IV
Thanks to the bright eyes of Lola (or perhaps to the musical jingle of the Cornet's cash bags), a very loose watch was kept on the pair. Hence the reason why the Countess of Landsfeld (as she still insisted on being called) had not kept her second appointment at Marlborough Street was because, together with the dashing ex-Life Guardsman, she had left England early that morning. Travelling as Mr. and Mrs. Heald, the pair went, first, to Paris, and then to Italy.
A British tourist who happened to be in Naples wrote to The Times, giving an account of a glimpse he had of them. According to him, the couple, "a youthful bridegroom and a fair lady," accompanied by a courier, a femme de chambre, and a carriage, took rooms at the Hotel Vittoria. After one night there, they left the next morning, hiring a special steamer, at a cost of £400, to take them to Marseilles. The hurried departure was said to be due to a lawyer's letters that was waiting for the bridegroom at his banker's. "I am told," adds the correspondent, "that Mr. and Mrs. Heald were bound on an excursion to the Pyramids; and that, when the little business for which the lady is wanted at home has been settled, they mean to prosecute their intention. Pray, sir, help Mrs. Heald out of her present affliction. Is this the first time that a lady has had two husbands? And is she not bound for the East, where every man has four wives?"
The booby Cornet, with his ideas limited to fox-hunting and a study of Ruff's Guide, was no mate for a brilliant woman like Lola. Hence disagreements soon manifested themselves. A specially serious one would seem to have arisen at Barcelona, for, says a letter from a mutual acquaintance, "the Countess and her husband had a warm discussion, which ended in an attempt by her to stab him. Mr. Heald, objecting to such a display of conjugal affection, promptly quitted the town."
Further particulars were supplied by another correspondent: "I saw Mr. Heald," says this authority. "He is a tall, thin young man, with a fair complexion, and often uses rouge to hide his pallor. Many pity him for what has happened. Others, however, pity the lovely Lola. Before he left this district, Mr. Heald called on the English Consul. 'I have come,' he said,'to ask your advice. Some of my friends here suggest that I should leave my wife. What ought I to do about it? If I stop with her, I am afraid of being assassinated or poisoned.' He then exhibited a garment covered with blood. The Consul replied: 'I am positively astonished that, after the attack of which you speak, you did not complain to the police, and that you have since lived with your wife on terms of intimacy. If you want to abandon her, you must do as you think best. I cannot advise you.'"
H.B.M. Consul, however, did stretch a point, since he (perhaps fearing further bloodshed) offered to viser the applicant's passport for any other country. Thereupon, Mr. Heald betook himself to Mataro. But, becoming conscience-smitten, he promptly sat down and wrote an apologetic letter to the lady he left behind him, begging her forgiveness. "If you should ever have reason to complain of me again," he said, "this letter will always act as a talisman."
Apparently it had the effect, for Lola returned to her penitent spouse.
The Barcelona correspondent of L'Assemblée Nationale managed to interview the Cornet.
"He says," announced this authority, "that others persuaded him to depart, against his real wishes. On rejoining him, Mrs. Heald was most indignant. Her eyes positively flashed fire; and, if she should chance to encounter the men who took her husband from her, I quite tremble to think what will happen!"
Something obviously did happen, for, according to de Mirecourt, "during their sojourn in Sunny Spain, the admirable English husband made his wife the gratified mother of two beautiful offspring." Parenthood, however, would appear to have had an odd effect upon this couple, for, continues de Mirecourt: "Mais, en dépit de ces gages d'amour, leur bonheur est troublé par des querelles intestines."
It was from Spain that, having adjusted their differences temporarily, the couple went back to Paris. As a peace offering, a rising young artist, Claudius Jacquand, was commissioned to paint both their portraits on a single canvas. During, however, another domestic rupture, Heald demanded that Lola's features should be painted out. "I want nothing," he said, "to remind me of that woman." Unfortunately, Lola had just made a similar demand where the Cornet was concerned. Jacquand was a man of talent, but he could not do impossibilities. Thereupon, Lola, breathing fire and fury, took the canvas away and hung it with its back to the front in her bedroom. "To allow my husband to watch me always would," she said, "be indelicate!"
There is a theory that, within the next twelve months, the ill-assorted union was dissolved by Heald getting upset in a rowing-boat and drowned in Lisbon harbour. The theory, however, is a little difficult to reconcile with the fact that, on the close of the Great Exhibition at the end of 1851, he attended an auction of the effects, where he bought a parquet floor and had it laid down in his drawing-room at Berrymead Priory. After this he had a number of structural alterations added; fitted the windows with some stained glass, bearing his crest and initials; and, finally, did not give up the lease until 1855. Pretty good work, this, for a man said to have met with a watery grave six years earlier.
As a matter of strict fact, Cornet Heald was not drowned, either at Lisbon or anywhere else. He died in his bed at Folkestone, in 1856. The medical certificate attributed the cause of death to consumption. In the Gentleman's Magazine, however, the diagnosis was different, viz., "broken heart."
All things pass. In 1859 the executors of the dashing Cornet sold the Berrymead property for £7000, to be repurchased soon afterwards for £23,000 by a land-development company. The house now serves as the premises of the Priory Constitutional Club, Acton. A certain amount of evidence of Cornet Heald's one-time occupancy still exists. Thus his crest and motto, Nemo sibi Nascitur, are let into the mosaic flooring of the hall, and the drawing-room ceiling is embellished with his initials picked out in gold.
CHAPTER XIII
ODYSSEY
I
otwithstanding the tie of alleged parenthood, domestic relations between them did not improve, and the couple soon parted. The knowledge that she was still "wanted" there kept Lola out of England. Instead, she went to Paris, where such unpleasantnesses as warrants could not touch her. There she was given a warm welcome, by old friends and new.
During this visit to Paris an unaccustomed set-back was experienced. She received it from Émile de Girardin, of whom she endeavoured to make a conquest. But this "wild-eyed, pale-faced man of letters," as she called him, would have none of her. Perhaps he remembered what had befallen Dujarier.
As was to be expected, the coming among them of Lola Montez attracted the attention of the courrierists, who earned many welcome francs by filling columns with details of her career. What they did not know about it they invented. They knew very little. Thus, one such article (appropriately signed "Fantasio") read as follows:
"Madame Lola Montez, who is now happily returned to us, is the legitimate spouse of Sir Thomas James, an officer of the English Army. Milord Sir James loved to drink and the beautiful Lola loved to flirt. A wealthy Prince of Kabul was willing to possess her for her weight in gold and gems. Up till now, her principal love affairs have been with Don Enriquez, a Spaniard, Brûle-Tout, a well-developed French mariner, and John, a phlegmatic Englishman. One day Sir James bet that he could drink three bottles of brandy in twenty minutes. While he was thus occupied, the amorous Lola made love to three separate gallants."
"It will doubtless," added a second, "be gratifying to her pride to queen it again in Paris, where she was once hissed off the stage. There she will at any rate now be received at the Bavarian Embassy, and exhibit the Order of Maria Theresa. She was invested with this to the considerable scandal of the Munich nobility, who cannot swallow the idea of such a distinction being bestowed on a dancer."
This sort of thing and a great deal more in a similar strain, was accepted as gospel by its readers. But for those who wished her ill, any lie was acceptable. Thus, although there was not a scrap of evidence to connect her with the incident, a paragraph, headed "Lola Again?" was published in the London papers:
Yesterday afternoon an extraordinary scene was witnessed by the promenaders in the Champs Elysées. Two fashionably attired ladies, driving in an elegant equipage, were heard to be employing language that was anything but refined. From words to blows, for suddenly they began to assault one another with vigorous smacks. The toilettes and faces of the fair contestants were soon damaged; and, loud cries of distress being uttered, the carriage was stopped, and, attracted by the fracas, some gentlemen hurried to render assistance. As a result of their interference, one of the damsels was expelled from the vehicle, and the other ordered the coachman to drive her to her hotel. This second lady is familiar to the public by reason of her adventures in Bavaria.
Albert Vandam, a singularly objectionable type of journalist, who professed to be on intimate terms with everybody in Paris worth knowing, has a number of offensive and unjustifiable allusions to Lola Montez at this period of her career. He talks of her "consummate impudence," of her "pot-house wit," and of her "grammatical errors," and dubs her, among other things, "this almost illiterate schemer."
"Lola Montez," says the egregious Vandam, "could not make friends." He was wrong. This was just what she could do. She made many staunch and warm-hearted friends. It was because she snubbed him on account of his pushfulness that Vandam elected to belittle her.
Lola Montez chose her friends for their disposition, not for their virtue. One of them was George Sand, "the possessor of the largest mind and the smallest foot in Paris." She also became intimate with Alphonsine Plessis, and constantly visited the future "Lady of the Camelias" in her appartement on the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Another habitué there at this period was Lola's old Dresden flame, the Abbé Liszt, who, not confining his attentions to the romanticists, had no compunction about poaching on the preserves of Dumas fils, or, for that matter, of anybody else. As for the fair, but frail, Alphonsine, she said quite candidly that she was "perfectly willing to become his mistress, if he wanted it, but was not prepared to share the position." As Liszt had other ideas on the subject, the suggestion came to nothing.
Some years afterwards, one of his pupils, an American young woman, Amy Fay, took his measure in a book, Music-study in Germany:
"Liszt," she wrote, "is the most interesting and striking-looking man imaginable. Tall and slight, with deep-set eyes, shaggy eyebrows and long iron-grey hair which he wears parted in the middle. His mouth turns up at the corners, which gives him a most crafty and Mephistophelean expression when he smiles, and his whole appearance and manner have a sort of Jesuitical elegance and ease."
Before she set out on this journey, Lola wrote to an acquaintance: "What makes men and women distinguished is their individuality; and it is for that I will conquer or die!" Of this quality, she had enough and to spare. Her Paris life was hectic; or, as the Boulevardiers put it, elle faisait la bombe.
Among the tit-bits of gossip served up by a reporter was the following:
"Lola is constantly giving tea-parties in her Paris flat. A gentleman who is frequently bidden to them tells us that her masculine guests are restricted to such as have left their wives, and that the feminine guests consist of ladies who have left their husbands."
An Englishman whom she met at this time was Savile Morton, a friend of Thackeray and Tennyson. One night when she was giving a supper-party, a fellow-guest, Roger de Beauvoir, happened to read to the company some verses he had written. The hostess, on the grounds of their alleged "coarseness," complained to Morton that she had been insulted. As a result, Morton, being head over ears in love with her, sent de Beauvoir a challenge. Lola, however, having had enough of duels, took care that nothing should come of it; and insisted that an apology should be given and accepted.
At one time she was optimistic enough to take a villa at Beaujon on a fifteen years' lease, and had it refurnished in sumptuous fashion on credit. The first two instalments of the rent were met. When, however, the landlord called to collect the third one, he was put off with the excuse that: "Mr. Heald was away and had forgotten to send the money, but would be back in a week." This story might have been accepted, had not the landlord discovered that his tenant was planning to leave surreptitiously and that some of the furniture had already been removed. As a result, a body of indignant tradesmen, accompanied by the Maire of the district, in tricoloured sash and wand of office complete, betook themselves to the villa and demanded a settlement of accounts for goods delivered. This time they were told that the money had arrived, but that the key of the box in which it had been deposited for safety was lost. Assuring them that she would fetch a locksmith, Lola slipped out of the house, and, stepping into a waiting cab, drove off to a new address near the Étoile. This was the last that the creditors saw of her.
In January, 1851, Lola, setting an example that has since then become much more common among theatrical ladies, compiled her "memoirs." When the editor of Le Pays undertook to publish them in his columns, a rival editor, jealous of the "scoop," referred to their author as "Madame James, once Madame Heald, formerly Mlle Lola Montez, and for nearly a quarter of an hour the Countess of Landsfeld."
The work was dedicated to her old patron, King Ludwig, with a florid avant-propos:
Sire: In publishing my memoirs, my purpose is to reveal to a world still engulfed in a vulgar materialism Your Majesty's lofty thoughts about art, poetry, and philosophy. The inspiration of this book, Sire, is due to yourself, and to those other remarkable men whom Fortune—always the protector of my younger years—has given me as councillors and friends.
Lola must have written with more candour than tact. At any rate, after the first three chapters had appeared, the editor of Le Pays, on the grounds that they would "shock his purer readers," refused to continue the series. "We positively decline," he announced, "to sully our columns further."