Lola Montez : $b An adventuress of the 'fortiesD'Auvergne, Edmund B. (Edmund Basil)
History
Lola Montez : $b An adventuress of the 'forties
D'Auvergne, Edmund B. (Edmund Basil)
Montez, Lola, 1818-1861
The company of any number of agreeable men about town and the amenities of
life in a Mayfair lodging-house were not, however, likely to content a
woman who had lately ruled a kingdom. Experience, it is true, had taught
Lola to set limits to her ambition. She had succeeded in her design of
hooking a prince, but the catch had been torn off the hook with
considerable violence to the angler. It was of no use again to cast her
line into royal waters. The fish were now too wary. After the ordeal
through which she had passed, Lola sighed for some enduring ties and an
established position. She yearned as the most fiery and erratic do at one
time or another, for a home. Some think that they who have loved most,
love best; but I imagine Lola was a trifle weary of love just then, and
longed for some felicity more stable and material. She inclined, in fact,
towards the sweet yoke of domesticity, which was quite a fashionable
institution in England at that time. Among her visitors was a Mr. George
Trafford Heald, son of a rich Chancery barrister, and a cornet in the
Second Life Guards. This gallant officer is described as a tall young man,
of juvenile figure and aspect, with straight hair and small light brown
downy mustachios and whiskers; his turned-up nose gave him an air of great
simplicity. As, however, he had, on his coming of age in January 1849,
inherited a fortune of between six and seven thousand pounds per annum, he
was considered, especially by unattached ladies, in and out of society, a
very interesting person. He was very much in love with the Countess of
Landsfeld who, no doubt, easily persuaded herself that she entertained a
strong affection for so eligible a suitor. In this respect Lola was, it is
safe to say, no more mercenary than half the good and well-brought-up
young ladies who were looking out for a good match that season. Heald
seems to have been what women call a nice boy; in many ways he probably
contrasted favourably with Lola's bolder, more experienced wooers. So when
(with many blushes, and in shy stammering words, I doubt not) he offered
the adventuress his hand and heart and fortune, she was able without any
natural repugnance to consent to be his wife.
That she ever doubted that she was free to wed again is not to be
supposed. In all likelihood, she had been made acquainted with her divorce
from Captain James only through the medium of the newspapers, and these
would lead any one to believe that the divorce had been made absolute. It
was, therefore, without any apprehension that she married Cornet Heald at
St. George's, Hanover Square, on 19th July 1849. As she left the church on
the arm of her youthful husband, she must have thought half-regretfully of
the career of adventure that was ended, and yet looked forward with
complacency to the life of respectability and affluence that seemed to
stretch before her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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