Weary, it may be conceived, of affairs of state, of strife and intrigue, conscious that she had played in her greatest rôle, the Countess of Landsfeld quitted Switzerland, once more to try her fortunes in England. She had stepped down from the throne for ever. She embarked for London at Rotterdam on 8th April 1848. By the irony of fate, it was ordered that the bitterest, and once the most powerful, of her foes, the fallen minister, Metternich, should be waiting at the same port seeking the same destination. The news of the Chartist demonstration alone prevented him sailing by the same vessel. “I thank God,” he piously remarks, “for having preserved me from contact with her.” Assuredly, the meeting would have been a painful and ignominious one for the fallen minister, at any rate.
Lola’s arrival in the troubled state of England passed almost unnoticed. She determined to try her fortunes once more upon the stage, and found, of course, as a celebrity, that she was persona grata to the managers and agents. The directors of Covent Garden conceived the ingenious idea of presenting her as herself in a dramatic representation of the recent events at Munich. The play was written and entitled, “Lola Montez, ou la Comtesse d’une Heure,” but the Lord Chamberlain declined to license a performance in which living royal personages were introduced.[19] The scheme fell through, and Lola, having a private income to fall back upon, retired into lodgings at 27 Halfmoon Street, Mayfair. There “she invited a few men, including myself,” writes the Hon. F. Leveson Gower, “to visit her in the evening. She had lost much of her good looks, but her animated conversation was entertaining.”[20] The journalist, George Augustus Sala, then a very young man, describes Lola on the contrary, as a very handsome lady, “originally the wife of a solicitor,” whom he met at a little cigar-shop, under the pillars, in Norreys Street, Regent Street. She proposed that he should write her life, “starting with the assumption that she was a daughter of the famous matador, Montes.”[21] Lola’s imaginative powers, especially when directed to inventing romantic origins for herself, rivalled those of the heroine of “The Dynamiter.” Lord Brougham, that learned but relatively susceptible Chancellor, she also claimed acquaintance with; he lived not far from her, in Grafton Street. It is probable that a woman of Lola’s beauty, wit, and remarkable attainments would have numbered the most brilliant and distinguished men in London among her associates, whatever attitude may have been assumed towards her by the little clique of prigs and prudes that arrogated to itself the title of Society.
XXVII
A SECOND EXPERIMENT IN MATRIMONY
The company of any number of agreeable men about town and the amenities of life in a Mayfair lodging-house were not, however, likely to content a woman who had lately ruled a kingdom. Experience, it is true, had taught Lola to set limits to her ambition. She had succeeded in her design of hooking a prince, but the catch had been torn off the hook with considerable violence to the angler. It was of no use again to cast her line into royal waters. The fish were now too wary. After the ordeal through which she had passed, Lola sighed for some enduring ties and an established position. She yearned as the most fiery and erratic do at one time or another, for a home. Some think that they who have loved most, love best; but I imagine Lola was a trifle weary of love just then, and longed for some felicity more stable and material. She inclined, in fact, towards the sweet yoke of domesticity, which was quite a fashionable institution in England at that time. Among her visitors was a Mr. George Trafford Heald, son of a rich Chancery barrister, and a cornet in the Second Life Guards. This gallant officer is described as a tall young man, of juvenile figure and aspect, with straight hair and small light brown downy mustachios and whiskers; his turned-up nose gave him an air of great simplicity. As, however, he had, on his coming of age in January 1849, inherited a fortune of between six and seven thousand pounds per annum, he was considered, especially by unattached ladies, in and out of society, a very interesting person. He was very much in love with the Countess of Landsfeld who, no doubt, easily persuaded herself that she entertained a strong affection for so eligible a suitor. In this respect Lola was, it is safe to say, no more mercenary than half the good and well-brought-up young ladies who were looking out for a good match that season. Heald seems to have been what women call a nice boy; in many ways he probably contrasted favourably with Lola’s bolder, more experienced wooers. So when (with many blushes, and in shy stammering words, I doubt not) he offered the adventuress his hand and heart and fortune, she was able without any natural repugnance to consent to be his wife.
That she ever doubted that she was free to wed again is not to be supposed. In all likelihood, she had been made acquainted with her divorce from Captain James only through the medium of the newspapers, and these would lead any one to believe that the divorce had been made absolute. It was, therefore, without any apprehension that she married Cornet Heald at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on 19th July 1849. As she left the church on the arm of her youthful husband, she must have thought half-regretfully of the career of adventure that was ended, and yet looked forward with complacency to the life of respectability and affluence that seemed to stretch before her.
Vain hope! By the common domestic women of her time Lola was regarded with bitter hatred. It is unnecessary to analyse this species of animosity. It is compounded, apparently, of jealousy, of some vague religious sentiment of inherited prejudice, and of the trade-unionist’s dislike for the blackleg. This attitude, though instinctive, is not unreasonable on the part of the vast numbers of women who consider marriage a profession, but it is more difficult to understand in the case of an aged lady, long since resigned to celibacy. Such a spinster was Miss Susanna Heald, of Headington Grove, Horncastle, the aunt of Cornet George. This lady manifested great displeasure at her nephew’s marriage; and, certain facts having been communicated to her by Lola’s numerous enemies, she forthwith set in motion that efficient engine of man’s injustice, the English law.
The honeymoon of the newly-wed pair, if they had one at all, was brief, for it was on 6th August, at nine o’clock in the morning, as the Countess of Landsfeld was stepping into her carriage, at 27 Halfmoon Street, that Police Sergeant Gray and Inspector Whall quietly requested a word or two with her. They explained that they held a warrant for her arrest on a charge of bigamy, she having intermarried with Cornet Heald while her lawful husband, Captain James, was still alive. Lola replied that she had been divorced from the captain by an act of Parliament. She added with characteristic petulence: “I don’t know whether Captain James is alive or not, and I don’t care. I was married in a wrong name, and it wasn’t a legal marriage. Lord Brougham was present when the divorce was granted, and Captain Osborne can prove it. What will the King say?” she murmured, as an after-thought, and referring no doubt to her late royal protector.