Chapter XXXIV: Last Scene of All 227 (6)

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.

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

The Creole City at that time swarmed with gold-seekers on their way to or returning from the newly-found Ophir of the Occident. Though the first headlong rush to California was over, it still drew its thousands every month, and Greeley's famous advice to the young man was followed without having been asked. Lola became infected with the fever. There was much of the gambler in her nature, and her zest for adventure was keener than of old. At this time, too, a positive distaste for civilisation appears to have possessed her. It may have been the vision of a wild, unfettered life in a virgin land that dispelled the sickly hankerings for the cloister.

She sailed across the Gulf of Mexico to San Juan del Norte, or Greytown, as it is now called, the newly opened halfway-house to the gold-fields. Thence the route lay across the beautiful savannahs of Nicaragua to the Pacific shore. She passed the white-walled towns of Leon and Rivas, which Walker and his filibusters two years later harried with fire and sword. This was an alternative route to that across the isthmus of Panama, which she was fabled to have followed in a book by Russell, the war-correspondent, called the "Adventures of Mrs. Seacole." Lola refers to this mendacious romance in her little autobiography, and quotes the following passage in order to characterise it at the finish as a base fabrication from beginning to end:--

"Occasionally some distinguished passengers passed on the upward and
downward tides of ruffianism and rascality that swept periodically
through Cruces. Came one day Lola Montez, in the full zenith of her
evil fame, bound for California with a strange suite. A good-looking,
bold woman, with fine, bad eyes and a determined bearing, dressed
ostentatiously in perfect male attire, with shirt collar turned down
over a velvet lapelled coat, richly worked shirt-front, black hat,
French unmentionables, and natty polished boots with spurs. She
carried in her hand a handsome riding-whip, which she could use as
well in the streets of Cruces as in the towns of Europe; for an
impertinent American, presuming, perhaps not unnaturally, upon her
reputation, laid hold jestingly of the tails of her long coat, and, as
a lesson, received a cut across his face that must have marked him for
some days. I did not see the row which followed, and was glad when the
wretched woman rode off on the following morning."

The incident is a spicy little bit of fiction, such as is so easily invented by the fertile journalistic brain. The adjectives applied to Lola also illustrate, in a mildly diverting manner, the strictly orthodox notions of morality entertained by the newspaper press, and the pontifical confidence with which journalists pronounce on questions of conduct.[25]

On the long journey to the golden gate, Lola had as a fellow-passenger a young man named Patrick Purdy Hull, a native of Ohio, and editor of the _San Francisco Whig_. The acquaintance thus formed soon ripened into an attachment. Though, upon her arrival in California, the Countess immediately went on tour among the mining camps, her new victim did not lose sight of her. For the third time Lola went through the ceremony of wedlock. On 1st July 1853 she married Hull at the Church of the Mission Dolores, "in presence," runs the report, "of a select party, among whom were Beverly C. Saunders, Esq., Judge Wills, James E. Wainwright, Esq., A. Bartol, Esq., Louis R. Lull, S. A. Brinsmade, and other prominent citizens"--all among the most remarkable men in that country, no doubt. "The bride and groom have since visited Sacramento, and are now in domestic retirement at San Francisco."[26]

From the reports of remarkable men and prominent citizens shooting each other in the public streets, of bandits raiding the suburbs, of fires and floods, that accompany this announcement, we should imagine that domestic retirement in San Francisco was at that time subject to frequent and unpleasant interruption. On this account, perhaps, Mr. and Mrs. Hull spent much of their time hunting in the valley of the Sacramento. Lola was in search of new sensations, and for the moment the bear seemed a more attractive quarry than the man. But before long a German medical man, named Adler, himself a mighty hunter, came across her path. His prowess excited her admiration, and he at once fell a victim to the shafts from her quiver. Hull was discarded and the German reigned in his stead.

In these American _amours_ we seem to detect the last flickerings of the flame of passion--the woman's last strenuous efforts to find a real and lasting interest in life. But Lola had played too much with love. That mighty force which she had so often exploited and exerted to the furtherance of her ambitions was no longer at her command. Her capacity for love was exhausted; by passion she was no more to rule or to be ruled.

She had hardly time to tire of her German lover, who accidentally shot himself while following the chase--no bad death for a hunter. It might have been expected that Lola would now quit California and return to more congruous surroundings. But a distaste for men and cities, for the restraints of civilisation, had grown strong within her. Just then she was sick of love and sick of the world. At her best, a splendid animal, with fierce elemental passions, she turned almost instinctively, to draw fresh supplies of vitality from "the green, sweet-hearted earth." She made herself a home in a cabin at Grass Valley, a lawless mining camp, among the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada. All her life she had loved animals, and these she now made her special friends and companions, finding in their marvellous stores of affection and devotion ample compensation for the muddy evanescent emotion that men call love. She did not, of course, lead the life of a hermit. We catch glimpses of her in a despatch from Nevada City, dated 20th January 1854:--

"The merry ringing of sleigh bells has been heard for several days
past in our city. Several sleighs have been fitted up, and the young
gentlemen have treated the ladies to some dashing turn-outs. On
Tuesday last, Lola Montez paid us a visit by this conveyance and a
span of horses, decorated with impromptu cowbells. She flashed like a
meteor through the snowflakes and wanton snowballs, and after a tour
of the thoroughfares, disappeared in the direction of Grass Valley."

There she continued to dwell during the rest of that year, her liking for the simple life unabated. A correspondent of the _San Francisco Herald_, who visited her on 13th December, describes her as--

"living a quiet, and apparently cosy life, surrounded by her pet
birds, dogs, goats, sheep, hens, turkeys, pigs, and her pony. The
latter seems to be a favourite with Lola, and is her companion in all
her mountain rambles. Surely it is a strange metamorphosis to find the
woman who has gained a world-renowned notoriety, and has played a part
upon the stage of life with powerful potentates, and with whose name
Europe and the world is familiar, finally settled down at home in the
mountain wilds of California."

A strange change, indeed, but no unpleasant life it could have been. What memories, what scenes, must have supplied food for the lonely woman's musings, as she galloped over the hills, or, seated with her dogs, gazed into her great fire of resinous logs! In communion thus with our great mother, treading these virgin forests, and breathing an air hardly yet inhaled by man, she might have attained to a higher, truer plane of existence than that which she finally took to be firm ground. But luck was against her here, as always. A fire swept away the township of Grass Valley, and with it Lola's little homestead--the only home that she had ever known. Her animals were dispersed, she was without funds. But she had renewed her stock of vitality at Nature's fountains. She went on her travels again, reinvigorated: a coarser woman, no doubt, thanks to her contact with miners and hunters, but, perhaps, a better one. She still loved the new auriferous lands. In the track of the sun she would continue to journey, and in June sailed from California across the ocean to Australia.

XXX

IN AUSTRALIA

Even to the antipodes--in the 'fifties unconnected by the telegraph with the rest of the world, and distant a three months' journey from England--the fame of the Countess of Landsfeld had extended. Her name had travelled completely round the world, and was as familiar to the people of Sydney as to those of London and Paris. Lola found that her prolonged rest cure had weakened in no way her hold on public curiosity. The moment for her arrival in New South Wales was not, however, well chosen. Commerce and agriculture were alike depressed, and the mind of the Colonists was preoccupied with the business of constitution-making. The city lay, too, under the spell of a celebrated Irish singer, Miss Catherine Hayes, "the sweet swan of Erin." It is, perhaps, worth noting that this vocalist was born at the same town as Lola, was married at the same church (St. George's, Hanover Square), and was to die the same year; that she made her _debut_ under the same manager (Benjamin Lumley), at the same theatre, and that the two women had for the last year or two trodden undeviatingly in each other's footsteps. Miss Hayes had been in possession of the Prince of Wales's Theatre nearly a fortnight, when Lola's arrival startled the eldest Australian city. The newcomer was engaged by Tonning of the Victoria Theatre, and was announced to appear, together with Mr. Lambert, Mr. Falland, and Mr. C. Jones, on 23rd August 1855, in the four-act drama, _Lola Montez in Bavaria_. The theatre was crowded to excess.

"The Countess looked charming, and acted very archly. She was cheered
vociferously, and recalled before the curtain, when she delivered a
short address. Mr. Lambert (well known in London) created quite a
sensation in the King of Bavaria (by which name he is now known), and
at the end of the performance the Countess presented him with a
handsome bundle of cigarettes--a very great compliment, as she is an
inveterate smoker, and seldom gives any cigars away.

"The excitement about her immediately empties the Prince of Wales's
Theatre, and Miss Hayes is then taken suddenly ill. Two nights after
the Countess of Landsfeld is seriously indisposed, and Miss Hayes
recovers. Her recovery restores Lola Montez to perfect health."[27]

On 27th August she appeared in _Yelva, or the Orphan of Russia_, "a new and exciting drama" she had herself translated from the French. On Wednesday, 6th September, she took a benefit, playing in _The Follies of a Night_, and two farces. Into one of these she introduced her "Spider Dance," which seems to have outraged colonial opinion. We need not condemn it on that account as immodest, for in our own day we have seen a performance interdicted as offensive to public morals in Manchester, and pronounced (rightly) to be the quintessence of mobile grace and the truest poetry of motion in the not less considerable city of London. Immodesty in the minds of many people definitely connotes that which pleases the eyes and the senses.

Business continued dull at Sydney, and Lola departed in the second week of September for Melbourne. A dispute had arisen between her and another member of her company, Mrs. Fiddes, who issued a writ of attachment against her. Brown, the sheriff, went aboard the steamer to apprehend Lola, who retired to her cabin till the vessel was well under weigh. She then sent word that the officer could arrest her if he would, but she was obliged to tell him that she was quite naked. The bold expedient was, of course, successful. "Poor Brown," we are told, "blushed and retired, and was put on shore at the Heads, about twenty miles from Sydney, and was greeted on his return to the city with roars of laughter." The sheriff evidently did not object to repeating a good story, even at his own expense.

At Melbourne, Lola must have been vividly reminded of California. The gold fever was at its height. The population of the Port Philip district had swollen in five years from 76,000 to 364,000, of which number at least two-thirds were men. Men, too, they were, of every nationality under the sun, and of every class, though the more criminal and dangerous elements were in the ascendant. In '55 life and property were, notwithstanding, somewhat more secure here than in California, thanks to the firmer, less corrupt administration of British officials. Prices were, it need not be said, extravagantly high, though the barest necessities of decent life were hardly obtainable outside Melbourne and Geelong. A goldfield would seem to be one of the most brutalising environments to which a human being can adapt himself.

For our knowledge of Lola's doings in the Victorian capital, we are indebted to the _Era's_ local correspondent. He writes:--

"Lola Montez made her _debut_ on 21st September, in a short drama
allusive to her own Bavarian transactions, but the piece might well
have borne curtailment. There was a very crowded audience. The
_ci-devant_ Countess of Landsfeld seemed determined to preserve her
notoriety intact by the selection, but entrenched so far upon decorum
in the 'Spider Dance' on a subsequent evening, that she did not face
the clamour raised in consequence till the objectionable portions were
agreed to be omitted. She is certainly a very singular character, but
there is an ever lively and brusque style in her action that seems to
catch general approbation for the time being.

"After a brief stay, Lola departed for Geelong; but there, I learn,
her performances were freely condemned. Indeed, their laxness was also
much canvassed with us, and the more staid of the visitors openly
enough expressed their censure. Subsequently to the performance, Dr.
Milman demanded of the Mayor at the City Court, in the name of an
outraged community, that a warrant be issued against all repetition of
the performances of Mme. Lola Montez at the Theatre Royal. The Mayor
referred the matter to the private room of the magistrates,
considering that should be the proper place for its discussion. The
bench declared that the law would not sustain them in issuing a
warrant unless the Doctor had actually witnessed the performance, and
had his information properly attested by witnesses. This he declared
he would do."

The methods of these self-constituted champions of outraged morality are the same in every age. They condemn first, and collect evidence afterwards--if at all.

Opinion in Geelong does not seem to have been as hostile as the _Era's_ correspondent supposed. In the _Geelong Advertiser_ of 10th October is to be found the following paragraph:--

ILLNESS OF LOLA MONTEZ

"Owing to severe indisposition, this talented actress is unable to
appear before a Geelong audience. When competent to perform, her
reappearance will be duly notified. Madame is suffering from severe
cold and bronchitis, and is now under the care of Dr. Thompson, of
Melbourne. To previous indisposition was superadded a severe attack
induced by exposure to the thunderstorm on Saturday."

Lola's illness was of a passing character. That it in no way impaired her vigour we shall presently see. From Melbourne she proceeded to the goldfields, moving among the most desperate characters of the two hemispheres undismayed and unafraid, a woman capable of defending herself with whip and tongue. A singular character, in truth was hers, thus equally at home in kings' courts and miners' camps, able to parry and to counterplot against the schemes and intrigues of Metternich, able to subdue and to tame the half-savage ex-convicts and desperadoes of the Australian diggings.

At Ballaarat occurred the celebrated fracas with Mr. Seekamp. This man was the editor of the local newspaper (the _Times_), and upon Lola's arrival in the town, he published an article, putting the worst construction on the episodes of her past life, and reflecting in uncomplimentary terms on her character. He was, no doubt, another guardian of public morality, which in mining camps is, of course, a very delicate growth. A few evenings afterwards, he was so rash as to call at the United States Hotel, where the woman he had traduced was staying. Being informed that he was below, Lola ran downstairs with a riding-whip, and laid it across his back with right good will. The journalist also held a whip, with which he defended himself lustily. Before long the combatants had each other literally by the hair. The bystanders interposed, and the two were separated, but not before life-preservers and revolvers had been produced. It seems to us an unedifying performance, though a woman, if insulted, has undoubtedly the right to chastise her offender physically, if she is able. Such was the view taken by the miners of Ballaarat. At the theatre that evening she was the object of an ovation, which she acknowledged at the conclusion of the performance.

"I thank you," she said, "most sincerely for your friendship. I regret
to be obliged to refer again to Mr. Seekamp, but it is not my fault,
as he again in this morning's paper repeated his attack upon me. You
have heard of the scene that took place this afternoon. Mr. Seekamp
threatens to continue his charges against my character. I offered,
though a woman, to meet him with pistols; but the coward who could
beat a woman, ran from a woman. He says he will drive me off the
diggings; but I will change the tables, and make Seekamp _de_camp
(applause). My good friends, again I thank you."[28]

This conduct was "unladylike," no doubt, but courageous; ungracious, but absolutely necessary.

Seekamp, bruised and humiliated, thirsted for revenge. We find him publishing a story of his conqueror's defeat in the _Ballaarat Times_. The authority can hardly be regarded as unimpeachable, but with amusing simplicity it has been accepted as such by all who have written about Lola. According, then, to the ungallant Mr. Seekamp, the Countess of Landsfeld was engaged by a manager, named Crosby--of what theatre is not stated. At "treasury" the actress had a misunderstanding with this gentleman, and flew into a violent rage. At this opportune moment a relief force appeared in the person of Mrs. Crosby, armed with a whip. With this she chastised Lola so severely that the weapon broke. The antagonists then threw themselves upon each other, and the rest (says the delicately-minded journalist) may be imagined rather than described. Mr. Seekamp's recent experience should indeed have enabled him to imagine such a scene without difficulty; in fact, he probably imagined this one. He concludes: "At last this terrible virago has found, not her master, but her mistress, and for many a long day will be incapable of performing at any theatre."

These words were written, possibly, while Lola was on her way to Europe. She appears to have quitted Australia in March or April 1856. With her arrival in France in August that year, she completed her trip round the world.

XXXI

LOLA AS A LECTURER

We have no knowledge of the business that took Lola once more to France on this occasion. She probably went there to spend, in the most agreeable way possible, the considerable sums she had amassed in her Australian tour. It may be supposed that she spent some time at Paris, renewing the acquaintance of her old friends. Dumas, Mery, De Beauvoir, were all living, and death had made few gaps in her circle of friends during the past ten years. In August, Lola followed the fashionable crowd to the southern watering-places, and stayed at St. Jean de Luz, within easy reach of the imperial court at Biarritz. Hence she addressed this extraordinary letter to the _Estafette_:--

"ST. JEAN DE LUZ, HOTEL DU CYGNE,
"_2nd September, 1856_.

"The Belgian newspapers, and some French ones, have asserted that the
suicide of the actor, Mauclerc, who, it is reported, has thrown
himself from the summits of the Pic du Midi, was caused by domestic
troubles for which I was responsible. This is a calumny which M.
Mauclerc himself will be ready to refute. We separated amicably, it is
true, after eight days of married life, but urged only by our common
and imperious need of personal liberty. It is probable that the
tragedy of the Pic du Midi exists only in the imagination of some
journalist on the look-out for sensational news. Trusting to your
sense of fairness to insert this explanation in your excellent
journal, I remain, yours, etc.,

LOLA MONTEZ."

This letter was copied by _La Presse_, which De Girardin still edited, and was presently noticed by the person most interested. His reply was duly published:--

"BAYONNE, _9th September, 1856_.

"SIR,--I read in your issue of the 7th. inst. a letter from Lola
Montez, wherein there is talk of a suicide of which I have been the
victim, and a marriage in which I have been principal actor. I am a
complete stranger to such catastrophes. I have never had the least
intention of throwing myself from the Pic du Midi, or from any other
peak, and I do not recollect having had the advantage of
marrying--even for eight days--the celebrated Countess of
Landsfeld,--Yours, etc.,

MAUCLERC."[29]

The simplest and most probable explanation of this affair is to set it down as a hoax. Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz are neighbouring towns, and it is possible that the actor had (perhaps unwittingly) incurred the anger of the Countess, who devised this rather elaborate means of revenge.

Soon after, Lola returned to the United States, a country for which she had conceived a strong liking. She considered it her home, says the Rev. F. L. Hawks, and had a sincere admiration for its institutions. Lola was by nature a republican, and intimacy with sovereigns had not much awakened her distaste for them.

"To Freedom ever true, true, true,
All his long life was Harlequin!"

On 2nd February 1857 we find her fulfilling a week's engagement at the Green Street Theatre at Albany, acting in _The Eton Boy_, _The Follies of a Night_, and _Lola in Bavaria_. She was not unknown at the state capital, having appeared there, with a _troupe_ of twelve dancers, at the Museum, in May 1852. On the present occasion she gave another proof of her dare-devil courage, by crossing the Hudson River in an open skiff among the floating ice.

"She got over in safety, but part of her wardrobe was carried down
stream. By going to Troy she could have avoided all danger, but her
love of notoriety led her to offer a hundred dollars to be carried
across here."[30]

This recklessness may have proceeded from that want of interest in life, that utter sense of desolation, which assailed her whenever she was not distracted by travel and adventure. A lonely, disenchanted woman, without any ties or hold on life, she found herself now on the verge of forty. Her days for adventure had passed. At times she must have sighed for her home among the Californian foothills. Surely it was wise and dignified, for one who had exhausted her strength and vitality in the struggles of an artificial society, to throw herself on the placid bosom of our common mother? There, in time, she would have awakened to fuller comprehension of man's place in the universe, and have learned at once the true value of all her past actions, and the futility of remorse. But in New York no one listened for the whisperings of Nature; instead, they fancied they heard voices from some other world. Women who have lost their hold on life readily give ear to visionaries: having exhausted the joys of this world, they wish to test those of another. Lola became a believer in spiritualism. The imagined touch of some fatuous phantom would thrill her as no man's had power to do. One day she announced that the spirits had directed her to abandon the stage, and to become a lecturer. Apparently, however, she had no confidence in their ability to inspire her on the platform, for she caused her lectures to be written by the Rev. C. Chauncy Burr. At the _seances_ she seems to have been brought into touch (in two senses) with several of the clergy of various Protestant denominations. Her first lecture was delivered at a place of worship called the Hope Chapel, 720 Broadway, New York, on 3rd February 1858.

"Lola Montez at Hope Chapel is good," chuckles a reporter. "It is
plain that the scent of the roses hangs round her still. We have heard
some queer things in that conventicle in our time, and have now and
then assisted at an entertainment there twice as funny, but not half
so intellectual nor half so wholesome, as the lecture our desperado in
dimity gave us last night."

The New York pressman was more easily pleased than is the modern reader. Lola's lectures were published that same year in book form, together with her autobiography, and they may be pronounced very poor stuff. They are respectively headed, "Beautiful Women," "Gallantry," "Heroines of History," "The Comic Aspect of Love," "Wits and Women of Paris," and "Romanism." Here and there their dullness is enlivened by a flash of Lola's own native wit, or a shrewd observation that only her experience could have supplied. Sometimes she begins by what is evidently an exposition of her own views, winding up with some trite moralisings calculated to appease her audience. Speaking, for instance, of the heroines of history, she dwells with enthusiasm on the valour of Margaret of Anjou, the sagacity of Isabel the Catholic, the administrative ability of Elizabeth, the diplomatic skill of Catharine II., and recollects herself in time to impress on her hearers that one

"who is qualified to be a happy wife and a good mother, need never
look with envy upon the woman of genius, whose mental powers, by
fitting her for the stormy arena of politics, may have unfitted her
for the quiet walks of domestic life."

As might have been expected, Lola spoke somewhat disdainfully of women who preferred to vote rather than to cajole the men who voted. The lecturer forgot, perhaps, that all her sisters were not as well equipped as she for the business of fascination, and that to some of them the personal exercise of the franchise might seem less unwomanly and objectionable than the arts of blandishment and intimidation.

Lola was bold enough to tell her American audience that the palm of beauty must be awarded to Englishwomen, and that the Yankees were too mercantile and practical to entertain the old spirit of gallantry. She mollified her hearers by adding that, after all, in America, "love dived the deepest and came out dryest"--a dark saying, from which she derived the conclusion that love in the United States was as brave, honest, and sincere a passion as elsewhere. The lecture on Romanism will not be regarded as a very formidable instrument of attack upon the Catholic Church. It concludes: "America does not yet recognise how much she owes to the Protestant principle. It has given the world the four greatest facts of modern times--steam-boats, railroads, telegraphs, and the American Republic!"

We can imagine with what enthusiasm this sentiment was received in Hope Chapel, where the lecture was delivered in October 1858, in aid of a fund for a church which should be open free to the poor and unfortunate (as, by the way, all Roman Catholic churches are). By this time Lola appears to have been weaned of her spiritualistic heresies, and had become interested in Methodism. In her new zeal for her own soul's welfare she did not, however, forget the corporal needs of her fellows, and with native generosity, stimulated by religious considerations, she showered the money earned at her lectures upon the poor and afflicted. To replenish her store, and encouraged by the success of her new enterprize in New York, she resolved to try her luck once more on the other side of the Atlantic.

XXXII

A LAST VISIT TO ENGLAND

Lola landed from the American steam-ship, _Pacific_, at Galway on 23rd November 1858. She had not set foot in her native land since she left it, the bride of Thomas James, more than twenty years before. In Dublin she had last appeared as a _debutante_ at the viceregal court; now, on 10th December, she appeared there, on the boards of the Round Room, as a public curiosity, as a woman whose fame not one among her auditors would have envied. But they flocked to see her in hundreds, and the opening promised a highly profitable tour. In her regenerate frame of mind the lecturer was distressed by the publication in the _Freeman_ of a long article referring to her connection with Dujarier and the King of Bavaria. Being the daughter of an Anglo-Indian officer, Lola had inherited a tendency to write to the papers on every possible occasion, and she at once sent a letter to the journal, defending her character. Her relations with Dujarier and Louis were, she insisted, absolutely proper and regular: to the former she was engaged; of the latter she was merely the friend and the adviser. The aspersions of her fair fame she attributed to the intrigues of Austria. She was in Ireland, and it was as well not to refer to the Jesuits.

At the new year she crossed over to England, beginning her tour at Manchester. We hear of her at Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Leamington, Worcester, Bristol, and Bath. She drew crowded houses, though everywhere she went she had to contend with a strong counter-attraction in the person of Phineas T. Barnum, the celebrated showman, who was also touring England. Of course, she disappointed expectation. The public wanted to see the dashing, dazzling dare-devil of other days, not a rather sad woman, slightly tinged with Yankee religiosity. She arrived at last in London, where she lectured at St. James's Hall. Two or three of the writer's friends faintly recollect having seen her on this occasion. For the impression she produced on her audience, I prefer, however, to rely on the notice in the _Era_, under date 10th April 1859.