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 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 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 dénouement 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, protesting passionately against a report that was being circulated to the effect that she had long been known in London as a disreputable character. She positively asserted that she was a native of Seville, and had never before been in London. She complains of the cruel calumnies that had got abroad concerning her, and says that she has instructed her lawyer to prosecute their utterers. Of course, the greater part of this statement was untrue, but she had her back against the wall, and with their reputation, social and professional, and means of livelihood at stake, few women would have acted otherwise. My own view is that after her affair with Lennox, Lola tried hard “to keep straight,” and made powerful enemies in consequence. The alliance of Pecksniff and Sir Mulberry proved too strong for her.
VII
WANDERJAHRE