Feeling herself damaged in reputation, Lola's next step was to instruct her solicitor to bring an action for libel against Seekamp. The magistrate remitted the case to the superior court at Geelong. But, as an apology was offered and accepted, nothing more was heard of it.
This, however, was not the end of her troubles at Ballarat, for horse-whips were again to whistle in the air. But, this time Lola got more than she bargained for. She was using her whip on one Mr. Crosby, the manager of the theatre there, when that individual's spouse--a strong-minded and muscular woman--wrested the weapon from her and laid it across her own back.
The account given by an eye-witness is a little different. "At Ballarat," he says, "Lola pitched into and cross-buttocked a stalwart Amazon who had omitted to show her proper respect."
"Cross-buttocked" would appear to be an expression which, so far, has eluded the dictionary-makers.
In other parts of the Colony, however, Lola's reception more than made up for any little unpleasantnesses at Ballarat. "Her popularity," says William Kelly, an Australian squatter, "was not limited to the stage. She was welcomed with rapture on the gold fields, and all the more for the liberal fashion in which she 'shouted' when returning the hospitality of the diggers. Her pluck, too, delighted them, for she would descend the deepest shafts with as much nonchalance as if she were entering a boudoir."
From Sandhurst Lola Montez travelled to Bendigo, where the tour finished. There, says a pressman, "she lived on terms of the most cordial amity with the entire populace, and without a single disturbing incident to ruffle the serenity of the intercourse."
V
Having completed her tour in Australia, with considerable profit to herself, Lola Montez disbanded her company, and, in the autumn of 1856, returned to Europe. She had several offers from London; but, feeling that a rest was well earned, she left the ship at Marseilles and took a villa at St. Jean de Luz. While there, she appears to have occupied a certain amount of public attention. At any rate, Émile de Girardin, thinking it good "copy," reprinted in La Presse a letter she had written to the Estafette:
ST. JEAN DE LUZ, September 3, 1856.
Sir:
The French and Belgian papers are announcing as a positive fact that the suicide of Monsieur Mauclerc (who deliberately precipitated himself from the top of the Pic du Midi cliff) was caused by various troubles I had occasioned him. If he were still living, Monsieur Mauclerc would himself, I feel certain, contradict this calumny.