THE “GOLDEN WEST”

I

As this was before the days when actresses in search of publicity announce that they are not going to Hollywood, Lola had to hit on a fresh expedient to keep her name in the news. Ever fertile of resource, the one she now adopted was to give out that this would be her “positively last appearance, as she was abandoning the stage and becoming a nun.” The scheme worked, and the box-office coffers were filled afresh. But Lola did not take the veil. Instead, she took a trip to California, sailing by the Isthmus route in the summer of 1853.

A ridiculous book, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole, with an introductory puff by a windbag, W. H. Russell, has a reference to this project:

Came one day Lola Montez, in the full zenith of her evil fame, bound for California, with a strange suite. A good-looking, bold woman, with fine, bad eyes and a determined bearing; dressed ostentatiously in perfect male attire, with shirt collar turned down over a lapelled coat, richly worked shirt front, black hat, French unmentionables, and natty polished boots with spurs. She carried in her hand a riding-whip.... An impertinent American, presuming perhaps not unnaturally upon her reputation, laid hold jestingly of the tails of her long coat; and, as a lesson, received a cut across his face that must have marked him for some days. I did not wait to see the row that followed, and was glad when the wretched woman rode off on the following morning.

Russell was not a fellow-passenger in the ship by which Lola travelled. Somebody else, however, who did happen to be one, gives a very different description of her conduct on the journey:

“We had not been at sea one day,” says Mrs. Knapp, “before all the saloon occupants were charmed by this lovely young woman. Her vivacity was infectious, and her abandon was always of a specially airy refinement.”

The arrival of Lola Montez at San Francisco would have eclipsed that of any Hollywood heroine of the present era. A vast crowd, headed by the City Fathers, “in full regalia,” gathered at the quay. Flags decked the public buildings; guns fired a salute; bands played; and the schoolchildren were assembled to strew her path with flowers as she stepped down the gangway; and, “to the accompaniment of ringing cheers,” the horses were taken from her carriage, which was dragged by eager hands through the streets to her hotel. “The Countess acknowledged the reception accorded her with a graceful inclination.”

“What if Europe has exiled her?” demanded an editorial. “This is of no consequence. After all, she is Lola Montez, acknowledged Mistress of Kings! She is beautiful above other women; she is gorgeous; she is irresistible; and we are genuinely proud to welcome her.”

Enveloped in legend, the reputation of the newcomer for “eccentricity” had preceded her. She lived up to this reputation, too, for, when the spirit moved her (and it did so quite often), she would dance in the beer gardens “for fun”; she had her hair cut short, when other women were affecting chignons; and wonder of wonders she would “actually smoke cigarettes in public.” Clearly, a trifle ahead of her period.

By the way, while she was in San Francisco, Lola is said to have renewed her acquaintance with the mysterious Jean Francois Montez, who, during the interval since they last met, had turned over a fresh leaf and was now married. But according to a chronicler: “The family felicity very soon succumbed to the lure of the lovely Lola.” Without, too, any support for the assertion, a contributor of theatrical gossip dashed off an imaginative column, in which he declared her, among other things, to have been “the petted companion of Louis Napoleon”; and also “the idolised dancer of the swells and wits of the capitals of the Old World, with the near relatives of royalty and the beaux of Paris for her intimates.”

This was going too far. Lola, much incensed, shook her dog-whip and threatened reprisals.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded the journalist, astonished at the outburst, “it’s good publicity, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but not the sort I want,” was the response.

Still, whether she wanted it, or not, Lola was soon to have a good deal more “publicity.” This was because she suddenly appeared with a husband on her arm.

Although the bridegroom, Patrick Purdy Hull, was a fellow-editor, the Daily Alta, of California, considered that the news value of the event was not worth more than a couple of lines:

“On the 2nd inst. Lola Montez and P. P. Hull, Esq., of this
city (and late of the San Francisco Whig) were married at
the Mission Dolores.”

Obviously regarding this as a somewhat meagre allowance, a New York journal furnished fuller details:

Among the recent domestic happenings of the times in California, the marriage of the celebrated Lola Montez will attract most attention. This distinguished lady has again united herself in the bonds of wedlock, the happy young man being Patrick Purdy Hull, Esq., formerly of Ohio, and for the past four years employed in the newspaper business in San Francisco.

Mr. Hull was a fellow-passenger with the fascinating Countess on her trip to California; and the acquaintance then formed fast ripened into an attachment which terminated fatally to his bachelorhood. The nuptials were consummated [sic] at the Holy Church of the Mission Dolores in the presence of a highly respectable gathering of prominent citizens.

The “prominent citizens” included “Governor Wainwright, Judge Wills, Captain McMichael, Mr. and Mrs. Clayton, and Beverley Saunders, Esq.” An attempt was made to keep the ceremony secret; and, with this end in view, the invited guests were pledged not to divulge it beforehand. On the previous evening Captain McMichael, being something of a tactician, announced to them: “We do not yet know for certain that the affair will ever come off, and we may all be jolly well sold.” When they assembled at the Mission Church, it looked as if this would happen, as neither of the couple appeared. Suddenly, however, they drove up in a carriage and entered the church. The “blushing bride,” says a reporter who had hidden behind a pillar, “carried a bouquet of orange blossoms, and the organ played ’The Voice that breathed o’er Eden’”; and another chronicler adds: “On the conclusion of the ceremony, all adjourned to partake of a splendid spread, with wine and cigars ad lib.” But this was not all, for: “Governor Wainwright, giving a significant wink, kissed the new-made bride, Mrs. Hull. His example was promptly followed by Mr. Henry Clayton, ’just to make the occasion memorable,’ he said. ‘Such is the custom of my country,’ remarked Madame Lola. She was not kissed by anybody else, but she none the less had a pleasant word for all.”

II

It was at Sacramento that Lola and her new husband began their married life. The conditions of the town were a little primitive just then; and even in the principal hotel the single guests were expected to sleep in dormitories. The cost of board and lodging (with bed in a bunk) was 150 dollars a week. As for the “board,” standing items on the daily menu would be boiled leg of grizzly bear, donkey steak, and jack-rabbit. “No kickshaws” was the proud boast of every chef.

In addition to his editorial labours (which were not unduly exacting), Hull was employed by the Government on census work, preparing statistics of the rapidly increasing population. But Lola, much to his annoyance, did not add to his figures for the Registrar-General’s return. The footlights proved a stronger lure than maternity; and, almost immediately after her marriage, she accepted an engagement at one of the theatres, where she appeared as Lady Teazle. A countess in that part of the world being a novelty, the public rallied to the box-office in full force and “business” was phenomenal. Still, competition there, as elsewhere. Some of it, too, of a description that could not be ignored. Thus, Olé Bull was giving concerts at the Opera House, and causing hardened diggers to shed tears when he played “Home Sweet Home” to them on his violin; Edwin Booth, “supported by a powerful company,” was mouthing Shakespeare, and tearing passion to tatters in the process; and a curious freak, billed as “Zoyara, the Hermaphrodite” (with a “certificate of genuineness, as to her equestrian skill and her virtues as a lady, from H.M. the King of Sardinia”) was cramming the circus to capacity every afternoon and evening. Yet, notwithstanding His Majesty’s “certificate,” it is a fact that its recipient “married” a woman member of the troupe. “The long sustained deception has been dropped,” says a paragraphist, “and the young man who assumed the name of ‘Madame Zoyara’ is now to be seen in correct masculine attire.”

Still, despite all this, Lola kept her public. After all, a countess was a countess. But, before long, there was a difference of opinion with the manager of the theatre in which she was appearing. Lola, who never brooked criticism, had “words” with him. High words, as it happened; and, flourishing her whip in his face, she tore up her contract and walked out of the building.

“Get somebody else,” she said. “I’m through.”

The difference of opinion appears to have arisen because Lola elected to consider herself “insulted” by a member of the audience while she was dancing, and the manager had not taken her part. The next evening, accordingly, she made a speech in public, giving him a “bit of her mind.” The result was, declared the San Francisco Alta, “the Countess came off the victor, bearing away the bravas and bouquets. At the conclusion of her address she was hailed by thunderous cheers, amid which she smiled sweetly, dropped a curtsey, and retired gracefully.”

Much to their surprise, those who imagined that the honours of the evening went to Lola read in the next issue of the Californian that “the applause was all sham, the paid enthusiasm of a hired house.” This was more than flesh and blood could stand. At any rate, it was more than Lola could stand; and she sent the editor a fierce letter, challenging him to a duel. “I must request,” was its last passage, “that this affair of honour be arranged by your seconds as soon as possible, as my time is quite as valuable as your own: MARIE DE LANDSFELD-HULL (LOLA MONTEZ).”

The editor of the Californian did not accept the suggestion. Instead, he applied the necessary balm, and the pistols-for-two-and-coffee-for-one order was countermanded.

III

A woman of moods, when Lola made a change, it was a complete one. She made one now. The artificiality of the towns, with their false standards and atmosphere of pretence, had begun to pall. She wanted to try a fresh milieu. Everybody was talking just then of Grass Valley, a newly opened-up district, set amid a background of the rugged Sierras, where gangs of miners were delving for gold in the bowels of Mother Earth, and, if half the accounts were true, amassing fortunes. Why not go there and see for herself? It would at least be a novel experience.

No sooner said than done. Hiring a mule team and wagon, and accompanied by Patrick Hull, she started off on a preliminary tour of inspection of the district.

Travelling was unhurried in those leisurely days. There were several stoppages; and the roads were rough, and long detours had to be made to avoid yawning canyons. “At the end of two weeks from the time they left Sacramento behind them, Pat Hull and his charming bride wheeled across the mountains into Grass Valley.”

“There were about 1600 people in the township of Marysville at this period,” says a chronicler, “and 1400 of them were of the masculine sex. The prospect of sudden riches was the attraction that drew them. England and the Continent were represented by some of the first families. A dozen were graduates of Oxford and Cambridge; there were two young relatives of Victor Hugo; there were a number of scions of the impoverished nobility of Bohemia; and several hundred Americans. Among the latter was William Morris Stewart, a Marysville lawyer, who was afterwards to become a senator and attorney-general.”

Grass Valley at this period (the autumn of 1853) was little more than a wilderness. The nearest town of any size was Nevada City, fringed by the shadows of the lofty Sierras. Between the gulches had sprung up as if by magic a forest of tented camps and tin-roofed shanties, with gambling-booths and liquor saloons by the hundred, in which bearded men dug hard by day, and played faro and monte and drank deep by night. Fortunes were made and spent and nuggets were common currency. The cost of living was very high. But it cost still more to be ill, since a grain of gold was the accepted tariff for a grain of quinine.

The whole district was a melting-pot. Attracted by the prospect of the precious metal that was to be wrung from it, there had drifted into the Valley a flotsam and jetsam, representatives of all nations and of all callings. As was natural, Americans in the majority; but, with them, Englishmen and Frenchmen and Germans and Italians, plus an admixture of Chinamen and Kanakas; also an undesirable element of deserters from ships and convicts escaped from Australia. To keep them in some sort of order, rough justice was the rule. Mayors and sheriffs had arbitrary powers, and did not hesitate to employ them. Judge Lynch was supreme; and a length of hemp dangling from a branch was part of the equipment of every camp.

With a full knowledge of all these possible drawbacks, Lola Montez looked upon Grass Valley and saw that it was good. Perhaps the Bret Harte atmosphere appealed to her. At any rate, she decided to settle down there temporarily; and, with this end in view, she persuaded Hull to buy a six-roomed cottage just above Marysville.

When Lola Montez for all that she had a wedding-ring on her finger, she still stuck to the name arrived there with her new husband, the conditions of life in Grass Valley were a little primitive. A telegraph service did not exist; and letters were collected and delivered irregularly. Transport with the outer world was by stage coach and mule and pony express. Whisky had to come round by Cape Horn; sugar from China; and meat and vegetables from Australia. The fact was, the early settlers were much too busily employed extracting nuggets and gold dust to concern themselves with the production of any other commodity.

Mrs. Dora Knapp, a neighbour of Lola Montez in Grass Valley at this period, has contributed some reminiscences of her life there:

“We, who knew of her gay career among the royalty and nabobs, were astonished that she should have gone to the camp. She frequently had letters from titled gentlemen in Europe, begging her to come back and live on their rich bounty. It was simply because she was weary of splendour and fast living that the Countess turned with such fondness to life in a mining camp.”

To Patrick Hull, however, the attractions of the district were not so obvious. Ink was in his blood. He wanted to get back to his editorial desk, preferring the throbbing of printing presses to the rattle of spades and picks and the clanking of drills. Nor did “love in a cottage” appeal to him. When Lola refused to give up Grass Valley, he developed a fit of sulks and turned to the whisky bottle for consolation.

Under the circumstances, matrimonial bliss was impossible. Such a life was a cat and dog one. Its end arrived very soon.

“Lola Montez and her new husband,” says the knowledgeable Mrs. Knapp, “had not lived together more than a few months before trouble began. When two such spirits came together, there was bound to be a clash. The upshot was that one day Lola pushed Patrick down the stairs, heaved his grip out of the window and ordered him to quit.”

Mr. Hull, who could take a hint as well as any man, did “quit.” He did more. He took to his bed and expired. “In his native state,” says a tearful obituary, “he was respected and loved by a large circle. The family of Manuel Guillen (in whose house he lay), inspired by a sentiment of genuine benevolence, bestowed upon him all the tender watchfulness due to a beloved son and brother; and nothing was omitted that promised cure or promoted comfort.”

But this was not until some time after he had received his abrupt congé from Lola Montez.

Once more, Lola had drawn a blank in the matrimonial market.

IV

With Adrienne Lecouvreur, Lola Montez must often have asked herself, Que faire au monde sans aimer? “Living without loving” had no appeal for her. Hence, she was soon credited (or discredited) with a fresh liaison. This time her choice fell on a German baron, named Kirke, who also happened to be a doctor. There was a special bond between them, for he had come from Munich, and could thus awaken memories and tell her of Ludwig, of Fritz Peissner and the other good comrades of the Alemannia, and of the house in the Barerstrasse where she had once queened it.

“This fourth adventure in matrimony was,” says a chronicler, “copiously consummated.” An odd choice of words. But, successful or not, it was short-lived. One fine day the baron took his gun with him into the forest. He did not return. “Killed in a shooting accident” (a fairly common occurrence in the Wild West at that period) was the coroner’s verdict. As a result, Lola was once more without a masculine protector.

The position was not devoid of an element of danger, for the district swarmed with lawless gangs, to whom a woman living by herself was looked upon as fair prey. But Lola was not disturbed. She had plenty of courage. She knew, too, that the miners had formed themselves into a “guard of honour,” and that it would have gone ill with anybody attempting to molest her. If the diggers were rough, they were chivalrous.

In response to a general invitation from the camp, Lola more than once gave an exhibition of her quality as a danseuse. Although the charge for admission was a hundred dollars, the hall where she appeared was always crammed to the doors. She expanded out, too, in other directions; and a picturesque account of her life at this period says that she slept under the stars ("canopy of heaven” was the writer’s more poetical way of putting it) and wore woollen underclothing knitted by herself. Another detail declares that she held a “weekly soiree in her cottage, attended by the upper circles of the camp, a court of litterateurs and actors and wanderers”; and that among the regular guests were “two nephews of Victor Hugo, a quartet of cashiered German barons, and a couple of shady French counts.” Obviously, a somewhat mixed gathering. For all this, however, the receptions were “merely convivial assemblies, with champagne and other wine, served with cake and fruit ad lib, and everyone smoked. The two Hugo neighbours were always there, as well as a son of Preston Brooks, the South Carolina congressman. A dozen of us looked forward to attending these salons, which we called ‘experience-meetings.’ Senator William M. Stewart, then a young lawyer in Nevada, said he used to count the days between each. Every song, every story, every scrap of humour or pathos that any of the young men came across would be preserved for the next gathering. Occasionally, our charming hostess would have a little fancy-dress affair at the cottage, and, clad in the fluffy and abbreviated garments she had once worn on the stage, show us that she still remembered her dancing-steps.”

When not engaged in these innocent relaxations, Lola would give herself up to other pursuits. Thus, she hunted and fished and shot, and often made long trips on horseback through the forests and sage bush. Having a fondness for all sorts of animals, on one such expedition she captured a bear cub, with which she returned to her cabin and set herself to tame. While thus employed, she was visited by a wandering violinist, who, falling a victim to her charms, begged a lock of her hair as a souvenir of the occasion. Thereupon, Lola, always anxious to oblige, struck a bargain with him. “I have,” she said, “a pet grizzly in my orchard. If you will wrestle with him for three minutes, you shall have enough of my hair to make a bow for your fiddle. Let me see what you can do.” The challenge was accepted; and the amorous violinist, merely stipulating that the animal should be muzzled, set to work and secured the coveted guerdon.

Something of a risk, perhaps. Still, it would have been a more serious one if Lola had kept a rattlesnake.

Appearances are deceptive, and Bruin was less domesticated than Lola imagined. One day, pining perhaps for fresh diet, he grappled with his mistress and bit her hand. The incident attracted a laureate on the staff of the California Chronicle, who, in Silas Wegg fashion, “dropped into verse:”

LOLA AND HER PET

One day when the season was drizzly,
And outside amusements were wet,
Fair Lola paid court to her Grizzly
And undertook petting her pet.

But, ah, it was not the Bavarian
Who softened so under her hand,
No ermined King octogenarian,
But Bruin, coarse cub of the land.

So, all her caresses combatting
He crushed her white slender hand first,
Refusing his love to her patting,
As she had refused hers to Pat!

Oh, had her pet been him whose glory
And title were won on the field,
Less bloodless had ended this story,
More easy her hand had been Heald!

This doggerel was signed “F.S.”, initials which masked the identity of Frank Soule, the editor of the Chronicle.

V

Never without her dog-whip, Lola took it with her to her cottage in Grass Valley. There she soon found a use for it. A journalist, in a column account of her career, was ungallant enough to finish by enquiring “if she were the devil incarnate?” As the simplest method of settling the problem, “Lola summoned the impertinent scribbler and gave him such a hiding that he had no doubts left at all.”

Shortly afterwards, there was trouble with another representative of the press. This was with one Henley Shipley, the editor of the Marysville Herald, who, notwithstanding that they were “regularly attended by the elite of the camp,” had described her “Wednesday soirees” as “disgraceful orgies, inimical to our fair repute.” Thereupon, says a sympathiser, the aspersed hostess “took her whip to him, and handed out a number of stinging and well merited cuts.”

The opportunity being too good to miss, the editor of the Sacramento Union set to work and rushed out a special edition, with a long description of the incident:

This forenoon our town was plunged into a state of ludicrous excitement by the spectacle of Madame Lola Montez rushing through Mill Street, with a lady’s delicate riding whip in one hand and a copy of the Marysville Herald in the other, vowing vengeance on “that scoundrel of an editor,” etc. She met him at the Golden Gate Saloon, a crowd, on the qui vive, following in her footsteps. Having struck at him with her whip, she then applied woman’s best weapon her tongue. Meanwhile, her antagonist kept most insultingly cool. All her endeavours being powerless, the “Divine Lola” appealed to the miners, but the only response was a burst of laughter. Mr. Shipley, the editor, then retired in triumph, having, by his calmness, completely worn down his fair enemy.

The immediate cause of the fracas was the appearance of sundry articles, copied from the New York Times, referring to the “Lola Montez-like insolence, bare-faced hypocrisy, and effrontery of Queen Christina of Spain.” The entire scene was decidedly rich.

One can well imagine it.

Never prepared to accept hostile criticism without a protest, Lola sent her own version of the occurrence to a rival organ:

“This morning, November 21,” she wrote, “the newspaper was handed me as usual. I scanned it over with little interest, saw a couple of abusive articles, not mentioning me by name, but, as I was afterwards told, had been prepared by the clever pen of this great statesman of the future, and present able writer, as a climax and extinguisher to all the past and future glories of Lola Montez. I wonder if he thought I should come down with a cool thousand or two, to stock up his fortune and cry ‘Grace, Grace!’

“This is the only attempt at blackmail I have been subjected to in California, and I hope it will be the last. On I read the paper till I saw my name in good round English, and the allusions to my ‘bare-faced hypocrisy and insolence.’ Europe, hear this! Has not the ‘hypocrisy’ been on the other side? What were you thinking of, Alexandra Dumas, Beringer, Mery, and all my friends when you told me my fault lay in my too great kindness? Shipley has judged me at last to be a hypocrite. To avenge you, I, bonnet on head and whip in hand that whip which was never used but on a horse this time to be disgraced by falling on the back of an ASS.... The spirit of my Irish ancestors (I being three-quarter Irish and Spanish and Scotch) took possession of my hand; and, on the most approved Tom Sayers principles, I took his, on which thanks to some rings I had I made a cutting impression. This would-be great smiter ended the combat with a certain amount of abuse, of which to do him justice he is a perfect master. Sic transit gloria SHIPLEY! Alas, poor Yorick!”

“Without,” says a member of the gathering, “any preliminaries beyond saying ‘Good afternoon,’ she proceeded to execute the dance before the astonished gaze of the company. Then turning to the minister, she said, ’The next time you think fit to make me and this dance a subject for a pulpit discourse, perhaps you will know better what you are talking about.’ She then took her departure, before the reverend gentleman could sufficiently collect his senses to say or do anything.”

But, notwithstanding these breaks in its monotony, Lola felt that she was not really adapted to the routine of Grass Valley. Once more, the theatre called her. Answering the call, she went back to it. But on the return journey she did not take Patrick Hull. She also shed the name he had given her, and resumed that of Countess of Landsfeld.

“It looks better on the bills,” she said, when she discussed plans for a prospective tour.

The Grass Valley Telegraph gave her a good “send off” in a fulsome column; and the miners presented her with a “farewell gift” in the form of a nugget. “Rough, like ourselves,” said their spokesman, “but the genuine article.”