Oh, why has no martyr to the miseries of a ‘liver’ or the sorrows of ‘nerves’ ever asked his M.D. where—where is this delightful intercourse to be found? or by what universal principle of application can the same tone of society please the mirthful and the melancholy, the man of depressed, desponding habit, and the man of sanguine, hopeful temperament? How can the indolent and lethargic soul be made to derive pleasure from the hustling energies of more excited natures, or the fidgety victim of instability sympathise with the delights of quiet and tranquillity? He who enjoys ‘rude health’—the phrase must have been invented by a fashionable physician; none other could have deemed such a possession an offensive quality—may very well amuse himself by the oddities and eccentricities of his fellow-men, so ludicrously exhibited en scene before him. But in what way will these things appear to the individual with an ailing body and a distempered brain? It is impossible that contrarieties of temperament would ever draw men into close intimacy during illness. The very nature of a sick man’s temper is to undervalue all sufferings save his own and those resembling his. The victim of obesity has no sympathies with the martyr to atrophy; he may envy, he cannot pity him. The man who cannot eat surely has little compassion for the woes of him who has the ‘wolf,’ and must be muzzled at meal times. The result, then, is obvious. The gloomy men get together in groups, and croak in concert; each mind brings its share of affliction to the common fund, and they form a joint-stock company of misery that rapidly assists their progress to the grave; while the nervously excited ones herd together by dozens, suggesting daily new extravagances and caprices for the adoption of one another, till there is not an air-drawn dagger of the mind unfamiliar to one among them; and in this race of exaggerated sensibility they not uncommonly tumble over the narrow boundary that separates eccentricity from something worse.
This massing together of such people in hundreds must be ruinous to many, and few can resist the depressing influence which streets full of pale faces suggest, or be proof against the melancholy derivable from a whole promenade of cripples. There is something indescribably sad in these rendezvous of ailing people from all parts of Europe—north, south, east, and west; the snows of Norway and the suns of Italy; the mountains of Scotland and the steppes of Russia; comparing their symptoms and chronicling their sufferings; watching with the egotism of sickness the pallor on their neighbour’s cheek, and calculating their own chances of recovery by the progress of some other invalid.
But were this all, the aspect might suggest gloomy thoughts, but could not excite indignant ones. Unhappily, however, there is a reverse to the medal. ‘The pleasant and cheerful society,’ so confidently spoken of by your doctor has another representation than in the faces of sick people. These watering-places are the depots of continental vice, the licensed bazaars of foreign iniquity, the sanctuary of the outlaw, the home of the swindler, the last resource of the ruined debauchee, the one spot of earth beneath the feet of the banished defaulter. They are the parliaments of European blackguardism, to which Paris contributes her escrocs, England her ‘legs’ from Newmarket and Doncaster, and Poland her refugee counts—victims of Russian cruelty and barbarity.
To begin—and to understand the matter properly, you must begin by forgetting all you have been so studiously storing up as fact from the books of Head, Granville, and others, and merely regard them as the pleasant romances of gentlemen who like to indulge their own easy humours in a vein of agreeable gossip, or the more profitable occupation of collecting grand-ducal stars and snuff-boxes.
These delightful pictures of Brunnens, secluded in the recesses of wild mountain districts inaccessible save to some adventurous traveller; the peaceful simplicity of the rural life; the primitive habits of a happy peasantry; the humble but contented existence of a little community estranged from all the shocks and strife of the world; the lovely scenery; the charming intercourse with gifted and cultivated minds; the delightful reunions, where Metternich, Chateaubriand, and Humboldt are nightly to be met, mixing among the rest of the company, and chatting familiarly with every stranger; the peaceful tranquillity of the spot—an oasis in the great desert of the world’s troubles, where the exhausted mind and tired spirit may lie down in peace and take its rest, lulled by the sound of falling water or the strains of German song —these, I say, cleverly put forward, with ‘eight illustrations taken on the spot,’ make pretty books—pleasant to read, but not less dangerous to follow; while exaggerated catalogues of cures and recoveries, the restoration from sufferings of a life long, the miraculous list of sick men made sound ones through the agency of sulphurates and sub-carbonates, are still more to be guarded against as guides to the spas of Germany.
Now, I would not for a moment be supposed to throw discredit on the efficiency of Aix or Ems, Wiesbaden or Töplitz, or any of them. In some cases they have done, and will do, it may be hoped, considerable benefit to many sufferers. I would merely desire to slide in, amidst the universal paen of praise, a few words of caution respecting the morale of these watering-places; and in doing so I shall be guided entirely by the same principle I have followed in all the notes of my ‘Loiterings,’ rather to touch follies and absurdities than to go deeper down into the strata of crimes and vices; at the same time, wherever it may be necessary for my purpose, I shall not scruple to cut into the quick if the malady need it.
And to begin—imagine in the first place a Grand-Duchy of such moderate proportions that its sovereign dare not take in the ‘Times’ newspaper; for if he opened it, he must intrude upon the territory of his neighbours. His little kingdom, however, having all the attributes of a real state, possesses a minister for the home and a minister for the foreign department; it has a chancellor of the exchequer and a secretary-at-war; and if there were half a mile of seaboard, would inevitably have a board of admiralty and a ministre de la marine. It is also provided with a little army, something in the fashion of Bombastes Furioso’s, where each arm of the service has its one representative, or that admirable Irish corps, which, when inquired after by the General of the District, ‘Where is the Donegal Light Horse?’ was met by the answer of, ‘Here I am, yer honour!’ And though certainly nothing could possibly be more modestly devised than the whole retinue of state, though the fantassins be fifty, and the cavalry five, still they must be fed, clothed, and kept in tobacco—a question of some embarrassment, when it is considered that the Grand-Duchy produces little grain and less grass, has neither manufacture nor trade, nor the means of providing for other wants than those of a simple and hard-working peasantry. There is, however, a palace, with its accompaniments of grand maréchal, equerries, cooks, and scullions—a vast variety of officials of every grade and class, who must be provided for. How is this done? Simply enough, when the secret is once known—four yards of green baize, with two gentlemen armed with wooden rakes, and a box full of five-franc pieces. Nothing more is wanting. For the mere luxury of the thing, as a matter of pin-money to the grand-duchess, if there be one, you may add a roulette-table; but rouge et noir will supply all the trumpery expedients of taxation, direct and indirect. You neither want collectors, custom-houses, nor colonies; you may snap your fingers at trade and import duties, and laugh at the clumsy contrivances by which other chancellors provide for the expenditure of other countries.
The machinery of revenue reduces itself to this: first catch a Jew. For your petty villainies any man will suffice; but for your grand schemes of wholesale plunder, there is nothing like an Israelite; besides, he has a kind of pride in his vocation. For the privilege of the gambling-table he will pay munificently, he will keep the whole grand-ducal realm in beer and beetroot the year through, and give a very respectable privy purse to the sovereign besides. To him you deliver up all the nations of the earth outside your own little frontier, none of those within it being under any pretext admitted inside the walls of the gambling-house; for, like the sick apothecary, you know better than to take anything in the shop. You give him a carte-blanche, sparing the little realm of Hesse-Homburg, to cheat the English, pigeon the Russians, ruin French, Swedes, Swiss, and Yankees to his heart’s content; you set no limits to his grand career of roguery; you deliver, bound, into his hands all travellers within your realm, to be fleeced as it may seem fit. What care you for the din of factories or the clanking hammers of the foundries? The rattle of the dice-box and the scraping of the croupier’s mace are pleasanter sounds, and fully as suggestive of wealth. You need not descend into the bowels of the earth for riches; the gold, ready stamped from the mint, comes bright and shining to your hand. Fleets may founder and argosies may sink, but your dollars come safely in the pockets of their owners, and are paid, without any cost of collection, into the treasury of the State. Manchester may glut the earth with her printed calicoes, Sheffield may produce more carving-knives than there are carvers. Your resources can suffer no such casualties as these; you trade upon the vices of mankind, and need never dread a year of scarcity. The passion for play is more contagious than the smallpox, and unhappily the malady returns after the first access. Every gambler who leaves fifty napoleons in your territory is bound in a kind of recognisance to return next year and lose double the sum. Each loss is but an instalment of the grand total of his ruin, and you have contracted for that.
But even the winner does not escape you. A hundred temptations are provided to seduce him into extravagance and plunge him into expense—tastes are suggested, and habits of luxury inculcated, that turn out sad comforters when a reverse of fortune compels him to a more limited expenditure; so that when you extinguish the unlucky man by a summary process, you reserve a lingering death for the more fortunate one. In the language of the dock, it is only ‘a long day’ he obtains, after all.
How pleasant, besides, to reflect that the storms of political strife, which agitate other heads, never reach yours. The violence of party spirit, the rancour of the press, are hushed before the decorous silence of the gaming-table and the death-like stillness of rouge et noir. There is no need of a censorship when there is a croupier. The literature of your realm is reduced to a card, to be pricked by the pin of a gamester; and men have no heads for the pleasures of reading, when stared in the face by ruin. Other states may occupy themselves with projects of philanthropy and benevolence, they may project schemes of public usefulness and advantage, they may advance the arts of civilisation, and promote plans of national greatness; your course is an easier path, and is never unsuccessful.