On the other hand, vanity certainly betrayed her into several deviations from the truth in her reminiscences of St. Petersburg. She went thither, she informs us, upon her expulsion from Poland—an odd refuge! Of her journey in a calèche across the wastes of Lithuania and through the dark forests of Muscovy; of St. Petersburg, still half an Oriental city, where all men below the rank of nobles wore the long beard and caftan of the Asiatic—our raconteuse has nothing to say. She introduces us at once to the Tsar and the innermost arcanum of his Court.
“Nicholas was as amiable and accomplished in private life as he was great, stern, and inflexible as a monarch. He was the strongest pattern of a monarch of this age, and I see no promise of his equal, either in the incumbents or the heirs-apparent of the other thrones of Europe.”
Lola, we see, speaks as an authority on crowned heads. In her estimate of Nicholas I. she seems to have forgotten the republican principles she generally professed. The Tsar was, no doubt, the most commanding figure of his time, and Russia’s influence in the counsels of Europe has never since had as much weight as in the earlier part of his reign. His fine proportions, as much as his strength of character, probably excited Lola’s admiration, and blinded her to defects, physical and temperamental, which did not escape the notice of more keen-eyed critics. She did not see that the autocrat’s majestic demeanour was a pose, that his stern, hawk-like glance was deliberately cultivated, and that he had only three expressions of countenance, all put on at will. Horace Vernet, who knew Nicholas well, was firmly convinced that he was not wholly sane. As to his amiability in private life, he is said to have been, like many tyrants, a good husband, and he often condescended to take tea with his nurse, “a decent Scotch body.” It was to this respectable exile that the members of the imperial family owed that fluent and colloquial English, which often as much astonished as gratified our countrymen. It is recorded that one of the Grand Dukes genially accosted the British chaplain at St. Petersburg with the enquiry: “God damn your eyes, and how the devil are you?”—language, very properly remarks an Early Victorian writer, which no man on earth had the right to address to a person in Holy Orders.
NICHOLAS I.
The Tsar himself was better bred. His relations with Mademoiselle Montez were characterized by politeness and liberality. Not only he, but his right-hand man, the astute Livonian, Benkendorf, held the lady’s political acumen in high esteem. While she and the Emperor and the Minister of the Interior were in a somewhat private chat about vexatious matters connected with Caucasia, airily relates Lola, a humorous episode occurred.
“It was suddenly announced that the superior officers of the Caucasian army were without, desiring audience. The very subject of the previous conversation rendered it desirable that Lola Montez should not be seen in conference with the Emperor and the Minister of the Interior; so she was thrust into a closet, and the door locked. The conference between the officers and the Emperor was short but stormy. Nicholas got into a towering rage. It seemed to the imprisoned Lola that there was a whirlwind outside; and womanly curiosity to hear what it was about [did she then understand Russian?], joined with the great difficulty of keeping from coughing, made her position a strangely embarrassing one. But the worst of it was, in the midst of this grand quarrel the parties all went out of the room, and forgot Lola Montez, who was locked up in the closet. For a whole hour she was kept in this durance vile, reflecting upon the somewhat confined and cramping honours she was receiving from Royalty, when the Emperor, who seems to have come to himself before Count Benkendorf did, came running back out of breath, and unlocked the door, and not only begged pardon for his forgetfulness, in a manner which only a man of his accomplished address could do, but presented the victim with a thousand roubles, saying laughingly: ‘I have made up my mind whenever I imprison any of my subjects unjustly, I will pay them for their time and suffering.’ And Lola Montez answered him: ‘Ah, sire, I am afraid that rule will make a poor man of you.’ He laughed heartily, and replied: ‘Well, I am happy in being able to settle with you, anyhow.’”
Lola makes here a rather heavy draft on the reader’s credulity. However, from the nice things she has to say about His Imperial Majesty, it is clear that she had been admitted at one time or another to his presence. Had not Nicholas I. been a pattern of the domestic virtues, we might have attributed his embarrassment at Lola’s being discovered in his closet, and the donation of the thousand roubles, to reasons entirely unconnected with the Caucasus. After all, Lola may have argued, if she had been courted by a king, why should she not have been consulted by an emperor?
Before or after her visit to St. Petersburg the dancer saw the Tsar at Berlin. Mounted on a fiery Cordovan barb, she was among the spectators at a review given by King Frederick William in honour of his imperial guest. The horse was scared by the firing, and bolted, carrying its rider straight into the midst of the Royal party. Lola was not sorry to find herself in such company, but a gendarme struck at her horse and endeavoured to drive it away. An insult of this sort Lola was the last woman to tolerate. Raising her whip, she slashed the policeman across the face. Out of respect for the Royal party, the incident was allowed to end there, for the moment; but the next day the dancer was waited upon with a summons. She instantly tore the document to pieces, and threw them into the face of the process-server. Such contempt for the law might have been attended with very serious consequences, but Lola went, as a matter of fact, scot-free. Perhaps her friends in high places interceded for her; but it is hard to believe, as she afterwards declared, that the gendarme came to her lodgings to sue for her pardon.[7] In every capital of Europe it soon became known that the beautiful Spanish dancer was able and prepared to defend herself against the most determined antagonists of either sex.
But a nobler quarry than Tsar and Viceroy was now to fall before the shafts from Lola’s eyes.