life in a Mayfair lodging-house were not, however, likely to content a
woman who had lately ruled a kingdom. Experience, it is true, had taught
Lola to set limits to her ambition. She had succeeded in her design of
hooking a prince, but the catch had been torn off the hook with
considerable violence to the angler. It was of no use again to cast her
line into royal waters. The fish were now too wary. After the ordeal
through which she had passed, Lola sighed for some enduring ties and an
established position. She yearned as the most fiery and erratic do at one
time or another, for a home. Some think that they who have loved most,
love best; but I imagine Lola was a trifle weary of love just then, and
longed for some felicity more stable and material. She inclined, in fact,
towards the sweet yoke of domesticity, which was quite a fashionable
institution in England at that time. Among her visitors was a Mr. George
Trafford Heald, son of a rich Chancery barrister, and a cornet in the
Second Life Guards. This gallant officer is described as a tall young man,
of juvenile figure and aspect, with straight hair and small light brown
downy mustachios and whiskers; his turned-up nose gave him an air of great
simplicity. As, however, he had, on his coming of age in January 1849,
inherited a fortune of between six and seven thousand pounds per annum, he
was considered, especially by unattached ladies, in and out of society, a
very interesting person. He was very much in love with the Countess of
Landsfeld who, no doubt, easily persuaded herself that she entertained a
strong affection for so eligible a suitor. In this respect Lola was, it is
safe to say, no more mercenary than half the good and well-brought-up
young ladies who were looking out for a good match that season. Heald
seems to have been what women call a nice boy; in many ways he probably
contrasted favourably with Lola's bolder, more experienced wooers. So when
(with many blushes, and in shy stammering words, I doubt not) he offered
the adventuress his hand and heart and fortune, she was able without any
natural repugnance to consent to be his wife.
That she ever doubted that she was free to wed again is not to be
supposed. In all likelihood, she had been made acquainted with her divorce
from Captain James only through the medium of the newspapers, and these
would lead any one to believe that the divorce had been made absolute. It
was, therefore, without any apprehension that she married Cornet Heald at
St. George's, Hanover Square, on 19th July 1849. As she left the church on
the arm of her youthful husband, she must have thought half-regretfully of
the career of adventure that was ended, and yet looked forward with
complacency to the life of respectability and affluence that seemed to
stretch before her.
Vain hope! By the common domestic women of her time Lola was regarded with
bitter hatred. It is unnecessary to analyse this species of animosity. It
is compounded, apparently, of jealousy, of some vague religious sentiment
of inherited prejudice, and of the trade-unionist's dislike for the
blackleg. This attitude, though instinctive, is not unreasonable on the
part of the vast numbers of women who consider marriage a profession, but
it is more difficult to understand in the case of an aged lady, long since
resigned to celibacy. Such a spinster was Miss Susanna Heald, of
Headington Grove, Horncastle, the aunt of Cornet George. This lady
manifested great displeasure at her nephew's marriage; and, certain facts
having been communicated to her by Lola's numerous enemies, she forthwith
set in motion that efficient engine of man's injustice, the English law.
The honeymoon of the newly-wed pair, if they had one at all, was brief,
for it was on 6th August, at nine o'clock in the morning, as the Countess
of Landsfeld was stepping into her carriage, at 27 Halfmoon Street, that
Police Sergeant Gray and Inspector Whall quietly requested a word or two
with her. They explained that they held a warrant for her arrest on a
charge of bigamy, she having intermarried with Cornet Heald while her
lawful husband, Captain James, was still alive. Lola replied that she had
been divorced from the captain by an act of Parliament. She added with
characteristic petulence: "I don't know whether Captain James is alive or
not, and I don't care. I was married in a wrong name, and it wasn't a
legal marriage. Lord Brougham was present when the divorce was granted,
and Captain Osborne can prove it. What will the King say?" she murmured,
as an after-thought, and referring no doubt to her late royal protector.
They drove to the police-station, and thence to Marlborough Street Police
Court. The rumour of the arrest had spread abroad, and the approaches to
the court were thronged with people, eager to get a glimpse of the famous
Countess of Landsfeld. The "respectable married women" in the crowd no
doubt exulted at the anticipated downfall of the woman who could bind
men's hearts without the chains of law or Church.
"About half-past one o'clock," says the reporter, "the Countess of
Landsfeld, leaning on the arm of Mr. Heald, her present husband, came
into court, and was accommodated with a seat in front of the bar. Mr.
Heald was also allowed to have a chair beside her. The lady appeared
quite unembarrassed, and smiled several times as she made remarks to
her husband. She was stated to be 24 years of age on the police-sheet,
but has the look of a woman of at least 30. [She was, in fact, 31.]
She was dressed in black silk, with close fitting black velvet jacket,
a plain white straw bonnet trimmed with blue, and blue veil. In figure
she is rather plump, and of middle height, of pale dark complexion,
the lower part of the features symmetrical, the upper part not so
good, owing to rather prominent cheek bones, but set off by a pair of
unusually large blue eyes with long black lashes. Her reputed husband,
Mr. Heald, during the whole of the proceedings, sat with the
countess's hand clasped in both of his own, occasionally giving it a
fervent squeeze, and at particular parts of the evidence whispering to
her with the fondest air, and pressing her hand to his lips with
juvenile warmth."[22]
The magistrate, Mr. Peregrine Bingham, having taken his seat, Mr.
Clarkson opened the case for the prosecution. "Sir," he began, "however
painful the circumstances under which the lady who sits at my left (Miss
Heald) is placed, she has felt it to be a duty to her deceased brother,
the father of the young gentleman now in court, to lay before you the
evidence of this young gentleman's marriage with the lady at the bar, and
also other evidence which has led her to impute the offence of bigamy to
that lady." The learned counsel then went on to state that Lola had been
married to Thomas James in Ireland, in July 1837, that a divorce only a
_toro et mensa_ (_i.e._, a judicial separation) had been pronounced by the
Consistory Court in 1842, and that Captain James was alive in India
thirty-six days before the celebration of the second marriage with Heald.
He deprecated any sort of allusion to the defendant's distinction or
notoriety, concluding: "I am further bound to state that this proceeding
is on the part of the aunt, Miss Heald, without the consent of Mr. Heald,
her nephew, who would, no doubt, if he could, prevent these proceedings
from being carried on. No one, I think, will venture to impugn the motives
or the purity of the intentions of Miss Heald in taking this step. My
application is for the lady at the bar to be remanded till we can get the
proper witnesses from India to come forward."
Miss Heald, who went into the witness-box, explained her relationship to
the accused's second husband, said she had been his guardian, and stated
she considered it was her duty to prosecute this enquiry. When old ladies
do any one a bad turn or make themselves a nuisance, they always explain
that they are prompted by a sense of duty. For my part, I take up the
challenge thrown down sixty years ago by Mr. Clarkson, and I impugn the
purity of his client's motives. If it had been her object to prevent any
family complications in the future, such as might have arisen from the
birth of children to Lola and her nephew, she could have laid the facts
before them in private; and if they had refused to separate, she should
have remained for ever silent. I entertain no doubt whatever that Miss
Susanna Heald wished to ruin the Countess of Landsfeld, and that this was
at any rate one of her motives in instituting police court proceedings.
The rest of the evidence was purely formal, and included the testimony of
Captain Ingram, in whose ship Lola had come to England seven years before.
Mr. Bodkin appeared on behalf of the lady, who had been dragged that
morning to a station-house, to answer a charge which, in all his
professional experience, was perfectly unparalleled. He never recollected
a case of bigamy in which neither the first nor the second husband came
forward in the character of a complaining party. The matter, would,
however, undergo investigation, and if anything illegal had been done,
those who had done the illegality would be held responsible for their
conduct. As far as the proof had gone he was willing to admit enough had
been laid before the court to justify further enquiry. At the proper time
he should be prepared to show that the marriage with Mr. Heald was a
lawful act. It would seem that the lady had been married when about
fifteen or sixteen years old, and that a divorce had taken place. It was
evident that the lady had a strong impression that a divorce bill had been
obtained in the House of Lords. This, however, might be a mistake, into
which the lady would be likely to fall from her ignorance of our laws.
Enough had been stated to show that even had the imputed offence been
committed, it had been committed in circumstances that appeared to justify
the act. He asked the court to admit the lady to bail, to appear upon such
a day as might be agreed upon. It was in the highest degree improbable
that the parties most interested would attempt to evade an enquiry of this
sort. He made no reflection on the motives of the prosecution, but it must
be clear that a private and not a public object originated the
proceedings.
Mr. Bodkin had not detected the flaw in his adversary's case, and he had
conceded too much to the prosecution. The magistrate's decision must have
mortified his professional feelings as much as it chagrined the amiable
Miss Heald.
"Mr. Bingham, after a short consultation with Mr. Hardwick, said: 'It
is observable in the present case that the person most immediately
interested (a person of full age and holding a commission in Her
Majesty's army) is not the person to institute or to countenance the
prosecution. It is quite compatible with the evidence now produced
that the accused may have received by the same mail from India a few
hours later than the official return, a letter communicating the death
of Captain James from cholera or some other casualty. The law presumes
she is innocent till the usual proof of guilt is brought forward. Here
that proof is wanting, and the magistrate is requested to act on a
presumption of guilt. I feel great reluctance in doing so, even to the
extent of a remand without an assurance on the part of the prosecutor
that the evidence necessary to ensure a conviction will certainly be
producible on a future occasion. No such assurance can be given in
this case, because between the 13th June and the last marriage, a
period of nearly six weeks, Captain James may have been snatched from
life by any of those numerous casualties by which life is beset in a
military profession and a tropical climate. However, upon the express
admission of the advocate that in his judgment sufficient ground has
been laid for further enquiry, and upon his offer to find security, I
shall venture to order a remand, and to liberate the prisoner, upon
finding two sureties in L500 each, and herself L1,000, for her
reappearance here on a future day.'
"Bail was immediately tendered and accepted. The Countess of Landsfeld
and her husband were allowed to remain some time in court in order to
elude the gaze of the crowd."
Her counsel's blunder had cost Lola and her husband two thousand pounds.
The prosecution succeeded in ruining the beautiful woman against whom it
was directed. A spiteful old lady had taken advantage of a bad law. The
whole proceedings were cruel and vindictive. A law framed by bigots and
administered by idiots condemned a woman to lose her conjugal rights; and
when she attempted to contract new ties and create for herself a home, it
threatened her with the punishment of a felon. Decrees like that of Dr.
Lushington impose on women the alternatives of celibacy and prostitution.
Lola, who was too human for the one, and too highly organised for the
other, was accordingly bludgeoned, defamed, and driven out of society.
Somewhere between this world and Nirvana there should be a flaming hell
for the makers of our ancient English law; though, perhaps, we should seek
them in the limbo of unbaptized innocents and idiots.
Lola did not share the magistrate's belief in the probability of Captain
James having been carried off by accident or fever. On the contrary, she
thought it likely that Miss Heald would succeed in producing him in court.
To defeat the malice of her enemies, she and Heald took their departure
for the continent, _via_ Folkestone and Boulogne, the day after her
appearance at Marlborough Street, as an announcement in the _Morning
Herald_ testifies. For the next two years we have no reliable information
as to the movements or the doings of the pair. Certain particulars are
supplied by Eugene de Mirecourt, a wholly untrustworthy writer, who speaks
ill of everybody, especially of Lola, and is again and again to be
convicted of palpable and serious errors. According to his version,[23]
the newly married couple proceeded in the first instance to Spain, where
two children were born to them. Here Monsieur de Mirecourt makes the first
heavy draft on our credulity, for we can find elsewhere no trace of or
allusion to the existence of any children of Lola Montez, who could have
had no possible interest in abandoning or repudiating them, since they
would have constituted a powerful claim on her wealthy young husband and
his affluent relatives. Despite these pledges of affection, we are told,
the domestic life of the Healds was troubled by violent quarrels. At
Barcelona, in an access of fury, Lola stabbed her husband with a stiletto.
The wounded man took to flight, but, unable to stifle his love for his
wife, returned to her with assurances of renewed affection. However, he
soon found reason to regret this step, and at Madrid again deserted the
conjugal roof. Lola advertised for him as for a lost dog, and rewarded
the person who found and restored him to her. Here Monsieur de Mirecourt's
effervescent Gallic humour seems to have betrayed him into what is at
least unplausible.
"Paris," he goes on to say, "had next the honour of sheltering this
extraordinary couple. Madame sate for her portrait to Claudius
Jacquand, but was obliged to interrupt the sitting every day on word
being brought that her husband was about to take to flight. On one
occasion she was obliged to pursue him as far as Boulogne. Claudius
Jacquand painted them both together [this rather conflicts with the
sense of the foregoing sentences], the husband presenting his wife
with a rich _parure_ of diamonds. When a definite rupture of their
relations was decided upon, Heald wished the canvas to be cut in two,
as he objected to appearing beside Lola. She, however, obtained
possession of the picture in its entirety, and kept it in her room,
with its face turned to the wall. 'My husband,' she explained, 'ought
not to see everything I do. It wouldn't be decent.'
"The husband, upon his return to London, obtained a decree of nullity
of marriage, and the year following was drowned at Lisbon, the swell
of a passing steamer swamping the skiff in which he was taking his
pleasure."
Our delightfully unreliable informant adds that Captain James died in
1852, whereas he lived to witness the Franco-German war. De Mirecourt
aimed rather at being funny than accurate, and succeeded in being neither
one nor the other. In substance his carefully-seasoned story is true. Lola
herself refers to her marriage with Heald as another unfortunate
experience in matrimony. There was, no doubt, a fundamental difference in
their temperaments, and the vagrant life in France and Spain must have
brought out only too well the wife's capacity for adventure, as much as it
must have bored and irritated the well-connected young Englishman. In
London they might have pulled together very well. He would have had his
club and his race-meetings; she would have had her well-appointed
household, her _salon_, and her box at the Opera. Miss Susanna Heald's
interference destroyed Lola's dream of an established position, and
wrecked two lives.
XXVIII
WESTWARD HO!
In the year 1851, the Countess of Landsfeld might well have reflected,
with Byron--
"Through Life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing--except thirty-three."
She had practically exhausted the possibilities of the old world. In Paris
she met with an American agent, named Edward Willis, who made her an offer
(in theatrical parlance) for New York. Such a proposal appealed at once to
this restless woman, in whom no series of misfortunes could extinguish the
thirst for novelty and adventure. Other and more distinguished exiles who
had been worsted in the fight with Europe's archaic traditions were also
turning their faces westward. The _Humboldt_, in which Lola sailed from
Southampton on 20th November 1851, bore, as its most illustrious
passenger, the patriot Kossuth. Of this great Magyar our adventuress saw
little, for he was confined to his cabin during the greater part of the
voyage with seasickness; what she did see she seems to have liked little.
She thought him (so she told the reporter of the _New York Tribune_)
sinister and distant. She, on an element with which she had been familiar
since childhood, was brilliant and sprightly.
The _Humboldt_ arrived at New York on Friday, 5th December 1851, and was
received with a salute of thirty-one guns--in honour, it need hardly be
said, of Kossuth, not of the Countess of Landsfeld. She was not altogether
overlooked in the transports of enthusiasm and public rejoicings with
which the American people hailed the exiled hero. She was promptly
interviewed by the newspaper men, who were surprised to find that she was
not a masculine woman, but rather slim in her stature.
"She has," continues the report, "a face of great beauty, and a pair
of black [_sic_] Spanish eyes, which flash fire when she is speaking,
and make her, with the sparkling wit of her conversation, a great
favourite in company. She has black hair, which curls in ringlets by
the sides of her face, and her nose is of a pure Grecian cast, while
her cheek bones are high, and give a Moorish appearance to her face.
"She states that many bad things have been said of her by the American
Press, yet she is not the woman she has been represented to be: if she
were, her admirers, she believes, would be still more numerous. She
expresses herself fearful that she will not be properly considered in
New York, but hopes that a discriminating public will judge of her
after having seen her, and not before."[24]
New York and its people in the middle of the last century have been
portrayed unkindly, but I do not think unfairly, by Charles Dickens. That
great novelist visited the country for the first time only seven years
before Lola landed, and his impressions are largely embodied in "Martin
Chuzzlewit." With the type of American delineated therein, it is evident
that the Countess of Landsfeld knew exactly how to deal. She succeeded at
once in disarming an intensely puritanical people by enthusiastic appeals
to their childlike national vanity, by delighted acquiescence in their
laughable self-righteousness. Colonel Diver and General Choke could with
difficulty have bettered her allusion to their Great Country as "this
stupendous asylum of the world's unfortunates, and last refuge of the
victims of the tyranny and wrongs of the Old World! God grant," devoutly
prays the Countess, "that it may ever stand as it is now, the noblest
column of liberty that was ever reared beneath the arch of heaven!" At the
conclusion of her autobiography the American people are told that the
pilgrim from the effete forms of Europe must look upon their great
Republic with as happy an eye as the storm-tossed and shipwrecked mariner
looks upon the first star that shines beneath the receding tempest. These
words, indeed, are Mr. Chauncy Burr's, but the sentiments beyond doubt are
those that Lola constantly affected. Her mastery over men, as is always
the case, was due not so much to her physical charms as to her skill in
detecting their weakest sides. It says much for her shrewdness that she
who had hitherto found it safest to appeal to men through their passions,
perceived that the cold Yankee was most vulnerable through so artificial
and dispassionate a sentiment as patriotism. Every other woman of her
experience would have assumed that the animal predominated in all men, of
whatever race or country.
[Illustration: LOLA MONTEZ. (After Jules Laure).]
No amount of judicious flattery could, however, blind the Great and
Critical American Public to the fair stranger's imperfections as an
actress and a dancer. On 27th December she appeared in the title _role_ of
_Betly, the Tyrolean_, a musical comedy written especially for her, at the
Broadway Theatre. It was expected that she would prove a powerful
attraction, and seats for the first performance were put up to public
auction on the preceding Saturday. But the piece was withdrawn on 19th
January 1852, public curiosity having by then been satisfied, and what
taste there was in New York not much gratified. Lola, however, secured an
engagement at the Walnut Street Theatre, at Philadelphia, that dull,
colourless city, which formed the most incongruous of all possible
settings for her personality. In May, when a faint breath of romance seems
to rustle the trees even in Union Square, she went back to New York. On
the 18th she appeared again at the Broadway Theatre in a dramatised
version of her career in Munich, written by C. P. T. Ware. She appeared as
herself, in the characters of the Danseuse, the Politician, the Countess,
the Revolutionist, and the Fugitive. The part of King Louis was sustained
by Mr. Barry, and Abel--the villain of the piece--by F. Conway. The play
ran five nights only. Even during these brief runs, and though the prices
at New York theatres did not exceed a dollar in those days, Lola had
amassed a considerable sum of money; but she was by nature prodigal, and
easily outpaced the swiftest current of Pactolus. She now hit on a
somewhat original scheme, which quickly replenished her exchequer. She
organised receptions, to which any one paying a dollar was admitted for
the space of a quarter of an hour, to shake her by the hand, gaze upon her
in all the splendour of her beauty, and converse with her in English,
French, German, or Spanish. The function was hardly consistent with the
Countess's dignity, but it revealed in a striking manner her knowledge of
the American character. To shake hands with a well-known personage is
esteemed by your average Yankee a greater privilege than visiting the
Acropolis or wading in the Jordan.
From New York Lola proceeded to New Orleans, that queer old city of
creoles and canals.
"A Canadian named Jones," relates De Mirecourt, "acted as her agent,
and as there was reason to fear that in this deeply religious state,
her scandalous history might dispose the public against her, the
following plan was devised.
"It was reported in the Louisiana journals that the Countess of
Landsfeld, who had recently arrived in America, was distributing alms
in abundance to the poor, the sick, and the captive, to make amends
for her misspent life.
"This announcement having taken some effect, the newspapers went on to
inform the public that the famous Countess was shortly about to enter
religion; the best informed went so far as to name the day on which
she would take the veil.
"But on the appointed day, behold a third and startling item of news!
"Senora Lola Montez, yielding to that instinct of inconstancy so
strong in her sex, is announced to have chosen the Opera instead of
the Cloister.
"That evening the theatre was crowded to suffocation, and the
following days the receipts were enormous."
De Mirecourt, who pronounced young Heald's desire to marry Lola in due and
proper form, _idee d'Anglais_, must be allowed his sneer. We who know in
what spirit the adventuress ended her career, and to what strange impulses
she was subject, may hesitate to dismiss her momentary attraction to the
cloister as a mere advertising manoeuvre. The woman was disillusioned,
sore at heart, and world-weary; her restlessness bespeaks a mind ill at
ease; her beauty showed signs of fading, she had no home, no ties, no
kindred. It is likely that for a moment her resolve to end her days in the
supposed tranquillity of the convent was genuine enough. It passed; as yet
the joy of living was too strong in her to be crushed down.
XXIX
IN THE TRAIL OF THE ARGONAUTS