Читать книгу The Magnificent Montez: From Courtesan to Convert - Horace Wyndham - Страница 28

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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."

What was behind Lord Ranelagh's cowardly attack on the débutante? There was a simple explanation, and not one that redounded to his credit in any way. It was that, during her "Bohemian" period, he had endeavoured to fill the empty niche left in her affections by the departure of that light-o'-love, Captain Lennox, and had been repulsed for his pains. A bad loser, my Lord nursed resentment. He would teach a mere ballet-dancer to snap her fingers at him. His opportunity came sooner than he imagined. He made the most of it.

Fond as he was of biting, Lord Ranelagh was, some years afterwards, himself bitten. He took a prominent part in an unsavoury scandal that fluttered mid-Victorian dovecotes, when a Bond Street "beauty specialist," known as Madame Rachel, was clapped into prison for swindling a wealthy and amorous widow. This was a Mrs. Borrodaile, whom "Madame" had gulled by declaring that Lord Ranelagh's one desire was to share his coronet with her. Although the raffish peer denied all complicity, he did not come out of the business too well.

"The peculiar prominence he has attained," remarked an obituarist, "has not always been of an enviable description. There are probably few men who have had so many charges of the most varied and disagreeable nature made against them. The resultant obloquy to which he had thus been exposed is great, nor has it vanished, as it properly should have done, with the charges themselves."

This, however, was looking ahead. The comments of 1843 came first. "In the clubs that night," we read, "the bucks and bloods laughed heartily when they discussed the mishap of the proud beauty who had scorned the advances of my Lord." Lola Montez, however, did not regard it as anything at which to laugh. She may, as she boasted, have had a dash of Spanish blood in her veins, but she certainly had none of George Washington's, for she immediately sat down and wrote a circular letter to all the London papers. In this she sought to correct what she described as a "false impression." Swallowing it as gospel, a number of them printed it in full:

To the Editor.

Sir:

Since I had the honour of dancing at Her Majesty's Theatre, on Saturday, the 3rd inst. (when I was received by the English public in so kind and flattering a manner) I have been cruelly annoyed by reports that I am not really the person I pretend to be, but that I have long been known in London as a woman of disreputable character. I entreat you, Sir, to allow me, through the medium of your respected journal, to assure you and the public, in the most positive and unqualified manner, that there is not a word of truth in such a statement.

I am a native of Seville; and in the year 1833, when ten years old, was sent to a Catholic lady at Bath, where I remained seven months, and was then taken back to my parents in Spain. From that period, until the 14th of April, when I landed in England, I have never set foot in this country, and I never saw London before in my life.

In apologising for the favour I ask you, I feel sure that you will kindly consider the anxiety of myself and my friends to remove from the public any impression to my disadvantage. My lawyer has received instructions to proceed against all the parties who have calumniated me.

Believe me to be your obedient and humble servant,

Lola Montez.

June 13, 1843.

Ballet-dancers cannot, when making their débuts, be expected to remember everything; and this one had obviously forgotten her sojourn in India, just as she had forgotten her marriage to Thomas James (and the subsequent Consistory Court action), as well as her amorous dalliance with Captain Lennox during the previous year.

"In spite of the encouraging reception accorded Donna Lola Montez, she has not danced again," remarked a critic in the Examiner. "What is the reason?"

Lumley could have supplied the information. He did so, some years afterwards, in his book, Reminiscences of the Opera:

It is not my intention to rake up the world-wide stories of this strange and fascinating woman. Perhaps it will be sufficient to say frankly that I was, in this instance, fairly "taken in." A Noble Lord (afterwards closely connected with the Foreign Office) had introduced the lady to my notice as the daughter of a celebrated Spanish Patriot and martyr, representing her merits as a dancer in so strong a light that her "appearance" was granted.

… But this spurious Spanish lady had no real knowledge of that which she professed. The whole affair was an imposture; and on the very night of her first appearance the truth exploded. On the discovery of the truth, I declined to allow the English adventuress, for such she was, another appearance on my boards. In spite of the expostulations of the "friends" of the lady—in spite of the deprecatory letters in which she earnestly denied her English origin—in spite even of the desire expressed in high places to witness her strange performance—I remained inflexible.

The "Noble Lord" thus referred to in this pompous disclaimer was Lord Malmesbury.

Viscount Ranelagh, who organised a cabal against Lola Montez