y, "who was so dazzled
by the purity of her Spanish accent that he adopted her as a
_compagnon de voyage_, and shared with her the horrors of bad cooking
and the joys of nights in Granada." This fact, however, if it be a
fact, is not to be found in the volume of "memoirs" that he
afterwards published.

Still, it seems that Lord Malmesbury did meet Lola. His own account of
the incident is that, on returning to England from abroad, in the
spring of the year 1843, he was asked by the Spanish Consul at
Southampton to escort to London a young woman who had just landed
there. He found her, he says, "a remarkably handsome person, who was
in deep mourning and who appeared to be in great distress." While they
were alone in the railway carriage, he improved the occasion and
extracted from his travelling companion the story of her life.

"She informed me," he says, "in bad English that she was the widow of
Don Diego Leon, who had lately been shot by the Carlists after he was
taken prisoner, and that she was going to London to sell some Spanish
property that she possessed, and give lessons in singing, as she was
very poor."

Notwithstanding his diplomatic training, Lord Malmesbury swallowed
this story, as well as much else with which it was embroidered. One
thing led to another; and the acquaintance thus fortuitously begun in
a railway carriage was continued in London. There he got up a concert
for her benefit at his town house, where, in addition to singing
Castilian ballads, his protegee sold veils and fans among the
audience; and he also gave her an introduction to a theatrical
manager, with results that neither of them had foreseen.

CHAPTER IV

FLARE OF THE FOOTLIGHTS

I

Times change. When Lola returned to London a passage through the
divorce court was not regarded as a necessary qualification for stage
aspirants. Also, being well aware that, to ensure a good reception, a
foreign-sounding name was desirable, this one decided to adopt that of
Lola Montez. This, she felt, would, among other advantages,
effectively mask her identity with that of Mrs. Thomas James, an
identity she was anxious to shed.

Her plans were soon made. On the morning after her arrival, she
presented her letter of introduction to the impressario of Her
Majesty's Theatre, in the Haymarket. This position was held by an
affable Hebrew, one Benjamin Lumley, an ex-solicitor, who had
abandoned his parchments and bills of costs and acquired a