Superwomen Part 1

Superwomen.

by Albert Payson Terhune.

FOREWORD

Find the Woman.

You will discover her in almost every generation, in almost every country, in almost every big city--the Super-Woman. She is not the typical adventuress; she is not a genius. The reason for her strange power is occult. When psycho-vivisectionists have thought they had segregated the cause--the formula--what you will--in one particular Super-Woman or group of Super-Women, straightway some new member of the clan has arisen who wields equal power with her notable sisters, but who has none of the traits that made them irresistible. And the seekers of formulas are again at sea.

What makes the Super-Woman? Is it beauty? Cleopatra and Rachel were homely. Is it daintiness? Marguerite de Valois washed her hands but twice a week. Is it wit? Pompadour and La Valliere were avowedly stupid in conversation. Is it youth? Diane de Poictiers and Ninon de l'Enclos were wildly adored at sixty. Is it the subtle quality of femininity? George Sand, who numbered her admirers by the score--poor Chopin in their foremost rank--was not only ugly, but disgustingly mannish. So was Semiramis.

The nameless charm is found almost as often in the masculine, "advanced" woman as in the ultrafeminine damsel.

Here are stories of Super-Women who conquered at will. Some of them smashed thrones; some were content with wholesale heart-smashing.

Wherein lay their secret? Or, rather, their secrets? For seldom did two of them follow the same plan of campaign.

ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE

CHAPTER ONE

LOLA MONTEZ

THE DANCER WHO KICKED OVER A THRONE

Her Majesty's Theatre in London, one night in 1843, was jammed from pit to roof. Lumley the astute manager, had whispered that he had a "find." His whisper had been judiciously pitched in a key that enabled it to penetrate St. James Street clubs, Park Lane boudoirs, even City counting-rooms.

The managerial whisper had been augmented by a "private view," to which many journalists and a few influential men about town had been bidden. These lucky guests had shifted the pitch from whisper to paean.

By word of mouth and by ardent quill the song of praise had spread.

One of the latter forms of tribute had run much in this rural-newspaper form:

"A brilliant ~divertiss.e.m.e.nt~ is promised by Mr. Lumley for the forthcoming performance of 'The Tarantula,' at Her Majesty's. Thursday evening will mark the British debut of the mysterious and bewitchingly beautiful Castilian dancer, Lola Montez.

"Through the delicate veins of this lovely daughter of dreamy Andalusia sparkles the ~sang azur~ which is the birthright of the hidalgo families alone. In her is embodied not alone the haughty lineage of centuries of n.o.ble ancestry, but all the fire and mystic charm that are the precious heritage of the Southland.

"At a private view, yesterday, at which your correspondent had the honor to be an invited guest, this peerless priestess of Terpsich.o.r.e----"

And so on for well-nigh a column of adjective-starred panegyric, which waxed more impa.s.sioned as the dictionary's supply of unrepeated superlatives waned. This was before the day of the recognized press agent. Folk had a way of believing what they read. Hence the gratifyingly packed theater to witness the mysterious Spaniard's debut.

Royalty itself, surrounded by tired gentlemen in waiting who wanted to sit down and could not, occupied one stage box. In the front of another, lolled Lord Ranelagh, arbiter of London fashion and accepted authority on all matters of taste--whether in dress, dancers, or duels. Ranelagh, recently come back from a tour of the East, divided with royalty the reverent attention of the stalls.

The pit whistled and clapped in merry impatience for the appearance of the danseuse. The West End section of the house waited in equal, if more subdued eagerness, and prepared to follow every possible expression of Ranelagh's large-toothed, side-whiskered visage as a signal for its own approval or censure of the much-advertised Lola's performance.

The first scene of the opera pa.s.sed almost unnoticed. Then the stage was cleared and a tense hush gripped the house. A fanfare of cornets; and from the wings a supple, dark girl bounded.

A whirlwind of welcome from pit and gallery greeted her. She struck a sensuous pose in the stage's exact center. The cornetists laid aside their instruments.

Guitars and mandolins set up a throbby string overture. Lola drew a deep breath, flashed a vivid Spanish smile on the audience at large, and took the first languid step of her dance.

Then it was that the dutiful signal seekers cast covert looks once more at Lord Ranelagh. That ordinarily stolid n.o.bleman was leaning far forward in his stage box, mouth and eyes wide, staring with incredulous amaze at the posturing Andalusian. Before her first step was complete, Ranelagh's astonishment burst the shackles of silence.

"Gad!" he roared, his excited voice smashing through the soft music and penetrating to every cranny. "Gad! It's little Betty James!"

He broke into a Homeric guffaw. A toady who sat beside him hissed sharply. The hiss and the guffaw were cues quite strong enough for the rest of the house. A sizzling, swishing chorus of hisses went up from the stalls, was caught by the pit, and tossed aloft in swelling crescendo to the gallery, where it was intensified to treble volume.

Lola's artistically made-up face had gone white under its rouge and pearl powder at Ranelagh's shout. Now it flamed crimson. The girl danced on; she was gallant, a thoroughbred to the core--even though she chanced to be thoroughbred Irish instead of thoroughbred Spanish--and she would not be hissed from the stage.

But now "boos" mingled with the hisses. And Ranelagh's immoderate laughter was caught up by scores of people who did not in the least know at what they were laughing.

The storm was too heavy to weather. Lumley growled an order. Down swooped the curtain, leaving the crowd booing on one side of it, and Lola raging on the other.

Which ended the one and only English theatrical experience of Lola Montez, the dreamy Andalusian dancer from County Limerick, Ireland.

That night at Almack's, Lord Ranelagh told a somewhat lengthy story--a story whose details he had picked up in the East--which was repeated with interesting variations next day on Rotten Row, in a dozen clubs, in a hundred drawing rooms. There is the gist of the tale:

Some quarter century before the night of Lola's London ~premiere~--and ~derniere~--an Irish girl, Eliza Oliver by name, had caught the errant fancy of a great man. The man chanced to be Lord Byron, at that time loafing about the Continent and trying, outwardly at least, to live up to the mental image of himself that was just then enshrined in the hearts of several thousand demure English schoolmaids.

Byron soon tired of Miss Oliver--it is doubtful whether he ever saw her daughter--and the Irish beauty soon afterward married a fellow countryman of her own--Sir Edward Gilbert, an army captain.

The couple's acquaintances being overmuch given to prattling about things best forgotten, Gilbert exchanged to a regiment in India, taking along his wife and her little girl. The child had meantime been christened Maria Dolores Eliza Rosanna; which, for practical purposes, was blue-penciled down to "Betty."

Seven years afterward, Gilbert died. His widow promptly married Captain Craigie, a solid, worthy, Scotch comrade-at-arms of her late husband's. Craigie generously a.s.sumed all post-Byronic responsibilities, along with the marriage vows. And, at his expense, Betty was sent to Scotland--later to Paris--to be educated.

At sixteen the girl was a beauty--and a witch as well. She and her mother spent a season at Bath, a resort that still retained in those days some shreds of its former glory. And there--among a score of younger and poorer admirers--two men sued for Betty's hand.

One was Captain James, a likable, susceptible, not over-clever army officer, home on furlough from India. The other was a judge, very old, very gouty, very rich.

And Betty's mother chose the judge, out of all the train of suitors, as her son-in-law-elect. Years had taught worldly wisdom to the once-gay Eliza.

Betty listened in horror to the old man's mumbled vows. Then, at top speed, she fled to Captain James. She told James that her mother was seeking to sacrifice her on the altar of wealth. James, like a true early-Victorian hero, rose manfully to the occasion.

He and Betty eloped, were married by a registrar, and took the next out-bound ship for India.

It was a day of long and slow voyages. Betty beguiled the time on shipboard by a course of behavior such as would have prevented the most charitable fellow pa.s.senger from mistaking her for a returning missionary.

There were many Anglo-Indians--officers and civilians--aboard. And Betty's flirtations, with all and sundry, speedily became the scandal of the ship. By the time the vessel docked in India, there were dozens of women ready to spread abroad the bride's fame in her new home land.

English society in India was, and is, in many respects like that of a provincial town. In the official and army set, one member's business is everybody's business.

Nor did Betty take any pains to erase the impressions made by her volunteer advance agents. Like a blazing star, she burst upon the horizon of India army life. Gloriously beautiful, willful, capricious, brilliant, she speedily had a horde of men at her feet--and a still larger number of women at her throat.

Her flirtations were the talk of mess-room and bungalow. Heartlessly, she danced on hearts. There was some subtle quality about her that drove men mad with infatuation.

And her husband? He looked on in horrified wonder. Then he argued and even threatened. At last he shut up and took to drink. Betty wrote contemptuously to a friend, concerning this last phase: