Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume

by Kit Brennan

  On one of the terrible days as his captive, I’d managed to shoot him in the upper thigh. Desperately reloading, not enough time—perhaps for that fraction of a second, I’d lost my nerve. I’d left him bleeding on the road and headed for France; then I’d crossed the channel, gathering the shards of my shattered life.

  On the night of my London début, the fiend was there. How he’d managed it, I have no idea. He’d denounced me onstage, called me a fraud and an adulteress. Lying in wait outside the theatre afterwards, he’d pursued me again through the streets, limping and lurching but still swift as a cobra, brandishing a switchblade, which I’d fully expected to feel hurled between my shoulders or slashed across my throat. And then rescue—miraculous rescue—by London policemen. While they struggled to subdue the hell-hound, I’d snatched up the blade, which had fallen to the cobbles. It’s the knife I now carry with me always, tucked into my waistband: a reminder of true evil, and also, I hope, an amulet against it.

  That treacherous madman, Miguel de la Vega, remains a guest in Her Majesty’s prison, accused of multiple murders of young London women. He was the instrument of so much horror and death. May he rot in hell. May they throw away the key. I whisper these things to myself over and over. Only the certain knowledge of his incarceration keeps the nightmares at bay.

  In the new, anonymous Dresden hotel, beneath the covers, I curled into the smallest ball possible, arms clasping my ribs, chin against my chest. A small silent being in a dark space. Breathe deeply, keep breathing…

  By nightfall, the evil, sorrowful memories had played themselves out and I was almost calm, though certainly very, very low in spirits. I’d eaten nothing all day—didn’t know how I’d pay for that either, when and if I ever felt like eating again. And then there came a knock on the door. Christ on a donkey, I thought, yanking the covers back over my head, I’m not answering that!

  “Lola, sweet Lola, it’s only me, George. Open up, won’t you?”

  I crept across the room, put my ear to the wood. “George?”

  “Yes, it’s me, not the avenging Marie d’A, don’t worry. I’ve brought you some things; let me in, dear?”

  I swung the door open and there she stood, in her men’s breeches, frock coat, and a gentleman’s topper on her head. She entered, swung out of the coat and slung it on a chair. I examined the breeches as her back was turned. They looked good on her, I have to say, though she was—I’m just being honest—somewhat broad in the beam. She flung the topper onto a coatrack. There was a mischievous grin on her face as she bent to retrieve something outside the door and then waltzed further into the room, carrying a large basket over one arm.

  “Treats and goodies, yummy yum,” she declared. “Where shall I put them?”

  Removing a vase of flowers, she plopped the basket down on the nearest table and placed the flowers beside the bed. “This is quite nice, isn’t it?” she said, glancing around, noting the state of the bed-linens, all rumpled and cried upon. “Have you been suffering, sweets? Never mind. Must have been one hell of a scene—will you tell me?”

  “No.”

  “I can imagine it. You must be starving.” She began pulling delectable food from the basket: half a roast chicken, a meat pie, fresh and still warm bread, a bottle of wine and some elegant pastries. My treacherous stomach began to gurgle and groan.

  “And that is not all,” she said triumphantly. “Look what else I have here—” She held up several sealed envelopes and waved them. “From Franz. He brought them to me an hour ago. How he managed to write them, I’m not sure, but he did. They’re for you. Letters of introduction to some of our gang in Paris, press-men and theatre managers. They’ll love you, love the way you look—and that’s all you need to get you started, isn’t it?”

  The tears flowed again as I took the envelopes from her and held them to my lips. I could smell, just faintly, the scent of Franz: his cigars and cognac, his particular essence.

  “It’s been a bad day, Lola, I can imagine that, too. But these will help immeasurably. You mustn’t lose your audacity; you’re too pretty for that—and more than pretty, aren’t you?” She bobbed her sparrow’s eyes at me, curious, interested and more than a little greedy to know, to understand—to empathize with the story I was living.

  “How is he?” I whispered, ruefully.

  “When he delivered these, he told me he’d asked Belloni to announce several more concerts here before he leaves. Marie will stay and that’s a miracle, then they’ll go home to Paris together. His words: ‘I feel a great weariness of life and a ridiculous need for rest.’”

  I shook my head, unhappily.

  “He also asked me to tell you that you must not try to contact him again, ever. The letters are the last things he can do for you, he told me to say that. And now I have.”

  I couldn’t help myself; it just fell out. “I will miss him terribly!” And the tears spilled forth, despite my angry attempts to hold them back.

  George bustled around, laying out the dinner, lighting several other candles, brightening the atmosphere and whistling to bring a bit of cheer into the room. As we sat down together, she spoke again of her life, her artistic circle of friends, the joy of creation—anything to take my mind from the horrible day and its dreadful reverberations. And I was grateful; I did begin to listen, I ate and drank wine. Life was beginning to go on—as it does, and as it must.

  As we finished the bottle, she got up and went to the door. “When you come to Paris, you’ll have to get used to long discussions over food—arguments, loud shouting matches, deep philosophical debates—we all do it. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not leaving.” She opened the door, leaned out and picked up a second bottle she’d left outside. “Just in case,” with a wicked grin.

  I smiled. “Oh, thank God. Thank you.”

  “Ça ne faire rien. I require a whole one, myself, or I can’t get to work.”

  “Work?”

  “I write all night, the darkness is my time; I’ve my requisite twenty pages to fulfill. I’ve brought everything with me, all I need. I’m not leaving you alone, Lola, not tonight.”

  “But—”

  “No, no getting rid of me just yet. Pass me the corkscrew?”

  So I did, and as she opened the bottle, she said, “Now, I don’t want any arguments, but just to set your mind at rest. I foresee success for you in the City of Lights, but at the moment I imagine you’re a bit skint. So here’s what I thought: you’ll come to Paris with me, and before that, I’ll take care of your hotel bill here. I’ll be picking up my children on the way through. You’ll love Maurice; he’s a handsome darling. Solange, the problem child? Well, let’s say no more about that. Here’s my copy of Consuelo, which you can read on the way. I’ve also got Balzac’s Béatrix—but perhaps that’s too much salt in the wound… You’d like my Horace, perhaps—it was very naughty of me, and I must admit Marie d’A hates me for it. Have you had enough to eat?”

  I didn’t know what to say to her generosity. No woman had ever taken me under her wing so protectively, except perhaps (very fleetingly) the magnificent Infanta Carlota of Naples—now dead, I had sadly read in the papers. Her stomach pains, it seemed, had been fatal.

  “You don’t need to feel beholden, dear,” my new, garrulous advisor went on. “I have the money and I’m hard at work at my next one, so the cash should keep coming, with luck.” I suppose I was looking downcast, because she added, “You’ve accepted help from your men friends in the past. Think of me as one of them, if it makes you more comfortable.”

  I placed my hand over hers. “Countess Dudevant, you are too kind.”

  “Pas de tout,” she answered. “And call me George. Drink up, then let’s have more.”

  All night, as I lay tossing and attempting to sleep, George sat at the table—food scraps and empty bottles pushed to the side—with the candles guttering directly above her writing paper. She hardly moved, covering page after page with large, flowing script, head bent, and the other arm hanging dow
n at her side. A comforting presence, there in the room with me. A famous woman! What a strange thing. Famous for her ideas, her words, not just her appearance or the unconventional way she dressed. An older woman with power. Fame. That enticing little four-letter word. Notoriety, too—even though she was plain. I banished that thought. Not plain, not really… There was something about her… And I finally fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  In the morning, she was in the bed with me, fingers black with ink, a smudge of it on her closed left eyelid.

  *

  The journey from Dresden, through Frankfurt and on into France, was stimulating and tiring. George and I talked virtually the whole way as we rolled along, noting the countryside’s permutations, the donning of its springtime colours and scents. Warm breezes wafted through the windows as I spoke of my childhood years with a neglectful mother (though I said I’d grown up in Seville, not in India), how at age sixteen I’d eloped in order to escape the trap I could feel closing around me.

  “Oh lord,” she said, heavily, “just the age of Solange. She teases my poor Chipette as he coughs and sighs; she’s got him wrapped round her index finger.”

  I also told her some judicious (yes, I can be, when I want) bits and pieces about my dancing, about Spain itself and my recent eight months of travel. She’d seen the cartoon of the fleeing Prussians, and we laughed about that. I’d never had a woman friend and wasn’t sure whether to trust such a thing. There was an uncanny sixth sense about her, however, for at one point she said, “One is often judged and put through the mangle by women friends, have you found? I won’t do that to you, Lola, I solemnly promise, though you should steel yourself, for I think you’ll come up against it fairly hard in your life. Female malice has never worried me; I observe it with a cold and detached eye, and recommend you to do the same. I am speaking, at least in part, of course, of our pal d’Agoult.”

  In return for my (somewhat fabricated) stories, I heard about her idyllic childhood in the village of Nohant, with an aristocratic grandmother and her favourite horse, Colette, with whom she would spend many happy hours galloping through the nearby Forest of Fontainbleau. Also—though obliquely—she let slip the reason she’d taken me under her wing. “Of course, though my father was wealthy, he committed a cardinal sin as far as my grandmother was concerned. Can you imagine the worst thing an only son can do to his mother?”

  I thought for a second, for that’s all the time she gave me.

  “He fell for a fallen woman! Yes, my mother’s a prostitute—or was, when he met her. And not a high-class one, not a femme galante—more of a strumpet. One of the world’s true vagabonds: Antoinette-Sophie-Victoire… How I loved that woman, doted on her—at first—but my mother fought with my grandmother tooth and nail. They battled over me. As my grandmother lay dying, she told me, ‘You’re losing your best friend, my darling’—and so it turned out. My mother was a tyrant, lost her mind when she reached her change of life. To escape her, I too married. Also a mistake. Though he is a count, which has its advantages—that’s how I became Countess Dudevant.”

  She was holding my hand, bouncing it up and down to make particular, emphatic points. My hand was getting hot and at times I longed to be outside on one of the horses, rather than back in a coach with this kind-hearted, intense person. I was also trying not to howl with unhappiness at the thought of the lonely road that had—once again—opened up in front of me.

  “I had my two children… Maurice is my darling, a young man now. Solange was an accident, fathered—I’m fairly sure—by someone else.” (How she loved to prattle on!) “When I was in agony, giving birth to her, I could hear the count outside the room, speaking love talk with one of the servant-girls, and I remember feeling happy because it released me, forever, from his power. At that exact moment, pushing a baby out of my womb, I repudiated the idea that adultery is a mortal sin. These things don’t matter, provided that one is sincerely in love.”

  I remembered that Liszt had said something very similar, to his countess, before she’d told him to shut up. But George’s juxtaposed images—babies pushed out of wombs, childbirth and adultery, all mixed up together—were surprising and, yes, shocking! And still she went on.

  “The next day I told the count, ‘I’m going to Paris. My children will remain at Nohant, and you will stop losing money through your bad business deals or I will divorce you.’ Of course, several years later, I did so—which puts me, I must say, in a less reprehensible position than that of d’Agoult, who’s still married to her long-suffering count. He stays silent in the shadows; he’s a gentleman, undeniably. Has never denounced her during all of her years with Franzi. Ah, how she likes to make them suffer.”

  At that, I sat up and withdrew my overheated hand from her grip.

  “George…” (I couldn’t think anymore, she was talking so much!)

  “What is it?”

  I tried to marshal my bludgeoned wits. “I’m going to Paris, thanks to you. It has always been my dream. But Paris is where the Countess d’Agoult lives.”

  “Certainly.”

  “If I manage to get my heart’s wish, and obtain a dancing engagement there…”

  “Will she rip you to shreds, in front of all of our eyes?”

  “Well… Yes.”

  “It will be marvelous sport, if so!” And she clapped her hands. “Lola, think, you are just as much a woman of passion as that terrifyingly skinny stick! She’s always been arrogant towards young women, and never forgives a man who marries for money. She has no idea how difficult the world is when you’re not born into wealth—but I do, you see. I come from both sides, and understand the fight. I’ll be cheering from the wings!”

  Why didn’t this make me feel better?

  She had bounced up to a standing position in the coach, balancing with her knees slightly bent, and leaning towards me as if to deliver a truth directly into my ear. “The real challenge for you, Lola, my love, will be this, and this is important. How will you prevent the battle to come from turning you into a monster, rather than an intelligent soul who enjoys a full life of the senses?”

  Now she was scaring me.

  “Are you up for it?”

  God, I hoped so.

  “Understand me, dear. Marie d’Agoult and I have likely had a permanent break in our friendship. I encouraged Balzac to write that disguised version of her love affair with Liszt, in Béatrix, and then—because I felt I could do it better—I followed up with one of my own. They’re romans à clef: intriguing to write, and to read.”

  I hadn’t heard of this, then. “What is ‘the key’? What does that mean?”

  “If you understand the real life story behind such a novel—the key, in other words—it makes the book even more piquant. As writer, it’s labeled fiction—so you can write a different ending if you wish to, and you can’t be sued for libel. But it’s also fact, so you can employ satire and—if you want—settle a few scores. Lovely!” Perhaps I was looking shocked again, so she added, “Well, the Liszt and d’Agoult affair was the scandal of the decade; how could a writer ignore such good material? What else can a woman of intelligence do but examine it fully? Now I hear d’Agoult has delusions that she, too, can write—ha! I’d like to see her try.”

  All this talk about female revenge, competition and ambition was making me queasy with nerves, and of course brought me to, “Why did you start to write?”

  “I needed to understand the world: to question, to penetrate the mystery.”

  By that time, we’d put up for the night at one of the hotels along our route, and were tucked up in bed—one bed, for economy’s sake, George told me.

  “The ‘key’ in a current roman à clef can also be celebrity itself.”

  I must have looked puzzled, for she went on. “The acquisition of it. Celebrity is entrancing to people, for some reason, God knows why. I think it is to you, and you should be wary of that. But you know, Lola, our life is our material. What else have we got to work with, in our tiny
spans? It’s all grist for the mill—never be ashamed of it, any part of it, promise me! It’s your life. It belongs to you, to no one else.”

  As we lay there, warmly cosy, I heard tales about herself as a girl named Aurore, writing for amusement; then about her first years in Paris, trying to break into the world of letters—to make a living and conquer the ‘dragon’ (as she called it), Fame. About meeting editors, then working for Le Figaro, where she tried to pen short articles.

  “Within the restricted space I was given, by the time I had begun to begin, my word count had overflowed!”

  I heard descriptions of her many and various novels—of her many and various lovers as well. Some of them were well known writers. Thanks to one of them, she said, she’d found her nom de plume.

  “Well, it was half a joke and half a partnership. We wrote things together. His name’s Jules Sandeau; we wrote as Jules et George. We grew apart, the George stuck, and I kept half of the rest.”

  That really hit me. I knew well what the power of naming oneself feels like, how it changes you, gives you courage and individuality. I’d adjusted my given name many times already—from hated childhood Betty to Eliza, Eliza to Rosana, Rosana—finally!—to dazzling Lola. But, with a nom de plume—well, you could be two people at the same time, switch back and forth between them. How tremendous.

  As we lay there, George feeling drowsy and me fighting sleep, dreading my thoughts and sniffling sadly (once again), she told me a tale of the other Marie she’d mentioned: the marvel of George’s youth, Marie Dorval the actress.