“The merry ringing of sleigh bells has been heard for several days past in our city. Several sleighs have been fitted up, and the young gentlemen have treated the ladies to some dashing turn-outs. On Tuesday last, Lola Montez paid us a visit by this conveyance and a span of horses, decorated with impromptu cowbells. She flashed like a meteor through the snowflakes and wanton snowballs, and after a tour of the thoroughfares, disappeared in the direction of Grass Valley.”
There she continued to dwell during the rest of that year, her liking for the simple life unabated. A correspondent of the San Francisco Herald, who visited her on 13th December, describes her as—
“living a quiet, and apparently cosy life, surrounded by her pet birds, dogs, goats, sheep, hens, turkeys, pigs, and her pony. The latter seems to be a favourite with Lola, and is her companion in all her mountain rambles. Surely it is a strange metamorphosis to find the woman who has gained a world-renowned notoriety, and has played a part upon the stage of life with powerful potentates, and with whose name Europe and the world is familiar, finally settled down at home in the mountain wilds of California.”
A strange change, indeed, but no unpleasant life it could have been. What memories, what scenes, must have supplied food for the lonely woman’s musings, as she galloped over the hills, or, seated with her dogs, gazed into her great fire of resinous logs! In communion thus with our great mother, treading these virgin forests, and breathing an air hardly yet inhaled by man, she might have attained to a higher, truer plane of existence than that which she finally took to be firm ground. But luck was against her here, as always. A fire swept away the township of Grass Valley, and with it Lola’s little homestead—the only home that she had ever known. Her animals were dispersed, she was without funds. But she had renewed her stock of vitality at Nature’s fountains. She went on her travels again, reinvigorated: a coarser woman, no doubt, thanks to her contact with miners and hunters, but, perhaps, a better one. She still loved the new auriferous lands. In the track of the sun she would continue to journey, and in June sailed from California across the ocean to Australia.
XXX
IN AUSTRALIA
Even to the antipodes—in the ’fifties unconnected by the telegraph with the rest of the world, and distant a three months’ journey from England—the fame of the Countess of Landsfeld had extended. Her name had travelled completely round the world, and was as familiar to the people of Sydney as to those of London and Paris. Lola found that her prolonged rest cure had weakened in no way her hold on public curiosity. The moment for her arrival in New South Wales was not, however, well chosen. Commerce and agriculture were alike depressed, and the mind of the Colonists was preoccupied with the business of constitution-making. The city lay, too, under the spell of a celebrated Irish singer, Miss Catherine Hayes, “the sweet swan of Erin.” It is, perhaps, worth noting that this vocalist was born at the same town as Lola, was married at the same church (St. George’s, Hanover Square), and was to die the same year; that she made her début under the same manager (Benjamin Lumley), at the same theatre, and that the two women had for the last year or two trodden undeviatingly in each other’s footsteps. Miss Hayes had been in possession of the Prince of Wales’s Theatre nearly a fortnight, when Lola’s arrival startled the eldest Australian city. The newcomer was engaged by Tonning of the Victoria Theatre, and was announced to appear, together with Mr. Lambert, Mr. Falland, and Mr. C. Jones, on 23rd August 1855, in the four-act drama, Lola Montez in Bavaria. The theatre was crowded to excess.
“The Countess looked charming, and acted very archly. She was cheered vociferously, and recalled before the curtain, when she delivered a short address. Mr. Lambert (well known in London) created quite a sensation in the King of Bavaria (by which name he is now known), and at the end of the performance the Countess presented him with a handsome bundle of cigarettes—a very great compliment, as she is an inveterate smoker, and seldom gives any cigars away.