A PASSIONATE PILGRIMAGE
I
The "departure for St. Petersburg" was a stretch of Fitzball's
imagination. Where Lola did go when she left England was not to
Russia, but to Belgium. The visit was not a success, as none of the
theatres in Brussels at which she applied for an engagement exhibited
any interest in ballet-dancers, whether they came from Seville, or
elsewhere. A spell of ill luck followed; and, if her own account of
this period is to be trusted, she was reduced to such a pass that in
the Belgian capital she became familiar with the inside of pawnshops
and had to sing in the streets, to secure a lodging. But this "singing
in the streets" business was, if a picturesque one, not an original
touch. It is still in active use, as a stock portion of the
autobiographical equipment of every stage and film heroine who wants
"publicity." Further, if Lola Montez ever did anything of the kind, it
was not for long. A "rich man"--she had a knack of establishing
contact with them--promptly came to the rescue; and, assisted by, it
is said, the mysterious Jean Francois Montez, who had followed her
from London, she shook the inhospitable dust of the Brussels
boulevards off her feet.
It was in Berlin that, in the autumn of 1843, long delayed Fortune
smiled on her. A novelty being wanted, she secured an engagement to
dance at a fête organised by Frederick William IV in honour of his
son-in-law, the Czar Nicholas, and a posse of Grand Dukes then
visiting Potsdam. The autocrat of all the Russias expressed himself as
highly pleased with the newcomer's efforts. The Berliners followed
suit. Lola was "made"; and every night for a month on end she was
booked up to dance somewhere.
While in the German capital, she is said to have had an encounter with
the arm of the law. The story is that, mounted on a blood horse, she
attended a review held in honour of the King and the Czar; and her
steed, being somewhat mettlesome, carried her at full tilt across the
parade ground and into the midst of the royal party assembled at the
saluting-point.
When an indignant policeman, bellowing _Verboten!_ at the top of his
voice, rushed up and clung to the bridle, he received for his pains a
vigorous cut from her whip. The next morning a summons was delivered
to the daring Amazon, ordering her to appear before a magistrate and
answer a charge of "insulting the uniform." Thereupon, Lola, feeling
that the general atmosphere was unfavourable, packed her trunks. She
managed to get away just in time, as a warrant for her arrest was
actually being made out. But if she did not leave Berlin with all the
honours of war, it is at any rate recorded that "she left this city of
pigs with a high head and a snapping of her fan."
The Odyssey continued. The next place where she halted was Dresden.
There the pilgrim swam into the orbit of Franz Liszt, who happened to
be giving a series of recitals. Born in 1811--the "year of the
Comet"--he was at the height of his powers when Lola Montez flashed
across his path. During an early visit to England, as a "boy prodigy,"
he had gathered considerable laurels. Windsor Castle had smiled upon
him, and he had played to George IV and to Queen Victoria. The chance
encounter with Lola was a fateful one for both of them. But, as it
happened, the virtuoso rather welcomed the prospect of a fresh
intrigue just then. Wearied of the romanticism of the phalanx of
feminine admirers, who clustered about him like bees, he found this
one, with her beauty and vivacious charm, to have a special appeal for
him. He responded to it avidly. The two became inseparable.
One evening, while _Rienzi_ was being performed, his latest charmer
accompanied Liszt to the Opera House, and, during an interval, joined
him in the dressing-room of Josef Tichatschek, the tenor. Hearing that
he was there, Wagner was coming to speak to him, "when he saw that his
companion was a painted and bejewelled woman with insolent eyes."
Thereupon, if his biographer is to be trusted, "the composer turned
and fled." Lola had routed "Rienzi."
Musicians will be musicians; and Liszt was no exception. With his love
affairs and his long catalogue of "conquests" in half the capitals of
Europe, he was generally regarded as a Don Juan of the keyboard. It is
said by James Huneker that, on leaving Dresden, Lola joined him in
Constantinople. In her memoirs she says nothing about wandering along
the shores of the Bosphorus in his company. Still, she says a good
deal about Sir Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, by whom, she
declares, she was given a letter to the Chief Eunuch, admitting her to
the Sultan's harem. But this, like many of her other statements, must
be taken with a generous pinch of salt.
During that memorable summer Liszt was specially invited to Bonn, to
unveil the Beethoven monument that had been erected there. The
ceremony attracted a distinguished gathering, and was witnessed by the
King and Queen of Russia, together with Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert. It was also witnessed by Lola Montez, who accompanied Liszt.
She was promptly recognised by Ignatz Moscheles; and, when they
discovered her presence, the reception committee were so upset that
they had her barred from the hotel in which rooms had been engaged for
the guest of honour. But it took more than this to keep her in the
background. While the speeches were in full swing, she forced her way
into the banquet-hall, and won over the prudish burghers by jumping on
the table and dancing to them.
The Prince Consort was shocked at the "liberty." Frederick William,
however, being more broad-minded, cracked a Teutonic jest.
"Lola is a Lorelei!" he declared, with an appreciative grin, when the
episode was reported to him. "What will she be up to next?"
An inevitable result of Liszt's dalliance with his new Calypso in the
various capitals that they visited together during the months that
followed was to shatter the relations that had existed for years
between himself and Madame d'Agoult. The virtuoso emerged from the
business badly, for the woman he had discarded in summary fashion for
a younger and more attractive one had sacrificed her name and her
reputation for his sake, and had also presented him with three pledges
of mutual affection. Infuriated at his callousness, she afterwards, as
"Daniel Stern," relieved her outraged feelings in a novel ("written to
calm her agitated soul"), _Nélida_, where Liszt, under a transparent
disguise, figured as "Guermann Regnier."
But the pace was too hot to last. Still, it was Liszt, and not Lola,
who cooled first. "With Lola, as with others, known and unknown, it
was," observes William Wallace, "_Da capo al Segno_." The story of the
final rupture between them, as given by Guy de Pourtales, has in it
something of the element of farce:
Liszt allowed her to make love to him, and amused himself
with this dangerous sweetheart. But without any conviction,
without any real curiosity. She annoyed, she irritated him
during his hours of work. Before long he planned to escape,
and, having arranged everything with the hotel porter, he
departed without leaving any address, but not without having
first locked this most wearisome of inamoratas up in her
room. For twelve hours Lola raised a fearful uproar,
breaking whatever she could lay her hands on.
Liszt, however, scenting this possibility, had settled the bill in
advance.
But the incident does not redound to his credit, for the spectacle of
a distinguished artist bribing a lackey to smuggle him out of an hotel
and imprison in her bedroom the woman with whom he had been living, is
a sorry one.
II
Having had enough of Germany for the time being, Lola decided to see
what France had to offer. "The only place for a woman of spirit," she
once said, "is Paris." Accordingly she betook herself there. As soon
as she arrived, she secured lodgings in a modest hotel near the Palais
Royal; and, well aware of her limitations, took some dancing lessons
from a ballet-master in the rue Lepelletier. When she had taken what
she considered enough, she called on Léon Pillet, the director of the
_Académie_.
"You have, of course, already heard of my immense success in London,"
she announced with an assured air.
M. Pillet had not heard of it. But this did not matter. As had been
the case with Lumley before him, Lola's ravishing smile inflamed his
susceptible heart; and he promptly engaged her to dance in the ballet
that was to follow Halévy's _Il Lazzarone_, then in active rehearsal.
Lola's début as a _première danseuse_ was made on March 30, 1844. It
was not a successful one. Far from it. The fact was, the Parisians,
accustomed to the dreamy and sylph-like pirouettings of Cerito and
Elssler and Taglioni, and their own Adèle Dumilâtre, could not
appreciate the vigorous _cachuchas_ and _boleros_ now offered them.
When they voiced their disapproval, Lola lost the one thing she could
never keep--her temper. She made a _moue_ at the audience; and, if de
Mirecourt is to be trusted, pulled off her garters (a second authority
says a more intimate item of attire) and flung them with a gesture of
contempt among the jeering crowd in the first row of stalls.
As may be imagined, the Press was unsympathetic towards this
"demonstration."
"We will avoid damaging with our strictures," remarked _Le
Constitutionnel_ in its next issue, "a pretty young woman who, before
making her début, has obviously not had time to study our
preferences."
A much more devastating criticism was published in _Le Journal des
Débats_ by Jules Janin. He went out of his way, indeed, to be
positively offensive. Nor did Théophile Gautier, who in his famous
waistcoat of crimson velvet was present on this eventful evening,
think very much of the would-be ballerina's efforts to win Paris.
Beyond, he wrote, a pair of magnificent dark eyes,
Mademoiselle Lola Montez has nothing suggestively Andalusian
in her appearance. She talks poor Spanish, scarcely any
French, and only tolerable English. The question is, to what
country does she really belong? We can affirm that she has
small feet and shapely legs. The extent, however, to which
these gifts serve her is quite another story.
It must be admitted that the public's curiosity aroused by
her altercations with the police of the North and her
whip-cracking exploits among the Prussian gendarmes has not
been satisfied. We imagine that Mademoiselle Lola would do
better on horseback than on the stage.
An odd account, headed: "Singular Début of Lola Montez in Paris," was
sent to New York by an American journalist:
"When, a few days ago, it was announced that two foreign
dancers, Mlle Cerito and Mlle Lola Montez, had just entered
the walls of Paris, the triumphs achieved by the Italian
ballerina could not eclipse the horse-whipping exploits of
Mlle Lola. 'Let us have Lola Montez!' exclaimed the stalls
and pit. 'We want to see if her foot is as light as her
hand!' Never did they witness a more astounding _entrée_.
After her first leap, she stopped short on the tips of her
toes, and, by a movement of prodigious rapidity, detached
one of her garters from a lissome limb adjacent to her
quivering thigh (innocent of _lingerie_) and flung it to the
occupants of the front row of the orchestra....
Notwithstanding the effect produced by this piquant
eccentricity, Mile Lola has not met with the reception she
anticipated; and it has been deemed proper by the management
to dispense with her reappearance."
But to give Lola her _congé_ by word of mouth was a task which M.
Pillet did not care to undertake. "So much was the haughty Amazon's
riding-whip dreaded that a letter of dismissal was prudently
delivered. As a result, bloodshed was avoided; and Mlle Lola has
solaced herself with the reflection that she has been the victim of
the Machiavellian cabal of Russia, still angry at her routing of
Muscovite gendarmes in Warsaw."
With reference to the Warsaw episode, the slipshod de Mirecourt says
that she was dancing there in 1839. At that date, however, she was no
nearer Warsaw than Calcutta. None the less, she did go there, but it
was not until she had left Paris after her failure at the Académie
Royale. According to herself, the Czar Nicholas, who remembered her in
Berlin, invited her to visit St. Petersburg, and, having a month to
spare, she accepted a preliminary engagement in the Polish capital.
This began well enough, for, if her terpsichorean abilities still left
something to be desired, the Warsaw critics, ever susceptible to
feminine charms, went into positive raptures about her personal
attractions. One of them, indeed, became almost lyrical on the
subject:
"Her soft silken hair," was this authority's opinion, "falls in
luxuriant wealth down her back, its glistening hue rivalling that of
the raven's wing; on a slender and delicate neck--the whiteness of
which eclipses swansdown--is poised a lovely face.... Where the
proportions are concerned, Lola's little feet are somewhere between
those of a Chinese maiden and those of the daintiest Parisienne
imaginable. As for her bewitching calves, they suggest the steps of a
Jacob's ladder transporting one up to heaven; and her ravishing
figure resembles the Venus of Cnidus, that immortal masterpiece
sculptured by the chisel of Praxiteles in the 104th Olympiad. As for
her eyes, her very soul is enshrined in their blue depths."
There was a lot more--several columns more--in a similar strain.
As was to be expected, such a tribute attracted the attention of
Prince Ivan Paskievich, the Viceroy of Poland. He had a weakness for
pretty women; and, after the long succession of lumpy and heavy-footed
ballerinas occupying the Warsaw stage, this new arrival sounded
promising. When a trusted emissary reported that the critics "had not
said half what they might," he resolved to make her acquaintance. His
first step was to send her, through Madam Steinkeller, the wife of a
banker, an invitation to have supper with him at his private house.
Lola, flattered by the invitation, and less clear-headed than usual,
was sufficiently trusting to accept. She soon, however, discovered
that his Excellency's intentions were strictly dishonourable, for he
made her, she afterwards said, "a most indelicate proposition." Her
response was to laugh in his face, and to tell him that "she had no
wish to become his toy." Thereupon, Paskievich, furious at such a
repulse (and unaccustomed to being thwarted by anyone, must less by a
ballet-dancer), dismissed her with threats of reprisals. The first of
these took the form of a visit from Colonel Abrahamowicz, the official
charged with "preserving morality in the Warsaw theatres." He
apparently interpreted his responsible functions in a fashion that
left something to be desired, for Lola complained that "his conduct
was so free that I took serious exception to it."
Paskievich then dealt his next card. This was to instruct his
understrapper to fill the theatre with a rabble and have her hissed
off the stage. Lola, however, was equal to the occasion. Advancing to
the footlights, before the terror-stricken manager could stop her, she
pointed to Colonel Abrahamowicz, sitting in a box, and exclaimed:
"Ladies and gentlemen, there is the dastard who attempts to revenge
himself on a pure woman who has scorned his infamous suggestions! I
ask your protection!"
Accompanied by M. Lesniowski, the editor of the _Warsaw Gazette_, she
returned to her lodgings, wondering what would happen next. She was
soon to discover, for the angry Colonel and a squad of police arrived
with a warrant for her arrest as an "undesirable." When, however, they
announced their purpose, she flourished a pistol in their faces and
declared that she would put a bullet through the first of them who
came near her. Realising that she meant what she said, and not anxious
to qualify for cheap martyrdom, Colonel Abrahamowicz was tactician
enough to withdraw. In the meantime, the public, learning what had
happened, sided with Lola and raised lusty shouts of "Down with the
Viceroy! Long live the Montez!"
Paskievich, who had crushed with an iron hand the rebellion of 1831,
had a short and sharp way with incipient revolutionaries; and, calling
out the troops, cleared the streets at the point of the bayonet. While
they were thus occupied, Lola slipped off to the French consul and
suggested that he should grant her his protection as a national. With
characteristic gallantry, he met her wishes. None the less, she had to
leave Warsaw the next morning, under escort to the frontier.
There were reprisals for a number of those who had taken her part.
Thus the manager of the theatre and the editor of the _Warsaw Gazette_
were dismissed; M. Steinkeller was imprisoned; and a dozen students
were publicly flogged.
"Tranquillity has been restored," was the official view of the
situation.
According to Lola herself (not, by the way, a very sound authority)
she went straight from Warsaw and the clutches of the lustful
Paskievich to St. Petersburg. Considering, however, that Poland was at
that period under the domination of the Czar, it is highly improbable
that, after her expulsion, she could have set foot in Russia without
a passport. Had she been sufficiently daring to make the experiment,
she would assuredly have been clapped into fetters and packed off to
Siberia.
Lola's motto was "courage, and shuffle the cards." Undeterred by her
previous failure there, she went back to Paris, to try her luck a
second time.
Luck came to her very soon, for she had scarcely arrived in the
capital when she encountered a young Englishman, Mr. Francis Leigh, an
ex-officer of the 10th Hussars. Within a week the two were on such
intimate terms that they set up housekeeping together. But the harmony
was shattered abruptly by Lola, who, in a jealous fit, one day fired a
pistol at her "protector." As this was more than he could be expected
to stand, Mr. Leigh, deciding that they could not continue living
under the same roof, severed the relationship.
III
In 1845 the Paris of Louis-Philippe was, when Lola resumed her
acquaintance with it, a pleasant city in which to live. The star of
Baron Haussmann had not yet arisen; and the capital's vulgarisation
under the Second Empire had not then begun. John Bull still gave it a
wide berth; nor, except for a few stray specimens, were there any
hordes of tourists to gape at the "Froggies." Everything was cheap;
and most things were nice. Paris really was _La ville lumière_. Dull
care had been given its marching orders. All that was required of a
man was that he should be witty, and of a woman that she should be
entertaining. The world of the boulevards--with its cafés and
restaurants and theatres--was the accepted rallying point of the
authors and poets, the painters and musicians, and the lights
twinkling in the theatrical and journalistic firmaments, the men in
velveteen jackets and peg-top trousers, the women in flounced skirts
and shawls and elastic-sided boots. The mode of the moment.
[Illustration: _Abbé Liszt: Musician and Lover_]
Lola settled down among them, and was given a warm welcome. Among
others with whom she was soon on friendly terms was the famous (or,
perhaps, it would be better to say, notorious) Alphonsine Plessis. The
Lady of the Camelias had a large heart and a wide circle; and Liszt,
who was also back in Paris, was to be found among the guests attending
her "receptions" at her house on the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Lola,
who never cherished rancour, was prepared to let bygones be bygones,
and resumed relations with him. But this time they were short lived,
for the maestro was already dangling after another charmer, and, as
was his habit, left for Weimar without saying farewell. Lola took his
defection philosophically. As a matter of fact, she rather welcomed
it, for it solved a situation that was fast threatening to become
awkward. This was that she herself had now formed an intimacy with
somebody else.
Her new acquaintance was Charles Dujarier, a young man of five and
twenty, and a journalist of some distinction, being part proprietor
and feuilleton editor of _La Presse_. Lola met him in the friendly
atmosphere of a Bohemian café, where formal introductions were not
insisted upon. As was the custom in such an atmosphere, the friendship
ripened rapidly. Within a week of their first meeting the two set up
housekeeping together in the rue Lafitte. Before long there was talk
of marriage. But it did not get beyond talk, for Lola had put her head
in the matrimonial noose once--in her opinion, once too often--and she
had no desire to do so a second time. Apart from this consideration,
she was probably well aware that her divorce from the philandering
Thomas James had never been completed.
As Dujarier's acknowledged mistress, Lola was accepted without demur
as one of themselves by the literary and artistic "set" thronging the
cafés and salons they frequented. Gautier and Sue, with Claudin and
Méry and Dumas, were those habitués of whom she saw most; and
Ferdinand Bac (but nobody else) says that she was on intimate terms
with the austere M. Guizot.
Gustave Claudin declared that he met Lola Montez in Paris in the
spring of 1841. That she made an impression on him is evident from a
passage in his _Souvenirs_:
Lola Montez was a charmer. There was something--I do not
quite know what--about her appearance that was provocative
and voluptuous, and which attracted one. She had a white
skin, hair suggestive of the tendrils of honeysuckle, and a
mouth that could be compared with a pomegranate. Added to
this was a ravishing figure, charming feet, and perfect
grace. Unfortunately, as a dancer, she had very little
talent.
Towards the year 1845 the author of these notes saw much of
her. She wanted him to write her memoirs, and gave him some
material for them.... She was born in Seville in 1823, with
a French officer for a godfather and (as is the custom in
Spain) the city of Seville for a godmother. The adventures
of her life were written out by her in an exercise-book. She
told me that, at a ball in Calcutta, she had once refused to
waltz with a wealthy gentleman who was so encrusted with
diamonds that he resembled a snuff-box. When he asked her
the reason for refusing to dance, she replied: "Sir, I
cannot dance with you because you have hurt my foot." The
would-be waltzer was a chiropodist!
Writing, as he did, nearly fifty years after the episode to which he
thus refers, Claudin's memory was a little shaky. Thus Lola Montez was
born in Limerick in 1818, not, as he says, at Seville in 1823; nor
could Claudin have met her in Paris in the spring of 1841, as she had
not then left India.
Dujarier, according to Lola, was much impressed by her political
acumen, and employed her on "secret service" for the Government,
entrusting her as a preliminary with a "mission to St. Petersburg."
The story is an obvious concoction, if merely because Dujarier, being
little beyond a penny-a-liner hack, had no power to employ anybody on
such a task. Still, Lola always stuck to it. Still, it is just
possible that she may have gone to Russia at this period, for Nicholas
was interested in the art of the ballet, and welcomed foreign
exponents of Terpsichore from wherever they came. He was a familiar
figure in the green-rooms of his capital. He patronised Taglioni and
Elssler, and was always ready to make up any deficit in the box-office
receipts. It only meant grinding more out of his army of serfs.
If she did go from Paris to Russia, Lola did not waste her time there,
for, she says, she "nearly married Prince Schulkoski," whom she had
already met in Berlin. This, she adds, was "one of the romances of her
life." But something went wrong with it, for the princely wooer,
"while furiously telegraphing kisses three times a day," was
discovered to be enjoying the companionship of another charmer. Lola
could put up with a great deal. There were, however, limits to her
toleration, and this was one of them. First, Tom James; then, George
Lennox; and now Prince Schulkoski. Masculine promises were no more
substantial than pie-crust. Poor Lola was having a sad awakening. It
is not remarkable that she formed the conclusion that men were
"deceivers ever." After such an experience, nothing else was possible.
Among other items in her repertoire of alleged happenings in Russia at
this period was one that certainly takes a good deal of swallowing.
This was that, while having a "private audience" with the Czar himself
and Count Benkendorf (the Chief of the Secret Police), an important
visitor was announced. Thereupon, and to avoid her presence being
known to the newcomer, she was locked up in a cupboard and left there
for several hours. When the Czar came back, he was "full of apologies
and insisted that she should accept from him a gift of a thousand
roubles."
Other details follow:
"A great magnate conquers her at St. Petersburg; Grand Dukes
perform their tricks; and Circassian Princes die for her.
But soon she has enough of caviare and vodka. What, she
wonders, is the good of becoming fuddled with drunkards and
wasting valuable time on half-civilized Asiatics?"
No good at all, was Lola's decision. Accordingly, she bade farewell to
Russian hospitality, and, relinquishing all prospects of wearing the
Muscovite diadem, returned to Paris and Dujarier. Her lover's
influence secured her an engagement in _La Biche au Bois_ at the Porte
St. Martin Theatre; but, as had happened at the Académie Royale, she
was a "flop." The critics said so with no uncertain voice; and the
manager announced that he agreed with them. Clearly, then, the ballet
was not her _métier_.
"Well, dancing isn't everything," said Lola, who always took a reverse
in philosophical fashion.