Fools of Fortune; or, Gambling and Gamblers. John Philip Quinn
walked there in good state between Don Antonio and myself, preceded by her three servant maids, one of whom was in her Indian dress and had charge of the cigars for her mistress. We found our way to the largest gambling table, at which Francisca, having elbowed some ragged women off the only bench in the place, established herself in full play. Even ladies with mock jewels, and women of all shades and colors, with every variety of mien, crowded around their favorite game, and my landlady having succeed in getting the balls in her hands, became entirely occupied in throwing them, with such gestures, or turns of the arm, as, in her opinion, would insure success. Before leaving the Plaza, where Francisca remained playing until nearly daylight, I made my way through the crowd to take a last peek at her, and saw a fellow to whom I had paid a real (the eighth of a dollar) in the morning for sweeping before my door, and who was almost in rags, standing beside my fair friend, acting as banker to the table, at which I suppose he had been successful. He ventured his dollar at every turn with the most perfect sang froid. The apparent indifference to losses, and apathy when successful, is very remarkable with all classes of Mexicans, but they gamble so incessantly that I should conceive all excitement in this dangerous fashion must be deadened and that love of play at last becomes a disorder, rather than an amusement. I have frequently seen a couple of poor porters, who had not a farthing of money, sit gravely down in the dust with a greasy pack of cards, and anxiously stake their respective stock of paper cigars until one or the other became bankrupt.”
This picture of life in Mexico is typical of all Spanish America.
ENGLAND.
Under the second Henry, when the courtiers grew weary of the minstrels and jugleurs, or when they were not occupied in making love, they beguiled the lagging moments by gaming in every form then known. Before the third crusade, there was no check upon the gaming vice, and no limit to the stakes. The gamester, when he had been defrauded of his patrimony, in turn preyed upon the unsuspecting youth. He lived upon the weaknesses of human nature then as now, and watched with pleasure the trembling fingers and flushed cheeks of his victim, led on, as they were, by apparent carelessness, to risk a larger sum after losing a smaller. The victim was left by the gamester, only when the former could not even call his clothes his own. The dupes often discovered, when it was too late, that they had been ruined, not by the superior skill of their adversary, but by his dishonesty. For their own advantage, then, they who had been victims began to practice the arts of deception, chief among which was the loading of the dice.
During the reign of Richard I., (he of the Lion’s Heart) and that of King John, dice constituted the chief amusement of the nobility, and the length to which they carried the game, may be inferred from the fact that not even the “pomp and circumstance” of the martial field could allure them from the fascinating pursuit. The Barons who collected to resist the tyranny of John, were reproached by Matthew Paris with spending their time in gambling with dice when their presence was required in the field. Even the flames and the dissensions of civil war could not excite in them an ardor equal to that induced by the dice-box. But the evil did not stop here, and honor itself was sacrificed at the shrine of the unworthy and demoralizing passion by some of that brilliant band of cavaliers to whom England is indebted for her fundamental privileges and constitutional liberty. Should still stronger proof be required of the prevalence of the gaming vice among the Anglo-Normans of to-day, it would be found in the instrument which was prepared by the “allied” kings of England and France in 1190, for the government of the forces they had fitted out against the Saracens, and which related particularly to this vice. It was thereby enacted that “knights and clerks should be restrained to the loss of twenty shillings in one day, but that sailors and soldiers detected in playing for money at all should be fined at will, or ‘ducked.’ ” During subsequent reigns gaming, although generally condemned, was vigorously pursued. How the practice operated upon the morals of the English people, during the reign of Elizabeth and her immediate successors, may be inferred from that phrase in Shakespeare which avers “dicers’ oaths are accounted proverbially false.” Gambling prevailed in England under Henry VIII, and it seems the King himself, was an unscrupulous gamester. The evidence is ample that gambling flourished during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I, and in the time of Charles II. Evelyn, writing on the day when James II was proclaimed King of England, says: “I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening), which this day I was witness of. The King sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland and Mazarine, a French boy singing love songs in that glorious galaxy, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at Basset round a large table, a bank with twice two thousand pounds in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflection with astonishment. Six days after, all was in the dust.”
From the Harleian Miscellany, we copy the following observations on gaming in England during the year 1668:
“One propounded this question: Whether men in ships at sea were to be accounted amongst the living or the dead—because there were but a few inches betwixt them and drowning. The same query may be made of gamesters, though their estates being never so considerable—whether they are to be esteemed rich or poor, since there are but a few casts at dice betwixt a person of fortune and a pauper.
“Betwixt twelve and one of the clock a good dinner is prepared by way of ordinary, and some of civility and condition oftentimes eat there and play a while for recreation after dinner, and both moderately and most commonly without deserving reproof. Towards night, when ravenous beasts shall seek their prey, there come in shoals of hectors, trepanners, gilts, pads, biters, prigs, divers, lifters, kidnappers, vouchers, millikens, pie-men, decoys, shop-lifters, foilers, bulkers, droppers, gamblers, donnapers, cross-biters, etc., under the general appellation of “rooks,” and in this particular it serves as a nursery for Tyburn, for every year some of its gang march thither.
“Would you imagine it to be true that a grave gentleman well stricken in years, in so much that he cannot see the pips of the dice, is so infatuated with this witchery as to play here with other’s eyes, of whom this quibble was raised; ‘That Mr. Such-a-one plays at dice by the ear.’ Another gentleman, stark blind, I have seen play at hazard, and surely that must be by the ear, too.
“Late at night, when the company grows thin, and your eyes dim with watching, false dice are often put upon the ignorant, or they are otherwise cozened with topping, or slurring, and if you are not vigilant the book shall square you up double or treble books, and though you have lost your money, dun you as severely for it as if it was the justest debt in the world.
“There are yet some more genteel and subtle ‘crooks’ whom you shall not distinguish, by their outward demeanor, from persons of condition, and who will sit by a whole evening and observe who wins, and then if the winner be ‘bubbleable’ they will insinuate themselves into his acquaintance, and civilly invite him to drink a glass of wine, wheedle him into play, and win all his money either by false dice, as high fulhams, low fulhams, or by palming, topping, etc. Note by the way, that when they have you at a tavern, and think you are a sure ‘bubble,’ they will many times purposely lose some small sums to you the first time, to encourage you more freely to ‘bleed’ at the second meeting to which they will be sure to invite you. A gentleman whom ill fortune had hurried into a passion, took a box to a side table and then fell to throwing by himself. At length he swore with an emphasis—‘Now, I throw for nothing, I can win a thousand pounds, but when I play for money I lose my all.’ ”
In the time of Henry VIII., as stated heretofore, gambling pervaded every rank of society. Sir Miles Partridge threw dice with this king and won from him the celebrated “Jesus bells,” then the largest in England, which were in the tower of St. Paul’s. Partridge was hung