ised as Mrs. James by a Prince of the Blood and his
companions in the omnibus-box. Her beauty could not save her from
insult; and, to avenge themselves on Mr. Lumley, for some pique, these
chivalrous English gentlemen of the upper classes hooted a woman from
the stage."

What was behind Lord Ranelagh's cowardly attack on the debutante?
There was a simple explanation, and not one that redounded to his
credit in any way. It was that, during her "Bohemian" period, he had
endeavoured to fill the empty niche left in her affections by the
departure of that light-o'-love, Captain Lennox, and had been repulsed
for his pains. A bad loser, my Lord nursed resentment. He would teach
a mere ballet-dancer to snap her fingers at him. His opportunity came
sooner than he imagined. He made the most of it.

Fond as he was of biting, Lord Ranelagh was, some years afterwards,
himself bitten. He took a prominent part in an unsavoury scandal that
fluttered mid-Victorian dovecotes, when a Bond Street "beauty
specialist," known as Madame Rachel, was clapped into prison for
swindling a wealthy and amorous widow. This was a Mrs. Borrodaile,
whom "Madame" had gulled by declaring that Lord Ranelagh's one desire
was to share his coronet with her. Although the raffish peer denied
all complicity, he did not come out of the business too well.

"The peculiar prominence he has attained," remarked an obituarist,
"has not always been of an enviable description. There are probably
few men who have had so many charges of the most varied and
disagreeable nature made against them. The resultant obloquy to which
he had thus been exposed is great, nor has it vanished, as it properly
should have done, with the charges themselves."

This, however, was looking ahead. The comments of 1843 came first. "In
the clubs that night," we read, "the bucks and bloods laughed heartily
when they discussed the mishap of the proud beauty who had scorned the
advances of my Lord." Lola Montez, however, did not regard it as
anything at which to laugh. She may, as she boasted, have had a dash
of Spanish blood in her veins, but she certainly had none of George
Washington's, for she immediately sat down and wrote a circular letter
to all the London papers. In this she sought to correct what she
described as a "false impression." Swallowing it as gospel, a number
of them printed it in full:

_To the Editor_.

SIR:

Since I had the honour of dancing at Her Majesty