in his fortieth year. A shrewd connoisseur, he had devoted nearly all his
income as Prince to the acquisition of objects of art. It was his ambition
to make his capital a new Florence, and to carry out this design the
strictest economy was introduced into all departments of the state. The
Munich we know was mainly his creation. To him we owe the Glyptothek, of
which he had conceived the idea at least as far back as 1805; the
beautiful Au Church, the Royal Chapel, the Ludwigskirche, the Church of
St. Boniface, the splendid throne-room, the bronze monument to the
Bavarian soldiers who fell in the Russian campaigns. The quaint old German
city was completely transformed. Unfortunately, the royal Maecenas failed
to recognise the worth of native models, such as were to be found in
Nuremberg. All his buildings were duplicates, or close imitations, of
others on the south side of the Alps. The Triumphal Arch in Ludwigstrasse,
with its bronze car drawn by lions, was obviously suggested by the
well-known models of Paris and Rome. To Louis's zeal we are indebted also
for the Pinakothek and the colossal statue of Bavaria. Finally, in 1830,
on the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig, the King laid the
foundation-stone of the Walhalla, the temple of German greatness, thus
accomplishing a design he had formed twenty-five years before. Lofty as
was the execution, the conception was loftier. It took place
"just after the Emperor Francis II. had uncrowned himself, declaring
that the Holy Roman Empire--the empire of a thousand years--was at an
end. It was at such a time, when the fabric that had stood for ten
centuries had crumbled into dust; when the tramp of the conqueror
threatened to efface all ancient institutions; when every existing
dynasty of the continent of Europe was trembling for its existence;
when principalities were being moulded into kingdoms, kingdoms
dismembered or destroyed, God's very barriers trampled down and
passed; when works of art, the heirlooms of a nation, were torn from
the land that had produced them to deck the capital of the conqueror;
when victory followed victory--Marengo, Hohenlinden, Ulm, Austerlitz,
Jena, Friedland; when king's crowns and mitres, like withered leaves,
lay strewn upon the ground, and when it might well be feared that in
that ancient land soon nothing would be left of its former self to
recognise its identity--at such a moment was it, when devastation
threatened to put out the lights which had been shining for ages, that
the Prince Royal of Bavaria, then twenty-three years of age, resolved
to build a monument to the glory of his country."[11]
There were the elements of greatness in Louis of Bavaria. In magnanimity
of soul he was very far the superior of those sovereigns to whom
historians have accorded the title of "the great." Nor was he lacking, as
we have seen, in the will and capacity to give to his loftiest conceptions
practical shape.
"Throughout life," says the writer just quoted, "King Louis ordered
his expenses with the exactness of a debtor and creditor account in a
banker's ledger. The necessary monies for certain undertakings were
assigned beforehand for each coming year. Every separate expenditure
was provided for from specified sources, and each rubric had a
corresponding one belonging to it, whence its expenses were to be
defrayed."
No Bond Street dealer could be a shrewder judge of the value of a work of
art than the Bavarian prince; he was no wasteful _dilettante_, but brought
to bear on the embellishment of his capital the keenest business
instincts. He watched with unflagging attention the fluctuations in the
prices of the treasures he coveted. We find him comparing Thorwaldsen's
and Canova's estimates of the value of the Barberini Faun, and refusing to
pay an extra scudo for the carriage of a statue. Yet he was not a
niggard. Those he honoured with his friendship he never left to want. A
sick or indigent artist had only to bring his need to the King's notice,
to receive liberal relief. He was a warm-hearted and constant friend. His
last letter to Wagner is as affectionate in tone as the first he addressed
to him forty-eight years before. The permanency of his friendships was in
a great degree due to his good sense in making them. His associates were
men, not only of genius and learning, but of sterling worth and character.
They were not the kind of men to flatter his vanity, or to humour his
foibles. Returning to Rome after his accession, Louis announced his
intention of continuing the course of life he had pursued as Prince, but
thought he ought to assume some little outward state. Wagner replied: "The
King of Spain certainly used to drive about in a coach and six, with
footmen in grand liveries; but, notwithstanding, I never heard that any
one had the least respect for him. Simplicity is most consistent with
dignity: and the course you formerly pursued, sire, will be the best to
pursue in the future."
To this artist-king Germany owes its first railway. A short but very
important line was constructed by his command from Nuremberg to Fuerth in
1835, and was followed up by lines connecting Munich with Augsburg and
Nuremberg with Bamberg. In these projects may be traced the inception of
the whole German railway system. Thanks also to Louis, the steamboat first
ploughed German waters, a service being inaugurated under his auspices on
the Bodensee. The important canal connecting the Danube with the Main, and
affording thereby direct water communication between the North Sea and
the Black Sea, bears the King's name, and was executed at his order. The
idealist, the man whom some writers in their ignorance dismiss as
half-_minnesaenger_, half-_virtuoso_, was keenly alive to the material
needs of his subjects. The commercial treaties concluded with Wuertemberg
in 1827 and with Prussia in 1833 laid the foundations of the Zollverein,
itself the basis of the political unity of all Germany. The empire owes
much to Louis I. Had he been the monarch of a more powerful state, the
imperial crown might have been his. "Were such a dignity offered to him,"
his brother-in-law, Frederick William, is reported to have said, "the King
of Bavaria would accept it for the sake of the picturesque costume!" The
sneer evinced a knowledge of the weaker side of a noble character, but it
is still open to question whether a Wittelsbach would not have more
worthily filled the imperial throne than a Hohenzollern. Humanity and the
arts would surely have been gainers.
XVIII
REACTION IN BAVARIA
All generous ideals took root and blossomed in the heart of the Bavarian
prince. He loved his country, he loved the arts, he venerated the Catholic
faith, and (oddest of all in a German prince) he loved liberty. The
beginning of his reign was marked by the most liberal administration.
Extensive reforms were carried out in every department of state. Many old
feudal institutions and privileges which had survived the Napoleonic
deluge were swept away, including a multitude of archaic courts and
jurisdictions. The powers of the censorship of the Press were considerably
curtailed and recognition extended to the Protestants in the departments
of public worship and instruction. Retrenchment and economy were enforced
upon Louis by his great expenditure on public works. A million florins
were saved in the army estimates, and official salaries were seriously cut
down. An economy, not so commendable, was also effected by reducing the
pensions to retired civil servants and their widows, whose complaints were
distinctly heard above the chorus of approbation that greeted the
administration of the Liberal King. Looking, perhaps, too, to the rapid
development of the railway system, he suffered the roads of Bavaria to
fall into a deplorable state of neglect.
Louis was not a Liberal of the Manchester School. His sympathy with
freedom and progress was genuine, and he loyally observed the provisions
of a not very democratic constitution. But there can be no doubt that he
believed rather in government for the people than by the people. In the
particular instance he was abundantly justified, for in general
enlightenment he was several centuries ahead of his subjects. Five years
after his succession to the throne, his good resolutions were rudely
shattered by the Revolution of July. Why that event should have arrested
him in the path of progress it is not easy to divine, for Charles X. lost
his crown through obstinately opposing, not by stimulating, Liberal
tendencies. In the Revolution the reactionary or Ultramontane party of
Bavaria saw their chance, however, and gained the King's ear. They dwelt
on the natural alliance of throne and altar, and the identity of
liberalism in religion with liberalism in politics. Only in a religious
people, they argued, could a king place his trust. Secure of royal
protection and encouragement, friars, nuns, and ecclesiastics of all kinds
came flocking into Bavaria. Monasteries, convents, and church schools
threatened to become as numerous as they are now in England. Some made
light of this black-robed invasion, and attributed it to the King's
well-known fondness for the mediaeval and the picturesque. But a real
change had come over Louis. Germany was seething with discontent, and
revolution was in the air. The King remembered the fate of his godfather,
and decided to take the side of reaction. The censorship of the Press was
again enforced. Those who were found guilty of _lese-majeste_ were
condemned to make a public apology to the King's portrait or statue--an
almost Gilbertian penalty. Soldiers, Protestants and Catholic, were alike
ordered to kneel when the Host was carried past. Repressive laws were
enacted against the Lutherans and Calvinists, and Germany seemed on the
point of passing once more under the sway of Rome. Louis had lost his
head. A few clod-hoppers brawling over their beer appeared to him an
attempt at revolution. It justified him in closing the university and
calling out the reserves. He established a star-chamber at Landshut, where
anonymous accusations were entertained and every accusation entailed
conviction. The Jesuits were supposed to have inspired this policy. The
rumour was probably true in substance. The children of Loyala are not
allowed to do evil that good may come, or to indulge in verbal
equivocations, as their enemies allege; but it is their aim to bring the
whole world into real and sincere submission to the Roman Church, and to
achieve that end they have certainly not hesitated to sacrifice political
and social ideals dear to all the rest of mankind. The Jesuit is a
Christian produced to his utmost logical extremity. Naturally, the order
is very unpopular with people who like to profess Christianity without any
intention of bringing their views and conduct into line with it.
A true son of the Church was Carl Abel, a politician of some repute, to
whom Louis handed the portfolio of the Interior in April 1858. He was, it
is interesting to note, one of those Bavarian ministers who had
accompanied the King's son, Otho, to Greece in the 'twenties, and assisted
in schooling the renascent nation in its new political status. He it was
who enacted the "knee-bending" order to which allusion has been made; he
again who substituted the word "subjects" for "citizens" in the royal
decrees and proclamations. His policy was frankly Ultramontane. The
publication of Strauss's "Life of Jesus," three years before, had given a
powerful stimulus to rationalistic tendencies, and these the Bavarian
Government determined at all costs to eradicate. It was in the world of
thought and education that they saw the struggle must be waged, and they
wisely strove to bring the schools entirely within their control. To
prevent the spread of dangerous opinions it was decreed that all the books
used in the universities and schools, even in those of the lowest grade,
must be purchased from the official Government depot. A bad time followed
for the booksellers and for every one suspected of liberal opinions. The
editor of the Bernstorff papers speaks of Abel's administration as a
scandal to all Europe. It was not considered such by the majority of the
Bavarian people, who were probably more in sympathy with their ruler's
present mood than with his earlier aspirations towards a Grecian polity
and culture. The Jesuits reigned supreme, but it was not without certain
faint misgivings that their chiefs heard the news of Lola's arrival in
Munich. The dauntless adventuress was a factor that had to be reckoned
with.
XIX
THE ENTHRALMENT OF THE KING
The Court Theatre of Munich, thanks to the King's critical faculty and
liberal patronage, had a very high reputation throughout Europe, and
seemed to Lola a very proper place for the display of her charms and
accomplishments. She applied accordingly to the Director, who upon an
exhibition of her powers, announced that they did not come up to his
standard. This was probably true; but had Lola danced like Taglioni, she
would no doubt have been rejected all the same by an official of this
strictly clerical Government. Full of wit and resource, she saw in her
rebuff the very opportunity she sought of bringing herself to the notice
of a sovereign. She had made a few friends among the _jeunesse doree_ of
the Bavarian capital, and through one of these, Count Rechberg, a royal
aide-de-camp, she craved an audience of His Majesty. Louis was indisposed
to grant it, despite his usually gracious bearing towards foreign
_artistes_. "Am I expected to see every strolling dancer?" he asked
pettishly. "Your pardon, sire," said Rechberg, "but this one is well worth
seeing." The King hesitated. While he did so Lola Montez stood before him.
Tired of waiting in the antechamber, and anticipating a refusal, she had
coolly followed an aide-de-camp into the royal presence. Now she stood
before the astonished King, dazzlingly beautiful, with downcast eyes, a
suppliant mien, and a smile of triumph at the corners of her mouth.
To a passionate admirer of beauty like Louis her loveliness was an
all-sufficient excuse for her amazing audacity. His aide-de-camp was
right. The woman was well worth seeing. As he gazed upon her youth glowed
anew in his sixty-year-old frame, the blood coursed as fiercely as in the
time long gone by. Those who saw Lola knew a second spring. Collecting his
faculties, the King granted the dancer's prayer--she received his command
to appear at the Court Theatre; but he was in no haste to dismiss the
suppliant. Lola, says one writer, came, saw, and conquered. The King
yielded to her at the first shot. Lola's detractors relate that, glancing
at her magnificent bust, he asked in wonder if such charms could be of
nature's making, whereupon the lady, there and then ripping up her
corsage, dispelled his doubts. They can believe the story who like to; it
sounds in the highest degree improbable. But from this first interview
dated the enthralment of the King.
Not only grey-headed rulers but tiny school-girls felt the power of the
enchantress. Louise von Kobell tells us how, when a child, she saw Lola
Montez.[12]
"On the 9th October, 1846, as I was going down Briennerstrasse, near
the Bayersdorf Palace, I saw coming my way a lady, gowned in black,
with a veil thrown over her head, and a fan in her hand. Suddenly
something seemed to flash across my vision, and I stood stock still,
gazing into the eyes that had dazzled me. They shone upon me from a
pale countenance, which assumed a laughing expression before my
bewildered stare. Then she went, or rather swept on, past me. I forgot
all my governess's injunctions against looking round, and stood
staring after her, till she disappeared from view. Like her, I told
myself, must have been the fairies in the nursery tales. I returned
home breathless, and told them of my adventure. 'That,' said my
father, grimly, 'must have been the Spanish dancer, Lola Montez.'
"I went to the Court Theatre on Saturday, the 10th October; I came
much too early to my seat, and read full of eagerness the
announcement: '_Der verwunschene Prinz_, a play in three acts, by J.
von Ploetz. During the two _entr'actes_, Mademoiselle Lola Montez of
Madrid will appear in her Spanish national dances.' Full of impatience
I saw the curtain rise, sat through the first act, and saw the curtain
fall again. Now it rose once more, and I saw my fairy of
yesterday--Lola Montez.
"In the pit they clapped and hissed; the last, explained my neighbour,
because of the rumours abroad that Lola was an emissary of the English
Freemasons, an enemy of the Jesuits--a coquette, too, who had had
amorous adventures in all parts of the world, according to the
newspapers.
"Lola Montez took the centre of the stage, clothed not in the usual
tights and short skirts of the ballet girl, but in a Spanish costume
of silk and lace, with here and there a glittering diamond. Fire
seemed to shoot from her wonderful blue eyes, and she bowed like one
of the Graces before the King, who occupied the royal box. Then she
danced after the fashion of her country, swaying on her hips, and
changing from one posture to another, each excelling the former in
beauty.
"While she danced she riveted the attention of all the spectators,
their gaze followed the sinuous swayings of her body, in their
expression now of glowing passion, now of lightsome playfulness. Not
till she ceased her rhythmic movements was the spell broken....
"On 14th October, 1846, Lola Montez appeared for the second and last
time at the Court Theatre. She danced the 'Cachucha' in the comedy,
_Der Weiberfeind von Benedix_, and danced the 'Fandango' with Herr
Opfermann in the _entr'acte_ of the play _Mueller und Miller_. In order
to drown any manifestations of displeasure, the pit was occupied by an
organised _claque_ of policemen in plain clothes and theatre
attendants. The precaution was unnecessary, as Lola Montez exercised a
universal charm. The King had received her in audience, as he was
accustomed to receive foreign _artistes_; her beauty and her
stimulating conversation captivated Louis I."
"I know not how--I am bewitched," His Majesty said frankly to one of his
ministers two days after his first interview with Lola. He had worshipped
at the altar of Venus all his life, and might reasonably have believed
himself immune against passion, now he had entered his seventh decade. The
vision of the radiant stranger haunted him. He sought for some excuse to
have her about his person. He had long meditated and spoken of a journey
to Spain. He would learn Spanish, and Lola should be his teacher. He
discussed the idea with some of his more intimate advisers, who said
nothing to dissuade him. Other hearts than his beat more rapidly at the
dancer's approach. Dr. Curtius, the royal physician, was of opinion that
Senora Montez would be an admirable person to teach the King the Castilian
tongue; the aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Nuessbaum, was eager to convey the
royal summons to the lady. Lola did not refuse the office of instructress,
though the situation was not without its irony, seeing that her knowledge
of Spanish was but slight. The reading of Calderon and Cervantes was
enlivened and interrupted by her humorous sallies, her unexpected _jeux
d'esprit_, by the thousand and one delightful turns and mannerisms by
which as much as by her beauty Lola intoxicated men. She was full of the
elusive quality that her pseudo-countrymen call _sal_. Her intense
vitality effervesced, fizzed, and sparkled like champagne, and every
bubble that reached the surface caught a different tint. Taking lessons
from a charming woman is one of the shortest ways I know to falling in
love with her. Louis's was a very bad case. His emotional capacity by an
unusual coincidence, had developed in proportion to his intellect. "His
soul is always fresh and young," Lola declared, no doubt quite sincerely.
He had not retained a very large measure of the good looks that
distinguished him when a young man, but his bearing was dignified,
courtly, gracious--in a word, kingly--and his frank, grey-blue
all-embracing eyes had in them something appealing. His personality, in
short, is summed up by Frau von Kobell as "interesting." His manner was as
animated as Lola's, and corresponded to every movement of his mind. I do
not see why such a man, even if he be sixty-one years old, should not win
a woman's love. Moreover, the staunchest Republican must admit that if
there is no divinity, there is a glamour or fascination about a king. He
is, at least, uncommon--even in Germany; he holds aloof, his inner life is
to some extent veiled in mystery; his setting is spectacular, and he
rarely appears at a disadvantage. He is never seen rolling in the mire in
the football field, affording sport to counsel and reporters in the
witness-box, or in any of those undignified situations in which we so
often meet our fellows. Above all, he represents power, a faculty more
attractive even to women than to men. Ambition prompted Lola to hook a
prince, but she found it quite easy to like one for his own sake.
The exact nature of the relations between individual men and women is not
in general a legitimate matter for curiosity or speculation. It is a
question which concerns the parties only. In this instance, however, it
may be in the interests of Louis and Lola to observe that their relations
were in all probability what is called platonic. The King's nature was
aesthetic, poetical, sentimental; he was eminently capable of that
unsensual affection that seems to have animated Dante and Michelangelo. It
must not be forgotten, too, that he was sixty years of age. "The sins of
youth," he said "are the virtues of age." He affirmed publicly and
solemnly that Lola had been his friend, never his mistress; and the word
of Louis of Bavaria is not to be lightly disregarded. Lola repeatedly said
the same thing. Nothing to the contrary was ever alleged by the King's
immediate _entourage_; and--most significant fact of all--the Queen,
Therese of Sachsen-Hildburghausen, never manifested the slightest jealousy
of her husband's friend, but, on the contrary, more than once expressed
her sympathy with her policy and actions.
It was not, of course, to be expected that the public would take this view
of Louis's relations with the famous adventuress. Least of all would it
find acceptance with the Roman Catholic clergy, whose tendency it has ever
been to exaggerate the sensual instincts in man's nature and to ignore the
subtler, finer phases of passion. Puritan and prurient are generally
synonymous terms. Nor were the King's ministers and clerical advisers at
all anxious to place a favourable construction on Lola's presence at the
court.
The Jesuits' agents in different capitals reported unfavourably on the
dancer. They professed to believe, as we have seen--perhaps, they did
believe--that she was an emissary of the Freemasons, a body which in
England is regarded as a gigantic goose club, but by the Catholic world as
the most dangerous of secret anti-clerical societies. Now from what Frau
von Kobell tells us, it is plain that the Jesuits looked on Lola as a foe
from the moment she set foot in Munich. We must seek for some antecedent
cause. The lady's own explanation is improbable, but worth repeating. She
alleges that while in Paris she was approached by the agents of the
Society, and invited to assist in the conversion of Count Medem, a Russian
nobleman. This proposal, possibly because of her inherited dislike of the
Roman Church, she declined; and communicated the matter to Monsieur
Guizot, then Prime Minister, who had long been puzzled by the
ever-increasing numbers in which the Russian nobility in Paris were going
over to Rome. Their conversion is attributed by Catholics to the apostolic
zeal of Madame Swetchine, a Russian lady of some literary attainments,
whose _salon_ was the rendezvous of the clerical party in Paris. Vandam's
informant (if he ever existed in the flesh) and one or two writers with an
Ultramontane bias suggest that the feud between Lola and the Jesuits arose
simply because it was impossible for the latter to give any countenance to
a King's mistress. But we know that they recognised her as their enemy
before she became the royal favourite; moreover, German writers say that
the clericals had never made any remonstrances or raised any difficulties
respecting her predecessors in His Majesty's affections. I see no reason
to doubt that Lola's anti-clerical or anti-Catholic sentiments were
genuine and frankly expressed; we find similar instances of the _odium
theologicum_ in Nell Gwynne and Louis de Keroual. Intercourse with Liszt
and Dujarier would have strengthened such a prejudice. In Lola's haughty
disregard, too, of the etiquette of courts and fearlessness in the
presence of the great, we may detect the temperament, which would find its
political expression in advanced Liberalism.