“The excitement about her immediately empties the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, and Miss Hayes is then taken suddenly ill. Two nights after the Countess of Landsfeld is seriously indisposed, and Miss Hayes recovers. Her recovery restores Lola Montez to perfect health.”[27]
On 27th August she appeared in Yelva, or the Orphan of Russia, “a new and exciting drama” she had herself translated from the French. On Wednesday, 6th September, she took a benefit, playing in The Follies of a Night, and two farces. Into one of these she introduced her “Spider Dance,” which seems to have outraged colonial opinion. We need not condemn it on that account as immodest, for in our own day we have seen a performance interdicted as offensive to public morals in Manchester, and pronounced (rightly) to be the quintessence of mobile grace and the truest poetry of motion in the not less considerable city of London. Immodesty in the minds of many people definitely connotes that which pleases the eyes and the senses.
Business continued dull at Sydney, and Lola departed in the second week of September for Melbourne. A dispute had arisen between her and another member of her company, Mrs. Fiddes, who issued a writ of attachment against her. Brown, the sheriff, went aboard the steamer to apprehend Lola, who retired to her cabin till the vessel was well under weigh. She then sent word that the officer could arrest her if he would, but she was obliged to tell him that she was quite naked. The bold expedient was, of course, successful. “Poor Brown,” we are told, “blushed and retired, and was put on shore at the Heads, about twenty miles from Sydney, and was greeted on his return to the city with roars of laughter.” The sheriff evidently did not object to repeating a good story, even at his own expense.
At Melbourne, Lola must have been vividly reminded of California. The gold fever was at its height. The population of the Port Philip district had swollen in five years from 76,000 to 364,000, of which number at least two-thirds were men. Men, too, they were, of every nationality under the sun, and of every class, though the more criminal and dangerous elements were in the ascendant. In ’55 life and property were, notwithstanding, somewhat more secure here than in California, thanks to the firmer, less corrupt administration of British officials. Prices were, it need not be said, extravagantly high, though the barest necessities of decent life were hardly obtainable outside Melbourne and Geelong. A goldfield would seem to be one of the most brutalising environments to which a human being can adapt himself.
For our knowledge of Lola’s doings in the Victorian capital, we are indebted to the Era’s local correspondent. He writes:—
“Lola Montez made her début on 21st September, in a short drama allusive to her own Bavarian transactions, but the piece might well have borne curtailment. There was a very crowded audience. The ci-devant Countess of Landsfeld seemed determined to preserve her notoriety intact by the selection, but entrenched so far upon decorum in the ‘Spider Dance’ on a subsequent evening, that she did not face the clamour raised in consequence till the objectionable portions were agreed to be omitted. She is certainly a very singular character, but there is an ever lively and brusque style in her action that seems to catch general approbation for the time being.
“After a brief stay, Lola departed for Geelong; but there, I learn, her performances were freely condemned. Indeed, their laxness was also much canvassed with us, and the more staid of the visitors openly enough expressed their censure. Subsequently to the performance, Dr. Milman demanded of the Mayor at the City Court, in the name of an outraged community, that a warrant be issued against all repetition of the performances of Mme. Lola Montez at the Theatre Royal. The Mayor referred the matter to the private room of the magistrates, considering that should be the proper place for its discussion. The bench declared that the law would not sustain them in issuing a warrant unless the Doctor had actually witnessed the performance, and had his information properly attested by witnesses. This he declared he would do.”
The methods of these self-constituted champions of outraged morality are the same in every age. They condemn first, and collect evidence afterwards—if at all.
Opinion in Geelong does not seem to have been as hostile as the Era’s correspondent supposed. In the Geelong Advertiser of 10th October is to be found the following paragraph:—
Illness of Lola Montez