Bradford MudgeASECS
Department of EnglishSan Antonio, TX
University of Colorado DenverApril 2012
Denver, CO 80217
High Stakes Play:
Casanova, Cards, and the Rise of the New Credit Economy
[S]take gold against gold, I accept no counters.
–Chevalier de Seingalt, L’histoire de ma vie (1798).
I
Casanova arrived in London in June 1763. He was at the top of his game, thirty-eight years old, flush with cash, and robustly healthy. Although hampered by his inability to speak English, within a week he had met the King and Queen, moved into an attractive house, and made a variety of desirable social connections. A more propitious arrival could not be imagined. Yet the visit did not go well. April 1764, a mere ten months later, sees Casanova having to escape London under the cover of darkness: racked by venereal disease, up to his ears in debt, and threatened by criminal prosecution, he returns to Europe profoundly shaken by his experiences in England. Although high stakes gambling figured centrally in this disaster, Casanova was not ruined by play, at least not only. Gambling at cards was only one part of a far more complex confrontation with the English financial system. Casanova’s real gamble, in other words, was on his own ability to negotiate the English passion for paper money and the severe and unfamiliar laws within which that passion moved.
Casanova’s adventures in London are well known: a mysterious Portugese lover, a scheming Swiss whore, our hero driven to the brink of suicide. For those interested in gambling, there are high-stakes shenanigans from beginning to end. Thomas Kavanagh has argued that Casanova’s gambling is his identity, intimately tied to his relationships with women, and at the heart of how he both sees and interacts with the world. I would add that Casanova’s disaster in London reveals more: it reveals the extent to which the new credit economy–the bills of exchange, the letters of credit, the bank notes, all of the paper currencies that flooded English markets–posed a powerful, and ultimately insurmountable challenge to the values of the courtier that Casanova struggled so heroically to represent. Moreover, this conflict between old money and new, gold and paper, was deeply inscribed within the romantic events for which this section is justifiably famous.
To begin, consider a brief summary of Casanova’s gambling. There are in the London section seven sessions–three whist, three faro, one dice. The stakes at whist are small. Casanova notes of the first session that he lost 15 guineas. Of the second and third, he says little. Faro is played with much higher stakes, and he is clearly more interested. In the first faro session, another player makes bank at a thousand guineas (about 150,000 pounds today), but the game breaks up quickly because Casanova refuses to accept notes, “counters,” from the other players. As he mentions repeatedly, he prefers to “stake gold against gold.” In the second faro session, Casanova himself makes the bank, once again a thousand guineas, and he loses an undisclosed amount. He also accepts bank notes that will subsequently prove to be forged, and so, in effect, loses twice. In the third session, another player makes bank and Casanova again loses, this time “two or three hundred guineas.” The last gambling session is played with dice, and Casanova wins 100 guineas, for which he accepts a third-party bill of exchange in a much larger amount. That bill will prove to be forged, and Casanova will have to flee London for his life.
As this brief summary makes clear, Casanova was more in danger from fraudulent currencies than he was from the cards themselves. This is borne out by his own descriptions, which are seemingly uninterested in the details of his victories or defeats, but quite attentive to the larger financial arrangements that make the games possible. There are, in other words, no obsessive recountings of hands; instead, careful attention is paid to the ways wealth was represented at the table. The concern, of course, is that the wrong decision about paper credit–under English law–may lead not only to financial ruin, but also to prison or death. Unsurprisingly, Casanova’s real gamble–the wager that this money or that is real or forged–is also central to his romantic adventures, in which sexual exchange is contingent upon financial understanding. Casanova’s disastrous affair with La Charpillon, the Swiss courtesan, thus provides a perfect opportunity to understand the larger issues at stake and to reconsider one of the most famous mysteries of Casanova’s life: what exactly was it about his relationship with La Charpillon that drove him to the brink of suicide?
II
From the outset, Casanova’s account of the English stresses the difficulties attendant upon monetary exchange. He is forewarned that “at Calais . . . one began to be in the wrong in all disputes in which one could not produce visible and palpable proof of one’s rights” (159). As if to prove the point, the English Ambassador to France, the Duke of Bedford, arrives at the inn and wishes to requisition the packet boat that Casanova has already purchased. In the testy negotiations that ensue, he has to tell the Duke, “the freedom of the boat is [yours] without paying, but not otherwise; for I do not sell merchandise which I have bought” (160). Mortified by the Duke’s pushiness, Casanova finds himself having to negotiate the very behaviors about which he was apprehensive. At stake was honor: the more the Duke focused on money, the more Casanova’s character was devalued in the process.
Casanova is in London less than a week before his first card party provides the occasion for another conflict about money. He loses 15 guineas at whist and, like a gentleman, pays immediately and in gold. He is then told by his hostess that his behavior was “unmannerly” and that he should have paid in paper. Moreover, she explains, paying in gold actually cost him an additional 15 schillings. Casanova has it all explained by his friend Martinelli:
I told him of my blunder . . . he showed me that it was not only evidence of the prosperity and wealth of the nation, which gave its paper the preference over gold, but also a proof of its blind confidence in its Bank, in which it was convinced that there was all the real value of all the notes which circulated in the three kingdoms. This preference for paper over gold was also remarkable because of the advantage of five pounds in a hundred which the guinea had over the pound. . . . You owe someone a hundred guineas and you pay him a hundred pounds . . . in paper; he says nothing, though he is the loser by it, and he thanks you. By this policy the English nation has doubled its legal tender. All the wealth it possesses in cash serves to carry on external commerce, and it carries on internal commerce with the tokens which represent the same real wealth. (179-80)
Both Casanova and Martinelli are incredulous that the English banking system runs on a “blind confidence.” The fictions of paper have enabled England to “double its legal tender” and maintain both “internal” and “external” commerce on the same reserve of “real wealth.” This promiscuous doubling of value is at once illusory and effective, a paradox underscored by the honorable manners that refuses to acknowledge the winners and losers in the exchange game. Although Casanova’s prior experience with the Duke of Bedford might suggest that he would be sympathetic to an “honor” above mercantile interest, he actually is quite insistent that “honor,” like money, have proper backing. If promissory notes have to be backed by gold, then honor should be backed by “character,” by a specie of self forged of unequal parts integrity and privilege.
Casanova’s knowledge of character served him well at the card table. In his first faro session, he recognizes the “sharpers” and refuses their credit, effectively ending the game before it begins. In the second session, he is outwitted because they present forged bank notes, rather than bills of exchange, and he takes the bait. As a result he loses 40 guineas in his capacity as dealer, in addition to undisclosed losses in the game itself. Although deeply ambivalent about having to resort to English law, he does initiate legal proceedings. In a move consistent with the courtier’s contempt for money, however, Martinelli advises him to burn the notes and be done, which Casanova eventually does, but only after he has the pleasure of seeing one of the perpetrators arrested, imprisoned, and broken and the other fled. Casanova’s account again makes clear that the monetary costs of his faro sessions matter much less to him than the costs–as he perceives them–to his honor.
Casanova’s ascendancy over the events in London is short lived. La Charpillon, will, soon after these games of faro, drive him to brink of suicide and have him imprisoned for assault. Although he will recover his spirits before he is forced to flee the city, she, together with her mother and aunts, take him not only at whist but also at the larger game of seduction, which he fails in an uncharacteristically spectacular fashion. It is this failure that throws Casanova’s card play in sharp relief as it reveals the profound difficulties posed by the new credit economy.
III
In describing his friend, La Binetti, and her relationship to Lord Pembroke, Casanova refers to seduction as the “great game” (197). Specifically, he tells us that La Binetti was “too well versed in the great game” to give Pembroke sex immediately. It is a reference that renders gambling both analogous and subservient to the “play” of love. He is describing, of course, how both activities require a back and forth of bluff and counter bluff, disclosure and obfuscation, advance and retreat. It is also a comparison that includes a theory of excitement, an understanding of the importance of risk and an appreciation for what would be lost in a world without flirtation or cards. But it is also–most emphatically–a confirmation of stakes: Casanova does not play for the sake of play. Seduction is played for the body of the beloved; cards are played for the money that is staked to the outcome. When pages later La Binetti complains of Pembroke’s lack of attention, Casanova laughingly reminds her that “the score is even”: “he has had you; you have had him too, so the score is even” (209). She is indignant and responds, “It is not even, you don’t know what you are talking about.” That Casanova turns away at this point in the narrative is deeply suggestive: he prefers to believe that seduction, like cards, “stake[s] gold against gold” and that consummation evens the accounts. Thus, La Binetti, who insists that she is owed more, is at fault for accepting a counter that may not prove legitimate.
The gold standard for romance has already been set by Pauline, Casanova’s mysterious Portugese lover, the story of whom is obviously intended to contrast to that of La Charpillon. Pauline dominates the first half of the London visit; La Charpillon the second. Pauline is beautiful and true; La Chapillon is beautiful and false. With Pauline, Casanova finds a “perfect harmony,” a physical, emotional, and intellectual compatibility that they both playfully refer to as a kind of marriage. They co-habit; they exchange portraits; they call each other “husband” and “wife.” Like the gold coin, whose professed value is matched by the material of its making, this love purports to be the real thing. For Casanova at least, the score is even.
La Charpillion is Pauline’s opposite, and his experience with her is such a disaster that Casanova famously identifies it as the lowest point of his life. Of their meeting, he says: “It was on that fatal day . . . that I began to die and . . . ceased to live” (272). It doesn’t take him long to realize that he had met La Charpillon once before and that her mother had swindled him out of six thousand francs, specifically that he held two bills of exchange for that sum which she had failed to honor. He also realizes that La Charpillon wants money for her favors, initially a hundred guineas, which she insists is for her mother and aunts. The negotiations that ensue are of devious complexity, combining as they do the actions of physical seduction, with the language of romance and the requirements of financial exchange. For instance, after La Charpillon requests the money, Casanova initially refuses to decide on way or another, a refusal that he follows with physical attention. He says, in effect, “I will not pay the 100 guineas until I have assurance that I am actually buying what I think I’m buying.” She refuses his caresses but a few minutes later proposes cards. She wants him to make a bank to play faro; but he laughingly refuses and only grudging plays whist. It is a telling moment not only because La Charpillon is quick witted and Casanova cautious, but also because she shifts the sex-for-money negotiations to the card table and implies that if he wants her he must be ready for some high-stakes gambling.
So it will prove: he decides to pay the 100 guineas up front but gets no more than the opportunity to surprise her in the bath. She then insists that he can have her neither with money nor by force, but only by courtship. So he courts her diligently for two weeks, relinquishing the quid pro quo of commercial exchange for subtleties of “gift” exchange: each day “a costly present” (290). The consummation is then arranged, she allows him into her bed, but intimacy is denied. He tells us: “I see that I am duped, a fool . . . I see that the girl is the most contemptible of whores” (291). Enraged, he assaults her, but to no avail. She is covered in bruises; he is miserable and confused; the mother threatens a law suit. In a clever move, La Charpillon then apologizes and agrees to be set up as a mistress. He sets her up, she takes him to bed, and again she withholds her favors. He assaults her, and again she threatens a lawsuit. Again, they reconcile, and Casanova–now “enchanted by the happiness which awaited” (303)–makes the most magnanimous gesture he can make: he returns the two bills of exchange, in effect canceling the debt owed by mother and aunts. Although the drama has few scenes left to play out before Casanova will load his pockets with lead and walk to Westminster Bridge, this is the crucial moment, the moment at which Casanova’s knowledge of the “great game” proves woefully inadequate and La Charpillon plays trump. He returns the bills because the La Charpillon has unequivocally rejected the protocols of commercial exchange and seemingly adopted the more genteel negotiations of gift exchange. He returns the bills because gift exchange re-figures sex-for-money as reciprocal generosities far above the specific and sordid equivalences of commercial transaction. He returns the bills because he expects that this over-the-top generosity will hasten La Charpillon’s return gift to him. Instead, she accepts the gift and returns nothing.
What will drive Casanova insane is that La Charpillon eschews both commercial and gift exchange. In fact, she eschews exchange of any sort. She is not playing sex-for-money, or gift-for-gift. All agreements are bluffs; all counters forged. It is not about wealth or honor. And it is certainly not about character. It comes closest to being about cards. Casanova thinks he’s playing faro or whist, which are both clear and straightforward, games that begin with and are held to community standards. But he is actually playing brelan, a game which, like poker, makes use of the bluff. In games of bluff, the cards themselves can become irrelevant: it’s the hand you project, not the hand you actually hold. He also thinks he knows the stakes, that he is playing for sex, for the body of the beloved, which La Charpillon will relinquish when the session is over. But La Charpillon is bluffing about this too. She lets Casanova think he has won until the last possible moment–when they are in bed–and then she withholds payment, gambling that her physical punishment will itself be repaid handsomely in the future, either by her abject lover or by the courts of law. To his horror, Casanova discovers not only that it is not “gold against gold,” but also that everything–game, stakes, and player–are forgeries. Every time he’s ready to cash out, there’s another dodge, another deferral, another promissory note . . . yet another reminder that he is being played for a fool.
In other words, Casanova walks to Westminster Bridge with his pockets full of lead because his “great game” needs “gold against gold.” Not unreasonably, he needs to know the rules and the stakes. Not so for La Charpillon. Like all great players, she needs to know only the expectations of her opponent. The more strongly he desires the perfect reciprocities of gold or sex, the easier it becomes to engineer the bait and switch. Thus, when Casanova walks to Westminster Bridge, his despair is less that of simple disappointment–that of not getting what he wanted–and more that he is aware of having left a note that he didn’t want to write. In the marks on her body–in the bruises, the scratches, and the cuts–he has written a bill of exchange redeemable for everything he values: all of his money, all of his jewels, and, most important, his character. Although the temptation is to consider La Charpillon herself as the fraudulent currency, as a note whose value Casanova misreads, that explanation doesn’t square. The real horror is not that Casanova has accepted a forgery, but instead that he has authored it himself.