“I will give you a sample,” says our traveller, “as well as it could be made out, of what I heard them sing while carrying an English clergyman who could not have weighed less than two hundred and twenty-five pounds. Each line of the following jargon was sung in a different voice:—“‘Oh, what a heavy bag!No, it is an elephant;He is an awful weight.Let us throw his palki down,Let us set him in the mud—Let us leave him to his fate.Ay, but he will beat us thenWith a thick stick.Then let’s make haste and get along,Jump along quickly!’“And off they started in a jog-trot, which must have shaken every bone in his reverence’s body, keeping chorus all the time of ‘Jump along quickly,’ until they were obliged to stop for laughing.“They invariably (continues Lola) suit these extempore chants to the weight and character of their burden. I remember to have been exceedingly amused one day at the merry chant of my human horses as they started off on the run.“‘She’s not heavy,Cabbada [take care]!Little baba [missie],Cabbada!Carry her swiftly,Cabbada!Pretty baba,Cabbada!’“And so they went on, singing and extemporising for the whole hour and a half’s journey. It is quite a common custom to give them four annas (or English sixpence) apiece at the end of every stage, when fresh horses [sic] are put under the burden; but a gentleman of my acquaintance, who had been carried too slowly, as he thought, only gave them two annas apiece. The consequence was that during the next stage the men not only went faster, but they made him laugh with their characteristic song, the whole burden of which was: ‘He has only given them two annas, because they went slowly; let us make haste, and get along quickly, and then we shall get eight annas, and have a good supper.’”
“I will give you a sample,” says our traveller, “as well as it could be made out, of what I heard them sing while carrying an English clergyman who could not have weighed less than two hundred and twenty-five pounds. Each line of the following jargon was sung in a different voice:—
“‘Oh, what a heavy bag!No, it is an elephant;He is an awful weight.Let us throw his palki down,Let us set him in the mud—Let us leave him to his fate.Ay, but he will beat us thenWith a thick stick.Then let’s make haste and get along,Jump along quickly!’
“And off they started in a jog-trot, which must have shaken every bone in his reverence’s body, keeping chorus all the time of ‘Jump along quickly,’ until they were obliged to stop for laughing.
“They invariably (continues Lola) suit these extempore chants to the weight and character of their burden. I remember to have been exceedingly amused one day at the merry chant of my human horses as they started off on the run.
“‘She’s not heavy,Cabbada [take care]!Little baba [missie],Cabbada!Carry her swiftly,Cabbada!Pretty baba,Cabbada!’
“And so they went on, singing and extemporising for the whole hour and a half’s journey. It is quite a common custom to give them four annas (or English sixpence) apiece at the end of every stage, when fresh horses [sic] are put under the burden; but a gentleman of my acquaintance, who had been carried too slowly, as he thought, only gave them two annas apiece. The consequence was that during the next stage the men not only went faster, but they made him laugh with their characteristic song, the whole burden of which was: ‘He has only given them two annas, because they went slowly; let us make haste, and get along quickly, and then we shall get eight annas, and have a good supper.’”
The burden of the European’s life in India at this period is voiced in “Marois’” poem,The Long, Long,Indian Day. It was the empire ofennui. A strongly puritanical tone, too, was observable in certain influential circles, and the clergy frequently discountenanced and condemned the poor efforts at relaxation made by officers and their wives. Dances and amateur theatricals were often the subject of censure from the pulpit. So the men fell back on brandy pawnee, loo, and tiger-shooting. The women were worse off. To the Honourable Emily Eden we are indebted for some vivid pictures of Anglo-Indian society during the viceroyalty of her brother, Lord Auckland (1836-1842). They enable us to realise Lola’s emotions and manner of life during her second visit to India. Miss Eden’s compassionate interest was excited by
“a number of young ladies just come out by the last ships, looking so fresh and English, and longing to amuse themselves—and it must be such a bore at that age to be shut up for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four; and the one hour that they are out is only an airing just where the roads are watered. They have no gardens, no villages, no poor people, no schools, no poultry to look after—none of the occupations of young people. Very few of them are at ease with their parents; and, in short, it is a melancholy sight to see a new young arrival.”
Another passage runs:—
“It is a melancholy country for wives at the best, and I strongly advise you never to let young girls marry an East Indian. There was a pretty Mrs. —— dining here yesterday, quite a child in looks, who married just before theRepulsesailed, and landed here about ten days ago. She goes on next week to Neemuch, a place at the farthest extremity of India, where thereis not another European woman, and great part of the road to it is through jungle, which is only passable occasionally from its unwholesomeness. She detests what she has seen of India, and evidently begins to think ‘papa and mamma’ were right in withholding for a year their consent to her marriage. I think she wishes they had held out another month. There is another, Mrs. ——, who is onlyfifteen, who married when we were at the Cape, ... and went straight on to her husband’s station, where for five months she had never seen a European. He was out surveying all day, and they lived in a tent. She has utterly lost her health and spirits, and though they have come down here for three weeks’ furlough, she has never been able even to call here [at Government House]. He came to make her excuse, and said, with a deep sigh: ‘Poor girl! she must go back to her solitude. She hoped she could have gone out a little in Calcutta, to give her something to think of.’ And then, if these poor women have children, they must send them away just as they become amusing. It is an abominable place.”
This was not realised at once by Mrs. James, whose first season (she tells us) was passed “in the gay and fashionable city of Calcutta.” There she became an acknowledged beauty. Not long after the outbreak of the first Afghan War she was torn away from the comparative brilliance of the capital, and accompanied her husband most reluctantly, to Karnál, a town between Delhi and Simla, on the Jumna Canal. The place is no longer a military station. At this juncture, happily for us, a flood of light is poured upon Lola’s character and history by the letters of Miss Eden, dated from Simla and Karnál in the latter part of the year 1839. I include some extracts not directly relating to Lola, as they describe scenes in which she must have takenpart, and which formed the background against which she moved.
“Sunday, 8th September[1839].“Simla is much moved just now by the arrival of a Mrs. J[ames], who has been talked of as a great beauty of the year, and that drives every other woman, with any pretensions in that line, quite distracted, with the exception of Mrs. N., who, I must say, makes no fuss about her own beauty, nor objects to it in other people. Mrs. J[ames] is the daughter of a Mrs. C[raigie], who is still very handsome herself, and whose husband is Deputy-Adjutant-General, or some military authority of that kind. She sent this only child to be educated at home, and went home herself two years ago to see her. On the same ship was Mr. J., a poor ensign, going home on sick leave. Mrs. C. nursed him and took care of him, and took him to see her daughter, who was a girl of fifteen [sic] at school. He told her he was engaged to be married, consulted her about his prospects, and in the meantime privately married this girl at school. It was enough to provoke any mother, but as it now cannot be helped, we have all been trying to persuade her for the last year to make it up, as she frets dreadfully about her only child. She has withstood it till now, but at last consented to ask them for a month, and they arrived three days ago. Therush on the roadwas remarkable, and one or two of the ladies were looking absolutely nervous. But nothing could be more unsatisfactory than the result, for Mrs. James looked lovely, and Mrs. Craigie had set up for her a very grand jonpaun [kind of sedan-chair], with bearers in fine orange and brown liveries, and the same for herself; and James is a sort of smart-looking man, with bright waistcoats and bright teeth, with a showy horse, and he rode along in an attitude of respectful attention toma belle mère. Altogether it was an imposing sight, and I cannot see any way out of itbut magnanimous admiration. They all called yesterday when I was at the waterfalls, and F[anny] thought her very pretty.”“Tuesday, 10th September.“We had a dinner yesterday. Mrs. James is undoubtedly very pretty, and such a merry, unaffected girl. She is only seventeen now [twenty-one, in fact], and does not look so old, and when one thinks that she is married to a junior lieutenant in the Indian army fifteen years older than herself, and that they have 160 rupees a month, and are to pass their whole lives in India, I do not wonder at Mrs. Craigie’s resentment at her having run away from school.“There are seventeen more officers come up to Simla on leave for a month, partly in the hope of a little gaiety at the end of the rains; and then the fancy fair has had a great reputation since last year, and as they will all spend money, they are particularly welcome....“Wednesday, 11th September.“We had a large party last night, the largest we have had in Simla, and it would have been a pretty ball anywhere, there were so many pretty people. The retired wives, now that their husbands are on the march back from Cabul, ventured out, and got through one evening without any prejudice to their characters.”
“Sunday, 8th September[1839].
“Simla is much moved just now by the arrival of a Mrs. J[ames], who has been talked of as a great beauty of the year, and that drives every other woman, with any pretensions in that line, quite distracted, with the exception of Mrs. N., who, I must say, makes no fuss about her own beauty, nor objects to it in other people. Mrs. J[ames] is the daughter of a Mrs. C[raigie], who is still very handsome herself, and whose husband is Deputy-Adjutant-General, or some military authority of that kind. She sent this only child to be educated at home, and went home herself two years ago to see her. On the same ship was Mr. J., a poor ensign, going home on sick leave. Mrs. C. nursed him and took care of him, and took him to see her daughter, who was a girl of fifteen [sic] at school. He told her he was engaged to be married, consulted her about his prospects, and in the meantime privately married this girl at school. It was enough to provoke any mother, but as it now cannot be helped, we have all been trying to persuade her for the last year to make it up, as she frets dreadfully about her only child. She has withstood it till now, but at last consented to ask them for a month, and they arrived three days ago. Therush on the roadwas remarkable, and one or two of the ladies were looking absolutely nervous. But nothing could be more unsatisfactory than the result, for Mrs. James looked lovely, and Mrs. Craigie had set up for her a very grand jonpaun [kind of sedan-chair], with bearers in fine orange and brown liveries, and the same for herself; and James is a sort of smart-looking man, with bright waistcoats and bright teeth, with a showy horse, and he rode along in an attitude of respectful attention toma belle mère. Altogether it was an imposing sight, and I cannot see any way out of itbut magnanimous admiration. They all called yesterday when I was at the waterfalls, and F[anny] thought her very pretty.”
“Tuesday, 10th September.
“We had a dinner yesterday. Mrs. James is undoubtedly very pretty, and such a merry, unaffected girl. She is only seventeen now [twenty-one, in fact], and does not look so old, and when one thinks that she is married to a junior lieutenant in the Indian army fifteen years older than herself, and that they have 160 rupees a month, and are to pass their whole lives in India, I do not wonder at Mrs. Craigie’s resentment at her having run away from school.
“There are seventeen more officers come up to Simla on leave for a month, partly in the hope of a little gaiety at the end of the rains; and then the fancy fair has had a great reputation since last year, and as they will all spend money, they are particularly welcome....
“Wednesday, 11th September.
“We had a large party last night, the largest we have had in Simla, and it would have been a pretty ball anywhere, there were so many pretty people. The retired wives, now that their husbands are on the march back from Cabul, ventured out, and got through one evening without any prejudice to their characters.”
Are regimental ladies in India nowadays expected to keep in seclusion while their husbands are on active service? I think not.
“Monday, 16th September.“We are going to a ball to-night, which the married gentlemen give us; and instead of being at the only public room, which is a broken, tumble-down place, it is to be at the C.’s [the Craigies’?], who very good-naturedly give up their house for it.”“Wednesday, 18th September.“The ball went off with the greatest success: transparencies of the taking of Ghaznee, ‘Auckland’ in all directions, arches and verandahs made up of flowers; a whist table for his lordship, which is always a great relief at these balls; and every individual at Simla was there. There was a supper room for us, made up of velvet and gold hangings belonging to the Durbar, and a standing supper all night for the company in general, at which one very fat lady was detected in eating five suppers.... It was kept up till five, and altogether succeeded.”“Friday, 27th September.“We had our fancy fair on Wednesday, which went off with greatéclat, and was really a very amusing day, and, moreover, produced 6,500 rupees, which, for a very small society, is an immense sum. X. and L. and a Captain C. were disguised as gipsies, and the most villainous-looking set possible; and they came on to the fair, and sang an excellent song about our poor old Colonel and a little hill fort that he has been taking; but after the siege was over, he found no enemy in it, otherwise, it was a gallant action.“We had provided luncheon at a large booth with the sign of the ‘Marquess of Granby.’ L. E. was old Weller, and so disguised I could not guess him; X. was Sam Weller; K., Jingle; and Captain C., Mrs. Weller; Captain Z., merely a waiter, with one or two other gentlemen; but they all acted very well up to their characters, and the luncheon was very good fun.... The afternoon ended with races—a regular racing-stand, and a very tolerable course for the hills; all the gentlemen in satin jackets and jockey caps, and a weighing stand—in short, everything got up regularly. Everybody likes these out-of-door amusements at this time of year, and it is a marvel to me how well X. and K. and L. E. contrive to make all their plots anddisguises go on. I suppose in a very small society it is easier than it would be in England, and they have all the assistance of servants to any amount, who do all they are told, and merely think the ‘sahib log’ are mad.”“Tuesday, 15th October.“The Sikhs are here. Our ball for them last night went off very well. The chiefs were in splendid gold dresses, and certainly very gentleman-like men. They sat bolt upright on their chairs, with their feet dangling, and I dare say suffered agonies from cramp. C. said we saw them amazingly divided between the necessity of listening to George [Lord Auckland], and their native feelings of notseemingsurprised, and their curiosity at men and women dancing together. I think that they learned at least two figures of the quadrilles by heart, for I saw Gholâb Singh, the commander of the Goorcherras, who has been with Europeans before, expounding the dancing to the others.”
“Monday, 16th September.
“We are going to a ball to-night, which the married gentlemen give us; and instead of being at the only public room, which is a broken, tumble-down place, it is to be at the C.’s [the Craigies’?], who very good-naturedly give up their house for it.”
“Wednesday, 18th September.
“The ball went off with the greatest success: transparencies of the taking of Ghaznee, ‘Auckland’ in all directions, arches and verandahs made up of flowers; a whist table for his lordship, which is always a great relief at these balls; and every individual at Simla was there. There was a supper room for us, made up of velvet and gold hangings belonging to the Durbar, and a standing supper all night for the company in general, at which one very fat lady was detected in eating five suppers.... It was kept up till five, and altogether succeeded.”
“Friday, 27th September.
“We had our fancy fair on Wednesday, which went off with greatéclat, and was really a very amusing day, and, moreover, produced 6,500 rupees, which, for a very small society, is an immense sum. X. and L. and a Captain C. were disguised as gipsies, and the most villainous-looking set possible; and they came on to the fair, and sang an excellent song about our poor old Colonel and a little hill fort that he has been taking; but after the siege was over, he found no enemy in it, otherwise, it was a gallant action.
“We had provided luncheon at a large booth with the sign of the ‘Marquess of Granby.’ L. E. was old Weller, and so disguised I could not guess him; X. was Sam Weller; K., Jingle; and Captain C., Mrs. Weller; Captain Z., merely a waiter, with one or two other gentlemen; but they all acted very well up to their characters, and the luncheon was very good fun.... The afternoon ended with races—a regular racing-stand, and a very tolerable course for the hills; all the gentlemen in satin jackets and jockey caps, and a weighing stand—in short, everything got up regularly. Everybody likes these out-of-door amusements at this time of year, and it is a marvel to me how well X. and K. and L. E. contrive to make all their plots anddisguises go on. I suppose in a very small society it is easier than it would be in England, and they have all the assistance of servants to any amount, who do all they are told, and merely think the ‘sahib log’ are mad.”
“Tuesday, 15th October.
“The Sikhs are here. Our ball for them last night went off very well. The chiefs were in splendid gold dresses, and certainly very gentleman-like men. They sat bolt upright on their chairs, with their feet dangling, and I dare say suffered agonies from cramp. C. said we saw them amazingly divided between the necessity of listening to George [Lord Auckland], and their native feelings of notseemingsurprised, and their curiosity at men and women dancing together. I think that they learned at least two figures of the quadrilles by heart, for I saw Gholâb Singh, the commander of the Goorcherras, who has been with Europeans before, expounding the dancing to the others.”
Lola’s month at Simla had now expired, but she probably postponed her departure to witness the reception of these chiefs. Having been reconciled with her mother—partly, it seems, through the kindly intervention of the Governor-General’s sister, and partly, as she afterwards declared, through her stepfather—she returned with her husband to his cantonment. Here she was fortunate again to attract the attention of the viceregal party.
Miss Eden writes from Karnál, under date 13th November 1839:—
“We had the same display of troops on arriving, except that a bright yellow General N. has taken hisliver complaint home, and a pale primrose General D., who has been renovating some years at Bath, has come out to take his place. We were at home in the evening, and it was an immense party, but except that pretty Mrs. James who was at Simla, and who looked like a star among the others, the women were all plain.“I don’t wonder if a tolerable-looking girl comes up the country that she is persecuted with proposals.... That Mrs. —— we always called the little corpse is still at Karnál. She came and sat herself down by me, upon which Mr. K., with great presence of mind, offered me his arm, and said to George that he was taking me away from that corpse. ‘You are quite right,’ said George. ‘It would be very dangerous sitting on the same sofa; we don’t know what she died of.’”“Sunday, 17th November.“We left Karnál yesterday morning. Little Mrs. James was so unhappy at our going that we asked her to come and pass the day here, and brought her with us. She went from tent to tent, and chattered all day, and visited her friend Mrs. ——, who is with the camp. I gave her a pink silk gown, and it was altogether a very happy day for her evidently. It ended in her going back to Karnál on my elephant, with E. N. by her side and Mr. James sitting behind, and she had never been on an elephant before, and thought it delightful. She is very pretty, and a good little thing, apparently, but they are very poor, and she is very young and lively, and if she falls into bad hands she would soon laugh herself into foolish scrapes. At present the husband and wife are very fond of each other, but a girl who marries at fifteen hardly knows what she likes.”
“We had the same display of troops on arriving, except that a bright yellow General N. has taken hisliver complaint home, and a pale primrose General D., who has been renovating some years at Bath, has come out to take his place. We were at home in the evening, and it was an immense party, but except that pretty Mrs. James who was at Simla, and who looked like a star among the others, the women were all plain.
“I don’t wonder if a tolerable-looking girl comes up the country that she is persecuted with proposals.... That Mrs. —— we always called the little corpse is still at Karnál. She came and sat herself down by me, upon which Mr. K., with great presence of mind, offered me his arm, and said to George that he was taking me away from that corpse. ‘You are quite right,’ said George. ‘It would be very dangerous sitting on the same sofa; we don’t know what she died of.’”
“Sunday, 17th November.
“We left Karnál yesterday morning. Little Mrs. James was so unhappy at our going that we asked her to come and pass the day here, and brought her with us. She went from tent to tent, and chattered all day, and visited her friend Mrs. ——, who is with the camp. I gave her a pink silk gown, and it was altogether a very happy day for her evidently. It ended in her going back to Karnál on my elephant, with E. N. by her side and Mr. James sitting behind, and she had never been on an elephant before, and thought it delightful. She is very pretty, and a good little thing, apparently, but they are very poor, and she is very young and lively, and if she falls into bad hands she would soon laugh herself into foolish scrapes. At present the husband and wife are very fond of each other, but a girl who marries at fifteen hardly knows what she likes.”
RIVEN BONDS
Miss Eden’s misgivings were warranted by the events. “Husband and wife are very fond of each other”—that was, doubtless, true, but Lola’s lips would have curled had she read the passage in after years. Abandoned by the departure of the viceregal party once more to the slender social resources of Karnál, the young wife, I conjecture, fretted and moped. The glitter of the Court made the boredom of the cantonment all the more oppressive. The year after the Simla festivities Karnál had another distinguished visitor, the famous Dost Mohammed Khan, Amir of Kabul, but as during his six months’ stay he was kept a close prisoner in the fort, his presence could not have sensibly relieved the monotony. Lieutenant James’s subsequent readiness to divorce his wife proves that he had no very strong attachment to her, and gives some colour to her allegations against him. Of course, it is safe to conclude that both were in the wrong, or, more truthfully, had made a mistake. So long, however, as people regard marriage more as a contract than a relation, each party will be anxious to throw the responsibility for the rupture upon the other. As the husband had the opportunity of stating his case in the law courts, it is only fair thatthe wife should be allowed to plead hers here. Her version of the circumstances which brought about the breach is as follows:—
“She was taken to visit a Mrs. Lomer—a pretty woman, who was about thirty-three years of age, and was a great admirer of Captain [sic] James. [His bright waistcoats and bright teeth were not without their effect, we see.] Her husband was a blind fool enough; and though Captain James’s little wife, Lola, was not quite a fool, it is likely enough that she did not care enough about him to keep a look-out upon what was going on between himself and Mrs. Lomer. So she used to be peacefully sleeping every morning when the Captain [read Lieutenant] and Mrs. Lomer were off for a sociable ride on horseback. In this way things went on for a long time, when one morning Captain James and Mrs. Lomer did not get back to breakfast, and so the little Mrs. James and Mr. Lomer breakfasted alone, wondering what had become of the morning riders.“But all doubts were soon cleared up by the fact fully coming to light that they had really eloped to Neilghery Hills. Poor Lomer stormed, and raved, and tore himself to pieces, not having the courage to attack any one else. And little Lola wondered, cried a little, and laughed a good deal, especially at Lomer’s rage.”
“She was taken to visit a Mrs. Lomer—a pretty woman, who was about thirty-three years of age, and was a great admirer of Captain [sic] James. [His bright waistcoats and bright teeth were not without their effect, we see.] Her husband was a blind fool enough; and though Captain James’s little wife, Lola, was not quite a fool, it is likely enough that she did not care enough about him to keep a look-out upon what was going on between himself and Mrs. Lomer. So she used to be peacefully sleeping every morning when the Captain [read Lieutenant] and Mrs. Lomer were off for a sociable ride on horseback. In this way things went on for a long time, when one morning Captain James and Mrs. Lomer did not get back to breakfast, and so the little Mrs. James and Mr. Lomer breakfasted alone, wondering what had become of the morning riders.
“But all doubts were soon cleared up by the fact fully coming to light that they had really eloped to Neilghery Hills. Poor Lomer stormed, and raved, and tore himself to pieces, not having the courage to attack any one else. And little Lola wondered, cried a little, and laughed a good deal, especially at Lomer’s rage.”
The injured husband, apparently, was never pieced together again, as we do not hear that he ever instituted any proceedings against the seducer of his wife. It is true that by Lola’s account they may be considered to have put themselves beyond his reach, for the Neilghery Hills lie, as the crow flies, about 1,400 miles from Karnál, and a stern chase in a palanquin over that distance is an undertaking from which even Menelauswould have shrank. Nor did the peccant Lieutenant James think it worth while to resign his commission.
Whatever may have been the immediate cause, it is clear that husband and wife were on bad terms when the cantonment at Karnál was broken up in the year 1841. Lola took refuge under her mother’s roof at Calcutta. She admits that her reception was cold, and that Mrs. Craigie pressed her to return to Europe. On this course she finally decided, probably without great reluctance. It was given out, and not perhaps altogether untruly, that she was leaving India for the benefit of her health. Her husband came down to Calcutta, and himself saw her aboard the good ship,Larkins. Her stepfather, to whose relations in Scotland she was again to be confided, was much affected at her departure.
“Large tears rolled down his cheeks when he took her on board the vessel; and he testified his affection and his care by placing in the hands of the little grass-widow a cheque for a thousand pounds on a house in London.”
Thus for the second and last time Lola saw the swampy shores of Bengal receding from her across the waves. She was never again to see India or those who bid her adieu. The merry, unaffected schoolgirl of Simla had become in one short year a disappointed, disillusioned woman. While husband and wife exchanged cold farewells, probably neither expected nor wished to see the other again. Both had made a mistake, and both knew it. Now they were placing half a world between them. Lola’s heart must have lightened, as the good ship sped before the windsouthwards across the Indian Ocean. Accustomed to shipboard, thedésagrémentsof the voyage were nothing to her, and she immediately began to take an interest in her companions. She speaks of a Mr. and Mrs. Sturges, Boston people, who were nominally in charge of her; and of a Mrs. Stevens, another American lady, a very gay woman, who had some influence in supporting her determination not to go to the Craigies’ on reaching England. There was a Mr. Lennox on board, sometimes described as an aide-de-camp to some governor, who also may have had something to do with this resolution. It all came about as Lord Auckland’s sister had feared. Lola had fallen into evil hands, and laughed herself into a bad scrape. She had been accustomed to admiration; she was young, beautiful, and passionate. Her heart was empty; she was angered against her husband. She was by no means unwilling to face the possibility of a final separation from him. Lennox remains for us the shadowiest of personalities, but his disappearance, implying abandonment of the woman he had compromised, tells against him. In this instance I think we may safely conclude that the man was to blame.
Out of affection for him, then, or a determination to lead her own life, uncontrolled and unshackled, Mrs. James, on arriving in London, flatly refused to accompany Mr. David Craigie, “a blue Scotch Calvinist,” whom she found awaiting her.
“At first he used arguments and persuasion, and finding that these failed, he tried force; and then, of course, there was an explosion, which soon settled the matter, and convinced Mr. David Craigie that he might go back to the little dull town of Perth as soon as he pleased, without the little grass-widow. Nowshe was left in London, sole mistress of her own fate. She had, besides the cheque given her by her stepfather, between five and six thousand dollars’ worth of various kinds of jewellery, making her capital, all counted, about ten thousand dollars—a very considerable portion of which disappeared in less than one year by a sort of insensible perspiration, which is a disease very common to the purses of ladies who have never been taught the value of money.”
It was in the early spring of 1842 that Lola set foot in London. Considering the rapidity for those times with which her husband became informed of her next movements, these must have been amazingly open; and it is hard to resist the conclusion that she was deliberately trying to bring about a divorce. She knew that the English law grants no relief to those who come to it both with clean hands. She knew also that so long as her husband neither starved nor beat her, she could not set the law in motion against him. English law, supposed to vindicate the sanctity of marriage, sets a premium on adultery and cruelty: these are the only avenues of escape from unhappy unions into which high-minded men and women may have been betrayed by youthful folly, by over-persuasion, by sentiments they innocently over-estimated. If Lola Gilbert at the age of eighteen had signed a bill for ten pounds, the courts would have annulled the transaction, on the ground that her youth rendered her incapable of appreciating its gravity. As it was, she had signed away her life—a less important thing than property—and our Rhadamanthine law sternly held her to her bargain.
James was not slow to avail himself of the pretext she afforded him. He instituted through his proctorsa suit against her for divorce in the Consistory Court of London, to which jurisdiction in all matrimonial causes at that time belonged. Lola, as he probably expected she would do, ignored the proceedings from first to last. The case was heard before Dr. Lushington on 15th December 1842. Mrs. James was accused of misconduct with Mr. Lennox on board the shipLarkins, and of subsequently cohabiting with him at the Imperial Hotel, Covent Garden, and in lodgings in St. James’s. The court was satisfied with the proofs adduced, and pronounced a divorcea mensâ et toro. In modern legal language this was a judicial separation. These two people, though they were to live apart, were sentenced never to marry again during the lifetime of each other. It is by such dispositions that the law of England proposes to promote morality and the interests of society.
Both lover and husband disappear from the scene. James rose to the rank of captain, retired from the Indian army in 1856, and died in 1871. He never crossed Lola’s path again, and she ever afterwards referred to him with contempt and bitterness. If it was in any vindictive spirit that he divorced her, he would have done well to remember how in former years he had taken advantage of her youth and inexperience. It was a squalid ending to the romantic runaway match. It would be interesting to know with what emotions Captain James heard of his ex-wife’s adventures in high places in the years that followed. It must have seemed odd that monarchs should risk their crowns for the charms that he so lightly prized. Perhaps his wonder was not untinged with regret. More likely it might have been written of him as of Lola:—
“Who have loved and ceased to love, forgetThat ever they lived in their lives, they say—Only remember the fever and fret,And the pain of love that was all his pay.”
Mrs. Craigie put on mourning as though her child was dead, and sent out to her friends the customary notifications. The good old Deputy-Adjutant-General alone thought kindly of Lola.
LONDON IN THE ’FORTIES
To a woman in Lola’s situation, London in the early ’forties offered every inducement to go to the devil. Between a roaring maelstrom of the coarsest libertinism, on the one hand, and an impregnable barrier of heartless puritanism on the other, her destruction was well-nigh inevitable. The hotchpotch of unorganised humanity that we call Society seldom presented an uglier appearance than it did in the first decade of Victoria’s reign. Sir Mulberry Hawk and Pecksniff are types of the two contending forces. Blackguardism was matched against snivelling cant. Luckily, the victory fell to neither. Those were the days of Crockfords, of Vauxhall, of the spunging-house, of public executions turned into popular festivals; when gentlemen of fashion painted policemen pea-green, and beat them till they were senseless; when peers got drunk and the people starved. Opposed to this debauchery was a religion of convention and propriety, narrow, stupid, and un-Christlike—the cult of the correct and the respectable, the fetishes to which Lady Flora Hastings and many another woman were coldly sacrificed.
In spite of Sir Mulberry and Mr. Pecksniff, however, Lola, ex-Mrs. James, had no intention of going under.Her exclusion from society, after her wearisome experiences in India, she probably regarded as no great hardship. Her youth, her sprightliness, and her beauty made her many friends. Some of these as quickly became enemies, when they discovered that a divorced woman is not necessarily for sale. More than onerouévowed vengeance against the girl who, with bursts of laughter and dangerous gusts of anger, rejected the offer of his protection. It was, perhaps, in this way she offended the elegant Lord Ranelagh, who was then swaggering about in the Spanish cloak he had worn in the Carlist Wars. Lola was strong enough to swim in the maelstrom. Independence and adversity brought out the latent force in the character of the “good little thing” of Simla. Instead of looking out for a refuge, she sought a career.
She turned, of course, towards the stage, the one profession in Early Victorian times that offered any promise to an ambitious woman. She took more pains to acquire a knowledge of her art than are deemed necessary by most beautiful aspirants nowadays. She studied under Miss Fanny Kelly, a gifted actress, who had distinguished herself by her efforts to improve the social status of her profession, and who had opened a dramatic school for women adjacent to what is now the Royalty Theatre. Lola describes Miss Kelly as a lady as worthy in the acts of her private life as she was gifted in genius. This opinion was shared by all the contemporaries of the venerable actress. In after years Mr. Gladstone thought fit to recognise her services to the theatre by a royal grant of one hundred and fifty pounds, but the money arrived in time only to be expended on a memorial over her grave in the dismalcemetery at Brompton. Since Lola was a friend of Miss Kelly, she must have been very far from being the depraved character she is represented by some.
With all the goodwill in the world, the experienced mistress could not make an actress of her beautiful pupil, who accordingly determined to approach the stage through a back-door. If talent of the intellectual order was denied her, she could fall back on her physical advantages. She determined to become a dancer. She was instructed for four months by a Spanish professor, and then (so she assures us) underwent a further training at Madrid. It was now that she assumed the name of Lola Montez—so soon to be known throughout Europe. She passed herself off as a Spaniard, partly, no doubt, for professional reasons, and partly to conceal her identity with the wife of Captain James. Society can hardly expect its quarry to step out into the open to be shot at. Her beauty and her dancing so impressed Benjamin Lumley, the experienced director of Her Majesty’s Theatre, that it was on his stage that she actually made her first appearance.
The morning papers of Saturday, 3rd June 1843, announced accordingly that between the acts of the opera (Il Barbiere di Seviglia), Donna [sic] Lola Montez, of the Teatro Real, Seville, would make her first appearance in this country, in the original Spanish dance, “El Olano.” Attracted by this advertisement, a critic, who afterwards wrote under the pseudonym of “Q.,” called at the theatre, and was presented to thedébutante. In her he recognised a lady living opposite his lodgings in Grafton Street, Mayfair, who had long been the object of his silent adoration. He dwells on her extreme vivacity, on her brilliancy of conversation, and on herforeign accent, which struck him as assumed. She was persuaded to give a rehearsal for his special benefit.
“At that period,” he goes on to say, “her figure was even more attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was. Lithe and graceful as a young fawn, every movement that she made seemed instinct with melody as she prepared to commence the dance. Her dark eyes were blazing and flashing with excitement, for she felt that I was willing to admire her. In herpose, grace seemed involuntarily to preside over her limbs and dispose their attitude. Her foot and ankle were almost faultless. Nadaud, the violinist, drew the bow across his instrument, and she began to dance. No one who has seen her will quarrel with me for saying that she was not, and is not, a finisheddanseuse, but all who have will as certainly agree with me that she possesses every element which could be required, with careful study in her youth, to make her eminent in her then vocation. As she swept round the stage, her slender waist swayed to the music, and her graceful neck and head bent with it, like a flower that bends with the impulse given to its stem by the changing and fitful temper of the wind.”[3]
On that eventful June evening, then, manager, critics, not least of all Lola herself, confidently looked forward to a striking success. The house was crowded, and many notabilities were present. There were the King of Hanover, the Queen-Dowager, the Duchess of Kent, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. There was also Lola’s old enemy, my Lord Ranelagh, who with a party of friends occupied one of the two omnibus-boxes—an admirable point from which to examine the ankles and calves of the long-skirted ballet-girls. When thecurtain rose in theentr’acte, a Moorish chamber was revealed. On either side stood a damsel, gazing expectantly towards the draped entrance at the back of the stage. A moment later and there glided through this a figure enveloped in a mantilla. One of the handmaids snatched away this drapery, and the commanding form of Donna Lola Montez was revealed in all its glory.
“And a lovely picture it is to contemplate! There is before you the perfection of Spanish beauty—the tall, handsome person, the full, lustrous eye, the joyous, animated face, and the intensely raven hair. She is dressed, too, in the brightest of colours: the petticoat is dappled with flaunting tints of red, yellow, and violet, and its showy diversities of hue are enforced by the black velvet bodice above, which confines the bust with an unscrupulous pinch. Presently this AndalusianPapagenalifts her arms, and the sharp, merry crack of the castanets is heard. She has commenced one of the merry dances of her nation, and many a piquant grace does she unfold.”[4]
The audience are bewitched, enraptured. The stage is strewn with bouquets. Suddenly from the right omnibus-box comes the surprised exclamation: “Why, it’s Betty James!” Lord Ranelagh has recognised the woman who rebuffed him, and hurriedly whispers to his friends. Above the applause from stalls and gallery, there is heard on the stage, at least, a prolonged and ominous hiss. My lord’s friends in the opposite box act upon the hint, and the hissing grows louder and more insistent. The body of the audience, knowing nothing about the matter, conclude that the dancer cannot knowher business, and presently begin to hiss, too. In ten minutes more the curtain comes down upon her, and Lola’s career as a dancer is terminated in England.
Lord Ranelagh had had his revenge. This species of blackguardism was only too common in those days. The notorious Duke of Brunswick that same year had gone with his attorney, Mr. Vallance, and a party of friends, to Covent Garden Theatre, for the express purpose of hooting down an actor, Gregory, who took the part of Faust. He succeeded in his design, and bragged about it afterwards. In Early Victorian times the theatre was completely under the thumb of certain aristocratic sets. The exasperated Lumley was powerless to resist the fiat of these gilded snobs. Lola Montez, they insisted, must never appear on his stage again. He obeyed. The Press was very far from imitating his subserviency. TheEraandMorning Heraldpraised the newdanseusein what seem to us extravagant terms, and deliberately ignored the ingloriousdénouementof her performance. Indeed, but for the pen of “Q.” we might be left to share the surprise expressed at her disappearance by theIllustrated London News, which, ironically perhaps, suggested that the votaries of what might be called the classical dance had set their faces against the national.
Lola herself was under no misapprehension as to the cause and authors of her defeat. She wrote to theEraon 13th June, protesting passionately against a report that was being circulated to the effect that she had long been known in London as a disreputable character. She positively asserted that she was a native of Seville, and had never before been in London. She complains of the cruel calumnies that had gotabroad concerning her, and says that she has instructed her lawyer to prosecute their utterers. Of course, the greater part of this statement was untrue, but she had her back against the wall, and with their reputation, social and professional, and means of livelihood at stake, few women would have acted otherwise. My own view is that after her affair with Lennox, Lola tried hard “to keep straight,” and made powerful enemies in consequence. The alliance of Pecksniff and Sir Mulberry proved too strong for her.
WANDERJAHRE
London, then, was closed to Lola. She was recognised, and for the divorced wife of Lieutenant James there were no prospects of a career. Her defeat determined her to aim higher, not lower, as most women would have done. In the English country towns she would have been quite unknown, and might have earned a modest competence. But her experience of Montrose and Meath did not predispose her towards the provincial atmosphere. Devoting England and its serpent seed to the infernal gods, she took wing to Brussels. So rapidly were her preparations made that when “Q.” called the very morning after the “frost” at Her Majesty’s at her apartments in Grafton Street, he found her gone—none knew whither. We must feel sorry for our anonymous friend, for it is evident from his confessions that Lola’s blue eyes had bored a big hole in his heart. He consoled himself for her loss by writing (I suspect) some of the flattering notices on her performance to which reference has been made.
It is impossible to trace his enchantress’s movements in their proper sequence during the next nine or ten months (June 1843 to March 1844). We find her at Brussels, Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg.She reached the Belgian capital practically with an empty purse. She afterwards said[5]that she went there partly because she had not enough money wherewith to go to Paris, partly because she hoped to make her way on to The Hague. She proposed to lay siege to the heart of his Dutch Majesty William II., then a man fifty-one years of age. She had, quite probably, met his son, the Prince of Orange, who was visiting Lord Auckland about the time she was at Simla, and had heard tales in Calcutta about the Dutch Court. The House of Orange has not been fortunate in its domestic relations. It is said that during the last king’s first experience of wedlock, the heads of chamberlains often intercepted the books aimed by the Royal spouses at each other, while the whole palace re-echoed with the slamming of doors and the crash of crockery. William II., though not possessed of the reputation of his son and grandson, the celebrated “Citron,” was known to be on bad terms with his Russian wife, Anna Pavlovna. He seemed to Lola a promising subject for the exercise of her powers of fascination. The design, if she ever really entertained it, was not one that moralists could applaud, but in extenuation it must be urged that Lola’s late defeat could not have encouraged her to persevere in the path of virtue. However, the Dutch project came to nothing, and the display of our heroine’s statecraft was reserved for another capital and another day.
In Brussels she found herself friendless and penniless. She was reduced to singing in the streets to save herself from starvation—she who only four years before had been borne from the stately Indian Court enthroned onthe Viceroy’s elephant! Her distress is rather to the credit of her reputation, for it would have been easy enough for so beautiful a woman to have found a wealthy protector in the Belgian capital. She was noticed by a man, whom she believed to be a German, who took her with him to Warsaw. “He spoke many languages,” says Lola, “but he was not very well off himself. However, he was very kind, and when we got to Warsaw, managed to get me an engagement at the Opera.”[6]I cannot help wishing that Lola had given us some account of a journey that must have been performed in a carriage right across Central Europe from Belgium to Poland.
Warsaw in 1844 must have been as cheerless a spot as any in Europe. The great insurrection of 1831 had been suppressed with ruthless severity by the soldiers of the Tsar, and there was not a family of rank in the city that was not mourning for some one of its members who had passed beyond the ken of its living, into dread Siberia. Order reigned at Warsaw, indeed, in its conqueror’s famous phrase, but it was order obtained only with the knout and the bayonet. The Polish language was barely tolerated, the Catholic religion proscribed. Women, half-naked, were publicly flogged for their attachment to their faith, school-boys and school-girls sent to perish beyond the Urals. The secret service ramified through every grade of society. Fathers distrusted their sons, husbands feared to discover in their own wives the tools of the Muscovite Government. To this day Poles are seldom free from the nightmare of the Russian spy. The present writer remembers how, some years ago, at Bern, in the capital ofa free republic, a Polish medical man refused, with every symptom of apprehension, to discuss the condition of his country within the longest ear-shot of a third party.
Yet unhappy Warsaw, under the heel of the terrible Paskievich, could be coaxed into a smile by the flashing eyes of the new Andalusian dancer. Her beauty enraptured the Poles, and drew from one of their dramatic critics the following elaborate panegyric:—
“Lola possesses twenty-six of the twenty-seven points on which a Spanish writer insists as essential to feminine beauty—and the real connoisseurs among my readers will agree with me when I confess that blue eyes and black hair appear to me more ravishing than black eyes and black hair. The points enumerated by the Spanish writer are: three white—the skin, the teeth, the hands; three black—the eyes, eye-lashes, and eyebrows; three red—the lips, the cheeks, the nails; three long—the body, the hair, the hands; three short—the ears, the teeth, the legs; three broad—the bosom, the forehead, the space between the eyebrows; three full—the lips, the arms, the calves; three small—the waist, the hands, the feet; three thin—the fingers, the hair, the lips. All these perfections are Lola’s, except as regards the colour of her eyes, which I for one, would not wish to change. Silky hair, rivalling the gloss of the raven’s wing, falls in luxuriant folds down her back; on the slender, delicate neck, whose whiteness shames the swan’s down, rests the beautiful head. How, too, shall I describe Lola’s bosom, if words fail me to describe the dazzling whiteness of her teeth? What the pencil could not portray, certainly the pen cannot.“‘Vedeansi accesi entro le gianci belleDolci fiamme di rose e di rubini,E nel ben sen per entro un mar di latteTremolando nutar due poma intatte.’“Lola’s little feet hold the just balance between the feet of the Chinese and French ladies. Her fine, shapely calves are the lowest rungs of a Jacob’s ladder leading to Heaven. She reminds one of the Venus of Knidos, carved by Praxiteles in the 104th Olympiad. To see her eyes is to be satisfied that her soul is throned in them.... Her eyes combine the varying shades of the sixteen varieties of forget-me-not....”
“Lola possesses twenty-six of the twenty-seven points on which a Spanish writer insists as essential to feminine beauty—and the real connoisseurs among my readers will agree with me when I confess that blue eyes and black hair appear to me more ravishing than black eyes and black hair. The points enumerated by the Spanish writer are: three white—the skin, the teeth, the hands; three black—the eyes, eye-lashes, and eyebrows; three red—the lips, the cheeks, the nails; three long—the body, the hair, the hands; three short—the ears, the teeth, the legs; three broad—the bosom, the forehead, the space between the eyebrows; three full—the lips, the arms, the calves; three small—the waist, the hands, the feet; three thin—the fingers, the hair, the lips. All these perfections are Lola’s, except as regards the colour of her eyes, which I for one, would not wish to change. Silky hair, rivalling the gloss of the raven’s wing, falls in luxuriant folds down her back; on the slender, delicate neck, whose whiteness shames the swan’s down, rests the beautiful head. How, too, shall I describe Lola’s bosom, if words fail me to describe the dazzling whiteness of her teeth? What the pencil could not portray, certainly the pen cannot.
“‘Vedeansi accesi entro le gianci belleDolci fiamme di rose e di rubini,E nel ben sen per entro un mar di latteTremolando nutar due poma intatte.’
“Lola’s little feet hold the just balance between the feet of the Chinese and French ladies. Her fine, shapely calves are the lowest rungs of a Jacob’s ladder leading to Heaven. She reminds one of the Venus of Knidos, carved by Praxiteles in the 104th Olympiad. To see her eyes is to be satisfied that her soul is throned in them.... Her eyes combine the varying shades of the sixteen varieties of forget-me-not....”
And so forth, and so on.
It is indisputable that in this, her twenty-sixth year, Lola was extremely beautiful. Her bitterest detractors have never denied her the possession of almost magical loveliness. This was informed by sparkling vivacity, and a force of personality, without which we should never have heard the name of Lola Montez. A human masterpiece of this sort is as much a source of trouble in a community as a priceless diamond. Everyone’s cupidity is excited, probity and honour melt away in the fierce heat of temptation. The upright think that here at last is a prize worth the sacrifice of all the standards that have hitherto guided them. St. Anthony, after forty years of sainthood, succumbs—and is glad that he does. Even miserable Poland for a moment forgot her woes when she looked on Lola; and her stern conqueror, the terrible Paskievich, felt a new spring pervading his grim, sixty-year-old frame. He, the master of many legions, he at whose frown a nation paled—why should he not grasp this treasure? Who should say him nay?
I will let Lola tell the story in her own words.
“While Lola Montez was on a visit to Madame Steinkiller the wife of the principal banker of Poland,the old viceroy sent to ask her presence at the palace one morning at eleven o’clock. She was assured by several ladies that it would be neither politic nor safe to refuse to go; and she did go in Madame Steinkiller’s carriage, and heard from the viceroy a most extraordinary proposition. He offered her the gift of a splendid country estate, and would load her with diamonds besides. The poor old man was a comic sight to look upon—unusually short in stature, and every time he spoke, he threw back his head and opened his mouth so wide as to expose the artificial gold roof of his palate. A death’s-head making love to a lady could not have been a more disgusting or horrible sight. These generous gifts were most respectfully and very decidedly declined. But her refusal to make a bigger fool of one who was already fool enough was not well received.
[This, I take it, is the only instance of the word fool being applied to one of the ablest, if most ruthless, men Russia has ever produced.]