the spunging-house, of public executions turned into popular festivals; when gentlemen of fashion painted policemen pea-green, and beat them till they were senseless; when peers got drunk and the people starved. Opposed to this debauchery was a religion of convention and propriety, narrow, stupid, and un-Christlike--the cult of the correct and the respectable, the fetishes to which Lady Flora Hastings and many another woman were coldly sacrificed.In spite of Sir Mulberry and Mr. Pecksniff, however, Lola, ex-Mrs. James, had no intention of going under.[Pg 40] Her exclusion from society, after her wearisome experiences in India, she probably regarded as no great hardship. Her youth, her sprightliness, and her beauty made her many friends. Some of these as quickly became enemies, when they discovered that a divorced woman is not necessarily for sale. More than one roue vowed vengeance against the girl who, with bursts of laughter and dangerous gusts of anger, rejected the offer of his protection. It was, perhaps, in this way she offended the elegant Lord Ranelagh, who was then swaggering about in the Spanish cloak he had worn in the Carlist Wars. Lola was strong enough to swim in the maelstrom. Independence and adversity brought out the latent force in the character of the "good little thing" of Simla. Instead of looking out for a refuge, she sought a career.
She turned, of course, towards the stage, the one profession in Early Victorian times that offered any promise to an ambitious woman. She took more pains to acquire a knowledge of her art than are deemed necessary by most beautiful aspirants nowadays. She studied under Miss Fanny Kelly, a gifted actress, who had distinguished herself by her efforts to improve the social status of her profession, and who had opened a dramatic school for women adjacent to what is now the Royalty Theatre. Lola describes Miss Kelly as a lady as worthy in the acts of her private life as she was gifted in genius. This opinion was shared by all the contemporaries of the venerable actress. In after years Mr. Gladstone thought fit to recognise her services to the theatre by a royal grant of one hundred
and fifty pounds, but the money arrived in time only to be expended on a memorial over her grave in the dismal[Pg 41] cemetery at Brompton. Since Lola was a friend of Miss Kelly, she must have been very far from being the depraved character she is represented by some.
With all the goodwill in the world, the experienced mistress could not make an actress of her beautiful pupil, who accordingly determined to approach the stage through a back-door. If talent of the intellectual order was denied her, she could fall back on
her physical advantages. She determined to become a dancer. She was instructed for four months by a Spanish professor, and then (so she assures us) underwent a further training at Madrid. It was now that she assumed the name of Lola Montez--so soon to be known throughout Europe. She passed herself off as a Spaniard, partly, no doubt, for professional reasons, and partly to conceal her identity with the wife of Captain James. Society can hardly expect its quarry to step out into the open to be shot at. Her beauty
15
and her dancing so impressed Benjamin Lumley, the experienced director of Her Majesty's Theatre, that it was on his stage that she actually made her first appearance.
The morning papers of Saturday, 3rd June 1843, announced accordingly that between the acts of the opera (Il Barbiere di Seviglia), Donna [sic] Lola Montez, of the Teatro Real, Seville, would make her first appearance in this country, in the original Spanish dance, "El Olano." Attracted by this advertisement, a critic, who afterwards wrote under the pseudonym of "Q.," called at the theatre, and was presented to the debutante. In her he recognised a lady living opposite his lodgings in Grafton Street, Mayfair, who had long been the object of his silent adoration. He dwells on her extreme vivacity, on her brilliancy of conversation, and on her[Pg 42] foreign accent, which struck him as assumed. She was persuaded to give a rehearsal for his special benefit.
"At that period," he goes on to say, "her figure was even more attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was. Lithe and graceful as a young fawn, every movement that she made seemed instinct with melody as she prepared to commence the dance. Her dark eyes were blazing and flashing with excitement, for she felt that I was willing to admire her. In her pose, grace seemed involuntarily to preside over her limbs and dispose their attitude. Her foot and ankle were almost faultless. Nadaud, the violinist, drew the bow
across his instrument, and she began to dance. No one who has seen her will quarrel with me for saying that she was not, and is not, a finished danseuse, but all who have will as certainly agree with me that she possesses every element which could be required, with careful study in her youth, to make her eminent in her then vocation. As she swept round the stage, her slender waist swayed to the music, and her graceful neck and head bent with it, like a flower that bends with the impulse given to its stem by the changing and fitful temper of the wind."[3]
On that eventful June evening, then, manager, critics, not least of all Lola herself, confidently looked forward to a striking success. The house was crowded, and many notabilities were present. There were the King of Hanover, the Queen-Dowager, the Duchess of Kent, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. There was also Lola's old enemy, my Lord Ranelagh, who with a party of friends occupied one of the two omnibus-boxes--an admirable point from which to examine the ankles and calves of the long-skirted
ballet-girls. When the[Pg 43] curtain rose in the entr'acte, a Moorish chamber was revealed. On either side stood a damsel, gazing expectantly towards the draped entrance at the back of the stage. A moment later and there glided through this a figure enveloped in a mantilla. One of the handmaids snatched away this drapery, and the commanding form of Donna Lola Montez was revealed in all its glory.
"And a lovely picture it is to contemplate! There is before you the perfection of Spanish beauty--the tall, handsome person, the full, lustrous eye, the joyous, animated face, and the intensely raven hair. She is dressed, too, in the brightest of colours: the petticoat is dappled with flaunting tints of red, yellow, and violet, and its showy diversities of hue are enforced by the black velvet bodice above, which confines the bust with an unscrupulous pinch. Presently this Andalusian Papagena lifts her arms, and the sharp, merry crack
of the castanets is heard. She has commenced one of the merry dances of her nation, and many a piquant grace does she unfold."[4]
The audience are bewitched, enraptured. The stage is strewn with bouquets. Suddenly from the right omnibus-box comes the surprised exclamation: "Why, it's Betty James!" Lord Ranelagh has recognised the woman who rebuffed him, and hurriedly whispers to his friends. Above the applause from stalls and gallery, there is heard on the stage, at least, a prolonged and ominous hiss. My lord's friends in the opposite box act upon the hint, and the hissing grows louder and more insistent. The body of the audience, knowing nothing about the matter, conclude that the dancer cannot know[Pg 44] her business, and presently begin to hiss, too. In ten minutes more the curtain comes down upon her, and Lola's career as a dancer is terminated in England.
Lord Ranelagh had had his revenge. This species of blackguardism was only too common in those days. The notorious Duke of Brunswick that same year had gone with his attorney, Mr. Vallance, and a party of friends, to Covent Garden Theatre, for the express purpose of hooting down an actor, Gregory, who took the part of Faust. He succeeded in his design, and bragged about it afterwards. In Early Victorian times the theatre was completely under the thumb of certain aristocratic sets. The exasperated Lumley was powerless to resist the fiat of these gilded snobs. Lola Montez, they insisted, must never appear on his stage again. He obeyed. The Press was very far from imitating his subserviency. The Era and Morning Herald praised the new danseuse in what seem to us extravagant terms, and deliberately ignored the inglorious denouement of her performance. Indeed, but for the pen of "Q." we might be left to share the surprise expressed at her disappearance by the Illustrated London News, which, ironically perhaps, suggested that the votaries of what might be called the classical dance had set their faces against the national.
Lola herself was under no misapprehension as to the cause and authors of her defeat. She wrote to the Era on 13th June, protest-ing passionately against a report that was being
