I
Having booked a number of engagements there, in December, 1857, Lola landed in New York for the second time. Directly she stepped off the ship, she was surrounded by a throng of reporters. Never losing the chance of making a speech, she gave them just what they wanted.
"America," she said, as they pulled out their note-books, "is the last refuge left the victims of tyranny and oppression in the old world. It is the finest monument to liberty ever erected beneath the canopy of heaven."
For her reappearance she offered the public Lola Montez in Bavaria, which had already done good service. By this time, however, it was a little frayed.
"The drama represents her as a coquettish and reckless woman," was the considered opinion of one critic. "We assure our readers she is nothing of the sort."
This testimonial was a help. Still, it could not infuse fresh life into a piece that had obviously outlived its popularity. Hence, she soon changed the bill for a double one, The Eton Boy and Follies of a Night. But the cash results were not much better; and when she left New York and tried her luck in Boston the week's receipts were scarcely two hundred dollars. This, in theatrical parlance, was "not playing to the gas."
Realising that she was losing her grip, she cast about for some fresh method of attracting the public. It was not long before she hit on one. As she was in a democratic country, she would make capital out of her "title." A plan was soon matured. This was to hold "receptions," where anybody would be welcome who was prepared to pay a dollar.
A dollar for ten minutes' chat with a genuine countess, and, for another 50 cents, the privilege of shaking her hand. A bargain. The tariff appealed to thousands. Among them Charles Sumner, the distinguished jurist, who declared of Lola Montez that, "She was by far the most graceful and delightful woman I ever met."
Her next scheme for raising the financial wind was to employ her pen. It was true that her "memoirs," strung together in Paris, had fallen flat--owing to the pusillanimity of the editor of Le Pays--but a full length "autobiography" would, she thought, stand a better prospect. Apart, too, from other considerations, there was now more material on which to draw. An embarrassing amount of it. She could say something--a lot--about the happenings in Bavaria, in France, in California, and in Australia. All good stuff, and a field hitherto untouched.