What reason
have you for treating this young lady in such a way?
have you for treating this young lady in such a way?
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the
leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The
emperor! " And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered
being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The
door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set
out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the
mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of
rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton
hands.
At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still
in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much
care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken
place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the
ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to
the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial
pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little
ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of
emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him
something of the common soldier--the man who lives for loot and lust. . . .
At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed
by the ladies of her household.
These facts, repellent as they are, must be remembered when we call
to mind what happened in the next five years. The horror of that night
could not be obliterated by splendid ceremonies, by studious attention,
or by all the pomp and gaiety of the court. Napoleon was then
forty-one--practically the same age as his new wife's father, the
Austrian emperor; Marie Louise was barely nineteen and younger than her
years. Her master must have seemed to be the brutal ogre whom her uncles
had described.
Installed in the Tuileries, she taught herself compliance. On their
marriage night Napoleon had asked her briefly: "What did your parents
tell you? " And she had answered, meekly: "To be yours altogether and to
obey you in everything. " But, though she gave compliance, and though her
freshness seemed enchanting to Napoleon, there was something concealed
within her thoughts to which he could not penetrate. He gaily said to a
member of the court:
"Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women in the
world--gentle, good, artless, and as fresh as roses. "
Yet, at the same time, Napoleon felt a deep anxiety lest in her very
heart of hearts this German girl might either fear or hate him secretly.
Somewhat later Prince Metternich came from the Austrian court to Paris.
"I give you leave," said Napoleon, "to have a private interview with the
empress. Let her tell you what she likes, and I shall ask no questions.
Even should I do so, I now forbid your answering me. "
Metternich was closeted with the empress for a long while. When he
returned to the ante-room he found Napoleon fidgeting about, his eyes a
pair of interrogation-points.
"I am sure," he said, "that the empress told you that I was kind to
her? "
Metternich bowed and made no answer.
"Well," said Napoleon, somewhat impatiently, "at least I am sure that
she is happy. Tell me, did she not say so? "
The Austrian diplomat remained unsmiling.
"Your majesty himself has forbidden me to answer," he returned with
another bow.
We may fairly draw the inference that Marie Louise, though she adapted
herself to her surroundings, was never really happy. Napoleon became
infatuated with her. He surrounded her with every possible mark of
honor. He abandoned public business to walk or drive with her. But the
memory of his own brutality must have vaguely haunted him throughout it
all. He was jealous of her as he had never been jealous of the fickle
Josephine. Constant has recorded that the greatest precautions were
taken to prevent any person whatsoever, and especially any man, from
approaching the empress save in the presence of witnesses.
Napoleon himself underwent a complete change of habits and demeanor.
Where he had been rough and coarse he became attentive and refined. His
shabby uniforms were all discarded, and he spent hours in trying on new
costumes. He even attempted to learn to waltz, but this he gave up in
despair. Whereas before he ate hastily and at irregular intervals,
he now sat at dinner with unusual patience, and the court took on a
character which it had never had. Never before had he sacrificed either
his public duty or his private pleasure for any woman. Even in the first
ardor of his marriage with Josephine, when he used to pour out his heart
to her in letters from Italian battle-fields, he did so only after he
had made the disposition of his troops and had planned his movements
for the following day. Now, however, he was not merely devoted, but
uxorious; and in 1811, after the birth of the little King of Rome, he
ceased to be the earlier Napoleon altogether. He had founded a dynasty.
He was the head of a reigning house. He forgot the principles of the
Revolution, and he ruled, as he thought, like other monarchs, by the
grace of God.
As for Marie Louise, she played her part extremely well. Somewhat
haughty and unapproachable to others, she nevertheless studied
Napoleon's every wish. She seemed even to be loving; but one can
scarcely doubt that her obedience sprang ultimately from fear and
that her devotion was the devotion of a dog which has been beaten into
subjection.
Her vanity was flattered in many ways, and most of all by her
appointment as regent of the empire during Napoleon's absence in the
disastrous Russian campaign which began in 1812. It was in June of that
year that the French emperor held court at Dresden, where he played,
as was said, to "a parterre of kings. " This was the climax of his
magnificence, for there were gathered all the sovereigns and princes who
were his allies and who furnished the levies that swelled his Grand Army
to six hundred thousand men. Here Marie Louise, like her husband, felt
to the full the intoxication of supreme power. By a sinister coincidence
it was here that she first met the other man, then unnoticed and little
heeded, who was to cast upon her a fascination which in the end proved
irresistible.
This man was Adam Albrecht, Count von Neipperg. There is something
mysterious about his early years, and something baleful about his silent
warfare with Napoleon. As a very young soldier he had been an Austrian
officer in 1793. His command served in Belgium; and there, in a
skirmish, he was overpowered by the French in superior numbers, but
resisted desperately. In the melee a saber slashed him across the right
side of his face, and he was made prisoner. The wound deprived him of
his right eye, so that for the rest of his life he was compelled to wear
a black bandage to conceal the mutilation.
From that moment he conceived an undying hatred of the French, serving
against them in the Tyrol and in Italy. He always claimed that had the
Archduke Charles followed his advice, the Austrians would have forced
Napoleon's army to capitulate at Marengo, thus bringing early eclipse
to the rising star of Bonaparte. However this may be, Napoleon's success
enraged Neipperg and made his hatred almost the hatred of a fiend.
Hitherto he had detested the French as a nation. Afterward he
concentrated his malignity upon the person of Napoleon. In every way he
tried to cross the path of that great soldier, and, though Neipperg was
comparatively an unknown man, his indomitable purpose and his continued
intrigues at last attracted the notice of the emperor; for in 1808
Napoleon wrote this significant sentence:
The Count von Neipperg is openly known to have been the enemy of the
French.
Little did the great conqueror dream how deadly was the blow which this
Austrian count was destined finally to deal him!
Neipperg, though his title was not a high one, belonged to the old
nobility of Austria. He had proved his bravery in war and as a duelist,
and he was a diplomat as well as a soldier. Despite his mutilation, he
was a handsome and accomplished courtier, a man of wide experience, and
one who bore himself in a manner which suggested the spirit of romance.
According to Masson, he was an Austrian Don Juan, and had won the hearts
of many women. At thirty he had formed a connection with an Italian
woman named Teresa Pola, whom he had carried away from her husband. She
had borne him five children; and in 1813 he had married her in order
that these children might be made legitimate.
In his own sphere the activity of Neipperg was almost as remarkable as
Napoleon's in a greater one. Apart from his exploits on the field of
battle he had been attached to the Austrian embassy in Paris, and,
strangely enough, had been decorated by Napoleon himself with, the
golden eagle of the Legion of Honor. Four months later we find him
minister of Austria at the court of Sweden, where he helped to lay the
train of intrigue which was to detach Bernadotte from Napoleon's cause.
In 1812, as has just been said, he was with Marie Louise for a short
time at Dresden, hovering about her, already forming schemes. Two years
after this he overthrew Murat at Naples; and then hurried on post-haste
to urge Prince Eugene to abandon Bonaparte.
When the great struggle of 1814 neared its close, and Napoleon, fighting
with his back to the wall, was about to succumb to the united armies of
Europe, it was evident that the Austrian emperor would soon be able to
separate his daughter from her husband. In fact, when Napoleon was sent
to Elba, Marie Louise returned to Vienna. The cynical Austrian diplomats
resolved that she should never again meet her imperial husband. She was
made Duchess of Parma in Italy, and set out for her new possessions; and
the man with the black band across his sightless eye was chosen to be
her escort and companion.
When Neipperg received this commission he was with Teresa Pola at Milan.
A strange smile flitted across his face; and presently he remarked, with
cynical frankness:
"Before six months I shall be her lover, and, later on, her husband. "
He took up his post as chief escort of Marie Louise, and they journeyed
slowly to Munich and Baden and Geneva, loitering on the way. Amid the
great events which were shaking Europe this couple attracted slight
attention. Napoleon, in Elba, longed for his wife and for his little
son, the King of Rome. He sent countless messages and many couriers; but
every message was intercepted, and no courier reached his destination.
Meanwhile Marie Louise was lingering agreeably in Switzerland. She was
happy to have escaped from the whirlpool of politics and war. Amid the
romantic scenery through which she passed Neipperg was always by her
side, attentive, devoted, trying in everything to please her. With him
she passed delightful evenings. He sang to her in his rich barytone
songs of love. He seemed romantic with a touch of mystery, a gallant
soldier whose soul was also touched by sentiment.
One would have said that Marie Louise, the daughter of an imperial
line, would have been proof against the fascinations of a person so far
inferior to herself in rank, and who, beside the great emperor, was less
than nothing. Even granting that she had never really loved Napoleon,
she might still have preferred to maintain her dignity, to share his
fate, and to go down in history as the empress of the greatest man whom
modern times have known.
But Marie Louise was, after all, a woman, and she followed the guidance
of her heart. To her Napoleon was still the man who had met her amid the
rain-storm at Courcelles, and had from the first moment when he touched
her violated all the instincts of a virgin. Later he had in his way
tried to make amends; but the horror of that first night had never
wholly left her memory. Napoleon had unrolled before her the drama of
sensuality, but her heart had not been given to him. She had been his
empress. In a sense it might be more true to say that she had been
his mistress. But she had never been duly wooed and won and made his
wife--an experience which is the right of every woman. And so this
Neipperg, with his deferential manners, his soothing voice, his magnetic
touch, his ardor, and his devotion, appeased that craving which the
master of a hundred legions could not satisfy.
In less than the six months of which Neipperg had spoken the
psychological moment had arrived. In the dim twilight she listened to
his words of love; and then, drawn by that irresistible power which
masters pride and woman's will, she sank into her lover's arms, yielding
to his caresses, and knowing that she would be parted from him no more
except by death.
From that moment he was bound to her by the closest ties and lived with
her at the petty court of Parma. His prediction came true to the very
letter. Teresa Pola died, and then Napoleon died, and after this Marie
Louise and Neipperg were united in a morganatic marriage. Three children
were born to them before his death in 1829.
It is interesting to note how much of an impression was made upon her by
the final exile of her imperial husband to St. Helena. When the news was
brought her she observed, casually:
"Thanks. By the way, I should like to ride this morning to Markenstein.
Do you think the weather is good enough to risk it? "
Napoleon, on his side, passed through agonies of doubt and longing when
no letters came to him from Marie Louise. She was constantly in his
thoughts during his exile at St. Helena. "When his faithful friend and
constant companion at St. Helena, the Count Las Casas, was ordered by
Sir Hudson Lowe to depart from St. Helena, Napoleon wrote to him:
"Should you see, some day, my wife and son, embrace them. For two years
I have, neither directly nor indirectly, heard from them. There has been
on this island for six months a German botanist, who has seen them
in the garden of Schoenbrunn a few months before his departure.
The barbarians (meaning the English authorities at St. Helena) have
carefully prevented him from coming to give me any news respecting
them. "
At last the truth was told him, and he received it with that high
magnanimity, or it may be fatalism, which at times he was capable of
showing. Never in all his days of exile did he say one word against her.
Possibly in searching his own soul he found excuses such as we may find.
In his will he spoke of her with great affection, and shortly before his
death he said to his physician, Antommarchi:
"After my death, I desire that you will take my heart, put it in the
spirits of wine, and that you carry it to Parma to my dear Marie Louise.
You will please tell her that I tenderly loved her--that I never ceased
to love her. You will relate to her all that you have seen, and every
particular respecting my situation and death. "
The story of Marie Louise is pathetic, almost tragic. There is the taint
of grossness about it; and yet, after all, there is a lesson in it--the
lesson that true love cannot be forced or summoned at command, that it
is destroyed before its birth by outrage, and that it goes out only when
evoked by sympathy, by tenderness, and by devotion.
END OF VOLUME TWO
THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON
Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk up
on any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station, the
conspicuous letters "G. T. T. " The laugh went round, and every one
who saw the inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on you, old
hoss! " The three letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for any man to go to
Texas in those days meant his moral, mental, and financial dilapidation.
Either he had plunged into bankruptcy and wished to begin life over
again in a new world, or the sheriff had a warrant for his arrest.
The very task of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran
their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from
moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and
where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form--all
this stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken the
emigrants who came toiling on foot or struggling upon emaciated horses.
Other daring pioneers came by boat, running all manner of risks upon the
swollen rivers. Still others descended from the mountains of Tennessee
and passed through a more open country and with a greater certainty of
self-protection, because they were trained from childhood to wield the
rifle and the long sheath-knife.
It is odd enough to read, in the chronicles of those days, that amid all
this suffering and squalor there was drawn a strict line between "the
quality" and those who had no claim to be patricians. "The quality" was
made up of such emigrants as came from the more civilized East, or
who had slaves, or who dragged with them some rickety vehicle with
carriage-horses--however gaunt the animals might be. All others--those
who had no slaves or horses, and no traditions of the older states--were
classed as "poor whites"; and they accepted their mediocrity without a
murmur.
Because he was born in Lexington, Virginia, and moved thence with his
family to Tennessee, young Sam Houston--a truly eponymous American
hero--was numbered with "the quality" when, after long wandering, he
reached his boyhood home. His further claim to distinction as a boy came
from the fact that he could read and write, and was even familiar with
some of the classics in translation.
When less than eighteen years of age he had reached a height of
more than six feet. He was skilful with the rifle, a remarkable
rough-and-tumble fighter, and as quick with his long knife as any
Indian. This made him a notable figure--the more so as he never abused
his strength and courage. He was never known as anything but "Sam. " In
his own sphere he passed for a gentleman and a scholar, thanks to his
Virginian birth and to the fact that he could repeat a great part of
Pope's translation of the "Iliad. "
His learning led him to teach school a few months in the year to the
children of the white settlers. Indeed, Houston was so much taken with
the pursuit of scholarship that he made up his mind to learn Greek and
Latin. Naturally, this seemed mere foolishness to his mother, his six
strapping brothers, and his three stalwart sisters, who cared little
for study. So sharp was the difference between Sam and the rest of the
family that he gave up his yearning after the classics and went to the
other extreme by leaving home and plunging into the heart of the forest
beyond sight of any white man or woman or any thought of Hellas and
ancient Rome.
Here in the dimly lighted glades he was most happy. The Indians admired
him for his woodcraft and for the skill with which he chased the wild
game amid the forests. From his copy of the "Iliad" he would read to
them the thoughts of the world's greatest poet.
It is told that nearly forty years after, when Houston had long led a
different life and had made his home in Washington, a deputation of more
than forty untamed Indians from Texas arrived there under the charge of
several army officers. They chanced to meet Sam Houston.
One and all ran to him, clasped him in their brawny arms, hugged him
like bears to their naked breasts, and called him "father. " Beneath the
copper skin and thick paint the blood rushed, and their faces changed,
and the lips of many a warrior trembled, although the Indian may not
weep.
In the gigantic form of Houston, on whose ample brow the beneficent
love of a father was struggling with the sternness of the patriarch and
warrior, we saw civilization awing the savage at his feet. We needed no
interpreter to tell us that this impressive supremacy was gained in the
forest.
His family had been at first alarmed by his stay among the Indians;
but when after a time he returned for a new outfit they saw that he was
entirely safe and left him to wander among the red men. Later he came
forth and resumed the pursuits of civilization. He took up his studies;
he learned the rudiments of law and entered upon its active practice.
When barely thirty-six he had won every office that was open to him,
ending with his election to the Governorship of Tennessee in 1827.
Then came a strange episode which changed the whole course of his life.
Until then the love of woman had never stirred his veins. His physical
activities in the forests, his unique intimacy with Indian life, had
kept him away from the social intercourse of towns and cities. In
Nashville Houston came to know for the first time the fascination of
feminine society. As a lawyer, a politician, and the holder of important
offices he could not keep aloof from that gentler and more winning
influence which had hitherto been unknown to him.
In 1828 Governor Houston was obliged to visit different portions of
the state, stopping, as was the custom, to visit at the homes of "the
quality," and to be introduced to wives and daughters as well as to
their sportsman sons. On one of his official journeys he met Miss Eliza
Allen, a daughter of one of the "influential families" of Sumner County,
on the northern border of Tennessee. He found her responsive, charming,
and greatly to be admired. She was a slender type of Southern beauty,
well calculated to gain the affection of a lover, and especially of
one whose associations had been chiefly with the women of frontier
communities.
To meet a girl who had refined tastes and wide reading, and who was at
the same time graceful and full of humor, must have come as a pleasant
experience to Houston. He and Miss Allen saw much of each other, and few
of their friends were surprised when the word went forth that they were
engaged to be married.
The marriage occurred in January, 1829. They were surrounded with
friends of all classes and ranks, for Houston was the associate of
Jackson and was immensely popular in his own state. He seemed to have
before him a brilliant career. He had won a lovely bride to make a home
for him; so that no man seemed to have more attractive prospects. What
was there which at this time interposed in some malignant way to blight
his future?
It was a little more than a month after his marriage when he met a
friend, and, taking him out into a strip of quiet woodland, said to him:
"I have something to tell you, but you must not ask me anything about
it. My wife and I will separate before long. She will return to her
father's, while I must make my way alone. "
Houston's friend seized him by the arm and gazed at him with horror.
"Governor," said he, "you're going to ruin your whole life!
What reason
have you for treating this young lady in such a way? What has she done
that you should leave her? Or what have you done that she should leave
you? Every one will fall away from you. "
Houston grimly replied:
"I have no explanation to give you. My wife has none to give you. She
will not complain of me, nor shall I complain of her. It is no
one's business in the world except our own. Any interference will be
impertinent, and I shall punish it with my own hand. "
"But," said his friend, "think of it. The people at large will not allow
such action. They will believe that you, who have been their idol, have
descended to insult a woman. Your political career is ended. It will not
be safe for you to walk the streets! "
"What difference does it make to me? " said Houston, gloomily. "What must
be, must be. I tell you, as a friend, in advance, so that you may be
prepared; but the parting will take place very soon. "
Little was heard for another month or two, and then came the
announcement that the Governor's wife had left him and had returned to
her parents' home. The news flew like wildfire, and was the theme
of every tongue. Friends of Mrs. Houston begged her to tell them the
meaning of the whole affair. Adherents of Houston, on the other hand,
set afloat stories of his wife's coldness and of her peevishness. The
state was divided into factions; and what really concerned a very few
was, as usual, made everybody's business.
There were times when, if Houston had appeared near the dwelling of his
former wife, he would have been lynched or riddled with bullets. Again,
there were enemies and slanderers of his who, had they shown themselves
in Nashville, would have been torn to pieces by men who hailed Houston
as a hero and who believed that he could not possibly have done wrong.
However his friends might rage, and however her people might wonder and
seek to pry into the secret, no satisfaction was given on either side.
The abandoned wife never uttered a word of explanation. Houston was
equally reticent and self-controlled. In later years he sometimes drank
deeply and was loose-tongued; but never, even in his cups, could he be
persuaded to say a single word about his wife.
The whole thing is a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that
we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged
in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love
with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant
marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure;
and that Houston, learning the facts, left her because he knew that her
heart was not really his.
But the evidence is all against this. Had it been so she would surely
have secured a divorce and would then have married the man whom she
truly loved. As a matter of fact, although she did divorce Houston, it
was only after several years, and the man whom she subsequently married
was not acquainted with her at the time of the separation.
Another theory suggests that Houston was harsh in his treatment of his
wife, and offended her by his untaught manners and extreme self-conceit.
But it is not likely that she objected to his manners, since she had
become familiar with them before she gave him her hand; and as to his
conceit, there is no evidence that it was as yet unduly developed. After
his Texan campaign he sometimes showed a rather lofty idea of his own
achievements; but he does not seem to have done so in these early days.
Some have ascribed the separation to his passion for drink; but here
again we must discriminate. Later in life he became very fond of spirits
and drank whisky with the Indians, but during his earlier years he
was most abstemious. It scarcely seems possible that his wife left him
because he was intemperate.
If one wishes to construct a reasonable hypothesis on a subject where
the facts are either wanting or conflicting, it is not impossible to
suggest a solution of this puzzle about Houston. Although his abandoned
wife never spoke of him and shut her lips tightly when she was
questioned about him, Houston, on his part, was not so taciturn. He
never consciously gave any direct clue to his matrimonial mystery; but
he never forgot this girl who was his bride and whom he seems always
to have loved. In what he said he never ceased to let a vein of
self-reproach run through his words.
I should choose this one paragraph as the most significant. It was
written immediately after they had parted:
Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous, chaste
wife, and as such I pray God I may ever regard her, and I trust I ever
shall. She was cold to me, and I thought she did not love me.
And again he said to an old and valued friend at about the same time:
"I can make no explanation. I exonerate the lady fully and do not
justify myself. "
Miss Allen seems to have been a woman of the sensitive American type
which was so common in the early and the middle part of the last
century. Mrs. Trollope has described it for us with very little
exaggeration. Dickens has drawn it with a touch of malice, and yet not
without truth. Miss Martineau described it during her visit to
this country, and her account quite coincides with those of her two
contemporaries.
Indeed, American women of that time unconsciously described themselves
in a thousand different ways. They were, after all, only a less striking
type of the sentimental Englishwomen who read L. E. L. and the earlier
novels of Bulwer-Lytton. On both sides of the Atlantic there was a reign
of sentiment and a prevalence of what was then called "delicacy. " It was
a die-away, unwholesome attitude toward life and was morbid to the last
degree.
In circles where these ideas prevailed, to eat a hearty dinner was
considered unwomanly. To talk of anything except some gilded "annual,"
or "book of beauty," or the gossip of the neighborhood was wholly to be
condemned. The typical girl of such a community was thin and slender and
given to a mild starvation, though she might eat quantities of jam and
pickles and saleratus biscuit. She had the strangest views of life and
an almost unnatural shrinking from any usual converse with men.
Houston, on his side, was a thoroughly natural and healthful man, having
lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest and displaying
the unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived the solitary life of
the woods, it was a strange thing for him to meet a girl who had been
bred in an entirely different way, who had learned a thousand little
reservations and dainty graces, and whose very breath was coyness and
reserve. Their mating was the mating of the man of the forest with the
woman of the sheltered life.
Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything. There was
a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on her side, probably
thought she had found in him only the brute which lurks in man. He, on
the other, repelled and checked, at once grasped the belief that his
wife cared nothing for him because she would not meet his ardors
with like ardors of her own. It is the mistake that has been made by
thousands of men and women at the beginning of their married lives--the
mistake on one side of too great sensitiveness, and on the other side of
too great warmth of passion.
This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains many
things in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a direct bearing
on the history of our country. A proud man, he could not endure the
slights and gossip of his associates. He resigned the governorship of
Tennessee, and left by night, in such a way as to surround his departure
with mystery.
There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he was
next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long before
adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with knife
and rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a gallant
defender of the Indians.
When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted
brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier
garb. One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted Houston,
who leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall of
Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was
arrested, imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson,
remitted his imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.
Returning to his Indians, he made his way to a new field which promised
much adventure. This was Texas, of whose condition in those early
days something has already been said. Houston found a rough American
settlement, composed of scattered villages extending along the disputed
frontier of Mexico. Already, in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, the
settlers had formed a rudimentary state, and as they increased and
multiplied they framed a simple code of laws.
Then, quite naturally, there came a clash between them and the Mexicans.
The Texans, headed by Moses Austin, had set up a republic and asked
for admission to the United States. Mexico regarded them as rebels and
despised them because they made no military display and had no very
accurate military drill. They were dressed in buckskin and ragged
clothing; but their knives were very bright and their rifles carried
surely. Furthermore, they laughed at odds, and if only a dozen of them
were gathered together they would "take on" almost any number of Mexican
regulars.
In February, 1836, the acute and able Mexican, Santa Anna, led across
the Rio Grande a force of several thousand Mexicans showily uniformed
and completely armed. Every one remembers how they fell upon the little
garrison at the Alamo, now within the city limits of San Antonio, but
then an isolated mission building surrounded by a thick adobe wall. The
Americans numbered less than three hundred men.
A sharp attack was made with these overwhelming odds. The Americans
drove the assailants back with their rifle fire, but they had nothing to
oppose to the Mexican artillery. The contest continued for several days,
and finally the Mexicans breached the wall and fell upon the garrison,
who were now reduced by more than half. There was an hour of blood, and
every one of the Alamo's defenders, including the wounded, was put to
death. The only survivors of the slaughter were two negro slaves, a
woman, and a baby girl.
When the news of this bloody affair reached Houston he leaped forth to
the combat like a lion. He was made commander-in-chief of the scanty
Texan forces. He managed to rally about seven hundred men, and set out
against Santa Anna with little in the way of equipment, and with
nothing but the flame of frenzy to stimulate his followers. By march and
countermarch the hostile forces came face to face near the shore of San
Jacinto Bay, not far from the present city of Houston. Slowly they moved
upon each other, when Houston halted, and his sharpshooters raked the
Mexican battle-line with terrible effect. Then Houston uttered the cry:
"Remember the Alamo! "
With deadly swiftness he led his men in a charge upon Santa Anna's
lines. The Mexicans were scattered as by a mighty wind, their commander
was taken prisoner, and Mexico was forced to give its recognition to
Texas as a free republic, of which General Houston became the first
president.
This was the climax of Houston's life, but the end of it leaves us with
something still to say. Long after his marriage with Miss Allen he took
an Indian girl to wife and lived with her quite happily. She was a very
beautiful woman, a half-breed, with the English name of Tyania Rodgers.
Very little, however, is known of her life with Houston. Later still--in
1840--he married a lady from Marion, Alabama, named Margaret Moffette
Lea. He was then in his forty-seventh year, while she was only
twenty-one; but again, as with his Indian wife, he knew nothing but
domestic tranquillity. These later experiences go far to prove the
truth of what has already been given as the probable cause of his first
mysterious failure to make a woman happy.
After Texas entered the Union, in 1845, Houston was elected to the
United States Senate, in which he served for thirteen years. In 1852,
1856, and 1860, as a Southerner who opposed any movement looking toward
secession, he was regarded as a possible presidential candidate; but his
career was now almost over, and in 1863, while the Civil War--which he
had striven to prevent--was at its height, he died.
LOLA MONTEZ AND KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA
Lola Montez! The name suggests dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs
and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with
a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the
name; and in truth Lola Montez justified the mental picture.
She was not altogether Spanish, yet the other elements that entered into
her mercurial nature heightened and vivified her Castilian traits.
Her mother was a Spaniard--partly Moorish, however. Her father was an
Irishman. There you have it--the dreamy romance of Spain, the exotic
touch of the Orient, and the daring, unreasoning vivacity of the Celt.
This woman during the forty-three years of her life had adventures
innumerable, was widely known in Europe and America, and actually lost
one king his throne. Her maiden name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna
Gilbert. Her father was a British officer, the son of an Irish knight,
Sir Edward Gilbert. Her mother had been a danseuse named Lola Oliver.
"Lola" is a diminutive of Dolores, and as "Lola" she became known to the
world.
She lived at one time or another in nearly all the countries of Europe,
and likewise in India, America, and Australia. It would be impossible
to set down here all the sensations that she achieved. Let us select the
climax of her career and show how she overturned a kingdom, passing but
lightly over her early and her later years.
She was born in Limerick in 1818, but her father's parents cast off
their son and his young wife, the Spanish dancer. They went to India,
and in 1825 the father died, leaving his young widow without a
rupee; but she was quickly married again, this time to an officer of
importance.
The former danseuse became a very conventional person, a fit match for
her highly conventional husband; but the small daughter did not take
kindly to the proprieties of life. The Hindu servants taught her more
things than she should have known; and at one time her stepfather found
her performing the danse du ventre. It was the Moorish strain inherited
from her mother.
She was sent back to Europe, however, and had a sort of education in
Scotland and England, and finally in Paris, where she was detected in
an incipient flirtation with her music-master. There were other persons
hanging about her from her fifteenth year, at which time her
stepfather, in India, had arranged a marriage between her and a rich but
uninteresting old judge. One of her numerous admirers told her this.
"What on earth am I to do? " asked little Lola, most naively.
"Why, marry me," said the artful adviser, who was Captain Thomas James;
and so the very next day they fled to Dublin and were speedily married
at Meath.
Lola's husband was violently in love with her, but, unfortunately,
others were no less susceptible to her charms. She was presented at
the vice-regal court, and everybody there became her victim. Even the
viceroy, Lord Normanby, was greatly taken with her. This nobleman's
position was such that Captain James could not object to his attentions,
though they made the husband angry to a degree. The viceroy would draw
her into alcoves and engage her in flattering conversation, while poor
James could only gnaw his nails and let green-eyed jealousy prey upon
his heart. His only recourse was to take her into the country, where she
speedily became bored; and boredom is the death of love.
Later she went with Captain James to India. She endured a campaign in
Afghanistan, in which she thoroughly enjoyed herself because of the
attentions of the officers. On her return to London in 1842, one Captain
Lennox was a fellow passenger; and their association resulted in an
action for divorce, by which she was freed from her husband, and yet by
a technicality was not able to marry Lennox, whose family in any case
would probably have prevented the wedding.
Mrs. Mayne says, in writing on this point:
Even Lola never quite succeeded in being allowed to commit bigamy
unmolested, though in later years she did commit it and took refuge in
Spain to escape punishment.
The same writer has given a vivid picture of what happened soon after
the divorce. Lola tried to forget her past and to create a new and
brighter future. Here is the narrative:
Her Majesty's Theater was crowded on the night of June 10,1843. A new
Spanish dancer was announced--"Dona Lola Montez. " It was her debut, and
Lumley, the manager, had been puffing her beforehand, as he alone knew
how. To Lord Ranelagh, the leader of the dilettante group of fashionable
young men, he had whispered, mysteriously:
"I have a surprise in store. You shall see. "
So Ranelagh and a party of his friends filled the omnibus boxes,
those tribunes at the side of the stage whence success or failure was
pronounced. Things had been done with Lumley's consummate art; the
packed house was murmurous with excitement. She was a raving beauty,
said report--and then, those intoxicating Spanish dances! Taglioni,
Cerito, Fanny Elssler, all were to be eclipsed.
Ranelagh's glasses were steadily leveled on the stage from the
moment her entrance was imminent. She came on. There was a murmur of
admiration--but Ranelagh made no sign. And then she began to dance.
A sense of disappointment, perhaps? But she was very lovely, very
graceful, "like a flower swept by the wind, she floated round the
stage"--not a dancer, but, by George, a beauty! And still Ranelagh made
no sign.
Yet, no. What low, sibilant sound is that? And then what confused, angry
words from the tribunal? He turns to his friends, his eyes ablaze with
anger, opera-glass in hand. And now again the terrible "Hiss-s-s! " taken
up by the other box, and the words repeated loudly and more angrily
even than before--the historic words which sealed Lola's doom at Her
Majesty's Theater: "WHY, IT'S BETTY JAMES! "
She was, indeed, Betty James, and London would not accept her as Lola
Montez. She left England and appeared upon the Continent as a beautiful
virago, making a sensation--as the French would say, a succes de
scandale--by boxing the ears of people who offended her, and even on one
occasion horsewhipping a policeman who was in attendance on the King of
Prussia. In Paris she tried once more to be a dancer, but Paris would
not have her. She betook herself to Dresden and Warsaw, where she
sought to attract attention by her eccentricities, making mouths at the
spectators, flinging her garters in their faces, and one time removing
her skirts and still more necessary garments, whereupon her manager
broke off his engagement with her.
An English writer who heard a great deal of her and who saw her often
about this time writes that there was nothing wonderful about her except
"her beauty and her impudence. " She had no talent nor any of the graces
which make women attractive; yet many men of talent raved about her. The
clever young journalist, Dujarrier, who assisted Emile Girardin, was her
lover in Paris. He was killed in a duel and left Lola twenty thousand
francs and some securities, so that she no longer had to sing in the
streets as she did in Warsaw.
She now betook herself to Munich, the capital of Bavaria. That country
was then governed by Ludwig I. , a king as eccentric as Lola herself. He
was a curious compound of kindliness, ideality, and peculiar ways. For
instance, he would never use a carriage even on state occasions. He
prowled around the streets, knocking off the hats of those whom he
chanced to meet. Like his unfortunate descendant, Ludwig II. , he
wrote poetry, and he had a picture-gallery devoted to portraits of the
beautiful women whom he had met.
He dressed like an English fox-hunter, with a most extraordinary hat,
and what was odd and peculiar in others pleased him because he was odd
and peculiar himself. Therefore when Lola made her first appearance at
the Court Theater he was enchanted with her. He summoned her at once to
the palace, and within five days he presented her to the court, saying
as he did so:
"Meine Herren, I present you to my best friend. "
In less than a month this curious monarch had given Lola the title of
Countess of Landsfeld.
leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The
emperor! " And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered
being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The
door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set
out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the
mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of
rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton
hands.
At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still
in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much
care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken
place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the
ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to
the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial
pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little
ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of
emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him
something of the common soldier--the man who lives for loot and lust. . . .
At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed
by the ladies of her household.
These facts, repellent as they are, must be remembered when we call
to mind what happened in the next five years. The horror of that night
could not be obliterated by splendid ceremonies, by studious attention,
or by all the pomp and gaiety of the court. Napoleon was then
forty-one--practically the same age as his new wife's father, the
Austrian emperor; Marie Louise was barely nineteen and younger than her
years. Her master must have seemed to be the brutal ogre whom her uncles
had described.
Installed in the Tuileries, she taught herself compliance. On their
marriage night Napoleon had asked her briefly: "What did your parents
tell you? " And she had answered, meekly: "To be yours altogether and to
obey you in everything. " But, though she gave compliance, and though her
freshness seemed enchanting to Napoleon, there was something concealed
within her thoughts to which he could not penetrate. He gaily said to a
member of the court:
"Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women in the
world--gentle, good, artless, and as fresh as roses. "
Yet, at the same time, Napoleon felt a deep anxiety lest in her very
heart of hearts this German girl might either fear or hate him secretly.
Somewhat later Prince Metternich came from the Austrian court to Paris.
"I give you leave," said Napoleon, "to have a private interview with the
empress. Let her tell you what she likes, and I shall ask no questions.
Even should I do so, I now forbid your answering me. "
Metternich was closeted with the empress for a long while. When he
returned to the ante-room he found Napoleon fidgeting about, his eyes a
pair of interrogation-points.
"I am sure," he said, "that the empress told you that I was kind to
her? "
Metternich bowed and made no answer.
"Well," said Napoleon, somewhat impatiently, "at least I am sure that
she is happy. Tell me, did she not say so? "
The Austrian diplomat remained unsmiling.
"Your majesty himself has forbidden me to answer," he returned with
another bow.
We may fairly draw the inference that Marie Louise, though she adapted
herself to her surroundings, was never really happy. Napoleon became
infatuated with her. He surrounded her with every possible mark of
honor. He abandoned public business to walk or drive with her. But the
memory of his own brutality must have vaguely haunted him throughout it
all. He was jealous of her as he had never been jealous of the fickle
Josephine. Constant has recorded that the greatest precautions were
taken to prevent any person whatsoever, and especially any man, from
approaching the empress save in the presence of witnesses.
Napoleon himself underwent a complete change of habits and demeanor.
Where he had been rough and coarse he became attentive and refined. His
shabby uniforms were all discarded, and he spent hours in trying on new
costumes. He even attempted to learn to waltz, but this he gave up in
despair. Whereas before he ate hastily and at irregular intervals,
he now sat at dinner with unusual patience, and the court took on a
character which it had never had. Never before had he sacrificed either
his public duty or his private pleasure for any woman. Even in the first
ardor of his marriage with Josephine, when he used to pour out his heart
to her in letters from Italian battle-fields, he did so only after he
had made the disposition of his troops and had planned his movements
for the following day. Now, however, he was not merely devoted, but
uxorious; and in 1811, after the birth of the little King of Rome, he
ceased to be the earlier Napoleon altogether. He had founded a dynasty.
He was the head of a reigning house. He forgot the principles of the
Revolution, and he ruled, as he thought, like other monarchs, by the
grace of God.
As for Marie Louise, she played her part extremely well. Somewhat
haughty and unapproachable to others, she nevertheless studied
Napoleon's every wish. She seemed even to be loving; but one can
scarcely doubt that her obedience sprang ultimately from fear and
that her devotion was the devotion of a dog which has been beaten into
subjection.
Her vanity was flattered in many ways, and most of all by her
appointment as regent of the empire during Napoleon's absence in the
disastrous Russian campaign which began in 1812. It was in June of that
year that the French emperor held court at Dresden, where he played,
as was said, to "a parterre of kings. " This was the climax of his
magnificence, for there were gathered all the sovereigns and princes who
were his allies and who furnished the levies that swelled his Grand Army
to six hundred thousand men. Here Marie Louise, like her husband, felt
to the full the intoxication of supreme power. By a sinister coincidence
it was here that she first met the other man, then unnoticed and little
heeded, who was to cast upon her a fascination which in the end proved
irresistible.
This man was Adam Albrecht, Count von Neipperg. There is something
mysterious about his early years, and something baleful about his silent
warfare with Napoleon. As a very young soldier he had been an Austrian
officer in 1793. His command served in Belgium; and there, in a
skirmish, he was overpowered by the French in superior numbers, but
resisted desperately. In the melee a saber slashed him across the right
side of his face, and he was made prisoner. The wound deprived him of
his right eye, so that for the rest of his life he was compelled to wear
a black bandage to conceal the mutilation.
From that moment he conceived an undying hatred of the French, serving
against them in the Tyrol and in Italy. He always claimed that had the
Archduke Charles followed his advice, the Austrians would have forced
Napoleon's army to capitulate at Marengo, thus bringing early eclipse
to the rising star of Bonaparte. However this may be, Napoleon's success
enraged Neipperg and made his hatred almost the hatred of a fiend.
Hitherto he had detested the French as a nation. Afterward he
concentrated his malignity upon the person of Napoleon. In every way he
tried to cross the path of that great soldier, and, though Neipperg was
comparatively an unknown man, his indomitable purpose and his continued
intrigues at last attracted the notice of the emperor; for in 1808
Napoleon wrote this significant sentence:
The Count von Neipperg is openly known to have been the enemy of the
French.
Little did the great conqueror dream how deadly was the blow which this
Austrian count was destined finally to deal him!
Neipperg, though his title was not a high one, belonged to the old
nobility of Austria. He had proved his bravery in war and as a duelist,
and he was a diplomat as well as a soldier. Despite his mutilation, he
was a handsome and accomplished courtier, a man of wide experience, and
one who bore himself in a manner which suggested the spirit of romance.
According to Masson, he was an Austrian Don Juan, and had won the hearts
of many women. At thirty he had formed a connection with an Italian
woman named Teresa Pola, whom he had carried away from her husband. She
had borne him five children; and in 1813 he had married her in order
that these children might be made legitimate.
In his own sphere the activity of Neipperg was almost as remarkable as
Napoleon's in a greater one. Apart from his exploits on the field of
battle he had been attached to the Austrian embassy in Paris, and,
strangely enough, had been decorated by Napoleon himself with, the
golden eagle of the Legion of Honor. Four months later we find him
minister of Austria at the court of Sweden, where he helped to lay the
train of intrigue which was to detach Bernadotte from Napoleon's cause.
In 1812, as has just been said, he was with Marie Louise for a short
time at Dresden, hovering about her, already forming schemes. Two years
after this he overthrew Murat at Naples; and then hurried on post-haste
to urge Prince Eugene to abandon Bonaparte.
When the great struggle of 1814 neared its close, and Napoleon, fighting
with his back to the wall, was about to succumb to the united armies of
Europe, it was evident that the Austrian emperor would soon be able to
separate his daughter from her husband. In fact, when Napoleon was sent
to Elba, Marie Louise returned to Vienna. The cynical Austrian diplomats
resolved that she should never again meet her imperial husband. She was
made Duchess of Parma in Italy, and set out for her new possessions; and
the man with the black band across his sightless eye was chosen to be
her escort and companion.
When Neipperg received this commission he was with Teresa Pola at Milan.
A strange smile flitted across his face; and presently he remarked, with
cynical frankness:
"Before six months I shall be her lover, and, later on, her husband. "
He took up his post as chief escort of Marie Louise, and they journeyed
slowly to Munich and Baden and Geneva, loitering on the way. Amid the
great events which were shaking Europe this couple attracted slight
attention. Napoleon, in Elba, longed for his wife and for his little
son, the King of Rome. He sent countless messages and many couriers; but
every message was intercepted, and no courier reached his destination.
Meanwhile Marie Louise was lingering agreeably in Switzerland. She was
happy to have escaped from the whirlpool of politics and war. Amid the
romantic scenery through which she passed Neipperg was always by her
side, attentive, devoted, trying in everything to please her. With him
she passed delightful evenings. He sang to her in his rich barytone
songs of love. He seemed romantic with a touch of mystery, a gallant
soldier whose soul was also touched by sentiment.
One would have said that Marie Louise, the daughter of an imperial
line, would have been proof against the fascinations of a person so far
inferior to herself in rank, and who, beside the great emperor, was less
than nothing. Even granting that she had never really loved Napoleon,
she might still have preferred to maintain her dignity, to share his
fate, and to go down in history as the empress of the greatest man whom
modern times have known.
But Marie Louise was, after all, a woman, and she followed the guidance
of her heart. To her Napoleon was still the man who had met her amid the
rain-storm at Courcelles, and had from the first moment when he touched
her violated all the instincts of a virgin. Later he had in his way
tried to make amends; but the horror of that first night had never
wholly left her memory. Napoleon had unrolled before her the drama of
sensuality, but her heart had not been given to him. She had been his
empress. In a sense it might be more true to say that she had been
his mistress. But she had never been duly wooed and won and made his
wife--an experience which is the right of every woman. And so this
Neipperg, with his deferential manners, his soothing voice, his magnetic
touch, his ardor, and his devotion, appeased that craving which the
master of a hundred legions could not satisfy.
In less than the six months of which Neipperg had spoken the
psychological moment had arrived. In the dim twilight she listened to
his words of love; and then, drawn by that irresistible power which
masters pride and woman's will, she sank into her lover's arms, yielding
to his caresses, and knowing that she would be parted from him no more
except by death.
From that moment he was bound to her by the closest ties and lived with
her at the petty court of Parma. His prediction came true to the very
letter. Teresa Pola died, and then Napoleon died, and after this Marie
Louise and Neipperg were united in a morganatic marriage. Three children
were born to them before his death in 1829.
It is interesting to note how much of an impression was made upon her by
the final exile of her imperial husband to St. Helena. When the news was
brought her she observed, casually:
"Thanks. By the way, I should like to ride this morning to Markenstein.
Do you think the weather is good enough to risk it? "
Napoleon, on his side, passed through agonies of doubt and longing when
no letters came to him from Marie Louise. She was constantly in his
thoughts during his exile at St. Helena. "When his faithful friend and
constant companion at St. Helena, the Count Las Casas, was ordered by
Sir Hudson Lowe to depart from St. Helena, Napoleon wrote to him:
"Should you see, some day, my wife and son, embrace them. For two years
I have, neither directly nor indirectly, heard from them. There has been
on this island for six months a German botanist, who has seen them
in the garden of Schoenbrunn a few months before his departure.
The barbarians (meaning the English authorities at St. Helena) have
carefully prevented him from coming to give me any news respecting
them. "
At last the truth was told him, and he received it with that high
magnanimity, or it may be fatalism, which at times he was capable of
showing. Never in all his days of exile did he say one word against her.
Possibly in searching his own soul he found excuses such as we may find.
In his will he spoke of her with great affection, and shortly before his
death he said to his physician, Antommarchi:
"After my death, I desire that you will take my heart, put it in the
spirits of wine, and that you carry it to Parma to my dear Marie Louise.
You will please tell her that I tenderly loved her--that I never ceased
to love her. You will relate to her all that you have seen, and every
particular respecting my situation and death. "
The story of Marie Louise is pathetic, almost tragic. There is the taint
of grossness about it; and yet, after all, there is a lesson in it--the
lesson that true love cannot be forced or summoned at command, that it
is destroyed before its birth by outrage, and that it goes out only when
evoked by sympathy, by tenderness, and by devotion.
END OF VOLUME TWO
THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON
Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk up
on any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station, the
conspicuous letters "G. T. T. " The laugh went round, and every one
who saw the inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on you, old
hoss! " The three letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for any man to go to
Texas in those days meant his moral, mental, and financial dilapidation.
Either he had plunged into bankruptcy and wished to begin life over
again in a new world, or the sheriff had a warrant for his arrest.
The very task of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran
their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from
moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and
where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form--all
this stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken the
emigrants who came toiling on foot or struggling upon emaciated horses.
Other daring pioneers came by boat, running all manner of risks upon the
swollen rivers. Still others descended from the mountains of Tennessee
and passed through a more open country and with a greater certainty of
self-protection, because they were trained from childhood to wield the
rifle and the long sheath-knife.
It is odd enough to read, in the chronicles of those days, that amid all
this suffering and squalor there was drawn a strict line between "the
quality" and those who had no claim to be patricians. "The quality" was
made up of such emigrants as came from the more civilized East, or
who had slaves, or who dragged with them some rickety vehicle with
carriage-horses--however gaunt the animals might be. All others--those
who had no slaves or horses, and no traditions of the older states--were
classed as "poor whites"; and they accepted their mediocrity without a
murmur.
Because he was born in Lexington, Virginia, and moved thence with his
family to Tennessee, young Sam Houston--a truly eponymous American
hero--was numbered with "the quality" when, after long wandering, he
reached his boyhood home. His further claim to distinction as a boy came
from the fact that he could read and write, and was even familiar with
some of the classics in translation.
When less than eighteen years of age he had reached a height of
more than six feet. He was skilful with the rifle, a remarkable
rough-and-tumble fighter, and as quick with his long knife as any
Indian. This made him a notable figure--the more so as he never abused
his strength and courage. He was never known as anything but "Sam. " In
his own sphere he passed for a gentleman and a scholar, thanks to his
Virginian birth and to the fact that he could repeat a great part of
Pope's translation of the "Iliad. "
His learning led him to teach school a few months in the year to the
children of the white settlers. Indeed, Houston was so much taken with
the pursuit of scholarship that he made up his mind to learn Greek and
Latin. Naturally, this seemed mere foolishness to his mother, his six
strapping brothers, and his three stalwart sisters, who cared little
for study. So sharp was the difference between Sam and the rest of the
family that he gave up his yearning after the classics and went to the
other extreme by leaving home and plunging into the heart of the forest
beyond sight of any white man or woman or any thought of Hellas and
ancient Rome.
Here in the dimly lighted glades he was most happy. The Indians admired
him for his woodcraft and for the skill with which he chased the wild
game amid the forests. From his copy of the "Iliad" he would read to
them the thoughts of the world's greatest poet.
It is told that nearly forty years after, when Houston had long led a
different life and had made his home in Washington, a deputation of more
than forty untamed Indians from Texas arrived there under the charge of
several army officers. They chanced to meet Sam Houston.
One and all ran to him, clasped him in their brawny arms, hugged him
like bears to their naked breasts, and called him "father. " Beneath the
copper skin and thick paint the blood rushed, and their faces changed,
and the lips of many a warrior trembled, although the Indian may not
weep.
In the gigantic form of Houston, on whose ample brow the beneficent
love of a father was struggling with the sternness of the patriarch and
warrior, we saw civilization awing the savage at his feet. We needed no
interpreter to tell us that this impressive supremacy was gained in the
forest.
His family had been at first alarmed by his stay among the Indians;
but when after a time he returned for a new outfit they saw that he was
entirely safe and left him to wander among the red men. Later he came
forth and resumed the pursuits of civilization. He took up his studies;
he learned the rudiments of law and entered upon its active practice.
When barely thirty-six he had won every office that was open to him,
ending with his election to the Governorship of Tennessee in 1827.
Then came a strange episode which changed the whole course of his life.
Until then the love of woman had never stirred his veins. His physical
activities in the forests, his unique intimacy with Indian life, had
kept him away from the social intercourse of towns and cities. In
Nashville Houston came to know for the first time the fascination of
feminine society. As a lawyer, a politician, and the holder of important
offices he could not keep aloof from that gentler and more winning
influence which had hitherto been unknown to him.
In 1828 Governor Houston was obliged to visit different portions of
the state, stopping, as was the custom, to visit at the homes of "the
quality," and to be introduced to wives and daughters as well as to
their sportsman sons. On one of his official journeys he met Miss Eliza
Allen, a daughter of one of the "influential families" of Sumner County,
on the northern border of Tennessee. He found her responsive, charming,
and greatly to be admired. She was a slender type of Southern beauty,
well calculated to gain the affection of a lover, and especially of
one whose associations had been chiefly with the women of frontier
communities.
To meet a girl who had refined tastes and wide reading, and who was at
the same time graceful and full of humor, must have come as a pleasant
experience to Houston. He and Miss Allen saw much of each other, and few
of their friends were surprised when the word went forth that they were
engaged to be married.
The marriage occurred in January, 1829. They were surrounded with
friends of all classes and ranks, for Houston was the associate of
Jackson and was immensely popular in his own state. He seemed to have
before him a brilliant career. He had won a lovely bride to make a home
for him; so that no man seemed to have more attractive prospects. What
was there which at this time interposed in some malignant way to blight
his future?
It was a little more than a month after his marriage when he met a
friend, and, taking him out into a strip of quiet woodland, said to him:
"I have something to tell you, but you must not ask me anything about
it. My wife and I will separate before long. She will return to her
father's, while I must make my way alone. "
Houston's friend seized him by the arm and gazed at him with horror.
"Governor," said he, "you're going to ruin your whole life!
What reason
have you for treating this young lady in such a way? What has she done
that you should leave her? Or what have you done that she should leave
you? Every one will fall away from you. "
Houston grimly replied:
"I have no explanation to give you. My wife has none to give you. She
will not complain of me, nor shall I complain of her. It is no
one's business in the world except our own. Any interference will be
impertinent, and I shall punish it with my own hand. "
"But," said his friend, "think of it. The people at large will not allow
such action. They will believe that you, who have been their idol, have
descended to insult a woman. Your political career is ended. It will not
be safe for you to walk the streets! "
"What difference does it make to me? " said Houston, gloomily. "What must
be, must be. I tell you, as a friend, in advance, so that you may be
prepared; but the parting will take place very soon. "
Little was heard for another month or two, and then came the
announcement that the Governor's wife had left him and had returned to
her parents' home. The news flew like wildfire, and was the theme
of every tongue. Friends of Mrs. Houston begged her to tell them the
meaning of the whole affair. Adherents of Houston, on the other hand,
set afloat stories of his wife's coldness and of her peevishness. The
state was divided into factions; and what really concerned a very few
was, as usual, made everybody's business.
There were times when, if Houston had appeared near the dwelling of his
former wife, he would have been lynched or riddled with bullets. Again,
there were enemies and slanderers of his who, had they shown themselves
in Nashville, would have been torn to pieces by men who hailed Houston
as a hero and who believed that he could not possibly have done wrong.
However his friends might rage, and however her people might wonder and
seek to pry into the secret, no satisfaction was given on either side.
The abandoned wife never uttered a word of explanation. Houston was
equally reticent and self-controlled. In later years he sometimes drank
deeply and was loose-tongued; but never, even in his cups, could he be
persuaded to say a single word about his wife.
The whole thing is a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that
we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged
in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love
with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant
marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure;
and that Houston, learning the facts, left her because he knew that her
heart was not really his.
But the evidence is all against this. Had it been so she would surely
have secured a divorce and would then have married the man whom she
truly loved. As a matter of fact, although she did divorce Houston, it
was only after several years, and the man whom she subsequently married
was not acquainted with her at the time of the separation.
Another theory suggests that Houston was harsh in his treatment of his
wife, and offended her by his untaught manners and extreme self-conceit.
But it is not likely that she objected to his manners, since she had
become familiar with them before she gave him her hand; and as to his
conceit, there is no evidence that it was as yet unduly developed. After
his Texan campaign he sometimes showed a rather lofty idea of his own
achievements; but he does not seem to have done so in these early days.
Some have ascribed the separation to his passion for drink; but here
again we must discriminate. Later in life he became very fond of spirits
and drank whisky with the Indians, but during his earlier years he
was most abstemious. It scarcely seems possible that his wife left him
because he was intemperate.
If one wishes to construct a reasonable hypothesis on a subject where
the facts are either wanting or conflicting, it is not impossible to
suggest a solution of this puzzle about Houston. Although his abandoned
wife never spoke of him and shut her lips tightly when she was
questioned about him, Houston, on his part, was not so taciturn. He
never consciously gave any direct clue to his matrimonial mystery; but
he never forgot this girl who was his bride and whom he seems always
to have loved. In what he said he never ceased to let a vein of
self-reproach run through his words.
I should choose this one paragraph as the most significant. It was
written immediately after they had parted:
Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous, chaste
wife, and as such I pray God I may ever regard her, and I trust I ever
shall. She was cold to me, and I thought she did not love me.
And again he said to an old and valued friend at about the same time:
"I can make no explanation. I exonerate the lady fully and do not
justify myself. "
Miss Allen seems to have been a woman of the sensitive American type
which was so common in the early and the middle part of the last
century. Mrs. Trollope has described it for us with very little
exaggeration. Dickens has drawn it with a touch of malice, and yet not
without truth. Miss Martineau described it during her visit to
this country, and her account quite coincides with those of her two
contemporaries.
Indeed, American women of that time unconsciously described themselves
in a thousand different ways. They were, after all, only a less striking
type of the sentimental Englishwomen who read L. E. L. and the earlier
novels of Bulwer-Lytton. On both sides of the Atlantic there was a reign
of sentiment and a prevalence of what was then called "delicacy. " It was
a die-away, unwholesome attitude toward life and was morbid to the last
degree.
In circles where these ideas prevailed, to eat a hearty dinner was
considered unwomanly. To talk of anything except some gilded "annual,"
or "book of beauty," or the gossip of the neighborhood was wholly to be
condemned. The typical girl of such a community was thin and slender and
given to a mild starvation, though she might eat quantities of jam and
pickles and saleratus biscuit. She had the strangest views of life and
an almost unnatural shrinking from any usual converse with men.
Houston, on his side, was a thoroughly natural and healthful man, having
lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest and displaying
the unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived the solitary life of
the woods, it was a strange thing for him to meet a girl who had been
bred in an entirely different way, who had learned a thousand little
reservations and dainty graces, and whose very breath was coyness and
reserve. Their mating was the mating of the man of the forest with the
woman of the sheltered life.
Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything. There was
a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on her side, probably
thought she had found in him only the brute which lurks in man. He, on
the other, repelled and checked, at once grasped the belief that his
wife cared nothing for him because she would not meet his ardors
with like ardors of her own. It is the mistake that has been made by
thousands of men and women at the beginning of their married lives--the
mistake on one side of too great sensitiveness, and on the other side of
too great warmth of passion.
This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains many
things in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a direct bearing
on the history of our country. A proud man, he could not endure the
slights and gossip of his associates. He resigned the governorship of
Tennessee, and left by night, in such a way as to surround his departure
with mystery.
There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he was
next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long before
adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with knife
and rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a gallant
defender of the Indians.
When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted
brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier
garb. One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted Houston,
who leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall of
Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was
arrested, imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson,
remitted his imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.
Returning to his Indians, he made his way to a new field which promised
much adventure. This was Texas, of whose condition in those early
days something has already been said. Houston found a rough American
settlement, composed of scattered villages extending along the disputed
frontier of Mexico. Already, in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, the
settlers had formed a rudimentary state, and as they increased and
multiplied they framed a simple code of laws.
Then, quite naturally, there came a clash between them and the Mexicans.
The Texans, headed by Moses Austin, had set up a republic and asked
for admission to the United States. Mexico regarded them as rebels and
despised them because they made no military display and had no very
accurate military drill. They were dressed in buckskin and ragged
clothing; but their knives were very bright and their rifles carried
surely. Furthermore, they laughed at odds, and if only a dozen of them
were gathered together they would "take on" almost any number of Mexican
regulars.
In February, 1836, the acute and able Mexican, Santa Anna, led across
the Rio Grande a force of several thousand Mexicans showily uniformed
and completely armed. Every one remembers how they fell upon the little
garrison at the Alamo, now within the city limits of San Antonio, but
then an isolated mission building surrounded by a thick adobe wall. The
Americans numbered less than three hundred men.
A sharp attack was made with these overwhelming odds. The Americans
drove the assailants back with their rifle fire, but they had nothing to
oppose to the Mexican artillery. The contest continued for several days,
and finally the Mexicans breached the wall and fell upon the garrison,
who were now reduced by more than half. There was an hour of blood, and
every one of the Alamo's defenders, including the wounded, was put to
death. The only survivors of the slaughter were two negro slaves, a
woman, and a baby girl.
When the news of this bloody affair reached Houston he leaped forth to
the combat like a lion. He was made commander-in-chief of the scanty
Texan forces. He managed to rally about seven hundred men, and set out
against Santa Anna with little in the way of equipment, and with
nothing but the flame of frenzy to stimulate his followers. By march and
countermarch the hostile forces came face to face near the shore of San
Jacinto Bay, not far from the present city of Houston. Slowly they moved
upon each other, when Houston halted, and his sharpshooters raked the
Mexican battle-line with terrible effect. Then Houston uttered the cry:
"Remember the Alamo! "
With deadly swiftness he led his men in a charge upon Santa Anna's
lines. The Mexicans were scattered as by a mighty wind, their commander
was taken prisoner, and Mexico was forced to give its recognition to
Texas as a free republic, of which General Houston became the first
president.
This was the climax of Houston's life, but the end of it leaves us with
something still to say. Long after his marriage with Miss Allen he took
an Indian girl to wife and lived with her quite happily. She was a very
beautiful woman, a half-breed, with the English name of Tyania Rodgers.
Very little, however, is known of her life with Houston. Later still--in
1840--he married a lady from Marion, Alabama, named Margaret Moffette
Lea. He was then in his forty-seventh year, while she was only
twenty-one; but again, as with his Indian wife, he knew nothing but
domestic tranquillity. These later experiences go far to prove the
truth of what has already been given as the probable cause of his first
mysterious failure to make a woman happy.
After Texas entered the Union, in 1845, Houston was elected to the
United States Senate, in which he served for thirteen years. In 1852,
1856, and 1860, as a Southerner who opposed any movement looking toward
secession, he was regarded as a possible presidential candidate; but his
career was now almost over, and in 1863, while the Civil War--which he
had striven to prevent--was at its height, he died.
LOLA MONTEZ AND KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA
Lola Montez! The name suggests dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs
and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with
a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the
name; and in truth Lola Montez justified the mental picture.
She was not altogether Spanish, yet the other elements that entered into
her mercurial nature heightened and vivified her Castilian traits.
Her mother was a Spaniard--partly Moorish, however. Her father was an
Irishman. There you have it--the dreamy romance of Spain, the exotic
touch of the Orient, and the daring, unreasoning vivacity of the Celt.
This woman during the forty-three years of her life had adventures
innumerable, was widely known in Europe and America, and actually lost
one king his throne. Her maiden name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna
Gilbert. Her father was a British officer, the son of an Irish knight,
Sir Edward Gilbert. Her mother had been a danseuse named Lola Oliver.
"Lola" is a diminutive of Dolores, and as "Lola" she became known to the
world.
She lived at one time or another in nearly all the countries of Europe,
and likewise in India, America, and Australia. It would be impossible
to set down here all the sensations that she achieved. Let us select the
climax of her career and show how she overturned a kingdom, passing but
lightly over her early and her later years.
She was born in Limerick in 1818, but her father's parents cast off
their son and his young wife, the Spanish dancer. They went to India,
and in 1825 the father died, leaving his young widow without a
rupee; but she was quickly married again, this time to an officer of
importance.
The former danseuse became a very conventional person, a fit match for
her highly conventional husband; but the small daughter did not take
kindly to the proprieties of life. The Hindu servants taught her more
things than she should have known; and at one time her stepfather found
her performing the danse du ventre. It was the Moorish strain inherited
from her mother.
She was sent back to Europe, however, and had a sort of education in
Scotland and England, and finally in Paris, where she was detected in
an incipient flirtation with her music-master. There were other persons
hanging about her from her fifteenth year, at which time her
stepfather, in India, had arranged a marriage between her and a rich but
uninteresting old judge. One of her numerous admirers told her this.
"What on earth am I to do? " asked little Lola, most naively.
"Why, marry me," said the artful adviser, who was Captain Thomas James;
and so the very next day they fled to Dublin and were speedily married
at Meath.
Lola's husband was violently in love with her, but, unfortunately,
others were no less susceptible to her charms. She was presented at
the vice-regal court, and everybody there became her victim. Even the
viceroy, Lord Normanby, was greatly taken with her. This nobleman's
position was such that Captain James could not object to his attentions,
though they made the husband angry to a degree. The viceroy would draw
her into alcoves and engage her in flattering conversation, while poor
James could only gnaw his nails and let green-eyed jealousy prey upon
his heart. His only recourse was to take her into the country, where she
speedily became bored; and boredom is the death of love.
Later she went with Captain James to India. She endured a campaign in
Afghanistan, in which she thoroughly enjoyed herself because of the
attentions of the officers. On her return to London in 1842, one Captain
Lennox was a fellow passenger; and their association resulted in an
action for divorce, by which she was freed from her husband, and yet by
a technicality was not able to marry Lennox, whose family in any case
would probably have prevented the wedding.
Mrs. Mayne says, in writing on this point:
Even Lola never quite succeeded in being allowed to commit bigamy
unmolested, though in later years she did commit it and took refuge in
Spain to escape punishment.
The same writer has given a vivid picture of what happened soon after
the divorce. Lola tried to forget her past and to create a new and
brighter future. Here is the narrative:
Her Majesty's Theater was crowded on the night of June 10,1843. A new
Spanish dancer was announced--"Dona Lola Montez. " It was her debut, and
Lumley, the manager, had been puffing her beforehand, as he alone knew
how. To Lord Ranelagh, the leader of the dilettante group of fashionable
young men, he had whispered, mysteriously:
"I have a surprise in store. You shall see. "
So Ranelagh and a party of his friends filled the omnibus boxes,
those tribunes at the side of the stage whence success or failure was
pronounced. Things had been done with Lumley's consummate art; the
packed house was murmurous with excitement. She was a raving beauty,
said report--and then, those intoxicating Spanish dances! Taglioni,
Cerito, Fanny Elssler, all were to be eclipsed.
Ranelagh's glasses were steadily leveled on the stage from the
moment her entrance was imminent. She came on. There was a murmur of
admiration--but Ranelagh made no sign. And then she began to dance.
A sense of disappointment, perhaps? But she was very lovely, very
graceful, "like a flower swept by the wind, she floated round the
stage"--not a dancer, but, by George, a beauty! And still Ranelagh made
no sign.
Yet, no. What low, sibilant sound is that? And then what confused, angry
words from the tribunal? He turns to his friends, his eyes ablaze with
anger, opera-glass in hand. And now again the terrible "Hiss-s-s! " taken
up by the other box, and the words repeated loudly and more angrily
even than before--the historic words which sealed Lola's doom at Her
Majesty's Theater: "WHY, IT'S BETTY JAMES! "
She was, indeed, Betty James, and London would not accept her as Lola
Montez. She left England and appeared upon the Continent as a beautiful
virago, making a sensation--as the French would say, a succes de
scandale--by boxing the ears of people who offended her, and even on one
occasion horsewhipping a policeman who was in attendance on the King of
Prussia. In Paris she tried once more to be a dancer, but Paris would
not have her. She betook herself to Dresden and Warsaw, where she
sought to attract attention by her eccentricities, making mouths at the
spectators, flinging her garters in their faces, and one time removing
her skirts and still more necessary garments, whereupon her manager
broke off his engagement with her.
An English writer who heard a great deal of her and who saw her often
about this time writes that there was nothing wonderful about her except
"her beauty and her impudence. " She had no talent nor any of the graces
which make women attractive; yet many men of talent raved about her. The
clever young journalist, Dujarrier, who assisted Emile Girardin, was her
lover in Paris. He was killed in a duel and left Lola twenty thousand
francs and some securities, so that she no longer had to sing in the
streets as she did in Warsaw.
She now betook herself to Munich, the capital of Bavaria. That country
was then governed by Ludwig I. , a king as eccentric as Lola herself. He
was a curious compound of kindliness, ideality, and peculiar ways. For
instance, he would never use a carriage even on state occasions. He
prowled around the streets, knocking off the hats of those whom he
chanced to meet. Like his unfortunate descendant, Ludwig II. , he
wrote poetry, and he had a picture-gallery devoted to portraits of the
beautiful women whom he had met.
He dressed like an English fox-hunter, with a most extraordinary hat,
and what was odd and peculiar in others pleased him because he was odd
and peculiar himself. Therefore when Lola made her first appearance at
the Court Theater he was enchanted with her. He summoned her at once to
the palace, and within five days he presented her to the court, saying
as he did so:
"Meine Herren, I present you to my best friend. "
In less than a month this curious monarch had given Lola the title of
Countess of Landsfeld.
