"I saw Lumley immediately after the fall of the curtain," says a reporter who was admitted behind the scenes. "He was surrounded by the professors of morality from the omnibus-box, who said that Donna Lola was positively not to reappear. They pointed out to him that it was absolutely essential to have none but exemplary characters in the ballet; but they did not tell him where he would procure females who would have no objection to exhibiting their legs in pink silk fleshings. As Lumley could not afford to offend his patrons, he was compelled to accept the fiat of these virtuous scions of a moral and ultra-scrupulous aristocracy. Carlotta Grisi might have had a score of lovers; but, then, she had never turned up her charming little nose at my Lord Ranelagh."
It was an age when the theatre had to kow-tow to the patron. Unless My Lord approved, Mr. Crummles had no choice but to ring down the curtain. As the Ranelagh faction very emphatically disapproved, Lumley was compelled to give the recruit her marching-orders.
Lola's première had thus become her dernière.
By the way, a Sunday paper, writing some time afterwards, was guilty of a serious slip in its account of the episode, and mistook Lord Ranelagh for the Duke of Cambridge. "The newcomer," says this critic, "was recognised 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 débutante? 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.