As the Crow Flies. Dodge Walter Phelps
carte de visite. Je suis le Marquis de Salisbury, Premier d’Angleterre.” But the doorkeeper still refused and would not let him in. He afterwards explained his incredulity by saying to a friend: “How could I believe he was Milord Salisbury and the Prime Minister of England? He wore a tweed suit and had his trousers turned up.” This brother evidently derived his idea of the appearance of a Marquis from the Italian article of that name, which is usually greasy, and fearfully and wonderfully attired.
The Casino at Monte Carlo and its tables have been often described; but the crowds that linger three deep about the green cloth are always fascinating to watch. Grande dames and cocottes elbow each other, and English statesmen rub shoulders with Parisian blacklegs. The day I was there I saw the Duc de Dino (who married Mrs. Stevens, of New York,) philosophically drop £2,000, and stand it better than a young man who lost five francs at roulette. But the saddest thing of all was to see young girls of eighteen or twenty (the rule is not to admit anyone under twenty-one, but of course the officials are often hoodwinked) with “systems,” pressing close to the table and pricking number after number on their cards as they eagerly follow a run on the red or the black. These people are always sure they will some day break the bank, and linger on from day to day and from week to week leaving whole fortunes in the maw of the remorseless “Administration.” Each additional week seems to add to the strained, eager look in their eyes, the drawn, pinched look about the mouth, and the tell-tale wrinkles about the temples that proclaim an habitual gambler. The croupiers, too, are curious studies, as they whirl the ball or deal the cards that mean so much to the eager crowd; cool, calm, impassive, there is something devilish about the monotonous way in which they call “Faites vos jeux, Messieurs,” or “Le jeu est fait. Rien ne va plus.” Some of them, it is easy to see, have come down in the world; and one man was shown to me who had filled a high position in a crack British regiment, before he had been detected cheating at cards and had been ruined for life. I may not give his name or all the facts in the case, but it bore a striking resemblance to Sir William Gordon-Cummings’ “accident.”
There is a peculiar class of harpies in the Casino, but very well dressed harpies, who make their living by “living up” to the table, so to speak, and grabbing the winnings of the lucky but slow players. Enormous sums are lost in this way by careless winners, for the ball (in roulette) rolls so quickly around, and the croupiers toss the gold so quickly in the general direction of the winners, that a very quick eye is needed to spy one’s property. The “Série Noir” has already begun at Monte Carlo, and two suicides have occurred. Of course the “Administration” policy is to hush up these little matters, and whenever a dead body is found in the lonely gardens surrounding the Casino (about one a fortnight is the average during the season) its pockets are pretty sure to be filled with gold and notes, placed there by the wily detectives of the Casino, to show that the poor man could not have shot himself on account of his losses at play. And rumour says that they have an admirably prompt way of getting rid of the bodies of those who are thoughtless enough to commit suicide on the company’s grounds without noise or scandal. An eye witness told me the following tale of a tragedy in the rooms last year, which he vouches for: about ten o’clock at night, when everything was in full swing and the rooms were crowded with well-dressed people (no shabby-looking character is ever admitted; and the devil in this case is certainly “in society”), a shot was suddenly heard, and a handsome young fellow, pale as death, staggered from the Trente et Quarante table with his hand to his bleeding side. He fell with a crash, and at once, like lightning, a crowd of the Casino detectives had closed around him, opened a window overlooking the sea, and thrown him out upon the rocks below. So quickly did this take place that not six people saw it, and the people who inquired about the disturbance were told that a lady had fainted from the heat and from the explosion in a gas pipe. The next morning the dead body of the young man was found on the rocks, with his pockets filled with gold and no trace of a wound about him.
Lovely Monte Carlo! It is like a decayed lady-apple – lovely to look on, but rotten at the core.
SAN REMO
SAN REMO. – There is a certain apparent similarity between Bournemouth and San Remo. Both are “winter resorts” and both are popular with invalids. But this similarity is only apparent. Frost and snow were rife at Bournemouth a month ago. Sunshine and ripe oranges on the trees are en evidence at San Remo now. One shudders here, to think of Bournemouth in winter, just as in Bournemouth the idea of the Lake District out of summer was repelling.
The climate of the Riviera is not perfect, by any means, but unless one goes to Honolulu or to “the Cape,” it is hard to do better for the winter. And yet it is not a tropical climate – or even sub-tropical, simply one with a more or less genial warmth in the winter time.
San Remo is not so “mixed” in its society as Nice, so renowned for suicides as Monte Carlo, or so vault-like as Mentone.
Cannes is the only place on the coast that approaches San Remo (and, indeed, outdoes it, so far as exclusiveness in the “English Colony,” which includes the small American contingent, goes); but Cannes is really a slice cut out of Belgravia and set down by the Mediterranean, and one may be in the height of the London Season all winter there. Cannes is popularly referred to as the “Dukeries,” on account of the number of English Dukes spending the winter there. But to a person liking society in moderation with a few good dances sprinkled in during the winter and a fair amount of tennis, San Remo is an ideal place. Knickerbockers and cricketing flannels are frequently seen, and there is none of that striving after effect so much found at Cannes, where top hats and frock coats are de rigeur most of the time.
San Remo is near the French frontier and so, of course, is a queer mixture of French and Italian village life (for it has only seventeen thousand inhabitants). It is thirty-six hours from London and easily reached either by the P. L. and M. Railway, by way of Lyons and Marseilles, or by Milan and Geneva, via the Mont-Cenis tunnel.
The old town, or Citta Vecchia, is built on a hill away from the sea, and the steep streets are crowded together pell-mell on the nearly perpendicular hillside. Bradshaw’s Guide refers to them as “steep, mediæval streets”; but, although I admit the steepness, I have never discovered the mediævalism – unless the abundant dirt and endless supply of unsavoury smells may be taken to represent it. Of course, the dark, narrow lanes are garlic-haunted, and that reminds me of a story I heard here. At the old Cathedral, an English priest was talking to an Italian peasant woman about the next world. She was giving her ideas on the subject and ended up a glowing rhapsody in this way: “And, oh, our Holy Father, the Pope, will be there on a great golden throne, smiling at the faithful; with big bunches of our angelic garlic under his chair to give to each of his flock as St. Peter brings them to him.” If that idea of Paradise were presented to many good Christians, I fear their faith might be shaken, for of all the sickening, clinging odours, a whiff of garlic-scented air is the worst.
This old town is nearly devoid of interest. There are even no curio shops, and after one walk the average English tourist comes back to his hotel to “take a tub,” and leaves its mysteries undisturbed in future. To any one, however, brave enough to pick his way through the overhanging alleys and dark streets, up to the very top of the hill, an old church presents itself, the “Madonna della Costa,” where there is a wonderful picture of the Virgin which is supposed to be a certain cure for leprosy. (The method of applying the cure is an unsolved mystery.)
Most people here go to Mentone to get gloves and stockings, and smuggle them back over the frontier to avoid paying the absurd prices asked in San Remo. The new town is built at the foot of the hill and consists of two streets, with a few good shops, where the tradesmen speak bad French and charge enormous prices for the necessaries of life. On each side of this new town stretch the English and German colonies, the English settling at the west end and the Teutons preferring the east. Ever since the Emperor Frederick lived in a villa here the east end has been a resort for patriotic Germans who want the warm breezes of the Riviera, but do not care to enjoy them on French territory. It is not the most pleasant part of the town, and English and Americans are very chary of settling there, as the more aristocratic west end turns the cold shoulder to the unfortunate villa holders and dwellers in hotels and pensions at the east end, and has a tendency to consider them doubtful or