The Magnificent Montez Part 18

As the result of a solemn conclave at the Rathaus, an ultimatum was delivered by the Cabinet; and Ludwig was informed, without any beating about the bush, that unless he wanted to plunge the country into revolution, Lola Montez must leave the kingdom. Ludwig yielded; and forgetful of, or else deliberately ignoring, the fact that he had once written a pa.s.sionate threnody, in which he declared:

"And though thou be forsaken by all the world, Yet, never wilt thou be abandoned by me!"

he could find it in his heart to issue a decree expelling her from his realms.

To this end, on March 17, he signed two separate Orders in Council.

1

"We, Ludwig, by the Grace of G.o.d, King of Bavaria, etc., think it necessary to give notice that the Countess of Landsfeld has ceased to possess the rights of naturalisation."

2

"Since the Countess of Landsfeld does not give up her design of disturbing the peace of the capital and country, all the judicial authorities of the kingdom are hereby ordered to arrest the said Countess wherever she may be discovered.

They are to carry her to the nearest fortress, where she is to be kept in custody."

Events moved rapidly. A few days later Lola was arrested by Prince Wallerstein (whom she herself had put into power when his stock had fallen) and deported, as an "undesirable alien," to Switzerland.

Woman-like, she had the last word.

"I am leaving Bavaria," she said, "but, before very long, your King will also leave."

Everybody had something to say about the business. Most people had a lot to say. The wires hummed; and the foreign correspondents in Munich filled columns with long accounts of the recent disturbances in Munich and their origin. No two accounts were similar.

"The people insisted," says Edward Cayley, in his _European Revolutions of_ 1848, "on the dismissal of the King's mistress. She was sent away, but, trusting to the King's dotage, she came back, police or no police.... This was a climax to which the people were unprepared to submit, not that they were any more virtuous than their Sovereign." Another publicist, Edward Maurice, puts it a little differently: "In Bavaria the power exercised by Lola Montez over Ludwig had long been distasteful to the sterner reformers." This was true enough; but the Muncheners disliked the Jesuits still more, a.s.serting that it was with them that Lola shared the conscience of the King. The Liberals were ready for action, and welcomed the opportunity of a.s.serting themselves.

As soon as Lola was really out of the country, her Barerstra.s.se mansion was searched from attic to cellar by the Munich police. Since, in order to justify the search, they had to discover something compromising, they announced that they had discovered "proofs" that Lord Palmerston and Mazzini were in active correspondence with the King's ex-mistress; and that the go-between for the British Foreign Office was a Jew called Loeb. This individual was an artist who had been employed to decorate the house. Seized with pangs of remorse, he is said to have gone to Ludwig and confessed having intercepted Lola's correspondence with Mazzini and engineered the rioting. He further declared that large sums of money had been sent her from abroad.

Historians, however, have no knowledge of this; nor was the nature of the "proofs" ever revealed.

Lola's villa in the Barerstra.s.se afterwards became the new home of the British Legation. It was demolished in 1914; and not even a wall plaque now marks her one-time occupancy. As for the Residenz Palace where she dallied with Ludwig, this building is now a museum, and as such echoes to the tramp of tourists and the snapping of cameras. _Sic transit_, etc.

II

When Lola, hunted from pillar to post, eventually left Munich for Switzerland, it was in the company of Auguste Papon, who, on the grounds of "moral turpitude," had already been given his marching-orders. He described himself as a "courier." His pa.s.sport, however, bore the less exalted description of "cook." It was probably the more correct one. The faithful Fritz Peissner, anxious to be of service to the woman he loved, and for whom he had already risked his life, joined her at Constance, together with two other members of the _Alemannia_, Count Hirschberg and Lieutenant Nussbaum. But they only stopped a few days.

Anxious to get into touch with them, Lola wrote to the landlord at their last address:

_2 March, 1848._

SIR,

In case the students of the Alemannia Society have left your hotel, I beg you to inform my servant, the bearer of this letter, where Monsieur Peissner, for whom he has a parcel to deliver, has gone.

Receive in advance my distinguished sentiments.

COUNTESS OF LANDSFELD.

Lola's first halt in Switzerland (a country she described as "that little Republic which, like a majestic eagle, lies in the midst of the vultures and cormorants of Europe") was at Geneva. An error of judgment, for the austere citizens of Calvin's town, setting a somewhat lofty standard among visitors, were impervious to her blandishments. "They were," she complained, "as chilly as their own icicles." At Berne, however, to which she went next, she had better luck. This was because she met there an impressionable young Charge d'affaires attached to the British Legation, whom she found "somewhat younger than Ludwig, but more than twice as silly." An _entente_ was soon established. "Sometimes riding, and sometimes driving she would appear in public, accompanied by her youthful adorer."

The official was Robert Peel, a son of the distinguished statesman, and was afterwards to become third baronet. In a curious little work, typical of the period, _The Black Book of the British Aristocracy_, there is an acid allusion to the matter: "This bright youth has just taken under his protection the notorious Lola Montez, and was lately to be observed walking with her, in true diplomatic style, in the streets of a Swiss town."

It was about this period that it occurred to a theatrical manager in London, looking for a novelty, that there was material for a stirring drama written round the career of Lola Montez. No sooner said than done; and a hack dramatist, who was kept on the premises, was commissioned to set to work. Locked up in his garret with a bottle of brandy, at the end of a week he delivered the script. This being approved by the management, it was put into rehearsal, and the h.o.a.rdings plastered with bills:

+---------------------------------------------------------------+ | THEATRE ROYAL, HAYMARKET | | | | (Under the Patronage of Her Gracious Majesty The Queen, | | His Royal Highness Prince Albert, and the elite of Rank and | | Fashion.) On Wednesday, April 26, 1848, will be produced a | | New and Original and Apropos Sketch ent.i.tled: | | | | "LOLA MONTEZ, or THE COUNTESS FOR AN HOUR." | +---------------------------------------------------------------+

"An hour." This was about as long as it lasted, for the reception by the critics was distinctly chilly. "We cannot," announced one of them, "applaud the motives that governed the production of a farce introducing a mock sovereign and his mistress. In our opinion the piece is extremely objectionable."

The Lord Chamberlain apparently shared this view, for he had the play withdrawn after the second performance.

"_Es gibt kein Zuruck_" ("There is to be no coming back") had been Ludwig's last words to her. But Lola did not take the injunction seriously. According to a letter in the _Deutsche Zeitung_, she was back in Munich within a week, travelling under the "protection" of Baron Moller, a Russian diplomatist. Entering the Palace surrept.i.tiously, she extracted a cheque for 50,000 florins from Ludwig. As it was drawn on Rothschild's bank at Frankfort, she hurried off there, and returned to Switzerland the same evening, "with a bagful of notes."

To convince his readers that he was well behind the scenes, Papon gives a letter which he a.s.serts was written by Ludwig to a correspondent some months later:

I wish to know from you if my dear Countess would like her annuity a.s.sured by having it paid into a private bank, or if she would rather I deposited a million francs with the Bank of England.... I am already being blamed for giving her too much. As the revolutionaries seize upon any pretext to a.s.sert themselves, it is important to avoid directing attention to her just now. Still, I want my dearly loved Countess to be satisfied. I repeat that the whole world cannot part me from her.

While he was with her in Switzerland, Papon strung together a pamphlet: _Lola Montez, Memoires accompagnes de lettres intimes de S.M. le Roi de Baviere et de Lola Montez, ornes des portraits, sur originaux donnes par eux a l'auteur_, purporting to be written by their subject. "I owe my readers," he makes her say smugly, "the exact truth. They must judge between my enemies and myself." But, in his character of a Peeping Tom, very little truth was expended by Papon.

Thus, he declares that, during her sojourn in the land of the mountains and William Tell, she had a series of _affaires_ with a "baron," a "muscular artisan," and an "intrepid sailor." He also has a story to the effect that "two pure-blooded English ladies, the bearers of ill.u.s.trious names," called on her uninvited; and that this circ.u.mstance annoyed her so much that she made her pet monkey attack them.

But Auguste Papon cannot be considered a very reliable authority. A decidedly odd fish, he claimed to be an ex-officer and also dubbed himself a marquis. For all his pretensions, however, he was merely a _chevalier d'industrie_, living on his wits; and, masquerading as a priest, he was afterwards convicted of swindling and sent to prison.

III

A doughty, but anonymous, champion jumped into the breach and issued a counterblast to Papon's effort in the shape of a second pamphlet, headed "A Reply." But this was not any more remarkable for its accuracy than the original. Thus, it declares, "She [Lola] lived with the King of Bavaria, a man of eighty-seven. The nature of that intimacy can best be surmised by reading the second and third verses of the First Book of Kings, Chapter i. It is evident to any reflecting mind that it was a sort of King David arrangement." As for the rest of the pamphlet, it was chiefly taken up with an elaborate argument that, all said and done, its subject was no worse than other ladies, and much better than many of them.

Among extracts from this well intentioned effort, the following are the more important:

A certain Marquis Auguste Papon, a quondam panderer to the natural desires and affections which are common to the whole human race, published and circulated throughout Europe a volume which stamps his own infamy (as we shall have occasion to show in the course of this reply) in far more ineffaceable characters than that of those whom, in his vindictiveness, he gloatingly sought to destroy.

But, before we proceed to dissect his book, it may be permitted us to ask the impartial reader what there is so very remarkable in the conduct of the King of Bavaria and Lola Montez as to distinguish them unfavourably from the monarchs and women celebrated for their talent, originality, and beauty who have gone before. Where are Henry IV of France, Henry V, Louis XIV, and Louis XV, with their respective mistresses? Who of their people ever presumed to interfere on the score of morality with the favours and honours conferred on those distinguished women? Nay, to come down to a later period, has the Marquis Auguste Papon ever heard of the loves of Louis XVIII and Madame de Cuyla, and that after the monarch's restoration in 1814? Is he ignorant of those of Napoleon himself and Mademoiselle Georges? Have not almost all the royal family of England--even those of the House of Hanover--been notorious for their connection with celebrated women? Has he never heard of Mrs.

Walkinshaw, ostensible mistress of Charles Edward the Pretender, of Lucy Barlow, mistress of Charles II, mother of the Duke of Monmouth? Of Arabella Churchill and Katherine Sedley, mistresses of James II? Of the Countess of Kendal, mistress of George II, who was received everywhere in English society? Or of George IV and the Marchioness of C----? Of the Duke of York and Mary Anne Clark? Of the Duke of Clarence and the amiable and respected Mrs. J----? And last, not least, of the present King of Hanover and late Duke of c.u.mberland, who labours even unto this hour under suspicion of having murdered his valet Sellis, to conceal his adultery with his wife? In what differs the King of Bavaria from these?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Lola Montez in caricature. "Lola on the Allemannen Hound"_]

But even to descend lower into the social scale of those who have occupied the attention of the world without incurring its marked and impertinent censure, has the Marquis Auguste Papon ever heard of the beautiful Miss Foote, who, first the favourite of the celebrated Colonel Berkeley (a natural brother of the Duke of Devonshire) and secondly of a personal friend of the writer of this reply--the celebrated Pea Green Hayne--became finally the charming and amiable Countess of Harrington, one of the sweetest women that ever were placed at the head of the Stanhope family or graced a peerage?

Who, that ever once enjoyed the pleasure of knowing this fairest flower in the parterre of England's aristocracy of beauty, would, in a spirit of revenge and disappointed avarice, have had the grossness to insult _her_ as the Marquis of Papon--the depository of all her secrets--has insulted the Countess of Landsfeld with the loathsome name of "courtesan," because, yielding to the confidence of her woman's heart, she had been the adored of two previous lovers? Never did Lord Petersham, afterwards the Earl of Harrington, take a more sensible course than when he elevated in a holy and irreproachable love--a love that strangled scandal in its bloated fullness--the fascinating Maria Foote to the position she was made to adorn, being twin sister in beauty as well as in law to the charming Miss Green, whose ripe red lips and long dark-lashed blue and laughing eyes were, before her marriage with Colonel Stanhope, the admiration and subject of homage of all London. Should her eye ever rest on this page, she will perceive that we have not forgotten its power and expression.

To descend still lower in the scale of social life, has the Marquis Auguste Papon ever heard of the celebrated Madame Vestris, now Mrs. Mathews? Is he ignorant that her theatre--the Olympic--was ever a resort of the most fashionable and aristocratic people of London? Did her moral life in any way detract from her popularity as a woman of talent and of beauty, and an artiste of exceeding fascination and merit? And yet she had more lovers than the Marquis Auguste Papon can, with all his ingenuity, raise up in evidence against the remarkable woman he, in his not very creditable spirit of vengeance, has sworn to destroy.

Let us enumerate those we know to have been the lovers of Madame Vestris, who, after having pa.s.sed her youth in all the variety of enjoyment, at length became the wife of a man, not without talent himself, and whose father stood first among the names celebrated in the comic art.

First was a personal friend of the writer of this reply to the unmanly attack of the Marquis Auguste Papon. And we have reason to remember it, for the connection of Henry Cole with the most fascinating woman of her day led to a duel in Hyde Park, of which that lady was the immediate cause, between the writer and a British officer who was so ungallant as to seek to check the enthusiasm created by her scarcely paralleled acting. To him succeeded Sir John Anstruther, and after Sir John the celebrated Horace Claggett. In what order their successors came we do not recollect, but of those who knew Madame Vestris in all the intimacy of the most tender friendship were Handsome Jack, Captain Best, Lord Edward Thynne, and Lord Castlereagh. These things were no secrets to the thousands who, fascinated by her beauty and the perfection of her acting, nevertheless thronged the theatre she was admitted to have conducted with the most amiable propriety and skill. On the contrary, they were as much matters of general knowledge among people of the first rank and fashion as the sun at noon-day. And yet what gentleman ever presumed to affix to the name of this gifted woman, whose very disregard of the opinion of those who hypocritically and _sub rosa_ pursued in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the same course--what gentleman, we ask, ever dared to commit himself so far as to term her a "courtesan"?

There was a good deal more of it, for the "Reply" ran to seventy-six pages.

The t.i.tle-page of this counterblast ran: