The Magnificent Montez: From Courtesan to ConvertWyndham, Horace
History
The Magnificent Montez: From Courtesan to Convert
Wyndham, Horace
Montez, Lola, 1818-1861
A much more devastating criticism was published in _Le Journal des
Debats_ by Jules Janin. He went out of his way, indeed, to be
positively offensive. Nor did Theophile Gautier, who in his famous
waistcoat of crimson velvet was present on this eventful evening,
think very much of the would-be ballerina's efforts to win Paris.
Beyond, he wrote, a pair of magnificent dark eyes,
Mademoiselle Lola Montez has nothing suggestively Andalusian
in her appearance. She talks poor Spanish, scarcely any
French, and only tolerable English. The question is, to what
country does she really belong? We can affirm that she has
small feet and shapely legs. The extent, however, to which
these gifts serve her is quite another story.
It must be admitted that the public's curiosity aroused by
her altercations with the police of the North and her
whip-cracking exploits among the Prussian gendarmes has not
been satisfied. We imagine that Mademoiselle Lola would do
better on horseback than on the stage.
An odd account, headed: "Singular Debut of Lola Montez in Paris," was
sent to New York by an American journalist:
"When, a few days ago, it was announced that two foreign
dancers, Mlle Cerito and Mlle Lola Montez, had just entered
the walls of Paris, the triumphs achieved by the Italian
ballerina could not eclipse the horse-whipping exploits of
Mlle Lola. 'Let us have Lola Montez!' exclaimed the stalls
and pit. 'We want to see if her foot is as light as her
hand!' Never did they witness a more astounding _entree_.
After her first leap, she stopped short on the tips of her
toes, and, by a movement of prodigious rapidity, detached
one of her garters from a lissome limb adjacent to her
quivering thigh (innocent of _lingerie_) and flung it to the
occupants of the front row of the orchestra....
Notwithstanding the effect produced by this piquant
eccentricity, Mile Lola has not met with the reception she
anticipated; and it has been deemed proper by the management
to dispense with her reappearance."
But to give Lola her _conge_ by word of mouth was a task which M.
Pillet did not care to undertake. "So much was the haughty Amazon's
riding-whip dreaded that a letter of dismissal was prudently
delivered. As a result, bloodshed was avoided; and Mlle Lola has
solaced herself with the reflection that she has been the victim of
the Machiavellian cabal of Russia, still angry at her routing of
Muscovite gendarmes in Warsaw."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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