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LOLA MONTEZ
UNIFORM LIBRARY EDITION OF THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT, newly
translated into English by Marjorie Laurie.
Volume 1. BEL-AMI.
"Bel-Ami" is an extraordinarily fine full-length portrait of an
unscrupulous rascal who exploits his success with women for the
furtherance of his ambitions. The book simmers with humorous
observations, and, as a satire on politics and journalism, is no less
biting because it is not bitter.
Volume 2. A LIFE.
This story of a woman's life, harrowed first by the faithlessness of
her husband and later by the worthlessness of her son, has been
described as one of the saddest books that has ever been written; it
is remorseless in its utter truthfulness.
Volume 3. "BOULE DE SUIF" and other Short Stories.
A story of the part played by a little French prostitute in an
incident of the war of 1870. It was published in a collection of tales
by distinguished French writers of the day, and was so clearly the gem
of the collection that it established the Author at once as a master.
Volume 4. THE HOUSE OF TELLIER.
[Illustration: LOLA MONTEZ. Countess of Landsfeld]
LOLA MONTEZ
AN ADVENTURESS OF THE 'FORTIES
BY EDMUND B. D'AUVERGNE
ILLUSTRATED
LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE, LTD.
30 NEW BRIDGE STREET, E.C.4
_First Printed April 1909
Second Edition, December 1909
Third Impression, November 1924
Fourth Impression, February 1925_
_Printed in Great Britain by
Fox, Jones & Co., at the Kemp Hall Press, Oxford, England_
PREFACE
The story of a brave and beautiful woman, whose fame filled Europe and
America within the memory of our parents, seems to be worth telling. The
human note in history is never more thrilling than when it is struck in
the key of love. In what were perhaps more virile ages, the great ones of
the earth frankly acknowledged the irresistible power of passion and the
supreme desirability of beauty. Their followers thought none the less of
them for being sons of Adam. Lola Montez was the last of that long and
illustrious line of women, reaching back beyond Cleopatra and Aspasia,
before whom kings bent in homage, and by whose personality they openly
confess themselves to be swayed. Since her time man has thrown off the
spell of woman's beauty, and seems to dread still more the competition of
her intellect.
Lola Montez, some think, came a century too late; "in the eighteenth
century," said Claudin, "she would have played a great part." The part she
played was, at all events, stirring and strange enough. The most
spiritually and aesthetically minded sovereign in Europe worshipped her as
a goddess; geniuses of coarser fibre, such as Dumas, sought her society.
She associated with the most highly gifted men of her time. Equipped only
with the education of a pre-Victorian schoolgirl, she overthrew the ablest
plotters and intriguers in Europe, foiled the policy of Metternich, and
hoisted the standard of freedom in the very stronghold of Ultramontane and
reactionary Germany.
Driven forth by a revolution, she wandered over the whole world,
astonishing Society by her masculine courage, her adaptability to all
circumstances and surroundings. She who had thwarted old Europe's skilled
diplomatists, knew how to horsewhip and to cow the bullies of young
Australia's mining camps. An indifferent actress, her beauty and sheer
force of character drew thousands to gaze at her in every land she trod.
So she flashed like a meteor from continent to continent, heard of now at
St. Petersburg, now at New York, now at San Francisco, now at Sydney. She
crammed enough experience into a career of forty-two years to have
surfeited a centenarian. She had her moments of supreme exaltation, of
exquisite felicity. Her vicissitudes were glorious and sordid. She was
presented by a king to his whole court as his best friend; she was dragged
to a London police-station on a charge of felony. But in prosperity she
never lost her head, and in adversity she never lost her courage.
A splendid animal, always doing what she wished to do; a natural pagan in
her delight in life and love and danger--she cherished all her life an
unaccountable fondness for the most conventional puritanical forms of
Christianity, dying at last in the bosom of the Protestant Church, with
sentiments of self-abasement and contrition that would have done credit to
a Magdalen or Pelagia.
In my sympathy with this fascinating woman, it is possible that I have
exaggerated the importance of her _role_; probable, also, that I have
digressed too freely into reflections on her motives and on the forces
with which she had to contend. Those who prefer a bare recital of the
facts of her career, I refer at once to the admirable epitome to be found
in the "Dictionary of National Biography." Here I have not hesitated to
include all that seemed to me to throw light on the subject of my sketch,
on the people around her, and on the influences that shaped her destiny.
EDMUND B. D'AUVERGNE.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. CHILDHOOD 1
II. A RUNAWAY MATCH 11
III. FIRST STEPS IN MATRIMONY 17
IV. INDIA SEVENTY YEARS AGO 21
V. RIVEN BONDS 31
VI. LONDON IN THE 'FORTIES 39
VII. WANDERJAHRE 47
VIII. FRANZ LISZT 59
IX. AT THE BANQUET OF THE IMMORTALS 65
X. MERY 75
XI. DUJARIER 79
XII. THE SUPPER AT THE FRERES PROVENCAUX 83
XIII. THE CHALLENGE 87
XIV. THE DUEL 95
XV. THE RECKONING 101
XVI. IN QUEST OF A PRINCE 107
XVII. THE KING OF BAVARIA 111
XVIII. REACTION IN BAVARIA 121
XIX. THE ENTHRALMENT OF THE KING 125
XX. THE ABEL MEMORANDUM 135
XXI. THE INDISCRETIONS OF A MONARCH 143
XXII. THE MINISTRY OF GOOD HOPE 149
XXIII. THE UNCROWNED QUEEN OF BAVARIA 157
XXIV. THE DOWNFALL 163
XXV. THE RISING OF THE PEOPLES 173
XXVI. LOLA IN SEARCH OF A HOME 177
XXVII. A SECOND EXPERIMENT IN MATRIMONY 181
XXVIII. WESTWARD HO! 193
XXIX. IN THE TRAIL OF THE ARGONAUTS 199
XXX. IN AUSTRALIA 205
XXXI. LOLA AS A LECTURER 213
XXXII. A LAST VISIT TO ENGLAND 219
XXXIII. THE MAGDALEN 223
XXXIV. LAST SCENE OF ALL 227
SOURCES OF INFORMATION 234
ILLUSTRATIONS
LOLA MONTEZ, COUNTESS OF LANDSFELD _Frontispiece_
NICHOLAS I. _To face page_ 54
FRANZ LISZT " 60
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, SENIOR " 70
LOUIS OF BAVARIA, WHEN ELECTORAL PRINCE " 112
LOUIS I, KING OF BAVARIA " 144
LOLA MONTEZ (AFTER JULES LAURE) " 194
LOLA MONTEZ
AN ADVENTURESS OF THE 'FORTIES
I
CHILDHOOD
The year 1818 was, on the whole, a good starting-point in life for people
with a taste and capacity for adventure. This was not suspected by those
already born. They looked forward, after the tempest that had so lately
ravaged Europe, to a golden age of slippered ease and general stagnation.
The volcanoes, they hoped, were all spent. "We have slumbered seven years,
let us forget this ugly dream," complacently observed a German prince on
resuming possession of his dominions; and "the old, blind, mad, despised,
and dying king's" worthy regent expressed the same confidence when he gave
the motto, "A sign of better times," to an order founded in this
particular year. Yet the child that thus with royal encouragement began
life in England at that time learned before he could toddle to tremble at
the mysterious name of "Boney," and later on would thrill with fear,
delight, and horror at his nurse's recital of the atrocities and final
glorious undoing of that terrific ogre. Presently he would meet in his
walks abroad, red-coated, bewhiskered veterans who had met the monster
face to face (or said they had); who would recount stories of decapitated
kings, dreadful uprisings, and threatened invasions; who had lost a leg or
an arm or an eye at Waterloo or Salamanca; which victories (they assured
him) were mainly due to their individual valour and generalship. As the
child grew older he would begin to make a coherent story out of these
strange happenings: he would realise through what a period of storm and
stress the world had passed immediately before his advent. He would listen
eagerly at his father's table to more trustworthy relations of the great
battles by men whose share in them his country was proud to acknowledge.
Waterloo, Trafalgar, the Nile, would be fought over again in the school
playground. For the best part of his life he might expect to have as
contemporaries, men who had seen Napoleon with their own eyes, and shaken
Nelson by his one hand--men who had seen thrones that seemed as stable as
the everlasting hills come crashing down, to be pieced together with a
cement of blood and gunpowder. How often the boy, or, as in this
particular case, the girl, must have longed for a recurrence of those
brave days, and deprecated the peaceful present. But for him (or her) far
more amazing things were in store. His it was to see society emerge from
its worn-out feudal chrysalis, and to take the path which may yet lead to
civilisation. Those born in 1818 could have the delightful distinction of
being carried in the first railway train, of sending the first "wire," of
boarding the first "penny 'bus." Born in the age of the coach and the hoy,
they would die in the era of the locomotive and mail steamer. Theirs was
an age of transition indeed, most curious to watch, most thrilling to
traverse. And--most valuable privilege of all to those that loved to play
a part in great affairs--they would be in good time to assist at the
widest spread and most terrific upheaval Europe had known since the
downfall of the Roman Empire. To have been thirty years of age in that
year of years, 1848! Those who witnessed the great drama must have felt
that to have come into the world more than three decades before would have
been a mistake the most grievous.
Among the children fortunate enough, then, to be born when the nineteenth
century was in its eighteenth year was the heroine of our history.
Limerick, the city of the broken treaty, was her birthplace, Maria Dolores
Eliza Rosanna the names bestowed upon her in baptism. Only a year before
(on 3rd July 1817) her father, Edward Gilbert, had been gazetted an ensign
in the old 25th regiment of the line, now the King's Own Scottish
Borderers. He may have been, as his daughter and only child afterwards
claimed, the scion of a knightly house, but he could boast a far more
honourable distinction--that he rose from the ranks and earned his
commission by valour and good conduct in the long Napoleonic wars.[1]
Promotion it was, perhaps, that emboldened him to marry in the same year.
His wife was a girl of surpassing beauty, a Miss Oliver, of Castle Oliver,
wherever that may be, and a descendant of the Count de Montalvo, a Spanish
grandee, who had lost his immense estates in the wars. The ancestors of
this unfortunate noble (we are told) were Moors, and came into Spain in
the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, which was certainly the worst
possible moment they could have chosen for so doing. For this account of
Mrs. Gilbert's ancestry we are indebted to her daughter, whose names
certainly suggest a Spanish origin. It was by her mournful second name, or
rather by its lightsome diminutive, Lola, that she was ever afterwards
known. Perhaps she was so called in remembrance of one of the proud
Montalvos. At all events, she never ceased to cherish the belief in her
half-Spanish blood. When she was a romantic young girl--for young girls
_were_ romantic seventy years ago--Spain obsessed the Byronic caste of
mind. It was regarded as the home of chivalry, romance, love, poetry, and
adventure. To be ever so little Spanish was accounted a most enviable
distinction. So it would be ungenerous of us to impugn Lola's claim to
what she and her contemporaries considered an inestimable privilege. True
or false, the idea was one she imbibed with her mother's milk--though I
forgot to say that, according to her own statement, she was nourished at
this early period by an Irish nurse. I wish I could say in what religion
the new daughter of the regiment was educated. Somewhere she says that her
mother eloped with her father from a convent. The strong dislike she
manifested in after years for the Roman Catholic Church may have been
inspired by this circumstance, and suggests, at any rate, in one not
keenly sensible of nice theological distinctions, some personal motive
arising from a bitter experience.
If the baby Lola gave promise of the woman, Edward Gilbert must have been
proud of his child--as proud of her as of his pretty wife and his hard-won
commission. But those years in troubled Ireland must have been anxious
ones for him. There is no evidence that he possessed private means, and to
support a wife and child on the pay of an ensign in a marching regiment
would necessitate economies of the most painful description. In the East,
now that Europe was at peace, lay the only hope of immediately increased
pay and rapid promotion. The establishment of the King's Own Scottish
Borderers was reduced, in August 1822, from ten to eight companies, and
Gilbert was able to obtain, in consequence, a transfer to the 44th of the
line, already under orders for India. His appointment to his new
regiment--now the first battalion Essex regiment--is dated 10th October
1822. With his young wife and child he embarked, accordingly, for the land
of promise. Probably the four-year-old Lola endured best of the three the
unspeakable fatigue and tedium of that long, long journey round the
Cape--a voyage which in those days it was no uncommon thing to prolong by
a call at Rio de Janeiro. It was not till four months had been passed at
the mercy of wind and wave that our weary travellers set foot in Calcutta.
The regiment was stationed at Fort William, and there the ensign's hopes
of speedy advancement early received encouragement. At one time seventeen
of his brother officers lay sick with the fever, and before six months had
fled, the last post was sounded over the graves of Major Guthrie, Captain
O'Reilly, and Lieutenants Twinberrow and Sargent. The unspoken question on
every one's lips was, Whose turn next? In this Indian pest-house there
must have been moments when the young mother, fearful for her husband and
child, longed fiercely for the rain-drenched streets of Limerick. At last
the regiment was ordered to Dinapore. The journey was effected, as was
usual in those days, by water, an element to which the Gilberts were now
well accustomed. But here, instead of the monotonous expanse of ocean,
they had slowly unfolded before them the strange and brightly-coloured
panorama of the East--gorgeous, teeming cities, the dreadful, burning
ghats, rank jungle, dense forests, rich rice-fields. As the flotilla
travelled only 12 or 14 miles a day, the passengers had ample time to
stretch their limbs ashore, and to visit the towns and villages passed _en
route_. The voyage, too, did not lack incident. On one occasion nine boats
were swamped, and eight British redcoats went to swell the horrible
procession of corpses which floats ever seaward down the Sacred River.
Another night the Colonel's boat took fire, and the flames, spreading to
other vessels, consumed the regimental band's music and instruments, which
were so sorely needed to revive the drooping spirits of the fever-stricken
troops.
However, in the excitement of taking up their new quarters at Dinapore,
these evil omens were, no doubt, forgotten. Pretty women were rare in
India in those days, and Mrs. Gilbert received (from the men, at all
events) a right royal welcome. She was acclaimed queen of the station,
and, as her husband, the Ensign, became, of course, a person of
consequence. This was better than Ireland, after all. Dinapore was a
fairly lively spot, and regimental society was not overshadowed, as at
Calcutta, by the magnates of Government House. So Lola's mother flirted
and danced, while Lola herself was petted by grey-haired generals and
callow subs., and Lola's father began to dream of a captaincy. One day,
in the early part of 1824, his place at the mess-table was vacant. The
doctor looked in, and said "Cholera," and a few faces blanched. Craigie,
the Ensign's best friend, hurried to his bedside. The dying man was
speechless, but conscious. Beckoning to his friend, he placed his weeping
wife's hand in his, and, having thus conveyed his last wish, died.
Lola was left fatherless before she was seven years old. She and her
mother, she tells us, were promptly taken charge of by the wife of General
Brown.
"The hearts of a hundred officers, young and old, beat all at once
with such violence, that the whole atmosphere for ten miles round
fairly throbbed with the emotion. But in this instance the general
fever did not last long, for Captain Craigie led the young widow
Gilbert to the altar himself. He was a man of high intellectual
accomplishments, and soon after this marriage his regiment was ordered
back to Calcutta, and he was advanced to the rank of major."
We are thus able to identify Lola's stepfather with John Craigie of the
Bengal Army, who was gazetted Captain on 11th May 1816, and Major, 18th
May 1825. Four years later he attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.[2]
He seems to have been a generous, warm-hearted man, who never forgot the
trust placed in him by his dying friend at Dinapore. To him Lola was
indebted for such education as she received in India. That was not of a
very thorough character. With a mother who, we learn, was passionately
fond of society and amusement, little Miss Gilbert must have passed most
of her time in the company of ayahs and orderlies, picking up the native
tongue with the facility which distinguished her in after life, and
domineering tremendously over idolatrous sepoys and dignified khansamahs.
I can imagine her on the knees of veterans at her father's table,
delighting them with her beauty, and still more with her boldness and
childish ready wit. Of course, His Excellency (Lord William Bentinck)
would take notice of the pretty, pert child of handsome Mrs. Craigie, and
it is not to be wondered at that all her life she should hanker after the
atmosphere of a court, remembering the vice-regal glories at Calcutta.
It seems to have dawned upon Mrs. Craigie, not very long after her second
marriage, that her daughter was, to use a common expression, running wild.
A little discipline, it was felt, would do her good. It was decided to
send her home to her stepfather's relatives at Montrose. With screams,
sobs, and wild protests, the eight-year-old girl accordingly found herself
torn from the redcoats and brown faces that she loved, once more to
undertake that terrible four months' journey to a land which she had
probably completely forgotten.
The contrast between Calcutta, the gorgeous city of palaces, and Montrose,
the dour, wintry burgh among the sandhills by the northern sea, must have
chilled the heart of the passionate child. Yet she does not seem in after
life to have thought with any bitterness of the place, and speaks with
respect, if not affection, of her new guardian, Major Craigie's father.
She writes:--
"This venerable man had been provost of Montrose for nearly a quarter
of a century, and the dignity of his profession, as well as the great
respectability of his family, made every event connected with his
household a matter of some public note, and the arrival of the queer,
wayward, little East Indian girl was immediately known to all
Montrose. The peculiarity of her dress, and I dare say not a little
eccentricity in her manners, served to make her an object of curiosity
and remark; and very likely she perceived that she was somewhat of a
public character, and may have begun, even at this early age, to
assume airs and customs of her own."
That is, indeed, very likely. Further information concerning our heroine's
stay at Montrose we have little. She does not seem to have retained any
very vivid impressions of her childhood. One of the few events in the
meagre history of the little Scots town she was privileged to witness--the
erection of the suspension bridge from Inchbrayock over the Esk. Here it
was, too, that she formed that friendship with the girl, afterwards Mrs.
Buchanan, which was destined to form her greatest consolation in the
evening of her days. The Craigies were strict Calvinists, and some of her
biographers have assumed, in consequence, that they must have treated the
child with rigour and inspired her with a distaste for religion. She never
said so, as far as I can ascertain. On the contrary, throughout her life
she evinced a marked bias in favour of Protestantism, which is quite as
compatible with an erotic temperament as was the zeal for Catholicism
displayed by the favourite mistress of Charles II.
Her parents, says Lola, being somehow impressed with the idea that she was
being petted and spoiled (by the gloomy Calvinists aforesaid), she was
removed to the family of Sir Jasper Nicolls, of London. It is to be
observed that neither now nor after do we hear of her father's relatives,
who one would suppose to have been her proper guardians. This circumstance
certainly discountenances the theory of Edward Gilbert's exalted
parentage. Sir Jasper Nicolls, K.C.B., Major-General, was succeeded by
Major-General Watson in the command of the Meerut Division in 1831, in
which year it may be presumed he returned to England, and took his friend
Craigie's stepdaughter under his wing. Like most Indian officers, he
preferred to spend his pension out of England, and gladly hurried his
girls off to Paris to complete their education. They missed the July
Revolution by a year; but all France was presently ringing with the
exploits of the brave Duchesse de Berry, who became the idol of the
_pensionnats_. To Lola, no doubt, she seemed a heroine worthier of
imitation than the young Princess Alexandrina Victoria, who was just then
touring her uncle's dominions. The romantic fever was at its height in
Paris. To her schoolfellows the beautiful Anglo-Indian girl, with her
Spanish name and ancestry, must have appeared a new edition of De Musset's
"Andalouse." The influences about her at this time tended to stimulate all
that was romantic and adventurous in her temperament, and determined,
perhaps, her action in the first great crisis of her life.
II
A RUNAWAY MATCH
It was now fifteen years since Mrs. Craigie had visited England, and
rather more than ten since she had seen her daughter. She had been made
aware that Lola's beauty far exceeded the promise of her childish years,
and this she took care to make known to all the eligible bachelors of
Bengal. The charms of the erstwhile pet of the 44th were eagerly discussed
by men who had never seen her. Lonely writers in up-country stations
brooded on her perfections, as advertised by Mrs. Craigie, and came to the
conclusion that she was precisely the woman wanted to convert their
secluded establishments into homes. It was difficult to get a wife of the
plainest description in the India of William IV.'s day, and the
competition for the hand of the unknown beauty oversea was proportionately
keen. If marriage by proxy were recognised by English law Lola's fate
would have been sealed long before she was aware of it. From a worldly
point of view the most desirable of these ardent suitors was Sir Abraham
Lumley, whom our heroine unkindly describes as a rich and gouty old rascal
of sixty years, and Judge of the Supreme Court in India. We see that in
that rude age it was not the custom to speak of sexagenarians as in the
prime of life. To the venerable magistrate Mrs. Craigie promised her
daughter in marriage. Remembering the hard times she had gone through with
her first husband, the penniless ensign, and forgetting, as we do when
past thirty, how those hardships were lightened by love, she no doubt felt
that she had acted extremely well by her daughter. Women's ideas on the
subject of marriage are usually absolutely conventional, and since unions
between men of sixty and girls of eighteen are not condemned by the
official exponents of religion, you would never have persuaded Mrs.
Craigie that they were immoral. Outside the Decalogue (and the Police
Regulations) all things are lawful. Well pleased with herself, the still
handsome Anglo-Indian lady sailed for home in the early part of the year
1837, proposing to bring her daughter back with her to the bosom of
Abraham.
She found Lola at Bath, whither she had been sent from Paris with Fanny
Nicolls "to undergo the operation of what is properly called finishing
their education." I do not suppose the meeting between mother and daughter
was especially cordial, considering the temperament of the former and the
long period of separation, but Mrs. Craigie was delighted to find that
report had nowise exaggerated the young girl's charms. This was also the
private opinion of Mr. Thomas James, a lieutenant in the 21st regiment of
Native Infantry (Bengal), a young officer who had attached himself to Mrs.
Craigie on the voyage and accompanied her to Bath. The mother thought him
quite safe, as he had told her that he was betrothed, and had consulted
her about his prospects, or, rather, the want of them. The married ladies
of India have always been full of maternal solicitude for poor young
subalterns, who frequently repay their kindness with touching devotion.
It was probably the wish to be useful to his benefactress that had drawn
Mr. James to Bath. Or it may have been that he wished to drink the waters,
for I forgot to say that he had been ill during the voyage, and owed his
recovery to Mrs. Craigie's careful nursing.
Lola was staggered by the kindness and liberality of her mother. Visits to
the milliner's and the dressmaker's succeeded each other with startling
rapidity; jewellery, _lingerie_, all sorts of delightful things were
showered upon her in bewildering profusion. Lieutenant James was kept on
his legs all day, escorting the ladies to the _modistes_ and running
errands to Madame Jupon and Mademoiselle Euphrosine. At last the girl
began to suspect that there must be some other motive for this excessive
interest in her personal appearance than maternal fondness. She made bold
one day (she tells us) to ask her mother what this was all about, and
received for an answer that it did not concern her--that children should
not be inquisitive, nor ask idle questions. (Lola is the only girl on
record who protested that too much money was being spent on her wardrobe.)
Her suspicions naturally increased tenfold. In her perplexity she sought
information from the Lieutenant, of whose interest in her she had probably
become conscious. Then she learnt the horrible truth. The wardrobe so fast
accumulating was her _trousseau_, and she was the promised bride of a man
in India old enough to be her grandfather. For a moment Lola was stunned.
For a full-blooded, passionate girl of eighteen the prospect was hideous.
We may be sure, too, that her informant did not understate the personal
disadvantages of Sir Abraham Lumley. Neither did he neglect this
favourable opportunity to declare his own passion for the proposed victim,
and to press his suit. An interview with Mrs. Craigie followed.
"The little madcap cried and stormed alternately. The mother was
determined--so was her child; the mother was inflexible--so was her
child; and in the wildest language of defiance she told her that she
never would be thus thrown alive into the jaws of death.
"Here, then, was one of those fatal family quarrels, where the child
is forced to disobey parental authority, or to throw herself away into
irredeemable wretchedness and ruin. It is certainly a fearful
responsibility for a parent to assume of forcing a child to such
alternatives. But the young Dolores sought the advice and assistance
of her mother's friend...."
She was probably a little in love with that friend, who was a fine-looking
fellow, about a dozen years older than herself, and who had certainly
conceived a violent passion for her. The situation was conventionally
romantic. The books of that time were full of distressed damsels being
forced into hateful unions. Lola, it is safe to say, relished her new
_role_ of heroine not a little. So when her lover proposed a runaway
match, she felt that she was bound to comply with the usual stage
directions. After all, what could be more delightful?--an elopement in a
post-chaise with a dashing young officer, an angry mamma in pursuit, and,
happily, no angry papa, armed with pistols or horse-whip.
Away they went. Lola has left us no particulars of the flight. The
runaways reappear, in the first month of Queen Victoria's reign, in the
girl's native land, where she was placed under the protection of her
lover's family. "They had a great muss [_sic_] in trying to get married."
Lola was under age, and her mother's consent was indispensable. James sent
his sister to Bath to intercede with Mrs. Craigie. The lady was furious.
Not only had her daughter upset her most cherished project, but had run
off with her most devoted friend and admirer. Mrs. Craigie was a prey to
the most mortifying reflections. No doubt she asked Miss James what had
become of the young lady to whom her brother had declared he was
affianced. She probably said some very unkind things about the Lieutenant.
At last, however, "good sense so far prevailed as to make her see that
nothing but evil and sorrow could come of her refusal, and she consented,
but would neither be present at the wedding, nor send her blessing." We
are not told if she sent the voluminous _trousseau_, which had been the
cause of all the mischief. She returned soon after, I gather, to India, to
announce to the unfortunate Sir Abraham the collapse of his matrimonial
scheme.
Miss James returned to Ireland with the necessary authority, and Thomas
James, Lieutenant, and Maria Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, spinster, were
made man and wife in County Meath on the 23rd July 1837. The bride's
reflections on this event are worth quoting:--
"So, in flying from that marriage with ghastly and gouty old age, the
child lost her mother, and gained what proved to be only the outside
shell of a husband, who had neither a brain which she could respect,
nor a heart which it was possible for her to love. Runaway matches,
like runaway horses, are almost sure to end in a smash up. My advice
to all young girls who contemplate taking such a step is, that they
had better hang or drown themselves just one hour before they start."
This warning was obviously intended to counteract the dreadful example of
the writer's subsequent life and adventures, and to dissuade ambitious
young ladies from following in her footsteps. Lola did not, of course,
believe what she said. Even "when wild youth's past" and the glamour of
love has worn thin, no sensible woman could believe that she would have
got much happiness out of life if it had been passed in wedlock with a man
half a century her senior. Perhaps, however, Lola sadly reflected that if
she had become Sir Abraham's wife, she would probably have become his
widow a very few years after.
III
FIRST STEPS IN MATRIMONY
Thus Lola found herself in Ireland, the wife of a penniless
subaltern--exactly the position of her mother twenty years before. "All
for love and the world well lost," she might have exclaimed. There is no
reason to suppose that disillusionment came to her any sooner than to
other hot-headed and romantic young ladies similarly placed. She was
accustomed to view her early married life in the bitter light of
subsequent experience, and forgot all the sweets and raptures of first
love. Women of her temperament always find it hard to believe that they
ever really loved men whom they have since learned to hate. Even by her
own account, those months in Ireland were not altogether unrelieved by the
glitter for which her soul craved. Her husband took her to Dublin, she
informs us, and presented her to the Lord-Lieutenant. His Excellency Lord
Normanby was one of the few good rulers England has placed over Ireland,
and like most clever men, he was an admirer of pretty women. Lola seems to
have been made much of by him. He paid her many compliments, among others
this, "Women of your age are the queens of society"--a remark which may be
addressed with equally good effect to ladies anywhere between seventeen
and seventy. Mr. James began to grow restive under the fire of admiration
directed by great personages upon his young wife. It is not impossible to
believe that she flirted. Her husband decided to withdraw her from the
seductions of the viceregal court, and retired with her to some spot in
the interior, the name of which has not been transmitted to us. Lola, in
memoirs she contributed years after to a Parisian newspaper, describes her
life in this retreat as unutterably tedious. The day was passed in hunting
and eating, these exercises succeeding each other with the utmost
regularity. Meanwhile, the system was sustained by innumerable cups of
tea, taken at stated intervals, and with much deliberateness.
Ireland had changed since the emancipation of the Catholics. It was not
with tea that the heroes of Charles Lever's time beguiled the tedium of
existence.
"This dismal life," continues our heroine, "weighed on me to such an
extent that I should assuredly have done something desperate if my husband
had not just then been ordered to return to India." Lola, it will have
been seen, entertained little affection for her native land. She had no
recollection of her childhood there, and she never afterwards thought of
the country except in connection with the detested husband of her youth.
In the second year of the Queen's reign she left Ireland, to return years
after in very different circumstances. Her fondest memories were of the
East, towards which she now gladly turned her face for the second time.
"On the old trail, on the out trail," she sailed aboard the East Indiaman,
_Blunt_, her husband at her side. There is a curious parallelism between
her mother's life and her own up till now, which she could not have
failed to notice. Her memories of the voyage strike me rather as having
been specially spiced for the consumption of Parisian readers, than as an
authentic relation. James, we are told, neglected his young wife, and
exhibited an amazing capacity for absorbing porter. Finding the time heavy
on her hands, Lola resorted to the commonest of all distractions on
passenger ships--flirting. While her consort lay sleeping "like a
boa-constrictor" in his bunk, his wife's admirers used to slip notes under
the door, these serving her as spills for Mr. James's pipe. The gentlemen
who fell under the spell of Lola's fascinations at this stage of her
career were three in number--a Spaniard called Enriquez, an Englishman,
simply described as John, and the skipper himself. This "colossal sailor"
seems to have been somewhat of a philosopher. One of his profound
reflections has been handed down to us, and is worth recording: "Love is a
pipe we fill at eighteen, and smoke till forty; and we rake the ashes till
our exit."
Lola thus pictures as a man-enslaving Circe the girl who was described by
a contemporary as a good little thing, merry and unaffected. I doubt if
the flirtations here magnified into intrigues were very serious affairs,
after all. It is rather pathetic, the woman's shame for the simplicity of
the girl, and her evident desire to paint her redder than she was. It is
probable that the girl would have been quite as much ashamed if she could
have seen herself at thirty.
IV
INDIA SEVENTY YEARS AGO
The land to which little Mrs. James was eager to return seems to us now to
have been a poor exchange for the rollicking Ireland of Lever's day. India
in 1838, as for a score of years after, was under the rule of John
Company. Collectors and writers of the Jos. Sedley type were still able to
shake the pagoda tree, and Englishmen in outlying provinces often became
suddenly rich, how or why nobody asked, and only the natives cared. Indigo
planters beat their half-caste wives to death, and English magistrates
looked the other way. Our people died, like flies in autumn, of cholera,
snakebites, and the thousand and one fevers to which India was subject. We
were still shut in by powerful native states. Ranjit Singh ruled in the
Punjaub, the Baluchis in Scinde; there was yet a king in Oude and a rajah
at Nagpur. Slavery was only abolished in the British dominions that very
year, and Hindoo widows had but lately lost the privilege of burning
themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres. The chronic famine had
assumed slightly more serious proportions.
It was a land of loneliness, remote and isolated. A postal service had
been introduced only the year before, and letters took at least three
months to come from England. This was by the overland route, which was
liable at any moment to interruption by the caprice of the Pasha of Egypt
or the enterprise of Bedouins. There were, of course, no railways and no
telegraphs. You travelled wherever possible by river, in boats called
budgerows, which had not increased in speed since Ensign Gilbert's day.
Going up the Ganges you might have seen the Danish flag waving over
Serampore. If you were in a hurry and could afford it, you travelled
_dak_--that is, in a palanquin, carried by four bearers, who were changed
at each stage like posting-horses. This method of travel--about the most
uncomfortable, I conceive, ever devised by man--greatly impressed and
interested Lola. She thought it repugnant to one's sense of humanity, but
could not help observing the lightheartedness of the bearers. They jogged
briskly along to the accompaniment of improvised songs, which were not
always flattering to their human load.
"I will give you a sample," says our traveller, "as well as it could
be made out, of what I heard them sing while carrying an English
clergyman who could not have weighed less than two hundred and
twenty-five pounds. Each line of the following jargon was sung in a
different voice:--
"'Oh, what a heavy bag!
No, it is an elephant;
He is an awful weight.
Let us throw his palki down,
Let us set him in the mud--
Let us leave him to his fate.
Ay, but he will beat us then
With a thick stick.
Then let's make haste and get along,
Jump along quickly!'
"And off they started in a jog-trot, which must have shaken every bone
in his reverence's body, keeping chorus all the time of 'Jump along
quickly,' until they were obliged to stop for laughing.
"They invariably (continues Lola) suit these extempore chants to the
weight and character of their burden. I remember to have been
exceedingly amused one day at the merry chant of my human horses as
they started off on the run.
"'She's not heavy,
Cabbada [take care]!
Little baba [missie],
Cabbada!
Carry her swiftly,
Cabbada!
Pretty baba,
Cabbada!'
"And so they went on, singing and extemporising for the whole hour and
a half's journey. It is quite a common custom to give them four annas
(or English sixpence) apiece at the end of every stage, when fresh
horses [_sic_] are put under the burden; but a gentleman of my
acquaintance, who had been carried too slowly, as he thought, only
gave them two annas apiece. The consequence was that during the next
stage the men not only went faster, but they made him laugh with their
characteristic song, the whole burden of which was: 'He has only given
them two annas, because they went slowly; let us make haste, and get
along quickly, and then we shall get eight annas, and have a good
supper.'"
The burden of the European's life in India at this period is voiced in
"Marois'" poem, _The Long, Long, Indian Day_. It was the empire of
_ennui_. A strongly puritanical tone, too, was observable in certain
influential circles, and the clergy frequently discountenanced and
condemned the poor efforts at relaxation made by officers and their wives.
Dances and amateur theatricals were often the subject of censure from the
pulpit. So the men fell back on brandy pawnee, loo, and tiger-shooting.
The women were worse off. To the Honourable Emily Eden we are indebted for
some vivid pictures of Anglo-Indian society during the viceroyalty of her
brother, Lord Auckland (1836-1842). They enable us to realise Lola's
emotions and manner of life during her second visit to India. Miss Eden's
compassionate interest was excited by
"a number of young ladies just come out by the last ships, looking so
fresh and English, and longing to amuse themselves--and it must be
such a bore at that age to be shut up for twenty-three hours out of
the twenty-four; and the one hour that they are out is only an airing
just where the roads are watered. They have no gardens, no villages,
no poor people, no schools, no poultry to look after--none of the
occupations of young people. Very few of them are at ease with their
parents; and, in short, it is a melancholy sight to see a new young
arrival."
Another passage runs:--
"It is a melancholy country for wives at the best, and I strongly
advise you never to let young girls marry an East Indian. There was a
pretty Mrs. ---- dining here yesterday, quite a child in looks, who
married just before the _Repulse_ sailed, and landed here about ten
days ago. She goes on next week to Neemuch, a place at the farthest
extremity of India, where there is not another European woman, and
great part of the road to it is through jungle, which is only passable
occasionally from its unwholesomeness. She detests what she has seen
of India, and evidently begins to think 'papa and mamma' were right in
withholding for a year their consent to her marriage. I think she
wishes they had held out another month. There is another, Mrs. ----,
who is only _fifteen_, who married when we were at the Cape, ... and
went straight on to her husband's station, where for five months she
had never seen a European. He was out surveying all day, and they
lived in a tent. She has utterly lost her health and spirits, and
though they have come down here for three weeks' furlough, she has
never been able even to call here [at Government House]. He came to
make her excuse, and said, with a deep sigh: 'Poor girl! she must go
back to her solitude. She hoped she could have gone out a little in
Calcutta, to give her something to think of.' And then, if these poor
women have children, they must send them away just as they become
amusing. It is an abominable place."
This was not realised at once by Mrs. James, whose first season (she tells
us) was passed "in the gay and fashionable city of Calcutta." There she
became an acknowledged beauty. Not long after the outbreak of the first
Afghan War she was torn away from the comparative brilliance of the
capital, and accompanied her husband most reluctantly, to Karnal, a town
between Delhi and Simla, on the Jumna Canal. The place is no longer a
military station. At this juncture, happily for us, a flood of light is
poured upon Lola's character and history by the letters of Miss Eden,
dated from Simla and Karnal in the latter part of the year 1839. I include
some extracts not directly relating to Lola, as they describe scenes in
which she must have taken part, and which formed the background against
which she moved.
"_Sunday, 8th September_ [1839].
"Simla is much moved just now by the arrival of a Mrs. J[ames], who
has been talked of as a great beauty of the year, and that drives
every other woman, with any pretensions in that line, quite
distracted, with the exception of Mrs. N., who, I must say, makes no
fuss about her own beauty, nor objects to it in other people. Mrs.
J[ames] is the daughter of a Mrs. C[raigie], who is still very
handsome herself, and whose husband is Deputy-Adjutant-General, or
some military authority of that kind. She sent this only child to be
educated at home, and went home herself two years ago to see her. On
the same ship was Mr. J., a poor ensign, going home on sick leave.
Mrs. C. nursed him and took care of him, and took him to see her
daughter, who was a girl of fifteen [_sic_] at school. He told her he
was engaged to be married, consulted her about his prospects, and in
the meantime privately married this girl at school. It was enough to
provoke any mother, but as it now cannot be helped, we have all been
trying to persuade her for the last year to make it up, as she frets
dreadfully about her only child. She has withstood it till now, but at
last consented to ask them for a month, and they arrived three days
ago. The _rush on the road_ was remarkable, and one or two of the
ladies were looking absolutely nervous. But nothing could be more
unsatisfactory than the result, for Mrs. James looked lovely, and Mrs.
Craigie had set up for her a very grand jonpaun [kind of sedan-chair],
with bearers in fine orange and brown liveries, and the same for
herself; and James is a sort of smart-looking man, with bright
waistcoats and bright teeth, with a showy horse, and he rode along in
an attitude of respectful attention to _ma belle mere_. Altogether it
was an imposing sight, and I cannot see any way out of it but
magnanimous admiration. They all called yesterday when I was at the
waterfalls, and F[anny] thought her very pretty."
"_Tuesday, 10th September._
"We had a dinner yesterday. Mrs. James is undoubtedly very pretty, and
such a merry, unaffected girl. She is only seventeen now [twenty-one,
in fact], and does not look so old, and when one thinks that she is
married to a junior lieutenant in the Indian army fifteen years older
than herself, and that they have 160 rupees a month, and are to pass
their whole lives in India, I do not wonder at Mrs. Craigie's
resentment at her having run away from school.
"There are seventeen more officers come up to Simla on leave for a
month, partly in the hope of a little gaiety at the end of the rains;
and then the fancy fair has had a great reputation since last year,
and as they will all spend money, they are particularly welcome....
"_Wednesday, 11th September._
"We had a large party last night, the largest we have had in Simla,
and it would have been a pretty ball anywhere, there were so many
pretty people. The retired wives, now that their husbands are on the
march back from Cabul, ventured out, and got through one evening
without any prejudice to their characters."
Are regimental ladies in India nowadays expected to keep in seclusion
while their husbands are on active service? I think not.
"_Monday, 16th September._
"We are going to a ball to-night, which the married gentlemen give us;
and instead of being at the only public room, which is a broken,
tumble-down place, it is to be at the C.'s [the Craigies'?], who very
good-naturedly give up their house for it."
"_Wednesday, 18th September._
"The ball went off with the greatest success: transparencies of the
taking of Ghaznee, 'Auckland' in all directions, arches and verandahs
made up of flowers; a whist table for his lordship, which is always a
great relief at these balls; and every individual at Simla was there.
There was a supper room for us, made up of velvet and gold hangings
belonging to the Durbar, and a standing supper all night for the
company in general, at which one very fat lady was detected in eating
five suppers.... It was kept up till five, and altogether succeeded."
"_Friday, 27th September._
"We had our fancy fair on Wednesday, which went off with great
_eclat_, and was really a very amusing day, and, moreover, produced
6,500 rupees, which, for a very small society, is an immense sum. X.
and L. and a Captain C. were disguised as gipsies, and the most
villainous-looking set possible; and they came on to the fair, and
sang an excellent song about our poor old Colonel and a little hill
fort that he has been taking; but after the siege was over, he found
no enemy in it, otherwise, it was a gallant action.