The Magnificent Montez Part 6

Overjoyed at the success of his emba.s.sy, Fitzball rushed off to the printers and had the h.o.a.rdings plastered with bills, directing special attention to the novelty:

THEATRE ROYAL, COVENT GARDEN Monday, July 10, 1843.

COLOSSAL ATTRACTION!

(For the Benefit of Mr. Fitzball)

EXTRAORDINARY COMBINATION OF TALENT!

During the evening the celebrated DONNA LOLA MONTEZ (whose recent performance created so p.r.o.nounced a sensation at Her Majesty's Theatre) will execute, by special request, her remarkable dance, "El Oleano."

N.B.--This will positively be the Donna's only appearance in London, as she departs on Thursday next for St. Petersburg.

"The theatre," says Fitzball, in his account of the evening, "was crammed. Lola Montez arrived in a splendid carriage, accompanied by her maid. When she was dressed, she enquired if I thought her costume would be approved. I have seen sylphs and female forms of the most dazzling beauty in ballets and fairy dramas, but the most dazzling and perfect form I ever did gaze upon was that of Lola Montez in her white and gold attire studded with diamonds. Her bounding before the public was the signal for general applause and admiration. On the conclusion of her performance, there was a rapturous and universal call for her reappearance."

CHAPTER V

A Pa.s.sIONATE PILGRIMAGE

I

The "departure for St. Petersburg" was a stretch of Fitzball's imagination. Where Lola did go when she left England was not to Russia, but to Belgium. The visit was not a success, as none of the theatres in Brussels at which she applied for an engagement exhibited any interest in ballet-dancers, whether they came from Seville, or elsewhere. A spell of ill luck followed; and, if her own account of this period is to be trusted, she was reduced to such a pa.s.s that in the Belgian capital she became familiar with the inside of p.a.w.nshops and had to sing in the streets, to secure a lodging. But this "singing in the streets" business was, if a picturesque one, not an original touch. It is still in active use, as a stock portion of the autobiographical equipment of every stage and film heroine who wants "publicity." Further, if Lola Montez ever did anything of the kind, it was not for long. A "rich man"--she had a knack of establishing contact with them--promptly came to the rescue; and, a.s.sisted by, it is said, the mysterious Jean Francois Montez, who had followed her from London, she shook the inhospitable dust of the Brussels boulevards off her feet.

It was in Berlin that, in the autumn of 1843, long delayed Fortune smiled on her. A novelty being wanted, she secured an engagement to dance at a fete organised by Frederick William IV in honour of his son-in-law, the Czar Nicholas, and a posse of Grand Dukes then visiting Potsdam. The autocrat of all the Russias expressed himself as highly pleased with the newcomer's efforts. The Berliners followed suit. Lola was "made"; and every night for a month on end she was booked up to dance somewhere.

While in the German capital, she is said to have had an encounter with the arm of the law. The story is that, mounted on a blood horse, she attended a review held in honour of the King and the Czar; and her steed, being somewhat mettlesome, carried her at full tilt across the parade ground and into the midst of the royal party a.s.sembled at the saluting-point.

When an indignant policeman, bellowing _Verboten!_ at the top of his voice, rushed up and clung to the bridle, he received for his pains a vigorous cut from her whip. The next morning a summons was delivered to the daring Amazon, ordering her to appear before a magistrate and answer a charge of "insulting the uniform." Thereupon, Lola, feeling that the general atmosphere was unfavourable, packed her trunks. She managed to get away just in time, as a warrant for her arrest was actually being made out. But if she did not leave Berlin with all the honours of war, it is at any rate recorded that "she left this city of pigs with a high head and a snapping of her fan."

The Odyssey continued. The next place where she halted was Dresden.

There the pilgrim swam into the orbit of Franz Liszt, who happened to be giving a series of recitals. Born in 1811--the "year of the Comet"--he was at the height of his powers when Lola Montez flashed across his path. During an early visit to England, as a "boy prodigy,"

he had gathered considerable laurels. Windsor Castle had smiled upon him, and he had played to George IV and to Queen Victoria. The chance encounter with Lola was a fateful one for both of them. But, as it happened, the virtuoso rather welcomed the prospect of a fresh intrigue just then. Wearied of the romanticism of the phalanx of feminine admirers, who cl.u.s.tered about him like bees, he found this one, with her beauty and vivacious charm, to have a special appeal for him. He responded to it avidly. The two became inseparable.

One evening, while _Rienzi_ was being performed, his latest charmer accompanied Liszt to the Opera House, and, during an interval, joined him in the dressing-room of Josef Tichatschek, the tenor. Hearing that he was there, Wagner was coming to speak to him, "when he saw that his companion was a painted and bejewelled woman with insolent eyes."

Thereupon, if his biographer is to be trusted, "the composer turned and fled." Lola had routed "Rienzi."

Musicians will be musicians; and Liszt was no exception. With his love affairs and his long catalogue of "conquests" in half the capitals of Europe, he was generally regarded as a Don Juan of the keyboard. It is said by James Huneker that, on leaving Dresden, Lola joined him in Constantinople. In her memoirs she says nothing about wandering along the sh.o.r.es of the Bosphorus in his company. Still, she says a good deal about Sir Stratford Canning, the British Amba.s.sador, by whom, she declares, she was given a letter to the Chief Eunuch, admitting her to the Sultan's harem. But this, like many of her other statements, must be taken with a generous pinch of salt.

During that memorable summer Liszt was specially invited to Bonn, to unveil the Beethoven monument that had been erected there. The ceremony attracted a distinguished gathering, and was witnessed by the King and Queen of Russia, together with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It was also witnessed by Lola Montez, who accompanied Liszt.

She was promptly recognised by Ignatz Moscheles; and, when they discovered her presence, the reception committee were so upset that they had her barred from the hotel in which rooms had been engaged for the guest of honour. But it took more than this to keep her in the background. While the speeches were in full swing, she forced her way into the banquet-hall, and won over the prudish burghers by jumping on the table and dancing to them.

The Prince Consort was shocked at the "liberty." Frederick William, however, being more broad-minded, cracked a Teutonic jest.

"Lola is a Lorelei!" he declared, with an appreciative grin, when the episode was reported to him. "What will she be up to next?"

An inevitable result of Liszt's dalliance with his new Calypso in the various capitals that they visited together during the months that followed was to shatter the relations that had existed for years between himself and Madame d'Agoult. The virtuoso emerged from the business badly, for the woman he had discarded in summary fashion for a younger and more attractive one had sacrificed her name and her reputation for his sake, and had also presented him with three pledges of mutual affection. Infuriated at his callousness, she afterwards, as "Daniel Stern," relieved her outraged feelings in a novel ("written to calm her agitated soul"), _Nelida_, where Liszt, under a transparent disguise, figured as "Guermann Regnier."

But the pace was too hot to last. Still, it was Liszt, and not Lola, who cooled first. "With Lola, as with others, known and unknown, it was," observes William Wallace, "_Da capo al Segno_." The story of the final rupture between them, as given by Guy de Pourtales, has in it something of the element of farce:

Liszt allowed her to make love to him, and amused himself with this dangerous sweetheart. But without any conviction, without any real curiosity. She annoyed, she irritated him during his hours of work. Before long he planned to escape, and, having arranged everything with the hotel porter, he departed without leaving any address, but not without having first locked this most wearisome of inamoratas up in her room. For twelve hours Lola raised a fearful uproar, breaking whatever she could lay her hands on.

Liszt, however, scenting this possibility, had settled the bill in advance.

But the incident does not redound to his credit, for the spectacle of a distinguished artist bribing a lackey to smuggle him out of an hotel and imprison in her bedroom the woman with whom he had been living, is a sorry one.

II

Having had enough of Germany for the time being, Lola decided to see what France had to offer. "The only place for a woman of spirit," she once said, "is Paris." Accordingly she betook herself there. As soon as she arrived, she secured lodgings in a modest hotel near the Palais Royal; and, well aware of her limitations, took some dancing lessons from a ballet-master in the rue Lepelletier. When she had taken what she considered enough, she called on Leon Pillet, the director of the _Academie_.

"You have, of course, already heard of my immense success in London,"

she announced with an a.s.sured air.

M. Pillet had not heard of it. But this did not matter. As had been the case with Lumley before him, Lola's ravishing smile inflamed his susceptible heart; and he promptly engaged her to dance in the ballet that was to follow Halevy's _Il Lazzarone_, then in active rehearsal.

Lola's debut as a _premiere danseuse_ was made on March 30, 1844. It was not a successful one. Far from it. The fact was, the Parisians, accustomed to the dreamy and sylph-like pirouettings of Cerito and Elssler and Taglioni, and their own Adele Dumilatre, could not appreciate the vigorous _cachuchas_ and _boleros_ now offered them.

When they voiced their disapproval, Lola lost the one thing she could never keep--her temper. She made a _moue_ at the audience; and, if de Mirecourt is to be trusted, pulled off her garters (a second authority says a more intimate item of attire) and flung them with a gesture of contempt among the jeering crowd in the first row of stalls.

As may be imagined, the Press was unsympathetic towards this "demonstration."

"We will avoid damaging with our strictures," remarked _Le Const.i.tutionnel_ in its next issue, "a pretty young woman who, before making her debut, has obviously not had time to study our preferences."

A much more devastating criticism was published in _Le Journal des Debats_ by Jules Janin. He went out of his way, indeed, to be positively offensive. Nor did Theophile Gautier, who in his famous waistcoat of crimson velvet was present on this eventful evening, think very much of the would-be ballerina's efforts to win Paris.

Beyond, he wrote, a pair of magnificent dark eyes, Mademoiselle Lola Montez has nothing suggestively Andalusian in her appearance. She talks poor Spanish, scarcely any French, and only tolerable English. The question is, to what country does she really belong? We can affirm that she has small feet and shapely legs. The extent, however, to which these gifts serve her is quite another story.

It must be admitted that the public's curiosity aroused by her altercations with the police of the North and her whip-cracking exploits among the Prussian gendarmes has not been satisfied. We imagine that Mademoiselle Lola would do better on horseback than on the stage.

An odd account, headed: "Singular Debut of Lola Montez in Paris," was sent to New York by an American journalist:

"When, a few days ago, it was announced that two foreign dancers, Mlle Cerito and Mlle Lola Montez, had just entered the walls of Paris, the triumphs achieved by the Italian ballerina could not eclipse the horse-whipping exploits of Mlle Lola. 'Let us have Lola Montez!' exclaimed the stalls and pit. 'We want to see if her foot is as light as her hand!' Never did they witness a more astounding _entree_.

After her first leap, she stopped short on the tips of her toes, and, by a movement of prodigious rapidity, detached one of her garters from a lissome limb adjacent to her quivering thigh (innocent of _lingerie_) and flung it to the occupants of the front row of the orchestra....

Notwithstanding the effect produced by this piquant eccentricity, Mile Lola has not met with the reception she antic.i.p.ated; and it has been deemed proper by the management to dispense with her reappearance."

But to give Lola her _conge_ by word of mouth was a task which M.

Pillet did not care to undertake. "So much was the haughty Amazon's riding-whip dreaded that a letter of dismissal was prudently delivered. As a result, bloodshed was avoided; and Mlle Lola has solaced herself with the reflection that she has been the victim of the Machiavellian cabal of Russia, still angry at her routing of Muscovite gendarmes in Warsaw."

With reference to the Warsaw episode, the slipshod de Mirecourt says that she was dancing there in 1839. At that date, however, she was no nearer Warsaw than Calcutta. None the less, she did go there, but it was not until she had left Paris after her failure at the Academie Royale. According to herself, the Czar Nicholas, who remembered her in Berlin, invited her to visit St. Petersburg, and, having a month to spare, she accepted a preliminary engagement in the Polish capital.

This began well enough, for, if her terpsich.o.r.ean abilities still left something to be desired, the Warsaw critics, ever susceptible to feminine charms, went into positive raptures about her personal attractions. One of them, indeed, became almost lyrical on the subject:

"Her soft silken hair," was this authority's opinion, "falls in luxuriant wealth down her back, its glistening hue rivalling that of the raven's wing; on a slender and delicate neck--the whiteness of which eclipses swansdown--is poised a lovely face.... Where the proportions are concerned, Lola's little feet are somewhere between those of a Chinese maiden and those of the daintiest Parisienne imaginable. As for her bewitching calves, they suggest the steps of a Jacob's ladder transporting one up to heaven; and her ravishing figure resembles the Venus of Cnidus, that immortal masterpiece sculptured by the chisel of Praxiteles in the 104th Olympiad. As for her eyes, her very soul is enshrined in their blue depths."

There was a lot more--several columns more--in a similar strain.

As was to be expected, such a tribute attracted the attention of Prince Ivan Paskievich, the Viceroy of Poland. He had a weakness for pretty women; and, after the long succession of lumpy and heavy-footed ballerinas occupying the Warsaw stage, this new arrival sounded promising. When a trusted emissary reported that the critics "had not said half what they might," he resolved to make her acquaintance. His first step was to send her, through Madam Steinkeller, the wife of a banker, an invitation to have supper with him at his private house.