THE EPIDEMIC OF CARDS.
THE Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, at the time of which I am writing, was
as crotchety a specimen of the old school as the Peninsular had ever
turned out. Clean shaved, with a Waterloo expression of countenance, Sir
George Browne was about the last of Wellington’s veterans who held a high
command. Despotic and vindictive if thwarted, he had a squabble with the
railway companies, and retaliated by vetoing henceforth the transit of
troops by rail, and a regiment ordered from Londonderry to Cork did the
entire distance by route march. Not that the ordeal was without its
advantages, for it enabled British regiments to form their own opinions
of Irish hospitality and the numerous good qualities of that
much-misunderstood race. Proceeding in detachments of two and three
companies, every night found them billeted in the towns or villages
through which they passed, and it was no rare occurrence for the landed
proprietors to ride out and insist that every officer should stay at the
Manor House, and to send supplies of comforts wherewith to regale the
men.
Mr. Kavanagh, M.P. for Kilkenny, was a brilliant specimen of a real old
Irish gentleman, and though deformed from his birth, could hold his own
amongst the best. Without arms, this grand sportsman could ride, drive
four horses, and shoot to perfection, and his prowess in Corfu and other
distant sporting haunts is remembered to this day.
Riding out to welcome the regiment, no refusal was listened to, and
within an hour every officer was comfortably settled at Borris Castle,
and the men fared proportionately as well.
But the monotony of these tedious pilgrimages will not bear narration.
Suffice it that having landed at Cork we received orders, much to our
delight, to proceed direct to Dublin instead of to dismal Templemore.
The craze for punting that we had experienced in London seemed, indeed,
to have crossed the Channel, and when the officers had severally been
elected honorary members, it was found that the Hibernian United Service
Club was the hotbed of about the highest play they had yet encountered.
Nightly, with the precision of a chronometer, ten o’clock found the
spacious card room crammed to its uttermost limits, and Irish banknotes,
varying from one to ten sovereigns in value, were literally stacked a
foot high on either side of the table. All through the night these
terrible duels continued, and it was no uncommon thing to leave the room
and drive like blazes for morning parade at ten. The garrison in this
memorable year was an exceptionally “high-play” one, consisting, amongst
others, of the 4th and 11th Hussars, 9th Lancers, the Royal Dragoons,
Highlanders, and Rifle Brigade, and during that winter fabulous sums were
lost by men incapable of meeting their obligations.
The Committee, meanwhile, were roused to action, and peremptory orders
were given that the gas was to be turned off punctually at 2 a.m.; but
the extinction of the gas was the signal for the appearance of
substitutes, and out of some two hundred pockets wax candles were brought
forth, and the game proceeded as vigorously as ever.
Further pressure was now applied, and under pain of expulsion members
were ordered to quit the card room at the prescribed hour; but even this
did not meet the case, and the punters ascended _en bloc_ to the largest
bedroom above.
It may be explained that this really delightful club possessed a dozen
bedrooms, and on the particular occasion of which we are writing, one was
in the occupation of Sir James Jackson, G.C.B., as irritable an old
Peninsular veteran as a merciful Providence had spared to the sixties. A
cavalry man of the old school, he invariably wore spurs, and no human eye
had ever seen him without these useful appendages—a small blue moustache
carefully waxed, and a bald head with blue tufts on either side completed
the picture of this irritable old warrior who ate his dinner every day in
the club, and never spoke to a soul.
Play, meanwhile, was proceeding apace, with calls of “King,” “Fifty more
wanted this side,” “D— it, blaze away,” “The pool’s made,” gracefully
interspersed, when the door suddenly opened, and an apparition in flowing
dressing-gown, nightcap, slippers, and spurs demanded peremptorily that
the game should cease. To refuse the colonel-in-chief of the Carabineers
would, of course, have been impossible, and as the old warrior retired to
his couch the punters left the club.
Ruin, meanwhile, had overtaken many an irreproachable man, and L—, of the
Royals, K— of the Rifle Brigade, and a score of others, had no
alternative but to send in their papers, and then the Commander-in-Chief
came upon the scene, and swore, as only a Waterloo veteran could, that if
any officer again transgressed he would send the regiment to the worst
station between Hell and Halifax.
But the wave of punting that appeared to have engulfed the land was by no
means confined to the Arlington, Raleigh, and Hibernian Clubs, and the
“Rag,” and later on the Whist Club—known as the “Shirt Shop”—caught the
infection, and fabulous sums were wagered on the turn of a card night
after night without intermission.
Two-pound points to £10 on the rubber were the staple stakes of even the
sober old Whist, and then one was looked upon as depriving a better man
of the seat unless prepared to bet an extra hundred. Old fogies, who had
never previously risked a shilling, would cautiously creep to the table,
and nervously tender half-crowns, till frightened out of their lives by
Tony Fawcett, of the 9th Lancers, shouting, “D— it, sir, this isn’t a
silver hell!” and then, not to be beaten, they would club together and
make up the requisite sovereign.
Gus Anson, V.C., M.P., the most popular man of the day, was so
impregnated with the epidemic that although at the time piloting an
important Bill through Parliament, he had given me a standing order that
as soon as a sufficient number were assembled for loo or baccarat, a
telegram was to be despatched to him forthwith, and numerous were the
messages that found their way to the sacred precincts of the House
between ten and twelve at night, addressed to Colonel the Honourable
Augustus Anson, V.C., M.P., presumedly from constituents.
Brighton, too, suffered from the epidemic, and during the Sussex
fortnight the fever spread to an alarming extent. The London detachments
came down _en bloc_, and all the best houses and leading hotels were
filled with roysterers, and high play was the rule from night till
morning.
Progress along the King’s Road after dusk was a matter of difficulty, and
at every lamp-post one was importuned by eager touters, and invitation
cards thrust into one’s hand to visit this house or that. Every roof
sheltered punters of a lower strata anxious to emulate their betters, and
the family knick-knacks and the family Bible, left exposed by their
worthy owner in his desire to participate in the golden harvest, might
have been seen huddled together in a corner, or intermingled with cards,
whisky bottles, and tumblers.
In preparation for the nightly orgies that commenced about ten, the
bloods inaugurated a delightful system whereby the maximum of fresh air
with the minimum of exertion might be obtained prior to the inhaling of
the foul currents amid which they proposed to revel for the rest of the
night.
To meet the requirements of the case, every wheelchair was bespoken or
engaged for the entire week at a considerable advance in price, and a
procession, usually headed by George Chetwynd, Billy Milner and Billy
Call—to whom the honour of the inception is credited—might nightly be
seen wending its way to the end of the pier, selecting the most suitable
parts, and generally inconveniencing everybody not of the “inner circle.”
The costume _de rigueur_ on these progresses was white tie, evening
trousers and vest, and silk hat, with the oldest shooting coat in one’s
wardrobe.
Later in the season some Hebrews of imitative dispositions aspired to
emulate the bloods, but although their get-ups were irreproachable, the
fraud was detected, and the jackdaws ruthlessly suppressed.
It is painful to remember the numerous edifices that toppled, and the
many good men that “went under” in the inevitable crash that ensued, and
picturing in one’s mind the huge table and the fifteen or twenty players
that congregated nightly around the board in the various clubs—winners
and losers and lookers-on—a lump rises in one’s throat as one remembers
how few are left! Carlyon and Augustus Webster, Jauncey, Cootie
Hutchinson, Sam Bachelor, Lord Milltown, Crock Vansittart, La Touche,
Hastings, De Hoghton, Tom Naghten, Sir George O’Donnel, Dick Clayton, Gus
Anson, Freddy Granville, George Lawrence, Jimmy Jop, Jim Coleman, and a
host of others, all good men and true, and all long since swept away into
the inevitable dust-bin.
Not to have known Jinks was not in itself a reproach, but not to have
known Jonas Hunt in the long-ago sixties was to have admitted that one
was without the pale of Society, or certainly that section of it which
gambled, raced, and drank all day and all night, if circumstances
permitted. A fine horseman of iron nerve and unbounded assurance, he had
ridden in the Balaclava charge before he was out of his teens, and on
retiring from the service a few years later, developed into one of the
best gentleman riders ever seen in England or France.
In a chronic state of impecuniosity—as he insisted on asserting—he never
omitted to add that a good knife and fork was always ready at home.
Jonas had certainly run through pretty well all he had had, but still he
always possessed an income.
Always ready to gamble, and always cheery, Jonas, as may be supposed, was
popular with a certain set, and if he had a fault it was a forgetfulness
in regard to the settlement of small scores, which by some was attributed
to the excitement when he rode in the “six hundred,” and by others to
various causes not sufficiently interesting to enumerate. Brave as a
lion, he had actually been recommended for the Victoria Cross—in those
days less lavishly awarded than now—and as he was quite ready to “go out”
on the slightest provocation, timid natures preferred to put up with
eccentricities arising out of his forgetfulness rather than risk a
daylight meeting at twelve yards rise.
Whilst riding in France his performances were a revelation to his foreign
critics, and when on one occasion his bridle broke and he steered his
mount to victory with his whip, he received such an ovation at Chantilly
as seldom falls to the lot of a perfidious Briton.
On one occasion, Jonas, who had allowed a comparative stranger to leave
the table without settling, was met by the indignant creditor a few days
later and reminded of his obligation; but Jonas, in no way disconcerted,
let the amazed punter understand that such a demand was highly
ungentlemanly and insulting, offering as an alternative to retire with
him forthwith and fight it out with either pistols or fists.
In the duel between Dillon, a gentleman rider, and the Duc de
Grammont-Caderousse, which created such an unjust scandal in the sixties,
Jonas, as might have been expected, was the former’s second. Neither man
had ever had a rapier in his hand before, and when on the following
morning both began slashing and thrusting, and Dillon was run through the
heart, a clamour arose as to the butchery of an Englishman by an expert
swordsman; all which was bosh. Had de Grammont been anything but the
veriest tyro, the regrettable incident could not have occurred.
It was subsequent to the various thrilling incidents we have narrated
that Jonas selected Brighton as his headquarters.
Jinks’ Club was not located in a palatial mansion, nor did it even
present the modest exterior of the local Union Club; as a fact, it was
limited in its dimensions, and consisted of two rooms in an unpretentious
house in Ship Street.
In the front room was a long table and some two dozen chairs, an iron
safe, and a side table, convenient for the support of such light
refreshments as sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, and beverages of a popular
kind.
The back room was more or less a sealed subject, and supposed to contain
club memoranda, Jinks’ books, and to be the spot where the “proprietor”
carried on the business.
Membership of the club was within the reach of all, and a “quorum” of
Jinks and Jonas could on emergency elect a member without general meeting
or ballot; but those specially introduced by Jonas were received with
marked favour. Nor were there apparently any fixed rules as to meetings,
which were left to circumstances, and an urgent three-lined whip on
emergency.
The procedure in the latter case may briefly be described as follows:—
If Jonas met a “likely” man—from town—he would tell him that his
appearance was the luckiest thing in the world, as that very night a rare
round game was “coming off,” that baccarat would begin at nine, and that
the rendezvous was Jinks’ Club. This point being settled, an urgent whip
was sent round by the indefatigable Jonas, and by 8.45 a representative
company awaited the desirable plunger from town.
Prior to the commencement of the game, Jonas, it must be conceded, was a
mass of energy. Attired in evening clothes he would first unlock the
mysterious safe, and after the local members had come one by one,
presumably to deposit money, and returned with counters conspicuously
displayed, he would turn with his most winning smile to the visitor with:
“Now, old man, how much do you want to buy; it saves a lot of bother by
having counters? You’ve only to plank your counters after it’s over, and
get their value; good rule, don’t you think? It’s what they do at ‘le
Cercle’ at Nice; saves a lot of bother.”
Occasionally, during the excitement of the game, strangers had been known
to put into the pool brand new crisp notes to save the bother of buying
counters; but these were always exchanged for counters by the
ever-obliging Jonas. “It’s much better to have one sort of settlement,
don’t you think, old man?” he would add, as stuffing the notes into his
pockets he eagerly rushed into the fray.
“By Jove! it’s later than I thought,” was often a familiar exclamation as
daylight appeared over the pier. “How many counters have you got, Jack?
Count them, old man, or keep them till morning. You and I are old pals;
you know where to come in the morning. Name your own hour; good-night.”
And the genius was round the corner like a hurricane.
An amusing incident once occurred where Jonas was a big winner, and his
debtor Master Fred Granville; Jonas on this occasion was immeasurably
chaffed. “You’ll never get a bob,” he was told right and left.
“Oh, yes I will, he’s all right,” was the half-hearted reply.
“But he’s going away in the morning,” added another; “you must look
sharp, Jonas.” And Jonas intimated he had been promised that a cheque
should be sent him in the morning.
Next morning a cab drove rapidly to the Norfolk, and Jonas, jumping out
excitedly, said: “Look here, you chaps,” and he waved a cheque excitedly.
“Let’s have a look at it,” asked Ernest Neville. “Why, man, it isn’t
signed.” And Jonas’s face lengthened inordinately as he realised the
terrible omission.
Shouting for a cab after a hurried glance at a railway guide, he in due
time reached the station, and had the satisfaction of seeing the last
carriage slowly receding from view.
It was the winter that Garcia—a Spanish miscreant—who had won colossal
sums at every hell in Europe, had just been detected in a trick that had
long baffled the ingenuity of the world.
The scheme was nothing less than procuring the contract for the supply of
cards at the principal gambling resorts of Nice, Monaco, St. Petersburg,
Homburg, Paris, and Ostend.
Shiploads of his ware thus found their way into every quarter, and
wherever he played he was confronted by his own cards. Knowing their
backs as well as their faces, the result was obvious, and it was only
after innumerable golden harvests that a clumsy accident brought the
fraud to light in a salon in the Champs-Elysées.
The scare thus created had not been lost upon the Riviera, and every
precaution that ingenuity could devise was taken to make foul play
impossible.
It was during this winter, too, that the culprit, detected cheating at
the Raleigh, put an end to his career.
Le Cercle de la Méditerranée is one of those majestic buildings that
meets the enormous revenue required for its support by making the pastime
of cards an absolute luxury. On the first floor is a spacious saloon,
with no better light than that afforded by plate-glass panels
communicating with the card room and other chambers; liberally provided
with lounges, weary punters resorted to it for repose, and waiters, when
not otherwise occupied, hovered near it as within easy call of
everywhere. In the adjoining room cards were usually set for possible
whist and ecarté, or until every available spot was required for the more
exciting claims of chemin de fer.
Biscoe had on more than one occasion rambled through the empty room, and
oblivious of the proximity of the servants, had been seen pocketing a
pack of cards. This having been duly reported, he was made an especial
object of interest to the committee; though, until he essayed to play, it
was looked upon as the act of a kleptomaniac.
All this, however, was unknown to the culprit, who, with but one object,
one aim in life, laughed at every reverse, and raked in his winnings when
Fortune smiled on him. His luck as a whole had been fairly good, and
thinking the moment a favourable one, he decided to increase his stakes.
It was now his deal, the “chemin de fer” was with him. “Come, gentlemen,
let us plunge,” he jokingly remarked, as, producing a pocket-book, he
placed it upon the pack. “I call twenty-five thousand francs.”
(£1,000).
A keen observer might have detected certain ominous glances that passed
between the polite Count and the bland Professor, but nothing was said,
and amid the silence of the Catacombs, the game proceeded.
Five minutes later Biscoe was raking in £1,000 (in counters).
“Again, gentlemen!” he shouted, as flushed and excited, he had not
observed that two or three players had risen, and the remainder,
bewildered at so unusual a proceeding, stared at one another in blank
astonishment.
“What’s up?” inquired Biscoe.
“D—d if I know,” was the laconic reply, as an Englishman left the table.
“The Committee, sir,” replied the Count, “have decided to count the
cards, and on their authority I take possession of those before you.”
Meanwhile groups discussed the position and ominous expressions, such as
“Il nous faut un agent de police,” and “C’est clair que nous avons été
volés” were bandied about. A _procès verbal_ also took place, presided
over by the Duc de Richelieu, and within an hour it was known to every
_gamin_ in Nice that an English “milor” had descended to the level of a
thimble-rigger, that his spurs had been hacked off by the fiat of public
opinion, and that henceforth his place would know him no more.
The rest is briefly told. A dozen extra cards were found in the packs
that had been correct before play commenced; the counters in Biscoe’s
possession were _not_ redeemed by the club, and the “acceptance” was as
far from redemption as ever.
Next morning, as the gardeners were sweeping the grounds, a dead body
with a gun-shot wound in the head was found in a shrubbery.
Within a few yards lay the tideless Mediterranean, calm and sparkling as
the morning sun played upon its waters; whilst here lay an upturned face,
cold and rigid and ghastly white save for a clotted disfigurement on the
brow, and the same sun, in all the irony of its grandeur, was lighting up
all that was left of blighted hopes, fallen greatness, and a tragedy
never to be forgotten. Later on, the mangled remains were buried at the
expense of the Municipality.
A week or two later a paragraph appeared in a Dublin paper, and there the
matter ended.
This is the usual procedure in these fashionable resorts. If you’ve lost
your last penny you are provided with railway fare and seen off the
premises; if you blow out your brains, you’re buried out of sight.
Decency must be maintained! _Faites vos jeux, messieurs_!
A convenient custom obtained at Le Cercle de la Méditerranée whereby a
player temporarily cleaned out was permitted to deposit a pencil on the
table to represent a stake, it being understood that he immediately
proceeded to the bureau to purchase counters to redeem his symbolical
investment. This was known as “au crayon.”
It was on one occasion that Bob Villiers, who was usually limited as
regards capital, was seen to place his pencil on the table and address
the courteous dealer with, “Cent louis au crayon.”
“By Gad,” whispered George Payne, who stood near me, “Bob Villiers has
put up a hundred louis ‘au crayon,’” and it was in breathless anxiety,
and with an eventual sigh of relief, that we saw him rake up his
winnings.
It was some years later, whilst once standing on the steps of the Hôtel
des Anglais at Nice, at a time when the one topic of conversation was the
terrible scandal that had lately taken place in Le Cercle de la
Méditerranée, that George Payne expounded the irrefutable axiom that
there were only two offences that might not be indulged in with impunity,
and yet how extraordinary it was that men of wealth with every enjoyment
capable of gratification should yet founder on one or other of these two
unspeakable rocks, and instanced the recent H— affair, where the brother
of a peer and major of a crack regiment had resorted to one of the
unpardonable offences. And then he quoted George Russell, who had
married a duke’s daughter, and Lord de Ros and Lord Arthur
Pelham-Clinton, another ducal branch, all of whom, in a species of
insanity, had fallen from their high estates.
Many will recall the weird rumours that floated around the Clinton case;
how the culprit had died and been duly buried; how weeks later an old
gun-room companion had recognised his former ship-mate in a railway
compartment, and how subsequent inquiry revealed the fact of a coffin
filled with lumber.
And in the H— affair the surroundings were, if possible, more dramatic;
how a youngster of the 7th, at Nice at the time, at once wrote the story
to a brother officer in order that “the first intimation to ‘the
Regiment’ might not come from the papers;” how the recipient intercepted
the commanding officer (Colonel Hale) in the barrack square, and handed
him the letter with: “This, sir, I have just received, and I feel it’s my
duty to show it to you”; how within a week the pen was ruthlessly run
through the culprit’s name, and the nine days’ wonder was forgotten.
That the publicity had been far-reaching, the following from the Paris
_Figaro_ will show:—
“One had hoped that chevaliers of industry were things of the past, but
it is not so; the game goes on as ever, to judge of what occurred last
Monday at le Cercle de la Méditerranée—a place where one always imagined
one only met persons with whom one’s purse would be safe.
“It was last Monday that an amiable personage—whose assumed manners
suggested imbecility—carried on a system with cards which has no
connection with honesty.
“Ever since yesterday Major H— has been the object of a stringent
surveillance, called into existence by the extraordinary fortune of
having ‘passed’ only seventeen times on Sunday last during a game of
chemin de fer.
“Suspicion was all the stronger from the cards when counted being found
to exceed the proper number by twenty-seven.
“It was under these circumstances that the Major bought the bank at
auction last Monday, and lost the first two coups.
“It was evidently sowing to reap, for after the second coup, not having
sufficient on the table to pay the winners, and while still holding the
cards in his left hand, he drew with his right hand a note case from his
pocket under which were a certain number of packed cards.
“He then placed the case and the packed cards on the pack he had already
in his left hand, and putting the entire packet before him, deliberately
opened his note case, whence protruded several notes that had evidently
been exposed with intention.
“At this moment a member who had not lost a single detail of this scene
of ‘prestidigitation,’ stood up and said: ‘Gentlemen, I play no longer,
and if you take my advice you will do the same!’
“The warning was not in vain.
“It was accepted by all but one player, who placed on the table about
sixty Louis.
“The Major H—, in no way disconcerted, again dealt, and turned up nine—a
nine of diamonds.
“There was no further room for doubt, and all the players left their
seats.
“The game was suspended, the cards were counted; there were twenty-seven
too many; and contained five nines of diamonds instead of four.
“Immediately the committee was called together, and the expulsion of
Major H— was unanimously decided upon. It was also decided that the
Major should be turned out of the room he had occupied in the club for
two days.” I approve entirely the decision of the committee, but regret
that these Major H—s get off with expulsion, when the proper place would
be the _correctionnelle_.
No more liberal player ever existed than George Hay.
On one occasion at a humdrum station in India, where he had started an
unpretentious club, a sporting tailor who had lost considerably begged
him to continue. “Give me my revenge,” he implored, and for three days
and three nights, with periodical adjournments for a tub, this amiable
punter continued giving the revenge. But Fate, alas! was against the
little Snipper, and on the third day the score showed a colossal sum
against him.
“This can’t go on,” pleaded George. “Why, man, I shall be placed under
arrest for absence without leave; besides which, I can’t keep my eyes
open.”
“Only one more chance,” whined the tailor.
“Very well,” replied George, “you owe me” (and he named a considerable
sum). “I’ll play you one game double or quits.”
The tailor pondered for some moments, and then replied:
“Look here, Captain Hay, I have a wife and four children, and I can’t
afford to go ‘sudden death,’ but I’ll play you the best out of three,
double or quits.”
Failing to catch the subtlety of this logic, George consented, and the
result was again against the tailor.
“Now,” said this noble punter, “I’ve complied with all your requests.
Nature won’t permit me to continue, but I’ll tell you what I _will_ do,”
and ringing the bell, he ordered the waiter to bring in the list of
members.
Scanning the names and counting the number, he again addressed the
tailor:
“Look here. We have, I see, fifty-four members; but old Crutchley and
the Chaplain needn’t count. You shall make every member of the club a
black velvet knickerbocker suit with scarlet hose, and a cap, and
henceforth we are quits.”
Prudes and strict sticklers for propriety may argue that the man was a
gambler, and consequently heartless and good for nothing; but after
events proved that although dire calamity overtook him, he was of a
noble, generous nature.
Despite the above incident, the Pindee Club played a very strict game,
and every member before sitting down carefully adjusted a pair of green
spectacles.