But Marie Antoinette’s love of high play was almost a vice, and her gaming-table often witnessed scenes far from creditable to her sex or rank. Le Comte de Mercy informs us that the Emperor Joseph II.—not too severe a moralist—once sent a message to the Queen to the effect that “the play at the Queen’s table at Fontainebleau was like that in a common gambling-house; people of all kinds were there, and mingled without decorum; the Comte d’Artois and the Duc de Chartres displayed there every day some fresh trait of folly, and great scandal was caused by the fact that several ladies cheated.... Those who held the bank arrived on the 30th of October; they acted as tellers all night and during the morning of the 31st in the apartments of the Princess de Lamballe. The Queen remained till five o’clock in the morning. In the evening the Queen directed the play to begin again, and continued playing until late in the morning of the 1st of November—All Saints’ Day.” It is not surprising that frivolity and dissipation of this kind were much commented upon, and gave to slanderers much scope for their attacks on her conduct. In order, also, to manage the high play at the Queen’s faro tables, it was necessary to have a banker provided with large sums of money.
Charles X. was an habitual whist-player, and on the eve of his deposition enjoyed his “rubber”; and when as an exile the ex-king was the guest of Cardinal Weld at Lulworth Castle, near Wareham, his principal occupation was whist. Later on, during his sojourn at Prague, at eight, after dinner, the whist-table was prepared, “where the tranquillity of the evening was not disturbed unless Charles found himself with an indifferent partner. He could lose a crown by his own fault with great reluctance, but to lose a trick by the stupidity of his partner was beyond his patience.” But his equanimity was only temporarily ruffled, and then he was full of redundant apology.
Strange and pathetic is a well-known anecdote told of the great Napoleon. As “the prisoner of Europe” he arrived at his last dwelling-place on the 15th of October, and exactly one year before he had been playing at cards with his mother in his little saloon in the island of Elba; and as the illustrious lady was about to rise after losing the game, her imperial son said to her laughingly, “Pay your debts, madam, pay your debts!” Since that time, as Dr. Doran writes, “Napoleon had played a most serious game against a host of adversaries, and had been defeated. The winners called upon him to pay the penalty.”
But although Napoleon gambled with kingdoms, he did not do so with cards. Indeed, he despised gamblers, and it is said that when Las Casas in exile admitted that he had played, Napoleon declared that he was glad he had not known it, as gamblers were always ruined in his estimation. A story, however, has been told of his having sent Junot in 1796 to play in order to accumulate funds for the Italian campaign, a statement which there is every reason to disbelieve.
Catherine II. of Russia enjoyed a game of whist at ten roubles the rubber. And at one period she would admit the Chamberlain Tchertkof to make up the party, whose presence generally afforded some amusement. This individual, it is said, generally got into a rage, reproached her imperial majesty with not playing fair, and sometimes in vexation he threw the cards in her face, an outburst of temper which she invariably took good-humouredly.
An amusing story is told of one of the German sovereigns. A stranger, plainly dressed, took his seat at a faro-table when the bank was richer than usual. After looking on for a short time he challenged the bank, and tossed his pocket-book to the banker that he might be satisfied of his financial position. It was found to contain bills to a large amount, and on the banker showing reluctance to accept the challenge, the stranger sternly demanded that he should comply with the laws of the game. The card soon turned up which decided the ruin of the banker.
“Heavens!” exclaimed an old infirm Austrian officer who had sat next to the stranger, “the twentieth part of your gains would make me the happiest man in the universe!” Whereupon the stranger answered, “You shall have it then,” and quitted the room. A servant speedily returned, and presented the officer with the twentieth part of the bank, adding, “My master, sir, requires no answer.” The successful stranger was soon discovered to be no other than the King of Prussia in disguise.
Henry VIII.’s losses at cards and dice are said to have been enormous, but Anne Boleyn appears to have been a more fortunate gamester. A game much played at Court was Pope Julius’s game, or as it is sometimes called in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII., “Pope July’s game.” On the 20th of November 1532 we find this entry in the Privy Purse Expenses:—“Delivered to the King’s grace at Stone, £9, 6s. 8d., which his grace lost at ‘Pope Julius’s game’ to my lady marques [Anne Boleyn], Mr. Bryan, and Maister Weston.” On the 25th Henry lost twenty crowns to the same party at the same game, and the following day £18, 13s. 4d. On the 28th Anne wins £11, 13s. 4d. in a single-handed game of cards with her royal lover, and on the next day Henry loses £4 at Pope Julius’s game. Henry was an inveterate gamester, and Erasmus in some emphatic words addressed to him bears witness that his queen, Catherine of Aragon, did not suffer such vain pursuits to divert her mind from duties. “Your noble wife,” says he, “spends that time in reading the sacred volume which other princesses occupy in cards and dice.” Henry VIII. gambled away the famous Jesus Campanile bell at St. Paul’s with the great folk-mote bell which summoned the assemblies of the citizens with a throw of the dice at hazard to Sir Miles Patridge, who pulled it down. “But,” adds Spelman in his “History of Sacrilege,” “in the fifth year of King Edward VI. the gamester had worse fortune when he lost his life, being executed on Tower Hill.”
Queen Mary in her young days was fond of betting and wagers, and many items of high play and of money lost by her have been preserved. She lost a frontlet, for instance, in a wager with her cousin, Lady Margaret Douglas, for which she paid four pounds. It is said that the Princess Mary not only pledged caps but lost breakfasts at bowls, which was then a fashionable amusement; “and to counterbalance these vanities she paid for the education of a poor child and the expense of binding him apprentice.”[85] The frontlets referred to above were the ornamented edges of coifs or caps, some of which were edged with gold lace and others with pearls and diamonds. Hence they were occasionally very expensive and cost a high price, and on this account they might easily be given in payment of wagers, or losses incurred through high play.
Through the evil influence of the Duchesses of Portsmouth and Mazarine, excessive gambling became one of the prevailing vices of the Court of Charles II., although his Majesty was not addicted to deep playing, or pursued cards otherwise than as an amusement. Queen Catherine was fond of ombre—which was probably introduced by her into this country—and quadrille, and if she played it was for the sake of the diversion rather than the stake. But the Duchess of Portsmouth had been known to lose five thousand guineas at a sitting, and on the evening of February 1, 1685—the last Sunday that Charles II. was permitted to spend on earth—“the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were playing at basset round a large table, with a bank of at least two thousand pounds before them. The king though not engaged in the game was to the full as scandalously occupied,”[86] “sitting,” writes Evelyn, “in open dalliance with three of the shameless women of the Court, the Duchesses of Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarine, and others of the same stamp, while a French boy was singing love-songs in that glorious gallery. Six days after,” he adds, “all was in the dust.”