ODYSSEY

I

Notwithstanding the tie of alleged parenthood, domestic relations between them did not improve, and the couple soon parted. The knowledge that she was still “wanted” there kept Lola out of England. Instead, she went to Paris, where such unpleasantnesses as warrants could not touch her. There she was given a warm welcome, by old friends and new.

During this visit to Paris an unaccustomed set-back was experienced. She received it from Emile de Girardin, of whom she endeavoured to make a conquest. But this “wild-eyed, pale-faced man of letters,” as she called him, would have none of her. Perhaps he remembered what had befallen Dujarier.

As was to be expected, the coming among them of Lola Montez attracted the attention of the courrierists, who earned many welcome francs by filling columns with details of her career. What they did not know about it they invented. They knew very little. Thus, one such article (appropriately signed “Fantasio”) read as follows:

“Madame Lola Montez, who is now happily returned to us, is the legitimate spouse of Sir Thomas James, an officer of the English Army. Milord Sir James loved to drink and the beautiful Lola loved to flirt. A wealthy Prince of Kabul was willing to possess her for her weight in gold and gems. Up till now, her principal love affairs have been with Don Enriquez, a Spaniard, Brule-Tout, a well-developed French mariner, and John, a phlegmatic Englishman. One day Sir James bet that he could drink three bottles of brandy in twenty minutes. While he was thus occupied, the amorous Lola made love to three separate gallants.”

“It will doubtless,” added a second, “be gratifying to her pride to queen it again in Paris, where she was once hissed off the stage. There she will at any rate now be received at the Bavarian Embassy, and exhibit the Order of Maria Theresa. She was invested with this to the considerable scandal of the Munich nobility, who cannot swallow the idea of such a distinction being bestowed on a dancer.”

This sort of thing and a great deal more in a similar strain, was accepted as gospel by its readers. But for those who wished her ill, any lie was acceptable. Thus, although there was not a scrap of evidence to connect her with the incident, a paragraph, headed “Lola Again?” was published in the London papers:

Yesterday afternoon an extraordinary scene was witnessed by the promenaders in the Champs Elysees. Two fashionably attired ladies, driving in an elegant equipage, were heard to be employing language that was anything but refined. From words to blows, for suddenly they began to assault one another with vigorous smacks. The toilettes and faces of the fair contestants were soon damaged; and, loud cries of distress being uttered, the carriage was stopped, and, attracted by the fracas, some gentlemen hurried to render assistance. As a result of their interference, one of the damsels was expelled from the vehicle, and the other ordered the coachman to drive her to her hotel. This second lady is familiar to the public by reason of her adventures in Bavaria.

Albert Vandam, a singularly objectionable type of journalist, who professed to be on intimate terms with everybody in Paris worth knowing, has a number of offensive and unjustifiable allusions to Lola Montez at this period of her career. He talks of her “consummate impudence,” of her “pot-house wit,” and of her “grammatical errors,” and dubs her, among other things, “this almost illiterate schemer.”

“Lola Montez,” says the egregious Vandam, “could not make friends.” He was wrong. This was just what she could do. She made many staunch and warm-hearted friends. It was because she snubbed him on account of his pushfulness that Vandam elected to belittle her.

Lola Montez chose her friends for their disposition, not for their virtue. One of them was George Sand, “the possessor of the largest mind and the smallest foot in Paris.” She also became intimate with Alphonsine Plessis, and constantly visited the future “Lady of the Camélias” in her appartement on the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Another habitue there at this period was Lola’s old Dresden flame, the Abbe Liszt, who, not confining his attentions to the romanticists, had no compunction about poaching on the preserves of Dumas fils, or, for that matter, of anybody else. As for the fair, but frail, Alphonsine, she said quite candidly that she was “perfectly willing to become his mistress, if he wanted it, but was not prepared to share the position.” As Liszt had other ideas on the subject, the suggestion came to nothing.

Some years afterwards, one of his pupils, an American young woman, Amy Fay, took his measure in a book, Music-study in Germany:

“Liszt,” she wrote, “is the most interesting and striking-looking man imaginable. Tall and slight, with deep-set eyes, shaggy eyebrows and long iron-grey hair which he wears parted in the middle. His mouth turns up at the corners, which gives him a most crafty and Mephistophelean expression when he smiles, and his whole appearance and manner have a sort of Jesuitical elegance and ease.”

Before she set out on this journey, Lola wrote to an acquaintance: “What makes men and women distinguished is their individuality; and it is for that I will conquer or die!” Of this quality, she had enough and to spare. Her Paris life was hectic; or, as the Boulevardiers put it, elle faisait la bombe.

Among the tit-bits of gossip served up by a reporter was the following:

“Lola is constantly giving tea-parties in her Paris flat. A gentleman who is frequently bidden to them tells us that her masculine guests are restricted to such as have left their wives, and that the feminine guests consist of ladies who have left their husbands.”

An Englishman whom she met at this time was Savile Morton, a friend of Thackeray and Tennyson. One night when she was giving a supper-party, a fellow-guest, Roger de Beauvoir, happened to read to the company some verses he had written. The hostess, on the grounds of their alleged “coarseness,” complained to Morton that she had been insulted. As a result, Morton, being head over ears in love with her, sent de Beauvoir a challenge. Lola, however, having had enough of duels, took care that nothing should come of it; and insisted that an apology should be given and accepted.

At one time she was optimistic enough to take a villa at Beaujon on a fifteen years’ lease, and had it refurnished in sumptuous fashion on credit. The first two instalments of the rent were met. When, however, the landlord called to collect the third one, he was put off with the excuse that: “Mr. Heald was away and had forgotten to send the money, but would be back in a week.” This story might have been accepted, had not the landlord discovered that his tenant was planning to leave surreptitiously and that some of the furniture had already been removed. As a result, a body of indignant tradesmen, accompanied by the Maire of the district, in tricoloured sash and wand of office complete, betook themselves to the villa and demanded a settlement of accounts for goods delivered. This time they were told that the money had arrived, but that the key of the box in which it had been deposited for safety was lost. Assuring them that she would fetch a locksmith, Lola slipped out of the house, and, stepping into a waiting cab, drove off to a new address near the Etoile. This was the last that the creditors saw of her.

In January, 1851, Lola, setting an example that has since then become much more common among theatrical ladies, compiled her “memoirs.” When the editor of Le Pays undertook to publish them in his columns, a rival editor, jealous of the “scoop,” referred to their author as “Madame James, once Madame Heald, formerly Mlle Lola Montez, and for nearly a quarter of an hour the Countess of Landsfeld.”

The work was dedicated to her old patron, King Ludwig, with a florid avant-propos:

Sire: In publishing my memoirs, my purpose is to reveal to a world still engulfed in a vulgar materialism Your Majesty’s lofty thoughts about art, poetry, and philosophy. The inspiration of this book, Sire, is due to yourself, and to those other remarkable men whom Fortune always the protector of my younger years has given me as councillors and friends.

Lola must have written with more candour than tact. At any rate, after the first three chapters had appeared, the editor of Le Pays, on the grounds that they would “shock his purer readers,” refused to continue the series. “We positively decline,” he announced, “to sully our columns further.”

II

Authorship having thus proved a failure, Lola, swallowing her disappointment, directed her thoughts to her old love, the ballet. To this end, she placed herself in the hands of a M. Roux; and, a number of engagements having been secured by him, she began a provincial tour at Bordeaux. By the time it was completed the star and her manager were on such bad terms that, when they got back to Paris, the latter was dismissed. Thereupon, he hurried off to a notary, and brought an action against his employer, claiming heavy damages.

According to Maitre Desmaret, his client, M. Roux, had been engaged in the capacity of pilote intermediare during a prospective tour in Europe and America. For his services he was to have 25 per cent of the box-office receipts. On this understanding he had accompanied his principal to a number of towns. He then returned to Paris; and while he was negotiating there for the defendant’s appearance at the Vaudeville, he suddenly discovered that she was planning to go to America without him. As a result, he was now claiming damages for breach of contract. These he laid at the modest figure of 10,000 francs.

M. Blot-Lequesne, on behalf of Lola Montez, had a somewhat different story to tell. The plaintiff himself, he declared, wanted to get out of the contract and had deliberately disregarded its terms. His client, he said, had authorised him to accept an engagement for her to dance six times a week; but, in his anxiety to make additional profit for himself, he had compelled her to dance six times a day. Apart from this, he had “signally failed to respect her dignity as a woman, and had invented ridiculous stories about her career.” He had even done worse, for, “without her knowledge or sanction, he had compiled and distributed among the audiences where she appeared an utterly preposterous biography of his employer.” This, among other matters, asserted that she had “lived and danced for eleven years in China and Persia; and that she had been befriended by the dusky King of Nepaul, as well as by numerous rajahs.”

The concluding passage from this effort was read to the judge:

“Ten substantial volumes would be filled with the chronicle of the eccentricities of Mlle Lola Montez, and much of them would still be left unsaid. In the year 1847 a great English lord married her in London. Unfortunately, they found themselves not in sympathy, and in 1850 she returned to the dreams of her spring-time. The Countess has now completed one half of her projected tour. In November she leaves France for America and well God only knows what will happen then!”

“As long,” said counsel, “as the amiable Mlle Montez was treated by M. Roux like a wild animal exhibited at a country fair, she merely shrugged her shoulders in disgust. When, however, she saw how this abominable pamphlet lifted the curtain from her private life, it was another thing altogether. She expressed womanly indignation, and made a spirited response.”

“What was that?” enquired the judge, with interest.

“She said: ’It is lucky for you, sir, that my husband is not here to protect me. If he were, he would certainly pull your nose!’”

As was inevitable, this expression of opinion shattered the entente, and the manager returned to Paris by himself. Hearing nothing from him, Lola Montez thought that she was at liberty to make her own plans, and had accordingly arranged the American tour without his help.

On November 6, 1851, continued counsel, Lola Montez arrived in Paris, telling M. Roux that she would leave for America on November 20, but that she would fulfil any engagement he secured during the interval. Just before she was ready to start he said he had got her one, but he would not tell her where it was or produce any written contract.

Accepting this version as the correct one, the Court pronounced judgment in favour of Lola Montez.

III

M. Roux having thus been dismissed with a flea in his ear, Lola, on the advice of Peter Goodrich, the American consul in Paris, next engaged Richard Storrs Willis (a brother of N. P. Willis, the American poet) to look after her business affairs, and left Europe for America. As the good ship Humbolt, by which she was sailing, warped into harbour at New York, a salute of twenty-one guns thundered from the Battery. Lola, mightily pleased, took this expenditure of ammunition as a tribute to herself. When, however, she discovered that it was really to herald the coming of Louis Kossuth, who also happened to be on board, she registered annoyance and retired to her cabin, to nurse her wrath. A Magyar patriot to be more honoured than an English ex-favourite of a King! What next?

“A gentleman travelling with her informed our representative,” said the New York Herald, “that Madame had declared Kossuth to be a great humbug. The Countess was a prodigious favourite among the masculine passengers during the voyage, and continually kept them in roars of laughter.”

But, if disappointed in one respect, Lola derived a measure of compensation from the fact that the bevy of reporters who met the vessel found her much more interesting than the stranger from Hungary.

“Madame Lola Montez,” remarked one of them, who had gone off with a bulging note-book, crammed with enough “copy” to fill a column, “says that a number of shocking falsehoods about her have been published in our journals. Yet she insists she is not the woman she is credited (or discredited) with being. If she were, her admirers, she thinks, would be still more plentiful than they are. She expresses herself as fearful that she will not have proper consideration in New York; but she trusts that the great American public will suspend judgment until they have made her acquaintance.”

“The Countess of Landsfeld, who is now among us,” adds a second scribe, “owes more to the brilliancy of intellect with which Heaven has gifted her than to her world-wide celebrity as an artiste. Her person and bearing are unmistakably aristocratic. If we may credit the stories which from time to time have reached us, she can, if necessary, use her riding-whip in vigorous fashion about the ears of any offending biped or quadruped. In America she is somewhat out of her latitude. Paris should be her real home.”

For the present, however, Lola decided to stop where she was.

While she was in America on this tour, Barnum wanted to be her impresario, and promised “special terms.” Despite, however, the lure of “having her path garlanded with flowers and her carriage drawn by human hands from hotel to theatre,” the offer was not accepted.

The New York debut of Lola Montez was made on December 29, 1851, in a ballet: Betly, the Tyrolean. Public excitement ran high, for appetites had been whetted by the sensational accounts of her “past” with which the papers were filled.

“Scandal does not necessarily create a great dancer,” declared one rigid critic; and a second had a long column, headed: “MONTEZ v. RESPECTABILITY,” in which he observed (thoughtfully supplying a translation): “Parturiunt MONTEZ, nascitur ridiculus mus.” All the same, the box-office reported record business. As a result, prices were doubled, and the seats put up to auction.

If she had her enemies in the press, Lola also had her champions there. Just before she arrived, one of them, a New York paper, took up the cudgels on her behalf in vigorous fashion:

The most funny proceeding that is going on in this town is the terrible to-do that is being made about Lola Montez. If this state of things continues we will guarantee a continuance of the fun after Lola makes her advent among us, for if she doesn’t properly horse-whip those squeamish gentlemen we are much mistaken in her character.

Now we want to call the attention of our fair-minded readers to a few other matters that are sure to occur. Here are the various papers pouring out a torrent of abuse on Lola. What will it all amount to? In a few weeks she will land. In a few weeks a popular theatre will be occupied by her, and tens of thousands will throng that theatre. The manager will reap a fortune, and so will Lola Montez; and those short-sighted conductors of the Press will be begging for tickets and quarrelling among themselves as to who can say the most extravagant things in her favour. Public curiosity will be gratified at any price; and if Lola Montez is a capital dancer she will soon dance down all opposition. With what grace can the public talk about virtue in a public actress, when they have followed in the wake of an ELSSLER? If the private character of a public actress is to be the criterion by which to judge of her professional merit, then half the theatres would be compelled to shut their doors.

We are as independently correct as any other paper that exists. We don’t care a straw whether we go on with or without the other newspapers. We will do justice and say what is true, regardless of popularity. We detest hypocrisy; and we have no disposition to make a mountain out of a molehill, or to see a mote in the eye of Lola Montez, and not discover a beam in the eye of Fanny Elssler, or of any of the other great dancers or actresses.

“What is Lola Montez?” enquire the public. A good dancer, says the manager of a theatre. She is also notorious. The public will crowd the theatre to see her and to judge whether she is not also a good actress; and if they get their money’s worth, they are satisfied. They do not pay to judge of the former history of Lola Montez.... A few squeamish people cannot prevent Lola Montez from creating a sensation here, or from crowding from pit to dome any house where she may appear; and, as they will be the first to endorse her success, they would be more consistent were they to let her alone until she secures it.

None the less, there was competition to meet. A great deal of competition, for counter-attractions were being offered in all directions. Thus, “Professor” Anderson was conjuring rabbits out of borrowed top hats; Thackeray was lecturing on “The English Humourists”; Macready was bellowing and posturing in Shakespeare; General Tom Thumb was exhibiting his lack of inches; and Mrs. Bloomer was advancing the cause of “Trousers for Women!” Still, Lola more than held her own as a “draw.”

In January the bill was changed to Diana and the Nymphs. The fact that some of the “Nymphs” supporting the star adopted a costume a little suggestive of modern nudism appears to have upset a feminine critic.

“When,” was her considered opinion, “a certain piece first presented a partly unclothed woman to the gaze of a crowded auditory, she was met with a gasp of astonishment at the effrontery which dared so much. Men actually grew pale at the boldness of the thing; young girls hung their heads; a death-like silence fell over the house. But it passed; and, in view of the fact that these women were French ballet-dancers, they were tolerated.”

To show that she was properly qualified to express her views on such a delicate matter, this censor added: “Belonging, root and branch, to a theatrical family, I have not on that account been deemed unworthy to break bread at an imperial table, nor to grasp the hand of friendship extended to me by an English lordly divine.”

By the way, on this subject of feminine attire (or the lack of it) a rigid standard was also applicable to the audience’s side of the curtain, and any departure from it met with reprisals. This is made clear by a shocked paragraph chronicling one such happening at another theatre:

“During the evening of our visit there transpired an occurrence to which we naturally have some delicacy in alluding. Since, however, it indicates a censorship in a quarter where refinement is perhaps least to be expected, it should not be suffered by us to pass unnoticed. In the stalls, which were occupied by a number of ladies and gentlemen in full evening costume, and of established social position, there was to be observed a woman whose remarkable lowness of corsage attracted much criticism. Indeed, it obviously scandalised the audience, among the feminine portion of which a painful sensation was abundantly perceptible. At last, their indignation found tangible expression; and a voice from the pit was heard to utter in measured accents a stern injunction that could apply to but one individual. Blushing with embarrassment, the offender drew her shawl across her uncovered shoulders. A few minutes later, she rose and left the house, amid well merited hisses from the gallery, and significant silence from the outraged occupants of the stalls and boxes.”

Decorum was one thing; decolletage was another. In the considered opinion of 1851 the two did not blend.

A certain Dr. Judd, who, in the intervals of his medical practice, was managing a Christy Minstrels entertainment at this period, has some recollections of Lola Montez. “Many a long chat,” he says, “I had with her in our little bandbox of a ticket-office. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair was being read in America just then, and Lola expressed to me great anger that the novelist should have put her into it as Becky Sharp. ‘If he had only told the truth about me,’ she said, ’I should not have cared, but he derived his inspiration from my enemies in England.’”

This item appears to have been unaccountably missed by Thackeray’s other historians.

IV

Lola’s tastes were distinctly “Bohemian,” and led her, while in New York, to be a constant visitor at Pfaff’s underground delicatessen cafe, then a favourite haunt of the literary and artistic worlds of the metropolis. There she mingled with such accepted celebrities as Walt Whitman, W. Dean Howells, Commodore Vanderbilt, and that other flashing figure, Adah Isaacs Menken. She probably found in Pfaff’s a certain resemblance to the Munich beer-halls with which she had been familiar. A bit of the Fatherland, as it were, carried across the broad Atlantic. German solids and German liquids; talk and laughter and jests among the company of actors and actresses and artists and journalists gathered night after night at the tables; everybody in a good temper and high spirits.

Walt Whitman, inspired, doubtless, by beer, once described the place in characteristic rugged verse:

The vaults at Pfaff’s, where the drinkers and laughers meet
to eat and drink and carouse,
While on the walk immediately overhead pass the myriad feet
of Broadway.

There was a good deal more of it, for, when he had been furnished with plenty of liquid refreshment, the Muse of Walt ran to length.

From New York Lola set out on a tour to Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Boston. While in this last town, she “paid a visit of ceremony” to one of the public schools. Although the children there “expressed surprise and delight at the honour accorded them,” the Boston Transcript shook its editorial head; and “referred to the visit in a fashion that aroused the just indignation of the lady and her friends.”

The cudgels were promptly taken up on her behalf by a New York journalist:

“Lola Montez,” he declared, “owes less of her strange fascination and world-wide celebrity to her powers as an artiste than to the extraordinary mind and brilliancy of intellect with which Heaven has thought fit to endow her. At one moment ruling a kingdom, through an imbecile monarch; and the next, the wife of a dashing young English lord.... Her person and bearing are unmistakably aristocratic. In her recent visit to one of our public schools she surprised and delighted the scholars by addressing them in the Latin language with remarkable facility.”

It would be of interest to learn the name of the “dashing young English lord.” This, however, was probably a brevet rank conferred by the pressman on Cornet Heald.

On April 27, 1852, Lola Montez appeared at the Albany Museum in selections from her repertoire. On this occasion she brought with her a “troupe of twelve dancing girls.” As an additional lure, the bills described these damsels as “all of them unmarried, and most of them under sixteen.”

But the attraction which proved the biggest success in her repertoire was a drama called Lola in Bavaria. This was said to be written by “a young literary gentleman of New England, the son of a somewhat celebrated poetess.” The heroine, who was never off the stage for more than five minutes, was depicted in turns as a dancer, a politician, a countess, a revolutionary, and a fugitive; and among the other characters were Ludwig I, Eugene Sue, Dujarier, and Cornet Heald, while the setting offered “a correct representation of the Lola Montez palace at Munich.” It seemed good value. At any rate, the public thought it was, and full houses were secured. But the critics restrained their raptures. “I sympathise,” was the acid comment of one of them, “with the actresses who were forced to take part in such stuff”; and Joseph Daly described the heroine as “deserting a royal admirer to court the sovereign public.” The author of this balderdash was one C. P. T. Ware, “a poor little hack playwright, who wrote anything for anybody.”

March of 1853 found Lola Montez fulfilling an engagement at the Varietés Theatre, St. Louis. Kate Field, the daughter of the proprietor, wrote a letter on the subject to her aunt.

“Well, Lola Montez appeared at father’s theatre last night for the first time. The theatre was crowded from parquet to doors. She had the most beautiful eyes I ever saw. I liked her very much; but she performed a dumb girl, so I cannot say what she would do in speaking characters.”

During this engagement Lola apparently proved a little care to challenge the tigress.”

The visit to Buffalo was crowned with success. “Lola Montez,” declared the Troy Budget, “has done what Mrs. McMahon failed to accomplish she positively charmed the Buffaloes. This can perhaps be attributed to her judicious choice of the ex-Reverend Chauncey Burr, by whom she is accompanied on her tour in the capacity of business-manager.”

The choice of an “ex-Reverend” to conduct a theatrical tour seems, perhaps, a little odd. Still, as Lola once remarked: “It is a common enough thing in America for a bankrupt tradesman or broken-down jockey to become a lawyer, a doctor, or even a parson.” Hence, from the pulpit to the footlights was no great step.