On 27th August she appeared in _Yelva, or the Orphan of Russia_, "a new and exciting drama" she had herself translated from the French. On Wednesday, 6th September, she took a benefit, playing in _The Follies of a Night_, and two farces. Into one of these she introduced her "Spider Dance," which seems to have outraged colonial opinion. We need not condemn it on that account as immodest, for in our own day we have seen a performance interdicted as offensive to public morals in Manchester, and pronounced (rightly) to be the quintessence of mobile grace and the truest poetry of motion in the not less considerable city of London. Immodesty in the minds of many people definitely connotes that which pleases the eyes and the senses.
Business continued dull at Sydney, and Lola departed in the second week of September for Melbourne. A dispute had arisen between her and another member of her company, Mrs. Fiddes, who issued a writ of attachment against her. Brown, the sheriff, went aboard the steamer to apprehend Lola, who retired to her cabin till the vessel was well under weigh. She then sent word that the officer could arrest her if he would, but she was obliged to tell him that she was quite naked. The bold expedient was, of course, successful. "Poor Brown," we are told, "blushed and retired, and was put on shore at the Heads, about twenty miles from Sydney, and was greeted on his return to the city with roars of laughter." The sheriff evidently did not object to repeating a good story, even at his own expense.
At Melbourne, Lola must have been vividly reminded of California. The gold fever was at its height. The population of the Port Philip district had swollen in five years from 76,000 to 364,000, of which number at least two-thirds were men. Men, too, they were, of every nationality under the sun, and of every class, though the more criminal and dangerous elements were in the ascendant. In '55 life and property were, notwithstanding, somewhat more secure here than in California, thanks to the firmer, less corrupt administration of British officials. Prices were, it need not be said, extravagantly high, though the barest necessities of decent life were hardly obtainable outside Melbourne and Geelong. A goldfield would seem to be one of the most brutalising environments to which a human being can adapt himself.