the dirty laces, the false jewels, have a hateful fascination,
obscure all other impressions.
There are many of the harpies living entirely by fraud, and though
croupiers, detectives, and attendants know some of them and suspect
others, it seems impossible to keep them out of the Casino.
Occasionally the doors are barred to someone, but under the present
administration admission rules are more lax than they were in the old
days, and the whole character of the Casino crowd, while perhaps not
more vicious, is certainly more vulgar than it was under M. Blanc's
régime.
The system of the women thieves is a simple one. An excited crowd
surrounds a roulette table; many of the players know comparatively
little about the game. The stakes are placed, money is lost or won,
and raked in or distributed, in less time than is required for the
telling of it. While a novice hesitates, wondering whether the money
on a certain number is really hers, a yellow hand reaches across her
shoulder and snatches the stakes. Even if the victim is sure that she
knows the offender, she hesitates to make a scene, to be implicated
in a gaming-room scandal, and the thief audaciously counts upon this
immunity. Sometimes, however, an attendant sees the transaction and
lays a firm hand upon the old woman's arm before she can get away. Or
perhaps the croupier of the immobile face and the eyes that see all
things notices the hand closing upon money to which it has no right and
brings his rake down sharply upon the thin wrist in time to stop the
move.
There are other wrinkled and haggard old women in the Casino
crowd,--women less contemptible, more pitiable, but unpleasant sights
for all that. They come to the gambling rooms to play, not to steal;
but the gambling fever has burned out all that was pure womanly in them
and nothing is left to them in life save the vice they hug to their
hearts. Some of them have been playing there ever since the first years
of the Casino, missing never a day from the opening to the closing of
the season, and usually staying all day long in the hot, ill-ventilated
rooms. They have but little money and they play cautiously, watching
the run of the game, making innumerable notes in little note-books,
taking no great risks.
One Russian princess is among the number. Old habitués of the Casino
say that when she came there first, twenty-five years ago, she was
beautiful, superbly gowned, magnificently bejewelled, but gaming is in
the Russian blood and the princess was a born gambler. She squandered
her fortune, pawned her jewels, sank lower and lower in the gambling
mire, gave herself up more and more unreservedly to her absorbing
passion. To-day, she lives in a cheap pension at Mentone and belongs
to the class known in Monte Carlo as "the bread-winners,"--a class of
gamblers making a regular daily visit to the Casino, playing until
perhaps ten, fifteen, or fifty francs ahead of the bank, and then
leaving. If one is content with making a mere daily pittance out of the
tables, the thing can be surely and systematically done; and, every
morning the first train brings an army of these bread-winners, together
with hundreds of bolder gamblers. There is always a crowd waiting at
the Casino doors when they are opened, always a wild scramble for the
chairs around the tables; and, once comfortably seated, these early
comers are usually good for the day, or at least until dinner-time.
They are the most economical and persistent, though not the most
profitable, of the Casino's patrons.
Fashionable folk favour shorter gambling hours. If Madame is staying at
one of the Monte Carlo hotels,--at the famous Hôtel de Paris, let us
say, a hotel beloved of Parisian demi-mondaines and their satellites,
but patronized by cosmopolitan great folk as well,--she arises very
late and has her breakfast on a terrace with a sunlit sapphire sea
stretching out before her and an awning sheltering her from the too
ardent sun. The chances are that it is a delectable breakfast, for
there is good cooking in Monte Carlo. The prodigal crowd that spends
its money there demands high living, and the Café de Paris, with its
Indian interior and its famous grill-room, has seen gay dinners and
suppers in its time and has appropriated a generous share of the
winnings of lucky gamblers, beside helping the Casino to rid the
unlucky player of his money.
Ciro's, too, has played its part in nineteenth-century romance and
scandal and had its share in the Monte Carlo harvest. The proprietor,
an energetic and diplomatic Italian, has made a large fortune and
deserves it, for he can produce for his cosmopolitan patrons on demand
any dish from buckwheat cakes to the most delicate frittura, and any
drink from vodka to Jersey apple-jack. Perhaps that is stating the
case too strongly, but he is a remarkable restaurateur, this Ciro.
These are but two restaurants of the many; and if one tires of the
town, there is the mountain restaurant at la Turbie, to which one
climbs by a funicular and where the air is keen and cool from the snowy
mountain peaks. Even the view alone is worth the trip to la Turbie;
for, from the restaurant terrace, one looks down upon Monaco with its
palace and cathedral, upon Monte Carlo with its snowy villas and Casino
amid their groves and gardens, and upon miles of summer sea.
When déjeuner is ended there are many ways of passing what is left of
the day. The terrace is thronged during the late morning hours, and if
one has breakfasted early enough there is time for a stroll there--a
stroll that calls for a smart costume, if one makes pretence of being
truly chic. Up and down the beautiful promenade saunter the idlers--a
crowd as interesting and as mixed as that of the promenade des
Anglais or the promenade at Trouville. Past they file, rosy-cheeked,
middle-class Englishwomen in ill-fitting frocks, consummately modish
Parisiennes, notorious in Monte Carlo as at home, fat German Jewesses,
American girls chaperoning their tired and patient parents, French,
American, and English actresses, great ladies from all countries,
men of every type, from hard-faced chevalier d'industrie to reigning
monarch, from gilded youth to elderly roué.
[Illustration: The Crowd at Monte Carlo]
One sees many a new fashion note on the Monte Carlo terrace, and,
later, costumes still more chic are in evidence at the Casino concert,
to which come music lovers from all the neighbouring resorts, for the
Monte Carlo orchestra is one of the best in Europe and even moralists
who have serious scruples to forbid their gambling do not hesitate to
take advantage of the concerts provided by the profits of the tables.
For the sporting contingent there is driving and motoring during the
early afternoon, before the chill creeps into the air; and on the
terrace overlooking the grounds of the International Pigeon Shooting
Club there is always a crowd watching the shooting below. Butchery
rather than sport, this pigeon shooting, but the Monte Carlo club
is the most famous in the world and draws the crack shots from all
countries. Betting runs high among the sportsmen and the onlookers, and
the club events are a great source of entertainment to those who have
heart and stomach for such sport.
After the tea hour, the Casino begins to fill with the crowd that is
its mainstay, the high-playing, heavily plunging, extravagant crowd,
willing to buy excitement at any price, and some of the heaviest
gambling is done in those hours just before the dinner. The hush grows
more pronounced, more oppressive, and the croupier's monotonous voice
sounds more clearly in its maddening iteration, "Messieurs, Mesdames,
faites vos jeux.--Les jeux sont faits. Rien ne va plus."
Every seat at the tables is filled, crowds are clustering behind the
chairs, leaning forward to play, watching with excitement an unusual
run of good or bad luck, but quiet, intent, absorbed. There is never
noise and confusion, never an outbreak that can create scandal.
A battalion of official employees attends to that, and quickly,
effectually suppresses any objectionable scene.
Monsieur François Blanc, who was responsible for Monte Carlo, was fond
of saying that he had made and kept the place "absolutely respectable."
He is dead now, this M. Blanc, but before he died he built a cathedral
not far from his Casino, and in a mortuary chapel of the cathedral
reposes the old Prince of Monaco, who granted to M. Blanc the rights
that made Monte Carlo possible.
The scoffer smiles at that cathedral; and yet M. Blanc offered it to le
bon Dieu in all sincerity. He was a quiet, unpretentious little man,
devoted to his family, charitable, abstemious in his habits, playing no
game save billiards, gambling not at all, a good man so far as personal
life went, and without scruples concerning his gambling paradise. He
insisted rigidly that play at Monte Carlo should be under absolutely
fair conditions. As for running a great gambling establishment--it
was a business like another. He was not ashamed of his metier and
allowed no threats nor pleas nor argument to disturb him. Men and
women would gamble.--Eh bien, here was a beautiful place in which they
might indulge their propensity without fear of dishonest treatment.
If they ruined themselves, if they committed suicide,--that was their
affair. They would have done the same thing elsewhere and he would have
preferred their doing it elsewhere, for suicides and scenes interfered
somewhat with prosperous business. A host of detectives and attendants
was employed by M. Blanc to prevent suicide or hush it up if it
occurred, and an official department was established for the purpose of
furnishing unlucky patrons of the Casino with money enough to betake
themselves elsewhere. Ruined gamblers were eloquently urged not to die
upon the premises. Railroad tickets and certain sums of money were
supplied to worthy applicants to whose hard luck and financial collapse
officials of the gambling rooms could testify. The system was not,
however, purely charitable,--M. Blanc did not believe in pauperizing
the poor. An I. O. U. was accepted in exchange for funds supplied, and
it was understood that this note must be met before the holder could
ever again be admitted to the Casino. Some time ago statistics showed
that forty thousand pounds had been distributed by this department
of ways and means--but that thirty thousand pounds had been repaid.
From which one may argue a large proportion of human integrity or of
gambling mania, as one is optimist or cynic.
M. Blanc had made his fortune in administering the gambling affairs
of Homburg and Baden Baden. When Germany shut down upon gambling he
looked about for a place in which he could establish a gambling resort
without fear of interference from a paternal government, and his shrewd
eye fell upon the little principality of Monaco. His Royal Highness
the Prince of Monaco, who was absolute ruler of this little kingdom
three and a half miles long by one mile wide, came of an illustrious
line of gentlemanly pirates, and since piracy had fallen from favour in
the Mediterranean, his revenues were not so princely as his title and
palace. He was pleased to make over his piratical rights to M. Blanc
in consideration of an annual subsidy which gave him an income really
royal. Incidentally the Frenchman agreed to attend to the municipal
affairs of the province, to free the subjects of the Prince from all
taxation, and to guarantee that no one of them should be allowed to
enter the Casino. An excellent bargain from a material view-point the
old Prince made. His successor, Albert I, the scholarly scientist and
Prince who now lives in the ancient palace of the Grimaldis, where the
little town of Monaco huddles on its isolated rock, facing the Monte
Carlo fairyland across the port of Condamine, has scruples concerning
the source of his income, it is said, but the Monte Carlo lease, which
is held by a syndicate since M. Blanc's death, has until 1913 to run.
Then we shall see what we shall see. The Prince, who is a French
nobleman, has French revenues which would keep him from penury, and
he is a man of simple tastes; but it would be a sacrifice for a saint
to give up a royal fortune for a scruple, and one can hardly expect a
worldly monarch to court canonization in such fashion.
Once in possession of his promontory, M. Blanc proceeded to spend a
fortune upon it. A gambling enterprise had already been tried there but
had failed, partly through mismanagement, partly because the place was
inaccessible, visitors being obliged to arrive by water and be taken
ashore in small boats.
The natural location was, however, beautiful beyond description,
and M. Blanc had the genius to appreciate his opportunity. The
architect of the Paris Opera House was called into consultation and a
five-million-dollar Casino was built. Everything that art and money
could do to make the gambling rooms, the corridors, the concert hall,
the theatre, luxurious and beautiful was done. Splendid terraces,
gardens, fountains, were added; a great reading-room was supplied with
the most complete collection of periodical literature in the world;
the finest of classical concerts were given in the concert-hall; the
best artists of Paris were engaged to present the latest and most
successful Parisian plays in the little jewel of a theatre; capitalists
were induced to build a railroad to the place and a big elevator was
constructed to carry up from the trains all who did not care to climb
the terraces; a luxurious café was installed in the Casino grounds.
M. Blanc was a frugal man, but he could scatter money like chaff for a
purpose, and he fulfilled his purpose. The fame of Monte Carlo spread
far and wide. Visitors flocked there from all over the world, and the
time was short indeed before the originator s money had returned to him
with interest many times compounded. To-day, after the income of the
Prince is handed over to him, after the taxes of the principality are
settled, after the immense staff of official employees, the musicians,
the artists, are paid, after the repairs and running expenses have
been provided for, the stockholders divide an annual profit of from
two million to two million five hundred thousand dollars. A profitable
business, as M. Blanc foresaw when he made his investment.
The syndicate which now holds the lease and manages the palace follows
as far as possible the system of M. Blanc, but the body has not the old
manager's genius for doing the wrong thing in exactly the right way,
and the place was not what it once was. M. Blanc had made the Casino a
club and so retained the right to bar or eject whom he would. In the
old days the age limit was strictly observed. Now one sees mere boys
and girls at the tables. For a long time a frock coat and high hat in
the daytime, and evening dress after six, were de rigeur, and women's
toilettes were carefully considered. Lord Salisbury and his wife were
once refused admission at the door because the Premier wore a shabby
old felt hat and tweeds, and a celebrated actress who once appeared in
a highly æsthetic costume was told she could enter after going home and
changing her déshabillé.
To-day, everything from dress clothes to bicycle costume is permissible
in the Casino, though a careful toilet is the rule, and a host of very
shabby and disreputable gamblers mingles with the more aristocratic
set. The crowd is more sordid, more vulgar, less chic than of old.
Fewer high-class English and French patronize the tables, and the
German Jews who have taken their places have not improved the general
tone of the throng.
But all this the ordinary visitor does not know, and even now the place
is as fascinating as it is unwholesome.
In the evening come the most brilliant and spectacular hours of the
Casino day. Then one sees the exquisite frocks, the superb jewels, the
celebrities of good and ill repute. The women wear elaborate evening
dress, usually topped by a picture hat, and though many mondaines avoid
conspicuous Casino toilettes, the demi-mondaines vie with each other in
gorgeousness of attire.
Some of these rivalries have afforded tremendous entertainment for
onlookers who appreciated the moves in the feminine game. Liane de
Pougy and la belle Otero, for example, have contributed largely to the
Monte Carlo amusement programme during recent years. Deadly rivals
these two, who fought their battles wherever they went in Fashion's
train, in Paris, at Trouville, at Monte Carlo. Both were lionnes
of the most formidable type, leaving a wake of ruin and disaster
behind them, devouring fortunes with Brobdignagian voracity, plunging
into the maddest extravagances. Men raved over their beauty, though
cooler-headed critics insisted that Otero was only a rather coarse
and common Spanish type, with bold, staring eyes, a cruel, sensuous
mouth, and a good figure, while de Pougy, with her long neck and
cat-in-the-cream expression, deserved no beauty prize.
The toilettes of the two were legion and beggared description. Their
jewels were a proverb.
One night, at the Casino, one of the rivals appeared wearing all her
jewels, and even the maddest gambler stopped his play to look at her.
From head to foot she was ablaze with precious stones of the finest
water, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls, gleaming
on throat and arms and fingers and in her hair, covering her bodice,
fastened upon her skirts.
The achievement was the sensation of the season. Nothing else was
spoken of the next day, and triumph was written large upon the face of
the wearer of the jewels; but she had reckoned without her host. The
Casino was more crowded than usual on the following evening. Curious
folk went to see how one beauty would carry off her victory and how
the other would accept her defeat. The triumphant one was handsome,
beaming, self-satisfied, but her rival was late in coming and gossip
whispered that something dramatic was to be expected.
It occurred.
Down the length of the gambling rooms walked the woman for whom the
crowd was waiting. She was perfectly gowned, but with an exquisite and
elaborate simplicity, with a good taste beyond question. Behind her
came her maid decked in jewels from coiffure to slipper toe, enjoying
her part in the comedy, yet awed by the fortune she carried with her.
No words were necessary, the most unlettered could read the retort.
Madame also had jewels--as many and as fine as those of her rival. If
anyone doubted that fact, let him observe. But as for wearing all one's
jewels at once,--impossible for a woman of taste!
The reign of la belle Otero is over. Liane de Pougy's tenure of favour
is very uncertain, but they have furnished the Riviera with a wealth of
gossip in their time. Monte Carlo would miss their annual duel, were
there not younger favourites, as beautiful and as shameless, to air
their toilettes and jewels and jealousies in M. Blanc's "absolutely
respectable" rendezvous.
Few women go to Monte Carlo without trying their luck at the tables,
though the fall from grace on the part of the ordinary tourist may
mean only a few francs lost or won. Starry-eyed young girls, staid
matrons with respectability stamped upon their brows, stern, elderly
spinsters--all may be seen at the roulette board where small stakes may
be hazarded; but they are the novices, the transients who are tasting
the new experience with a fearful joy. The seasoned and systematic
woman gambler is another thing. So is the reckless woman who does not
bother about system and risks large sums as lightly as she waves her
fan, and with far less calculation.
Langtry belonged to this last class. In her heyday, one might see her,
charmingly gowned, radiantly beautiful, twisting up thousand-franc
notes and tossing them on the table to lie wherever they might fall,
losing as carelessly as she won and far more often than she won.
Otero and de Pougy, and many of their guild, are of the shrewd and
canny type, gambling to win, and taking the game of chance seriously,
though worrying little over losses and throwing away winnings with
both hands. The brilliant jewelry shops and the Mont de Pieté of Monte
Carlo are equally prosperous. The winners buy jewels, the losers pawn
them,--but, on the whole, it is the men who gamble heavily. Three
fourths of the women who have money enough to play extravagantly care
more about what they wear to the Casino than about what they win or
lose, would rather win at hearts and chiffons than at roulette.
Occasionally a woman, like the old Russian princess, ruins herself
dramatically at Monte Carlo, but more often it is the petty woman
gambler who comes to grief--the woman who has only a little money and
no resources to draw upon when that little is swallowed up. Not long
ago six little American chorus girls, who had heard much about the
gaiety and extravagance of Monte Carlo, and had conceived the idea that
between luck at gambling and luck at love a half-dozen pretty Americans
might corner considerable of the gaiety and of the wherewithal for
extravagance, went down to the Riviera and tried trente et quarante.
A few weeks later, when they were penniless, miserable, absolutely
stranded, without money either to stay or to go home, Sybil Sanderson
heard of their plight and played good angel for the six homesick,
disillusioned, singed little moths. The flames are cruel at Monte Carlo.
But it is the man who really supports the Casino, the man who squanders
fortunes at the tables, the man who evolves infallible systems, who
gives himself up utterly to the gambling, who commits suicide on the
terrace, or breaks the bank.
Suicides are few, and the few are carefully covered up, concealed. The
management even denies that they occur, but ugly rumours are persistent
and many seem to be backed by facts. Detectives are eternally vigilant
to suppress scandal. They rise from the ground, they fall from the
trees, they follow the lucky winner to his hotel or train in order
to see that he is not waylaid and murdered or robbed by thugs, as
has happened before now, they shadow desperate losers and prevent
ugly scenes, they instruct the penniless where to find the benevolent
gentleman who is willing to furnish transportation away from Monte
Carlo for the human sponge that has been squeezed dry.
The bank breakers are even fewer than the suicides. In the old days, a
certain amount of money was allowed to each table for one day. If the
bank lost that amount, the table went out of commission for the rest of
the session; but now, if a lucky player breaks the bank, it means only
a wait of a few minutes until a new package of money can be brought
from the vaults. When the money arrives, play goes on.
Charles Wells, an engineer, was the man whose spectacular winnings
inspired the song concerning "the man who broke the bank at Monte
Carlo," but many another man has done the thing and some of them have
repeated the operation several times. There, for instance, was Garcia,
who broke the bank again and again and was a nine days' wonder at Monte
Carlo. He died a wretched death in the slums of Paris, that lucky
Garcia.
And there was a New York salesman among the bank breakers. Some of the
older New York business men may remember him, for he was a popular
fellow and he cut a wide swath in Europe. First he broke the bank
at Monte Carlo,--broke it with fine spirit and éclat and was the
envied hero of the hour. Then he went to Paris and opened a gambling
place that quickly became famous. Baccarat was the game, and the New
Yorker's luck held. He could not lose. His name was known all over
Europe. Paris gave him the title of Le Roi Baccarat, and in the morning
papers the latest doings of the baccarat king were as much a matter of
course as the stock market reports.
Of course the luck changed. It always does. One day the baccarat king
began to lose, and he was as persistent in losing as he had been in
winning. The close air of the gambling rooms had affected his lungs and
his health went with his money. One of the many women who had loved him
in his brilliant day, took him, a consumptive pauper, to her lodgings,
and gave him shelter, food, and care, but she had no money to do more.
Finally several of the man's old friends and business associates in New
York heard of his condition and sent money to bring him home. He came,
a dying man, and a little later the same friends contributed the money
to bury him.
Histories of that sort are common among the men who have broken the
bank at Monte Carlo.
As for the Casino management, it does not lament when some one breaks
the bank. Far from it. Such a run of luck advertises the fairness of
the game and encourages gamblers. The syndicate is frankly pleased
when anyone wins in spectacular fashion--or in any fashion whatsoever,
for winning only fans the gambling fever and in the end it is always
the bank that wins. The old saying launched in M. Blanc's day is true:
"C'est encore rouge qui perd, et encore noir, mais toujours Blanc qui
gagne."
The bank of Monte Carlo is honest as the Bank of England. No hint of
trickery has ever been associated with it, but outside the Casino
there are gambling resorts of a different character. It is said that
more money is lost at the private gambling clubs of Nice in a night
than at Monte Carlo in a week; and whether or not this is true, it is
certain that more men are ruined in these outside gambling hells than
in the Casino. The game at the latter place is fair; only cash stakes
are allowed; there is no bar and anyone drunk enough to make a scene
is expelled. At many of the private clubs the play is dishonest; I. O.
U's are accepted; and a drunken fool may gamble away not only all he
has with him, but all he has elsewhere or ever expects to have, and
more. Not all of the suicides along the Riviera are due to M. Blanc's
gambling palace.
It is difficult to keep away from the subject of the gambling when one
talks of Monte Carlo. A famous show of frocks and jewels and women
is on view there; the fashions of the coming summer are launched
there; the social game is played with verve and zest there; But, at a
distance, one remembers rather the crowd around the green tables under
the great chandeliers, the flushed faces, the twitching mouths, the
trembling hands, and the uncanny, oppressive, breathless hush that
follows the croupier's "Rien ne va plus."