'Marquess of Granby.' L. E. was old Weller, and so disguised I could
not guess him; X. was Sam Weller; K., Jingle; and Captain C., Mrs.
Weller; Captain Z., merely a waiter, with one or two other gentlemen;
but they all acted very well up to their characters, and the luncheon
was very good fun.... The afternoon ended with races--a regular
racing-stand, and a very tolerable course for the hills; all the
gentlemen in satin jackets and jockey caps, and a weighing stand--in
short, everything got up regularly. Everybody likes these out-of-door
amusements at this time of year, and it is a marvel to me how well X.
and K. and L. E. contrive to make all their plots and disguises go
on. I suppose in a very small society it is easier than it would be in
England, and they have all the assistance of servants to any amount,
who do all they are told, and merely think the 'sahib log' are mad."
"_Tuesday, 15th October._
"The Sikhs are here. Our ball for them last night went off very well.
The chiefs were in splendid gold dresses, and certainly very
gentleman-like men. They sat bolt upright on their chairs, with their
feet dangling, and I dare say suffered agonies from cramp. C. said we
saw them amazingly divided between the necessity of listening to
George [Lord Auckland], and their native feelings of not _seeming_
surprised, and their curiosity at men and women dancing together. I
think that they learned at least two figures of the quadrilles by
heart, for I saw Gholab Singh, the commander of the Goorcherras, who
has been with Europeans before, expounding the dancing to the others."
Lola's month at Simla had now expired, but she probably postponed her
departure to witness the reception of these chiefs. Having been reconciled
with her mother--partly, it seems, through the kindly intervention of the
Governor-General's sister, and partly, as she afterwards declared, through
her stepfather--she returned with her husband to his cantonment. Here she
was fortunate again to attract the attention of the viceregal party.
Miss Eden writes from Karnal, under date 13th November 1839:--
"We had the same display of troops on arriving, except that a bright
yellow General N. has taken his liver complaint home, and a pale
primrose General D., who has been renovating some years at Bath, has
come out to take his place. We were at home in the evening, and it was
an immense party, but except that pretty Mrs. James who was at Simla,
and who looked like a star among the others, the women were all plain.
"I don't wonder if a tolerable-looking girl comes up the country that
she is persecuted with proposals.... That Mrs. ---- we always called
the little corpse is still at Karnal. She came and sat herself down by
me, upon which Mr. K., with great presence of mind, offered me his
arm, and said to George that he was taking me away from that corpse.
'You are quite right,' said George. 'It would be very dangerous
sitting on the same sofa; we don't know what she died of.'"
"_Sunday, 17th November._
"We left Karnal yesterday morning. Little Mrs. James was so unhappy at
our going that we asked her to come and pass the day here, and brought
her with us. She went from tent to tent, and chattered all day, and
visited her friend Mrs. ----, who is with the camp. I gave her a pink
silk gown, and it was altogether a very happy day for her evidently.
It ended in her going back to Karnal on my elephant, with E. N. by her
side and Mr. James sitting behind, and she had never been on an
elephant before, and thought it delightful. She is very pretty, and a
good little thing, apparently, but they are very poor, and she is very
young and lively, and if she falls into bad hands she would soon laugh
herself into foolish scrapes. At present the husband and wife are very
fond of each other, but a girl who marries at fifteen hardly knows
what she likes."
V
RIVEN BONDS
Miss Eden's misgivings were warranted by the events. "Husband and wife are
very fond of each other"--that was, doubtless, true, but Lola's lips would
have curled had she read the passage in after years. Abandoned by the
departure of the viceregal party once more to the slender social resources
of Karnal, the young wife, I conjecture, fretted and moped. The glitter of
the Court made the boredom of the cantonment all the more oppressive. The
year after the Simla festivities Karnal had another distinguished visitor,
the famous Dost Mohammed Khan, Amir of Kabul, but as during his six
months' stay he was kept a close prisoner in the fort, his presence could
not have sensibly relieved the monotony. Lieutenant James's subsequent
readiness to divorce his wife proves that he had no very strong attachment
to her, and gives some colour to her allegations against him. Of course,
it is safe to conclude that both were in the wrong, or, more truthfully,
had made a mistake. So long, however, as people regard marriage more as a
contract than a relation, each party will be anxious to throw the
responsibility for the rupture upon the other. As the husband had the
opportunity of stating his case in the law courts, it is only fair that
the wife should be allowed to plead hers here. Her version of the
circumstances which brought about the breach is as follows:--
"She was taken to visit a Mrs. Lomer--a pretty woman, who was about
thirty-three years of age, and was a great admirer of Captain [_sic_]
James. [His bright waistcoats and bright teeth were not without their
effect, we see.] Her husband was a blind fool enough; and though
Captain James's little wife, Lola, was not quite a fool, it is likely
enough that she did not care enough about him to keep a look-out upon
what was going on between himself and Mrs. Lomer. So she used to be
peacefully sleeping every morning when the Captain [read Lieutenant]
and Mrs. Lomer were off for a sociable ride on horseback. In this way
things went on for a long time, when one morning Captain James and
Mrs. Lomer did not get back to breakfast, and so the little Mrs. James
and Mr. Lomer breakfasted alone, wondering what had become of the
morning riders.
"But all doubts were soon cleared up by the fact fully coming to light
that they had really eloped to Neilghery Hills. Poor Lomer stormed,
and raved, and tore himself to pieces, not having the courage to
attack any one else. And little Lola wondered, cried a little, and
laughed a good deal, especially at Lomer's rage."
The injured husband, apparently, was never pieced together again, as we do
not hear that he ever instituted any proceedings against the seducer of
his wife. It is true that by Lola's account they may be considered to have
put themselves beyond his reach, for the Neilghery Hills lie, as the crow
flies, about 1,400 miles from Karnal, and a stern chase in a palanquin
over that distance is an undertaking from which even Menelaus would have
shrank. Nor did the peccant Lieutenant James think it worth while to
resign his commission.
Whatever may have been the immediate cause, it is clear that husband and
wife were on bad terms when the cantonment at Karnal was broken up in the
year 1841. Lola took refuge under her mother's roof at Calcutta. She
admits that her reception was cold, and that Mrs. Craigie pressed her to
return to Europe. On this course she finally decided, probably without
great reluctance. It was given out, and not perhaps altogether untruly,
that she was leaving India for the benefit of her health. Her husband came
down to Calcutta, and himself saw her aboard the good ship, _Larkins_. Her
stepfather, to whose relations in Scotland she was again to be confided,
was much affected at her departure.
"Large tears rolled down his cheeks when he took her on board the
vessel; and he testified his affection and his care by placing in the
hands of the little grass-widow a cheque for a thousand pounds on a
house in London."
Thus for the second and last time Lola saw the swampy shores of Bengal
receding from her across the waves. She was never again to see India or
those who bid her adieu. The merry, unaffected schoolgirl of Simla had
become in one short year a disappointed, disillusioned woman. While
husband and wife exchanged cold farewells, probably neither expected nor
wished to see the other again. Both had made a mistake, and both knew it.
Now they were placing half a world between them. Lola's heart must have
lightened, as the good ship sped before the wind southwards across the
Indian Ocean. Accustomed to shipboard, the _desagrements_ of the voyage
were nothing to her, and she immediately began to take an interest in her
companions. She speaks of a Mr. and Mrs. Sturges, Boston people, who were
nominally in charge of her; and of a Mrs. Stevens, another American lady,
a very gay woman, who had some influence in supporting her determination
not to go to the Craigies' on reaching England. There was a Mr. Lennox on
board, sometimes described as an aide-de-camp to some governor, who also
may have had something to do with this resolution. It all came about as
Lord Auckland's sister had feared. Lola had fallen into evil hands, and
laughed herself into a bad scrape. She had been accustomed to admiration;
she was young, beautiful, and passionate. Her heart was empty; she was
angered against her husband. She was by no means unwilling to face the
possibility of a final separation from him. Lennox remains for us the
shadowiest of personalities, but his disappearance, implying abandonment
of the woman he had compromised, tells against him. In this instance I
think we may safely conclude that the man was to blame.
Out of affection for him, then, or a determination to lead her own life,
uncontrolled and unshackled, Mrs. James, on arriving in London, flatly
refused to accompany Mr. David Craigie, "a blue Scotch Calvinist," whom
she found awaiting her.
"At first he used arguments and persuasion, and finding that these
failed, he tried force; and then, of course, there was an explosion,
which soon settled the matter, and convinced Mr. David Craigie that he
might go back to the little dull town of Perth as soon as he pleased,
without the little grass-widow. Now she was left in London, sole
mistress of her own fate. She had, besides the cheque given her by her
stepfather, between five and six thousand dollars' worth of various
kinds of jewellery, making her capital, all counted, about ten
thousand dollars--a very considerable portion of which disappeared in
less than one year by a sort of insensible perspiration, which is a
disease very common to the purses of ladies who have never been taught
the value of money."
It was in the early spring of 1842 that Lola set foot in London.
Considering the rapidity for those times with which her husband became
informed of her next movements, these must have been amazingly open; and
it is hard to resist the conclusion that she was deliberately trying to
bring about a divorce. She knew that the English law grants no relief to
those who come to it both with clean hands. She knew also that so long as
her husband neither starved nor beat her, she could not set the law in
motion against him. English law, supposed to vindicate the sanctity of
marriage, sets a premium on adultery and cruelty: these are the only
avenues of escape from unhappy unions into which high-minded men and women
may have been betrayed by youthful folly, by over-persuasion, by
sentiments they innocently over-estimated. If Lola Gilbert at the age of
eighteen had signed a bill for ten pounds, the courts would have annulled
the transaction, on the ground that her youth rendered her incapable of
appreciating its gravity. As it was, she had signed away her life--a less
important thing than property--and our Rhadamanthine law sternly held her
to her bargain.
James was not slow to avail himself of the pretext she afforded him. He
instituted through his proctors a suit against her for divorce in the
Consistory Court of London, to which jurisdiction in all matrimonial
causes at that time belonged. Lola, as he probably expected she would do,
ignored the proceedings from first to last. The case was heard before Dr.
Lushington on 15th December 1842. Mrs. James was accused of misconduct
with Mr. Lennox on board the ship _Larkins_, and of subsequently
cohabiting with him at the Imperial Hotel, Covent Garden, and in lodgings
in St. James's. The court was satisfied with the proofs adduced, and
pronounced a divorce _a mensa et toro_. In modern legal language this was
a judicial separation. These two people, though they were to live apart,
were sentenced never to marry again during the lifetime of each other. It
is by such dispositions that the law of England proposes to promote
morality and the interests of society.
Both lover and husband disappear from the scene. James rose to the rank of
captain, retired from the Indian army in 1856, and died in 1871. He never
crossed Lola's path again, and she ever afterwards referred to him with
contempt and bitterness. If it was in any vindictive spirit that he
divorced her, he would have done well to remember how in former years he
had taken advantage of her youth and inexperience. It was a squalid ending
to the romantic runaway match. It would be interesting to know with what
emotions Captain James heard of his ex-wife's adventures in high places in
the years that followed. It must have seemed odd that monarchs should risk
their crowns for the charms that he so lightly prized. Perhaps his wonder
was not untinged with regret. More likely it might have been written of
him as of Lola:--
"Who have loved and ceased to love, forget
That ever they lived in their lives, they say--
Only remember the fever and fret,
And the pain of love that was all his pay."
Mrs. Craigie put on mourning as though her child was dead, and sent out to
her friends the customary notifications. The good old
Deputy-Adjutant-General alone thought kindly of Lola.
VI
LONDON IN THE 'FORTIES
To a woman in Lola's situation, London in the early 'forties offered every
inducement to go to the devil. Between a roaring maelstrom of the coarsest
libertinism, on the one hand, and an impregnable barrier of heartless
puritanism on the other, her destruction was well-nigh inevitable. The
hotchpotch of unorganised humanity that we call Society seldom presented
an uglier appearance than it did in the first decade of Victoria's reign.
Sir Mulberry Hawk and Pecksniff are types of the two contending forces.
Blackguardism was matched against snivelling cant. Luckily, the victory
fell to neither. Those were the days of Crockfords, of Vauxhall, of the
spunging-house, of public executions turned into popular festivals; when
gentlemen of fashion painted policemen pea-green, and beat them till they
were senseless; when peers got drunk and the people starved. Opposed to
this debauchery was a religion of convention and propriety, narrow,
stupid, and un-Christlike--the cult of the correct and the respectable,
the fetishes to which Lady Flora Hastings and many another woman were
coldly sacrificed.
In spite of Sir Mulberry and Mr. Pecksniff, however, Lola, ex-Mrs. James,
had no intention of going under. Her exclusion from society, after her
wearisome experiences in India, she probably regarded as no great
hardship. Her youth, her sprightliness, and her beauty made her many
friends. Some of these as quickly became enemies, when they discovered
that a divorced woman is not necessarily for sale. More than one _roue_
vowed vengeance against the girl who, with bursts of laughter and
dangerous gusts of anger, rejected the offer of his protection. It was,
perhaps, in this way she offended the elegant Lord Ranelagh, who was then
swaggering about in the Spanish cloak he had worn in the Carlist Wars.
Lola was strong enough to swim in the maelstrom. Independence and
adversity brought out the latent force in the character of the "good
little thing" of Simla. Instead of looking out for a refuge, she sought a
career.
She turned, of course, towards the stage, the one profession in Early
Victorian times that offered any promise to an ambitious woman. She took
more pains to acquire a knowledge of her art than are deemed necessary by
most beautiful aspirants nowadays. She studied under Miss Fanny Kelly, a
gifted actress, who had distinguished herself by her efforts to improve
the social status of her profession, and who had opened a dramatic school
for women adjacent to what is now the Royalty Theatre. Lola describes Miss
Kelly as a lady as worthy in the acts of her private life as she was
gifted in genius. This opinion was shared by all the contemporaries of the
venerable actress. In after years Mr. Gladstone thought fit to recognise
her services to the theatre by a royal grant of one hundred and fifty
pounds, but the money arrived in time only to be expended on a memorial
over her grave in the dismal cemetery at Brompton. Since Lola was a
friend of Miss Kelly, she must have been very far from being the depraved
character she is represented by some.
With all the goodwill in the world, the experienced mistress could not
make an actress of her beautiful pupil, who accordingly determined to
approach the stage through a back-door. If talent of the intellectual
order was denied her, she could fall back on her physical advantages. She
determined to become a dancer. She was instructed for four months by a
Spanish professor, and then (so she assures us) underwent a further
training at Madrid. It was now that she assumed the name of Lola
Montez--so soon to be known throughout Europe. She passed herself off as a
Spaniard, partly, no doubt, for professional reasons, and partly to
conceal her identity with the wife of Captain James. Society can hardly
expect its quarry to step out into the open to be shot at. Her beauty and
her dancing so impressed Benjamin Lumley, the experienced director of Her
Majesty's Theatre, that it was on his stage that she actually made her
first appearance.
The morning papers of Saturday, 3rd June 1843, announced accordingly that
between the acts of the opera (_Il Barbiere di Seviglia_), Donna [_sic_]
Lola Montez, of the Teatro Real, Seville, would make her first appearance
in this country, in the original Spanish dance, "El Olano." Attracted by
this advertisement, a critic, who afterwards wrote under the pseudonym of
"Q.," called at the theatre, and was presented to the _debutante_. In her
he recognised a lady living opposite his lodgings in Grafton Street,
Mayfair, who had long been the object of his silent adoration. He dwells
on her extreme vivacity, on her brilliancy of conversation, and on her
foreign accent, which struck him as assumed. She was persuaded to give a
rehearsal for his special benefit.
"At that period," he goes on to say, "her figure was even more
attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was. Lithe and graceful
as a young fawn, every movement that she made seemed instinct with
melody as she prepared to commence the dance. Her dark eyes were
blazing and flashing with excitement, for she felt that I was willing
to admire her. In her _pose_, grace seemed involuntarily to preside
over her limbs and dispose their attitude. Her foot and ankle were
almost faultless. Nadaud, the violinist, drew the bow across his
instrument, and she began to dance. No one who has seen her will
quarrel with me for saying that she was not, and is not, a finished
_danseuse_, but all who have will as certainly agree with me that she
possesses every element which could be required, with careful study in
her youth, to make her eminent in her then vocation. As she swept
round the stage, her slender waist swayed to the music, and her
graceful neck and head bent with it, like a flower that bends with the
impulse given to its stem by the changing and fitful temper of the
wind."[3]
On that eventful June evening, then, manager, critics, not least of all
Lola herself, confidently looked forward to a striking success. The house
was crowded, and many notabilities were present. There were the King of
Hanover, the Queen-Dowager, the Duchess of Kent, and the Duke and Duchess
of Cambridge. There was also Lola's old enemy, my Lord Ranelagh, who with
a party of friends occupied one of the two omnibus-boxes--an admirable
point from which to examine the ankles and calves of the long-skirted
ballet-girls. When the curtain rose in the _entr'acte_, a Moorish chamber
was revealed. On either side stood a damsel, gazing expectantly towards
the draped entrance at the back of the stage. A moment later and there
glided through this a figure enveloped in a mantilla. One of the handmaids
snatched away this drapery, and the commanding form of Donna Lola Montez
was revealed in all its glory.
"And a lovely picture it is to contemplate! There is before you the
perfection of Spanish beauty--the tall, handsome person, the full,
lustrous eye, the joyous, animated face, and the intensely raven hair.
She is dressed, too, in the brightest of colours: the petticoat is
dappled with flaunting tints of red, yellow, and violet, and its showy
diversities of hue are enforced by the black velvet bodice above,
which confines the bust with an unscrupulous pinch. Presently this
Andalusian _Papagena_ lifts her arms, and the sharp, merry crack of
the castanets is heard. She has commenced one of the merry dances of
her nation, and many a piquant grace does she unfold."[4]
The audience are bewitched, enraptured. The stage is strewn with bouquets.
Suddenly from the right omnibus-box comes the surprised exclamation: "Why,
it's Betty James!" Lord Ranelagh has recognised the woman who rebuffed
him, and hurriedly whispers to his friends. Above the applause from stalls
and gallery, there is heard on the stage, at least, a prolonged and
ominous hiss. My lord's friends in the opposite box act upon the hint, and
the hissing grows louder and more insistent. The body of the audience,
knowing nothing about the matter, conclude that the dancer cannot know
her business, and presently begin to hiss, too. In ten minutes more the
curtain comes down upon her, and Lola's career as a dancer is terminated
in England.
Lord Ranelagh had had his revenge. This species of blackguardism was only
too common in those days. The notorious Duke of Brunswick that same year
had gone with his attorney, Mr. Vallance, and a party of friends, to
Covent Garden Theatre, for the express purpose of hooting down an actor,
Gregory, who took the part of Faust. He succeeded in his design, and
bragged about it afterwards. In Early Victorian times the theatre was
completely under the thumb of certain aristocratic sets. The exasperated
Lumley was powerless to resist the fiat of these gilded snobs. Lola
Montez, they insisted, must never appear on his stage again. He obeyed.
The Press was very far from imitating his subserviency. The _Era_ and
_Morning Herald_ praised the new _danseuse_ in what seem to us extravagant
terms, and deliberately ignored the inglorious _denouement_ of her
performance. Indeed, but for the pen of "Q." we might be left to share the
surprise expressed at her disappearance by the _Illustrated London News_,
which, ironically perhaps, suggested that the votaries of what might be
called the classical dance had set their faces against the national.
Lola herself was under no misapprehension as to the cause and authors of
her defeat. She wrote to the _Era_ on 13th June, protesting passionately
against a report that was being circulated to the effect that she had long
been known in London as a disreputable character. She positively asserted
that she was a native of Seville, and had never before been in London. She
complains of the cruel calumnies that had got abroad concerning her, and
says that she has instructed her lawyer to prosecute their utterers. Of
course, the greater part of this statement was untrue, but she had her
back against the wall, and with their reputation, social and professional,
and means of livelihood at stake, few women would have acted otherwise. My
own view is that after her affair with Lennox, Lola tried hard "to keep
straight," and made powerful enemies in consequence. The alliance of
Pecksniff and Sir Mulberry proved too strong for her.
VII
WANDERJAHRE