I had my boots blacked on the Quay du Port, and a marvellous boy in rags performed the office. Murillo might have been tempted to come out of his grave to paint him. When everything else fails, and I am quite tired of respectable life, I shall come to Marseilles, and spend the rest of my days in lolling on the quay and basking in the sun.
Yet perhaps I had better wait before I finally make up my mind on the subject of Marseilles, for down the harbour on my right there lies at anchor the ship which is to carry me across the blue Mediterranean to the African shore. And who knows?—I might like Algiers better.
‘High Street, Africa,’ is a very nice address to give to your creditors or to people who worry you with letters about nothing at all, and require an immediate and categorical answer; but it is not an address which facilitates the reception of the latest news from England. I have been able to leave nothing more definite at home for the guidance of the officials of the International Postal Service. For this reason I am in a state of the most blissful ignorance as to what is happening at home. I am sitting in the sun, I pluck oranges, gather bananas and prickly pears, and go into the garden after breakfast and pick green peas and dig up new potatoes. When you are where you can do this in the first week of January, it would be the concentrated essence of idiotism to bother yourself as to who is the responsible person for clearing away the snow and the slush that have stopped the traffic of Downing Street, and converted legislative pedestrianism into a process of slipping and sliding, and coming down bang on your back.
I like High Street, Africa, very much indeed. I have got so far along it as the Djur-Djura Hills, among the Atlas Mountains. I am on friendly terms with the great mountain tribes of Kabylia, and the lion and the panther are my next-door neighbours.But I did not get so far all at once, and as the process of getting there has been to me both novel and instructive, I fancy it may be the same to some of my readers—say eighteen out of the twenty millions. The other two millions can skip this chapter if they don’t care about it, and read the advertisements at the end of this volume.
We left Marseilles, not by the Messageries, but by a much more ‘up to date’ line—the Compagnie Transatlantique. A more magnificent vessel than theVille de Tunisit would be hard to find in the Mediterranean service, and she rushes through the water at the rate of nineteen-and-a-half knots an hour. But oh, that ‘awful night at sea!’ Tell me no more of your blue Mediterranean. I had it black—black and furious. It blew a gale nearly the whole voyage, and the ship rolled to such an extent that it was impossible to lie in one’s berth. All night long it was a hideous crash of crockery and furniture, piteous groans of men, and the terrified cries of women, and the day brought no relief. For twenty-eight long hours did we roll from side to side in the trough of a raging sea, expecting every moment that the ship would roll an inch too far and go right over. If you don’t know what it is to feel for a night and day that you are going to be drowned in a minute, you won’t appreciate the feelings of the poor bruised and battered and bilious and broken-hearted passengers who sailed with me over that five hundred miles of misery that separates France from Africa, Marseilles from Algiers.
We made Algiers shortly before midnight on Sunday. But our troubles were not over. Beautiful in the moonlight lay Algiers, the houses and mosques of the Arabs glistening in pearly whiteness above the long line of lights of the European quarter, and the whole shut in by a background of far-off hills of snow.But we had to get there, and the ships don’t go up to the quays. To the terror of the timorous it was explained that as soon as the ship’s doctor had gone ashore, and certified that we had no cholera or infectious disease on board, we should be fetched off in small boats by Arab boatmen. And so we were.
There came about fifty boats manned by wild-looking Arabs. They crushed round the steamer shouting and swearing at each other, and gesticulating to attract the attention of the passengers. When at last the signal was given they swarmed up the sides of the ship, and at once laid hold of all the luggage that was unguarded. Two or three men would lay hands on a bag and fight over it. Presently all the hand-bags and the rugs were in the boats; but some of the passengers found themselves in one boat, while their rugs and bags were being carried ashore in another. We managed to keep our things together, but for a quarter of an hour we had a bad time of it, and I had begun to doubt that the French had ever conquered Algiers, because these boatmen were so much like pirates.
When we landed, we were taken in tow by a handsome, barefooted Arab lad of about seventeen, who insisted upon shouldering all our bags and rugs, and putting a heavy portmanteau on his head, and conducting us to the Custom House. Here, to my utter astonishment, the Custom House officer, instead of asking if we had tobacco, cigars, eau-de-Cologne, or spirits, demanded sternly if we had any ‘verdure.’ I hesitated before replying. I have a considerable amount of verdure. I am as green in some things as a country bumpkin, but I hesitated to confess it in public. I might have parried the question with a joke, by asking the grave official if he saw any verdure in my eye, but his solemnity of manner overawed me. I ventured to ask what hemeant by verdure. A French officer attached to the Bureau Arabe, who had crossed with us and become friendly, hastened to the rescue, and explained that ‘verdure’ means ‘green stuff’ at the Custom House. The officials were merely anxious to know if I had any fruit, flowers, or vegetables in my baggage.
The key to the enigma was soon supplied. Algeria is in a state of morbid terror lest the dreaded phylloxera should be imported from France and destroy her vines. Not a green leaf, not an orange, not a flower is allowed to pass the Custom House. I assured the official that I had nothing of the sort, when, with a sudden yell, he sprang at me and seized me by the coat. Two soldiers ran to his assistance, a crowd gathered around me, and, amid the indignant cries of the multitude, a poor little faded rosebud was torn from my buttonhole. I had taken it from the dinner-table on board ship, put it in my buttonhole, and had forgotten it was there. I believe that the rosebud was put into a boat at once, rowed out ten miles to sea, and sunk in the Mediterranean by means of a big stone tied to its stalk. My own fate was less terrible. I was severely lectured and allowed to pass, but for many days afterwards, when I walked abroad in the town, the inhabitants turned and gazed after me with scowling faces, and muttered imprecations on the head of the ‘Sale Anglais,’ who had basely endeavoured to introduce the phylloxera into Algeria.
Once free of the Custom House, Achmet, our young Arab, conducted us to hotel after hotel. All were full. At last we succeeded in getting two rooms on a top landing. Achmet carried our luggage up, and then asked us for the ticket of the heavier portmanteaux, which were in the ship’s hold, and could not be got out till the morning. I hesitated, but Albert Edward instantly handedit to him. ‘Trust him,’ he said; ‘an Arab never betrays a trust.’ And so Achmet walked off with the ticket of our portmanteaux.
At nine the next morning ragged, barefooted Achmet knocked at our door. He wanted the keys of our baggage to pass it at the Custom House. We gave them to him, and in an hour the lad came to the hotel and brought the baggage, and returned the keys. And not so much as a handkerchief or a pair of socks had disappeared. To me this is one of the most wonderful features of my journey. Here was a lad—almost a beggar lad—utterly unknown to us, we could not even recognise him in the crowd of Arabs that haunt the quays, and we had trusted him blindly and implicitly with the sole custody and control of valuable property. I shouldn’t like to try the same experiment in London or anywhere else. And it wouldn’t do to try it in Algiers with a European boy of the same position. This is one great feature of the Arab character. Trust them, and they would die rather than betray the trust; suspect them and guard against their dishonesty, and they will glory in robbing and tricking you at the first opportunity.
For his trouble and his civility I gave Achmet a five-franc piece. He grinned and smiled and chuckled, and tied it up in a piece of rag, and put it in his bosom. I asked him what he was going to do with it. ‘Ah! monsieur, it will help to buy me a wife,’ replied Achmet, and then he told us how he was saving up to get £5 that he might buy a wife. An old woman had told him of a very pretty girl, and the father only wanted 125 francs for her. I engaged Achmet there and then to do all my little commissions for me, and to accompany me to the Arab quarter, and show me everything; and I promised him that if he was good, before I left Algeria I wouldgive him the balance he needed, and leave him a happy married man.
The Arab marriage system is curious but simple. There can be no love and no courtship about it. That must come after marriage, because the Arab husband never sees his wife’s face, or speaks to her until the marriage ceremony has been performed. Old women are the match-makers. They see the Arab girls at home, and describe their beauty in glowing Eastern language to the eligible Arab men. A young fellow is kind to an old woman, runs errands for her (I am speaking of Achmet’s class now), and in return she gives him ‘the straight tip’ as to whose daughter to buy for a wife. Achmet had saved his old lady friend from being insulted by a drunken Zouave, and she had rewarded him by telling him of the beautiful Saidah Bint Mohammed, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Mohammed Ben Omar, the old Arab donkey-driver of the Upper Town. Papa wanted 150 francs, but he would take 125. Achmet was in great terror lest some other young fellow should hear of the bargain first.
These young Arab women are rarely seen in the streets. The old women and the divorced women (women sent back to their fathers) go about, but closely veiled, so that only the eyes are visible. The Arab divorce is curious, and, like the marriage system, singularly easy. An Arab with too many wives who wants to get rid of one, or the poor Arab with one who wants a change in his domestic circle, says to the wife, ‘I divorce thee.’ This he must say three times at a week’s interval. The girl then goes back to her father, and takes all her jewellery, and any property she brought with her. Divorce, however, is not very frequently resorted to. Husband and wife jog along together. Jealousy does not exist on the female side, and the wife has very little opportunity of causing her lord uneasiness. There is nothing in the domestic arrangements to cause words. The Arab husband does not dine with his wife, and it never enters into her head to object to his latchkey and late hours at the café.
The system of polygamy prevents the poor Arab from feeling the pressure of a large family, and the labour market is not affected by female competition. These people escape the difficulties of our London poor. A man’s sons work for him at a very early age, and the daughters are all marketable. When they are very pretty they are really valuable property. Besides this, the Korancommandscharity, and there is no such thing as an Arab who has been true to his faith dying of hunger. Arabs, again, are forbidden by their religion to drink intoxicants. An Arab can cross Africa from Morocco to the Soudan with nothing in his pocket. Shelter and food are offered him gratis by every tribe he meets. The rich help the poor, not as an act of charity, but as an act of religion. Islamism does not at present enjoy the benefit of the teaching of the Charity Organization Society.
With Achmet to accompany me, and Albert Edward to exchange Arabic pleasantries with the natives, I have been able to sit among them at their own cafés, to chat with them in their bazaars, and to visit some of them in their homes. To me this has been more instructive than wandering about the famous old town of the pirates and its picturesque environs. No one can look without emotion for the first time on this once blood-bespattered spot, on the wild African coast from which the scourges of Christendom sailed forth to sweep the seas and then desolate the neighbouring lands; to bring back thousands of slaves—the men to toil their lives away in cruel bondage, and the women to be sold in the great market to thewealthy lords of vast harems—no one, I say, can look upon this spot without feeling stirred and interested. But, after all, the proper study of mankind is man. The condition of a race existing is a more useful study than the story of a race which has passed away. Algiers has had its Dey, and now it has its Governor-General; but I doubt much whether the Arabs of Algeria are really fonder of the French soldiers than the Christians of old were of the Moorish corsairs.
The best way to get an idea of Algiers as a whole is to row out into the bright blue bay. Then you see as pretty a picture as ever was sent to a Royal Academy. The town seems to rise from the sea in a series of shining white marble terraces. Above the European quarter lies the old Arab town—white and weird and wonderful. But it is the background that makes the picture. The glorious green heights that frame the landscape are dotted with French villas and Moorish palaces, amid the rich colouring of tropical fruit and flower, and, high over all, stretching far away into the dim distance, are the snowclad summits of the Atlas Mountains.
But the greatest beauty of all lies in the sky and the sea and the sun, and the ever-glowing, smiling landscape. You can’t describe this sort of thing—at least, I can’t. My stock of adjectives is small, and I should exhaust it in a paragraph if I tried to depict the loveliness of this favoured spot.
The best of scenery soon palls on me, but the ever-changing, ever-moving crowd never does. I should like to have the great gathering-place of Algiers, the Place du Gouvernement, packed and exported to London for my especial benefit. Always at my dark hour, when I begin to wonder whether razors or poisons or water-butts are the best solutions of the enigma of life, I would go and sit down onthe Place du Gouvernement, and my dark hour would give way to the dawn—nay, to the full glory of the noonday sun. What a marvellous crowd it is that saunters up and down! The stately Arab, spurning the ground as he paces it in white burnous; the gaudy Moor, in his bright blue, gold-embroidered jacket, short white trousers, and red fez; the Jew, with his yellow turban, his black jacket, and his many-coloured sash; the black Bedouins of the desert; the Greek; the Turk; the Maltese; the swarthy, fierce-eyed Spaniard; the French Zouaves and Turcos; the raven-haired, lustrous-eyed daughters of Spain and Southern Italy; the Arab woman, veiled upwards to the nose and downwards to the eyes—how you wonder what they look like behind that tantalizing gauze!—the Jewess, with her straight silk robe and slippered feet—all these races mix and commingle with the dandy Frenchman and the commonplace Englishman, and make a ‘bit of colour’ which it would be hard to find equalled anywhere.
How one despises broadcloth and chimney-pot and all the sober hues of cockneydom as one gazes on this scene! I feel that even I might begin to find a few minutes’ pleasure in life if I could only dress myself up in one of these romantic garbs and wear a bright-coloured sash instead of braces, and shining buff boots or scarlet slippers. If I could wear these things and have a fierce black moustache and a turban or a fez, I am quite sure the world would also wear a different aspect. Of course I may be wrong. It is quite possible that these picturesque people who eye me as I pass are envying me my prosaic billycock hat and my tallow-coloured complexion and my commonplace black coat.
How these people ever get about Algiers without spoiling their finery is a great mystery to me. Ihave not been out five minutes before I am mud-colour from top to toe—not black mud; that does not exist here—but a brown-coloured mud, which driescafé-au-lait, or fawn colour, and shows up splendidly on your dark garments. The roads of Algiers are awful. They are sometimes a foot thick in light, liquid mud. If you take an open carriage, you might as well put the mud on with a whitewash-brush at starting to save trouble. The administration of Algiers does not worry itself about such a thing as road-making or road-sweeping. The mayor is a learned professor, and the council probably join with him in learned discussions on abstruse questions. They never do anything for Algiers.
To take a good drive in the neighbourhood you want nerves of iron. One Sunday I drove a roundabout way to our Lady of Africa, the church that stands on the summit of the high hill of Bou Zarea. Two little Arab horses drew me, and the driver left the path to them. He only attended to the pace, which was the maximum all the way. Go up the side of a house and down the side of a house in an open carriage at full speed, then dash round the house on the extreme verge of the gutter, then, without getting out of the carriage, make your steeds jump from the roof of one detached house to the next, then drive straight across a row of roofs, taking the centre and never turning to the right or the left merely because a stack of chimneys is in the way—do all this, and you will then be able to understand the sort of drives my coachman takes me in Algeria. I am told the precipices and the ravines we pass over and the mountains we scale are grand and glorious. I can’t say; I always, when I come to them, shut my eyes, and wonder whether they will think to join my pieces together before they pack me for transportation to England, just to see if I am ‘all there.’
Our Lady of Africa stands upon a precipice overlooking the sea. Here I saw a ceremony which is, I believe, unique. The priests and the acolytes, and the whole religious procession, filed out after prayers and stood on the brow of the precipice. Then began a grand and beautiful service. The priest ‘blessed the sea,’ and then performed a solemn funeral service for all those who have died therein. It was a very impressive service, and it was a very lovely idea. Some of us were so touched by the solemn ceremony at the edge of that vast grave that we broke down a little. Amid the sad-faced women who stood around there were evidently some to whom the prayers for the dead who lay beneath the sad sea-waves brought back the loved face lost, the vanished hand, and the sound of the voice for ever still. The ceremony is one no visitor to Algiers should miss, but it leaves a sadness on the mind which does not soon pass away.
The interior walls of Our Lady of Africa are covered with votive offerings from the faithful, chiefly pictures of wrecks and narrow escapes by land and sea, from fire and water, which are intended to commemorate the miraculous intercession of the Holy Virgin; and there is also to be seen a very quaint statue of the Archangel Michael, usually hidden behind drapery, and which is said to be worth a hundred thousand francs, being made of solid silver. It is the property of a confraternity of Neapolitan fishermen. The church of Our Lady of Africa is the place of worship of Mediterranean seafarers, irrespective of nationality; and Spanish smugglers, Italian fishermen and French sailors forget their differences when they kneel down in prayer before her shrine.
The village of Bou Zarea, which is built on a slope of the mountain, lies 1,300 feet above the sea,and from it you can get some idea of what this coast must have looked like in the days of the Deys and the pirates. Every prominent point is studded with the ruins of a fort, or the tomb of a saint. These tombs, properly called koubbas, but usually styled marabouts by the French, are often exceedingly picturesque. Just behind us, half a mile up the mountain, there is the koubba of Sidi Naaman, a venerated patriarch who worked miracles while in the flesh, and whose fame is still green among the Arabs. But this is but one in a hundred, or a thousand, and there are few pretty spots on the seashore or in the mountain without a koubba.
One day, while wandering in the hills, I came upon one of these koubbas, the tomb of a very celebrated marabout, whose life had been one of holiness. I was quite alone, there was not a living soul to be seen, so I opened the door of the mausoleum and walked in. To my surprise, I found inside the tomb a beautiful bed hung with gorgeous draperies, and by the side of the bed was a little table, on which stood a plate of oranges, a plate of bananas, and a plate of dates. I fancied I had mistaken somebody’s one-roomed house for a tomb, so I crept out cautiously and walked away. The same evening, while talking with a French officer, I related my adventure, and he explained the mystery.
The beautiful bed was for the marabout to sleep on, the food was for his refreshment. After sunset all holy men are believed to rise from the earth and lie upon the more comfortable bed, and take a little light refreshment. Some Arabs go so far as to put a pipe and some tobacco and a box of lights on the table, in case the dead saint should like a smoke. What a delightful idea of death! Why, the grave would lose all its terrors to some men if they could be sure of a pipe after dinner!
I bringa message from across the seas. I am requested by the venerable Father Antoine, of the monastery of La Trappe, at Staouëli, near Algiers, to make it known that the Trappists of Africa are very anxious to have an English brother among them. The monastery is delightfully situated. Its advantages are that you take a vow of perpetual silence; you only have one meal a day, which never includes meat; you labour healthfully in the fields, and, by way of recreation, you dig your own grave. The English brother will occasionally be relieved of the vow of perpetual silence, because his duties will be to receive the English visitors and conduct them over the monastery. I am absolutely in earnest. The request is abonâ-fideone; and an English Roman Catholic willing to enter the order will be most heartily and cordially received.
I was much inclined to stay myself. I didn’t mind the work and the grave-digging and the vegetarian diet. I am sure many of my ailments would have disappeared under the treatment. My stumbling-block was the vow of silence. In the interior of the monastery silence is rigorously enforced. Even visitors, after they pass the inner portals, are requested to hold their tongues. I couldn’t do that even for ten minutes. I tried hard, but every nowand then I found myself whispering a remark to my companions. The good Père Antoine smilingly rebuked me with a warning finger, and the silent Trappists gazed at me in mild remonstrance. No ladies are under any circumstances admitted. The utter impossibility of a woman remaining silent anywhere or under any circumstances is probably the reason for this rigorous exclusion.
On the day that I drove to Staouëli and visited the famous monastery, the African sun was pouring down its fierce rays from a sky of the deepest and intensest blue. The vast fields of scented geranium, from which the Trappists distil a famous perfume, were bathed in a great white heat. There hundreds of cattle lay about and lolled in the sun, and the great palm-trees in the glorious gardens of the monastery cast their long shadows over such a wealth of fruit and flower as I have never seen before. ‘If it is sad to live at La Trappe, how sweet it is to die there,’ says an inscription on the walls. I don’t want to die there, but I am sure I should not have found it sad to live and labour amid such calm and beautiful surroundings, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot.’ It must be a very comfortable existence. All the brothers I saw looked very happy. No posts, no telegraphs disturbed the calm serenity of their labours, and they all sat down to their one daily meal with an appetite and a digestion that filled me with a great envy.
I breakfasted at La Trappe. Brother Dominic spread the feast, and Father Antoine himself uncorked the wines—made on the premises—with which the dainty fare was washed down. I was the only visitor, so I breakfasted in solemn state alone. I had first an excellent omelette, then some cold sweet potatoes, then some cheese and salad, then some bread and honey, then some raisins, someoranges, and some bananas, and after I had drunk a bottle of red wine, the good father produced a bottle of exquisite white sweet dessert wine; and after that I had coffee and a glass of the famous Trappistine liqueur. Father Antoine and Brother Dominic waited upon me hand and foot. They piled my plate and filled my glass until I was obliged to cry, ‘Hold! enough!’ only I expressed myself more politely. And then I was shown to the shaded seat in the garden, and told that if I liked to enjoy a cigar under the palm-trees, the brother would look the other way.
I have a few pleasant memories to look back upon—green oases in the arid desert of my life; but there are none so fraught with calm and holy peace as that hot January day I spent with the good kind brothers of La Trappe in their African home. They showed me everything—their cells, their beds, their library, their kitchen, their farm, their winepresses, theirlaboratoire, their stables, their cattle, their thousands of cocks and hens and pigeons and rabbits, and then they loaded me with ripe oranges and bananas plucked from their own trees, and choicest roses gathered from their own gardens; and all they asked me in return was to mention in my book that they wanted an English brother to come and live among them. Go, English brother, go; and I promise you you will be happy—far happier than staying in the turmoil of the world, to endure its thousand worries and heartaches and disappointments. Go and tell Father Antoine that the Englishman who smoked a pipe, and whowouldkeep talking in spite of the rules, kept his promise, and sent you out to dig your own grave, and to make the English visitors who don’t speak French welcome to the African home of the world-famed monks of La Trappe.
On the evening of the day that I visited La Trappe, I assisted at a very different scene. I received an invitation to be present at the Feast of the Assaouaï, a kind of religious fête, held in a Moorish house in the Rue Ben Ali, a narrow street in the top of the Arab quarter. The Arab quarter is a sight in itself. It is a labyrinth of narrow streets of steps and jumbled houses. You can only pass along two abreast, and the roofs of the houses hang over and almost join. To get to any given house, you must have a guide; for there are scores of streets crossing and recrossing one another, and they are all alike. Achmet conducted me at night to the Rue Ben Ali, and I witnessed a scene the like of which is to be seen nowhere else in the civilized world. I found myself in the courtyard of a Moorish house, open to the sky. Above me glittered the bright stars in a vault of blue. The courtyard was crammed with Arabs, and French and English ‘strangers.’ Next to me, standing on a chair, was Miss Jones of Clapham, with her mamma. I wondered how they got there, and what they thought of the Moorish ladies, who, dressed like the chorus in the Eastern extravaganza at the Gaiety Theatre, sat outside many of the houses in the narrow streets, and addressed endearing blandishments to the male passers-by. I blushed a little at much that I passed on my journey up the Arab quarter; but Miss Jones of Clapham and her mamma were possibly protected by their innocence from knowing what it meant. Before the Feast of the Assaouaï was over, they must have had their innocence severely put to the test; but I am bound to say they never blushed once.
The performance commenced with a dance of Moorish girls. The girls were lovely, and they were gorgeously dressed. They danced the Oriental dance, which is, perhaps, as absolutely and indelicately suggestive as any dance known to ancient or moderntimes. The French ladies present muttered ‘Mon Dieu!’ under their breath. Miss Jones of Clapham struggled for a closer view. Mamma pursed her lips a little, and once I thought I heard her groan, but she stood on tiptoe until a Moor’s fez got in her line of sight. After the dance, the girls sang a love-song. Achmet explained the burthen of it to me, when I heard Miss Jones say to her mamma that it was very ‘sweet.’ I felt convinced that Arabic didn’t form part of a young lady’s education at Clapham seminaries. What the natives who understood the song and appreciated the dances must have thought of the English young woman who almost jumped on the Arabs’ backs to get a good view of the proceedings, I have been wondering ever since.
After the songs and dances, the dervishes commenced their performances. A young dervish jumped into the ring, and swayed himself backwards and forwards for ten minutes, shouting, ‘Allah! Allah!’ while his motions became so rapid that I felt giddy. Then, having reached the required pitch of fanatical fervour, he began to cram live scorpions into his mouth, and bite off their heads and tails. I confess that if I could have got out of the crowd, I should gladly have been sick. Miss Jones of Clapham only murmured that it was very wonderful. Another fanatic, after swinging round till he fell down foaming at the mouth, ran skewers through his nose and under his eyelids, and left them hanging there while he bit pieces out of a glass bottle and chewed them to powder. Then he had an epileptic fit, or a paralytic stroke, and, as soon as he had recovered, sat down to rest on a pan of live charcoal. He then ran a knife through his tongue, turned his eyes out on to his cheeks, twisted his ears upside down, and stuck his nose full of red-hot needles. After this he bowed and retired, amid much applause, Miss Jonesof Clapham almost splitting her dainty little kid gloves in her demonstrations of approval. Mamma, I am bound to say, whispered to her dear and enthusiastic child that she was not quite sure that she could stand very much more.
I didn’t think there could be much more to stand; but a very old Arab gentleman stepped into the ring with a huge sharp-pointed sword in his hand. The sword was passed round, and we all felt the edge and the point. Miss Jones wouldn’t let it go for at least two minutes. The sword was then held on the ground, point upwards, by two strong men, who lay down to do it. The old Arab gentleman then coolly proceeded to roll up his shirt round his neck, so as to leave his entire stomach bare. He then turned to the audience to show them that it was bare. At last Miss Jones of Clapham was disconcerted. Truth compels me to admit that she ejaculated, ‘Oh, mamma!’ and for one short moment she looked as though she would like to retire. But she recovered herself in a moment, and nearly knocked an elderly French gentleman’s hat over his eyes in her endeavour to get a nearer view. The Arab ‘undressed,’ after trying the sword to see that it was firmly fixed, stepped back a foot or two; then, with a little run, sprang in the air, and, throwing himself out, fell with his bare stomach flat on to the point of the upright sword. He was absolutely impaled, and in this position he spun round and round. I turned away, and fancied I was on board ship again. If only there had been a steward handy, I should have called him to my assistance with the accompanying crockery; but Miss Jones of Clapham gave a little giggle, and cried out in maiden wonderment, ‘Lor, ma! however can he do it?’
I stopped to see no more. Calling on Achmet to accompany me, I quitted the dancing girls and thejuggling Arabs and the self-mutilating dervishes, and went out into the Rue Ben Ali. As I left the courtyard of the Moorish house, I looked up, and high above me in the starlight, upon the galleries of the house, I saw veiled Arab women looking down upon the scene. I wondered what they thought of the unveiled, bare-faced English girls who assisted, without a blush or a shudder, at such disgusting and depraved exhibitions. When I told Achmet that many of these young English girls would not be allowed to go to a stage-play in England, except at the Crystal Palace, for fear their modesty should be shocked, he opened his large Eastern eyes to such an extent that they looked like a couple of full moons. He says the Arabs can’t understand the Giaour women at all, and I don’t wonder at it. The French people in the town are themselves shocked at the idea of unmarried girls assisting at these exhibitions; but they are the first things that the English girls ask to be taken to see. If I had a son, I should be very sorry for him to accompany me to one. But English mothers take their daughters, and so I am driven to the conclusion that either I am extra squeamish, or that they are extra innocent. But the innocence that can detect nothing improper in the dance of the Moorish girls ought to be wrapped in cotton-wool, and taken back to the Garden of Eden in the days before Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That is the only place, and the only period, in which anyone would accept it as genuine.
In bygone times the Assaouaï were a powerful religious fraternity. The founder of the order was an Arab, one Sidi Mohammed Ben Aïssa, and the members, whose mission it was to fan the fanaticism of the people in times of war, were all Arabs. But the Assaouaï of to-day are a mixed lot of Arabs,Berbers, and Negroes. Nevertheless, they still exercise considerable power over the imagination of their fellow-countrymen in the more remote districts of Morocco and Tripoli, where they are often the secret agents of rebellion. But in Algeria, owing to the revolts fomented by them, ending all in slaughter and defeat, they have lost their prestige; they are no longer ‘invincibles,’ only showmen living upon the profits of their performances.
The climate of Algeria is fearfully trying to the temper. If the Archbishop of York and the Archbishop of Canterbury came to stay here together, they would have words in a week. I won’t say they would come to blows in a month, because they are Archbishops; but I think that two bishops would probably fight. Everybody in Algeria who is not a native becomes irritable and hasty and snappy very soon after landing. I, of course, retain my usual placidity of manner; but Albert Edward is awful. He bullies the landlords of our hotels; he challenges the post-office officials to come outside and fight; he even presumes at times to lecture me smartly upon my unreasonableness; and when he scolds the waiters, I blush for very shame. I generally go afterwards to these poor people and apologize for his violence. But I have to do it in secret, for I am myself afraid of him. The other day he fell over a piece of broken pavement in the Rue Bab el Zoued at Algiers, and his new hat went flying into the mud. This accident he declared was due to the culpable negligence of the authorities, and before I could stop him he had rushed off to the Hotel de Ville, rung up the concierge, and was flourishing his stick about, and giving most insulting messages to the mayor. His language to the clerk at the Poste-Restante was really shocking. Here I must say he had an excuse.
The method of doing business at the Poste Restante is not calculated to put an Englishman in a good temper. If he comes and gives in his card, he is handed all the English letters, and told to help himself. From Mustapha (the English colony, and at once the Clapham and South Kensington of Algiers) there comes a porter from the hotels. He generally takes all the English newspapers as a matter of course. The idea that anybody not residing on the Mustapha (a height above the town) should have anything from England is scouted as absurd. My English papers I only recovered after employing mounted Arabs to scour the hills in every direction, inquiring at every villa and every hotel and every farm where an English person resided.
I received a batch of letters nine days after their leaving London. They were due in four. I believe that they had been given to a sailor who came from an English yacht in the bay for letters, and mine evidently went for a short cruise before they were brought back. One thing I would impress on English people coming to Algiers—don’t have your letters sent to the Poste Restante. If you do your time will be wasted, your correspondence delayed, and your temper will become as uncontrollable as my companion’s.
The Post-office clerks cannot read English names. To show the hash that is made of them, I will quote from the list of fashionable arrivals at an hotel given in a local paper. The arrivals are all classified under the heads of French, Spanish, Italian, English, etc. Here is the English listliteratim et verbatim:
‘The Mistress Macandraw, Mr. Boom, Mr. Fegin, Mr. Fosdick, Mr. Dosgoity, Mr. Billies, Mr. Plumb, Mr. Sliebel, the O’Rori, the Mistress Lady Jon.’ If the names are right, it is about the queerest collection of surnames I ever came across.
Achmet has just come in to tell me that a lion has appeared at a village some miles from where I am now encamped, and that his roaring has kept the inhabitants awake all night. I am off. To see a real live lion looking about for his breakfast, free and unfettered, is an unfulfilled ambition of my life. Hastily we grasp our firearms, leap upon our Arab steeds, and dash across the desert towards the hill where the lion is seeking whom he may devour. Whether I shall be able to let you know the result of our day’s sport will depend very much upon which gets the better of the encounter—we or the lion.
Achmet, who brought me my letters and newspapers, also told me there had been an execution in Algiers of an Arab who had been found guilty of a very cruel murder. The guillotine is a fearful punishment for a Moslem, because the guillotine cuts the head off, and Mahomet takes the faithful when they are dead by the hair of the head in order to lift them up into Paradise. The poor fellows who are cut in two at the neck are in a fearful state, because when Mahomet takes hold of them by the hair of the head the body will naturally remain behind on earth. In the Mahomedan Paradise a gentleman with only a head would not be able to thoroughly enjoy himself.
A public decapitation strikes terror into the hearts of the Arab populace. The guillotine at Algiers is erected on a large open space in front of the Arab quarter, and the ceremony is made as imposing as possible,pour encourager les autres. Achmet told me that once when a friend of his had been guillotined, the relatives had gone to the Governor and begged the body and head back again. As a great favour they had been given up to them on condition that they said nothing about it to the other Arabs. When these people got the two pieces of their departedfriend home, they sewed his head on again with a thick string, and then they practised holding him up by the hair to see if the stitches would stand when Mahomet came to lift him into Paradise.
The Arabs are none too well treated bytheirmaster. They have had to suffer for France’s colonial policy. I don’t fancy that France makes Algeria pay. It is a trinket on her watch-chain, and not the watch at the end of it. Algeria is in debt. She costs France far more to keep than she gives in return. The expenses of military occupation of the Government are great, and the produce is small. The Arabs complain bitterly of the excessive taxation; but they have suffered even more at the hands of the Jews than of the French.
Nearly all the Arab farmers and landed proprietors are in debt to the Jews. Their crops are mortgaged before they are gathered. One after the other their houses and lands have fallen into the hands of the Israelites. Money is dear. The legal rate of interest is from twelve to thirteen per cent., but the Arab pays forty, and sometimes more. I have been on some magnificent properties which only a few years ago belonged to Arab Caïds and Sheiks; to-day the gaudy villa of the Jewish owner has replaced the Arab house. They have passed from race to race at about one-third of their value. The extortionate interest has accumulated, and the property has gone to pay it.
Between the French Government and the Jew money-lender, the Arab proprietors of land in Algeria have come to the ground, or, to speak more correctly, have gone from it. How deeply the Arabs of Algeria feel their position was expressed in 1871. Gambetta appointed Crémieux, a Jew, Governor-General of Algeria. The great Arab chiefs flung down their French decorations, resigned their official positions,and called on their kinsmen to throw off the yoke of France. The rebellion was crushed, the Arabs were slaughtered and fined and impoverished, and to-day they sit and brood in a state of sullen resignation. The French have good reason for keeping a strong military force in Algeria.
But I am wandering into a political discussion. Good gracious me! and all my own personal adventures are going to the wall. I have spent so many nights in the Arab cafés with Achmet, and heard so much of these things from the natives, that they have saturated my mind. I hasten to unsaturate it. Bother the Arabs and their grievances! let us go and see the sights.
I told you I was just off to kill a lion. You will gather from the fact that these lines appear in print that the lion did not kill me. We found him, after a long search, in a lonely part of the Atlas Mountains. I never shot anything in my life, so when Albert Edward handed me his rifle I said, ‘No. Perhaps the poor beast is the father of a family who are entirely dependent on him for support.’ ‘Oh, nonsense!’ was the reply; ‘pray don’t let any idea of that sort interfere with legitimate sport. Besides, fancy the triumph of bringing home a lion that you have shot yourself. If you don’t shoot him I will.’ He levelled the gun. The lion saw it. A piteous look came into the animal’s face. He gave one roar of terror, turned round, and bolted off with his tail between his legs. But he was not quick enough. Bang went the rifle, and the lion rolled over on his side a corpse!
Then I felt that I ought to share in the honours of the day. I assisted to pick the poor beast up, and we made a litter, and put him on it, and carried him in triumph to the next village. We expected a grand reception. To our intense surprise, when the inhabitants beheld the dead lion, they burst out into savage cries, and shook their fists at us, and cursed us in Arabic. We were arrested and dragged before the Caïd, and then we learnt for the first time what our offence was.
We had killed the ‘show’ lion of the district—a lion that had been imported at vast expense from the Zoological Gardens, London, and tamed and taught to run about the mountains for the amusement of tourists. The Caïd fined us £50 for destroying the property of the inhabitants, and discharged us with a caution. We asked for the skin, and were refused. That skin is to be stuffed and put up on the mountains in a natural position. African travellers who visit this district can shoot the first lion they meet now in perfect safety. They will injure nothing but the stuffing.
One cherished illusion I shall, alas! leave behind me in the Sahara. You know those beautiful lines the Arab addressed to his steed in the poetry-book of our youth—
‘My beautiful, my beautiful, that stands so meekly by,With thy proudly arched and glossy neck, thy dark and fiery eye;Fret not to roam the desert now, with all thy wingèd speed,I may not mount on thee again—thou’rt sold, my Arab steed.’
‘My beautiful, my beautiful, that stands so meekly by,With thy proudly arched and glossy neck, thy dark and fiery eye;Fret not to roam the desert now, with all thy wingèd speed,I may not mount on thee again—thou’rt sold, my Arab steed.’
‘My beautiful, my beautiful, that stands so meekly by,With thy proudly arched and glossy neck, thy dark and fiery eye;Fret not to roam the desert now, with all thy wingèd speed,I may not mount on thee again—thou’rt sold, my Arab steed.’
The poem is long. But it shows that the Arab is devoted to his horse. Well, I have seen the Arab’s devotion to his horse, and I’m very sorry for the animal. The cruelty of the Arab to his steed is something beyond expression. The Arab starves his steed and beats it mercilessly. He works it to death. The steed is covered with raw and bleeding wounds, and when the Arab wants to make his steed go faster he runs a sharp stick into one of the open wounds. ‘My beautiful, my beautiful!’ O, Poetry, what sins you have to answer for! I shall neverread those beautiful verses again without saying ‘Bosh!’ The Arab who loved his horse, and the horse that was so beautiful, have gone over for ever, so far as I am concerned, to the great majority—the majority of lost illusions.
While in Algiers I was indebted to my coachman for much of my information. My coachman was a Gascon, and he Gasconaded to his heart’s content. He drove us about day by day, and told us stories which would have made Baron Munchausen look to his laurels. I let him have his fling, and then, in the language of the ring, I ‘took him on.’ I began to tell him stories of England. He listened at first in calm and childlike faith, but at last he saw that I was playing him at his own game. Then the old African hills resounded with his Homeric laughter, and he became my sworn friend. He slapped me on the back and said I was a fine fellow, and he liked the English because they were not proud like the French, but cracked jokes with a coachman.
My coachman’s friendship became gradually a little too obtrusive. One day, having to rest his horses in order to take us a sixty-mile drive into the interior the next day, and having drawn twenty francs on account of his fare, he spent his spare time in drinking my health. Unfortunately, he strolled about the town as well, and was continually meeting me. Every time we met he insisted on shaking hands and slapping me on the back. I didn’t mind it at quiet corners, but when I was talking to the Governor-General and his charming daughters on the Place du Gouvernement, I must confess that I was taken aback to find myself suddenly embraced by my affectionate Jehu, who, in accents slightly thick and alcoholised, called me his brother, and implored Heaven to witness that I was his best friend.The Governor smiled, the lovely daughters tittered, and I felt that my dignity as a distinguished stranger had suffered a slight concussion.
But my coachman was quite sober on the morning of our departure. He drove us to the quay, and refused any fare. He wept on both our shoulders, and as the Arab boatman rowed us out to the ship, the brave Gascon fell upon his knees upon the African soil and prayed that we might soon come back and gladden his eyes and shake his hand and tell him stories again.
Achmet, too, came to see us off. Achmet was married the day before we left. I made up his five pounds, and he bought his little wife and took her home. ‘Well, Achmet,’ I said, ‘did the old woman tell you the truth?’ ‘Ah, Sidi,’ replied the young man, ‘I am the happiest young Arab in all Algiers. Give me your name, that I may call the first son that Allah shall bless me with after my benefactor.’ I didn’t give him my real name, but I gave him mynom de plume, and so I dare say before I visit Algiers again the followers of the Prophet will number among them for the first time in the history of the faith a Mohammedan named Dagonet.
‘TheBeauty Spot of the Riviera’ is the flattering title which a resident English physician has given to his book upon Monte Carlo. It is getting difficult nowadays to give a new name to a place which has been raved about, reviled, flattered, slandered, discussed, and describedad nauseam. That it is a paradise is a fact as widely advertised as that somebody’s soap is matchless for the complexion, and that somebody else’s mustard is the best. It is a paradise—a fool’s paradise. All that Nature could do to make Monte Carlo beautiful she has done. She has painted the lily and adorned the rose in her endeavour to make the famous mount queen of the Riviera. Monte Carlo is a beautiful poem set to music; but the poem is the one in which the singer tells us that ‘all save the spirit of man is divine.’ When I arrived in Monte Carlo, my first impression was that I had made a mistake, and taken a ticket for Kempton Park; but the scenery was slightly against such a theory. I looked at the sea, and then I thought that in a fit of absence of mind I might have got mixed on the railway and in my dates, and that I had been landed at Brighton during the Sussex fortnight. The sun was hot, the sea was blue, and the bookmakers and the backers that one is accustomed to meet at a race meeting were airingthemselves in light costumes and yellow boots along the principal promenades. But palm-trees, and marble staircases, and cacti and eucalypti, and prickly pear-trees, and sunny mountain slopes dotted with white villas are not the characteristic features of London-super-Mare. I gradually awoke to the fact that I was on the Mediterranean, and at Monte Carlo in January; but you can understand my being a little bit mixed at first when I tell you that the only people I met during the first half-hour of my sojourn in the principality were either English bookmakers, English backers, or English racehorse owners.
Let me briefly trace the interesting history of a place which is now world-famous, and is becoming every year more and more a place of English resort. In the old days, when the railway came no further than Nice, someone had permission from the Prince of Monaco to keep a roulette-table in the old town. There were so few customers that the game did not pay, and it was on the point of being given up when Blanc, knowing that the doom of the German gaming-tables was imminent, began to look about for a spot in which he could carry on his business when his German premises were closed. He came to Monaco, and saw the situation. He made an offer for the concession, took it over, and when the German tables were closed he transported his business to the shores of the Mediterranean.
All the world knows how the affair prospered, how Blanc died, how his daughter married Prince Roland Bonaparte, and how the affair was turned into a company. But what all the world does not know is that since Blanc’s death the management has steadily degenerated, until it has become absolutely objectionable.
A special Providence seems to watch over this delightful, romantic, wicked, enchanting little spot.Monte Carlo escaped damage from the earthquake which shattered the neighbouring places, and she is always spared the snow and ice which occasionally remind one of winter in Nice. She seems, indeed, to bear a charmed life, for nothing affects her prosperity, and nothing damages her beauty. I fell an instant victim to her wiles. I had not been in the place half an hour before I wanted to come and live there for ever. Every turn reveals some new beauty, every hour brings some fresh pleasure, and you begin to wonder how it is possible that there can be so many melancholy looking people in such a heavenly spot, unless you remember that the little ball rolls from morning till night, and that the majority of people who come to Monte Carlo come to gamble, and, as a natural consequence, to lose their money.
From noon until eleven o’clock at night, despising the glorious scenery, the tropical vegetation, the balmy air, and the glorious sunshine, the great bulk of the people who come to Monte Carlo crowd round the roulette and trente-et-quarante tables in a series of close, stuffy, and gloomy rooms. The air and the sunshine are rigidly excluded. A dim, religious, artificial light falls upon the tables and the faces of the players. All is forgotten in the greed for gold. Faces are flushed, hands tremble, bosoms heave, and the gold passes slowly and surely into the coffers of the bank. Those who have lost fall out and go their way, with heavy hearts, out into the mocking sunshine and the beauteous Eden in which the ‘establishment’ has concealed its serpent. The winners stay on, and plunge and plunge again, only to come to the inevitable end; it is only a question of time. The unlucky lose at once, the lucky win at first, only to make their ultimate loss the more bitter.
I have the whole place to myself—always excepting the gambling rooms and the post-office. You can mostly find plenty of people losing all their money at the former, and wiring home for more at the latter. I came with the firm intention of climbing the mountain, basking in the sunshine, taking long walks by the blue Mediterranean, and generally enjoying the beauties of the poisoned paradise without paying toll to the Strangers’ Club and Sea Baths Company (Limited). For a whole day I resisted the temptation to play. I drank in the warm air, I feasted my eyes on orange groves and avenues of palms, and gardens gay with the flowers that come to us only in summer. I climbed the mountain, and looked out over the hills dotted with white villas, and I looked down upon the sea that lay like a lake of still blue paint far below. I picked oranges and lemons from the boughs that hung down over the white mountain roadways, and in the lightness of my heart I whistled ‘The Man who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,’ and shook my fist defiantly at the palatial building which has drawn all men unto the rocky home of the Grimaldis—with the accent on the rocky. I gambolled on the green turf like a lamb, instead of gambling on the green cloth like a donkey—and twenty-four hours afterwards a man with a stern set face and flashing eyes stood opposite that palatial establishment and cursed it in five different languages, specially studied up for that occasion. In spite of all his resolutions, he had gone in ‘just to look on,’ and he had put down five francs ‘just for the fun of the thing,’ and it had ended—ah, you can guess how it had ended—that man had won 5,000 francs, and that man was the man who didn’t mean to play.
Then, like all winners, I went back again and again to the rolling ball that gathers all our moss. I didn’t mind losing—in fact, I only lost the moneyI had won—but I hated myself for passing sunny mornings and moonlight nights in a heated atmosphere, amid exciting and unhealthy surroundings. It was so lovely out of doors, but Nature, decked in her fairest garb, wooed me in vain. It is so with almost everyone who comes to Monte Carlo. There is no one anywhere else, but the rooms are crowded. The grounds are deserted; there is never a soul upon the beach. Nobody ever goes out in a boat. Even the ocean at Monte Carlo is for ornament, and not for use. And it is an ocean which, anywhere on the English coast, would be a fortune to the proprietors of rowing boats and sailing vessels and bathing-machines.
Still, in spite of my annoyance at my own weakness in yielding to the evil influence of the place, I have managed to amuse myself and take a few notes, other than those handed to me by a croupier on the end of a rake.
One day there was an amusing incident in the rooms. An Englishman arrived early, and, sitting down, crossed his legs, and stuck one foot out in an attitude of ease. Suddenly there was a wild rush of everybody to the tables, and Italian barons, Spanish countesses, and Russian princesses fought with each other to get their gold and silver pieces on to 17. The croupiers stared, the inspectors looked nervous, and when 17 came up the entire staff seemed petrified. What had happened? Had the wheel been got at? Had some clever trick been played? Why had everybody rushed to back 17? The croupiers looked about and saw every eye directed at the Englishman, who, finding himself the object of so much attention, blushed violently, and burst into a profuse perspiration.
Then a roar of laughter went round the room, and the croupiers and the inspectors, and even thesolemn attendants in livery, joined in it. The mystery was explained. On the sole of the Englishman’s boot was the number 17 in chalk. He had just come from his hotel, and that was the number of his room, and the number chalked on the soles of his shoes that the boots might recognise them and place them outside the right door. We have heard of a man putting his own shirt on a horse, but it isn’t every day that an entire company of gamblers put somebody else’s boots on a number at roulette.
There have been the usual number of suicide stories flying about Monte Carlo. Last night two young Germans were discovered in the gardens about midnight; one had a pistol in his mouth, and the other had a clasp-knife open, with the point pressed against his heart. When they were seized they declared they were about to commit suicide because they had lost everything at the tables.
But a German gentleman came forward who had heard the lads say to each other a quarter of an hour before they were arrested, ‘Let us do it. Someone will be sure to come along and see us, and we shall get a bit to go away.’ This kind of trick is of the common or Monte Carlo garden order, and has long since ceased to impose on the Casino officials.
In the good old days of M. Blanc, it was the custom (so the story goes), directly a suicide was found, to stuff his pockets full of bank notes. This was done to prove that his losses at play were not the cause of his hurried departure from the shores of time. The last person who received this generous treatment was, I believe, an American. He was found lying in one of the quiet alleys of the beautiful grounds, with an empty bottle, labelled ‘Poison,’ by his side. The secret agents of the bold Blanc instantly stuffed his pockets full of gold and notes,preparatory to giving information to the police. No sooner had they filled him as full of lucre as he could hold, than the suicide leapt to his feet, raised his hat, exclaimed, ‘Thank you very much!’ and went off to enjoy himself with his newly-acquired wealth.
A morning in the little post-office that stands above the sea on the terrace at Monte Carlo, and looks like the Paris Morgue’s understudy, may be passed with profit by the student of men and manners. One day, when the mistral (probably having found out that I had come to Monte Carlo for the benefit of my health) was blowing its worst, I went into the post-office and sat down in a chair and wrote telegrams to the sovereigns of Europe, couched in brotherly language. I am in the habit of doing this sort of thing occasionally when I feel sad. I never send the telegrams, but leave them lying on the desk, saying to myself aloud in the language of the country, ‘Ah, no; after all, I will write.’ It is wonderful the respect with which you are treated in a Continental health resort when it gets about that you have telegraphed to the Czar of Russia, ‘Sorry can’t dine with you Wednesday, old fellow; gout keeps me here;’ or to a Prince of the House of Hohenzollern, ‘Come and take potluck with me Sunday week, if you are passing.’
Once in the old days before the war, when one could put one’s gulden on the board of green cloth at Ems, at Wiesbaden, at Baden-Baden, and at Homburg, I was caught in a storm in the woods above Ems, and, spying a stranger standing under a dripping tree, I offered him half my umbrella. When the storm was over, he thanked me and went his way. That night at the tables we met again; he recognised me, and stopped and spoke to me, and asked me if I had had good luck. It is astonishing how polite they were to me at the tables after that. Although I only played in modest silver the croupierswould do their best to get me a seat, and treated me with the greatest distinction. I had entertained a Czarewitch under my umbrella unawares. The gentleman who had publicly asked me if I was having good luck was the heir to the throne of all the Russias. I have never since had a chance of chatting publicly with royalty, and have had to fall back upon sending it telegraphic messages, or, rather, leaving telegraphic messages addressed to it lying about unfinished on the desks of Continental post-office bureaux.
But in writing about the sovereign I am wandering from the subject. I went into the post-office one day and sat down at a table littered with spoilt telegraph-forms. I picked up some of them and read them. They were most of them little life-dramas in themselves. One ran: ‘Dear Aunt and Cousins,—I have finished my life’s journey. This is the bourne from which one traveller will never return. Farewell.’ Here was a hint at a Monte Carlo tragedy. The next spoilt telegram I picked up was more definite. The tragedy was complete: ‘Alphonse died at seven this morning. Break gently to his mother.’ There was a little comic relief in another one: ‘Send me fifty. Hôtel de Paris, return post. Am dead broke, and living on my watch. I only brought a silver one.’ While I was turning over these telegrams, the writers of which had evidently on second thoughts couched their messages in other words, I heard a female voice exclaim, with a pronounced London accent, ‘Does anybody here speak English?’ I looked up, and beheld a young lady in a black hat and large ostrich feathers, and a silver chain and locket. I at once proffered my services. ‘I want to know if I can send £500 through the post to London.’ I explained that one can send a million if one wishes in a registered letter. ‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ said the young lady. ‘I’ve won it, and got it changed into English notes, and I want to send it to my mother. I’m not going to let ’em have it back again at the table—not me.’ The young lady then went to the counter, and, with my assistance, registered a letter containing £500 to Mrs. Hopkins, somewhere in the Caledonian Road, and, honouring me with a smile of thanks, went out gaily on a pair of those trodden-down high heels which are peculiar to the feminine toilette of Great Britain.
Her place at theguichetwas immediately taken by an English clergyman in a brown straw hat and alpaca umbrella. He didn’t speak a word of French, and he wanted a post-office order for four-and-threepence, payable in the Walworth Road. He asked about three hundred questions of the clerk, who did his best to understand him, and finally tendered for the order two French francs, two Italian lire, and wanted to make up the rest in English penny postage-stamps. When the clerk objected, the clergyman argued, and was especially indignant at the rejection of the Italian coins, maintaining that he had received them in the Principality of Monaco. Finally, after taking up nearly an hour of the clerk’s time, and keeping twelve people waiting, he departed without the order, and with the loudly-expressed intention of writing to theTimeson the subject.
There were applicants of every nationality applying for letters at the Poste Restante. Many a one that morning did I see turn away with a white, dazed face when the clerk shook his head and said, ‘Il n’y a rien, monsieur.’ The anxiously expected remittance had not come, and Monte Carlo is a bad place to be in when you have exhausted your funds and forgotten to make your retreat safe by taking a return ticket. Many of those who received registered letters opened them eagerly, and with feverish hands drew forth thebank-notes, thrust them into their pockets, and went off almost at a run along the broad pathway that leads to the gates of—well, ‘the rooms.’ A crowd of anxious faces does he gaze on day after day, this clerk who sits behind theguichetof the Poste Restante at Monte Carlo; and some sad, wild messages must the other clerk read who takes in the telegrams of the gamblers far from home. It isn’t every day that a Miss Hopkins steps jauntily in to send a ‘monkey’ to her mother in the Caledonian Road.
One beautiful sunny afternoon I went over to Mentone. Sitting on the parade in the sunshine, it was difficult to imagine that it was the end of January. It was a day that an Englishman would have been proud of in August. I asked the landlord of the hotel where I lunched if the growing popularity of Monte Carlo had not injured Mentone. ‘Oh no, not at all,’ he replied. ‘On the contrary, we have a great number of English people who come here because it is so close to Monte Carlo. They live here, and go to the rooms every day. No one suspects you of gambling when you are having your letters addressed to Mentone.’ There is no doubt that Monte Carlo is not an address which everybody would care to give who leaves London for the benefit of his or her health.
I missed the train back from Mentone to Monte Carlo, and, not caring to hang about for two hours after the sun had gone down, I took a victoria from the public stand and drove back over the mountains. It was a nice drive in the twilight, but weird and lonely withal. Once in a gloomy gorge, when we came suddenly on an encampment of fierce-looking gipsies, I felt a little uncomfortable, and had visions of being carried off by brigands to a cave; but when we began, after a steep ascent, to go down a precipice at full gallop, I thought of nothing but my neck.The driver cracked his whip, and the horse flew like the wind. We swayed from side to side, and every moment I thought I should go over, and be found mixed up with trunks of trees and bits of rock on the beach below; but the horse was a surefooted little beast, and when I remonstrated with the driver he only laughed, and said he had driven that road for ten years and had never gone over the side of a precipice yet.
The last part of the journey was done by moonlight. I have no doubt it was very beautiful and romantic, but I don’t care about it. There is a bit of roadway near Roquebrune which would try the nerves of a Blondin, and I never walk along it in broad daylight without turning giddy. When we got to that I insisted upon getting out and walking, and I was glad that I did. To avoid a piece of rock which had fallen, my charioteer took the extreme outside edge, and, walking behind, I saw one hind-wheel go actually off the ground and hang in the air. Had the horse stumbled or stopped, I should have had no fare to pay that night. Luckily he made a bound forward as he felt the carriage tilt, and the situation was saved. That steep bank wasnotthe bank that broke the man at Monte Carlo.
I made up my mind that I would never take another moonlight drive over the mountains as long as I lived. For three nights afterwards I dreamt that I was rolling down a precipice, and woke up in such a state of abject terror that I had to get up and draw the curtains, and look out at Monte Carlo bathed in moonlight, lying silent and peaceful as a City of Dreams.
One morning, unable to go to sleep again, I sat at the window and saw the sun rise. I never wished so much for the power of word-painting as then. I would give a good deal to be able to describe thatscene. As I looked out upon it, it seemed to me a sin that such a glorious spot should be the hell of Europe—the hotbed of all that is evil in human nature. The flaunting Casino, with its gaudy roof of blue and red and yellow, seemed like a painted harlot leering with a bold and brazen face as the fair earth woke and smiled at the kiss of her bridegroom the sun. But when I looked at it in this way, the last louis I had to lose had been gathered in by the remorseless rake of the croupier. Probably ‘the Successful Gambler’ would have seen that sunrise in a different light.
Everything is done toforcethe visitor into the bad atmosphere of the hot, unventilated gambling-rooms. No outside attractions are provided or allowed. Everything that may give pleasure to the visitor who does not wish to gamble is taboo. Even the railway is in the official clutches, and the means of escape from the place are made as difficult as possible. The Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Railway is, in the hands of the Casino people, made to injure the surrounding towns. You can get from Nice to Monte Carlo, for example, easily enough, but you find it very difficult to get back again. The hotel-keepers of Nice complain bitterly of what are called ‘Les trains Blanc,’ which are so arranged that the Nice visitor who goes to Monte Carlo cannot get back to Nice for dinner. There is an afternoon train, but it is ‘facultatif,’ which means that it only runs when the administration chooses.
I met a young fellow the other day at the tables who at one time was betting in thousands, and losing his £5,000 a night at baccarat, and was the most notorious plunger in England. He told me he had been cleared out at trente-et-quarante. ‘That’s what I’ve got to get through the week with now,’ he exclaimed playfully, as he showed me twofrancs and a bunch of keys. The next day he borrowed a louis and turned it into £50. The day after that he was ‘broke’ again, and the story goes that he went to bed without any dinner. I saw him yet again, and he had borrowed another five francs, and played it up into a thousand francs in the morning, only to be cleared out again before night.
It was this same young fellow who came to me and told me confidentially that he believed everybody was stony-broke. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, my boy,’ he said, ‘I’ve asked about forty fellows to change me a cheque for £50, and there isn’t one of them that has enough to do it.’ I smiled. Poor lad! If he had had more experience of the world he would have understood why all his former friends and associates, and even the wealthy men who had shared the bulk of his once vast fortune among them, had become so suddenly short of cash. Cheques are not changed with impunity at ‘Charley’s Mount.’
There has been a real suicide at Monte Carlo. There is nothing more difficult than to arrive at the facts connected with Monte Carlo scandals. Everything that is unpleasant, or that is likely to increase the prejudice against the pastime of the Principality, is hushed up with the skill which comes of long practice in the art of concealment.
The place at which the suicide was committed was a small house situated in the Condamine at Monaco. In front of it an Italian labourer was at work in the street. With this man I engaged in conversation, and asked him if he had heard of a young couple committing suicide. The reply was, ‘I know nothing.’ Then I told him what I knew, and rattled some loose silver in my pockets. ‘Ah, as the Signor knows so much it cannot matter what I tell him,’ said the man, and then he pointed out to me the window of the room in which the youngcouple had come to their end. ‘Ah, I saw them often,’ he said, ‘this last few days, while I was at work on the road here. They used to come out arm-in-arm. They were very loving, and I said to myself, “It is a newly-married couple.”’
Having fixed the position of the room well in my eye, I entered the hotel, and found it practically empty. The proprietress came out to receive me. I explained that I was looking for rooms for some friends of mine. Could I see which apartments were vacant? ‘Yes, certainly.’ I was taken into most of the rooms, but none suited until I found myself in the apartment of the romantic suicide. I said nothing to the lady, nor she to me. The room was a small but comfortable one. Two wooden beds stood side by side. These were the beds on which two days previously the lovers had stretched themselves to die. The sun shone in at the open window; the blue Mediterranean glinted below, and as far as the eye could see all was peace and beauty and the joyousness of life. It was from these windows that the young couple had taken their last look upon earth. They had looked out upon the sunny land and the deep blue sea with a fixed purpose of self-destruction in their hearts—with the letter already written which was to tell their friends the story of their last days. It was to this pleasant little room in which I stood that they returned on their last night together, with their last hope gone, with the knowledge in their hearts that when the sun rose again over the palm groves and orange-trees and the white cliffs and smiling seas they would have passed from this world to eternity. What a last walk in the moonlight that must have been!—the man of twenty-nine, the woman of nineteen—lovers, fugitives from their homes—she a marriedwoman, he a married man, and—— But let me tell it you, beginning, middle, and end—this perfect French tragedy, this curious study of morals and manners and Monte Carlo, this romance of the passions, this little life-drama taken ‘palpitating’ from the pages of the modern Boulevard novelist.