Superwomen Part 2

So she came to New York. Here there were no kings, to bar her out lest they share Ludwig's fate. And Americans knew little and cared less about the evil eye. If Lola Montez could make good on the stage, America was willing to welcome her: If not, it had no further general interest in her.

Moreover, she was well past thirty; at an age when the first glory of a woman's siren charms may reasonably be supposed to be slightly blurred. New Yorkers were curious to see her, on account of her history; but that was their only interest in her.

She danced at the old Broadway Theater. People thronged the theater for the first few performances. Then, having gazed their fill on the Bavarian throne's wrecker and finding she could not dance, they stayed away; and Lola ended her engagement at the Broadway to the hackneyed "beggarly array of empty benches."

An enterprising manager--P. T. Barnum, if I remember aright--raked up the Byron story and starred Lola in a dramatization of Lord Byron's poem "Mazeppa." But people here had already looked at her, and the production was a failure. Next she appeared in one or two miserably written plays, based on her own European adventures. These, too, failed. She then wrote a beauty book that had a small sale, and wrote also a drearily stupid volume of humor, designed as a mock "Guide to Courts.h.i.+p."

On her way to America, Lola had stopped in England long enough to captivate and marry a British army officer, Heald by name. But she soon left him, and arrived in this country without visible matrimonial ties.

New York having tired of her, Lola went West. She created a brief, but lively, furore among the gold-boom towns along the Pacific coast; not so much by reason of her story as for the wondrous charm that was still hers. She gave lectures in California, and then made an Australian tour.

Coming back from the Antipodes, she settled for a time in San Francisco. There, in rather quick succession, she married twice. One of her two California spouses was Hull, the famous pioneer newspaper owner, of San Francisco.

But she quickly wearied of the West, and of her successive husbands.

Back she came to New York. And--to the wonder of all, and the incredulity of most--she there announced that, though she had been a great sinner, she was now prepared to devote the rest of her life to penance.

Strangely enough, her new resolve was not a pose. Even in her heyday she had given lavishly to charity. Now she took up rescue work among women. She did much good in a quiet way, spending what money she had on the betterment of her s.e.x's unfortunates, and toiling night and day in their behalf.

Under this unaccustomed mode of life, Lola's health went to pieces.

She was sent to a sanitarium in Astoria, L.I. And there, in poverty and half forgotten, she died. Kindly neighbors sc.r.a.ped together enough money to bury her.

Thus ended in wretched anticlimax the meteor career of Lola Montez; Wonder Woman and wanderer; over-thrower of a dynasty and worse-than-mediocre dancer. Some one has called her "the last of the great adventuresses." And that is perhaps her best epitaph.

Her neglected grave--in Greenwood Cemetery, in Brooklyn, by the way--bears no epitaph at all. That last resting place of a very tired woman is marked merely by a plain headstone, whose dimmed lettering reads:

~Mrs. Eliza Gilbert. Died June 16, 1861. Age 42.~

One trembles to think of the near-royal Irish rage that would have possessed Lola if, at her baroness-countess-Bavarian zenith, she could have foreseen that dreary little postscript to her lurid life missive.

CHAPTER TWO

NINON DE L'ENCLOS

PREMIERE SIREN OF TWO CENTURIES

This story opens with the account of a deathbed scene; somewhat different from any other you may have read. It is brought in to throw a light on what heredity and careful instruction can do in molding a young mind. But don't necessarily skip it for that reason.

One day in 1630, the Sieur de L'Enclos lay dying in his great, dreary bedroom in his great, dreary Touraine castle. There was no especial tragedy about the closing of his life. He was elderly, very rich, and possessed of a record for having used, to the full, every minute of a long and exciting life.

Beside his bed stood a fifteen-year-old girl, his only daughter, Anne; affectionately nicknamed by him--and later by all Europe and still later by all history--"Ninon." She was something below medium height, plump, with a peachblow complexion, huge dark eyes, and a crown of red-gold hair. Ninon and her father had been chums, kindred spirits, from the girl's babyhood.

The dying n.o.ble opened his eyes. They rested lovingly on the daughter who had bent down to hear the whispered sounds his white lips were striving to frame. Then, with a mighty effort, De L'Enclos breathed his solemn last words of counsel to the girl--counsel intended to guide her through the future that he knew must lie before so rich and so beautiful a damsel. This was his message to her:

"Ninon--little girl of mine--in dying I have but one single regret. I regret that I did not--get more fun out of life. I warn you--daughter--do not make the terrible mistake that I have made.

Live--live so that at the last you will not have the same cause for sorrow!"

So saying, the Sieur de L'Enclos bade an exemplary farewell to earth and to its lost opportunities of fun. To judge from his career as well as from his last words, one may venture the optimistic belief that he had not thrown away as many such priceless chances as he had led his daughter to believe.

Ninon, then, at fifteen, was left alone in the world. And her actions in this sad state conformed to those of the customary helpless orphan--about as closely as had her father's death speech to the customary "last words." With a shrewdness miraculous in so young a girl, she juggled her Touraine property in a series of deals that resulted in its sale at a little more than double its actual value.

Rich beyond all fear of want, she settled in Paris.

It was not there or then that her love life set in. That had begun long before. As a mere child she had flashed upon her little world of Touraine as a wonder girl. The superwoman charm was hers from the first. And she retained it in all its mysterious power through the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth; men vying for her love when she was ninety.

A full year before her father died, she had met the youthful Prince de Marsillac, and had, at a glance, wholly captivated his semi-royal fancy. It was Ninon's first love affair--with a prince. She was dazzled by it just a little, she whom monarchs later could not dazzle.

She was only fourteen. And in Touraine a princely admirer was a novelty.

At Marsillac's boyish supplication, Ninon consented to elope with him.

Off they started. And back to their respective homes they were brought in dire disgrace. There was all sorts of a scandal in the neighborhood. The princeling was soundly spanked and packed off to school. The Sieur de L'Enclos came in for grave popular disapproval by laughingly refusing to mete out the same stern penalties to Ninon.

To Paris, then, at sixteen, went the orphaned Ninon. Laughing at convention and at the threats of her shocked relatives, she set up housekeeping on her own account, managing the affairs of her Rive Gauche mansion with the ease of a fifty-year-old grande dame.

On Paris burst the new star. In a month the city was crazy over her.

Not her beauty alone, nor her wit, nor her peculiar elegance, nor her incredibly high spirits.--Not any or all of these, but an all-compelling magnetism drew men to her in shoals and swarms.

By reason of her birth and breeding she took at once her place in the court society of the day. Before she was twenty, she was setting the fas.h.i.+ons for feminine Paris, and was receiving in her salon the stateliest ladies of the court, in equal numbers with their far less stately husbands.

Frankly, she declared herself a votary, not of love, but of loves. For constancy she had no use whatsoever. One admirer who had won a temporary lease of her gay heart swore he would kill himself unless Ninon would swear to love him to eternity.

And as she loved him ardently, she made the rash vow. When at the end of ninety days she gave him his dismissal, he reproached her wildly and bitterly for her broken pledge.

"You swore you would love me to eternity!" he raged. "And now----"

"And now," she explained, as one might soothe a cranky child, "I have kept my vow. I have loved you for three endless months. That is an eternity--for love!"

And three months remained, to the end, Ninon's record for fidelity to any one man; which was, perhaps, as well, for the waiting list was as long as that of a hyper-fas.h.i.+onable club.

And now we come to a story that I do not ask you to believe, although all France unquestionably and unquestioningly believed it. Whether Ninon herself at first coined it as a joke, or whether it was a hoax that she herself credited, it is certain that she grew at last to have firm faith in it.

One night--so Ninon always declared--when she was about twenty, she returned home late from a ball at the Hotel St. Evremond. As she stood before the mirror of her boudoir, after her maid had left her for the night, she became aware of a shadowy reflection behind her.

Turning, she saw a man clad all in black, his face hidden by the low brim of his hat and by his cloak's folds. What little was visible of his countenance was ghastly pale. Ninon, ever fearless, did not cry out for help. Instead, she approached the black-shrouded stranger and demanded to know his business and how he had penetrated to her close-barred room.

The man in black, by way of answer, drew one sable-gloved hand from beneath his cloak. In his fingers he grasped a large phial, wherein sparkled and glowed a strange, pinkish liquid.

"Life is short," said the visitor, as Ninon still looked in amazed inquiry from his half-hidden face to the rose-colored phial he carried. "Life is short, but youth is far shorter. When youth is gone, love is gone. Love is the goal of life. Without youth, there is no love. Without love, life is a desert. The gifts of youth and beauty are yours. Would you make them long-lasting, instead of transient blessings that shall too soon become mere memories?"

As Ninon, dumb with wonder, hesitated to reply, he continued:

"The admiration of men melts like summer snow at the first touch of age in a woman. Their admiration is now yours. Would you hold it? One drop a day from this phial, in your bath, will keep you young, will keep you beautiful, will retain for you the love of men."

He set the flask on her dressing table and turned to go.

"You will see me again," he said very slowly and distinctly, "just three days before your death."