Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume (9 page)

There they stood, the other writer-composer couple of the age! Frédéric Chopin was astonishingly tiny. George was taller, and she wasn’t a tall woman—he might have been five feet and two inches, perhaps? Light-boned, always feeling chilly, and always with that tell-tale cough. He was in fact almost an invalid; George obsessed about his health. Although he wrote music that was beautiful and complicated, and—like Franz—worked many long hours every day, he was not able to play in public, the strain would have been too much.

Like an invalid, he complained often and without being aware of doing so. And it was true what George had said, that Solange played with Chopin’s affections. That night at dinner, the girl flirted appallingly, as he coughed and tried to eat his meal. Maurice had his head down, attempting not to notice. It was not a happy household, I was sad to see, and was glad that we’d be traveling to Paris the following day.

George took me on a tour of her gardens and her estate the next morning, where she grilled me for a final time. I was astonished when she gave me a large gift of cash to get started—enough for a month, if I was careful—with a warning that I’d need to parlay Franz’s letters of introduction into work as quickly as possible. This I was eager to do.

“I’ve written you one myself,” she said, handing me an envelope with the name ‘Eugène Sue’ written upon it. “He’s a novelist and man-about-town, very well-dressed and always with an attractive woman on his arm. He had a huge success last year, so he’s in a generous mood. Let him help; he’s well placed to do so.”

I took this, too, with gratitude.

“Once we are in the great city,” she continued, “you’ll be on your own. As I was. To sink or swim, and I’m sure you can swim.” She bent down to smell the daffodils that were bobbing in yellow, scented waves. From that position, I heard, “By the way, are you any good?”

“Am I—?”

“Any good as a dancer?” And she straightened, to look me squarely in the eye.

“Well, I’m trying my best.”

“That’s not what I asked. You need to settle, soon, upon something you’re good at—
really
good at, instinctively. To last your whole life through, for life is long.”

I flounced about, quite out of sorts with these probing questions. “I have done this once or twice before, you know, George. I know how to use Franz’s letters, how to open the oyster—that part of it is not difficult.”

She paced along beside me, hands behind her back, as we made our way through the flowering lanes of her perennial beds. “Let’s come clean, Lola my love. I know and you know that you’re not a bit Spanish. No, don’t roll your eyes back in their sockets; it’s a bad habit which doesn’t suit you. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s all about creating—no, orchestrating—a strong story, and living it to the hilt.” Her damnable mouth was smiling kindly at me.

“I
know
that, George! That’s the one thing I know
extremely
well!”

By then I was quite exhausted from trying to please her large intelligence, her expectations, and I longed to be free. Free to make my own mistakes and take my own chances, thank you very much.

“And now I’m annoying you.” She shrugged. “
C’est la vie
. A final word, then. Be smart, not just beautiful. Use your mind as well as your undeniable physical gifts. Don’t repeat the mistakes of Sophie-Victoire, do you understand?”

It was as if she knew about the exploits of my own lamentable mother, a woman I was determined not to emulate. But it’s all very well, telling a young woman don’t do this, don’t do that. Better to give advice that is possible, surely, if that young woman’s purse remains sadly ‘skint.’

“I expect great things, Lola Montez.”

Crikey. Get me out of here.

Only a few weeks later, by mid-March, I was beginning to feel as if I might survive and thrive in Paris. I was still terribly sad to have been so abruptly parted from Franz. Undeniably, I missed his hands and other parts of him, in bed. But he had warned me—and he had helped me, too, as much as he could, and for that I was endlessly grateful. I was taking charge of my rekindled confidence. If Countess Marie d’Agoult tried to disparage me in public, I told myself, I would put up a good fight, and I guessed that I was a more under-handed scrapper than she had ever learned to be.

That spring in Paris, everything was bubbling and stewing with unrest and a kind of excited agitation. Politics were in the air, everywhere—and whispers of possible civil war, should things continue as they were headed. The government of Louis Philippe, the Citizen King, was becoming increasingly repressive as artists and others grew loud in their questioning of authority. Members of the rising middle class were spinning their newly earned wealth in bold, new directions, while the entitled hid behind their gated walls, and the poor still waited—restlessly, impatiently—for the long-promised
liberté, equalité, et fraternité
. Ferment, indeed.

Plenty of room for me to join the fray!

After debating with myself (whose to use first?), I sent George’s letter to Eugène Sue’s address, with a note letting him know where I could be found. I’d taken residence in a tiny hotel near Montmartre, had purchased a new velvet hat to go with my amazon riding jacket, and there I awaited developments.

Monsieur Sue was indeed the poised and debonair dandy George had described. We met at a coffee house.

“Mademoiselle Montez? Please, sit here with me.”

I could tell, from his small grin, that he liked what he saw. He was quite handsome, I was happy to note, and slim; he’d been a successful military surgeon serving the navy on the Spanish campaign in 1830, prior to inheriting his family’s wealth (so George had told me). He held himself as a doctor should—very upright, very observant.

“Coffee? Or chocolate?”

“Black coffee,
por favor
,” I told him. “I am not partial to sweets.”

“Good, I will remember that.”

What followed was a whirlwind week of theatre, ballet, musical plays, suppers and other social events, with me on his arm. Interestingly, there was no quick invitation to his bedroom. Eugène Sue was unusual, in that way, and I wondered when and if that would change. Truthfully, I was glad—it gave me breathing space; I wasn’t ready to embark once more into the sexual arena. At the time we met, he’d just begun planning the second of what were being dubbed his anti-Catholic novels. The first,
Les Mystères de Paris,
had been serialized in one of the papers during all of the previous year.

“It was so popular that even those who can’t read would stand outside the shops begging others to read aloud the latest installment so that they could hear it,” he told me. “It pleased the common people, vilified religion and the élite.
Alors
, it made me a lot of money, and one can’t say no to that.”

Recently published in book form, he gave me a copy.

“I’ve never read so much fiction before—and so quickly!” I enthused.

“One after the other, like downing ripe cherries: it’s sweet and addictive.”

“Yes, it is.
Merci,
Monsieur Sue.”

I sat down with the novel that very evening. An adventure tale, it was terrifying, suspenseful, and gory, featuring a mysterious Duke disguised as a Parisian worker, a black doctor who’d formerly been a slave, a prostitute, and a murdering butcher! In the dark of the night (unable to put it down), candle burning at my side while tucked up in bed,
Les Mystères
made me relive once again (dear God!) the mournful images branded behind my eyes: a pitch-dark night on the flat, frozen Spanish plains, in the clutches of the vile Jesuit priest. Pistol to my head, he’d revealed the kind of rapture that signals true depravity. Through thin, spittle-covered lips, he’d hissed of his spying upon Diego and me in the stable, where we’d lain, naked, loving each other—ecstatically pleasuring each other, for hours. The Jesuit had watched. Oh God, how my soul still shuddered…

Clawing my way out, I closed Eugène Sue’s book.

I left the bed and moved to the window, looking down into the street at the lamps winking and glimmering through the soft new leafing of the trees. I cannot stay in this dark place, I whispered to my trembling self, and made another vow: I am not ruled by pessimism—I refuse! I’ve been loved by an amazing man, I told myself: death doesn’t change that. By two amazing men, in fact—neither of whom could be mine for long. I will find love again, and it will be a love that lasts. And then, above and beyond my hope for love: I can shoot, I rarely miss, and I vow to get better; I can ride like a Cossack, and dance until dawn. I’ve come through terror, I am strong. My new life is just beginning: nothing will hold me back. No more regrets, Lola, and—definitely—no more fear.

Outside the window, Paris lay at rest, impassive, majestic, and unmoved.

Never mind. It was all true—or so I wanted to believe. I would believe.

*

I began putting things in place. With a word from Eugène, I talked my way into dancing lessons with Hippolyte Barrez, choreographer at the Paris Opéra, to work on my technique (for I knew that I needed it). On my own merits, I also signed up—the first woman to be allowed to do so—for target practice at Lepage’s famous shooting gallery. They remembered me there from my first time in Paris, when Juan de Grimaldi had been teaching me.

On the afternoon I inquired about membership, master instructor Grisier was in attendance, watching my aim. Though I hadn’t before used the particular pistol they gave me, I was delighted to handle its welcome weight, and I hit a bull’s-eye, almost first off.

“Good shot, young woman,” he said, stroking his mustache. Turning to the manager, he remarked, “Extremely good. Let her come. Should be interesting, make them jump.”

¡Hola!

Next I took myself to the newspaper office of Jules Janin at the
Journal des Débats
, with Franz’s letter. A good friend of Liszt’s, Janin was powerful and greatly feared as a critic.

I found him growling behind a large desk covered in piles of paper. “What do you want?” he demanded with a scowl.

“I have a letter of introduction addressed to you, señor. From Franz Liszt?”

When I passed over the letter, he grunted and waved me to sit. He was a very stout forty or so, hair greying, and deeply solemn. Dear God, I thought, keep your courage, girl, and deploy the luscious Spanish sibilance you’ve honed to perfection.

“Well,” he said, looking up with impatient eyes, “I don’t understand what you think I can do for you.”

I hitched myself to the edge of the chair, kept my voice soft and silky, my French words polite. “Monsieur Janin, I simply wonder whether you could put in a good word, in your paper, whenever you see fit. I am a Spanish dancer with some fame, widowed during the Carlist War. I seek to dance in France, in order to make my living away from my sorrows. I can never return to Spain, after all that has happened.” I laid it on, but not too thick.

He listened carefully, rubbing his bristly chin, and then he nodded. “I understand now. But—”

I flattered him a bit. “Your articles are so perceptive, so intelligent.” (And influential as all get out.) I smiled and placed my hand on top of his, as it lay upon his desk (a bit daring, but what the hell). He turned his hand over and grasped mine lightly. What now? I tried a joke, with a Spanish flavour—that might be amusing, I thought. I couldn’t really remember one, but decided to make it up as I went along.

“Do you know what the donkey said to the Jesuit?”

Who knows why, but with those words, my mind was suddenly alight with inspiration. There was something wonderful about ridiculing the detestable tribe of the Society of Jesus! I don’t know why I’d never thought of it before.

Janin looked bemused while I improvised, as if he’d never heard a woman tell a joke before, but at the final punchline—a little bit racy, but not going too far—he spluttered and guffawed, then patted my hand. “I’ve read about you in the papers, Mademoiselle Montez. There is no doubt that Franz needed some fun in his life—I can see at least part of the attraction. And the other parts I can guess at.” His hairy eyebrows wiggled slightly, and he patted his belly. “I will see what can be arranged.”

Huzzah!

On the strength of this, I moved on to the Paris Opéra (aim high, why not?) to meet its director, Leon Pillet—the man to whom Franz’s second letter was addressed.

Again I pulled out all the stops. “I am the grieving widow of General Diego de Léon, Spanish war hero, unjustly executed—ah, I see you’ve heard of this?”

The little fellow’s eyebrows had jumped to the top of his narrow head. “Indeed, madame. You have my sympathy. That was a terrible injustice, quite unbelievable. And you—?”

“I must make my way now, alone, for I will never return to the land of my birth, a land that could murder such a heroic and wonderful man.” And oh, that was true. The unexpected but honest tears spilled hotly onto my bosom.

He leapt to his feet, whisking a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket. “Madame
, s’il vous plâit
… Oh,
mon Dieu
…”

After a bit of mopping up and some rueful smiles, we were speaking animatedly together. “And what is your forte?” he asked.

“I dance cachuchas and boleros.” I described them to him.

“There was a cartoon I seem to remember…”

“Yes, that
was
me in the press—with the whip and the Prussians, ha ha!”

Pillet was a ditherer, though. After a half hour’s discussion, he said, “I am not sure you would go over well here, madame. The Opéra is a hallowed stage. Such an act as you describe…”—et cetera, et cetera. It made me tired just listening to his excuses.

But I made sure he wouldn’t forget me completely. I rose. “Well,
muchas gracias
for your indulgence, señor. I can only hope that you might reconsider.” Leaning forwards to thank him, a deep flash of my décolletage caught his eye and I heard him hitch his breath.

Gotcha.

By the end of that first week, Janin had written a nice little article about me and my talents. I also heard back from Pillet, who’d decided to give me a spot
entr’actes
at the end of the month, where I would dance
El Oleano
—me and my Spider Dance, at the Paris Opéra! Who would believe!