Lola Montez Part 11

Lola's arrival in the troubled state of England pa.s.sed almost unnoticed.

She determined to try her fortunes once more upon the stage, and found, of course, as a celebrity, that she was _persona grata_ to the managers and agents. The directors of Covent Garden conceived the ingenious idea of presenting her as herself in a dramatic representation of the recent events at Munich. The play was written and ent.i.tled, "Lola Montez, ou la Comtesse d'une Heure," but the Lord Chamberlain declined to license a performance in which living royal personages were introduced.[19] The scheme fell through, and Lola, having a private income to fall back upon, retired into lodgings at 27 Halfmoon Street, Mayfair. There "she invited a few men, including myself," writes the Hon. F. Leveson Gower, "to visit her in the evening. She had lost much of her good looks, but her animated conversation was entertaining."[20] The journalist, George Augustus Sala, then a very young man, describes Lola on the contrary, as a very handsome lady, "originally the wife of a solicitor," whom he met at a little cigar-shop, under the pillars, in Norreys Street, Regent Street. She proposed that he should write her life, "starting with the a.s.sumption that she was a daughter of the famous matador, Montes."[21] Lola's imaginative powers, especially when directed to inventing romantic origins for herself, rivalled those of the heroine of "The Dynamiter." Lord Brougham, that learned but relatively susceptible Chancellor, she also claimed acquaintance with; he lived not far from her, in Grafton Street. It is probable that a woman of Lola's beauty, wit, and remarkable attainments would have numbered the most brilliant and distinguished men in London among her a.s.sociates, whatever att.i.tude may have been a.s.sumed towards her by the little clique of prigs and prudes that arrogated to itself the t.i.tle of Society.

XXVII

A SECOND EXPERIMENT IN MATRIMONY

The company of any number of agreeable men about town and the amenities of 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 pa.s.sed, 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 fas.h.i.+onable inst.i.tution 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 a.n.a.lyse 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 att.i.tude, 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 unembarra.s.sed, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 inst.i.tuting police court proceedings.

The rest of the evidence was purely formal, and included the testimony of Captain Ingram, in whose s.h.i.+p 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 circ.u.mstances 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 inst.i.tute 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 a.s.surance on the part of the prosecutor that the evidence necessary to ensure a conviction will certainly be producible on a future occasion. No such a.s.surance 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 500 each, and herself 1,000, 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.

Lus.h.i.+ngton impose on women the alternatives of celibacy and prost.i.tution.

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 h.e.l.l 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 const.i.tuted 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 a.s.surances 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 pa.s.sing 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 ill.u.s.trious pa.s.senger, 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 d.i.c.kens. 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! G.o.d grant," devoutly prays the Countess, "that it may ever stand as it is now, the n.o.blest 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 s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner looks upon the first star that s.h.i.+nes 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 pa.s.sions, perceived that the cold Yankee was most vulnerable through so artificial and dispa.s.sionate a sentiment as patriotism. Every other woman of her experience would have a.s.sumed that the animal predominated in all men, of whatever race or country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 t.i.tle _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 Sat.u.r.day. 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 ama.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ca.n.a.ls.

"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!