Lola Montez Part 4

At Dresden fate threw Liszt and Lola Montez across each other's path. The intense, artistic nature of the man cried out with joy at the glorious beauty of the woman. Her inextinguishable vivacity, her almost masculine boldness, her frank and splendid animalism enraptured the musician, now sick to death of soulful conversations and the sentimentalities of Romanticism. It was the old struggle for the possession of the artist, waged by Silvia and Gioconda. Lola was beautiful as a tigress. To Liszt she could surrender herself proudly. She was one of those erotic women, whose pa.s.sion is excited rather by a man's mental attributes than by his physical advantages. Intellect she adored. Her own strong nature could yield only to a stronger. We have heard how she spoke of Nicholas I.; we shall find this almost sensuous craving for force of personality in her subsequent relations. To her, the pianist must have been a new revelation of manhood. Her life so far had brought her in contact with Indian officers and civilians, a few men about town, and (for a few hours) with one or more potentates. Now she met a great man with a beautiful soul.

She had heard the stories current of Liszt's abnegation, his boundless generosity, his pride in his vocation. In her, too, he recognised a haughty intolerance of patronage, a contempt for those in high places, such as he had himself exhibited. Both could laugh over the slights to which they had subjected the King of Prussia, and their demeanour in presence of the mighty Tsar. It is likely enough that their conversation may have begun in some such fashion; how their love ripened we are left to guess. On this episode in her history Lola exhibits unwonted reserve. She mentions meeting Liszt at Dresden, and speaks of the furore he created. As to their love pa.s.sages, she is silent. I like to think that this was a secret she held sacred, that her love for the great musician had in it something fresh and n.o.ble, which distinguished it from the emotions excited in her by all other men. Women of many attachments are p.r.o.ne to idealise one among them.

The world was bound by no such scruples. The rumour ran from capital to capital that Liszt was enthralled by the Andalusian. It reached the Comtesse d'Agoult in her retreat at Nonnenwerth. She penned a fierce, reproachful letter. Liszt, in Calypso's grotto at Dresden, answered proudly and coldly. The Comtesse wrote, announcing the end of their relations. Most men are frightened at the abrupt termination of a love affair of which they have long been heartily weary. Liszt gave the Comtesse time to think it over. She made no further overtures, expecting that he would come to kneel at her feet. He did not. The lady went to Paris, and they never met again.

The artist at least owed Lola a service, since she had been the unwitting instrument of a rupture so long desired by him. But he valued his newly-recovered freedom too highly to jeopardise it by linking his life again with a woman's. His love affair with Lola may have been simply an infatuation. Lucio would soon have tired of Gioconda had he lived with her. We hardly know how this brief love story began; we are quite in the dark as to how it ended. A report was current that the two travelled together from Dresden to Paris, where both appeared in the spring of '44.

We do not hear that they were seen together in the French capital, so the adieux may already have been exchanged. Liszt stayed there but a few weeks, and then started on a tour through the French departments. Then he crossed the Pyrenees, and pushed as far south as Gibraltar. Less than three years later he was in the toils of a third woman--the Princess Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, with whom his relations endured twelve years. It is noteworthy that he and Lola turned their thoughts from love to religion almost at the same time, though half a world lay between them.

Of the third actor in this little drama it is hardly within my province to speak. The Comtesse d'Agoult found consolation in the care of her children and in those wider interests of which she never tired. She ardently espoused the cause of the Revolution in 1848. More fortunate than her old lover, she never lost the sane and generous sympathies of her youth. You may read her _Souvenirs_, published at Paris the year after her death (1877). Liszt long survived the women who had loved him--not a fate that either of them would have envied him.

IX

AT THE BANQUET OF THE IMMORTALS

Lola's first appearance in Paris was, like her _debut_ at Her Majesty's, a fiasco. Thanks, no doubt, to her reputation for beauty and audacity, she secured an engagement at the Opera, then under the management of Leon Pillet. The power behind the throne was the great Madame Stoltz, who some years later was to be hooted off the stage by a hostile clique just as Lola had been nine months before. At that time, however, no one dreamed of a revolt against the all-powerful _cantatrice_ whose favour the _danseuse_ was fortunate to procure. The great Stoltz looked best and was luckiest in men's parts, and therefore saw no rival in the now famous "Andalouse."

Lola, accordingly, made her bow to the Parisian public on Sat.u.r.day, 30th March 1844, in _Il Lazzarone_, an opera in two acts by Halevy. Her audience was more fastidious than the playgoers of Dresden and Warsaw. Her beauty ravished them, but in her dancing they saw little merit. Seeing this, Lola made a characteristic bid for their favour. Her satin shoe had slipped off. Seizing it, she threw it with one of her superb gestures into the boxes, where it was pounced upon and brandished as a precious relic by a gentleman of fashion. The manoeuvre seems to have succeeded in its object, for the _Const.i.tutionnel_ next morning found it necessary to warn young dancers against the danger of fact.i.tious applause, while "abstaining from criticising too severely a pretty woman who had not had time to study Parisian tastes." Theophile Gautier was less gallant:--

"We are reluctant," he writes, "to speak of Lola Montes, who reminds us by her Christian name of one of the prettiest women of Granada, and by her surname of the man who excited in us the most powerful dramatic emotions we have ever experienced--Montes, the most ill.u.s.trious _espada_ of Spain. The only thing Andalusian about Mlle. Lola Montes is a pair of magnificent black eyes. She gabbles Spanish very indifferently, French hardly at all, and English pa.s.sably [_sic_].

Which is her country? That is the question. We may say that Mlle. Lola has a little foot and pretty legs. Her use of these is another matter.

The curiosity excited by her adventures with the northern police, and her conversations, _a coups de cravache_, with the Prussian _gens d'armes_, has not been satisfied, it must be admitted. Mlle. Lola Montes is certainly inferior to Dolores Serrai, who has, at least, the advantage of being a real Spaniard, and redeems her imperfections as a dancer by a voluptuous _abandon_, and an admirable fire and precision of rhythm. We suspect, after the recital of her equestrian exploits, that Mlle. Lola is more at home in the saddle than on the boards."

As at Her Majesty's, so at the Opera. Lola's first appearance was her last. For the rest of the year, as far as I can learn, she was out of an engagement. She had, no doubt, made some money during her German and Russian tour, and Liszt would not have forgotten her when he started on his southern tour at the end of April.

If her a.s.sociation with him had begotten in Lola Montez a thirst for wit and genius, she had every chance of slaking it in Paris. There were giants on the earth in those days, and they were all gathered together on the banks of the Seine. It is not too much to say that since the Medici ruled in Florence, no capital has boasted so brilliant an a.s.semblage of men of genius as did Paris under the paternal government of July. In the year '44, Victor Hugo, attended by a score of minor poets, daily appeared on his balcony to acknowledge the homage of the public; Lamartine was dividing his attention between politics and literature. Alfred de Musset was wrecking his const.i.tution by spasms of debauchery. Balzac was dodging his creditors, playing truant from the National Guard, and finding time to write his "Comedie Humaine"; Theophile Gautier, a man of thirty-three, if he had not yet received the full meed of his genius, was already well known and widely appreciated. Alexandre Dumas had long since become a national inst.i.tution, and his son was looking out for copy among the ladies of the _demi-monde_. Delphine Gay was writing her brilliant "Lettres Parisiennes" for her husband's newspaper. The Salon was still rejecting the masterpieces of Delacroix, but Vernet was painting the ceiling of the Palais Bourbon. Auber, though past the prime of life, had not yet scored his greatest success. Paris was like Athens in the age of Pericles.

Life was really worth living then, when Louis Phillippe was king. He was an honest, kindly-natured man, this pear-headed potentate, who reigned, "comme la corniche regne autour d'un plafond." He was the king of the _bourgeois_, and he looked it every inch, with his white felt hat and respectable umbrella; but in the calm sunshine of his reign the arts flourished and the world was gay. Those days before the Revolution remind us of that strange picture in our National Gallery, "The Eve of the Deluge." Paris, as the old stagers regretfully a.s.sure us, was Paris then, and not the caravanserai of all the nations of the world. The good Americans who died then, had they gone to Paris, would have thought they had reached the wrong destination. Men of Pontus and Asia had not then made the French capital their own. The invasion of the Barbarians, says Gustave Claudin, took place in 1848. They came, not conducted by Attila, but by the newly-constructed railways. As these strangers had plenty of money to spend, they naturally sought the most fashionable quarters.

"The true Parisians disappeared in the crowd, and knew not where to find themselves. In the evening, the restaurants where they used to dine, the stalls and boxes where they used to a.s.sist at the opera and the play, were taken by a.s.sault by cohorts of sightseers wishing to steep themselves up to the neck in _la vie Parisienne_."

The tide of the invasion has never diminished in volume, and the true Parisian has become extinct.

In the year 1844 the fine flower of Parisian society was in undisputed possession of the Boulevard--the quarter between the Opera and the Rue Drouot.

"By virtue of a selection which no one contested," says the author just quoted, "n.o.body was tolerated there who could not lay claim to some sort of distinction or originality. There seemed to exist a kind of invisible moral barrier, closing this area against the mediocre, the insipid, and the insignificant, who pa.s.sed by, but did not linger, knowing that their place was not there."

The headquarters of the n.o.ble company of the Boulevard was the famous Cafe de Paris, at the corner of the Rue Taitbout. Dumas, Balzac, and Alfred de Musset were to be seen there twice or thrice a week; the eccentric Lord Seymour, founder of the French Jockey Club, had his own table there. Lola, doubtless, often tasted the unsurpa.s.sed _cuisine_ of this celebrated restaurant, for she soon penetrated into the circle of the Olympians, and was presented with the freedom of the Boulevard.

She met Claudin (who indeed knew everybody).

"Lola Montez," he says, "was an enchantress. There was about her something provoking and voluptuous which drew you. Her skin was white, her wavy hair like the tendrils of the woodbine, her eyes tameless and wild, her mouth like a budding pomegranate. Add to that a dashing figure, charming feet, and perfect grace. Unluckily," the notice concludes, "as a dancer she had no talent."

That multiple personality whom Vandam embodies in "An Englishman in Paris"

admits that Lola was naturally graceful, that her gait and carriage were those of a d.u.c.h.ess. When he goes on to say that her wit was that of a pot-house, I seem to detect one of his not infrequent lapses from the truth. Only three years had elapsed since Lola had shone in Court circles in India, where the social atmosphere was not that of a bar-room; and since then she had been wandering about in countries where her ignorance of the language must have left her manner of speech and modes of thought almost unaffected. Pot-house wit would not have fascinated Liszt, nor the fastidious Louis of Bavaria. "Men of far higher intellectual attainments than mine, and familiar with very good society," admits our nebulous chronicler,[8] "raved and kept raving about her."

Dumas, he says in another place, was as much smitten with her as her other admirers. This, of course, is no guarantee of her refinement, for the genial Creole had the reputation of not being over nice in his attachments and amours. He was then in the prime of life, and may be considered to have just reached the zenith of his fame by the publication of "Les Trois Mousquetaires," "Monte Cristo," and "La Reine Margot" (1844-5). Two years before he had formally and legally married Mademoiselle Ida Ferrier--this step, so inconsistent with his temperament and mode of life, having resulted from his own reckless disregard of the conventions. The lady had fascinated him while she was interpreting a _role_ of his creation at the Porte-St.-Martin. It did not strike him that it would be irregular to take her with him to a ball given by his patron, the Duke of Orleans, and he straightway did so. "Of course, my dear Dumas," said His Highness affably, "it is only your _wife_ that you would think of presenting to me." Poor Alexandre, the lover of all women and none in particular, was hoisted with his own petard. A prince's hints, above all when he is your patron and publisher, are commands. Dumas was led to the altar, like a sheep to the slaughter, by the charming Ida. Chateaubriand supported the bridegroom through the ordeal. However the chains of matrimony sat lightly on the irrepressible _romancier_. Madame Dumas soon after departed for Florence, greatly to the relief of her spouse. He was living, at the time of Lola's visit to Paris, at the Villa Medicis at St. Germain. There he could superintend the building of his palace of Monte Cristo, on the road to Marly, a part of which, with imperturbable _sang-froid_, he actually raised on the land belonging to a neighbour, without so much as a "by your leave." This ambitious residence emptied Dumas's pockets of the little money that the ladies he loved had left in them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALEXANDRE DUMAS, SENIOR.]

Alexandre, of course, fell pa.s.sionately in love with Lola Montez. We need no written a.s.surance of that. We read that he told her that she had acted "like a gentleman" in her treatment of Frederick William's policemen, and with what far-fetched compliments he followed up this commendation it is easy to imagine. There were certain resemblances in their temperaments, though the woman was far the stronger. Posterity is never likely to agree on an estimate of Dumas's character. Theodore de Banville thought him a truly great man.

"Dumas," he wrote, "had no more need to husband his strength and his vitality than a river has to economise with its waters, and it seemed, in fact, that he held in his strong hands inexhaustible urns, whence flowed a stream always clear and limpid. In what formidable metal had he been cast? Once he took it into his head to take his son, Alexandre, to the masked ball of Grados, at the Barriere Montparna.s.se, and, attired as a postilion, the great man danced all night without resting for a moment, and held women with his outstretched arm, like a Hercules. When he returned home in the morning, he found that his postilion's breeches had, through the swelling of the muscles, become impossible to remove; so Alexandre was obliged to cut them into strips with a penknife. After that what did the historian of the Mousquetaires do? Do you think he chose his good clean sheets or a warm bath? He chose work! And having taken some _bouillon_, set himself down before his writing paper, which he continued to fill with adventures till the evening, with as much 'go' and spirit as if he had come from calm repose.

"Nature has given up making that kind of man; by way of a change, she turns out poets, who, having composed a single sonnet, pa.s.s the rest of their lives contemplating themselves and--their sonnets."

Prodigious! It is gratifying to think that this indefatigable worker had always two sincere admirers--himself and his son. The latter, it is true, would have his joke at the former's expense. "My father," remarked the son, "is so vain that he would be ready to hang on to the back of his own carriage, to make people believe he kept a black servant."

Notwithstanding, the two loved each other tenderly. Innumerable anecdotes bear witness to the paternal fondness of the one, the filial devotion of the other. Yet their relation was more that of two sworn friends, as is so touchingly expressed in these lines from the "Pere Prodigue":--

"... I have sought your affection, more than your obedience and respect.... To have all in common, heart as well as purse, to give and to tell each other everything, such has been our device. We have lost, it seems, several hundred thousands of francs; but this we have gained--the power of counting always on one another, thou on me, I on thee, and of being ready always to die for each other. That is the most important thing between father and son."

These are the words of Frenchmen. An Englishman would have put such language into the mouths of husband and wife.

Enjoying the friendship of Dumas _pere_, Lola no doubt had the privilege of meeting Alexandre junior. The young man was then in his twenty-first year, and had piled up debts to the respectable total of fifty thousand francs. It was just about this time, as has been said, that he turned his attention to literature. He found "copy" for his most celebrated work in the pale, flower-like courtesan, Alphonsine Plessis, who shared with Lola the devotion of the erotic Boulevard. The two were women of very different stamp. The Irish woman confronted the world with head erect and flashing eyes; the Lady of the Camellias, with a blush and trembling lips. They were typical of two great cla.s.ses of women: those who rule men, and those whom men rule. The loved of the G.o.d of Love died young. After Alphonsine's early death, the fair Parisiennes flocked to her apartments, as to the shrine of some patron saint, and touched, as though they were precious relics, her jewellery and trinkets, her _lingerie_, and her slippers.

X

MeRY

Another most delightful friend had Lola--he whom she refers to in her autobiography as "the celebrated poet, Mery." To describe this charming and impossible personage as a poet, is to indicate only one department of his genius: as a dramatist he was not far inferior to his great contemporaries, as a novelist he revealed an amazing power of paradox, and a bewildering fertility of imagination. He wrote descriptions of countries he had never seen (though he had travelled far), which, by their accuracy and colour, deceived and delighted the very natives. He was not merely rich in rhymes, said Dumas, he was a millionaire. He could write, too, in more serious vein, and was a profound and ardent cla.s.sicist.

In 1845 Mery was approaching his half-century. Thirty years before he had come to Paris from Ma.r.s.eilles in hot pursuit of a pamphleteer who had dared to attack him. He found time to cross swords with somebody else, and got the worst of the encounter. As a result he took a voyage to Italy for the benefit of his health. His adventures remind us alternatively of those of Brantome and Benvenuto Cellini. At a later period he was a.s.sociated with Barthelemy in an intrigue for the restoration of the Bonapartes; and went to pay his respects to Queen Hortense, while his colleague vainly endeavoured to talk with the Eaglet through the gilded bars of his cage.

Mery could, in short, do everything, and everything very well. He possessed the faculty of turning base metal into gold. Geese in his eyes became swans, and in every lump of literary c.o.ke he saw a diamond of the purest ray. It was, above all, in his dramatic criticism, remarks De Banville, that this faculty produced the most surprising results.

"One day, reading in Mery's review the pretended recital of a comedy of which I was the author, I could not but admire its gaiety, grace, unexpected turns, and happy confusion, and I said to myself: 'Ah, if only this comedy were really the one I wrote!'"

On another occasion, says the poet, at the theatre,

"he said to me: 'What a superb drama!'--and he was perfectly right.

The play, as he described it to me, was, in fact, superb, only unfortunately it had been entirely reconstructed by Mery on the absurd foundation imagined by Mr. * * *. The _denouement_ he invented--for though the third act was not finished, he spoke of the fifth as an old acquaintance--was of such tragic power and daring originality, that after hearing him expound it, I had no desire to witness Mr. * * *'s."

Reviewers and dramatic critics of this kind are now, unhappily, rare.

These few anecdotes sufficiently justify De Banville's claim that Mery was something altogether unheard of and fabulously original. He should have been (and probably was) the happiest of men, and his peculiar powers must have lightened his critical labours as much as they benefited those he criticised. He was as incapable of envy as Dumas was of rancour. Certainly no more lovable and agreeable creature ever haunted the slopes of Parna.s.sus.

I doubt if such men would be appreciated in our society. Ours is the reign of the glum Boeotian. We know not how to converse, and wits are as dead as kings' jesters. There is no scholarship in our senate, and the standard of oratory there would not have satisfied an Early Victorian debating society. If we talk less, a.s.suredly we do not think the more. Every social, political, and religious idea that occupies our dull brains had entered into the consciousness of the men of the 'forties. They thought quickly and talked brilliantly. Their young men were youths--full of fire, enthusiasm, love, and fun. They did not talk about the advantages of devotion to business in early life. They were not born tired. Wonderful, too, as it may seem, people in those days used to like to meet each other in social converse, and were not ashamed to admit it. It was not then fashionable to affect a disinclination for society--the handiest excuse for an inability to talk and to think. Lola Montez learned in Paris what was meant by the _joie de vivre_. In '45 wit was at the prow and pleasure at the helm.