The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert

Horace Wyndham

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• Publié par: feas
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 25
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magnificent Montez, by Horace Wyndham This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Magnificent Montez From Courtesan to Convert Author: Horace Wyndham Release Date: May 12, 2007 [EBook #21421] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGNIFICENT MONTEZ *** Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld (From a lithograph by Prosper Guillaume Dartiguenave) THE MAGNIFICENT MONTEZ From Courtesan to Convert By HORACE WYNDHAM "When you met Lola Montez, her reputation made you automatically think of bedrooms." —ALDOUS H UXLEY . HILLMAN-CURL, INC. Publishers NEW YORK FOREWORD Sweep a drag-net across the pages of contemporary drama, and it is unquestionable that in her heyday no name on the list stood out, in respect of adventure and romance, with greater prominence than did that of Lola Montez. Everything she did (or was credited with doing) filled columns upon columns in the press of Europe and America; and, from first to last, she was as much "news" as any Hollywood heroine of our own time. Yet, although she made history in two hemispheres, it has proved extremely difficult to discover and unravel the real facts of her glamorous career. This is because round few (if any) women has been built up such a honeycomb of fable and fantasy and imagination as has been built up round this one. [5] Even where the basic points are concerned there is disagreement. Thus, according to various chroniclers, the Sultan of Turkey, an "Indian Rajah" (unspecified), Lord Byron, the King of the Cannibal Islands, and a "wealthy merchant," each figure as her father, with a "beautiful Creole," a "Scotch washerwoman," and a "Dublin actress" for her mother; and Calcutta, Geneva, Limerick, Montrose, and Seville—and a dozen other cities scattered about the world—for her birthplace. This sort of thing is—to say the least of it—confusing. But Lola Montez was something of an anachronism, and had as lofty a disregard for convention as had the ladies thronging the Court of Merlin. Nor, it must be admitted, was she herself any pronounced stickler for exactitude. Thus, she lopped half a dozen years off her age, allotted her father (whom she dubbed a "Spanish officer of distinction") a couple of brevet steps in rank, and [6] insisted on an ancestry to which she was never entitled. Still, if Lola Montez deceived the public about herself, others have deceived the public about Lola Montez. Thus, in one of his books, George Augustus Sala solemnly announced that she was a sister of Adah Isaacs Menken; and a more modern writer, unable to distinguish between Ludwig I and his grandson Ludwig II, tells us that she was "intimate with the mad King of Bavaria." To anybody (and there still are such people) who accepts the printed word as gospel, slips of this sort destroy faith. As a fount of information on the subject, the Autobiography (alleged) of Lola Montez, first published in 1859, is worthless. The bulk of it was written for her by a clerical "ghost" in America, the Rev. Chauncey Burr, and merely serves up a tissue of picturesque and easily disproved falsehoods. A number of these, by the way, together with some additional embroideries, are set out at greater length in other volumes by Ferdinand Bac (who confounds Ludwig I with Maximilian II) and the equally unreliable Eugène de Mirecourt and Auguste Papon. German writers, on the other hand, have, if apt to be long-winded, at least avoided the more obvious pitfalls. Among the books and pamphlets (many of them anonymous) of Teutonic origin, the following will repay research: Die Gräfin Landsfeld (Gustav Bernhard); Lola Montez, Gräfin von Landsfeld (Johann Deschler); Lola Montez und andere Novellen (Rudolf Ziegler); Lola Montez und die Jesuiten (Dr. Paul Erdmann); Die spanische Tänzerin und die deutsche Freiheit (J. Beneden); Die Deutsche Revolution, 1848-1849 (Hans Blum); Ein vormarzliches Tanzidyll (Eduard Fuchs); Abenteur der beruhmten Tänzerin; Anfang und Ende der Lola Montez in Bayern ; Die Munchener Vergange; Unter den vier ersten Königen Bayerns (Luise von Kobell); and, in particular, the monumental Histeriche of Heinrich von Treitschke. But one has [7] to milk a hundred cows to get even a pint of Lola Montez cream. With a view to gathering at first hand reliable and hitherto unrecorded details, visits have recently been made by myself to Berlin, Brussels, Dresden, Leningrad, Munich, Paris, and Warsaw, etc., in each of which capitals some portion of colourful drama of Lola Montez was unfolded. In a number of directions, however, the result of such investigations proved disappointing. "Lola Montez—h'm—what sort of man was he?" was the response of a prominent actor, recommended to me as a "leading authority on anything to do with the stage"; and the secretary of a theatrical club, anxious to be of help, wrote: "Sorry, but none of our members have any personal reminiscences of the lady." As she had then been in her grave for more than seventy years, it did not occur to me that even the senior jeune premier among them would have retained any very vivid recollections of her. Still, many of them were quite old enough to have heard something of her from their predecessors. But valuable assistance in eliciting the real facts connected with the career of this remarkable woman, and disentangling them from the network of lies and fables in which they have long been enmeshed, has come from other sources. Among those to whom a special debt must be acknowledged are Edmund d'Auvergne (author of a carefully documented study), Lola Montez (an Adventuress of the 'Forties); Gertrude Aretz (author of The Elegant Woman ); Bernard Falk (author of The Naked Lady ); Arthur Hornblow (author of A History of the Theatre in America); Harry Price (Hon. Sec. University of London Council for Psychical Investigation); Philip Richardson (editor of The Dancing Times); and Constance Rourke (author of Troupers of the Gold Coast ); and further information has been forthcoming from Mrs. Charles Baker (Ruislip), and John Wade (Acton). Much help in supplying me with important letters and documents and hitherto unpublished particulars relating to the trail blazed by Lola Montez in America has been furnished by the following: Miss Mabel R. Gillis (State Librarian, [8] Californian State Library, Sacramento); Mrs. Lillian Hall (Curator, Harvard Theatre Collection); Miss Ida M. Mellen (New York); Mrs. Helen Putnam van Sicklen (Library of the Society of Californian Pioneers); Mrs. Annette Tyree (New York); Mr. John Stapleton Cowley-Brown (New York); Mr. Lewis Chase (Hendersonville); Professor Kenneth L. Daughrity (Delta State Teachers' College, Cleveland); Mr. Frank Fenton (Stanford University, California); Mr. Harold E. Gillingham (Librarian, Historical Society of Pennsylvania); Mr. W. Sprague Holden (Associate-Editor, Argonaut Publishing Company, San Francisco); and Mr. Milton Lord (Director, Public Library, Boston). In addition to these experts, I am also indebted to Monsieur Pierre Tugal (Conservateur, Archives de la Danse, Paris); and to the directors and staffs of the Bibliothèque d'Arsenal, Paris, and of the Theatrical Museum, Munich, who have generously placed their records at my disposal. Unlike his American and Continental colleagues, a public librarian in England said (on a postcard) that he was "too busy to answer questions." H. W. CONTENTS PAGE [9] FOREWORD CHAPTER 5 13 24 I. PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE II. "MARRIED IN H ASTE" II. "MARRIED IN H ASTE" III. THE C ONSISTORY C OURT IV. FLARE OF THE FOOTLIGHTS V. A PASSIONATE PILGRIMAGE VI. AN "AFFAIR OF H ONOUR" VII. "H OOKING A PRINCE " VIII. LUDWIG THE LOVER IX. "MAÎTRESSE DU R OI" X. BURSTING OF THE STORM XI. A FALLEN STAR XII. A "LEFT-HANDED" MARRIAGE XIII. ODYSSEY XIV. THE "GOLDEN WEST" XV. "D OWN U NDER" XVI. FAREWELL TO THE FOOTLIGHTS XVII. THE C URTAIN FALLS APPENDIX I. INDEX "ARTS OF BEAUTY " APPENDIX II. "LOLA MONTEZ' LECTURES " 24 40 49 61 75 91 104 118 136 149 164 181 196 211 229 251 267 271 281 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LOLA MONTEZ, C OUNTESS OF LANDSFELD "JOHN C OMPANY" TROOPS ON THE MARCH IN INDIA H ER MAJESTY'S THEATRE, H AYMARKET, WHERE LOLA MONTEZ MADE HER D ÉBUT BENJAMIN LUMLEY, LESSEE OF H ER MAJESTY'S THEATRE LOLA MONTEZ, "SPANISH D ANCER." D ÉBUT AT H ER MAJESTY'S THEATRE VISCOUNT R ANELAGH, WHO ORGANISED A C ABAL AGAINST LOLA MONTEZ ABBÉ LISZT, MUSICIAN AND LOVER FANNY ELSSLER, PREDECESSOR OF LOLA MONTEZ IN PARIS PORTE ST. MARTIN THEATRE, PARIS, WHERE LOLA WAS A " FLOP" SUPPER-PARTY AT LES FRÈRES PROVENÇAUX. FIRST ACT IN A TRAGEDY R ESIDENZ PALACE, MUNICH, IN 1848. R ESIDENCE Frontispiece PAGE [11] 17 27 36 47 59 70 83 95 106 OF LUDWIG I. 120 132 144 156 167 177 187 199 209 219 231 241 253 262 "C OMMAND" PORTRAIT. IN THE "GALLERY OF BEAUTIES," MUNICH KING OF BAVARIA. "LUDWIG THE LOVER" LOLA MONTEZ IN C ARICATURE. "LOLA ON THE ALLEMANNEN H OUND" BERRYMEAD PRIORY, ACTON, WHERE LOLA MONTEZ LIVED WITH C ORNET H EALD LOLA MONTEZ IN LONDON. AGED THIRTY A "BELLE OF THE BOULEVARDS." LOLA MONTEZ IN PARIS THE "SPIDER D ANCE." C AUSE OF MUCH C RITICISM LOLA MONTEZ IN "LOLA IN BAVARIA." A "PLAY WITH A P URPOSE" LOLA AS A LECTURER. FROM STAGE TO PLATFORM LOLA MONTEZ IN MIDDLE LIFE. A C HARACTERISTIC POSE "LECTURES AND LIFE." FROM STAGE TO PLATFORM C OUNTESS OF LANDSFELD. A FAVOURITE PORTRAIT GRAVE OF LOLA MONTEZ, IN GREEN-WOOD C EMETERY, N EW YORK THE MAGNIFICENT MONTEZ CHAPTER I PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE I n a tearful column, headed "Necrology of the Year," a mid-Victorian obituarist wrote thus of a woman figuring therein: This was one who, notwithstanding her