CHAPTER VIII. GAMBLING AT THE GERMAN BATHING-PLACES.——
BADEN AND ITS CONVERSATION HOUSE.
Baden-Baden in the season is full of the most exciting contrasts—gay restaurants and brilliant saloons, gaming-tables, promenades, and theatres crammed with beauty and rank, in the midst of lovely natural scenery, and under the shade of the pine-clad heights of the Hercynian or Black Forest—the scene of so many weird tales of old Germany—as for instance of the charming Undine of De la Mothe Fouque.
But among the seducing attractions of Baden-Baden, and of all German bathing-places, the Rouge-et-noir and Roulette-table hold a melancholy pre-eminence—being at once a shameful source of revenue to the prince—a rallying point for the gay, the beautiful, the professional blackleg, the incognito duke or king—and a vortex in which the student, the merchant, and the subaltern officer are, in the course of the season, often hopelessly and irrevocably ingulfed. Remembering the gaming excitement of the primitive Germans, we can scarcely be surprised to find that the descendants of these northern races poison the pure stream of pleasure by the introduction of this hateful occupation. It is, however, rather remarkable that all foreign visitors, whether Dutch, Flemish, Swede, Italian, or even English, of whatever age or disposition or sex, 'catch the frenzy' during the (falsely so-called) Kurzeit, that is, Cure-season, at Baden, Ems, and Ais.
Princes and their subjects, fathers and sons, and even, horrible to say, mothers and daughters, are hanging, side by side, for half the night over the green table; and, with trembling hands and anxious eyes, watching their chance-cards, or thrusting francs and Napoleons with their rakes to the red or the black cloth.
No spot in the whole world draws together a more distinguished society than may be met at Baden; its attractions are felt and acknowledged by every country in Europe. Many of the elite of each nation may yearly be found there during the months of summer, and, as a natural consequence, many of the worst and vilest follow them, in the hope of pillage.
Says Mrs. Trollope:—'I doubt if anything less than the evidence of the senses can enable any one fully to credit and comprehend the spectacle that a gaming-table offers. I saw women distinguished by rank, elegant in person, modest, and even reserved in manner, sitting at the Rouge-et-noir table with their rateaux, or rakes, and marking-cards in their hands;—the former to push forth their bets, and draw in their winnings, the latter to prick down the events of the game. I saw such at different hours through the whole of Sunday. To name these is impossible; but I grieve to say that two English women were among them.'
The Conversationshaus, where the gambling takes place, is let out by the Government of Baden to a company of speculators, who pay, for the exclusive privilege of keeping the tables, £11,000 annually, and agree to spend in addition 250,000 florins (£25,000) on the walks and buildings, making altogether about £36,000. Some idea may be formed from this of the vast sums of money which must be yearly lost by the dupes who frequent it. The whole is under the direction of M. Benazet, who formerly farmed the gambling houses of Paris.
'On trouve ici le jeu, les livres, la musique,
Les cigarres, l'amour, les orangers,
Le monde tantot gai, tantot melancholique,
Les glaces, la danse, et les cochers;
De la biere, de bons diners,
A cote d'arbre une boutique,
Et la vue de hauts rochers.
Ma foi!'
'We find here gambling, books, and music,
Cigars, love-making, orange-trees;
People or gay or melancholic,
Ices, dancing, and coachmen, if you please;
Beer, and good dinners; besides these,
Shops where they sell not on tic; And towering rocks one ever sees.'
'How shall I describe,' says Mr. Whitelocke, 'to my readers in language sufficiently graphic, one of the resorts the most celebrated in Europe; a place, if not competing with Crockford's in gorgeous magnificence and display, at least surpassing it in renown, and known over a wider sphere? The metropolitan pump-room of Europe, conducted on the principle of gratuitous admittance to all bearing the semblance of gentility and conducting themselves with propriety, opens its Janus doors to all the world with the most laudable hospitality and with a perfect indifference to exclusiveness, requiring only the hat to be taken off upon entering, and rejecting only short jackets, cigar, pipe, and meerschaum. A room of this description, a temple dedicated to fashion, fortune, and flirtation, requires a pen more current, a voice more eloquent, than mine to trace, condense, vivify, and depict. Taking everything, therefore, for granted, let us suppose a vast saloon of regular proportions, rather longer than broad, at either end garnished by a balcony; beneath, doors to the right and left, and opposite to the main entrance, conduct to other apartments, dedicated to different purposes. On entering the eye is at once dazzled by the blaze of lights from chandeliers of magnificent dimensions, of lamps, lustres, and sconces. The ceiling and borders set off into compartments, showered over with arabesques, the gilded pillars, the moving mass of promenaders, the endless labyrinth of human beings assembled from every region in Europe, the costly dresses, repeated by a host of mirrors, all this combined, which the eye conveys to the brain at a single glance, utterly fails in description. As with the eye, so it is with the ear; at every step a new language falls upon it, and every tongue with different intonation, for the high and the low, the prince, peer, vassal, and tradesman, the proud beauty, the decrepit crone, some fresh budding into the world, some standing near the grave, the gentle and the stern, the sombre and the gay, in short, every possible antithesis that the eye, ear, heart can perceive, hear, or respond to, or that the mind itself can imagine, is here to be met with in two minutes. And yet all this is no Babel; for all, though concentrated, is admirably void of confusion; and evil or strong passions, if they do exist, are religiously suppressed—a necessary consequence, indeed, where there can be no sympathy, and where contempt and ridicule would be the sole reciprocity. In case, however, any such display should take place, a gendarme keeps constant watch at the door, appointed by government, it is true, but resembling our Bow-street officers in more respects than one.
'Now that we have taken a survey of the brilliant and moving throng, let us approach the stationary crowd to the left hand, and see what it is that so fascinates and rivets their attention. They are looking upon a long table covered with green cloth, in the centre of which is a large polished wooden basin with a moveable rim, and around it are small compartments, numbered to a certain extent, namely 38, alternately red and black in irregular order, numbered from one to 36, a nought or zero in a red, and a double zero upon the black, making up the 38, and each capable of holding a marble. The moveable