0227
“What a lovely morning!” she said.
“Have you heard about the King?” I asked her gruffly, well knowing that she had not.
“No,” she answered smiling. And then, as she looked at me, her smile faded.
“Well,” I said, “he’s dead!”
“What!OurKing?”
“Yes. He died at midnight. Here it is.” And I showed her the “Recentissime” or Latest News page of the newspaper, two lines in leaded type: “Londra, 7, ore 2:30 (Urgenza). Re Edoardo è morto a mezzanotte.” She knew enough Italian to comprehend that.
“This last midnight?” She was breathless.
“Yes.”
“But—but—no one even knew anything about him being ill?” she protested.
“Yesterday evening’s Italian papers had columns about the illness—it was bronchitis,” I said grimly.
“Oh!” she said, “I never see the Italian papers.”
Yet the name of Edward the Seventh had been on every newspaper placard in the land on Friday night. But in Italy these British have literally no sight for anything later than the sixteenth century.
Tears stood in her eyes. On my part it would have been just as kindly to knock her down.
“Just think of that little fellow at Osborne—he’s got to be Prince of Wales now, and I suppose they’ll take him away from there,” she murmured brokenly, as she went off, aghast.
I sat down again. It seemed to me, as I reflected among these tombs and cenotaphs, that a woman’s eyes, on such an occasion, were a good test of the genuineness of popular affection.
I then noticed that, while the Irish lady and I had been whispering, another acquaintance of mine had mysteriously entered the church without my cognizance and had set up his tent in the south transept. This was a young man who, having gained a prominent place in a certain competition at the Royal College of Art, had been sent off with money in his pocket, at the expense of the British nation, to study art and to paint in Italy. He possessed what is called a travelling scholarship, and the treasures of Italy were at his feet as at the feet of a conqueror. Already he had visited me at my hotel, and filled my room with the odour of his fresh oil-sketches. There were only two things in his head—the art of painting, and the prospect of an immediate visit to Venice. He had lodged his easel on a memorial-stone among the flags of the pavement, and was painting a vista of tombs ending in a bright light of stained glass. His habit was to paint before the museums opened and after they closed. I went and accosted him. Again I was conscious of the naïve pride of a bringer of tragic tidings. He was young and strong, with fire in his eye. I need not be afraid of knocking him down, at any rate.
“The King’s dead,” I said.
He lifted his brush.
“Not—?”
I nodded.
He burst out with a tremendous, “By Jove!” that broke that fresh morning stillness once for all, and faintly echoed into silence among those tombs. “By Jove!”
His imagination had at once risen to the solemn grandeur of the event, as an event; but the sharp significance of death did not penetrate the armour of that enthusiastic youthfulness. “What a pity!” he exclaimed nicely; but he could not get the iridescent vision of Venice out of his head, nor the problems of his canvas. He continued painting—what else could he do?—and then, after a few moments, he said eagerly, “I wish I was in London!”
“Me too!” I said.
Probably most of the thousands of Englishmen in Italy had the same wish.
I departed from the church. The chanting had ceased; the guides were still talking business, but the beggars had begun to whine.
In the dining-room of the hotel there was absolute silence. A lady near the door, with an Italian newspaper over her coffee-cup, who had never spoken to me before, and would probably never speak to me again, said:
“I suppose you’ve heard about—”
“Yes,” I said.
Everybody in the room knew. Everybody was
English. And nobody spoke. As the guests came down by ones and twos to breakfast, the lady near the door stopped each of them: “I suppose you’ve heard—” But none of them had. I was her sole failure. At length a retired military officer came down, already informed. “Where does this news come from?” he demanded of the room, impatiently, cautiously, half-incredulously, as one who would hesitate to trust any information that he had not seen in a London daily. With a single inflection of his commanding voice he wiped out the whole Press of Italy—that country of excellent newspapers. He got little answer. We all sat silent.
Geographical considerations made it impossible for me to be present at the performance ofLa Traviata, which opened the Covent Garden season. I solaced myself by going to hear, on that very night, another and better opera of Verdi’s,Aida, in a theatre certainly more capacious than Covent Garden, namely, the Politeamo Fiorentino, at Florence. Florence is a city of huge theatres, which seem to be generally empty, even during performances, and often on sale. In the majority of them the weather is little by little getting the better of the ceiling; and the multifarious attendants, young and old, go about their casual vague business of letting cushions or selling cigars in raiment that has the rich, storied interest of antiquity. But on this particular occasion prosperity attended a Florentine theatrical enterprise. I was one of three thousand or so excited and crowded beings, most of whom had paid a fair price for admission to hear the brassiest opera ever composed.
Once I used to condescend to Verdi. That was in the early nineties, when, at an impressionable and violent age, I got caught in the first genuine Wagner craze that attacked this country. We used to go to the special German seasons at Drury Lane, as it were to High Mass. And although Max Alvary and Frau Klafsky would be singing inTristan, you might comfortably have put all the occupants of the upper circle into a Pullman car. Once a cat walked across the stage during a solemn moment in the career of Isolde, and nearly everybody laughed; a few tittered, which was even more odious. Only a handful, of such as myself, scowled angrily—not at the cat, which was really rather fine in the garden, completing it—but at the infantile unseriousness of these sniggering so-called Wagnerians. I felt that laughter would have been very well at a Verdi performance, might even have enhanced it. Meanwhile, over the way at Convent Garden, Verdi performances were being given to the usual full houses. It never occurred to me to attend them. Verdi was vulgar. I cannot explain my conviction that Verdi was vulgar, because I had not heard a single opera of Verdi’s, save his Wagnerian imitations. No doubt it arose out of the deep human instinct to intensify the pleasure of admiring one thing by simultaneously disparaging another thing.
Then, a long time afterwards, in the comparatively calm interval between the first and the second Wagner crazes, I heard the real Verdi. It wasLa Traviata, in a little town in Italy, and it was the first operatic performance I had attended in Italy. I adored it, when I was not privately laughing at it; and there are one or two airs in it, which I would sit through the whole opera to hear, if I could not hear them otherwise. (Happily they occur in the first act.) Yes, Verdi’s name does not begin with W; but it very nearly does. I stuck him up at once a little lower than the angels, and I have never pulled him down. It is certain, however, thatLa Traviataat any rate cannot live, unless as a comic opera. I personally did not laugh aloud, because the English are seldom cruel in a theatre; but the tragical parts are undoubtedly very funny indeed, funnier even than the tragical parts of the exquisitely absurd play,La Dame aux Camélias, upon which the opera is founded. WhenLa Traviatawas first produced, about fifty-five years ago, in Venice, its unconscious humour brought about an absolute, a disastrous failure. The performance ended amid roars of laughter. Unhappily the enormous proportions of Signora Donatelli, who sang Violetta, aided the fiasco. When the doctor announced that this lady was in an advanced stage of consumption and had but a few hours to live, Harry Lauder himself could not have had a greater success of hilarity with the mob. Italians are like that. They may be devoted to music—though there are reasons for doubting it—but as opera-goers and concert-goers they are a godless crew. An Englishman would have laughed at Violetta’s unconsumptive waist, but he would have laughed in the street, or the next morning. The English have reverence, and when they go to the opera, they go to hear the opera.
When Italians go to the opera, they are apparently out for a lark, and they have some of the qualities of the Roman multitude enjoying wild beasts in the amphitheatre. I think I have never been to an operatic performance in Italy without acutely noticing this. When I went to hearAida, the colossal interior of the Politeamo Fiorentino had the very look of an amphitheatre, with its row of heads and hats stretching away smaller and smaller into a haze. There were notices about appealing to the gentleness of the public not to smoke. But do you suppose the public did not smoke? Especially considering that the management thoughtfully offered cigars, cigarettes, and matches for sale! In a very large assemblage of tightly-packed people, unauthorised noises are bound to occur from time to time. Now, an Italian audience will never leave an unauthorised noise alone. If a chair creaks, or a glass on the bar tinkles, an Italian audience will hiss savagely and loudly for several seconds—which seem like several minutes. Not in the hope of stopping the noise, for the noise has stopped! Not because it wishes not to miss a note of the music, for it misses about twenty-five per cent, of the notes through its own fugal hissing! But from simple, truculent savagery! It cares naught for the susceptibilities of the artists. Whether a singer is in the midst of a tender pianissimo, or the band is blaring its best, if an Italian audience hears a noise, however innocent, it will multiply that noise by a hundred. Yet the individual politeness of the Italian people is perfectly delightful.
Further: In the middle of the performance a shabby gentleman came on to the stage and begged indulgence for an artist who was “gravely indisposed.” The audience received him with cynical laughter; he made a gesture of cynical resignation and departed. The artist received no indulgence. The artist was silly enough to hold on powerfully to a high note at the end of a long solo; and that solo had to be given again—and let there be no mistake about it!—despite the protests of a minority against such insistence. The Latin temperament! If you sing in opera in Italy, your career may be unremunerative, but it will be exciting. You may be deified, or you may be half-killed. But be assured that the audience is sincere, as sincere as a tiger.
Composers also must beware. When Pasini’s new opera,Don Quixote, was produced lately, it had a glorious run of two performances. It was, indeed, received with execration. After the second night the leading newspaper appeared with a few brief, barbed remarks: “The season of the Teatro Verdi is ended. It would have been better if it had never started.. . . The maestro Pasini has written an opera which may be very pleasing—to deaf mutes.” YetDon Quixotewas not worse than many other operas which people pay to see. Imagine these manners in unmusical England.
France is less crude, but not always very much less crude. The most musical city in France is Toulouse. An extraordinary number of singers, composers, and poets seem to be born in Toulouse.
But thedebutsof an operatic artist at the Toulouse municipal opera are among the most dangerous and terrible experiences that can fall to a singer. The audience is merciless, and recks not of youth nor sex. If it is not satisfied, it expresses its opinion frankly, and for the more frank and effective expression of its opinion it goes to the performance suitably provided with decayed vegetables. And I am told that Marseilles candour is carried even further. As for Naples—.
Perhaps, after all, our admirable politeness and the solemnity of our attitude towards the whole subject of opera merely prove that Continental nations are right in regarding us as fundamentally unmusical. With us opera is a cultivated exotic. In Italy, what does it matter if you ruin a composer’s career, or even kill a young soprano who has not reached your standard! There are quantities of composers and sopranos all over Italy. You can see them active in the very streets. You can’t keep them down. We say Miss —————-, the English soprano, in startled accents of pride. Italians don’t say Signorina —————‘, the Italian soprano. In Italy you get a new opera about once a month. The last English grand opera that held the English stage wasArtaxeræes, and it is so long ago that not one person in a hundred who reads these lines will be able to give the name of the composer. Can any nation be musical which does not listen chiefly to its own music?
Because I am a light and uneasy sleeper I can hear, at a quarter to six every morning, the distant subterranean sound of a peculiarly energetic bell. It rings for about one minute, and it is a signal at which They quit their drowsy beds. And all along the Riviera coast, from Toulon to San Remo, in the misty and chill dawn, They are doing the same thing, beginning the great daily conspiracy to persuade me, and those like me, that we are really the Sultan, and that our previous life has been a dream. I sink back into slumber and hear the monotonous roar of the tideless Mediterranean in my sleep. The Mediterranean, too, is in the conspiracy. It is extremely inconvenient and annoying to have to go running about after a sea which wanders across half a mile of beach twice a day; appreciating this, and knowing the violent objection of sultans to any sort of trouble, the Mediterranean dispenses with a tide; at any hour it may be found tirelessly washing the same stone. After an interval of time, during which a quarter to six in the morning has receded to the middle of the night, I wake up wide, and instantly, in Whitman’s phrase,
I know I am august.
I put my hand through the mosquito curtains and touch an electrical contrivance placed there for my benefit, and immediately there appears before me a woman neatly clothed to delight my eye, and I gaze out at her through my mosquito curtains. She wishes me “Good morning” in my own language, in order to save the trouble of unnecessary comprehension, and if I had happened to be Italian, French, or German she could still greet me in my own language, because she has been taught to do so in order to save me trouble. She takes my commands for the morning, and then I notice that the sun has thoughtfully got round to my window and is casting a respectful beam or two on my hyacinthine locks. In the vast palace the sultans are arising, and I catch the rumour thereof. Presently, with various and intricate aid, I have laved the imperial limbs and assumed the robes of state. The window is opened for me, and I pass out on to the balcony and languidly applaud the Mediterranean, like a king diverting himself for half an hour at the opera. It is a great sight, me applauding the Mediterranean as I drink a cup of tea; stockbrokers clapping the dinner-band at the Trocadero would be nothing to it. After this I do an unmonarchical act, an act of which I ought to be ashamed, and which I keep a profound secret from the other sultans in the vast palace—I earn my living by sheer hard labour.
Then I descend to the banqueting-hall, and no sooner do I appear than I am surrounded by minions in black, an extraordinary race of persons. At different hours I see these mysterious minions in black, and sometimes I observe them surreptitiously. They have no names. They never eat, never drink, never smile, never love, never do anything except offer me prepared meats with respectful complacency. Their god is my stomach, and they have made up their minds that it must be appeased with frequent burnt sacrifices and libations. They watch my glance as mariners the sky, and the slightest hint sends them flying. At the conclusion of the ceremony they usher me out of the hall with obeisances into other halls and other deferential silences.
And when the entire rite has been repeated twice we recline on sofas, I and the other sultans, and spend the final hours of the imperial day in being sad and silent together. We are sad because we are sultans. It is in the nature of things that sultans should be sad; it is not the cares of state which make us sad, but merely a high imperial instinct for the correct. Silence is, of course, a necessity to sultans, and for this reason the activity of the immense palace is conducted solely in hushed tones. The minions in black never raise their dulcet voices more than half an inch or so. Late at night, as I pass on my solitary, sad way to the chamber of sleep, I see them, those mysterious minions with no names and no passions and no heed for food, still hovering expectant, still bowing, still silent. And lastly I retire. I find my couch beautifully laid out, I cautiously place myself upon it, I savour the soundless calm of the palace, and I sleep again; and my closing thought is the thought that I am august, and that all the other sultans, in this and all the other palaces from Toulon to San Remo, are august.
Strange things happen. Once a week a very-strange thing happens. I find an envelope lying about. It is never given to me openly. I may discover it propped up against the teapot on my tea-tray, or on my writing-desk, or sandwiched in my “post,” between a love-letter and a picture post card. But I invariably do find it; measures are taken that I shall succeed promptly in finding it. All the minions pretend that this envelope is a matter of no importance whatever; I also pretend the same. Now, the fact is that I simply hate this envelope; I hate the sight of it; I hate to open it; I dread its contents. Every week it shocks me. I carry it about with me in my imperial pocket for several hours, fighting against the inevitable. Then at length I dismally yield to a compulsion. And I wander, by accident on purpose, in the direction of a little glass-partitioned room, where a malevolent man sits like a spider sits in its web. We both pretend I am there by chance, but since I am in fact there, I may as well—a pure formality! And a keen listener might hear a golden chink or the rustle of paper. And then I feel feeble but relieved, as if I had come out of the dentist’s. And I am aware that I am not so excessively august after all, and that I am in the middle of the Riviera season, when one must expect, etc., etc., and that even the scenery was scientifically reduced to figures in that envelope, and that anyhow the Hôtel Triste is the Hôtel Triste. (Triste is not its real name; one of my fellow sultans, who also does the shameful act in secret, so baptised it in a ribald moment.)
0245
The strangest thing of all occurred one night. I was walking moodily along the convenient marge of the Mediterranean when I saw a man, a human being, dressed in a check suit and a howler hat, talking to another human being dressed in a blouse and a skirt. I passed them. The man was smiling, and chattering loudly and rapidly and even passionately to the soul within the blouse. Soon they parted, with proofs of affection, and the man strode away and overtook and left me behind. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I perceived he was one of the mysterious nameless minions who I thought always wore mourning and never ate, drank, smiled, or loved. “Fellow wanderer in the Infinite,” I addressed his back as soon as I had recovered, “What are your opinions upon life and death and love, and the advisability of being august?”
We were in the billiard-room—English men and women collected from various parts of the earth, and enjoying that state of intimacy which is somehow produced by the comfortable click of billiard balls. It is extraordinary what pretty things the balls say of a night in the billiard-room of a good hotel. They say: “You are very good-natured and jolly people. Click. Women spoil the play, but it’s nice to have them here. Click. And so well-dressed and smiling and feminine I Click. Click. Cigars are good and digestion is good. Click. How correct and refined and broad-minded you all are! All’s right with the world. Click.” A stockbroker sat near me by the fire. My previous experience of stockbrokers had led me to suppose that all stockbrokers were pursy, middle-aged, hard-breathers, thick-fingered, with a sure taste in wines, steaks, and musical comedies. But this one was very different—except perhaps on the point of musical comedies. He was quite young, quite thin, quite simple. In fact, he was what is known as an English gentleman. He frankly enjoyed showing young ladies aged twenty-three how to make a loser off the red, and talking about waltzes, travel, and sport. He never said anything original, and so never surprised one nor made one feel uncomfortable. He was extremely amiable, and we all liked him. The sole fact about the Stock Exchange which I gleamed from him was that the Stock Exchange comprised many bounders, and “you had to be civil to ‘em, too.”
“You’ve heard the news?” I said to him. “About Japan?” he asked. No, he had not heard. It took the English papers two days to reach us, and, of course, for the English there are no newspapers but English newspapers. There was a first-class local daily; with a complete service of foreign news, and a hundred thousand readers; but I do not believe that one English person in ten even knew of its existence. So I took the local daily out of my pocket, and translated to him the Russian note informing the Powers that ambassadors were packing up. “Looks rather had!” he murmured. I could have jumped up and slain him on the spot with the jigger, for every English person in that hotel every night for three weeks past had exclaimed on glancing at the “Times”: “Looks bad!” And here this amiable young stockbroker, with war practically broken out, was saying it again! I am perfectly convinced that everyone said this, and this only, because no one had any ideas beyond it. There had appeared some masterly articles in the “Times” on the Manchurian question. But nobody read them: I am sure of that. No one had even a passable notion of Far Eastern geography, and no one could have explained, lucidly or otherwise, the origin of the gigantic altercation. How strange it is that the causes of war never excite interest! (What was the cause of the Franco-German war, you who are omniscient?)
In response to another question, the young stockbroker said that his particular market would be seriously affected. “I should like to be there,” [on the Exchange], he remarked, and added dreamily: “It would be rather fun.” Then we began a four-handed game, a game whose stupidities were atoned for by the charming gestures of women. And the stockbroker found himself in enormous form. The stone of the Russian Note had sunk into the placid lake and not a ripple was left. Nothing but billiards had existed since the beginning of the world, or ever would exist. Nothing, I reflected, will rouse the average sensible man to an imaginative conception of what a war is, not even the descriptions of a Stephen Crane. Nay, not even income tax at fifteen pence in the pound!
The next morning I went out for a solitary walk by the coast road. And I had not gone a mile before I came to an unkempt building, with a few officials lounging in front of it. “French Custom House” was painted across its pale face. Then the road began to climb up among the outlying spurs of the Maritime Alps. It went higher and higher till it was cut out of the solid rock. Half a mile further, and there was another French Custom House. Still further, where the rock became crags, and the crags beetled above and beetled below, there occurred a profound gorge, and from the stone bridge which spanned it one could see, and faintly hear, a thin torrent rushing to the sea perhaps a couple of hundred feet below. Immediately to the west of this bridge the surface of the crags had been chiselled smooth, and on the expanse had been pictured a large black triangle with a white border—about twelve feet across. And under the triangle was a common little milestone arrangement, smaller than many English milestones, and on one side of the milestone was painted “France” and on the other “Italia.” This was the division between the two greatest Latin countries; across this imaginary line had been waged the bloodless but disastrous tariff war of ten years ago. I was in France; a step, and I was in Italy! And it is on account of similar imaginary, artificial, and unconvincing lines, one here, one there—they straggle over the whole earth’s crust—that most wars, military, naval, and financial, take place.
Across the gorge was a high, brown tenement, and towards the tenement strutted an Italian soldier in the full, impossible panoply of war. He carried two rifles, a mile or so of braid, gilt enough to gild the dome of St. Paul’s and Heaven knows what contrivances besides. And he was smoking a cigarette out of a long holder. Two young girls, aged perhaps six or eight, bounded out of the slatternly tenement, and began to chatter to him in a high infantile treble. The formidable warrior smiled affectionately, and bending down, offered them a few paternal words; they were evidently spoiled little things. Close by a vendor of picture post cards had set up shop on a stone wall. Far below, the Mediterranean was stretched out like a blue cloth without a crease in it, and a brig in full sail was crawling across the offing. The sun shone brilliantly. Roses in perfect bloom had escaped from gardens and hung free over hedges. Everything was steeped in a tremendous and impressive calm—a calm at once pastoral and marine, and the calm of obdurate mountains that no plough would ever conquer. And breaking against this mighty calm was the high, thin chatter of the little girls, with their quick and beautiful movements of childhood.
And as I watched the ragged little girls, and followed the brig on the flat and peaceful sea, and sniffed the wonderful air, and was impregnated by the spirit of the incomparable coast and the morning hour, something overcame me, some new perception of the universality of humanity. (It was the little girls that did it.) And I thought intensely how absurd, how artificial, how grotesque, how accidental, how inessential, was all that rigmarole of boundaries and limits and frontiers. It seemed to me incredible, then, that people could go to war about such matters. The peace, the natural universal peace, seemed so profound and so inherent in the secret essence of things, that it could not be broken. And at the very moment, though I knew it not, while the brig was slipping by, and the little girls were imposing upon the good-nature of their terrible father, and the hawker was arranging his trumpery, pathetic post cards, they were killing each other—Russia and Japan were—in a row about “spheres of influence.”
Monte Carlo—the initiated call it merely “Monte”—has often been described, in fiction and out of it, but the frank confession of a ruined gambler is a rare thing; partly because the ruined gambler can’t often write well enough to express himself accurately, partly because he isn’t in the mood for literary composition, and partly because he is sometimes dead. So, since I am not dead, and since it is only by means of literary composition that I can hope to restore my shattered fortunes, I will give you the frank confession of a ruined gambler. Before I went to Monte Carlo I had all the usual ideas of the average sensible man about gambling in general, and about Monte Carlo in particular. “Where does all the exterior brilliance of Monte Carlo come from?” I asked sagely. And I said further: “The Casino administration does not disguise the fact that it makes a profit of about 50,000 francs a day. Where does that profit come from?” And I answered my own question with wonderful wisdom: “Out of the pockets of the foolish gamblers.” I specially despised the gambler who gambles “on a system”; I despised him as a creature of superstition. For the “system” gambler will argue that if I toss a penny up six times and it falls “tail” every time, there is a strong probability that it will fall “head” the seventh time. “Now,” I said, “can any rational creature be so foolish as to suppose that the six previous and done-with spins can possibly affect the seventh spin? What connection is there between them?” And I replied: “No rational creature can be so foolish. And there is no connection.” In this spirit, superior, omniscient, I went to Monte Carlo.
0255
Of course, I went to study human nature and find material. The sole advantage of being a novelist is that when you are discovered in a place where, as a serious person, you would prefer not to be discovered, you can always aver that you are studying human nature and seeking material. I was much impressed by the fact of my being in Monte Carlo. I said to myself: “I am actually in Monte Carlo!” I was proud. And when I got into the gorgeous gaming saloons, amid that throng at once glittering and shabby, I said: “I am actually in the gaming saloons!” And the thought at the back of my mind was: “Henceforth I shall be able to say that I have been in the gaming saloons at Monte Carlo.” After studying human nature at large, I began to study it at a roulette table. I had gambled before—notably with impassive Arab chiefs in that singular oasis of the Sahara desert, Biskra—but only a little, and always atpetits chevaux, But I understood roulette, and I knew several “systems.” I found the human nature very interesting; also the roulette. The sight of real gold, silver, and notes flung about in heaps warmed my imagination. At this point I felt a solitary five-franc piece in my pocket. And then the red turned up three times running, and I remembered a simple “system” that began after a sequence of three.
I don’t know how it was, but long before I had formally decided to gamble I knew by instinct that I should stake that five-franc piece. I fought against the idea, but I couldn’t take my hand empty out of my pocket. Then at last (the whole experience occupying perhaps ten seconds) I drew forth the five-franc piece and bashfully put it on black. I thought that all the fifty or sixty persons crowded round the table were staring at me and thinking to themselves: “There’s a beginner!” However, black won, and the croupier pushed another five-franc piece alongside of mine, and I picked them both up very smartly, remembering all the tales I had ever heard of thieves leaning over you at Monte Carlo and snatching your ill-gotten gains. I then thought: “This is a bit of all right. Just for fun I’ll continue the system.” I did so. In an hour I had made fifty francs, without breaking into gold. Once a croupier made a slip and was raking in red stakes when red had won, and people hesitated (because croupiers never make mistakes, you know, and you have to be careful how you quarrel with the table at Monte Carlo), and I was the first to give vent to a protest, and the croupier looked at me and smiled and apologised, and the winners looked at me gratefully, and I began to think myself the deuce and all of a Monte Carlo habitué.
Having made fifty francs, I decided that I would prove my self-control by ceasing to play. So I did prove it, and went to have tea in the Casinocafé. In those moments fifty francs seemed to me to be a really enormous sum. I was as happy as though I had shot a reviewer without being found out. I gradually began to perceive, too, that though no rational creature could suppose that a spin could be affected by previous spins, nevertheless, it undoubtedly was so affected. I began to scorn a little the average sensible man who scorned the gambler. “There is more in roulette than is dreamt of in your philosophy, my conceited friend,” I murmured. I was like a woman—I couldn’t argue, but I knew infallibly. Then it suddenly occurred to me that if I had gambled with louis instead of five-franc pieces I should have made 200 francs—200 francs in rather over an hour! Oh, luxury! Oh, being-in-the-swim! Oh, smartness! Oh, gilded and delicious sin!
Five days afterwards I went to Monte Carlo again, to lunch with some brother authors. In the meantime, though I had been chained to my desk by unalterable engagements, I had thought constantly upon the art and craft of gambling. One of these authors knew Monte Carlo, and all that therein is, as I know Fleet Street. And to my equal astonishment and pleasure he said, when I explained my system to him: “Couldn’t have a better!” And he proceeded to remark positively that the man who had a decent system and the nerve to stick to it through all crises, would infallibly win from the tables—not a lot, but an average of several louis per sitting of two hours. “Gambling,” he said, “is a matter of character. You have the right character,” he added. You may guess whether I did not glow with joyous pride. “The tables make their money from the plunging fools,” I said, privately, “and I am not a fool.” A man was pointed out to me who extracted a regular income from the tables. “But why don’t the authorities forbid him the rooms?” I demanded, “Because he’s such a good advertisement. Can’t you see?” I saw.
We went to the Casino late after lunch. I cut myself adrift from the rest of the party and began instantly to play. In forty-five minutes, with my “system,” I had made forty-five francs. And then the rest of the party reappeared and talked about tea, and trains, and dinner. “Tea!” I murmured disgusted (yet I have a profound passion for tea), “when I am netting a franc a minute!” However, I yielded, and we went and had tea at the Restaurant de Paris across the way. And over the white-and-silver of the tea-table, in the falling twilight, with the incomparable mountain landscape in front of us, and the mostchicand decadent Parisianism around us, we talked roulette. Then the Russian Grand Duke who had won several thousand pounds in a few minutes a week or two before, came veritably and ducally in, and sat at the next table. There was no mistaking his likeness to the Tsar. It is most extraordinary how the propinquity of a Grand Duke, experienced for the first time, affects even the proverbial phlegm of a British novelist. I seemed to be moving in a perfect atmosphere of Grand Dukes! And I, too, had won! The art of literature seemed a very little thing.
After I had made fifty and forty-five francs at two sittings, I developed suddenly, without visiting the tables again, into a complete and thorough gambler. I picked up all the technical terms like picking up marbles—the greater martingale, the lesser martingale, “en plein,” “à cheval,” “the horses of seventeen,” “last square,” and so on, and so on—and I had my own original theories about the alleged superiority of red-or-black to odd-or-even in betting on the even chances. In short, for many hours I lived roulette. I ate roulette for dinner, drank it in my Vichy, and smoked it in my cigar. At first I pretended that I was only pretending to be interested in gambling as a means of earning a livelihood (call it honest or dishonest, as you please). Then the average sensible man in me began to have rather a bad time, really. I frankly acknowledged to myself that I was veritably keen on the thing. I said: “Of course, ordinary people believe that the tables must win, but we who are initiated know better. All you want in order to win is a prudent system and great force of character.” And I decided that it would be idle, that it would be falsely modest, that it would be inane, to deny that I had exceptional force of character. And beautiful schemes formed themselves in my mind: how I would gain a certain sum, and then increase my “units” from five-franc pieces to louis, and so quadruple the winnings, and how I would get a friend to practise the same system, and so double them again, and how generally we would have a quietly merry time at the expense of the tables during the next month.
And I was so calm, cool, collected, impassive. There was no hurry. I would not go to Monte Carlo the next day, but perhaps the day after. However, the next day proved to be very wet, and I was alone and idle, my friends being otherwise engaged, and hence I was simply obliged to go to Monte Carlo. I didn’t wish to go, but what could one do? Before starting, I reflected: “Well, there’s just achance—such things have been known,” and I took a substantial part of my financial resources out of my pocket-book, and locked that reserve up in a drawer. After this, who will dare to say that I was not cool and sagacious? The journey to Monte Carlo seemed very long. Just as I was entering the ornate portals I met some friends who had seen me there the previous day. The thought flashed through my mind: “These people will think I have got caught in the meshes of the vice just like ordinary idiots, whereas, of course my case is not ordinary at all.” So I quickly explained to them that it was very wet (as if they couldn’t see), and that my other friends had left me, and that I had come to Monte Carlo merely to kill time. They appeared to regard this explanation as unnecessary.
I had a fancy for the table where I had previously played and won. I went to it, and by extraordinary good fortune secured a chair—a difficult thing to get in the afternoons. Behold me seated next door to a croupier, side by side with regular frequenters, regular practisers of systems, and doubtless envied by the outer ring of players and spectators! I was annoyed to find that every other occupant of a chair had a little printed card in black and red on which he marked the winning numbers. I had neglected to provide myself with this contrivance, and I felt conspicuous; I felt that I was not correct. However, I changed some gold for silver with the croupier, and laid the noble pieces in little piles in front of me, and looked as knowing and as initiated as I could. And at the first opening offered by the play I began the operation of my system, backing red, after black had won three times. Black won the fourth time, and I had lost five francs.... Black won the sixth time and I had lost thirty-five francs. Black won the seventh time, and I had lost seventy-five francs. “Steady, cool customer!” I addressed myself. I put down four louis (and kindly remember that in these hard times four louis is four louis—three English pounds and four English shillings), and, incredible to relate, black won the eighth time, and I had lost a hundred and fifty-five francs. The time occupied was a mere nine minutes. It was at this point that the “nerve” and the “force of character” were required, for it was an essential part of my system to “cut the loss” at the eighth turn. I said: “Hadn’t I better put down eight louis and win all back again,just this once?Red’s absolutely certain to win next time.” But my confounded force of character came in, and forced me to cut the loss, and stick strictly to the system. And at the ninth spin red did win. If I had only put down that eight louis I should have been all right. I was extremely annoyed, especially when I realised that, even with decent luck, it would take me the best part of three hours to regain that hundred and fifty-five francs.
I was shaken. I was like a pugilist who had been knocked down in a prize fight, and hasn’t quite made up his mind whether, on the whole, he won’t be more comfortable, in the long run, where he is. I was like a soldier under a heavy fire, arguing with himself rapidly whether he prefers to be a Balaclava hero with death or the workhouse, or just a plain, ordinary, prudent Tommy. I was struck amidships. Then an American person behind my chair, just a casual foolish plunger, of the class out of which the Casino makes its profits, put a thousand franc note on the odd numbers, and thirty-three turned up. “A thousand for a thousand,” said the croupier mechanically and nonchalantly, and handed to the foolish plunger the equivalent of eighty pounds sterling. And about two minutes afterwards the same foolish plunger made a hundred and sixty pounds at another single stroke. It was odious; I tell you positively it was odious. I collected the shattered bits of my character out of my boots, and recommenced my system; made a bit; felt better; and then zero turned up twice—most unsettling, even when zero means only that your stake is “held over.” Then two old and fussy ladies came and gambled very seriously over my head, and deranged my hair with the end of the rake in raking up their miserable winnings.... At five o’clock I had lost a hundred and ninety-five francs. I don’t mind working hard, at great nervous tension, in a vitiated atmosphere, if I can reckon on netting a franc a minute; but I have a sort of objection to three laborious sittings such as I endured that week when the grand result is a dead loss of four pounds. I somehow failed to see the point. I departed in disgust, and ordered tea at the Café de Paris, not the Restaurant de Paris (I was in no mood for Grand Dukes). And while I imbibed the tea, a heated altercation went on inside me between the average sensible man and the man who knew that money could be made out of the tables and that gambling was a question of nerves, etc. It was a pretty show, that altercation. In about ten rounds the average sensible man had knocked his opponent right out of the ring. I breathed a long breath, and seemed to wake up out of a nightmare. Did I regret the episode? I regretted the ruin, not the episode. For had I not all the time been studying human nature and getting material? Besides that, as I grow older I grow too wise. Says Montaigne: “Wisdome hath hir excesses, and no leise need of moderation, then follie.” (The italics are Montaigne’s)... And there’s a good deal in my system after all.