“In those countries where political tyranny is unrestrained, the social and domestic tyranny is scarcely less absolute.“The next day His Majesty’s tool, the colonel of thegendarmesand director of the theatre, called at her hotel to urge the suit of his master.“He began by being persuasive and argumentative, and when that availed nothing, he insinuated threats, when a grand row broke out, and the madcap ordered him out of her room.“Now when Lola Montez appeared that night at the theatre, she was hissed by two or three parties who had evidently been instructed to do so by the director himself. The same thing occurred the next night; and when it came again on the third night, Lola Montez, in a rage, rushed down to the footlights, and declared that those hisses had been set at her bythe director, because she had refused certain gifts from the old prince, his master. Then came a tremendous shower of applause from the audience; and the old princess, who was present, both nodded her head and clapped her hands to the enraged and fiery Lola.“Here, then, was a pretty muss. An immense crowd of Poles, who hated both the prince and the director, escorted her to her lodgings. She found herself a heroine without expecting it, and indeed without intending it. In a moment of rage she had told the whole truth, without stopping to count the cost, and she had unintentionally set the whole of Warsaw by the ears.“The hatred which the Poles intensely felt towards the government and its agents found a convenient opportunity of demonstrating itself, and in less than twenty-four hours Warsaw was bubbling and raging with the signs of an incipient revolution. When Lola Montez was apprised of the fact that her arrest was ordered, she barricaded her door; and when the police arrived she sat behind it with a pistol in her hand, declaring that she would certainly shoot the first man dead who should break in. The police were frightened, or at least they could not agree among themselves who should be the martyr, and they went off to inform their masters what a tigress they had to confront, and to consult as to what should be done. In the meantime, the French Consul gallantly came forward and claimed Lola Montez as a French subject, which saved her from immediate arrest; but the order was peremptory that she must quit Warsaw.”
“In those countries where political tyranny is unrestrained, the social and domestic tyranny is scarcely less absolute.
“The next day His Majesty’s tool, the colonel of thegendarmesand director of the theatre, called at her hotel to urge the suit of his master.
“He began by being persuasive and argumentative, and when that availed nothing, he insinuated threats, when a grand row broke out, and the madcap ordered him out of her room.
“Now when Lola Montez appeared that night at the theatre, she was hissed by two or three parties who had evidently been instructed to do so by the director himself. The same thing occurred the next night; and when it came again on the third night, Lola Montez, in a rage, rushed down to the footlights, and declared that those hisses had been set at her bythe director, because she had refused certain gifts from the old prince, his master. Then came a tremendous shower of applause from the audience; and the old princess, who was present, both nodded her head and clapped her hands to the enraged and fiery Lola.
“Here, then, was a pretty muss. An immense crowd of Poles, who hated both the prince and the director, escorted her to her lodgings. She found herself a heroine without expecting it, and indeed without intending it. In a moment of rage she had told the whole truth, without stopping to count the cost, and she had unintentionally set the whole of Warsaw by the ears.
“The hatred which the Poles intensely felt towards the government and its agents found a convenient opportunity of demonstrating itself, and in less than twenty-four hours Warsaw was bubbling and raging with the signs of an incipient revolution. When Lola Montez was apprised of the fact that her arrest was ordered, she barricaded her door; and when the police arrived she sat behind it with a pistol in her hand, declaring that she would certainly shoot the first man dead who should break in. The police were frightened, or at least they could not agree among themselves who should be the martyr, and they went off to inform their masters what a tigress they had to confront, and to consult as to what should be done. In the meantime, the French Consul gallantly came forward and claimed Lola Montez as a French subject, which saved her from immediate arrest; but the order was peremptory that she must quit Warsaw.”
I have no means of verifying this account. Riots were of frequent occurrence in Warsaw during the ’forties, but, thanks to a rigid censorship of the Press, the particulars concerning them have failed to reach us. That the citizens would at once side with any one who for any reason whatsoever was “agin the Government” is not to be doubted, and Lola was quite clever enoughto make a slight to her appear as an insult to the Warsaw public. In defending herself with the pistol, she only gave proof of the manlike courage and resolution conspicuous throughout her whole career. As to the cause of the row, one of Lola’s recent biographers remarks that if Prince Paskievich had made the offer alleged, it is quite certain that she would have closed with it. It is far from being certain. The Russian Viceroy was definitely repugnant to her, and her subsequent experiences show that she never bestowed herself upon a man whom she could not, or did not, love. She was new, too, to herrôleof adventuress. Altogether, there is no good reason for doubting that Lola’s relation of her experiences in the Polish capital is substantially true.
On the other hand, vanity certainly betrayed her into several deviations from the truth in her reminiscences of St. Petersburg. She went thither, she informs us, upon her expulsion from Poland—an odd refuge! Of her journey in acalècheacross the wastes of Lithuania and through the dark forests of Muscovy; of St. Petersburg, still half an Oriental city, where all men below the rank of nobles wore the long beard and caftan of the Asiatic—ourraconteusehas nothing to say. She introduces us at once to the Tsar and the innermost arcanum of his Court.
“Nicholas was as amiable and accomplished in private life as he was great, stern, and inflexible as a monarch. He was the strongest pattern of a monarch of this age, and I see no promise of his equal, either in the incumbents or the heirs-apparent of the other thrones of Europe.”
Lola, we see, speaks as an authority on crownedheads. In her estimate of Nicholas I. she seems to have forgotten the republican principles she generally professed. The Tsar was, no doubt, the most commanding figure of his time, and Russia’s influence in the counsels of Europe has never since had as much weight as in the earlier part of his reign. His fine proportions, as much as his strength of character, probably excited Lola’s admiration, and blinded her to defects, physical and temperamental, which did not escape the notice of more keen-eyed critics. She did not see that the autocrat’s majestic demeanour was a pose, that his stern, hawk-like glance was deliberately cultivated, and that he had only three expressions of countenance, all put on at will. Horace Vernet, who knew Nicholas well, was firmly convinced that he was not wholly sane. As to his amiability in private life, he is said to have been, like many tyrants, a good husband, and he often condescended to take tea with his nurse, “a decent Scotch body.” It was to this respectable exile that the members of the imperial family owed that fluent and colloquial English, which often as much astonished as gratified our countrymen. It is recorded that one of the Grand Dukes genially accosted the British chaplain at St. Petersburg with the enquiry: “God damn your eyes, and how the devil are you?”—language, very properly remarks an Early Victorian writer, which no man on earth had the right to address to a person in Holy Orders.
NICHOLAS I.
The Tsar himself was better bred. His relations with Mademoiselle Montez were characterized by politeness and liberality. Not only he, but his right-hand man, the astute Livonian, Benkendorf, held the lady’s political acumen in high esteem. While she and the Emperorand the Minister of the Interior were in a somewhat private chat about vexatious matters connected with Caucasia, airily relates Lola, a humorous episode occurred.
“It was suddenly announced that the superior officers of the Caucasian army were without, desiring audience. The very subject of the previous conversation rendered it desirable that Lola Montez should not be seen in conference with the Emperor and the Minister of the Interior; so she was thrust into a closet, and the door locked. The conference between the officers and the Emperor was short but stormy. Nicholas got into a towering rage. It seemed to the imprisoned Lola that there was a whirlwind outside; and womanly curiosity to hear what it was about [did she then understand Russian?], joined with the great difficulty of keeping from coughing, made her position a strangely embarrassing one. But the worst of it was, in the midst of this grand quarrel the parties all went out of the room, and forgot Lola Montez, who was locked up in the closet. For a whole hour she was kept in this durance vile, reflecting upon the somewhat confined and cramping honours she was receiving from Royalty, when the Emperor, who seems to have come to himself before Count Benkendorf did, came running back out of breath, and unlocked the door, and not only begged pardon for his forgetfulness, in a manner which only a man of his accomplished address could do, but presented the victim with a thousand roubles, saying laughingly: ‘I have made up my mind whenever I imprison any of my subjects unjustly, I will pay them for their time and suffering.’ And Lola Montez answered him: ‘Ah, sire, I am afraid that rule will make a poor man of you.’ He laughed heartily, and replied: ‘Well, I am happy in being able to settle with you, anyhow.’”
Lola makes here a rather heavy draft on the reader’scredulity. However, from the nice things she has to say about His Imperial Majesty, it is clear that she had been admitted at one time or another to his presence. Had not Nicholas I. been a pattern of the domestic virtues, we might have attributed his embarrassment at Lola’s being discovered in his closet, and the donation of the thousand roubles, to reasons entirely unconnected with the Caucasus. After all, Lola may have argued, if she had been courted by a king, why should she not have been consulted by an emperor?
Before or after her visit to St. Petersburg the dancer saw the Tsar at Berlin. Mounted on a fiery Cordovan barb, she was among the spectators at a review given by King Frederick William in honour of his imperial guest. The horse was scared by the firing, and bolted, carrying its rider straight into the midst of the Royal party. Lola was not sorry to find herself in such company, but agendarmestruck at her horse and endeavoured to drive it away. An insult of this sort Lola was the last woman to tolerate. Raising her whip, she slashed the policeman across the face. Out of respect for the Royal party, the incident was allowed to end there, for the moment; but the next day the dancer was waited upon with a summons. She instantly tore the document to pieces, and threw them into the face of the process-server. Such contempt for the law might have been attended with very serious consequences, but Lola went, as a matter of fact, scot-free. Perhaps her friends in high places interceded for her; but it is hard to believe, as she afterwards declared, that thegendarmecame to her lodgings to sue for her pardon.[7]In everycapital of Europe it soon became known that the beautiful Spanish dancer was able and prepared to defend herself against the most determined antagonists of either sex.
But a nobler quarry than Tsar and Viceroy was now to fall before the shafts from Lola’s eyes.
FRANZ LISZT
In the year 1844 Franz Liszt may be considered to have reached the zenith of his fame. In the two-and-twenty years that had elapsed since his first triumph, when a lad of eleven, at Vienna, the young Hungarian had taken pride of place before all the pianists of his day. The crown still rested securely on his brow, despite the formidable rivalry of Thalberg. Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Rome, and Milan had in turn felt his spell, and rapturously acclaimed him the king of melody. Honours and wealth poured in upon him. The magnates of his native land—the proudest of all aristocracies—presented him with a sword of honour. The monarchs of Europe publicly recognised the lofty genius of one whom they knew to be no friend of theirs. For Liszt, the devotee of later years, glowed then with generous enthusiasm for freedom, political and religious. Frederick William sent him diamonds, and he pitched them into the wings; the Tsar found him unabashed and contemptuous; the Kings of Bavaria and Hanover he scorned to invite to his concerts; before Isabel II. he refused to play at all, because Spanish Court etiquette forbade his personal introduction to her. The Catholic Church, he wrote, knew only curse and ban. He wasthe friend of Lamennais. The bourgeois—the Philistine, as we should call him now—he held in greater abhorrence even than the tyrant. In Louis Philippe he saw bourgeoisie enthroned. Yet the King of the French courted the man whose empire was more stable than his own. He reminded the pianist of a former meeting when the one was but a boy, and the other only Duke of Orleans. “Much has changed since then,” said the Citizen-King. “Yes, sire, but not for the better!” bluntly replied the artist.
In 1844 Europe was more liberal in some respects than America is to-day. Honours and applause were not denied to Liszt because he openly transgressed the sex conventions. Since 1835 his life had been shared by the beautiful Comtesse d’Agoult, the would-be rival, under the name “Daniel Stern,” of the more celebrated Georges Sand. Of this union were born three children, one of whom became the wife of Richard Wagner. Madame d’Agoult was a Romanticist, and a very typical figure of her time and circle. She was an interesting woman, and tried hard to be more interesting still. But it was no affectation of passion that led her to abandon home, husband, and position, to throw herself into the pianist’s arms at Basle. She was deeply in love with him; but she wished to be more than a wife, more than a lover: she aspired to be his muse. Liszt, however, needed no inspiration from without. In an oft-quoted phrase, he said that the Dantes created the Beatrices; “the genuine die when they are eighteen years old.” The man chafed more and more under the ties that bound him. He had no wish to abandon the mother of his children, but his genius demanded to be unfettered. He wandered over Europe, sad and bitterat heart, but heaping up his laurels. The Comtesse and the children stayed in Paris, or at the villa Liszt had rented on the beautiful islet of Nonnenwerth, in the shadow of “the castled crag of Drachenfels.” There he joined them from time to time, while unable to resist the conclusion that he and she must part. The evolution of their temperaments and intellects was in rapidly diverging directions. He was no longer willing to throw himself out of the window at her bidding as he had publicly declared himself to be four years before. The cord that bound them was frayed and fretted to a thread.
FRANZ LISZT.
At Dresden fate threw Liszt and Lola Montez across each other’s path. The intense, artistic nature of the man cried out with joy at the glorious beauty of the woman. Her inextinguishable vivacity, her almost masculine boldness, her frank and splendid animalism enraptured the musician, now sick to death of soulful conversations and the sentimentalities of Romanticism. It was the old struggle for the possession of the artist, waged by Silvia and Gioconda. Lola was beautiful as a tigress. To Liszt she could surrender herself proudly. She was one of those erotic women, whose passion is excited rather by a man’s mental attributes than by his physical advantages. Intellect she adored. Her own strong nature could yield only to a stronger. We have heard how she spoke of Nicholas I.; we shall find this almost sensuous craving for force of personality in her subsequent relations. To her, the pianist must have been a new revelation of manhood. Her life so far had brought her in contact with Indian officers and civilians, a few men about town, and (for a few hours) with one or more potentates. Now she met a great man with abeautiful soul. She had heard the stories current of Liszt’s abnegation, his boundless generosity, his pride in his vocation. In her, too, he recognised a haughty intolerance of patronage, a contempt for those in high places, such as he had himself exhibited. Both could laugh over the slights to which they had subjected the King of Prussia, and their demeanour in presence of the mighty Tsar. It is likely enough that their conversation may have begun in some such fashion; how their love ripened we are left to guess. On this episode in her history Lola exhibits unwonted reserve. She mentions meeting Liszt at Dresden, and speaks of the furore he created. As to their love passages, she is silent. I like to think that this was a secret she held sacred, that her love for the great musician had in it something fresh and noble, which distinguished it from the emotions excited in her by all other men. Women of many attachments are prone to idealise one among them.
The world was bound by no such scruples. The rumour ran from capital to capital that Liszt was enthralled by the Andalusian. It reached the Comtesse d’Agoult in her retreat at Nonnenwerth. She penned a fierce, reproachful letter. Liszt, in Calypso’s grotto at Dresden, answered proudly and coldly. The Comtesse wrote, announcing the end of their relations. Most men are frightened at the abrupt termination of a love affair of which they have long been heartily weary. Liszt gave the Comtesse time to think it over. She made no further overtures, expecting that he would come to kneel at her feet. He did not. The lady went to Paris, and they never met again.
The artist at least owed Lola a service, since she had been the unwitting instrument of a rupture so longdesired by him. But he valued his newly-recovered freedom too highly to jeopardise it by linking his life again with a woman’s. His love affair with Lola may have been simply an infatuation. Lucio would soon have tired of Gioconda had he lived with her. We hardly know how this brief love story began; we are quite in the dark as to how it ended. A report was current that the two travelled together from Dresden to Paris, where both appeared in the spring of ’44. We do not hear that they were seen together in the French capital, so the adieux may already have been exchanged. Liszt stayed there but a few weeks, and then started on a tour through the French departments. Then he crossed the Pyrenees, and pushed as far south as Gibraltar. Less than three years later he was in the toils of a third woman—the Princess Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, with whom his relations endured twelve years. It is noteworthy that he and Lola turned their thoughts from love to religion almost at the same time, though half a world lay between them.
Of the third actor in this little drama it is hardly within my province to speak. The Comtesse d’Agoult found consolation in the care of her children and in those wider interests of which she never tired. She ardently espoused the cause of the Revolution in 1848. More fortunate than her old lover, she never lost the sane and generous sympathies of her youth. You may read herSouvenirs, published at Paris the year after her death (1877). Liszt long survived the women who had loved him—not a fate that either of them would have envied him.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE IMMORTALS
Lola’s first appearance in Paris was, like herdébutat Her Majesty’s, a fiasco. Thanks, no doubt, to her reputation for beauty and audacity, she secured an engagement at the Opera, then under the management of Léon Pillet. The power behind the throne was the great Madame Stoltz, who some years later was to be hooted off the stage by a hostile clique just as Lola had been nine months before. At that time, however, no one dreamed of a revolt against the all-powerfulcantatricewhose favour thedanseusewas fortunate to procure. The great Stoltz looked best and was luckiest in men’s parts, and therefore saw no rival in the now famous “Andalouse.”
Lola, accordingly, made her bow to the Parisian public on Saturday, 30th March 1844, inIl Lazzarone, an opera in two acts by Halévy. Her audience was more fastidious than the playgoers of Dresden and Warsaw. Her beauty ravished them, but in her dancing they saw little merit. Seeing this, Lola made a characteristic bid for their favour. Her satin shoe had slipped off. Seizing it, she threw it with one of her superb gestures into the boxes, where it was pounced upon and brandished as a precious relic by a gentleman of fashion.The manœuvre seems to have succeeded in its object, for theConstitutionnelnext morning found it necessary to warn young dancers against the danger of factitious applause, while “abstaining from criticising too severely a pretty woman who had not had time to study Parisian tastes.” Théophile Gautier was less gallant:—
“We are reluctant,” he writes, “to speak of Lola Montes, who reminds us by her Christian name of one of the prettiest women of Granada, and by her surname of the man who excited in us the most powerful dramatic emotions we have ever experienced—Montes, the most illustriousespadaof Spain. The only thing Andalusian about Mlle. Lola Montes is a pair of magnificent black eyes. She gabbles Spanish very indifferently, French hardly at all, and English passably [sic]. Which is her country? That is the question. We may say that Mlle. Lola has a little foot and pretty legs. Her use of these is another matter. The curiosity excited by her adventures with the northern police, and her conversations,à coups de cravache, with the Prussiangens d’armes, has not been satisfied, it must be admitted. Mlle. Lola Montes is certainly inferior to Dolores Serrai, who has, at least, the advantage of being a real Spaniard, and redeems her imperfections as a dancer by a voluptuousabandon, and an admirable fire and precision of rhythm. We suspect, after the recital of her equestrian exploits, that Mlle. Lola is more at home in the saddle than on the boards.”
As at Her Majesty’s, so at the Opera. Lola’s first appearance was her last. For the rest of the year, as far as I can learn, she was out of an engagement. She had, no doubt, made some money during her German and Russian tour, and Liszt would not have forgotten her when he started on his southern tour at the end of April.
If her association with him had begotten in Lola Montez a thirst for wit and genius, she had every chance of slaking it in Paris. There were giants on the earth in those days, and they were all gathered together on the banks of the Seine. It is not too much to say that since the Medici ruled in Florence, no capital has boasted so brilliant an assemblage of men of genius as did Paris under the paternal government of July. In the year ’44, Victor Hugo, attended by a score of minor poets, daily appeared on his balcony to acknowledge the homage of the public; Lamartine was dividing his attention between politics and literature. Alfred de Musset was wrecking his constitution by spasms of debauchery. Balzac was dodging his creditors, playing truant from the National Guard, and finding time to write his “Comédie Humaine”; Théophile Gautier, a man of thirty-three, if he had not yet received the full meed of his genius, was already well known and widely appreciated. Alexandre Dumas had long since become a national institution, and his son was looking out for copy among the ladies of thedemi-monde. Delphine Gay was writing her brilliant “Lettres Parisiennes” for her husband’s newspaper. The Salon was still rejecting the masterpieces of Delacroix, but Vernet was painting the ceiling of the Palais Bourbon. Auber, though past the prime of life, had not yet scored his greatest success. Paris was like Athens in the age of Pericles.
Life was really worth living then, when Louis Phillippe was king. He was an honest, kindly-natured man, this pear-headed potentate, who reigned, “comme la corniche règne autour d’un plafond.” He was the king of thebourgeois, and he looked it every inch, with hiswhite felt hat and respectable umbrella; but in the calm sunshine of his reign the arts flourished and the world was gay. Those days before the Revolution remind us of that strange picture in our National Gallery, “The Eve of the Deluge.” Paris, as the old stagers regretfully assure us, was Paris then, and not the caravanserai of all the nations of the world. The good Americans who died then, had they gone to Paris, would have thought they had reached the wrong destination. Men of Pontus and Asia had not then made the French capital their own. The invasion of the Barbarians, says Gustave Claudin, took place in 1848. They came, not conducted by Attila, but by the newly-constructed railways. As these strangers had plenty of money to spend, they naturally sought the most fashionable quarters.
“The true Parisians disappeared in the crowd, and knew not where to find themselves. In the evening, the restaurants where they used to dine, the stalls and boxes where they used to assist at the opera and the play, were taken by assault by cohorts of sightseers wishing to steep themselves up to the neck inla vie Parisienne.”
The tide of the invasion has never diminished in volume, and the true Parisian has become extinct.
In the year 1844 the fine flower of Parisian society was in undisputed possession of the Boulevard—the quarter between the Opera and the Rue Drouot.
“By virtue of a selection which no one contested,” says the author just quoted, “nobody was tolerated there who could not lay claim to some sort of distinction or originality. There seemed to exist a kind of invisible moral barrier, closing this area against themediocre, the insipid, and the insignificant, who passed by, but did not linger, knowing that their place was not there.”
The headquarters of the noble company of the Boulevard was the famous Café de Paris, at the corner of the Rue Taitbout. Dumas, Balzac, and Alfred de Musset were to be seen there twice or thrice a week; the eccentric Lord Seymour, founder of the French Jockey Club, had his own table there. Lola, doubtless, often tasted the unsurpassedcuisineof this celebrated restaurant, for she soon penetrated into the circle of the Olympians, and was presented with the freedom of the Boulevard.
She met Claudin (who indeed knew everybody).
“Lola Montez,” he says, “was an enchantress. There was about her something provoking and voluptuous which drew you. Her skin was white, her wavy hair like the tendrils of the woodbine, her eyes tameless and wild, her mouth like a budding pomegranate. Add to that a dashing figure, charming feet, and perfect grace. Unluckily,” the notice concludes, “as a dancer she had no talent.”
That multiple personality whom Vandam embodies in “An Englishman in Paris” admits that Lola was naturally graceful, that her gait and carriage were those of a duchess. When he goes on to say that her wit was that of a pot-house, I seem to detect one of his not infrequent lapses from the truth. Only three years had elapsed since Lola had shone in Court circles in India, where the social atmosphere was not that of a bar-room; and since then she had been wandering about in countries where her ignorance of the language must have lefther manner of speech and modes of thought almost unaffected. Pot-house wit would not have fascinated Liszt, nor the fastidious Louis of Bavaria. “Men of far higher intellectual attainments than mine, and familiar with very good society,” admits our nebulous chronicler,[8]“raved and kept raving about her.”
Dumas, he says in another place, was as much smitten with her as her other admirers. This, of course, is no guarantee of her refinement, for the genial Creole had the reputation of not being over nice in his attachments and amours. He was then in the prime of life, and may be considered to have just reached the zenith of his fame by the publication of “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” “Monte Cristo,” and “La Reine Margot” (1844-5). Two years before he had formally and legally married Mademoiselle Ida Ferrier—this step, so inconsistent with his temperament and mode of life, having resulted from his own reckless disregard of the conventions. The lady had fascinated him while she was interpreting arôleof his creation at the Porte-St.-Martin. It did not strike him that it would be irregular to take her with him to a ball given by his patron, the Duke of Orleans, and he straightway did so. “Of course, my dear Dumas,” said His Highness affably, “it is only yourwifethat you would think of presenting to me.” Poor Alexandre, the lover of all women and none in particular, was hoisted with his own petard. A prince’s hints, above all when he is your patron and publisher, are commands. Dumas was led to the altar, like a sheep to the slaughter, by the charming Ida. Châteaubriand supported the bridegroom through the ordeal. Howeverthe chains of matrimony sat lightly on the irrepressibleromancier. Madame Dumas soon after departed for Florence, greatly to the relief of her spouse. He was living, at the time of Lola’s visit to Paris, at the Villa Médicis at St. Germain. There he could superintend the building of his palace of Monte Cristo, on the road to Marly, a part of which, with imperturbablesang-froid, he actually raised on the land belonging to a neighbour, without so much as a “by your leave.” This ambitious residence emptied Dumas’s pockets of the little money that the ladies he loved had left in them.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, SENIOR.
Alexandre, of course, fell passionately in love with Lola Montez. We need no written assurance of that. We read that he told her that she had acted “like a gentleman” in her treatment of Frederick William’s policemen, and with what far-fetched compliments he followed up this commendation it is easy to imagine. There were certain resemblances in their temperaments, though the woman was far the stronger. Posterity is never likely to agree on an estimate of Dumas’s character. Théodore de Banville thought him a truly great man.
“Dumas,” he wrote, “had no more need to husband his strength and his vitality than a river has to economise with its waters, and it seemed, in fact, that he held in his strong hands inexhaustible urns, whence flowed a stream always clear and limpid. In what formidable metal had he been cast? Once he took it into his head to take his son, Alexandre, to the masked ball of Grados, at the Barrière Montparnasse, and, attired as a postilion, the great man danced all night without resting for a moment, and held women with his outstretched arm, like a Hercules. When he returned home in the morning, he found that his postilion’sbreeches had, through the swelling of the muscles, become impossible to remove; so Alexandre was obliged to cut them into strips with a penknife. After that what did the historian of the Mousquetaires do? Do you think he chose his good clean sheets or a warm bath? He chose work! And having taken somebouillon, set himself down before his writing paper, which he continued to fill with adventures till the evening, with as much ‘go’ and spirit as if he had come from calm repose.“Nature has given up making that kind of man; by way of a change, she turns out poets, who, having composed a single sonnet, pass the rest of their lives contemplating themselves and—their sonnets.”
“Dumas,” he wrote, “had no more need to husband his strength and his vitality than a river has to economise with its waters, and it seemed, in fact, that he held in his strong hands inexhaustible urns, whence flowed a stream always clear and limpid. In what formidable metal had he been cast? Once he took it into his head to take his son, Alexandre, to the masked ball of Grados, at the Barrière Montparnasse, and, attired as a postilion, the great man danced all night without resting for a moment, and held women with his outstretched arm, like a Hercules. When he returned home in the morning, he found that his postilion’sbreeches had, through the swelling of the muscles, become impossible to remove; so Alexandre was obliged to cut them into strips with a penknife. After that what did the historian of the Mousquetaires do? Do you think he chose his good clean sheets or a warm bath? He chose work! And having taken somebouillon, set himself down before his writing paper, which he continued to fill with adventures till the evening, with as much ‘go’ and spirit as if he had come from calm repose.
“Nature has given up making that kind of man; by way of a change, she turns out poets, who, having composed a single sonnet, pass the rest of their lives contemplating themselves and—their sonnets.”
Prodigious! It is gratifying to think that this indefatigable worker had always two sincere admirers—himself and his son. The latter, it is true, would have his joke at the former’s expense. “My father,” remarked the son, “is so vain that he would be ready to hang on to the back of his own carriage, to make people believe he kept a black servant.” Notwithstanding, the two loved each other tenderly. Innumerable anecdotes bear witness to the paternal fondness of the one, the filial devotion of the other. Yet their relation was more that of two sworn friends, as is so touchingly expressed in these lines from the “Père Prodigue”:—
“... I have sought your affection, more than your obedience and respect.... To have all in common, heart as well as purse, to give and to tell each other everything, such has been our device. We have lost, it seems, several hundred thousands of francs; but this we have gained—the power of counting always on one another, thou on me, I on thee, and of being ready always to die for each other. That is the most important thing between father and son.”
These are the words of Frenchmen. An Englishman would have put such language into the mouths of husband and wife.
Enjoying the friendship of Dumaspère, Lola no doubt had the privilege of meeting Alexandre junior. The young man was then in his twenty-first year, and had piled up debts to the respectable total of fifty thousand francs. It was just about this time, as has been said, that he turned his attention to literature. He found “copy” for his most celebrated work in the pale, flower-like courtesan, Alphonsine Plessis, who shared with Lola the devotion of the erotic Boulevard. The two were women of very different stamp. The Irish woman confronted the world with head erect and flashing eyes; the Lady of the Camellias, with a blush and trembling lips. They were typical of two great classes of women: those who rule men, and those whom men rule. The loved of the God of Love died young. After Alphonsine’s early death, the fair Parisiennes flocked to her apartments, as to the shrine of some patron saint, and touched, as though they were precious relics, her jewellery and trinkets, herlingerie, and her slippers.
MÉRY
Another most delightful friend had Lola—he whom she refers to in her autobiography as “the celebrated poet, Méry.” To describe this charming and impossible personage as a poet, is to indicate only one department of his genius: as a dramatist he was not far inferior to his great contemporaries, as a novelist he revealed an amazing power of paradox, and a bewildering fertility of imagination. He wrote descriptions of countries he had never seen (though he had travelled far), which, by their accuracy and colour, deceived and delighted the very natives. He was not merely rich in rhymes, said Dumas, he was a millionaire. He could write, too, in more serious vein, and was a profound and ardent classicist.
In 1845 Méry was approaching his half-century. Thirty years before he had come to Paris from Marseilles in hot pursuit of a pamphleteer who had dared to attack him. He found time to cross swords with somebody else, and got the worst of the encounter. As a result he took a voyage to Italy for the benefit of his health. His adventures remind us alternatively of those of Brantôme and Benvenuto Cellini. At a later period he was associated with Barthélemy in anintrigue for the restoration of the Bonapartes; and went to pay his respects to Queen Hortense, while his colleague vainly endeavoured to talk with the Eaglet through the gilded bars of his cage.
Méry could, in short, do everything, and everything very well. He possessed the faculty of turning base metal into gold. Geese in his eyes became swans, and in every lump of literary coke he saw a diamond of the purest ray. It was, above all, in his dramatic criticism, remarks De Banville, that this faculty produced the most surprising results.
“One day, reading in Méry’s review the pretended recital of a comedy of which I was the author, I could not but admire its gaiety, grace, unexpected turns, and happy confusion, and I said to myself: ‘Ah, if only this comedy were really the one I wrote!’”
On another occasion, says the poet, at the theatre,
“he said to me: ‘What a superb drama!’—and he was perfectly right. The play, as he described it to me, was, in fact, superb, only unfortunately it had been entirely reconstructed by Méry on the absurd foundation imagined by Mr. * * *. Thedénouementhe invented—for though the third act was not finished, he spoke of the fifth as an old acquaintance—was of such tragic power and daring originality, that after hearing him expound it, I had no desire to witness Mr. * * *’s.”
Reviewers and dramatic critics of this kind are now, unhappily, rare.
These few anecdotes sufficiently justify De Banville’s claim that Méry was something altogether unheard ofand fabulously original. He should have been (and probably was) the happiest of men, and his peculiar powers must have lightened his critical labours as much as they benefited those he criticised. He was as incapable of envy as Dumas was of rancour. Certainly no more lovable and agreeable creature ever haunted the slopes of Parnassus.
I doubt if such men would be appreciated in our society. Ours is the reign of the glum Bœotian. We know not how to converse, and wits are as dead as kings’ jesters. There is no scholarship in our senate, and the standard of oratory there would not have satisfied an Early Victorian debating society. If we talk less, assuredly we do not think the more. Every social, political, and religious idea that occupies our dull brains had entered into the consciousness of the men of the ’forties. They thought quickly and talked brilliantly. Their young men were youths—full of fire, enthusiasm, love, and fun. They did not talk about the advantages of devotion to business in early life. They were not born tired. Wonderful, too, as it may seem, people in those days used to like to meet each other in social converse, and were not ashamed to admit it. It was not then fashionable to affect a disinclination for society—the handiest excuse for an inability to talk and to think. Lola Montez learned in Paris what was meant by thejoie de vivre. In ’45 wit was at the prow and pleasure at the helm.
DUJARIER
As anartiste, Lola was naturally anxious to conciliate the Press, which had not spoken too kindly of her first performance on the Paris stage. Gautier’s unflattering notice had appeared in one of the most influential newspapers—La Presse. This journal was under the direction of the famous De Girardin, the Harmsworth of his generation. Till 1st July 1836 the lowest annual subscription to any newspaper in Paris was eighty francs; on that day De Girardin issued the first number ofLa Presseat a subscription of forty francs a year. This startling reduction in the price of news excited, of course, no little animosity, but its successful results were immediately manifest. The daring journalist’s next innovation was the creation of thefeuilleton. The new paper prospered exceedingly, though it represented the views of the editor rather than those of any large section of the public. In 1840 De Girardin acquired a half of the property, the other being held by Monsieur Dujarier, who assumed the functions of literary editor.
In 1845 Dujarier was a young man of twenty-nine, a writer of no mean ability, and a smart journalist. He was well known to all the Olympians of the Boulevard, and entered with zest into the gay life of Paris. Lolabecame acquainted with him soon after her arrival in the capital, probably in an effort to win the paper over to her side. He spent, she tells us, almost every hour he could spare from his editorial duties with her, and in his society she rapidly ripened in a knowledge of politics. But before her political education had proceeded far, the woman’s beauty and the man’s wit had produced the effect that might have been looked for. “They read no more that day”—Lola and Dujarier loved each other.
“This,” continues our heroine, “was in autumn [the autumn of ’44], and the following spring the marriage was to take place.” I fancy the word “marriage” is introduced here out of respect for the susceptibilities of the American public. The Old Guard of the Boulevard, in Louis Philippe’s golden reign,se fiança mais ne se maria pas. Besides, Lola was still legally the wife of that remote and forgotten officer, Captain James. “It was arranged that Alexandre Dumas and the celebrated poet, Méry, should accompany them on their marriage tour through Spain.” Dumas, Méry, and Lola, to say nothing of Dujarier, travelling together through Andalusia—here would have been a gallant company indeed, with which one would have gladly made a voyage even to Tartarus and back! The narrative, too, of the journey would have permanently enriched literature. But the scheme has gone, these sixty years, to the cloudy nether-world of glorious dreams unrealized.
The success of De Girardin’s newspaper had intensely embittered his competitors, who made it the object of venomous attack. The founder dipped his pen in gall and acid, and his sword in the blood of his enemies. He fought four duels, and having killed Armand Carrel,sheathed his rapier. But he did not lay aside his pen, which was even more dreaded. Dujarier proved an apt pupil, and by his command of irony and sarcasm at last attracted to himself as much hatred and jealousy as his senior. The special rival of his paper was theGlobe, edited by Monsieur Granier de Cassagnac, a journalist of the type we now denominate yellow. He had at one time been on the staff ofLa Presse, to which he remained financially indebted. Dujarier came across the debit notes signed by him, and obtained a judgment against him. The exasperation of theGlobeknew no bounds. The editor may be conceived addressing to his satellites the reproaches used by Henry II.: “Of those that eat my bread, is there none that will rid me of this pestilent journalist?” The appeal was responded to by his wife’s brother, Monsieur Jean Baptiste Rosemond de Beauvallon, a Creole from Guadeloupe, then in his twenty-fifth year. He was dramatic critic to theGlobe, and in this capacity his acquaintance was sought by Lola. Dujarier naturally objected to this, and his interference was not forgiven by his journalist rival. The two men seemed doomed to cross each other’s path. There was a certain Madame Albert, with whom Dujarier had been on terms of intimacy for some years. In December 1844 he ceased to visit her, probably for no other reason than that he had transferred his affections to Lola. As it happened, however, De Beauvallon made the lady’s acquaintance at this moment, and she spitefully suggested that Dujarier had discontinued relations with her in order not to meet him. The Creole’s score against the literary editor ofLa Pressewas now a high one, and he embraced his brother-in-law’s quarrel with enthusiasm.
THE SUPPER AT THE FRÈRES PROVENÇAUX
At the beginning of March (1845), Lola, despite her failure at the Opera, obtained an engagement at the Porte-St.-Martin Theatre for the musical comedyLa Biche au Bois. While she was rehearsing, she and her lover received an invitation to supper at the Frères Provençaux, a fashionable restaurant in the Palais Royal. The party was to be composed of some of the liveliest men and women in Paris, and none of those invited were over thirty-five years of age. Lola was keen to accept, but Dujarier would not hear of her being seen in such a company. In spite of her protests he decided, however, to go himself. It was the evening of 11th March.
He found himself the only guest, for all the others paid their shares in the cost of the entertainment. The nominal hostess was Mademoiselle Liévenne: “a splendid person, with abundant black hair, black eyes like a Moorish woman or Arlésienne, dazzling skin, and opulent figure.” There were also at the table Mademoiselle Atila Beauchêne, Mademoiselle Alice Ozy, Mademoiselle Virginie Capon, and other charming ladies, all styling themselves actresses, and spending a thousand francs a week out of a salary of twenty-five. In attendanceon this bevy of beauty were some of the jolliest fellows in Paris. The oldest and most distinguished was Roger de Beauvoir, whose curly black hair, wonderful waistcoats, and pearl-grey pantaloons made him the delight of the fair sex, and the envy of his fellow-boulevardiers. De Beauvallon was also present, but he and Dujarier were not openly on bad terms, and nothing seemed likely to cloud the general gaiety.
The fun waxed fast and furious. Champagne corks popped in all directions, toasts were drunk to everybody and everything. Dujarier proposed “Monsieur de Beauvoir’s waistcoat,” followed by “Monsieur de Beauvoir’s raven locks.” The jovial Roger responded with the toast “Friend Dujarier’s bald head,” and evoked roars of laughter by drinking to the Memoirs of Count Montholon, with whichLa Pressehad promised to entertain its readers for the last five years. Dujarier laughed as loudly as the others; the champagne had risen to his head. He began to fondle the girls, and became a little too bold even for their taste. “Anaïs,” he murmured in an audible whisper to Mademoiselle Liévenne, “je coucherai avec toi en six mois.” The next moment he realised he had gone too far. Recollecting himself, he apologised, was forgiven, and the incident seemed to be forgotten by all.
The remains of the supper were removed, curtains drawn back, and one side of the room left free for dancing, while a card-table occupied the other. More people dropped in. De Beauvoir, finding the literary editor in such a good humour, thought the moment opportune to remind him of one of his romances whichLa Pressehad accepted but seemed in no hurry to publish. To worry an editor about such a matter atsuch a moment is to court a rebuff. Dujarier replied sharply that Dumas’s novel would be running for some time, adding that it was likely to prove more profitable to the paper than De Beauvoir’s serial would be. Roger, the best-humoured of men, was nettled at this reply, and said so. “Good! do you seek an affair with me?” retorted the editor. “No, I don’t look for affairs, but I sometimes find them,” answered the author.
It is clear that Dujarier, like his mistress, seldom had his temper under perfect control. He took a hand atlansquenet, and complained of the low limit imposed by the banker, Monsieur de St. Aignan. He and De Beauvallon offered to share the bank’s risks and winnings. This being agreed to, Dujarier threw down twenty-five louis, De Beauvallon five and a half. The bank won twice, and Dujarier was entitled to a hundred louis. But St. Aignan had made the mistake of understating the amount in the bank before the cards were dealt, and now, therefore, found that the winnings were not sufficient to satisfy him and his partners. He was about to make good the deficit at his own expense, when De Beauvallon generously suggested to Dujarier that they should share the loss in proportion to their stakes. The literary editor preferred to stand upon his rights, and seems to have been backed up by the bystanders. De Beauvallon said nothing more at the time, but as the candles were flickering low and the party was preparing to break up, he reminded his rival that he owed him (on some other score) eighty-four louis. Dujarier replied tartly, but handed him the seventy-five louis he had won, borrowed the odd nine louis from Collot, the restaurant-keeper, and thus discharged the debt. He had lost on the whole evening two thousand five hundredfrancs. In the grey March dawn his head became clearer. He vaguely realised he had given deep offence to two, at least, of his fellow revellers. He returned, anxious and haggard to his lodgings in the Rue Laffitte, where Lola was eagerly awaiting him. She guessed at once that something was amiss, and endeavoured in vain to extract from him the cause of his evident agitation. Returning evasive answers, the journalist hurried off to the office ofLa Presse.
THE CHALLENGE
Whether or not Dujarier had used offensive expressions to De Beauvallon on this particular occasion, the opportunity for bringing to a head the long-standing feud between the two newspapers was too good to be missed.
That afternoon the literary editor was waited upon at his office by two gentlemen—the Vicomte d’Ecquevillez, a French officer in the Spanish service, and the Comte de Flers. They informed him that they came upon behalf of Monsieur de Beauvallon, who considered himself insulted by the tone of his remarks the previous evening, and required an apology or satisfaction. Dujarier affected contempt for his rival, making a point of mispronouncing his name. He had no apology to offer, and referred his visitors to Monsieur Arthur Berrand, and Monsieur de Boigne. As the seconds withdrew D’Ecquevillez mentioned that Monsieur de Beauvoir also considered himself entitled to satisfaction.
The rest of that day Lola could not but remark the intense pre-occupation of her lover—that concentration of mind that all men experience at the near menace of death. On the battle-field it may last for a minute or an hour; in other circumstances it may last for daystogether. Dujarier felt himself already a dead man. He had hardly handled a pistol in his life. He envied his mistress, who had often given him an exhibition of her powers as a shot. De Beauvallon, on the other hand, was known to be skilled in all the arts of attack and defence. Nor could Dujarier doubt that he wished to see him dead. In the evening Bertrand and De Boigne arrived. Lola was with difficulty persuaded to leave them to attend her rehearsal. Dujarier, pale and nervous, discussed the matter with his friends. “C’est une querelle de boutique!” he exclaimed bitterly, but expressed his determination to proceed with the affair if it cost him his life. Bertrand, fully alive to the gravity of the situation, sought De Beauvallon’s seconds, and argued that nothing said by his principal could be considered ground for an encounter. His efforts at a reconciliation were useless. De Boigne tried to give precedence to De Beauvoir, who was accounted an indifferent shot; but that easily placable author had just lost his mother, and displayed no anxiety to defraud De Beauvallon of his vengeance. Seeing the encounter was inevitable, Bertrand and De Boigne exacted from the other side this written statement:—
“We, the undersigned, declare that in consequence of a disagreement, Monsieur Dujarier has been challenged by Monsieur de Beauvallon in terms which render it impossible for him to decline the encounter. We have done everything possible to conciliate these gentlemen, and it is only upon Monsieur de Beauvallon insisting that we have consented to assist them.”
This statement was signed by all four seconds. It left Dujarier, as the injured party, the choice of arms.He chose the pistol, thinking, it is to be presumed, that as his adversary was equally experienced in the use of the rapier and firearms, chance might possibly favour him with the latter.
Lola, while these negotiations were proceeding, was a prey to the most painful apprehensions. Pressed by her, Dujarier admitted that he was about to engage in an affair of honour, but gave her to understand that his opponent would be Roger de Beauvoir. Her alarm at once subsided. No one feared Roger. “You know I am a woman of courage,” she said; “if the duel is just, I will not prevent it.”
“Oh, what after all is a duel!” said her lover lightly, but she noticed that his smile was forced.
She drove to the Porte-St.-Martin; Dujarier, at three in the afternoon, paid a visit to Alexandre Dumas. He picked up a sword that stood in a corner of the room, and made a few passes. “You don’t know how to wield the sword, I can see,” observed the novelist. “Can you use any other weapon?”
“Well, Imustuse the pistol,” replied the journalist significantly.
“You mean you are going to fight?”
“Yes, to-morrow, with De Beauvallon.”
Dumas looked grave. “Your adversary is a very good swordsman,” he said. “You had better choose swords. When De Beauvallon sees how you handle the weapon, the duel will be at an end.”
He told Dujarier that Alexandre, junior, practised at the same fencing-class as De Beauvallon, and he strongly urged him to reconsider the choice of weapons. But the journalist was obstinate. He had no confidence in his opponent’s clemency, and he feared his skill withthe rapier. With the pistol there was always a chance; with cold steel he was bound to be killed. In vain Dumas argued that the sword could spare, while the pistol could slay, even if the trigger were pulled by the least experienced hand. Dujarier dined with father and son. The friends parted at nine in the evening. The journalist, in company with Bertrand, went to a shooting gallery, where he tried his hand at the pistol. He hit a figure as large as a man only twice in twenty shots! Dumas strolled into the Variétés. He was ill at ease. Finally he took a cab and drove to the Rue Laffitte. He found Dujarier seated at his bureau, writing his will, as it afterwards proved.
Dumas returned to the question of weapons. Dujarier showed a disposition to avoid the whole subject. “You are only losing your time,” he said, “and that is valuable. I don’t want you to arrange this affair, mind. It is my first duel. It is astonishing that I have not had one before. It’s a sort of baptism that I must undergo.”
His friend questioned him as to the cause of the proposed encounter. “Lord knows!” was the reply, “I can recollect no particular reason. I don’t know what I am fighting about. It’s a duel between theGlobeandLa Presse,” he added, “not between Monsieur Dujarier and Monsieur de Beauvallon.”
Seeing him determined both to fight and to choose fire-arms, Dumas recommended him at least not to use the hair-trigger pistol. To the novelist’s astonishment, Dujarier admitted he did not know the difference between one kind of pistol and another. Alexandre said he would show him, and drove off to his house for the purpose. As he descended the stairs, he passed Lola,who noticed his agitation. Dujarier was again writing when she entered his room. He was very pale. Dissimulating his preoccupation, he invited his mistress to read a flattering notice on her performance from the pen of Monsieur de Boigne. But Lola was not to be thus diverted from her purpose. She implored her lover to tell her more about the proposed encounter, to reveal the cause of his evident anxiety. He merely replied that he was extremely busy, that there was nothing to worry about. He insisted on her returning to her own apartments. “I’ll come and see you to-morrow,” he promised, “and, Lola!—if—if I should leave Paris for any reason, I don’t want you to lose sight of my friends. Promise that. They are good sorts.”
He almost forced Lola out of the house, only to admit Dumas a few minutes later. The novelist had brought a brand-new pair of pistols. “Use these,” he said; “I’ll give you a written statement that they have not been used before. That ought to satisfy the seconds.” Dujarier shook his head. “Look here,” said Dumas solemnly, “your luck has endured a long time. Take care that it does not fail you now.”
His friend’s well-meant pertinacity irritated the journalist. He replied brusquely: “What would you? Do you want me to pass for a coward? If I don’t accept this challenge, I shall have others. De Beauvallon is determined to fasten a quarrel on me. One of his seconds told me so. He said my face displeased him. However, this affair over, I shall be left in peace.”
It was one o’clock in the morning. Dumas, having exhausted all the resources of argument and persuasion, rose to depart. “At least,” he counselled his friend, “don’t fight till two in the afternoon. It is no usegetting up early for so unpleasant an affair. Besides, I know you. You are always at your worst—nervous and fidgety—between ten and eleven.”
“You know that,” said Dujarier eagerly, “you won’t think it fear? And, Dumas,” ... he went to his desk, and wrote a cheque on Laffitte’s for a thousand crowns. “I owe you this. Now this is drawn on my private account, and as the duel takes place at eleven, go there before eleven, for you don’t know what may happen. Go therebefore eleven, for after that my credit may be dead. I beg of you, go before eleven.”
The two friends wrung each other’s hand, and Dumas, heavy at heart, went downstairs. Dujarier was left to his thoughts. The reflections of a man who is practically sure that he will be dead next day are quite peculiar. The sensation is not fear in the ordinary acceptation of the term. It is an effort to realise what no man ever can properly realise—that the world around you, which in one (and a very true) sense has no existence except as it is perceived by you, will, notwithstanding, be existing to-morrow evening, while you will not exist. Intellectually you know this, but you cannot realise it.
At such moments men turn with relief to the pen. With ink and paper you can project yourself beyond your own grave. Dujarier signed his will, which began with these words:—
“On the eve of fighting for the most absurd reasons, on the most frivolous of pretexts, and without its being possible for my friends, Arthur Bertrand and Charles de Boigne, to avoid an encounter, which was provoked in terms that forced me on my honour to accept, I set forth hereafter my last wishes....”
Then he wrote to his mother.