Lisztomania

Mon Dieu, the man could play! Sitting in the audience, hardly able to believe that I’d managed to get myself there in time, I let the cascading notes from the piano rejuvenate my spirit. Franz Liszt, in profile, was a demon of intensity; I had never heard anything like the sounds and emotion that he could produce from that inert-looking instrument. His long body was mostly still and concentrated, except for the vibrations of strength and power I could sense emanating from his spine. Occasionally his entire body would burst into action, like watching a kind of spontaneous combustion, then it would calm again, barely rippling, simply vibrating with the sounds he was creating. His hands were spellbinding, as the fingers danced and ripped across the keys with breath-taking speed.

What was this man before me made of? Alive to every second of cascading sound, I reviewed what I’d managed to glean: he’d been a child prodigy, born to simple Hungarian parents; had played every day of his life from the age of three or something astonishing; he’d performed before royalty many times. As a child, he’d even met Beethoven, when the composer was ill, deaf and about to die. Liszt had begun touring extensively in recent years, some papers reporting that it was to escape from a souring relationship with the mother of his children, Countess Marie d’Agoult. They were not married; this was a well-known source of scandal, but an old tale by now. Other reports claimed that Liszt gave many of his phenomenal earnings to various charities in the cities in which he played. Why on earth would he do that, I asked myself? Men, it’s true, have a longer shelf life—they can go on with their art form even if their attractiveness in body and face has left them. In our day and age, women are not generally granted such leniency.

As the music’s intensity increased, Liszt threw his mane of fair hair back with a swift lift and twist of his chin. He appeared to be in his early thirties, though his face was careworn and full of lines across the brow.

In order to examine him more closely, I wiggled my chair slightly further to the left, bumping it up against that of a crusty-looking dowager with large brown eyes, who raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. I smiled at her, then pinned my gaze back to the elevated platform and its two pianos.

The room we were in was pretty, decorated in pale pinks and ivories; the management must have squeezed over four hundred of these chairs into the place, and there were also men standing at the back, mashed in tightly together—perhaps another fifty or sixty. I’d been lucky to talk my way in, for this concert had been oversold for the past week, almost as soon as the announcement had been made. I’d begged and pleaded, telling anyone who would listen that I’d dropped everything to be here, spent a small fortune in travel, and so on and so on, whereupon a kind gentleman waiting in line and now standing at the back had taken pity upon me, allowing me to occupy his seat. Lovely stranger! I’d given him a very thankful kiss upon the cheek, which sent him away blushing and embarrassed, but also rather proud of himself.

For this final selection, Liszt had moved back to the nearer piano, which, luckily, was exactly opposite me. He’d gone back and forth between the two instruments during the whole concert; at first I’d thought it was so that each side of the room could see him from different angles, but during the previous piece, his roar of sound had actually snapped a piano wire. So here he was, directly before me.

Such rapturous notes, rippling and frothing, and sometimes shocking the heart rate. This is it, I told myself, this must be it! I couldn’t afford to lose my concentration! I sat up very straight, willing it to happen: something had to happen, I had to make it happen. The music was nearing a crescendo. Liszt’s hands were flying—sustained, crashing waves of sound—and then it came. He looked up, for one second. His eyes fell upon me, mine upon his. I felt the jolt of lightning contact, the explosive flash as our gaze connected. I was sure he’d felt it, too, for his hands raised suddenly above the keyboard for one brief hesitation—hardly noticeable, but I sensed it—before he plunged on into the finale. The woman beside me looked over and I could feel her gaze move up and down me, from hairline to toes. I ignored it in case the pianist would look up to see me again. But no. He finished, rose, bowed and exited! Immediately, three women in the front row leapt towards the platform, snatching up the white gloves he’d thrown under the piano before he’d started to play. They began squabbling, tearing the gloves to shreds in their frenzy to possess a piece of the god of music.

Had I missed my chance? Was it all over? I couldn’t believe it had come to an end so quickly, and that he’d disappeared.

“Who are you, my dear?” the dowager beside me asked, touching me on the knee with her closed fan.

“My name is Lola Montez,” I said, craning to see which exit Liszt had taken and not sure because of the sea of bodies, now standing and chattering. “I am a dancer.”

“Ah, indeed.” A smile crossed her lips. “Do you know our great friend?”

“Franz Liszt?”

“That’s who I mean, yes.”

“No, to my regret, I do not. Or—not yet.” I was still craning my neck, and it just slipped out.

“I see.” Would this sad-eyed woman now berate me for voicing what so many other young women probably said? Was I just another fool of a girl, trying to horn her way in to a world that’s beyond her? I raised my chin and looked at the woman defiantly.

“I wish to meet him. What’s wrong with that?”

The woman’s mouth pursed again, and then another cat-like curl moved across it. “Not a thing. It’s the most natural reaction to genius, isn’t it? We wish to touch it, to be part of it. Though,” she said, and she looked at me piercingly, “I do not think it would be good for him.”

Who was she to make such a pronouncement? I rose to my feet—I had to try to find him, and she was preventing it—but she took hold of my wrist as I turned to move away. “Wait.” She dug adeptly into her reticule and, to my surprise, brought forth a nib and a small bottle of ink. “I will take a note backstage. I won’t read it, I promise. I know what you will likely say.” Now her lips were openly smiling. I suppose I looked confused, so she added, “I am his friend. I am going there now, to raise a glass with him as he recovers, but they won’t let you come too. So why not trust me?”

I didn’t know what to think. This middle-aged person (not perhaps as old as I’d originally assumed) with the large brown eyes of a Guernsey cow, sitting there, speaking with a kind of complacent superiority—was I losing my best chance of meeting the man I had come so far to see?

“I am Countess Dudevant,” the woman said, putting the ink and nib upon my chair and pulling out a thick ivory calling card. “Write on the back of this, dear.” She folded her hands in her lap, the card upon the chair. Should I believe her? This aristocratic stranger? Would she not simply tear it up, or make a joke of me to her great acquaintance? Just another fanatically emotional young woman, trying to touch the hem of fame. “Though friends call me George,” the woman added, a twinkle and a question in her eyes.

What a strange name for a countess, I thought, glancing down at the card. But then returned to the crucial matter in hand—what to say? I mused for a second, nibbling the pen’s tip, before dipping it in the ink and writing, “Our eyes met. Please call on me, so that we may unite our artistic paths. Lola Montez.” I scribbled the name of my hotel on the bottom, then folded the card in half.

The mysterious friend of Liszt held out her gloved hand, took it, rose and made her way out of the rapidly emptying concert hall. I was broken-hearted—I’d missed my best chance, I was sure, by allowing her to distract me!

I trailed disconsolately off to my hotel, deflated and anxious. Oh, God, now what? What was I doing there? What was I doing anywhere? My most fervent desire was to be an independent woman who could earn her own money and rely strictly upon herself—so why did it seem so damned difficult?

I climbed up to my little rented room on the third floor, a dark, dank space with a mattress that sagged depressingly in the middle. How many sad and damaged lives had spent a night there? I didn’t wish to know. Undressing, and slipping beneath the covers, a correspondingly sad thought assailed me: a brief note I’d received from my mother, a missive that had caught up with me before I’d left Warsaw a few months earlier: ‘Craigie dead at forty-four. Nowhere to turn. Where are you, so that I may join you?’

Craigie was my stepfather, a great and kind man who had loved me as a little girl in India, head-strong though I was, and then loved and cared for me from afar when I’d gotten into terrible trouble at fourteen, at my detested boarding school in Bath. I’d had a baby—little Emma—and my mother never knew. She would have had a fit; neither Craigie nor I would ever have heard the end of the martyred punishment she’d have inflicted upon us. Emma was with Craigie’s sister Catherine and her husband Herbert, in England, being raised as their beloved daughter, and Emma knew nothing of me except as a mysterious relative that she’d never met. I’d held her—once—but I loved her, dearly. She’d be nine years old now… God, oh God… I still couldn’t believe dear Craigie was dead—I hoped he hadn’t suffered—and that my mother was once again a widow. And looking for me? Only fourteen when she’d had me, she’d be thirty-eight now, and I would never—never! Oh, it didn’t bear thinking about. I was lonely and sorrowful, yes, but I would never submit to the kind of misery that she could inflict, or else I would be truly lost.

I buried my head beneath the flaccid pillow, trying to silence the jangling chords that were drowning out Liszt’s masterful ones.

*

The following morning, just after ten o’clock, there was a knock on my door. When I opened, the maid curtsied and told me that a gentleman had called for me and was in the waiting room downstairs. Did I know, right away? Of course I hoped. Certainly the news sent me into a frenzy of rushing about, wondering whether I’d chosen my best dress, trying to pile my long black tresses even higher, pinching my cheeks and biting my lips to make them full of colour.

I rifled through my portmanteau, then wrapped myself in my most picturesque Spanish shawl. It had silken fringes that were over a foot in length and swished about my legs with excellent seductiveness. Skewering my twisted-up hair with a gaily-painted comb, a small black lace mantilla was thereby attached. I must look every inch the Spanish lady, I told myself, and ensure that my intonations are full of the sibilances of Andalusia, whatever language I attempt when speaking with Herr Liszt. Nobody knows me or can denounce me here; no one must ever be able to discern my Irish roots. “I repudiate them utterly,” I said aloud, glaring at myself in the mirror that sat above the room’s small mantel. That face stared back, chin lifted and eyes blazing. Deep inside those eyes, the rebellious girl that I had been—kicking and flailing out against my mother, eloping with one of her admirers in order to escape an arranged marriage she’d cooked up for me—that girl was still there, still wild. Somewhat trampled and mangled, perhaps, but still wild. “Never let them know you’re afraid,” I told my reflection. These were the words of my Spanish lover, my darling, dashing General Diego de Léon. He had recognized and celebrated the wildness in me, and urged me to step fully into the woman I wished to become. Play hard, without fear, Bandida: this was Diego’s gambling credo, and now it was mine. I am Doña Maria Dolores de Porris y Montez!

Courage, Lola, and shuffle the cards.

Downstairs I went, and there he was: Franz Liszt. A quizzical grin bloomed upon his gaunt face as he saw me enter in my high Spanish shoes. He stood and took a step towards me. There were a number of other guests and hotel people in the room, and I was aware of their curiosity, so I approached the great man very demurely. We stood facing each other, about five feet apart. I was pleased to sense that everyone knew who he was and wondered what he was doing here. I knew I must proceed carefully.

“Good morning, Herr Liszt,” I said in my halting German. “I am most pleased that you have called upon me.”

“Would you prefer to speak in French?” he asked me in that language. “I do not know Spanish, alas, but French is a tongue that I am very comfortable with. And perhaps it is not so well known—by everyone in this room, ja?”

We smiled at each other, very easily. “Bien sûr, monsieur.”

“Come, let’s take a turn about the garden,” and he held out his arm for me. The whispering began even before we were out of the room; I saw that one of the younger women seemed to be having palpitations from the way her companions were administering to her.

Liszt’s arm was thin and taut, like piano wire encased in flesh. He really was tall, towering at least a foot above me, and I am above average in height. His fair hair glowed in the sunshine; he flung it often, with that sideways motion of the head, away from his brow. We conversed gently about the flowers we were passing but my heart was beginning to beat quite quickly—from fear, from anticipation? Fear of failure, or…? Fear of the man’s undoubted grandeur? Would I know what to say? Would his discourse be of politics, and make me look like a fool? Or of musical complexities, compositional perplexities or mathematical equations? What do geniuses talk about?

He glanced down, and through my colly-wobbles, I did appreciate the smile he bestowed upon me, as well as the sparkle of interest in his sea green eyes. “Now, Mademoiselle Montez, what exactly did you mean by uniting our artistic paths?”

I laughed; a foolish thing to do, I suppose, but I was unusually nervous. “Rather bold, I’m afraid.”

“Not at all. That is what made me curious enough to come. Believe me, I don’t usually respond to admirers’ notes, that would be far too exhausting. But this one made me sit up and take notice.”

“I am very glad of that.” I couldn’t seem to speak; my tongue was cloth.

“And George told me that you were exquisitely beautiful, with your dark black hair, your deep blue eyes and kissable lips. And so they are.” Still smiling, he looked up and all about to see whether we were quite alone. Sadly, we were not—several people from the waiting room had followed us out into the garden and had their eyes fixed upon us. He lowered his voice. “So, I have called upon you, as you requested. My suggestion now is that I hail a cab this very moment, and that you come with me. I hope I haven’t shocked you.”

I shook my head, no. “I’ll come, yes. This very moment.”

We walked the pebble path around the side of the hotel and out towards the street. The others from the waiting room were following, and as Liszt hailed a cab, flinging out his long arm to do so, one of the women plucked up her courage and rushed over. “Please,” she begged. “Please sign my book, Herr Liszt?” as she thrust it out and into his face. “I love your music, you are so wonderful! I’ve been reading about you for years, and always hoped you would come to our small city. I was there last night at the concert and—” She burbled on and on while Liszt signed her little book, then passed it back. She hugged it to her bosom and turned bright red. The cab was waiting, and Liszt now turned to help me inside. As he bent to climb in, the woman grabbed at his coat-tails. He reached behind to whisk them out of her grasp, then closed the carriage door. Nodding out the window, “Fräulein,” he banged the ceiling of the carriage with his walking stick and the driver took us away.

“Does that happen often?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, far too often. And worse.”

His hotel was not far off. I sat trembling with… Not fear exactly. I was far too experienced for that. It was anticipation, of course, and excitement—I hadn’t been with a man that I cared about in ever so long. Did I care about him, already? I can’t say that with certainty; it was too soon. But, undeniably, there was something about the smell of fame that was making me absolutely wet with desire. Bad, isn’t it, to admit such a thing?

We gained entry to his hotel with no one remarking upon it, then ascended to the third floor, all very calmly and modestly. He unlocked the door, we stepped inside, and he locked us in. I stood there, wondering what would happen next, whether I should dare to take the initiative.

“Lola,” he said quietly. “That’s a pretty name. A Spanish name.”

I nodded; my palms were wet now, as well as other parts.

“What is your artistic path, that I should unite with it?”

Oh, my, he certainly cut to the chase.

“I am a dancer, from Seville—” I began.

“The one who slashes Prussian officers.”

I gasped, and at that, he laughed out loud, a good laugh because it came from the belly and was full of genuine mirth. He’d obviously seen the infamous cartoon of me—me, Lola Montez!—slashing a Prussian gendarme across the cheek, and sending legions of mounted gendarmes fleeing from my wrath.

“I hope you haven’t brought your riding crop with you,” he added. “That it’s not hidden in those lovely skirts. May I check?” And his arms were around my waist, his long hands running up and down my thighs. “No whip, but something even better,” he breathed in my ear, bending his head, with his golden hair falling forward. “A pair of strong and no doubt lovely legs. I love the forwardness of your words, my dear Lola, and the boldness of your eyes. You made me skip three notes last night, and I could not retrieve them. That happens—never.”

I tipped my face up to his at this and kissed him. I liked it, so I reached up and held his smoothly shaven cheeks between my hands, kissing and tasting his lips and his tongue. He was interesting; he turned it into an exploratory kiss, not full of haste and a rush to pull off our clothing. That’s unusual, for a first time, surely? I was more full of haste than he—and then it occurred to me that maybe he’d stop, think better of what he was doing, and there I’d be, hung out to dry with desire for this man of whom everybody wanted a piece. I wanted more than a piece. I wanted, suddenly, more than anything, to know what made him breathe hard, what he liked, what his thoughts were, the way he’d cry out, what parts of me would make him harder. I’d been without for such a long time, and my body could hardly wait to give and feel delight.

“Where is the bed?” I asked.

“Through that door.”

We began moving slowly towards it as I undid his neckerchief and he loosened my hair. It was a slow dance towards nakedness that I liked very much. As it was revealed, bit by bit, I could see that all of his skin was incredibly white, as if he stayed strictly out of the sun; he was without an ounce of fat, and yet not bony. Just enough flesh covering the muscles to make him strong, keep him flexible. Usually I like to laugh in the bedchamber—it releases tension and keeps things light—but with Liszt, there was silence and grace instead. One part of my aroused mind noted the ease with which he sat on the edge of the bed to remove his trousers. Usually, with men, this was an amusing exercise in disencumbering themselves of awkward tubes of fabric, turned inside out and yanked from the foot in lusty haste, but Liszt slipped out of them like a snake its skin.

He rose again—and there it was. Standing hard, for me. Long and pale as the rest of him. By then I was shivering with anticipation of delights to come. I turned around so that he could unlace me, and as he stood to do so, I could feel his prick nudging the middle of my back, first through folds of fabric, then against bare skin. I’d never made love with such a tall man—what would that be like? Would I feel crushed against his chest, would it be difficult to breathe? He turned me again to kiss me, bending like a stork to reach my lips. I urged him to the bed, where we lay down, and where any worries about our differences in size were forgotten. I found myself overwhelmingly excited, and, for a change, had to try to slow to meet his pace. I was so thrilled and ready that, as his hand stroked and circled my breast and his lips tickled my belly, I came with a loud cry and a voluptuous shuddering all over.

He propped himself on an elbow. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. “Or—to be clearer—not when I am doing so little.”

I was about to apologize, or something ridiculous, but he added, “That was very beautiful, Lola Montez. I thank you for trusting me, and be assured, I haven’t finished with you yet.”

Mon Dieu, what a wonderful afternoon. Franz Liszt was a very thoughtful lover. His fingers seem almost to be able to disjoint themselves, to spread apart more widely than would be believed. The pads of his fingers are flat and broad, and—as one would imagine—he is very skilled with them, and not just upon the piano. “Your legs are so fine, Lola,” he told me, moving one hand higher and higher, and going on kissing me. “How round, how lovely your thigh is…” His fingers slipped inside my satiny, wet lips, and our mouths were also glued together; he was playing me like a sonata. Soon enough there was more of him inside me, and the sonata became soulful and deep—almost to the point of pain, for his member is very long and he is a very intense man. These moments, though, as all lovers know, are so engrossing in their deliciousness… They defy description, they simply melt and flow, amid murmurs and short, sharp cries of rapture. In the warm bed, absorbed in sensations, not another word passed between us ’til he had spent, with a soundless force.

“Oh, too quick, too quick,” he breathed then, “Lay still.” We kept together in our fleshy conjunction; I tightened my muscles to keep him inside. We lay that way, and before too long, little stimulus was needed; our spends, separately, had only made us want it again, together, if we could manage it. How wonderful it is when the world is right and the impulse is great in both; when, thrilling with lust, when prick and quim are joined, both come to a hot eclipse at almost exactly the same moment! It’s not a commonplace circumstance, perhaps—and one at a time is equally gorgeous—but when it does happen, it feels like true bliss.

Repose then became a pleasure, and we drew apart, resting. Reaching down, I laughed and told him, “Oh, how wet you’ve made me. It’s all over the sheet.” Holding his slippery member, I took his fingers and guided them again between my legs. “You’re a fine one to talk,” he smiled. “You’re like a paste-pot.” I laughed, and, hands still upon each other, we dozed off.

Liszt woke first, and this time it was more like a mazurka, fast and randy and very fun, full of punch-drunk, lusty chatter: “Let me feel…” “Oh, I’m coming!—my God!” “I can’t wait, I must—!” By then, of course, we’d begun to relax with each other, having passed the first test by providing pleasurable sensations without too much imperativeness, and now freeing our voices to utter nonsense and libidinous cries.

Finally we fell apart again, sweating and sated.

“Tell me about that cartoon,” he said with a lazy yawn, stretching his long torso out upon the mattress.

“Mm, very well,” I answered, pleased to be asked—pleased to be with someone who wanted to converse. I’d been constrained for so long. “The whole thing was quite a to-do.”

“So I gather.”

“It was last August. I’d just arrived in Berlin, to find the city in a frenzy. Czar Nicholas I of Russia had arrived. Tens of thousands of visitors were all trying to catch a glimpse of the great and powerful ruler. Fine, I thought. Why not me, too?”

He propped his left heel into the big toe and second toe of his right foot; the narrow feet rose above the mattress, one on top of the other. “Paint me the picture…”

One of my favourite things: telling a story! I sat up in bed, naked, legs tucked under me and resting on my heels, ready to enchant him. “It was the day of the Grand Parade,” I began. “I’d hired a first-rate saddle horse, and purchased a stylishly-cut amazon outfit in deep red velvet to ride him in.” (Remembering how proud I’d felt, and how much I’d adored the accompanying riding chapeau I’d also purchased: like a small hatbox, with black veiling attached to the back of it, which flew along behind me like a second tail as we galloped). “I rode to the Friedrichfelde to see what all the fuss was about. There were absolutely thousands of people and horses and military men, you see—and perhaps it’s true that I went too close, but it wasn’t intentional. My horse, I think, shied suddenly at the sound of gunshots—another military salute or something—and somehow I found myself inside the circle reserved for important personages. Very close to the czar himself, in fact, with his little pointy beard and mean, squinty eyes.”

Franz gave a snort at this—“Were you, now?”—then reached out languidly to caress my waist.

“An officer galloped over and yanked at my horse’s bridle to pull me away, cutting the animal’s mouth. I simply reacted—he’d startled me, and hurt the horse—so I lashed out with my riding whip: shissht!” I slashed with my arm through the air above Franz’s head, to show him the manoeuver.

He flinched, then began to chuckle, a deep sort of rumble as if he was employing the bass pedal on his piano. “And then?”

“Well, immediately, the gash on the man’s cheek started to bleed quite profusely—though he did let go of my rein. So I rode away and forgot about it. But apparently the fellow was outraged. First, that I was a woman on her own—which seems to be a crime in itself, for some men.”

“Indeed.”

I was getting riled again, just thinking about it. “Second, since I wasn’t a servant or other subordinate, he couldn’t punish me or take away my wages. Third, I wasn’t a man, so he couldn’t challenge me to a duel—and just as well for him, for little did he know what a crack shot I am!”

“Are you, Lola? However did that come about?” Liszt asked, with a real curiosity that made his sleepy eyes open and his frowning brow corrugate.

“Too long a story for here,” I said, giving his celebrated nose a kiss. What a boldness! But not, surely, after all the other boldnesses we’d just been indulging in. “That evening, I was served with an official summons to answer a charge of assault on a Prussian officer. I mean, how ludicrous! I ripped it up.”

“You didn’t.”

“It might have been a mistake…” A brief pause, then, “I was charged with contempt of the legal process.”

Here Liszt began to laugh—snorts and chuckles first, followed by a medley of amused sounds as I went on to finish my tale. “There were two articles in the press about the whole silly thing the next day. The officer’s honour had been besmirched, ‘Ladies of outrageous behaviour do not merit gentlemanly conduct,’ and so on. I was advised to leave Berlin. And Germany!”

A huge guffaw.

“I know, I can still hardly believe it, but that is what happened!” I checked to see whether he was genuinely amused, and since he seemed to be, I carried on. “A further result was the cartoon in the press, of me—Lola Montez!—slashing an officer with a wicked-looking whip. Then that first cartoon expanded into—”

“The one of you chasing the terrified legions.”

“It was a sensation, that second one.”

“I saw it everywhere,” he averred. “In several different countries.”

“And it gave me more press than I would ever have dreamed possible.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” he nodded, wiping at his eyes.

“It wasn’t all good press, perhaps,” I faltered, before recovering with, “—but not completely bad either.”

“And how do you make that out?”

“It opened doors. When I mentioned my name after that, people already knew me. You knew me.” I had just realized it. “That’s the real reason you agreed to meet me, wasn’t it? You were intrigued; you were challenged.”

“I admit nothing.”

I leapt on him and pinned him to the mattress with a torrent of kisses.

Once we’d laughed ourselves breathless and his chuckles were easing, he whispered, “Well, now, my lady of outrageous behaviour…”

“Oh yes, let’s, Herr Liszt!”

And this time I had the momentous happiness of experiencing the real cri de coeur of a genius. Although he protested he was “exhausted, I’m spent, my dear creature, completely wrung out,” I persisted because I could sense that he had more stamina than he knew. It was my turn to play him, and I think it is safe to say that my performance was virtuoso. Up and down, up and down his long, thin member, first with hands, and then with all of me—for I am very athletic; it’s one of my passions. My athleticism was something Diego went crazy for. Most men seem astonished, and yet once they’ve experienced it, they crave it: that is, a woman who enjoys it as much as they do. Like a jockey on a winning steed, riding full tilt for the finish line: Lola, the athletic jockey, with knees high and imaginary whip in hand. All the sensations inside him roiling through that one potent connection, up and down, up and down—and the finish line was an enormous bellow of release. When I dismounted—ecstatically, proudly—rolling into his arms, he held me tight, a deep sense of peace enfolding us. And it was beautiful, as beautiful as it was private… Only for me and for him…

I watched him for a long time, his closed orbs, the troubled face. Watched the lines relax, the care lift away, the breathing soften. His hands—those instruments of wizardry—upon my skin… I memorized them; I’ll never forget the look and feel of them, cupping the curve of my hip instead of his keyboard. Amazing, and all for me! The touch of a genius. Fame’s caress… I wanted it so badly, fame. Why? Sometimes I hardly know—but, if I had to explain it… I suppose for excitement, for the novelty of new things, new experiences, for open doors. The security of ready money, always to hand. To be known for something that sets you apart. For vanity? I hope not, but yes, perhaps… I lay awake, as he slept, hoping for what might happen next, what might come of this. Of course, no one can plan such things—no one can force them. Life is a complex web, and Franz Liszt was deeply entangled by it.

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 done 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.”

“How old…?”

“Blandine is nine, Cosima eight.”

My heart clenched as I thought of nine-year-old Emma, pictured her trusting face. The only thing she had of me was the pair of peridot earbobs I’d sent her in a moment of terrible guilt.

“Ah well,” he went on. “That is not for you to bear.” I almost told him, but then did not. What would have been the point? He might have hated me for deserting my child, he who did everything for his own. Peering at the letter, he read aloud, “‘Beneath the French veneer you have managed to don, one still finds in you the Hungarian peasant.’ Mm. Her barbs sting more unerringly each time. I blame myself. I tour, I work, I leave her on her own; she has borne me three children in a very short period of time. What else can I expect?” He put the letter down, removed his glasses, and gave me a sad, lingering kiss. “What has happened between us, Lola… I ask you to keep it to yourself, always. Can you do that, I wonder?”

“I can. I will.”

“Sleep well, my dear. Life goes on.” He turned onto his side, and in a few minutes was asleep.

I lay awake, staring into the darkness for quite a long time. Does it? Mostly, while with Franz, I had managed to forget the throbbing heartache of my lost love—except in the depths of night, in the dark. General Diego de Léon… Lithe and compact, a small, cat-like man with brown, hot skin, and a magical mustache… During my year in Spain, I’d begun so well… I’d danced and played Cupid in a musical play, in Madrid. But, with Diego, I’d become entangled in a kidnapping attempt for the moderados cause, trying to return the two little Spanish princesses to their waiting mamá, the ex-regent María Cristina, in Paris. It had gone badly wrong. Diego and his fellow general, Manuel de la Concha, had been captured and shockingly executed—by firing squad, at dawn!—with unseemly haste and without a trial, by order of the prime minister, Baldomero Espartero, a vengeful former commander during the Carlist War.

Curled up grimly, muffling all sounds with both hands, I began juddering again with grief—shaking the mattress with it. Useless grief. It would never bring Diego back. He’d been silenced forever with six bullets to the heart. His strong and courageous heart. I’d been so young… At twenty-two, I’d no idea that love could be so swiftly extinguished, that fate could go so badly awry. That joy is given in the moment and promised for the future, but the world never stops moving, and before you know it, everything shifts.

My nights with Franz had helped salve the ache, but not entirely, oh, not at all. And soon I was to be cast adrift again, back into a loveless world where evil lurked, ready to tear fierce bites out of you. I lay there, awake for hours, trying not to move, curled into the small of Franz’s back, breathing in the warm scent of his long, sleeping body.

*

And then, two things occurred that turned everything upside down.

The following evening, I went with Franz to a new opera by a cash-strapped young acquaintance of his named Richard Wagner, an ugly, earnest man with a thick, gobbling sort of accent. Franz had kissed me and told me that we would have fun; he didn’t think to warn me that the event, titled Rienzi, was five hours in length. Dios mío! I was going insane by the second hour, and it was without intermission until almost the third. No one’s writing or composing warrants that interminableness! After the interval, I swear, Franz had to use his sweetest, mildest words to convince me to re-enter the plushy chamber of tedium. During the fourth and fifth hour, I stood in our box and did leg exercises, not caring a fart what anyone thought. Conceited, overblown twit of a composer—I wanted to strangle him. I remember thinking that George would probably love the piece of shite, since it was about a populist figure who defeats the nobles and champions the people, but I chafed and jerked, flinging myself about with boredom, and then I fell asleep. When I woke, I cheered—loudly—when I realized that the populace had turned against Rienzi and was burning the Capitol, because at least it meant the bloody thing would be over.

Backstage, I guessed that Wagner’s eyes had been glued to Liszt’s every reaction from wherever he’d been sitting (like a toad in its hole). He glared at me with a squinched-up face, though Franz told him nice, complimentary things. As we turned away, I could hear the ugly fellow mutter, “Heartless, demonic being.”

I rounded upon him. “Who, me?” (¡Bastardo! ¡Cabrón!)

Franz placed a hand on my arm.

“I should think that you are the heartless being,” I snapped, “keeping us entrapped like that for so long!” Having delivered myself of this, I vowed to say no more, though the toad was looking me up and down with undisguised malice.

“Good evening, then, Richard,” Franz said with a bow.

“Her eyes are insolent.”

“Her eyes see more than you and me,” Franz rejoined. He took my arm and urged me away through the departing crowds and then through the streets, back to our hotel.

I was exhausted, it was two o’clock in the morning and Franz was as pale as milk, but I had to ask.

“What did you mean by that, Franz? It sounded lovely, but what did it mean?”

He was lying back upon the bed, without a stitch of clothing, and without desire. “Not tonight, Lola, it’s far too late.”

I lay beside him, also naked. “Your friend, the composer. I’m sorry I said that, I really am. It’s just… It reminded me of—I get testy when…”

“When what, my dear?”

“When I’m treated dismissively. In Paris, another theatre man insulted me, just because he could, and I don’t think men should get away with that.”

“I don’t either,” Franz said mildly, eyes closed.

“It was Alexandre Dumas, a hippopotamus with a swelled head, a—”

“Alexandre is a good fellow, Lola.”

“What? You know him?”

“He’s a large-hearted soul.”

“Pooh! He is not.”

Two years earlier, I’d been introduced to Dumas in Paris by the impresario Juan de Grimaldi, a man who’d seemed so willing to help my theatrical ambitions. Grimaldi turned out to be a government agent—yes, a spy—for exiled Spanish royalty. He was the one who had gotten me into the whole Spanish mess in the first place.

“Alexandre Dumas is finally beginning to enjoy the success he deserves,” Franz was saying. “It’s been a long time coming, and he’s worked very hard.”

“Hmph. What’s the success, yet another woman-belittling play?”

“No, something else. Novels. In serialized form. A new thing, apparently, and it’s caught on. Marie is very interested in this. She’s dabbling, has friends in the business who attend her salons. She tells me that Alexandre is at the edge of a precipice of wild accomplishment.”

I was disgusted: more adulation for that insatiable appetite in the shape of a man. I retorted hotly, “The last time I saw Dumas was at the funeral of a young girl who’d been murdered. He was unutterably rude and in a foul mood, completely absorbed with himself.”

“He’s a writer,” Franz said.

“That’s no excuse! I stood up in the church and in front of everyone, I challenged Alexandre Dumas to a duel!”

Liszt’s eyes opened. He turned his head to look at me, a smile upon his lips. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

His eyes closed again, and the grin spread. “Incorrigible.” And his prick began to rise.

*

I awoke the next morning to find that Franz was not in the bed. I could hear him moving around in the other room. A loud, repeated knocking at the door was probably what had woken me. “I’m coming,” I heard him say, then he turned to look back into the bedroom. “I’ll close you in, sleepy one, and get rid of whoever this is.” Tightening the sash of his smoking jacket, he gently shut the door.

I lay back again, replaying images of passion from the night before. Every muscle in my body felt tired, but elated. I wondered what we’d do later that day, and I yawned voluptuously. Outside the bedroom, a little clatter as Franz opened the door of Number 17, followed by a deep rumble of unknown words as he spoke to whoever was standing there. Then suddenly, a woman’s curt voice.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding. Very luxurious, I’m sure, and very expensive. Will you let me in, or must I stand out here like one of your admirers?”

Lusty images fled—I bolted upright, covering my breasts with the rumpled sheets. The woman spoke in French, with traces of a German accent.

“Marie, my dear, what are you doing in Dresden? I thought you were not well—”

“True, thanks to you I am very unwell, but that doesn’t mean I should never go anywhere.” The woman—Countess Marie d’Agoult, it must be—was walking back and forth around the outer room in an agitated manner. “I decided to visit my people in Frankfurt, if it’s any business of yours—and then, since I’d come so far, to come along and see what you’ve been doing with yourself. Performing your tricks for anyone who’ll pay to listen. Have you been having fun?” Her voice was brittle and angry.

Merde, and triple fuck! What in God’s name was I going to do? My heart had leapt into my throat with a sickening bound. I’d never been the culprit in this dreadful, clichéd situation, and I wished devoutly that I could melt into the mattress, disappear, hear nothing more! Definitely not to be a major player in this (no doubt) swiftly approaching scene.

“I hear that George is here,” the woman’s voice continued. “Frédéric has been complaining bitterly that she’s abandoned him. I know the feeling.”

“My dear Marie—”

“I hope you haven’t decided to bed my best friend. I know she’d love it, if only for the experience, and to be able to talk about it to everyone and anyone, then write it down in one of her sordid little novels.”

“Please, stop, don’t say such things—”

“Well, one of these days she’ll laugh out of the wrong side of her face. I’ve put things in motion, I’ve been meeting with de Girardin at La Presse and he’s very interested in an idea that I’ve had. Are you? I think not.”

“What idea? Marie? Sit for a moment, you seem rather—”

“I’ve been sitting for hours; I don’t feel like sitting, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Very well. How are the children?”

Her voice rose another octave—if that was possible. “Always the children! Have you asked after me, how I am? Do you care?”

“I wish you to come outside with me, Marie; let us go to the garden just downstairs, it’s peaceful…” Franz’s voice sounded steady and sad; I imagined him trying to catch her arm and perhaps hold her in both of his own, but it seemed as if she’d flung herself away again. I couldn’t move, couldn’t bear to think what could happen at any second; my eyes were fastened upon the door handle, willing it to remain as it was, closed and still. An image of myself on the other side of this same situation flashed across my mind: I’d caught an earlier lover, George Lennox (the cad), bouncing the fat, white ass of a third-rate actress named Angel, and could picture the creature again in my mind’s eye, scuttling away, naked, across the parquet. Oh my God, was I now such an appalling, thoughtless thing as that? What to do, what to do!

“I’ve come this far; you’ll not turn me aside so easily, Franz. Mein Gott, to leave me month after month, when you know how ill and melancholy I am! Where is George, anyway? She’s not at the Hotel de Saxe, too, I hope? You tell me you’ve never slept with her, but I’m not convinced you haven’t slept with others—these actresses and singers you seem to keep company with. And what about this Spanish one?”

Oh dear saints and apostles, and other celestials of any sodding stripe! This was terrible.

“You’ll catch the morbus gallicus, Franz,” she hissed, “and then you’ll be sorry. Don’t come crying to me when you’re ill and bits of you are falling off!”

His equable voice remonstrated, “You know that you’re the one who asked me for a permission d’infidélité—in writing, remember? For that Bulwer-Lytton fellow? A few years back?”

“Don’t you fling that in my face!”

“You know I would have written it for you, if that’s what you’d really wanted. I’ve told you the way I look at this sort of thing, Marie. The facts, the deeds, are nothing. It’s the shades of meaning, of—”

“Shut up!”

My mouth had dropped open, my heartbeat pounded in my ears, I was—oh, I can’t find a word for it. How I wished I wasn’t hearing these intimate things. And what would happen if—no, when! Because she wasn’t leaving.

“Marie, I want you always to have complete freedom; I wish you would understand that.”

“You turn my words around.” Her high voice had gone quieter, angrier. “You try to push me to the side of your life, but you will be nothing without me. I made you, Franz.” From the sound, I thought she must be over by the window, looking down at the street. Come on, Franz, I prayed. Help her to the garden, I’ll dress very fast and then slip down the back staircase. What will happen then, I have no idea. By this point, I was standing beside the bed, holding the sheet up against me, trembling.

“So let us see where the illustrious composer has been laying his head,” and with those words, she strode to the bedroom door and flung it open—oh, Jesús! Tall, thin, aristocratic, beautiful blonde hair braided and piled on the top of her head, dressed impeccably in a dove-grey satin, with a jewel at her throat. Fuckity fuck! There I stood, like a gutted steer hanging from its hook, nowhere to go, nothing to say.

Her creamy complexion went suddenly as red as a beet-root, and then just as quickly drained back into the palest of pales; her blue eyes flared, then narrowed. I expected screams, expected her to leap at me, clawing (God knows I would have done so). She simply stood there, eyes proud, face carved in stone. Franz came up to her—still calmer than I could believe—and said,

“The Spanish lady. Lola Montez.”

Out of Marie’s constricted throat, I heard, “I have never objected to being your mistress, Franz. But I do object to being one of your mistresses. You will be sorry for this.” She reached out and slammed the bedroom door powerfully in my face ’til it rang in my ears and I was closed in again, with my shame.

*

I have never felt like that before, and I hope to God I never feel like that again. I continued to stand there, a dreadful, sick hollowness in the pit of my stomach. Could I have brazened it out? Should I have? Juan de Grimaldi’s wife, Concepción, would have done so, with a shrill torrent of Spanish imprecations while throwing herself about. At one point, I might have tried to emulate her, but now? It all felt too sordid. And I also knew, very surely, that this was the end between Franz and myself. It was over. His decency would never allow him to treat the mother of his children so badly if there was any way that he could salve the situation. I was dispensable, just for fun. Of course I’d known it, somewhere at the back of my head, but I’d been going along, not worrying about possible endings—and certainly, not this one. The situations from farce are not nearly as amusing in reality as they seem onstage, in a comedy.

There were sounds of items breaking in the outer room, but no feminine screams or flinging of herself out the window. Liszt’s voice went on and on, low, melodious. After some minutes (which felt like hours), I heard the outer door open and then close, and they were gone. That’s when I started to shake—delayed reaction, I suppose—but somehow I managed to haul myself into my nearest day dress, button my boots, throw all of my belongings into my portmanteau and drag it down the back stairs. I held my head regally upon entering the lobby, requesting one of the valets to call me a cab. Curse them, there was whispering and pointing throughout, and I knew they must have gathered something of the high drama that had taken place upstairs. But they did as I asked, and after some fraught, silent minutes in which I tried to ignore them and they vibrated with repressed gossipmongering, my portmanteau was placed gently beside me in a hansom that had drawn up at the curb, and away I went.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I found myself another hotel (how I’d pay for it, I had no idea). I flung myself down upon the bed and sobbed; I knew I’d miss Franz very much. His solemn expressions, his hot and wiry torso, that long, thin member of his—as well as everything else: his talent, his genius! His quiet relaxation after sex, with his long fingers wrapped by strands of my hair… Then suddenly, overlaying those images, flaring nostrils and a pale visage: the outraged face of the countess. Oh, fuck it, I wept. A society woman with her own salon in Paris—Paris! My target, my goal! Now closed to me? No. But, what will I do now? Where can I go? Why am I always in such an unruly mess?

I crawled under the bedclothes and felt like a fool, a harlot, a shameful beast… I’d never wanted to be the sort of woman who stole husbands, who stole love. I wanted a love that was freely given and that might even last the test of time. Diego’s murder by firing squad had shattered my vision of that possible world. Beneath the impersonal covers, shivering (what was I doing, trying to hide from myself?), a tidal wave of regret and memories engulfed me again, rolling me under and dragging me back into a riptide of dread.

In Spain, unbeknownst to myself or Diego, there was a killer loose, and dangerous. We’d thought he was a Cristino, but he was a Carlist, and he was party to Diego’s summary execution—I don’t know how, but I’m sure of it. In the frightening aftermath, desperate to escape the wrath of Prime Minister Espartero, who knew I’d been involved in Diego’s plans, I’d galloped north from Madrid. I’d been followed by this killer: Father Miguel de la Vega, Jesuit priest, spy and double agent. He was an acolyte of a secret cult, and dangerously insane. He’d slit the throat of the woman guiding me out of the country, smothered her baby, then captured me. He’d been taking me to Pamplona, to the headquarters of the Society of the Exterminating Angel, where they would have tortured and destroyed me like that brotherhood of wolves I’d seen demolishing the deer. As he’d hauled me onwards, the priest had bragged about his infernal society. It was a terrorist sect, vowing to reinstate the Inquisition, to exterminate liberalism—and as many females as possible. De la Vega deeply feared and detested anything female, wished to eradicate the sex completely. He’d tricked everyone who knew him. He wasn’t human, couldn’t possibly be considered human. He was a serial killer who relished the work.

On one of the terrible days as his captive, I’d managed to shoot him in the upper thigh. Desperately reloading, not enough time—perhaps for that fraction of a second, I’d lost my nerve. I’d left him bleeding on the road and headed for France; then I’d crossed the channel, gathering the shards of my shattered life.

On the night of my London début, the fiend was there. How he’d managed it, I have no idea. He’d denounced me onstage, called me a fraud and an adulteress. Lying in wait outside the theatre afterwards, he’d pursued me again through the streets, limping and lurching but still swift as a cobra, brandishing a switchblade, which I’d fully expected to feel hurled between my shoulders or slashed across my throat. And then rescue—miraculous rescue—by London policemen. While they struggled to subdue the hell-hound, I’d snatched up the blade, which had fallen to the cobbles. It’s the knife I now carry with me always, tucked into my waistband: a reminder of true evil, and also, I hope, an amulet against it.

That treacherous madman, Miguel de la Vega, remains a guest in Her Majesty’s prison, accused of multiple murders of young London women. He was the instrument of so much horror and death. May he rot in hell. May they throw away the key. I whisper these things to myself over and over. Only the certain knowledge of his incarceration keeps the nightmares at bay.

In the new, anonymous Dresden hotel, beneath the covers, I curled into the smallest ball possible, arms clasping my ribs, chin against my chest. A small silent being in a dark space. Breathe deeply, keep breathing…

By nightfall, the evil, sorrowful memories had played themselves out and I was almost calm, though certainly very, very low in spirits. I’d eaten nothing all day—didn’t know how I’d pay for that either, when and if I ever felt like eating again. And then there came a knock on the door. Christ on a donkey, I thought, yanking the covers back over my head, I’m not answering that!

“Lola, sweet Lola, it’s only me, George. Open up, won’t you?”

I crept across the room, put my ear to the wood. “George?”

“Yes, it’s me, not the avenging Marie d’A, don’t worry. I’ve brought you some things; let me in, dear?”

I swung the door open and there she stood, in her men’s breeches, frock coat, and a gentleman’s topper on her head. She entered, swung out of the coat and slung it on a chair. I examined the breeches as her back was turned. They looked good on her, I have to say, though she was—I’m just being honest—somewhat broad in the beam. She flung the topper onto a coatrack. There was a mischievous grin on her face as she bent to retrieve something outside the door and then waltzed further into the room, carrying a large basket over one arm.

“Treats and goodies, yummy yum,” she declared. “Where shall I put them?”

Removing a vase of flowers, she plopped the basket down on the nearest table and placed the flowers beside the bed. “This is quite nice, isn’t it?” she said, glancing around, noting the state of the bed-linens, all rumpled and cried upon. “Have you been suffering, sweets? Never mind. Must have been one hell of a scene—will you tell me?”

“No.”

“I can imagine it. You must be starving.” She began pulling delectable food from the basket: half a roast chicken, a meat pie, fresh and still warm bread, a bottle of wine and some elegant pastries. My treacherous stomach began to gurgle and groan.

“And that is not all,” she said triumphantly. “Look what else I have here—” She held up several sealed envelopes and waved them. “From Franz. He brought them to me an hour ago. How he managed to write them, I’m not sure, but he did. They’re for you. Letters of introduction to some of our gang in Paris, press-men and theatre managers. They’ll love you, love the way you look—and that’s all you need to get you started, isn’t it?”

The tears flowed again as I took the envelopes from her and held them to my lips. I could smell, just faintly, the scent of Franz: his cigars and cognac, his particular essence.

“It’s been a bad day, Lola, I can imagine that, too. But these will help immeasurably. You mustn’t lose your audacity; you’re too pretty for that—and more than pretty, aren’t you?” She bobbed her sparrow’s eyes at me, curious, interested and more than a little greedy to know, to understand—to empathize with the story I was living.

“How is he?” I whispered, ruefully.

“When he delivered these, he told me he’d asked Belloni to announce several more concerts here before he leaves. Marie will stay and that’s a miracle, then they’ll go home to Paris together. His words: ‘I feel a great weariness of life and a ridiculous need for rest.’”

I shook my head, unhappily.

“He also asked me to tell you that you must not try to contact him again, ever. The letters are the last things he can do for you, he told me to say that. And now I have.”

I couldn’t help myself; it just fell out. “I will miss him terribly!” And the tears spilled forth, despite my angry attempts to hold them back.

George bustled around, laying out the dinner, lighting several other candles, brightening the atmosphere and whistling to bring a bit of cheer into the room. As we sat down together, she spoke again of her life, her artistic circle of friends, the joy of creation—anything to take my mind from the horrible day and its dreadful reverberations. And I was grateful; I did begin to listen, I ate and drank wine. Life was beginning to go on—as it does, and as it must.

As we finished the bottle, she got up and went to the door. “When you come to Paris, you’ll have to get used to long discussions over food—arguments, loud shouting matches, deep philosophical debates—we all do it. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not leaving.” She opened the door, leaned out and picked up a second bottle she’d left outside. “Just in case,” with a wicked grin.

I smiled. “Oh, thank God. Thank you.”

“Ça ne faire rien. I require a whole one, myself, or I can’t get to work.”

“Work?”

“I write all night, the darkness is my time; I’ve my requisite twenty pages to fulfill. I’ve brought everything with me, all I need. I’m not leaving you alone, Lola, not tonight.”

“But—”

“No, no getting rid of me just yet. Pass me the corkscrew?”

So I did, and as she opened the bottle, she said, “Now, I don’t want any arguments, but just to set your mind at rest. I foresee success for you in the City of Lights, but at the moment I imagine you’re a bit skint. So here’s what I thought: you’ll come to Paris with me, and before that, I’ll take care of your hotel bill here. I’ll be picking up my children on the way through. You’ll love Maurice; he’s a handsome darling. Solange, the problem child? Well, let’s say no more about that. Here’s my copy of Consuelo, which you can read on the way. I’ve also got Balzac’s Béatrix—but perhaps that’s too much salt in the wound… You’d like my Horace, perhaps—it was very naughty of me, and I must admit Marie d’A hates me for it. Have you had enough to eat?”

I didn’t know what to say to her generosity. No woman had ever taken me under her wing so protectively, except perhaps (very fleetingly) the magnificent Infanta Carlota of Naples—now dead, I had sadly read in the papers. Her stomach pains, it seemed, had been fatal.

“You don’t need to feel beholden, dear,” my new, garrulous advisor went on. “I have the money and I’m hard at work at my next one, so the cash should keep coming, with luck.” I suppose I was looking downcast, because she added, “You’ve accepted help from your men friends in the past. Think of me as one of them, if it makes you more comfortable.”

I placed my hand over hers. “Countess Dudevant, you are too kind.”

“Pas de tout,” she answered. “And call me George. Drink up, then let’s have more.”

All night, as I lay tossing and attempting to sleep, George sat at the table—food scraps and empty bottles pushed to the side—with the candles guttering directly above her writing paper. She hardly moved, covering page after page with large, flowing script, head bent, and the other arm hanging down at her side. A comforting presence, there in the room with me. A famous woman! What a strange thing. Famous for her ideas, her words, not just her appearance or the unconventional way she dressed. An older woman with power. Fame. That enticing little four-letter word. Notoriety, too—even though she was plain. I banished that thought. Not plain, not really… There was something about her… And I finally fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

In the morning, she was in the bed with me, fingers black with ink, a smudge of it on her closed left eyelid.

*

The journey from Dresden, through Frankfurt and on into France, was stimulating and tiring. George and I talked virtually the whole way as we rolled along, noting the countryside’s permutations, the donning of its springtime colours and scents. Warm breezes wafted through the windows as I spoke of my childhood years with a neglectful mother (though I said I’d grown up in Seville, not in India), how at age sixteen I’d eloped in order to escape the trap I could feel closing around me.

“Oh lord,” she said, heavily, “just the age of Solange. She teases my poor Chipette as he coughs and sighs; she’s got him wrapped round her index finger.”

I also told her some judicious (yes, I can be, when I want) bits and pieces about my dancing, about Spain itself and my recent eight months of travel. She’d seen the cartoon of the fleeing Prussians, and we laughed about that. I’d never had a woman friend and wasn’t sure whether to trust such a thing. There was an uncanny sixth sense about her, however, for at one point she said, “One is often judged and put through the mangle by women friends, have you found? I won’t do that to you, Lola, I solemnly promise, though you should steel yourself, for I think you’ll come up against it fairly hard in your life. Female malice has never worried me; I observe it with a cold and detached eye, and recommend you to do the same. I am speaking, at least in part, of course, of our pal d’Agoult.”

In return for my (somewhat fabricated) stories, I heard about her idyllic childhood in the village of Nohant, with an aristocratic grandmother and her favourite horse, Colette, with whom she would spend many happy hours galloping through the nearby Forest of Fontainbleau. Also—though obliquely—she let slip the reason she’d taken me under her wing. “Of course, though my father was wealthy, he committed a cardinal sin as far as my grandmother was concerned. Can you imagine the worst thing an only son can do to his mother?”

I thought for a second, for that’s all the time she gave me.

“He fell for a fallen woman! Yes, my mother’s a prostitute—or was, when he met her. And not a high-class one, not a femme galante—more of a strumpet. One of the world’s true vagabonds: Antoinette-Sophie-Victoire… How I loved that woman, doted on her—at first—but my mother fought with my grandmother tooth and nail. They battled over me. As my grandmother lay dying, she told me, ‘You’re losing your best friend, my darling’—and so it turned out. My mother was a tyrant, lost her mind when she reached her change of life. To escape her, I too married. Also a mistake. Though he is a count, which has its advantages—that’s how I became Countess Dudevant.”

She was holding my hand, bouncing it up and down to make particular, emphatic points. My hand was getting hot and at times I longed to be outside on one of the horses, rather than back in a coach with this kind-hearted, intense person. I was also trying not to howl with unhappiness at the thought of the lonely road that had—once again—opened up in front of me.

“I had my two children… Maurice is my darling, a young man now. Solange was an accident, fathered—I’m fairly sure—by someone else.” (How she loved to prattle on!) “When I was in agony, giving birth to her, I could hear the count outside the room, speaking love talk with one of the servant-girls, and I remember feeling happy because it released me, forever, from his power. At that exact moment, pushing a baby out of my womb, I repudiated the idea that adultery is a mortal sin. These things don’t matter, provided that one is sincerely in love.”

I remembered that Liszt had said something very similar, to his countess, before she’d told him to shut up. But George’s juxtaposed images—babies pushed out of wombs, childbirth and adultery, all mixed up together—were surprising and, yes, shocking! And still she went on.

“The next day I told the count, ‘I’m going to Paris. My children will remain at Nohant, and you will stop losing money through your bad business deals or I will divorce you.’ Of course, several years later, I did so—which puts me, I must say, in a less reprehensible position than that of d’Agoult, who’s still married to her long-suffering count. He stays silent in the shadows; he’s a gentleman, undeniably. Has never denounced her during all of her years with Franzi. Ah, how she likes to make them suffer.”

At that, I sat up and withdrew my overheated hand from her grip.

“George…” (I couldn’t think anymore, she was talking so much!)

“What is it?”

I tried to marshal my bludgeoned wits. “I’m going to Paris, thanks to you. It has always been my dream. But Paris is where the Countess d’Agoult lives.”

“Certainly.”

“If I manage to get my heart’s wish, and obtain a dancing engagement there…”

“Will she rip you to shreds, in front of all of our eyes?”

“Well… Yes.”

“It will be marvelous sport, if so!” And she clapped her hands. “Lola, think, you are just as much a woman of passion as that terrifyingly skinny stick! She’s always been arrogant towards young women, and never forgives a man who marries for money. She has no idea how difficult the world is when you’re not born into wealth—but I do, you see. I come from both sides, and understand the fight. I’ll be cheering from the wings!”

Why didn’t this make me feel better?

She had bounced up to a standing position in the coach, balancing with her knees slightly bent, and leaning towards me as if to deliver a truth directly into my ear. “The real challenge for you, Lola, my love, will be this, and this is important. How will you prevent the battle to come from turning you into a monster, rather than an intelligent soul who enjoys a full life of the senses?”

Now she was scaring me.

“Are you up for it?”

God, I hoped so.

“Understand me, dear. Marie d’Agoult and I have likely had a permanent break in our friendship. I encouraged Balzac to write that disguised version of her love affair with Liszt, in Béatrix, and then—because I felt I could do it better—I followed up with one of my own. They’re romans à clef: intriguing to write, and to read.”

I hadn’t heard of this, then. “What is ‘the key’? What does that mean?”

“If you understand the real life story behind such a novel—the key, in other words—it makes the book even more piquant. As writer, it’s labeled fiction—so you can write a different ending if you wish to, and you can’t be sued for libel. But it’s also fact, so you can employ satire and—if you want—settle a few scores. Lovely!” Perhaps I was looking shocked again, so she added, “Well, the Liszt and d’Agoult affair was the scandal of the decade; how could a writer ignore such good material? What else can a woman of intelligence do but examine it fully? Now I hear d’Agoult has delusions that she, too, can write—ha! I’d like to see her try.”

All this talk about female revenge, competition and ambition was making me queasy with nerves, and of course brought me to, “Why did you start to write?”

“I needed to understand the world: to question, to penetrate the mystery.”

By that time, we’d put up for the night at one of the hotels along our route, and were tucked up in bed—one bed, for economy’s sake, George told me.

“The ‘key’ in a current roman à clef can also be celebrity itself.”

I must have looked puzzled, for she went on. “The acquisition of it. Celebrity is entrancing to people, for some reason, God knows why. I think it is to you, and you should be wary of that. But you know, Lola, our life is our material. What else have we got to work with, in our tiny spans? It’s all grist for the mill—never be ashamed of it, any part of it, promise me! It’s your life. It belongs to you, to no one else.”

As we lay there, warmly cosy, I heard tales about herself as a girl named Aurore, writing for amusement; then about her first years in Paris, trying to break into the world of letters—to make a living and conquer the ‘dragon’ (as she called it), Fame. About meeting editors, then working for Le Figaro, where she tried to pen short articles.

“Within the restricted space I was given, by the time I had begun to begin, my word count had overflowed!”

I heard descriptions of her many and various novels—of her many and various lovers as well. Some of them were well known writers. Thanks to one of them, she said, she’d found her nom de plume.

“Well, it was half a joke and half a partnership. We wrote things together. His name’s Jules Sandeau; we wrote as Jules et George. We grew apart, the George stuck, and I kept half of the rest.”

That really hit me. I knew well what the power of naming oneself feels like, how it changes you, gives you courage and individuality. I’d adjusted my given name many times already—from hated childhood Betty to Eliza, Eliza to Rosana, Rosana—finally!—to dazzling Lola. But, with a nom de plume—well, you could be two people at the same time, switch back and forth between them. How tremendous.

As we lay there, George feeling drowsy and me fighting sleep, dreading my thoughts and sniffling sadly (once again), she told me a tale of the other Marie she’d mentioned: the marvel of George’s youth, Marie Dorval the actress.

“We enjoyed a love affair, very torrid. We still love each other, of course. She’s a mad, wee thing, everyone adores her…”

I tried to imagine George and this Marie in bed together. Just as she was, here in bed with me… And I wondered what it would be like. Wait, I thought—was that why she…?

But George was carrying on, “Oh, the success Marie had in Dumas’ Antony, years ago. That was amazing! I remember standing in the pit, dressed as a man, chums on either side—our liberal endeavours were beginning to win out over the reactionaries… Antony was the first play to celebrate adultery, bastardy… To advocate tolerance. Dumas took a chance, bless him, and at the same time he was speaking proudly of his own mixed blood, his heritage… We were all so young and radical—in ’31, it was… Delightful…”

George was falling asleep, wallowing in memories of her free-spirited youth. She wasn’t thinking of me at all. I rolled over, and rolled my eyes. Dumas, again. That pompous ass. Paris would be full of not only Marie d’Agoult and her political salons, but also the monumental bulk of Dumas. They all knew him, they all loved him. Merde en double.

*

The day we arrived at George’s gorgeous country house in Nohant, south of Paris, was the day I realized fully that Countess Aurore Dudevant was indeed an aristocrat. My God, that house, those grounds! I couldn’t imagine having inherited such a stupendous pile—and having to maintain it. The place was constantly revolving with children, lover (or lovers), and dozens of friends dropping in, for a week or for several months. It must have cost her a fortune, and now that I knew that she paid for it all by the sweat of her brow and hours of ceaseless nighttime toil, I was full of both amazement and horror. How did she do it, year after year? The children were there, awaiting her return: Maurice (devoted to his mother) and Solange (sulky and unfriendly, regarding me idly with a curled lip). And of course Chopin, her famous musician.

Leaping from the carriage, George rushed towards him, enfolding him gently in her arms. “Chopinsky, my velvet-fingers, how are you, darling?”

He gave a little cough at her tight embrace. “Middling, only middling. I’ve missed you. I came here to be with the children. I felt lonely, and my pupils were oppressive.”

“I could have told you that, sweets. Oh, how I love to see you!” she said, and she kissed him all over his face.

There they stood, the other writer-composer couple of the age! Frédéric Chopin was astonishingly tiny. George was taller, and she wasn’t a tall woman—he might have been five feet and two inches, perhaps? Light-boned, always feeling chilly, and always with that tell-tale cough. He was in fact almost an invalid; George obsessed about his health. Although he wrote music that was beautiful and complicated, and—like Franz—worked many long hours every day, he was not able to play in public, the strain would have been too much.

Like an invalid, he complained often and without being aware of doing so. And it was true what George had said, that Solange played with Chopin’s affections. That night at dinner, the girl flirted appallingly, as he coughed and tried to eat his meal. Maurice had his head down, attempting not to notice. It was not a happy household, I was sad to see, and was glad that we’d be traveling to Paris the following day.

George took me on a tour of her gardens and her estate the next morning, where she grilled me for a final time. I was astonished when she gave me a large gift of cash to get started—enough for a month, if I was careful—with a warning that I’d need to parlay Franz’s letters of introduction into work as quickly as possible. This I was eager to do.

“I’ve written you one myself,” she said, handing me an envelope with the name ‘Eugène Sue’ written upon it. “He’s a novelist and man-about-town, very well-dressed and always with an attractive woman on his arm. He had a huge success last year, so he’s in a generous mood. Let him help; he’s well placed to do so.”

I took this, too, with gratitude.

“Once we are in the great city,” she continued, “you’ll be on your own. As I was. To sink or swim, and I’m sure you can swim.” She bent down to smell the daffodils that were bobbing in yellow, scented waves. From that position, I heard, “By the way, are you any good?”

“Am I—?”

“Any good as a dancer?” And she straightened, to look me squarely in the eye.

“Well, I’m trying my best.”

“That’s not what I asked. You need to settle, soon, upon something you’re good at—really good at, instinctively. To last your whole life through, for life is long.”

I flounced about, quite out of sorts with these probing questions. “I have done this once or twice before, you know, George. I know how to use Franz’s letters, how to open the oyster—that part of it is not difficult.”

She paced along beside me, hands behind her back, as we made our way through the flowering lanes of her perennial beds. “Let’s come clean, Lola my love. I know and you know that you’re not a bit Spanish. No, don’t roll your eyes back in their sockets; it’s a bad habit which doesn’t suit you. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s all about creating—no, orchestrating—a strong story, and living it to the hilt.” Her damnable mouth was smiling kindly at me.

“I know that, George! That’s the one thing I know extremely well!”

By then I was quite exhausted from trying to please her large intelligence, her expectations, and I longed to be free. Free to make my own mistakes and take my own chances, thank you very much.

“And now I’m annoying you.” She shrugged. “C’est la vie. A final word, then. Be smart, not just beautiful. Use your mind as well as your undeniable physical gifts. Don’t repeat the mistakes of Sophie-Victoire, do you understand?”

It was as if she knew about the exploits of my own lamentable mother, a woman I was determined not to emulate. But it’s all very well, telling a young woman don’t do this, don’t do that. Better to give advice that is possible, surely, if that young woman’s purse remains sadly ‘skint.’

“I expect great things, Lola Montez.”

Crikey. Get me out of here.