Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume

by Kit Brennan

  When we eventually emerged from the bedchamber (ordering up chops and a carafe of wine from the kitchen to slake our ravenous hunger and thirst), we returned to an almost shy formality. He was circumspect about his situation.

  “You must know this; I will not keep it from you. I am encumbered, Lola. I am the father of three small children who depend upon me utterly. The mother of my children and I… We have begun to grow apart, alas. It is a melancholy truth that I have not been able to rectify. It has made me… Reticent. I do not trust easily.”

  From what I’d read in the papers, I knew that the relationship between Liszt and Countess Marie d’Agoult had been turned into thinly veiled fiction by no less than Honoré de Balzac, in a story called Béatrix. The story was scandalous and hence had sold immoderately—though I hadn’t read it. Yet.

  I was hesitant, but asked it anyway, “Do you mean, that novel about you?”

  “It is not about me, not in any way.” A flare of anger, but then he took my hand and stroked the back of it lightly. “No, no, I’m sorry. Writers, in my opinion, can be like prostitutes—anything that sells. They will open up their own wounds to lick the blood if it will make them money. Let us not speak of these things, for then I am tempted to insult my friends, and that I do not wish to do.”

  That evening and into the night, he played for me—for me! The piano in his room was one that travelled with him, apparently: an Erard, which he adored because of something called a double-escapement action. It allowed him to accomplish some of his most thrilling tours de force; the magnificence of sound came from his use of that deep, bass sustaining pedal. The other pedal, the soft one, he also used in ingenious ways, to mute or transport certain notes into mimicking other sounds. He told me to lie on my back underneath the instrument—“as my friend George likes to do”—so that I could be carried away by his art. And oh God, I was. He’d been called a ‘matador of the piano’, and the phrase was apt. How he challenged and seduced that instrument! He played everything from memory—never used sheet music, even in performance—and often he’d improvise, flirting with themes and experimenting. I know very little about music-making, composing or arranging, but I knew enough to feel that I would never experience anything like Liszt again. Music, to him, was eating and breathing. It was no wonder that he was so thin; the music ate up every other thing inside, I truly believe. Overwhelmed by the emotions he was evoking, I lay there under the piano, sobbing, throbbing, and enthralled.

  After midnight, he began to play a kind of Hungarian Gypsy music, the melodies moving from languid to wild and manic. He’d written some pieces based on Gypsy improvisations: the lassan, or slow movements, and the friska, or fast. These melodies were so exciting—and familiar to me, from my year in Spain—that I crawled out from beneath the piano, grabbed another glass of cognac, and began to dance, twirling, snapping my fingers like castanets, rising with the music to a frenzy of exaltation and almost delirium—the state which the tarantella inflicts upon the dancer. Like my El Oleano, the dance I’d created in Spain and performed at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London, as my début. The original dance that I’d been using to tour Europe, which had sometimes caused me to be dismissed. My Spider Dance.

  It had been called profane and orgiastic. What they couldn’t grasp was that it is a simple story: of a young girl in a meadow, innocently gambolling forth and smelling the flowers. She steps, by chance, on a spider’s nest, and hundreds of tiny, newly-hatched spiders crawl up her legs. But they are not only spiders—they are tarantulas! She has to get them out of her skirts, quickly, or she will die of their poisonous stings. She whirls, and leaps, and shakes her dress; she kicks and stamps. And then, when she does get them all out and she’s finally safe, that’s when she spies the hairy parental spider, standing upon its nest, sending out its minions to do its evil work! She rushes towards it, and stamps and stamps again.

  I performed, I whirled, I leapt upon the imaginary spider, and Franz Liszt, cigar between his teeth and watching with initial alarm, finally threw his head back and began to laugh once more, restraint thrown to the winds. He understood; he got it! I was so gratified. When I’d finished and had caught my breath, he played me a new tarantella that he’d recently composed: a piece called Venezia e Napoli. With its leaps, trills, and tremolos, it was a magical dance of sound. I stood behind him, holding him around the torso and feeling the engine of his playing, thrilled to bits. We were soul mates; we must be! When finally he stopped, I still held him, whispering breathlessly into his charmed ear.

  “I so wish to dance in Paris, to make a success there…”

  “I understand, and I hope you will,” he whispered back, eyes closed and arms crossed, leaning upon the keys, his body exuding waves of heat from the force of his playing. “You should, however, be wary of the Parisian press. They can be brutally sarcastic. They target me unmercifully. No one likes to see a meteoric rise unless it is their own.”

  His sudden bitterness reminded me of my last theatrical engagement, in Warsaw. Should I tell him about it, I wondered? I’d talked myself into a role at the Opera there, and on opening night, the military were of course in attendance, since Poland is also under the thumb of Czar Nicholas I—a state of affairs that Polish nationalists hate with the kind of passion that I understand.

  I moved around the piano bench and onto Liszt’s lap, snuggling in with my legs wrapped around him. I decided to risk it. “I’ve experienced negative press as well. It’s very hurtful… In Warsaw, well… I understand the Poles, you see,” I said. “I too have been repressed, as a woman trying to make my way in a world ruled by men.”

  “Mm.” Franz breathed into my hair, winding a strand of it around his fingers.

  I suddenly felt nervous—why had I gotten started on politics, anyway?—and added quickly, “Perhaps I’m not as politically astute as I could be… Though I do read the papers assiduously, and not only for the fashion pages…”

  “What did you do, Lola?” His voice, in my hair, seemed sad or some other melancholy emotion, so I hurried to add,

  “Well, it was such a shame, because I really did have a sweet little role… The Russian Governor-General was there, a certain Baron General Paskievitch.”

  “I’ve met the man. Very rigid.”

  “Sí. I danced well, was applauded quite strenuously, and in the third act, I delivered my few lines.” I was stroking his hair, the back of his neck. “I don’t remember exactly what happened then, or why, but the final thing I said was, ‘All people, in all countries, demand the right to be free.’”

  Franz murmured, “Let me guess. It was not a line from the script.”

  How did he know?

  “Well, that’s true. There was a moment of startled silence, then wild applause broke out amongst the Polish faction. Not the military.”

  “Oh, Lola…”

  “Anyway, anyway—long story short!” I was nervous again, and hurried on. “I was warned there could be trouble afterwards. A young Polish student slipped me two pistols. Then twenty or so of them unhitched a horse from its carriage and pulled me, sans horse, through the streets to my lodgings, running and chanting nationalistic songs—very fun. Then the Russian colonel in command arrived, demanding entry. I refused, said I’d shoot any Russian who tried to come in. I probably shouldn’t have specified nationality like that… By morning I was lucky that the French Consul—an affirmed bachelor—arrived to grant me honorary French citizenship, so they couldn’t charge me.”

  Franz was beginning to snicker again.

  “However,” I finished, glad to see that his humour had returned, “The ultimate result was that I was thrown out of Warsaw—and Poland! ‘Depart swiftly and never come back,’ that’s what they said!”

  “Oh my God,” Franz whooped, “two cities, and two countries! Lola Montez, you’re a force of nature!” At this point, we actually fell off the piano bench together, onto the floor, in a tangle of limbs. We stayed there, giddy with hilarity.

  Why had I do
ne it? Why did I say those words about freedom? They had simply popped out, and that is the truth. How often have I told myself that I must stop this capricious behaviour, curb my tongue. Then it happens again. I can’t seem to get it under control.

  “Last year,” Franz finally told me with a sigh, “I travelled through Poland myself, on a long, tiring concert tour. I was cautioned sternly by this same Paskievitch. My music had ignited similar reactions.”

  So! My story was accepted; he didn’t think of me as a prattling idiot, but as an adventurous comrade in art. Oh, I was enchanted with the world and my place in it.

  Shortly after that, we led each other back to bed. A late night friska was swift and lively, followed by a lovely sleepy lassan, just before dawn.

  “I thank you for taking me entirely outside of my head, Lola Montez,” Franz Liszt said softly. “A rare gift.”

  My head on his chest, his long fingers entangled again in my hair. Confidence returning, courage high. Splendid night…

  *

  The next morning—by mutual consent—I went with him back to Dresden, to Room 17, Hotel de Saxe. Our travelling companions in the coach were his manager, an Italian named Gaëtano Belloni, and the aristocratic lady from the concert hall, Countess Dudevant, who was wearing an enveloping cloak of dark burgundy wool. Franz was almost silent as we rode along. He occupied his time by incessantly practising upon a dumb keyboard placed across his knees, which seemed, from his facial expressions, to convey him to another, silent, more palatable world.

  The countess, on the other hand, was extremely talkative and curious. She had a habit of staring straight into one’s face, almost unblinkingly, as if she were drinking you up.

  “So,” she said. “I see you got what you wanted. How was he?”

  “…What?” Ye gods, she was direct!

  Liszt wasn’t listening, obviously, for he didn’t react to this; Belloni shot the countess a look, then went back to his book.

  “Never mind. I can see what I need from the fact that you’re with us.” She took my arm and moved her body closer. “He practices up to ten hours a day, you know. Genius has its price. Especially when he’s working up some new technique, some new way of making his ten hands fly even faster. ‘Tradition is laziness,’ he tells me, as he seeks ever better solutions. Sweet Franzi! We’ve been friends forever, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And his sweetheart, Countess d’Agoult—friends forever, there, as well.”

  Belloni gave a discreet little cough, but otherwise was motionless.

  The countess leaned closer, her mouth near my chin. “It’s too bad she’s such a joyless and brooding woman; it’s too bad for Franz. He needs a bit of pleasure; he works too hard, don’t you think?” It was as if she didn’t need an answer to most of her observations, because she only paused to take a quick breath before asking, “Do you know who I am yet? Have you guessed? I can see that you haven’t. Perhaps you don’t read; perhaps you’re one of those who don’t need the stimulation of imaginary worlds or of large events explained through story.” I was about to protest, but too late. “You’re attracted by celebrity, I can see that—a moth to a flame. Well, I am famous, too, my love, celebrated almost as much as our fair friend here. Not with such reckless idolatry, I admit; I’m becoming too frumpy for that sort of adoration, curse it.” She gave my cheek a rather prolonged kiss. “I’m George Sand. The writer. Won’t you love me too?”

  *

  I’d entered a rarefied world, no mistake, and that fact is certainly the catalyst for everything that’s happened. If I hadn’t followed Liszt to Dresden and become acquainted with George Sand, all of my new sorrows—and joys, and ultimate terror—would never have come about. Strange to think of… How everything changes, nothing can ever be captured and held. All is as slippery—and dangerous—as water.

  For three weeks, I lived with Franz at his hotel, where we spent lovely nights in bed after evenings attending musical and theatrical events (on his arm, I was much noticed and admired, I was delighted to see). Even so, I saw much more of George than of our tall genius, who practised scales, arpeggios and new experiments hour after hour, every day, all day.

  George certainly loved to talk, and to lean up against me, confidingly.

  “Lola, my sweet, you must know that this will never last. Franz will never belong to one woman; he belongs to the world. I’ve told Marie that for years, but she simply denies his brilliance, pretends to be his only Muse. Thin and wavering as a candle flame she is, and pale as a blanched almond. Of course we’re great friends, but she is no liberal—can’t stand the idea of sharing anything. It makes her skin crawl.”

  We were walking alongside the river Elbe, George in her expensive wool cape and me in my warmest wrap. Underneath her cape, I could see that she was wearing men’s breeches. She had my arm clasped tightly in hers.

  “I myself am devoted to a genius—perhaps you’ve heard?” She peered at me sideways, a bit like an inquisitive sparrow, head cocked to the right. “No? Frédéric Chopin, another pianist. He’s Polish—very nervy, very frail. Fantastic composer. Haven’t you heard of him? You’ve so much to learn! We are, perhaps, at the apex of our time together, or perhaps even heading down the other side, alas. My daughter Solange is sixteen, almost seventeen. She’s becoming a problem between us. Too much beauty, flowering too soon. Dangerous for all concerned. Have you read any of my novels?”

  I think I’d never met a woman who was so straight ahead in her comments and questions—no coyness, no deferring to others.

  “Not yet,” I told George, finally catching on.

  “I will give you Consuelo to start with; I’m very proud of it. My third try at this particular theme… In the first two, the heroine dies or is conquered. Typical ending for women, you have to admit; it’s almost expected, to keep them in line. This one’s more hopeful—but I shouldn’t give away the end, should I? It concerns a woman who tries to live her life outside the repressive rules that society imposes, but she finds it difficult to do that without finding herself shunned by society.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Truly? But that is my dilemma, too.”

  “Of course it is. We are who and what society makes us, after all.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “I believe that physical passion is the only force that can truly release us—man or woman—into our authentic selves. Why should woman be denied what man takes for granted?”

  Oh my God. I agreed wholeheartedly—but she actually wrote these things down and published them for all the world to read, and debate, and argue over! And to hate her for, perhaps? This was where we truly differed. I could be daring when it came to doing things, to acting or reacting: dancing a tarantella, shooting pistols, galloping on horseback or otherwise exerting my body. But radical ideas about womanhood, written down? To be excoriated, or ridiculed, and then published, to go on into perpetuity? How did she dare?—Was it exciting?

  “Come along,” she urged, almost tugging me onwards with the passion in her voice, in her vigorous steps. “I’m also more than ever determined that political change must happen. I believe in the common man. There’s a socialist movement arising that I think will result in cataclysmic turmoil before too long, but then open us up to real progress. I’m writing articles for a review, which I’ve co-founded—L’Éclaireur—where we discuss such things. Are you interested?”

  “Um…”

  “Never mind. You must come to Paris. I live in the midst of a charming circle of artists in the lovely Square d’Orléans. I should be there now, except for our mutual friend Franzi; I just had to get away from all my cares and come fling myself under his piano. Chopin is teaching; he’s too moody to compose during the winters, and I’m so bored by his pupils. They grovel at his feet in a truly sickening manner. In Paris, I can introduce you to some of my friends.”

  My head was whirling, trying to keep up.

  “You should meet Marie—I mean Marie Dorval the actress, not d’Agoult. Too many Maries!
No, d’Agoult would rip you to shreds in a moment; you really want to try to avoid an encounter with her, let me warn you. I blame her age; she’s seven years older than Franzi, you know—almost as old as me, and you can see what time has done to this bold edifice. Now, you say you’re a dancer? Won’t you dance for me?”

  During one of our nights of love, I asked Franz about George. He was unfailingly polite—I never heard him speak badly of anyone.

  “Are you falling for her, Lola? She can make you do so—although I remember when Chopin first saw her, he asked me crossly whether the creature was a man, she went after him so forcefully.” That made me laugh. “She’s hungry for love, for life. She will mother everyone she can. Chopin is like another child to her, I believe. He’s often unwell—a bit like myself—and she pampers him. And yet it’s true, she has the strength of the most virile of men.”

  “She’s invited me to visit her in Paris.”

  “I think you should go.”

  I sat up to look at him.

  Hands locked behind his head, he was gazing at the ceiling. “I will write you some letters of introduction. My concerts are finished here, and I must return, myself. But not with you.” I couldn’t restrain a swift intake of breath: that was very abrupt. “Yes,” he continued, as if reading my thoughts. “I received a letter today from Marie, the mother of my little ones. She is incensed. She’s caught wind that I am escorting a young Spanish lady to the theatre and so on. The damnable papers, I suppose.” He sat up as well, reaching for the candle, moving it about over the bedside table. “Ach, it’s come to this… I now need my glasses in order to find my damned glasses,” he muttered, patting around, then spreading the spectacles’ arms and perching them upon his nose. “My daughters, Blandine and Cosima, are at school and Marie wishes them to return to live with her instead. But she is in a period of—vitriol, shall I say—and will not speak well to them of me. Dumdum, my sweet little boy, Daniel, is still too young to be influenced, but my dear girls… I couldn’t bear to lose their love.”