and her enemies could turn with some confidence to the educated classes,
as far as they were represented at the University. Students in France,
Russia, Italy, and indeed most civilised countries, are admittedly
hot-blooded, enthusiastic champions of freedom and progress; in some
states they are the very backbone of the revolutionary party. In Bavaria
at this time, on the contrary, the students, like those of our English
universities, displayed fervent devotion to the ideals of their
grandmothers, and held tenaciously by the standards of the nurseries they
had so lately quitted. Munich rivalled Oxford and Cambridge in its zeal
for Conservatism and obsolete canons. Professor Lassaulx, therefore, was
only voicing the sentiments of the University generally when he presented
an address to Councillor von Abel, deploring that minister's retirement,
and congratulating him upon his adherence to Ultramontane principles. This
was tantamount to a vote of censure on the sovereign. Lassaulx was at once
deprived of his chair, despite (it is said by Dr. Erdmann) Lola's earnest
entreaties with the King. The professor received a tremendous ovation from
the students. On the 1st March 1847 they collected in the morning outside
his house in Theresienstrasse, cheering him vociferously. Lola, unluckily,
was then living in the same street, and having expressed their sympathy
with the professor, it occurred to the students that they might as well
express their disapprobation of the woman to whom they attributed his
downfall. Lola was at lunch when howls and hoots and cries of "Pereat
Lola!" brought her to the window. She was received with yells from the
throats of two hundred stout, beer-drinking, Bavarian _burschen_. Amused
at the sight, and undismayed, as she ever was, she derisively toasted the
mob in a glass of champagne and ate chocolates while she watched their
gyrations. Her coolness would have disarmed the enmity of an English
crowd, and sent it away cheering. But the sportsman-like qualities are not
specially inculcated by the disciples of Loyola, nor were perhaps highly
esteemed in the Germany of that date. Presently the King himself came
along the street, and, unmolested and unnoticed, quietly elbowed his way
through the mob. He stood at Lola's door composedly contemplating his
excited subjects. He turned to Councillor Hoermann, whom the noise of the
disturbance had also brought to the spot. "If she were called Loyola
Montez," remarked His Majesty, "I suppose they would cheer her." Then he
quietly entered the house. The street was cleared by the mounted police.
Louis remained all the afternoon at his favourite's house, and when night
fell, attempted to return to the palace on foot, and unattended, as he had
come. He was compelled to abandon the attempt. He was received with howls
and threats, and could only reach his residence by the aid of a military
escort. The streets were filled with the most dangerous elements in the
city. A crowd collected before the palace, and cheered the Queen, who,
poor lady! must have been embarrassed by this demonstration of sympathy
with the emotions of wifely jealousy and injured dignity to which she was
a stranger! Before day broke order had been restored by the sabres of the
cuirassiers.
Lola, knowing the temper of her countrymen, saw in this attack on a woman
a sure means of enlisting their sympathies. She wrote a letter to the
_Times_ in which she gave her own version of affairs in Bavaria in the
following terms:--
"I had not been here a week before I discovered that there was a plot
existing in the town to get me out of it, and that the party was the
Jesuit party. Of course, you are aware that Bavaria has long been
their stronghold, and Munich their headquarters. This, naturally, to a
person brought up and instructed from her earliest youth to detest
this party (I think you will say naturally) irritated me not a
little.
"When they saw that I was not likely to leave them, they commenced on
another tack, and tried what bribery would do, and actually offered me
50,000 francs yearly if I would quit Bavaria and promise never to
return. This, as you may imagine, opened my eyes, and as I indignantly
refused their offer, they have not since then left a stone unturned to
get rid of me, and have never for an instant ceased persecuting me. I
may mention, as one instance, that within the last week a Jesuit
professor of philosophy at the University here, by the name of
Lassaulx, was removed from his professorship, upon which the party
paid and hired a mob to insult me and break the windows of my palace,
and also to attack the palace; but, thanks to the better feeling of
the other party, and the devotedness of the soldiers to His Majesty
and his authority, this plot likewise failed."
It was, in fact, as disastrous to its instigators as the famous
memorandum. The King perceived the University to be a hot-bed of
clericalism, and promptly invited the majority of the professors to
transfer their services to other seats of learning, or to abandon this
particular sphere of usefulness altogether. Their chairs were filled by
men of moderate views. At the same time the University was freed from the
oppressive surveillance of the Ministry; the obnoxious decrees affecting
the sale of books were withdrawn; and even the undergraduates felt
constrained to testify their gratitude to the liberal King by means of a
torchlight procession.
Louis and his new ministers were not wanting in firmness. Several officers
and civil servants were transferred to distant stations, and otherwise
made to feel the weight of the royal displeasure for having taken part in
an Ultramontane gathering at Adelholz, in the Bavarian Highlands, where a
protest was raised against Lola's elevation to the peerage. With the bulk
of the people, notwithstanding, the King's popularity knew no diminution.
He received an enthusiastic greeting at Bruckenau, Kissingen, and
Aschaffenburg, where he passed the summer. He wrote to his secretary in
Munich, on 27th June 1847: "I am very satisfied with my reception
throughout my whole progress;" and on 31st August: "I was surprised,
agreeably surprised, by my evidently joyful reception in the Palatinate."
In Franconia, inhabited largely by Protestants, the King's change of
policy was naturally welcome. Lola's popularity likewise increased by
leaps and bounds, though her uncontrollable temper continued to lead her
into mischief. A furious quarrel with the commandant of the Wuerzburg
garrison interrupted her journey north to join the Court at Aschaffenburg.
The Queen, meanwhile, was the object of a demonstration of sympathy at
Bamberg, really directed against the favourite. Certain sections of the
aristocracy held aloof from the Countess, with that steadfast devotion to
virtue that has always characterised their order. Lola complained of their
attitude to His Majesty. Questioned by him they alluded to the lady's
doubtful antecedents as sufficient justification for their refusal to
present her to their wives. The King's answer was that of a chivalrous man
of the world: "What other woman of so-called high standing would have
conducted herself better, had she been abandoned to the world, young,
beautiful, and helpless? Bah! I know them all, and I tell you I don't rate
too highly the much-belauded virtue of the inexperienced and untried."
Louis was a gentleman as well as a prince, and had the courage to protect
the woman he loved. "Mark well," he wrote to a person of rank, "if you
are invited to the house the King frequents, and you do not come, the King
will see in this an offence against his dignity, and his displeasure will
follow." Louis's rule for his courtiers was, in short: "Love me, love
Lola."
Social distinction and wealth were not enough to satisfy the Countess of
Landsfeld. She was not content to pull the wires; she wanted the
appearance of power, as well as its substance. She longed to display
openly her talents as a ruler. She was galled by the affected indifference
of statesmen, who could not in reality put a single measure into execution
without her sanction. While all Germany acclaimed her as the Liberal
heroine, Zu Rhein was able afterwards to affirm publicly in the Chamber
that the favourite had at no time come between the Cabinet and the
sovereign, nor had in any way governed its policy. This statement may be
accepted as far as it goes, but the ministers could have done nothing
without the King's co-operation, and the King never denied that he was
accustomed to consult the Countess on all affairs of state. The credit of
the Zu Rhein-Maurer administration rightly, therefore, belongs in great
measure to her. She was always by the King to keep him in the straight way
of reform, to safeguard him against a relapse into Ultramontanism. She not
unnaturally chafed at what must have seemed the ingratitude of the
ministers. She had not yet forgiven Maurer for his reference to her
proposed naturalisation as a calamity. Now she regarded him as a puppet
which had the impudence to ignore its maker. He got the credit of reforms,
she told herself, that she had initiated. Meantime, the clerical Press
bombarded her with low abuse. She demanded the enforcement of the
censorship and the suppression of the offending journals. Such steps as
these, a professedly Liberal Government was loth to take. A collision took
place between the favourite and "the Ministry of Good Hope," as it was
derisively called. Lola found an instrument ready to her hand in
Councillor von Berks, whose devotion to her was warmer than a merely
political allegiance. In December, the King decided to reconstitute the
Ministry. He appointed Berks to the Department of the Interior, and to
Prince Wallerstein, lately Bavarian representative at Paris, he gave the
portfolio of foreign affairs. The new Cabinet was composed entirely of men
wholly in sympathy with the views of both sovereign and favourite. By its
opponents it was derisively dubbed the Lola Ministry. The _Muenchner
Zeitung_ welcomed its frank and whole-hearted Liberalism as a guarantee of
the solution of all the problems of Bavaria's internal and foreign policy.
Wallerstein was even more anti-clerical than his predecessors. The
Sonderbund was crushed in November by the strategy of Dufour, and the
Jesuits came flying from Switzerland into Bavaria. They were forbidden to
remain in the country more than a few days. The Press was not gagged, but
conciliated. Lola was acclaimed as the good genius of Bavaria. The German
Liberals hailed her as a valued ally. To her influence was attributed the
tardy addition of Luther's bust to the collection of German worthies in
the Walhalla. _Punch_, as a suggestion for a colossal statue of Bavaria,
represents Lola upholding a banner inscribed "Freedom and the Cachuca."
The "good little thing" of Simla wielded the sceptre, and wielded it
well.
XXIII
THE UNCROWNED QUEEN OF BAVARIA
George Henry Francis, an English journalist, a resident of Munich at that
time, and afterwards editor of the _Morning Post_, contributed the
following account of Lola's manner of life at this period to _Fraser's
Magazine_ for January 1848:--
"The house of Lola Montez at Munich presents an elegant contrast to
the large, cold, lumbering mansions, which are the greatest defect in
the general architecture of the city. It is a _bijou_, built under her
own eye, by her own architect,[16] and it is quite unique in its
simplicity and lightness. It is of two storeys, and, allowing for its
plainness, is in the Italian style. Elegant bronze balconies from the
upper windows, designed by herself, relieve the plainness of the
exterior; and long, muslin curtains, slightly tinted, and drawn close,
so as to cover the windows, add a transparent, shell-like lightness to
the effect. Any English gentleman (Lola has a great respect for
England and the English) can, on presenting his card, see the
interior; but it is not a 'show place.' The interior surpasses
everything, even in Munich, where decorative painting and internal
fitting has been carried almost to perfection. We are not going to
write an upholsterer's catalogue, but as everything was done by the
immediate choice and under the direction of the fair Lola, the general
characteristics of the place will serve to illustrate her character.
Such a tigress, one would think, would scarcely choose so beautiful a
den. The smallness of the house precludes much splendour. Its place is
supplied by French elegance, Munich art, and English comfort. The
walls of the chief room are exquisitely painted by the first artists
from the designs found in Herculaneum and Pompeii, but selected with
great taste by Lola Montez. The furniture is not gaudily rich, but
elegant enough to harmonise with the decorations. A small winter room,
adjoining the larger one, is fitted up, quite in the English style,
with papered walls, sofas, easy-chairs, all of elegant shape. A
chimney, with a first-rate grate of English manufacture, and rich,
thick carpets and rugs, complete the illusion; the walls are hung with
pictures, among them a Raphael. There are also some of the best works
of modern German painters; a good portrait of the King; and a very bad
one of the mistress of the mansion. The rest of the establishment
bespeaks equally the exquisite taste of the fair owner. The
drawing-rooms and her boudoir are perfect gems. Books, not of a
frivolous kind, borrowed from the royal library, lie about, and help
to show what are the habits of this modern Amazon. Add to these a
piano and a guitar, on both of which she accompanies herself with
considerable taste and some skill, and an embroidery frame, at which
she produces works that put to shame the best of those exhibited for
sale in England; so that you see she is positively compelled at times
to resort to some amusement becoming her sex, as a relief from those
more masculine or unworthy occupations in which, according to her
reverend enemies, she emulates alternately the example of Peter the
Great and Catharine II. The rest of the appointments of the place are
in keeping: the coach-house and stabling (her equipages are extremely
modest and her household no more numerous or ostentatious than those
of a gentlewoman of means), the culinary offices, and an exquisite
bath-room, into which the light comes tinted with rose-colour. At the
back of the house is a large flower-garden, in which, during the
summer, most of the political consultations between the fair Countess
and her sovereign are held.
"For her habits of life, they are simple. She eats little, and of
plain food, cooked in the English fashion; drinks little, keeps good
hours, rises early, and labours much. The morning, before and after
breakfast, is devoted to what we must call semi-public business. The
innumerable letters she receives and affairs she has to arrange, keep
herself and her secretary constantly employed during some hours. At
breakfast she holds a sort of _levee_ of persons of all
sorts--ministers _in esse_ or _in posse_, professors, artists, English
strangers, and foreigners from all parts of the world. As is usual
with women of an active mind, she is a great talker; but although an
egotist, and with her full share of the vanity of her sex, she
understands the art of conversation sufficiently never to be
wearisome. Indeed, although capable of violent but evanescent
passions--of deep but not revengeful animosities, and occasionally of
trivialities and weaknesses very often found in persons suddenly
raised to great power--she can be, and almost always is, a very
charming person and a delightful companion. Her manners are
distinguished, she is a graceful and hospitable hostess, and she
understands the art of dressing to perfection.
"The fair despot is passionately fond of homage. She is merciless in
her man-killing propensities, and those gentlemen attending her
_levees_ or her _soirees_, who are perhaps too much absorbed in
politics or art to be enamoured of her personal charms, willingly pay
respect to her mental attractions and conversational powers.
"On the other hand, Lola Montez has many of the faults recorded of
others in like situations. She loves power for its own sake; she is
too hasty and too steadfast in her dislikes; she has not sufficiently
learned to curb the passion which seems natural to her Spanish blood;
she is capricious, and quite capable, when her temper is inflamed, of
rudeness, which, however, she is the first to regret and to apologise
for. One absorbing idea she has which poisons her peace. She has
devoted her life to the extirpation of the Jesuits, root and branch,
from Bavaria. She is too ready to believe in their active influence,
and too early overlooks their passive influence. Every one whom she
does not like, her prejudice transforms into a Jesuit. Jesuits stare
at her in the streets, and peep out from the corners of her rooms. All
the world, adverse to herself, are puppets moved to mock and annoy her
by these dark and invisible agents. At the same time she has,
doubtless, had good cause for this animosity; but these restless
suspicions are a weakness quite incompatible with the strength of
mind, the force of character, and determination of purpose she
exhibits in other respects.
"As a political character, she holds an important position in Bavaria,
besides having agents and correspondents in various Courts of Europe.
The King generally visits her in the morning from eleven till twelve,
or one o'clock; sometimes she is summoned to the palace to consult
with him, or with the ministers, on state affairs. It is probable that
during her habits of intimacy with some of the principal political
writers of Paris, she acquired that knowledge of politics and insight
into the manoeuvres of diplomatists and statesmen which she now
turns to advantage in her new sphere of action. On foreign politics
she seems to have very clear ideas; and her novel and powerful method
of expressing them has a great charm for the King, who has himself a
comprehensive mind. On the internal politics of Bavaria she has the
good sense not to rely upon her own judgment, but to consult these
whose studies and occupations qualify them to afford information. For
the rest, she is treated by the political men of the country as a
substantive power; and, however much they may secretly rebel against
her influence, they, at least, find it good policy to acknowledge it.
Whatever indiscretions she may, in other respects, commit, she always
keeps state secrets, and can, therefore, be consulted with perfect
safety, in cases where her original habits of thought render her of
invaluable service. Acting under advice, which entirely accords with
the King's own general principles, His Majesty has pledged himself to
a course of steady but gradual improvement, which is calculated to
increase the political freedom and material prosperity of his kingdom,
without risking that unity of power, which, in the present state of
European affairs, is essential to its protection and advancement. One
thing in her praise is, that although she really wields so much power,
she never uses it either for the promotion of unworthy persons or, as
other favourites have done, for corrupt purposes. Her creation as
Countess of Landsfeld, which has alienated from her some of her most
honest Liberal supporters, who wished her still to continue in rank,
as well as in purposes, one of the people, while it has exasperated
against her the powerless, because impoverished, nobility, was the
unsolicited act of the King, legally effected with the consent of the
Crown Prince. Without entrenching too far upon a delicate subject, it
may be added, that she is not regarded with contempt or detestation by
either the male or the female members of the Royal family. She is
regarded by them rather as a political personage than as the King's
favourite. Her income, including a recent addition from the King, is
seventy thousand florins, or little more than five thousand pounds.
While upon this subject of her position, it may be added, that it is
reported, on good authority, that the Queen of Bavaria (to whom, by
the way, the King has always paid the most scrupulous attentions due
to her as his wife) very recently made a voluntary communication to
her husband, apparently with the knowledge of the princes and other
member of the Royal family, that should the King desire, at any
future time, that the Countess should, as a matter of right, be
presented at Court, she (the Queen) would offer no obstacle.
"The relation subsisting between the King of Bavaria and the Countess
of Landsfeld is not of a coarse or vulgar character. The King has a
highly poetical mind, and sees his favourite through his imagination.
Knowing perfectly well what her antecedents have been, he takes her as
she is, and finding in her an agreeable and intellectual companion,
and an honest, plainspoken councillor, he fuses the reality with the
ideal in one deep sentiment of affectionate respect."
XXIV
THE DOWNFALL
This view of the King's sentiments towards his favourite was not
acceptable to that lady's political enemies. It is to be observed, also,
that the champions of orthodox morality are the hardest to persuade of the
actual existence or possibility of virtue in the individual. It would seem
at times that they doubt the efficacy of baptismal waters to wash out
original sin. Morality finds strange champions in all lands. The House of
Lords, the racing papers, the transpontine stage, and the Irish
moon-lighters have all been found at one time or another on the side of
the angels. In Bavaria in 1848 the University students, still for the
greater part leavened by Ultramontane doctrines, posed as the vindicators
of Christian morality, and spoke of Lola as the Scarlet Woman. With
singular inconsistency they continued to profess their devotion to the
King, who must have obviously been in their eyes, a partner in the woman's
guilt. The Catholic Church does not discriminate between the sexes as
regards this particular offence; moreover, evil example in a prince is
held by all moralists to be more serious than in a private person. Lola,
also, was believed to be single; Louis was living with his wife. The man's
offence, then, would seem from every point of view to have been graver;
nor could it have been excused on the ground of weakness of will or
understanding, for this in a king would itself have aggravated his guilt.
The undergraduates of Munich, however, being pupils of the Jesuits and
presumably skilled in casuistry, would no doubt have been able to explain
an attitude which appears inconsistent to the non-academic mind.
All the members of the University were not under the thumb of the
clericals. Two or three students of the corps Palatia (Pfalz)--probably
Protestants--did not hesitate to appear at the Countess of Landsfeld's
_salon_, which was the resort of the most brilliant people in Munich.
Lola's fancy was taken by the colours of the corps, and she playfully
stuck one of the young fellows' caps on her pretty head. The students
were, in consequence, expelled from their association. A large number of
Liberal students thereupon seceded from their respective corps and formed
a new one, appropriately called Alemannia. The new body was at once
recognised by the King, and endowed with all the privileges of an ancient
corps. Lola insisted upon providing every member with an exceedingly smart
uniform, at her own expense, and with delight saw them establish their
head-quarters in a house backing upon her own. The Alemannia became her
devoted bodyguard. They watched her house, they escorted her in the
street. She graced their festivals, dressed in the close-fitting uniform
of the corps. Berks entertained them to a banquet at the palace of
Nymphenburg, and in a stirring speech publicly commended their zeal for
the cause of enlightenment, humanity and progress.
Conflicts between the Alemannen and the other corps were frequent. The
University was split into two bitterly, venomously hostile camps, and
Lola's partisans, being the fewer, seemed likely to have the worst of it.
The Rector, Thiersch, intervened, and publicly took the new corps under
his protection. For this act he was thanked by the King. But the mutual
hatred of the factions knew no abatement. Now the wires began to feel the
touch of other operators than the Jesuits. The revolutionary party was
gathering strength in the winter of 1847-8. Any rod was good enough to
beat a King with, and no means or agents were to be despised which would
weaken his authority, and the respect in which he was held by his
subjects. As to the Countess of Landsfeld, she had played her part: she
had struck a mortal blow at the Jesuits, she had kept Bavaria in leash
while Switzerland throttled the Sonderbund. Now, the Liberals could do
without her. Her downfall would involve the King's. The situation was
promising. The Radicals determined to let the Clericals pull the chestnuts
out of the fire.