It was left for Lumley to deal with the situation. He did so by ringing down the curtain, while Lola, in tears and fury, rushed off to her dressing-room.
III
Perhaps they left early, but none of the critics saw anything of this dénouement. What, however, they did see they described in rapturous, not to say, florid terms:
We saw, as in a dream (declared one of them), an Elssler or a Taglioni descend from the clouds, under the traits of a new dancer, whose fervent admirers lavished on her all the enthusiasm and applause with which the rare perfection of her predecessors has been rewarded.
On Saturday last, between the acts of the opera, Donna Lola Montez was announced to appear on the programme at Her Majesty's. A thousand ardent spectators were in feverish anxiety to see her. Donna Lola enchanted everyone. There was throughout a graceful flowing of the arms—not an angle discernible—an indescribable softness in her attitude and suppleness in her limbs which, developed in a thousand positions (without infringing on the Opera laws), were the most intoxicating and womanly that can be imagined. We never remember seeing the habitués—both young and old—taken by more agreeable surprise than the bewitching lady excited. She was rapturously encored, and the stage strewn with bouquets.
Lord Ranelagh and his friends must have grinned when they read this gush.
"I saw Lumley immediately after the fall of the curtain," says a reporter who was admitted behind the scenes. "He was surrounded by the professors of morality from the omnibus-box, who said that Donna Lola was positively not to reappear. They pointed out to him that it was absolutely essential to have none but exemplary characters in the ballet; but they did not tell him where he would procure females who would have no objection to exhibiting their legs in pink silk fleshings. As Lumley could not afford to offend his patrons, he was compelled to accept the fiat of these virtuous scions of a moral and ultra-scrupulous aristocracy. Carlotta Grisi might have had a score of lovers; but, then, she had never turned up her charming little nose at my Lord Ranelagh."
It was an age when the theatre had to kow-tow to the patron. Unless My Lord approved, Mr. Crummles had no choice but to ring down the curtain. As the Ranelagh faction very emphatically disapproved, Lumley was compelled to give the recruit her marching-orders.
Lola's première had thus become her dernière.
By the way, a Sunday paper, writing some time afterwards, was guilty of a serious slip in its account of the episode, and mistook Lord Ranelagh for the Duke of Cambridge. "The newcomer," says this critic, "was recognised as Mrs. James by a Prince of the Blood and his companions in the omnibus-box. Her beauty could not save her from insult; and, to avenge themselves on Mr. Lumley, for some pique, these chivalrous English gentlemen of the upper classes hooted a woman from the stage."