Famous Affinities of History: The Romance of Devotion. Volume 3Orr, Lyndon
History
Famous Affinities of History: The Romance of Devotion. Volume 3
Orr, Lyndon
Biography; Love; Women -- Biography
So Ranelagh and a party of his friends filled the omnibus boxes, those
tribunes at the side of the stage whence success or failure was
pronounced. Things had been done with Lumley's consummate art; the
packed house was murmurous with excitement. She was a raving beauty,
said report--and then, those intoxicating Spanish dances! Taglioni,
Cerito, Fanny Elssler, all were to be eclipsed.
Ranelagh's glasses were steadily leveled on the stage from the moment
her entrance was imminent. She came on. There was a murmur of
admiration--but Ranelagh made no sign. And then she began to dance. A
sense of disappointment, perhaps? But she was very lovely, very
graceful, "like a flower swept by the wind, she floated round the
stage"--not a dancer, but, by George, a beauty! And still Ranelagh made
no sign.
Yet, no. What low, sibilant sound is that? And then what confused,
angry words from the tribunal? He turns to his friends, his eyes ablaze
with anger, opera-glass in hand. And now again the terrible "Hiss-s-s!"
taken up by the other box, and the words repeated loudly and more
angrily even than before--the historic words which sealed Lola's doom
at Her Majesty's Theater: "WHY, IT'S BETTY JAMES!"
She was, indeed, Betty James, and London would not accept her as Lola
Montez. She left England and appeared upon the Continent as a beautiful
virago, making a sensation--as the French would say, a succes de
scandale--by boxing the ears of people who offended her, and even on
one occasion horsewhipping a policeman who was in attendance on the
King of Prussia. In Paris she tried once more to be a dancer, but Paris
would not have her. She betook herself to Dresden and Warsaw, where she
sought to attract attention by her eccentricities, making mouths at the
spectators, flinging her garters in their faces, and one time removing
her skirts and still more necessary garments, whereupon her manager
broke off his engagement with her.
An English writer who heard a great deal of her and who saw her often
about this time writes that there was nothing wonderful about her
except "her beauty and her impudence." She had no talent nor any of the
graces which make women attractive; yet many men of talent raved about
her. The clever young journalist, Dujarrier, who assisted Emile
Girardin, was her lover in Paris. He was killed in a duel and left Lola
twenty thousand francs and some securities, so that she no longer had
to sing in the streets as she did in Warsaw.
She now betook herself to Munich, the capital of Bavaria. That country
was then governed by Ludwig I., a king as eccentric as Lola herself. He
was a curious compound of kindliness, ideality, and peculiar ways. For
instance, he would never use a carriage even on state occasions. He
prowled around the streets, knocking off the hats of those whom he
chanced to meet. Like his unfortunate descendant, Ludwig II., he wrote
poetry, and he had a picture-gallery devoted to portraits of the
beautiful women whom he had met.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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