capital that Liszt was enthralled by the Andalusian. It reached the
Comtesse d'Agoult in her retreat at Nonnenwerth. She penned a fierce,
reproachful letter. Liszt, in Calypso's grotto at Dresden, answered
proudly and coldly. The Comtesse wrote, announcing the end of their
relations. Most men are frightened at the abrupt termination of a love
affair of which they have long been heartily weary. Liszt gave the
Comtesse time to think it over. She made no further overtures, expecting
that he would come to kneel at her feet. He did not. The lady went to
Paris, and they never met again.
The artist at least owed Lola a service, since she had been the unwitting
instrument of a rupture so long desired by him. But he valued his
newly-recovered freedom too highly to jeopardise it by linking his life
again with a woman's. His love affair with Lola may have been simply an
infatuation. Lucio would soon have tired of Gioconda had he lived with
her. We hardly know how this brief love story began; we are quite in the
dark as to how it ended. A report was current that the two travelled
together from Dresden to Paris, where both appeared in the spring of '44.
We do not hear that they were seen together in the French capital, so the
adieux may already have been exchanged. Liszt stayed there but a few
weeks, and then started on a tour through the French departments. Then he
crossed the Pyrenees, and pushed as far south as Gibraltar. Less than
three years later he was in the toils of a third woman--the Princess Zu
Sayn-Wittgenstein, with whom his relations endured twelve years. It is
noteworthy that he and Lola turned their thoughts from love to religion
almost at the same time, though half a world lay between them.
Of the third actor in this little drama it is hardly within my province to
speak. The Comtesse d'Agoult found consolation in the care of her children
and in those wider interests of which she never tired. She ardently
espoused the cause of the Revolution in 1848. More fortunate than her old
lover, she never lost the sane and generous sympathies of her youth. You
may read her _Souvenirs_, published at Paris the year after her death
(1877). Liszt long survived the women who had loved him--not a fate that
either of them would have envied him.
IX
AT THE BANQUET OF THE IMMORTALS
Lola's first appearance in Paris was, like her _debut_ at Her Majesty's, a
fiasco. Thanks, no doubt, to her reputation for beauty and audacity, she
secured an engagement at the Opera, then under the management of Leon
Pillet. The power behind the throne was the great Madame Stoltz, who some
years later was to be hooted off the stage by a hostile clique just as
Lola had been nine months before. At that time, however, no one dreamed of
a revolt against the all-powerful _cantatrice_ whose favour the _danseuse_
was fortunate to procure. The great Stoltz looked best and was luckiest in
men's parts, and therefore saw no rival in the now famous "Andalouse."
Lola, accordingly, made her bow to the Parisian public on Saturday, 30th
March 1844, in _Il Lazzarone_, an opera in two acts by Halevy. Her
audience was more fastidious than the playgoers of Dresden and Warsaw. Her
beauty ravished them, but in her dancing they saw little merit. Seeing
this, Lola made a characteristic bid for their favour. Her satin shoe had
slipped off. Seizing it, she threw it with one of her superb gestures into
the boxes, where it was pounced upon and brandished as a precious relic by
a gentleman of fashion. The manoeuvre seems to have succeeded in its
object, for the _Constitutionnel_ next morning found it necessary to warn
young dancers against the danger of factitious applause, while "abstaining
from criticising too severely a pretty woman who had not had time to study
Parisian tastes." Theophile Gautier was less gallant:--
"We are reluctant," he writes, "to speak of Lola Montes, who reminds
us by her Christian name of one of the prettiest women of Granada, and
by her surname of the man who excited in us the most powerful dramatic
emotions we have ever experienced--Montes, the most illustrious
_espada_ of Spain. The only thing Andalusian about Mlle. Lola Montes
is a pair of magnificent black eyes. She gabbles Spanish very
indifferently, French hardly at all, and English passably [_sic_].
Which is her country? That is the question. We may say that Mlle. Lola
has a little foot and pretty legs. Her use of these is another matter.
The curiosity excited by her adventures with the northern police, and
her conversations, _a coups de cravache_, with the Prussian _gens
d'armes_, has not been satisfied, it must be admitted. Mlle. Lola
Montes is certainly inferior to Dolores Serrai, who has, at least, the
advantage of being a real Spaniard, and redeems her imperfections as a
dancer by a voluptuous _abandon_, and an admirable fire and precision
of rhythm. We suspect, after the recital of her equestrian exploits,
that Mlle. Lola is more at home in the saddle than on the boards."
As at Her Majesty's, so at the Opera. Lola's first appearance was her
last. For the rest of the year, as far as I can learn, she was out of an
engagement. She had, no doubt, made some money during her German and
Russian tour, and Liszt would not have forgotten her when he started on
his southern tour at the end of April.
If her association with him had begotten in Lola Montez a thirst for wit
and genius, she had every chance of slaking it in Paris. There were giants
on the earth in those days, and they were all gathered together on the
banks of the Seine. It is not too much to say that since the Medici ruled
in Florence, no capital has boasted so brilliant an assemblage of men of
genius as did Paris under the paternal government of July. In the year
'44, Victor Hugo, attended by a score of minor poets, daily appeared on
his balcony to acknowledge the homage of the public; Lamartine was
dividing his attention between politics and literature. Alfred de Musset
was wrecking his constitution by spasms of debauchery. Balzac was dodging
his creditors, playing truant from the National Guard, and finding time to
write his "Comedie Humaine"; Theophile Gautier, a man of thirty-three, if
he had not yet received the full meed of his genius, was already well
known and widely appreciated. Alexandre Dumas had long since become a
national institution, and his son was looking out for copy among the
ladies of the _demi-monde_. Delphine Gay was writing her brilliant
"Lettres Parisiennes" for her husband's newspaper. The Salon was still
rejecting the masterpieces of Delacroix, but Vernet was painting the
ceiling of the Palais Bourbon. Auber, though past the prime of life, had
not yet scored his greatest success. Paris was like Athens in the age of
Pericles.
Life was really worth living then, when Louis Phillippe was king. He was
an honest, kindly-natured man, this pear-headed potentate, who reigned,
"comme la corniche regne autour d'un plafond." He was the king of the
_bourgeois_, and he looked it every inch, with his white felt hat and
respectable umbrella; but in the calm sunshine of his reign the arts
flourished and the world was gay. Those days before the Revolution remind
us of that strange picture in our National Gallery, "The Eve of the
Deluge." Paris, as the old stagers regretfully assure us, was Paris then,
and not the caravanserai of all the nations of the world. The good
Americans who died then, had they gone to Paris, would have thought they
had reached the wrong destination. Men of Pontus and Asia had not then
made the French capital their own. The invasion of the Barbarians, says
Gustave Claudin, took place in 1848. They came, not conducted by Attila,
but by the newly-constructed railways. As these strangers had plenty of
money to spend, they naturally sought the most fashionable quarters.
"The true Parisians disappeared in the crowd, and knew not where to
find themselves. In the evening, the restaurants where they used to
dine, the stalls and boxes where they used to assist at the opera and
the play, were taken by assault by cohorts of sightseers wishing to
steep themselves up to the neck in _la vie Parisienne_."
The tide of the invasion has never diminished in volume, and the true
Parisian has become extinct.
In the year 1844 the fine flower of Parisian society was in undisputed
possession of the Boulevard--the quarter between the Opera and the Rue
Drouot.
"By virtue of a selection which no one contested," says the author
just quoted, "nobody was tolerated there who could not lay claim to
some sort of distinction or originality. There seemed to exist a kind
of invisible moral barrier, closing this area against the mediocre,
the insipid, and the insignificant, who passed by, but did not linger,
knowing that their place was not there."
The headquarters of the noble company of the Boulevard was the famous Cafe
de Paris, at the corner of the Rue Taitbout. Dumas, Balzac, and Alfred de
Musset were to be seen there twice or thrice a week; the eccentric Lord
Seymour, founder of the French Jockey Club, had his own table there. Lola,
doubtless, often tasted the unsurpassed _cuisine_ of this celebrated
restaurant, for she soon penetrated into the circle of the Olympians, and
was presented with the freedom of the Boulevard.
She met Claudin (who indeed knew everybody).
"Lola Montez," he says, "was an enchantress. There was about her
something provoking and voluptuous which drew you. Her skin was white,
her wavy hair like the tendrils of the woodbine, her eyes tameless and
wild, her mouth like a budding pomegranate. Add to that a dashing
figure, charming feet, and perfect grace. Unluckily," the notice
concludes, "as a dancer she had no talent."
That multiple personality whom Vandam embodies in "An Englishman in Paris"
admits that Lola was naturally graceful, that her gait and carriage were
those of a duchess. When he goes on to say that her wit was that of a
pot-house, I seem to detect one of his not infrequent lapses from the
truth. Only three years had elapsed since Lola had shone in Court circles
in India, where the social atmosphere was not that of a bar-room; and
since then she had been wandering about in countries where her ignorance
of the language must have left her manner of speech and modes of thought
almost unaffected. Pot-house wit would not have fascinated Liszt, nor the
fastidious Louis of Bavaria. "Men of far higher intellectual attainments
than mine, and familiar with very good society," admits our nebulous
chronicler,[8] "raved and kept raving about her."
Dumas, he says in another place, was as much smitten with her as her other
admirers. This, of course, is no guarantee of her refinement, for the
genial Creole had the reputation of not being over nice in his attachments
and amours. He was then in the prime of life, and may be considered to
have just reached the zenith of his fame by the publication of "Les Trois
Mousquetaires," "Monte Cristo," and "La Reine Margot" (1844-5). Two years
before he had formally and legally married Mademoiselle Ida Ferrier--this
step, so inconsistent with his temperament and mode of life, having
resulted from his own reckless disregard of the conventions. The lady had
fascinated him while she was interpreting a _role_ of his creation at the
Porte-St.-Martin. It did not strike him that it would be irregular to take
her with him to a ball given by his patron, the Duke of Orleans, and he
straightway did so. "Of course, my dear Dumas," said His Highness affably,
"it is only your _wife_ that you would think of presenting to me." Poor
Alexandre, the lover of all women and none in particular, was hoisted with
his own petard. A prince's hints, above all when he is your patron and
publisher, are commands. Dumas was led to the altar, like a sheep to the
slaughter, by the charming Ida. Chateaubriand supported the bridegroom
through the ordeal. However the chains of matrimony sat lightly on the
irrepressible _romancier_. Madame Dumas soon after departed for Florence,
greatly to the relief of her spouse. He was living, at the time of Lola's
visit to Paris, at the Villa Medicis at St. Germain. There he could
superintend the building of his palace of Monte Cristo, on the road to
Marly, a part of which, with imperturbable _sang-froid_, he actually
raised on the land belonging to a neighbour, without so much as a "by your
leave." This ambitious residence emptied Dumas's pockets of the little
money that the ladies he loved had left in them.
[Illustration: ALEXANDRE DUMAS, SENIOR.]
Alexandre, of course, fell passionately in love with Lola Montez. We need
no written assurance of that. We read that he told her that she had acted
"like a gentleman" in her treatment of Frederick William's policemen, and
with what far-fetched compliments he followed up this commendation it is
easy to imagine. There were certain resemblances in their temperaments,
though the woman was far the stronger. Posterity is never likely to agree
on an estimate of Dumas's character. Theodore de Banville thought him a
truly great man.
"Dumas," he wrote, "had no more need to husband his strength and his
vitality than a river has to economise with its waters, and it seemed,
in fact, that he held in his strong hands inexhaustible urns, whence
flowed a stream always clear and limpid. In what formidable metal had
he been cast? Once he took it into his head to take his son,
Alexandre, to the masked ball of Grados, at the Barriere Montparnasse,
and, attired as a postilion, the great man danced all night without
resting for a moment, and held women with his outstretched arm, like a
Hercules. When he returned home in the morning, he found that his
postilion's breeches had, through the swelling of the muscles, become
impossible to remove; so Alexandre was obliged to cut them into strips
with a penknife. After that what did the historian of the
Mousquetaires do? Do you think he chose his good clean sheets or a
warm bath? He chose work! And having taken some _bouillon_, set
himself down before his writing paper, which he continued to fill with
adventures till the evening, with as much 'go' and spirit as if he had
come from calm repose.
"Nature has given up making that kind of man; by way of a change, she
turns out poets, who, having composed a single sonnet, pass the rest
of their lives contemplating themselves and--their sonnets."
Prodigious! It is gratifying to think that this indefatigable worker had
always two sincere admirers--himself and his son. The latter, it is true,
would have his joke at the former's expense. "My father," remarked the
son, "is so vain that he would be ready to hang on to the back of his own
carriage, to make people believe he kept a black servant."
Notwithstanding, the two loved each other tenderly. Innumerable anecdotes
bear witness to the paternal fondness of the one, the filial devotion of
the other. Yet their relation was more that of two sworn friends, as is so
touchingly expressed in these lines from the "Pere Prodigue":--
"... I have sought your affection, more than your obedience and
respect.... To have all in common, heart as well as purse, to give and
to tell each other everything, such has been our device. We have lost,
it seems, several hundred thousands of francs; but this we have
gained--the power of counting always on one another, thou on me, I on
thee, and of being ready always to die for each other. That is the
most important thing between father and son."
These are the words of Frenchmen. An Englishman would have put such
language into the mouths of husband and wife.
Enjoying the friendship of Dumas _pere_, Lola no doubt had the privilege
of meeting Alexandre junior. The young man was then in his twenty-first
year, and had piled up debts to the respectable total of fifty thousand
francs. It was just about this time, as has been said, that he turned his
attention to literature. He found "copy" for his most celebrated work in
the pale, flower-like courtesan, Alphonsine Plessis, who shared with Lola
the devotion of the erotic Boulevard. The two were women of very different
stamp. The Irish woman confronted the world with head erect and flashing
eyes; the Lady of the Camellias, with a blush and trembling lips. They
were typical of two great classes of women: those who rule men, and those
whom men rule. The loved of the God of Love died young. After Alphonsine's
early death, the fair Parisiennes flocked to her apartments, as to the
shrine of some patron saint, and touched, as though they were precious
relics, her jewellery and trinkets, her _lingerie_, and her slippers.
X
MERY
Another most delightful friend had Lola--he whom she refers to in her
autobiography as "the celebrated poet, Mery." To describe this charming
and impossible personage as a poet, is to indicate only one department of
his genius: as a dramatist he was not far inferior to his great
contemporaries, as a novelist he revealed an amazing power of paradox, and
a bewildering fertility of imagination. He wrote descriptions of countries
he had never seen (though he had travelled far), which, by their accuracy
and colour, deceived and delighted the very natives. He was not merely
rich in rhymes, said Dumas, he was a millionaire. He could write, too, in
more serious vein, and was a profound and ardent classicist.
In 1845 Mery was approaching his half-century. Thirty years before he had
come to Paris from Marseilles in hot pursuit of a pamphleteer who had
dared to attack him. He found time to cross swords with somebody else, and
got the worst of the encounter. As a result he took a voyage to Italy for
the benefit of his health. His adventures remind us alternatively of those
of Brantome and Benvenuto Cellini. At a later period he was associated
with Barthelemy in an intrigue for the restoration of the Bonapartes; and
went to pay his respects to Queen Hortense, while his colleague vainly
endeavoured to talk with the Eaglet through the gilded bars of his cage.
Mery could, in short, do everything, and everything very well. He
possessed the faculty of turning base metal into gold. Geese in his eyes
became swans, and in every lump of literary coke he saw a diamond of the
purest ray. It was, above all, in his dramatic criticism, remarks De
Banville, that this faculty produced the most surprising results.
"One day, reading in Mery's review the pretended recital of a comedy
of which I was the author, I could not but admire its gaiety, grace,
unexpected turns, and happy confusion, and I said to myself: 'Ah, if
only this comedy were really the one I wrote!'"
On another occasion, says the poet, at the theatre,
"he said to me: 'What a superb drama!'--and he was perfectly right.
The play, as he described it to me, was, in fact, superb, only
unfortunately it had been entirely reconstructed by Mery on the absurd
foundation imagined by Mr. * * *. The _denouement_ he invented--for
though the third act was not finished, he spoke of the fifth as an old
acquaintance--was of such tragic power and daring originality, that
after hearing him expound it, I had no desire to witness Mr. * * *'s."
Reviewers and dramatic critics of this kind are now, unhappily, rare.
These few anecdotes sufficiently justify De Banville's claim that Mery was
something altogether unheard of and fabulously original. He should have
been (and probably was) the happiest of men, and his peculiar powers must
have lightened his critical labours as much as they benefited those he
criticised. He was as incapable of envy as Dumas was of rancour. Certainly
no more lovable and agreeable creature ever haunted the slopes of
Parnassus.
I doubt if such men would be appreciated in our society. Ours is the reign
of the glum Boeotian. We know not how to converse, and wits are as dead
as kings' jesters. There is no scholarship in our senate, and the standard
of oratory there would not have satisfied an Early Victorian debating
society. If we talk less, assuredly we do not think the more. Every
social, political, and religious idea that occupies our dull brains had
entered into the consciousness of the men of the 'forties. They thought
quickly and talked brilliantly. Their young men were youths--full of fire,
enthusiasm, love, and fun. They did not talk about the advantages of
devotion to business in early life. They were not born tired. Wonderful,
too, as it may seem, people in those days used to like to meet each other
in social converse, and were not ashamed to admit it. It was not then
fashionable to affect a disinclination for society--the handiest excuse
for an inability to talk and to think. Lola Montez learned in Paris what
was meant by the _joie de vivre_. In '45 wit was at the prow and pleasure
at the helm.
XI
DUJARIER
As an _artiste_, Lola was naturally anxious to conciliate the Press, which
had not spoken too kindly of her first performance on the Paris stage.
Gautier's unflattering notice had appeared in one of the most influential
newspapers--_La Presse_. This journal was under the direction of the
famous De Girardin, the Harmsworth of his generation. Till 1st July 1836
the lowest annual subscription to any newspaper in Paris was eighty
francs; on that day De Girardin issued the first number of _La Presse_ at
a subscription of forty francs a year. This startling reduction in the
price of news excited, of course, no little animosity, but its successful
results were immediately manifest. The daring journalist's next innovation
was the creation of the _feuilleton_. The new paper prospered exceedingly,
though it represented the views of the editor rather than those of any
large section of the public. In 1840 De Girardin acquired a half of the
property, the other being held by Monsieur Dujarier, who assumed the
functions of literary editor.
In 1845 Dujarier was a young man of twenty-nine, a writer of no mean
ability, and a smart journalist. He was well known to all the Olympians of
the Boulevard, and entered with zest into the gay life of Paris. Lola
became acquainted with him soon after her arrival in the capital, probably
in an effort to win the paper over to her side. He spent, she tells us,
almost every hour he could spare from his editorial duties with her, and
in his society she rapidly ripened in a knowledge of politics. But before
her political education had proceeded far, the woman's beauty and the
man's wit had produced the effect that might have been looked for. "They
read no more that day"--Lola and Dujarier loved each other.
"This," continues our heroine, "was in autumn [the autumn of '44], and the
following spring the marriage was to take place." I fancy the word
"marriage" is introduced here out of respect for the susceptibilities of
the American public. The Old Guard of the Boulevard, in Louis Philippe's
golden reign, _se fianca mais ne se maria pas_. Besides, Lola was still
legally the wife of that remote and forgotten officer, Captain James. "It
was arranged that Alexandre Dumas and the celebrated poet, Mery, should
accompany them on their marriage tour through Spain." Dumas, Mery, and
Lola, to say nothing of Dujarier, travelling together through
Andalusia--here would have been a gallant company indeed, with which one
would have gladly made a voyage even to Tartarus and back! The narrative,
too, of the journey would have permanently enriched literature. But the
scheme has gone, these sixty years, to the cloudy nether-world of glorious
dreams unrealized.