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editor
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 Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2005 10:56 am Post subject: |
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Teacher Man
Hardcover
By Frank McCourt
| Quote: | Yonk was an artist and restorer in his sixties. He came from the Bronx, where his father was a politically radical doctor. Any revolutionary or anarchist passing through New York was welcome to a dinner and a bed at Dr. Kling's. Yonk went through World War II working Graves Registration. After a battle he searched the area for bodies or parts of bodies. He told me he never wanted to fight but this was worse, and he often felt like asking for a transfer to the infantry where you just shot your man and moved on. You didn't have to finger the dog tags of the dead or look in their wallets at pictures of wives and kids...
He had two other subjects: racehorses and dancing Hasidim. He showed horses coming round the bend. That's where the horse's body is most fluid, he said. Anyone can paint a horse out of the gate or heading for the finish line. That's just straight horse from nostril to tail, but coming round the bend, man, they're tilting and straining and sideswiping, adjusting to the bend, finding a slot for the stretch.
At the Aqueduct track I watched him watching. He seemed to be the only one at the track interested in what he called the laggard nags, the ones who trailed in at the end of the field. He ignored horses being led into the winner's enclosure. Winning was winning but losing made you dig deep. Before I knew Yonk I saw nothing but groups of horses being pointed in one direction and running their hearts out till one of them won. I looked through his eyes at a different Aqueduct. I knew nothing about art or the mind of the artist but I knew he took horse and rider images home in his head. (Chapter 12, pgs. 196-197) |
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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Seabiscuit
DVD
| Quote: | (Images of a racetrack, Tijuana, Mexico, 1933)
Narrator: At a time when the world really needed a drink, you couldn't get one in the United States of America. Liquor was illegal. Diversions were scarce and there's just so much a human being can do without. Soon, the border town was born, providing everything to the south that their neighbor of the north would not. You could find anything: food, companionship, decent gin, and with gambling outlawed as well, the chance to turn bad luck into good. |
An unexpectedly good Hollywood B movie that includes just the right amount of unromantically authentic images of the desperate Dirty Thirties. Happily, there are enough story omissions in the movie to make the excellent text worthwhile.
Seabiscuit
Paperback
By Laura Hillenbrand
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| Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 12:12 pm Post subject: |
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The Globe and Mail
Daily Newspaper
Obituaries Dec. 28/05
Kerry Packer, Media Baron and Gambler 1937-2005
Australia's richest man owned newspapers, television stations, casinos, enormous cattle farms and vast amounts of real estate. A legendary betting man, he was also a cricket fanatic and polo player
| Quote: | Australia's richest man, media mogul Kerry Packer, was known throughout the world for his love of sports and gambling.
Listed by Forbes magazine this year as the 94th richest man in the world - at $5 billion (US) - he amassed his fortune through his family's Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd., which he inherited from his father.
...In 1987, he entered horse-racing mythology when his craving to wager anything temporarily put him on the wrong side of Bruce McHugh at Sydney's Randwick racetrack when he made the mistake of betting on the favourite in the Sydney Cup, only to see it eclipsed by one of his own horses. Revenge came later when he bet a record $1-million in a subsequent race and collect $20-million from Mr. McHugh, effectively putting the famed bookie out of business. (-- p. S8) |
| Quote: | Forbes
Magazine Subscription
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| Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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BC Business
Magazine Subscription
The $200 Stake
Betting: art or science?
BC Business writer Alison Northey partners
with betting legend Scotty Douglas to parlay $200
into thousands at Fraser Downs racetrack. She
hopes...
June, 2004
| Quote: | | Like everyone else, we're here tonight to make money - plain and simple. Scotty needs to pay his rent and I'm thinking there's a new spring suit somewhere with my name on it. Partnering up with Scotty Douglas (right), I've been told, is like having a licence to print money. It's an odd partnership. Having grown up as a barn brat, I know of Scotty more as legend than in person and I'm more used to making a living by grooming the horses than by betting on them. Yet an opportunity to watch the races through his eyes - and a chance to make some easy money - is too good to pass up. (Opening paragraph at p. 66) |
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:18 am Post subject: |
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Wayne Gretzky
Paperback
By Jim Taylor, award-winning sportswriter
even we can stomach)
See the story, Wayne Gretzky denies placing bets with illegal gambling ring, posted Feb. 10/06 at Yahoo! News. Here is a brief excerpt:
| Quote: | TRENTON, N.J. (CP) - Wayne Gretzky was recorded on a wiretap talking to the alleged financier of a gambling ring, discussing how the hockey great's wife could avoid being connected to the operation, a person with knowledge of the investigation told Associated Press on Thursday.
Gretzky, coach and part-owner of the Phoenix Coyotes, can be heard on wiretaps made within the past month talking about his wife with assistant coach Rick Tocchet, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
After Phoenix's game on Thursday night, Gretzky did not take questions or talk about the wire taps during a brief news conference. He reiterated that he had never bet and said he planned to stay with the Coyotes and attend the Turin Olympics as Team Canada's executive director.
...Gretzky's comments were backed up by his wife, actress Janet Jones, who allegedly bet at least $100,000 US on football games over the course of the investigation by state authorities, the AP source said.
"At no time did I ever place a wager on my husband's behalf, period," Jones said in a statement provided by the Coyotes on Thursday night. "Other than the occasional horse race, my husband does not bet on any sports." |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 9:47 am Post subject: |
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A Day at the Races
Poster at Google Images
By our favorite Fauviste, Raoul Dufy,
whose art celebrates the finer things of life.
To wit:
| Quote: | Raoul Dufy was a painter of joy: his style, his subject matter, and his light, bright colors reflect a joy in life and in creating works which impart to the viewer a sensuous delight. Deeply rooted in the French decorative tradition that includes Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher, he was an amused observer and recorder of the fashionable world around him - of horse races and yachting scenes, sparkling views of the Riviera, chic parties and musical events. The wit and elegance of Dufy's calligraphic draftsmanship, combined with a magnificent control of intense color harmonies, give his work its characteristic style.
Dufy's work encompassed such an enormous variety of media. Although he was best known as a society painter, Dufy's paintings were just one part of his tremendous breadth of creative energy. Dufy brought equal enthusiasm and joie-de-vivre to all his work. He changed the face of fashion and fabric design with his work for Paul Poiret and Biachini-Férier; he was one of the finest book illustrators of his time, producing numerous exquisite engravings for Apollinaire's Bestiaire; his stage and costume designs for Cocteau's Le Beuf sur le toit were inspired, amusing and rapturously received; in 1937 he painted his huge and immensely popular epic to electricity, the fresco La Fée Electicité, for the Exposition Internationale. (From Leslie Sacks Fine Art in Los Angeles, CA) |
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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The Irish Times
English-language cage liner still worth reading
Where's Godot?
Who's Godot?
The complete text of Bono's homage to Samuel Beckett at the launch of the Beckett Centenary Festival this week
April 1/06
| Quote: | Un homage du Bono au maestro
Samuel Beckett, starring un homage du Mannix Flynn
a Barry McGovern - or a piece what I wrote called
Waiting for Colgan
I'm so tired, I'm so tired of the telephone...
The telephone rings...
The sound of cigar...a booming voice in a booming town
Shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
1995 Puligny Montrachet, 400 quid a bottle...glug glug glug...
Good buy...good boy
One hundred years, one hundred bum steers, one hundred and
seventeen thousand black beers before your peers
One hundred ears flappy happy happy clappy ears
It's hard not to be happy when you feel the sappy in someone
else's veins
As they kick a banana ball through the splits
On your birthday
And Ireland
Wins the triple crown on your birthday
It's your birthday, it's your birthday
I've been waiting
Waiting a long time
One hundred years
It gets tiring all this velvety blackness
that's what Le Brocquy calls it...
Velvety blackness but there's no nothingness
Oh no, just everythingness and judgment
The judgment of your peers...
Where's Gaybo? Who's Ryanair? W
here are the trolley dollies?
It's not dollys on the trolleys now
It's the living and the dead clogging up the arteries of the
health service
oh yest late to the late...late to the Late Late Show
Isn't Brendan Gleeson the business
The pricks
The celts
Waiting, waiting for the tiger to catch its tail,
I'm waiting for the phone to ring
Michael Colgan
The sound of cigar
Booming town, booming voice, shattering the glasses of the
drinking classes
Puligny Montrachet 1995
400 quid a bottle
Glug glug glug
One hundred years
I'm so tired
Louis and Anne, remember you gave me a signed copy of the
unforgettable fire?
I told you I loved it? I lied. I never listened to it.
Too busy
Waiting
Waiting for language to turn to liquid
Waiting for language to be our own again
Oh, Joyce had his revenge on they that put it in our mouth
His revenge
Was to chew it, bite into it, masticate and masterbate it
Make chewing gum of it
Spit it into hand and stick it on the bottom of a schoolboy's
desk
Me...I shrank it, swallowed it, made a fart out of it, made a fart
out of everyone who didn't like the smell of it
Such confusion caused by ignoring the obvious
Metaphor...I only met her for a drink...ha ha that's what Simon
says
Black Bush. George Bush the da says
The bombs are dropping closer, the Brudder Nikki Sudden
Shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
Puligny Montrachet 1995 glug glug glug
Mother's milk
I never had the mother tongue...
Just the father's cranky aloof and lofty voice
That language was always there growing like teeth in the gum,
like Chomsky says
I got closer to the brain than anyone before or after
I could hear you thinking,
I can hear you thinking now
Blinkin' phone rings...sound of cigards
Michael Colgan birthday parties
Puligny Montrachet, 1995, 400 quid a bottle
glug glug glug
I'm so tired
All those PhDs
All those questions
Where's Godot
Who's Godot...
Everyone knows that
phone rings, sound of cigars
Table at the Unicorn
Puligny Montrachet
Glug glug glug
Big smoky voice shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
Birthday party sort it out...
Tell them death isn't funny but eternity is a laugh
Tell the tiger not to eat its tale
Ah to win the triple crown on your birthday
Parties, it's great to have them and not be there...
But don't leave people waiting for too long
One hundred years, it's a long time
The table is set, it looks great Michael
The sound of cigar, booming town, booming voice
Shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
Puligny Montrachet, glug glug glug
Waiting, waiting, waiting...to be fuckin' understood
Wating, waiting, waiting...for Colgan
Good boy, goodbye.'
- Bono
(From News Features, p. 5) |
One tough critic at Irish Examiner.com had this to say about the piece on April 5/06:
| Quote: | Beckett honour should have been given to a writer
When we, as a country, finally have the chance to pay some hugely overdue respect to Samuel Beckett, arguably the most important modernist of the 20th century, who do we choose to open his centenary celebrations? Bono. Obviously. Who else would we ask? Not an infinitely more suitable literary figure. In our scrabbling attempts to claim back our national writers whom we now recognise as marketable commodities, we once again drag this narcissistic, glorified pop star back into the limelight.
Why could the Arts Minister not have taken this opportunity to offer recognition and support to the future legends - contemporary Irish writers like Heaney, Banville, Doyle and others - by offering this honour to an Irish writer?
As I read the stomach-churningly awful 'Un homage du Bono au maestro Samuel Beckett', written and performed by Bono at Dublin Castle, and reproduced in the Irish Examiner on March 31, I could not help laughing, as I'm sure Beckett would have, at yet another example of misguided Irish self-importance at its parochial best.
No wonder he left.
Nuala Walsh
Western Road
Cork |
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: Further proof, if more was required, of just how tough it is to please the home crowd. Not long after Frank McCourt's second blockbuster memoir, T'is, was published, a review in the Irish Times appeared below the banner headline, T'isn't. |
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| Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 10:29 am Post subject: |
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A Few Quick Ones
Paperback
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | | Now, though at the moment when he made this fine gesture Bingo actually had ten quid in his possession, having touched Purkiss for an advance on his salary, one would have expected him, thinking things over in the cold grey light of the morning after, to kick himself soundly for having been such an ass as to utter those unguarded words, committing him as they did to a course of conduct which would strip him of his last bean. But such was not the case. Still mellowed by a father's love, all he thought next day was that as a gift to a superchild like Algernon Aubrey a tenner was a bit on the cheeseparing side. Surely twenty would be far more suitable. And he could pick that up by slapping his ten on Potato in the two-thirty at Haydock Park. At dinner on the previous night he had burned his mouth by placing in it a fried spud about ninety degrees Fahrenheit warmer than he had supposed it to be, and he is always far too inclined to accept omens like this as stable information. He made the investment, accordingly, and at two-forty-five was informed by the club tape that he was now penniless. (From The Word in Season at pgs. 92-93) |
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| Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 11:56 am Post subject: |
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Notes on an Endangered Species
and Others
Hardcover
By Mordecai Richler
| Quote: | Traditionally, the GG, the Queen's very own Canadian second-floor maid, stands behind two major horse races: the Queen's Plate and the Governor-General's Awards (never more than six) for the best books of the year. Though one Queen's Plate winner, the fabulous Northern Dancer, also came first in the Kentucky Derby, so far no Governor-General's Award winner has ever been entered in the final heat for the Nobel.
...Until 1959, when the Canada Council took over the administration of the awards, the Governor-General forked out 50 guineas to the horse that won the Queen's Plate, but offered just a handshake (royal only by osmosis since Vincent Massey became the first Canadian-born GG in 1952), and a copy of your book signed in his own hand, to writers. The Canada Council, happily cognizant of the stuff that really excites this country's artistic types, tacked a $1,000 purse to the awards in 1959, raising the ante to $2,500 six years later.
This year's awards created a small uproar. THE ESTABLISHMENT BEWARE!, ran the headline in the Toronto Globe and Mail, THESE AWARDS ARE WITH IT. Winners fro 1968 were Hubert Aquin, for his novel Trou de memoires, Fernand Dumont, for his sociological work Le Lieu de l'homme, and Marie-Claire Blais, for her novel Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange. English-language writers were Leonard Cohen, for his Selected Poems; Alice Munro, for her first book of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades; and me, for Cocksure, a novel, and Hunting Tigers Under Glass, a collection of essays.
Well now, the truth is we were a scurvy lot. Cohen, who enjoys an immense campus following in Canada and the U.S., is a self-declared pot smoker. Hubert Aquin, a former vice-president of the militantly separatist RIN party, was once arrested and charged with car theft and being in possession of a revolver. My novel, Cocksure, had been banned by the rest of the white Commonwealth, not to mention W. H. Smith in the mother country. Aquin, as was to be expected, turned down the award instantly, the GG being anathema to him. Fernand Dumont accepted the award, but two weeks later donated his prize money to the separatist Parti Quebecois. Cohen, pondering the inner significance of the award in his hotel in the Village, wavered. He told a Toronto Star reporter he wasn't sure whether he would accept the award, it would depend on how he felt when he got up that morning. In the end, he didn't wait that long, but instead issued a statement saying there was much in him that would like to accept the award, but the poems absolutely forbid it. (From "Etes-vous canadien?" at pgs. 207-209) |
Richler in company with the A-list of Canadian letters but not allowing any of their lustre to rub off on him.
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| Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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Tales From the Drones Club
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | I don't know if you have ever seen a bull-terrier embarking on a scrap with an Airedale and just as it was getting down nicely to its work suddenly having an unexpected Kerry Blue sneak up behind it and bite it in the rear quarters. When this happens, it lets go of the Airedale and swivels round and fixes the butting-in animal with a pretty nasty eye. It was exactly the same with the woman Connie when Lord Ickenham spoke these words.
'What!'
'I was only wondering if you had forgotten how Charlie Parker made his pile.'
'What are you talking about?'
'I know it is painful,' said Lord Ickenham, 'and one doesn't mention it as a rule, but, as we are on the subject, you must admit that lending money at two hundred and fifty per cent interest is not done in the best circles. The judge, if you remember, said so at the trial.'
'I never knew that!' cried the girl Julia.
'Ah,' said Lord Ickenham. 'You kept it from the child? Quite right, quite right?'
'It's a lie!'
'And when Henry Parker had all that fuss with the bank it was touch and go they didn't send him to prison. Between ourselves, Connie, has a bank official, even a brother of your husband, any right to sneak fifty pounds from the till in order to put it on a hundred to one shot for the Grand National? Not quite playing the game, Connie. Not the straight bat. Henry, I grant you, won five thousand of the best and never loked back afterwards, but, though we applaud his judgment of form, we must surely look askance at his financial methods. As for Cousin Alf Robbins...' (From Uncle Fred Flits By at pgs. 131-132) |
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| Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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A Day in the Life of Ireland
May 17/91
Featuring the work of 75 photographers
Hardcover
Edited by Jennifer Ewitt and Bob Lawlor
Cover photo
| Quote: | | Competition is keen both on and off the track as a steeplechase event gets under way in Dundalk. About 350 licensed bookmakers roam a circuit of Irish horse tracks throughout the racing season, taking bets from all comers and paying out on the spot. A government backed Racing Board runs its own betting operation, known as the Tote, but five times as much business passes through the hands of private bookies. Together, the two systems turned over $120 million in 1990. Another $300 million passed through off-track betting parlors strategically situated on streetcorners throughout the land. (Photographer Dego Goldberg, Argentina, pgs. 164-165) |
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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Uncle Fred in the Springtime
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
All-time champion *performing flea
| Quote: | Mr. Pott's eyes were glistening a little, as he trousered the note.
"You've got a lot of money there, Lord B."
"And I may need it before tomorrow's sun has set. It's the first day of the Bridgford races, where I usually get skinned to the bone. Very hard to estimate form at these country meetings. You interested in racing?"
"I was at one time a turf commissioner, operating in the Silver Ring."
"Good Lord! Were you really? My young brother Freddie was a partner in a bookie's firm once. His father-in-law made him give it up and go over to America and peddle dog-biscuits. Absorbing work."
"Most."
"I expect you miss it, don't you?"
"I do at times, Lord B."
"What do you do for amusement these days?"
"I like a quiet little game of cards."
"So do I." Lord Bosham regarded this twin soul with a kindly eye. Deep had spoken to deep. "Only the trouble is, it's a dashed difficult thing for a married man to get. You a married man?"
"A widower, Lord B."
"I wish you wouldn't keep saying 'Lord B.' It sounds as if you had been starting to call me something improper and changed your mind. Where was I? Oh, yes. When I'm at home, I don't get a chance of little games of cards. My wife objects."
"Some wives are like that. You start out in life a willing, eager sportsman, ready to take anybody on at anything and then you meet a girl and fall in love, and when you come out of the ether you find not only that you are married but that you have signed on for a lifetime of bridge at threepence a hundred."
"Too true," sighed Mr. Pott.
"No more friendly little games with nothing barred except biting and bottles."
"Ah!" said Mr. Pott.
"We could do far worse," said Lord Bosham, "while we're waiting for these impostors to get up steam, than have a friendly little game now."
"As your lordship pleases."
Lord Bosham winced.
"I wish you wouldn't use that expression. It was what counsel for the defence kept saying to the judge at my breach-of-promise case, every time the latter ticked him off for talking out of his turn. So don't do it, if you don't mind."
"Very good, your lordship."
"And don't call me 'your lordship,' either. I hate all this formality. I like your face...well, no, that's overstating it a bit...put it this way, I like your personality, bloodhound, and feel that we shall be friends. Call me Bosham."
"Right ho, Bosham."
"I'll ring for some cards, shall I?"
"Don't bother to do that, Bosham. I have some."
The sudden appearance of a well-thumbed pack from the recesses of Mr. Pott's costume seemed to interest Lord Bosham.
"Do you always go about with a pack of cards on you?"
"When I travel. I like to play solitaire in the train."
"Do you play anything else?"
"I am fond of Snap."
"Yes, Snap's a good game."
"And Animal Grab."
"That's not bad, either. But I can tell you something that's better than both."
"Have ----------------" said Mr. Pott.
"Have you -------------" said Lord Bosham.
"Have you ever ---------" said Mr. Pott.
"Have you ever," concluded Lord Bosham, "heard of a game called Persian Monarchs?"
Mr. Pott's eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and for an instant he could not speak. His lips moved silently. He may have been praying. (-- pgs. 139-140) |
| Quote: | * Note on the title:
Performing Flea
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | | With (Irish playwright of comparatively scant consequence) Sean O'Casey's statement that I am "English literature's performing flea," I scarcely know how to deal. Thinking it over, I believe he meant to be complimentary, for all the performing fleas I have met have impressed me with their sterling artistry and that indefinable something which makes the good trouper. (From the chapter entitled, Huy Day by Day, at p. 217) |
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| Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 12:55 pm Post subject: |
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Gilgamesh
A New English Version
Hardcover
By Stephen Mitchell
| Quote: | The goddess Ishtar caught sight of him,
she saw how splendid a man he was,
her heart was smitten, her loins caught fire.
"Come here, Gilgamesh," Ishtar said,
"marry me, give me your luscious fruits,
be my husband, be my sweet man.
I will give you abundance beyond your dreams:
marble and alabaster, ivory and jade,
gorgeous servants with blue-green eyes,
a chariot of lapis lazuli
with golden wheels and guide-horns of amber,
pulled by storm-demons like giant mules.
When you enter my temple and its cedar fragrance,
high priests will bow down and kiss your feet,
kings and princes will kneel before you,
bringing you tribute from east and west.
And I will bless everything that you own,
your goats will bear triplets, your ewes will twin,
your donkeys will be faster than any mule,
your chariot horses will win every race,
your oxen will be the envy of the world.
These are the least of the gifts I will shower
upon you. Come here. Be my sweet man.
(From Book VI at pgs. 130-131) |
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:07 am Post subject: |
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A Bit on the Side
Stories
Hardcover
By William Trevor
| Quote: | 'He raced his horses, we're to understand?' Kathleen said.
'Point-to-points. Punchestown the odd time.'
'Well, that's great.'
'There wasn't much success.'
'It's an up and down business, of course.'
Disappointment had filled the house when yet again a horse trailed in, when months of preparation went for nothing. There had never been much reason for optimism, but even so expectation had been high, as if anything less would have brought bad luck. When Emily married, her husband had been training a string of yearlings on the Curragh. Doing well, he'd said himself, although in fact he wasn't. (From Sitting with the Dead at pgs. 7-8) |
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Last edited by editor on Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:28 am; edited 2 times in total |
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editor
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Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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A Victorian Scrapbook
Hardcover
A wonderful picture book for rainy days.
By Cynthia Hart, John Grossman and Priscilla Dunhill
| Quote: | With steadily mounting wealth and seduced by the heady tenor of the times, Victorians flocked to gambling. Fortunes were won and lost overnight in high-stakes games of faro, poker, roulette, and all manner of sports events - boxing, horse racing, wrestling, sailing.
First "opening its doors to Satan" in 1819, when city fathers winked at billiards, unchaperoned dancing and private gambling, Saratoga Springs had no peer when it came to the social station and inventiveness of its gamblers. Millionaires at the Springs dreamed up a new gambling game called Flo-lo, in which each player would set a cube of sugar saturated with honey in front of him at the dining table, place his bet, then wait to see which cube would first attract a fly. With the arrival in 1861 of John Morrissey, a huge, brawling, handsome Irish immigrant boxer, gambling was seriously - and openly - launched. At his Matilda Street club, Morrissey took cash only and barred women and local citizens from gaming. He was enormously successful, he gave large sums to charity and closed his doors on Sunday, but no blueblood dowagers ever welcomed him and his dazzling dark-eyed bride across the thresholds of their Broadway mansions.
Morrissey, cut to the quick, simply poured more energy into his trade. By the 1870s, rich carpetbaggers from the South, Nevada silver lode mining kings and the Eastern establishment industrial aristocracy all jostled for preferred places at his gambling events. Capitalizing on the Victorian appetite for sports, he built the Springs' first racetrack and sponsored boat racing on Lake Saratoga. Despite his efforts, Morrissey died at age forty-seven, porcine and worn out from overeating and other excesses, without ever having gained the social acceptance he so coveted.
His replacement was the dapper, elegant Richard Canfield, who came to be called the Prince of Gambling. Canfield bought Morrissey's club and redecorated it, much as it can be seen today, with red-flocked wallpapaer, moon-globe chandeliers, green satin draperies and cabbage-rose carpets. Importing the best chefs from France, he charged higher prices than New York's Delmonico's and Sherry's, and called his new place the Casino. Soon, ten gambling houses were imitating his success. The roulette wheels and dice clattered round the clock. Prodded by local citizens and sensing the circulation bonanza to be found in the high-life scandal of bluebloods, veteran newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer sent his star reporter, Nelly Bly, to expose the debaucheries of Saratoga. In August of 1894, the headlines of her story blazed across the pages of the New York World: "Money mad by night and day/Little children who play horses." The subhead was no less irate: "Reputable and disreputable women, solid merchants, bankers, touts, criminals and race track riff-raff crazed by the mania for gold."
The heyday would soon be over. (From Manly Pursuits at pgs. 101-104) |
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:32 am; edited 3 times in total |
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