The Magnificent Montez Part 3

There are about ninety-six ladies here whose husbands are gone to the wars, and about twenty-six gentlemen--at least, there will, with good luck, be about that number. We have a very dancing set of aides-de-camp just now, and they are utterly desperate at the notion of our having no b.a.l.l.s. I suppose we must begin on one in a fortnight; but it will be difficult, and there are several young ladies here with whom some of our gentlemen are much smitten. As they will have no rivals here, I am horribly afraid the flirtations may become serious, and then we shall lose some active aides-de-camp, and they will find themselves on ensign's pay with a wife to keep. However, they _will_ have these b.a.l.l.s, so it is not my fault.

After she had left Simla and its round of gaieties, Lola was to have another meeting with the hospitable Aucklands. This took place in camp at Kurnaul, "a great ugly cantonment, all barracks and dust and guns and soldiers." Miss Eden, who was accompanying her brother on a tour through the district, wrote to her sister in England:

_November 13, 1839._

We were at home in the evening, and it was an immense party; but, except that pretty Mrs. J, who was at Simla, and who looked like a star among the others, the women were all plain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Benjamin Lumley. Lessee of Her Majesty's Theatre_]

A couple of days later, she added some further particulars:

We left Kurnaul yesterday morning. Little Mrs. J was so unhappy at our going that we asked her to come and pa.s.s the day here, and brought her with us. She went from tent to tent and chattered all day and visited her friend, Mrs. M, who is with the camp. I gave her a pink silk gown, and it was altogether a very happy day for her evidently. It ended in her going back to Kurnaul on my elephant, with E.N. by her side, and Mr. J sitting behind. She had never been on an elephant before, and thought it delightful.

She is very pretty, and a good little thing apparently. But they are very poor, and she is very young and lively, and if she falls into bad hands, she would laugh herself into foolish sc.r.a.pes. At present the husband and wife are very fond of each other, but a girl who marries at fifteen hardly knows what she likes.

When she wrote this pa.s.sage, Miss Eden might have been a Sibyl, for her words were to become abundantly true.

IV

Except when on active service, officers of the Company's Army were not overworked. Everything was left to the sergeants and corporals; and, while Thomas Atkins and Jack Sepoy trudged in the dust and sweated and drilled in their absurd stocks and tight tunics, the commissioned ranks, lolling in barracks, killed the long hours as they pleased.

Following form, Captain James (the Afghan business had brought him a step in rank) did a certain amount of tiger-shooting and pig-sticking, and a good deal of brandy-swilling, combined with card-playing and gambling. As a husband, he was not a conspicuous success. "He slept,"

complained Lola, feeling herself neglected, "like a boa-constrictor,"

and, during the intervals of wakefulness, "drank too much porter." The result was, there were quarrels, instead of love-making, for they both had tempers.

"Runaway matches, like runaway horses," Lola had once written, "are almost sure to end in a smash-up." In this case there was a "smash-up," for Tom James was not always sleeping and drinking. He had other activities. If fond of a gla.s.s, he was also fond of a la.s.s. The one among them for whom he evinced a special fondness was a Mrs.

Lomer, the wife of a brother officer, the adjutant of his regiment.

His partiality was reciprocated.

One morning when, without any suspicion of what was in store for them, Mrs. James and Adjutant Lomer sat down to their _chota-hazree_, two members of the accustomed breakfast party were missing. Enquiries having been set on foot, the fact was elicited that Captain James and Mrs. Lomer had gone out for an early ride. It must have been a long one, thought the camp, as they did not appear at dinner that evening.

Messengers sent to look for them came back with a disturbing report.

This was to the effect that the couple had slipped off to the Nilgiri Hills and had decided to stop there.

The next morning a panting native brought a letter from the errant lady addressed to her furious spouse. This missive is (without explaining how he got it) reproduced by an American journalist, T.

Everett Harre, in a series of articles, _The Heavenly Sinner_: "I suggest," runs an extract, "you come to your senses and give me my freedom ... I am going with a man of parts who knows how to give a woman the attentions she craves, and is himself glad to shake off a young chit of a wife who is too brainless to appreciate him."

A first-cla.s.s sensation. The entire cantonment throbbed and buzzed with excitement. The colonel fumed; the adjutant cursed; and there was talk of bringing the Don Juan Captain James to a court-martial for "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." But Lola, as was her custom, took it philosophically, doubtless reflecting that she was well rid of a spouse for whom she no longer cared, and went back to her mother in Calcutta.

Mrs. Craigie's maternal heart-strings should have been wrung by the unhappy position of her daughter. They were not wrung. The clandestine marriage, with the upsetting of her own plans, still rankled and remained unforgiven and unforgotten. As a result, when she asked for shelter and sympathy, Lola received a very frigid welcome. Her step-father, however, took her part, and declared that his bungalow was open to her until other arrangements could be made for her future.

Not being possessed of much imagination, his idea was that she should leave India temporarily and stop for a few months in Scotland with his brother, Mr. David Craigie, a man of substance and Provost of Perth.

After an interval for reflection there, he felt that the differences of opinion that had arisen between her husband and herself would become adjusted, and the young couple resume marital relations.

Accordingly, he wrote to his brother, asking him to meet her when she arrived in London and escort her to Perth.

Lola, however, while professing complete agreement, had other views as to her future. She wanted neither a reconciliation with her husband nor a second experience of life with the Craigie family in Scotland.

One such had been more than sufficient, but she was careful not to breathe a word on the subject. She kept her own counsel, and matured her own plans.

CHAPTER III

THE CONSISTORY COURT

I

Sailing from Calcutta for London in an East Indiaman, at the end of 1840, Lola was consigned by her step-father to the "special care" of a Mrs. Sturgis who was among the pa.s.sengers. He obviously felt the parting. "Big salt tears," says Lola, "coursed down his cheeks," when he wished her a last farewell. He also gave her his blessing; and, what was more negotiable, a cheque for 1000. The two never met again.

But although she had left India's coral strand, a memory of her lingered there for many years. In this connection, Sir Walter Lawrence says that he once found himself in a cantonment that had been deserted so long that it was swallowed up by the ever advancing jungle. "A wizened villager," he says, "recalled a high-spirited and beautiful girl, the young wife of an officer, who would creep up and push him into the water. 'Ah,' he said, with a smile of affection, 'she was a _badmash_, but she was always very kind to me.' She was better known afterwards as Lola Montez."

At Madras a number of fresh comers joined the good ship _Larkins_ in which Lola was proceeding to England. Among them was a certain Captain Lennox, aide-de-camp to Lord Elphinstone, the Governor. An agreeable young man, and very different from the missionaries and civil servants who formed the bulk of the other male pa.s.sengers. Lola and himself were soon on good terms. "Too good," was the acid comment of the ladies in whose society Captain Lennox exhibited no interest. The couple were inseparable. They sat at the same table in the saloon; they paced the deck together, arm in arm, on the long hot nights, preferring dark and unfrequented corners; their chairs adjoined; their cabins adjoined; and, so the shocked whisper ran, they sometimes mistook the one for the other.

"Anybody can make a mistake in the dark," said Lola, when Mrs.

Sturgis, remembering Captain Craigie's injunctions, and resolved at all costs to fulfil her trust, ventured on a remonstrance.

Ninety years ago, travellers had to "rough it;" and the conditions governing a voyage from India to England were very different from those that now obtain. None of the modern amenities had any place in the accepted routine. Thus, no deck sports; no jazz band; no swimming-pool; no c.o.c.ktail bar; not even a sweepstake on the day's run.

But time had to be killed; and, as a young gra.s.s widow, Mrs. James felt that flirting was the best way of getting through it. Captain Lennox was the only man on board ship with whom she had anything in common. He was sympathetic, good-looking, and attentive. Also, he swore that he was "madly in love with her." The old, old story; but it did its work. Before the vessel berthed in London docks, Lola had come to a decision. A momentous decision. She would give David Craigie the slip, and, listening to his blandishments, cast in her lot with George Lennox.

"I'll look after you," he said rea.s.suringly. "Trust me for that, my dear."

Lola did trust him. In fact, she trusted him to such an extent that, on reaching London, she stopped with him at the Imperial Hotel in Covent Garden; and then, when the manageress of that establishment took upon herself to make pointed criticisms, at his rooms in Pall Mall.

Naturally enough, this sort of thing could not be hushed up for long.

Meaning nods and winks greeted the dashing Lennox when he appeared at his club. Tongues wagged briskly. Some of them even wagged in distant Calcutta, where they were heard by Lola's husband. Ignoring his own amorous dalliance with a brother officer's spouse, he elected to feel injured. Resolved to a.s.sert himself, he got into touch with his London solicitors and instructed them to take the preliminary steps to dissolve his marriage. The first of these was to bring an action for what was then politely dubbed "crim. con." against the man he alleged to have "wronged" him.

The lawyers would not be hurried; and things moved in leisurely fashion. Still, they moved to their appointed end; and, the necessary red tape being unwound, interrogatories administered, and the evidence of prying chambermaids and hotel servants collected and examined, in May, 1841, the case of James v. Lennox got into the list and was heard by Lord Denman and a special jury in the Court of Queen's Bench. Sir William Follett, the Solicitor-General, was briefed on behalf of the plaintiff, and Frederick Thesiger appeared for Captain Lennox.

In his opening address, Sir William Follett (who had not been too well instructed) told the jury that the pet.i.tioner and his wife "had lived very happily together in India, and that the return of Mrs. James to England was due to a fall from her horse at Calcutta." While on the pa.s.sage home, he continued, pulling out his _vox humana_ stop, the ship touched at Madras, where the defendant came on board; and, "during the long voyage, an intimacy sprang up between Mrs. James and himself which developed in a fashion that left the outraged husband no choice but to inst.i.tute the present proceedings to recover damages for having been wantonly robbed of the affection and society of his consort."

At this point, counsel for Captain Lennox (who, in pusillanimous fashion, had loved and sailed away, rather than stop and help the woman he had compromised) cut short his learned friend's tearful eloquence by admitting that he was prepared to accept a verdict, with 1000 damages. As the judge agreed, the case was abruptly terminated.

This, however, was only the first round. In December of the following year, the next step was adopted, and a suit for divorce was commenced in the Consistory Court. As neither Mrs. James nor the Lothario-like Captain Lennox put in an appearance, Dr. Lushington, declaring himself satisfied that misconduct had been committed, p.r.o.nounced a decree _a mensa et thoro_. All that this amounted to was merely a judicial separation.

The report in _The Times_ only ran to a dozen lines. Considering that the paper cost fivepence a copy, this was not a very liberal allowance. Still, readers had better value in respect of another action in "high life" that was heard the same day, that of Lord and Lady Graves, which had a full column allotted it.

II

This was all that the public knew of the case. It did not seem much on which to blast a young wife's reputation. Dr. Lushington, the judge of the Consistory Court, however, knew a good deal more about the business than did the general public. This was because, during the preliminary hearing, held some months earlier and attended only by counsel and solicitors, a number of damaging facts had transpired.

Mrs. James, said learned counsel for the pet.i.tioner, had "been guilty of behaviour at which a crocodile would tremble and blush." A serious charge to bring against a young woman. Still, in answer to the judge, he professed himself equipped with ample evidence to support it. His first witness was a retired civil servant, a Mr. Browne Roberts, who had known the respondent's husband, first, as a bachelor in India, and afterwards as a married man in Dublin. At the beginning of 1841, he had received a call, he said, from a Major McMullen to whom Captain Craigie had written, asking him to take charge of his step-daughter on her arrival in London and see her off to his relatives in Scotland.

When, however, the major offered this hospitality, it was refused.

Thereupon, Mr. Roberts had himself called at the Imperial Hotel, Covent Garden, and suggested that she should come and stop with his wife; and this invitation was also refused.

Not much in this perhaps, but a good deal in what followed. Mrs.