XXVII A Second Experiment in Matrimony
The company of any number of agreeable men about town and the amenities of life in a Mayfair lodging-house were not, however, likely to content a woman who had lately ruled a kingdom. Experience, it is true, had taught Lola to set limits to her ambition. She had succeeded in her design of hooking a prince, but the catch had been torn off the hook with considerable violence to the angler. It was of no use again to cast her line into royal waters. The fish were now too wary. After the ordeal through which she had passed, Lola sighed for some enduring ties and an established position. She yearned as the most fiery and erratic do at one time or another, for a home. Some think that they who have loved most, love best; but I imagine Lola was a trifle weary of love just then, and longed for some felicity more stable and material. She inclined, in fact, towards the sweet yoke of domesticity, which was quite a fashionable institution in England at that time. Among her visitors was a Mr. George Trafford Heald, son of a rich Chancery barrister, and a cornet in the Second Life Guards. This gallant officer is described as a tall young man, of juvenile figure and aspect, with straight hair and small light brown downy mustachios and whiskers; his turned-up nose gave him an air of great simplicity. As, however, he had, on his coming of age in January 1849, inherited a fortune of between six and seven thousand pounds per annum, he was considered, especially by unattached ladies, in and out of society, a very interesting person. He was very much in love with the Countess of Landsfeld who, no doubt, easily persuaded herself that she entertained a strong affection for so eligible a suitor. In this respect Lola was, it is safe to say, no more mercenary than half the good and well-brought-up young ladies who were looking out for a good match that season. Heald seems to have been what women call a nice boy; in many ways he probably contrasted favourably with Lola’s bolder, more experienced wooers. So when (with many blushes, and in shy stammering words, I doubt not) he offered the adventuress his hand and heart and fortune, she was able without any natural repugnance to consent to be his wife.
That she ever doubted that she was free to wed again is not to be supposed. In all likelihood, she had been made acquainted with her divorce from Captain James only through the medium of the newspapers, and these would lead any one to believe that the divorce had been made absolute. It was, therefore, without any apprehension that she married Cornet Heald at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on 19th July 1849. As she left the church on the arm of her youthful husband, she must have thought half-regretfully of the career of adventure that was ended, and yet looked forward with complacency to the life of respectability and affluence that seemed to stretch before her.
Vain hope! By the common domestic women of her time Lola was regarded with bitter hatred. It is unnecessary to analyse this species of animosity. It is compounded, apparently, of jealousy, of some vague religious sentiment of inherited prejudice, and of the trade-unionist’s dislike for the blackleg. This attitude, though instinctive, is not unreasonable on the part of the vast numbers of women who consider marriage a profession, but it is more difficult to understand in the case of an aged lady, long since resigned to celibacy. Such a spinster was Miss Susanna Heald, of Headington Grove, Horncastle, the aunt of Cornet George. This lady manifested great displeasure at her nephew’s marriage; and, certain facts having been communicated to her by Lola’s numerous enemies, she forthwith set in motion that efficient engine of man’s injustice, the English law.
The honeymoon of the newly-wed pair, if they had one at all, was brief, for it was on 6th August, at nine o’clock in the morning, as the Countess of Landsfeld was stepping into her carriage, at 27 Halfmoon Street, that Police Sergeant Gray and Inspector Whall quietly requested a word or two with her. They explained that they held a warrant for her arrest on a charge of bigamy, she having intermarried with Cornet Heald while her lawful husband, Captain James, was still alive. Lola replied that she had been divorced from the captain by an act of Parliament. She added with characteristic petulence: “I don’t know whether Captain James is alive or not, and I don’t care. I was married in a wrong name, and it wasn’t a legal marriage. Lord Brougham was present when the divorce was granted, and Captain Osborne can prove it. What will the King say?” she murmured, as an after-thought, and referring no doubt to her late royal protector.
They drove to the police-station, and thence to Marlborough Street Police Court. The rumour of the arrest had spread abroad, and the approaches to the court were thronged with people, eager to get a glimpse of the famous Countess of Landsfeld. The “respectable married women” in the crowd no doubt exulted at the anticipated downfall of the woman who could bind men’s hearts without the chains of law or Church.
“About half-past one o’clock,” says the reporter, “the Countess of Landsfeld, leaning on the arm of Mr. Heald, her present husband, came into court, and was accommodated with a seat in front of the bar. Mr. Heald was also allowed to have a chair beside her. The lady appeared quite unembarrassed, and smiled several times as she made remarks to her husband. She was stated to be 24 years of age on the police-sheet, but has the look of a woman of at least 30. [She was, in fact, 31.] She was dressed in black silk, with close fitting black velvet jacket, a plain white straw bonnet trimmed with blue, and blue veil. In figure she is rather plump, and of middle height, of pale dark complexion, the lower part of the features symmetrical, the upper part not so good, owing to rather prominent cheek bones, but set off by a pair of unusually large blue eyes with long black lashes. Her reputed husband, Mr. Heald, during the whole of the proceedings, sat with the countess’s hand clasped in both of his own, occasionally giving it a fervent squeeze, and at particular parts of the evidence whispering to her with the fondest air, and pressing her hand to his lips with juvenile warmth.”22
The magistrate, Mr. Peregrine Bingham, having taken his seat, Mr. Clarkson opened the case for the prosecution. “Sir,” he began, “however painful the circumstances under which the lady who sits at my left (Miss Heald) is placed, she has felt it to be a duty to her deceased brother, the father of the young gentleman now in court, to lay before you the evidence of this young gentleman’s marriage with the lady at the bar, and also other evidence which has led her to impute the offence of bigamy to that lady.” The learned counsel then went on to state that Lola had been married to Thomas James in Ireland, in July 1837, that a divorce only a toro et mensâ (i.e., a judicial separation) had been pronounced by the Consistory Court in 1842, and that Captain James was alive in India thirty-six days before the celebration of the second marriage with Heald. He deprecated any sort of allusion to the defendant’s distinction or notoriety, concluding: “I am further bound to state that this proceeding is on the part of the aunt, Miss Heald, without the consent of Mr. Heald, her nephew, who would, no doubt, if he could, prevent these proceedings from being carried on. No one, I think, will venture to impugn the motives or the purity of the intentions of Miss Heald in taking this step. My application is for the lady at the bar to be remanded till we can get the proper witnesses from India to come forward.”
Miss Heald, who went into the witness-box, explained her relationship to the accused’s second husband, said she had been his guardian, and stated she considered it was her duty to prosecute this enquiry. When old ladies do any one a bad turn or make themselves a nuisance, they always explain that they are prompted by a sense of duty. For my part, I take up the challenge thrown down sixty years ago by Mr. Clarkson, and I impugn the purity of his client’s motives. If it had been her object to prevent any family complications in the future, such as might have arisen from the birth of children to Lola and her nephew, she could have laid the facts before them in private; and if they had refused to separate, she should have remained for ever silent. I entertain no doubt whatever that Miss Susanna Heald wished to ruin the Countess of Landsfeld, and that this was at any rate one of her motives in instituting police court proceedings.
The rest of the evidence was purely formal, and included the testimony of Captain Ingram, in whose ship Lola had come to England seven years before.
Mr. Bodkin appeared on behalf of the lady, who had been dragged that morning to a station-house, to answer a charge which, in all his professional experience, was perfectly unparalleled. He never recollected a case of bigamy in which neither the first nor the second husband came forward in the character of a complaining party. The matter, would, however, undergo investigation, and if anything illegal had been done, those who had done the illegality would be held responsible for their conduct. As far as the proof had gone he was willing to admit enough had been laid before the court to justify further enquiry. At the proper time he should be prepared to show that the marriage with Mr. Heald was a lawful act. It would seem that the lady had been married when about fifteen or sixteen years old, and that a divorce had taken place. It was evident that the lady had a strong impression that a divorce bill had been obtained in the House of Lords. This, however, might be a mistake, into which the lady would be likely to fall from her ignorance of our laws. Enough had been stated to show that even had the imputed offence been committed, it had been committed in circumstances that appeared to justify the act. He asked the court to admit the lady to bail, to appear upon such a day as might be agreed upon. It was in the highest degree improbable that the parties most interested would attempt to evade an enquiry of this sort. He made no reflection on the motives of the prosecution, but it must be clear that a private and not a public object originated the proceedings.
Mr. Bodkin had not detected the flaw in his adversary’s case, and he had conceded too much to the prosecution. The magistrate’s decision must have mortified his professional feelings as much as it chagrined the amiable Miss Heald.
“Mr. Bingham, after a short consultation with Mr. Hardwick, said: ‘It is observable in the present case that the person most immediately interested (a person of full age and holding a commission in Her Majesty’s army) is not the person to institute or to countenance the prosecution. It is quite compatible with the evidence now produced that the accused may have received by the same mail from India a few hours later than the official return, a letter communicating the death of Captain James from cholera or some other casualty. The law presumes she is innocent till the usual proof of guilt is brought forward. Here that proof is wanting, and the magistrate is requested to act on a presumption of guilt. I feel great reluctance in doing so, even to the extent of a remand without an assurance on the part of the prosecutor that the evidence necessary to ensure a conviction will certainly be producible on a future occasion. No such assurance can be given in this case, because between the 13th June and the last marriage, a period of nearly six weeks, Captain James may have been snatched from life by any of those numerous casualties by which life is beset in a military profession and a tropical climate. However, upon the express admission of the advocate that in his judgment sufficient ground has been laid for further enquiry, and upon his offer to find security, I shall venture to order a remand, and to liberate the prisoner, upon finding two sureties in £500 each, and herself £1,000, for her reappearance here on a future day.’
“Bail was immediately tendered and accepted. The Countess of Landsfeld and her husband were allowed to remain some time in court in order to elude the gaze of the crowd.”
Her counsel’s blunder had cost Lola and her husband two thousand pounds.
The prosecution succeeded in ruining the beautiful woman against whom it was directed. A spiteful old lady had taken advantage of a bad law. The whole proceedings were cruel and vindictive. A law framed by bigots and administered by idiots condemned a woman to lose her conjugal rights; and when she attempted to contract new ties and create for herself a home, it threatened her with the punishment of a felon. Decrees like that of Dr. Lushington impose on women the alternatives of celibacy and prostitution. Lola, who was too human for the one, and too highly organised for the other, was accordingly bludgeoned, defamed, and driven out of society. Somewhere between this world and Nirvana there should be a flaming hell for the makers of our ancient English law; though, perhaps, we should seek them in the limbo of unbaptized innocents and idiots.
Lola did not share the magistrate’s belief in the probability of Captain James having been carried off by accident or fever. On the contrary, she thought it likely that Miss Heald would succeed in producing him in court. To defeat the malice of her enemies, she and Heald took their departure for the continent, via Folkestone and Boulogne, the day after her appearance at Marlborough Street, as an announcement in the Morning Herald testifies. For the next two years we have no reliable information as to the movements or the doings of the pair. Certain particulars are supplied by Eugène de Mirecourt, a wholly untrustworthy writer, who speaks ill of everybody, especially of Lola, and is again and again to be convicted of palpable and serious errors. According to his version,23 the newly married couple proceeded in the first instance to Spain, where two children were born to them. Here Monsieur de Mirecourt makes the first heavy draft on our credulity, for we can find elsewhere no trace of or allusion to the existence of any children of Lola Montez, who could have had no possible interest in abandoning or repudiating them, since they would have constituted a powerful claim on her wealthy young husband and his affluent relatives. Despite these pledges of affection, we are told, the domestic life of the Healds was troubled by violent quarrels. At Barcelona, in an access of fury, Lola stabbed her husband with a stiletto. The wounded man took to flight, but, unable to stifle his love for his wife, returned to her with assurances of renewed affection. However, he soon found reason to regret this step, and at Madrid again deserted the conjugal roof. Lola advertised for him as for a lost dog, and rewarded the person who found and restored him to her. Here Monsieur de Mirecourt’s effervescent Gallic humour seems to have betrayed him into what is at least unplausible.
“Paris,” he goes on to say, “had next the honour of sheltering this extraordinary couple. Madame sate for her portrait to Claudius Jacquand, but was obliged to interrupt the sitting every day on word being brought that her husband was about to take to flight. On one occasion she was obliged to pursue him as far as Boulogne. Claudius Jacquand painted them both together [this rather conflicts with the sense of the foregoing sentences], the husband presenting his wife with a rich parure of diamonds. When a definite rupture of their relations was decided upon, Heald wished the canvas to be cut in two, as he objected to appearing beside Lola. She, however, obtained possession of the picture in its entirety, and kept it in her room, with its face turned to the wall. ‘My husband,’ she explained, ‘ought not to see everything I do. It wouldn’t be decent.’
“The husband, upon his return to London, obtained a decree of nullity of marriage, and the year following was drowned at Lisbon, the swell of a passing steamer swamping the skiff in which he was taking his pleasure.”
Our delightfully unreliable informant adds that Captain James died in 1852, whereas he lived to witness the Franco-German war. De Mirecourt aimed rather at being funny than accurate, and succeeded in being neither one nor the other. In substance his carefully-seasoned story is true. Lola herself refers to her marriage with Heald as another unfortunate experience in matrimony. There was, no doubt, a fundamental difference in their temperaments, and the vagrant life in France and Spain must have brought out only too well the wife’s capacity for adventure, as much as it must have bored and irritated the well-connected young Englishman. In London they might have pulled together very well. He would have had his club and his race-meetings; she would have had her well-appointed household, her salon, and her box at the Opera. Miss Susanna Heald’s interference destroyed Lola’s dream of an established position, and wrecked two lives.