THE ENSLAVER OF A KING
More than fifty years have gone since the penitent soul of Lola Montez
took flight to its Creator; but there must be some still living whose
pulses quicken at the very mention of a name which recalls so much
mystery and romance and bewildering fascination of the days when, for
them, as for her, "all the world was young."
Who was she, this woman whose beauty dazzled the eyes and whose witchery
turned the heads of men in the forties and fifties of last century? A
dozen countries, from Spain to India, were credited with her birth. Some
said she was the daughter of a noble house, kidnapped by gipsies in her
infancy; others were equally confident that she had for father the
coroneted rake, Lord Byron, and for mother a charwoman.
Her early years were wrapped in a mystery which she mischievously helped
to intensify by declaring that her father was a famous Spanish toreador.
Her origin, however, was prosaic enough. She was the daughter of an
obscure army captain, Gilbert, who hailed from Limerick; her mother was
an Oliver, from whom she received her strain of Spanish blood; and the
names given to her at a Limerick font, one day in 1818, two months after
her parents had made their runaway match, were Marie Dolores Eliza
Rosanna.
When Captain Gilbert returned, after his furlough-romance, to India, he
took his wife and child with him. Seven years later cholera removed him;
his widow found speedy solace in the arms of a second husband, one
Captain Craigie; and Dolores was packed off to Scotland to the care of
her stepfather's people until her schooldays were ended.
In the next few years she alternated between the Scottish household,
with its chilly atmosphere of Calvinism, and schools in Paris and
London, until, her education completed, she escaped the husband, a
mummified Indian judge, whom her mother had chosen for her, by eloping
with a young army officer, a Captain James, and with him made the return
voyage to India.
A few months later her romance came to a tragic end, when her Lothario
husband fell under the spell of a brother-officer's wife and ran away
with her to the seclusion of the Neilgherry Hills, leaving his wife
stranded and desolate. And thus it was that Dolores Gilbert wiped the
dust of India finally off her feet, and with a cheque for a thousand
pounds, which her good-hearted stepfather slipped into her hand, started
once more for England, to commence that career of adventure which has
scarcely a parallel even in fiction. She had had more than enough of
wedded life, of Scottish Calvinism, and of a mother's selfish
indifference. She would be henceforth the mistress of her own fate. She
had beauty such as few women could boast--she had talents and a stout
heart; and these should be her fortune.
Her first ambition was to be a great actress; and when she found that
acting was not her forte she determined to dance her way to fame and
fortune, and after a year's training in London and Spain she was ready
to conquer the world with her twinkling feet and supple body.
Of her first appearance as a danseuse, before a private gathering of
Pressmen, we have the following account by one who was there: "Her
figure was even more attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was.
Lithe and graceful as a young fawn, every movement that she made seemed
instinct with melody. Her dark eyes were blazing and flashing with
excitement. In her pose grace seemed involuntarily to preside over her
limbs and dispose their attitude. Her foot and ankle were almost
faultless."
Such was the enthusiastic description of Lola Montez (as she now chose
to call herself) on the eve of her bid for fame as a dancer who should
perhaps rival the glories of a Taglioni. A few days later the world of
rank and fashion flocked to see the début of the danseuse whose fame had
been trumpeted abroad; and as Lola pirouetted on to the stage--the focus
of a thousand pairs of eyes--she felt that the crowning moment of her
life had come.
Almost before her twinkling feet had carried her to the centre of the
stage an ominous sound broke the silence of expectation. A hiss came
from one of the boxes; it was repeated from another, and another. The
sibilant sound spread round the house; it swelled into a sinister storm
of hisses and boos. The light faded out of the dancer's eyes, the smile
from her lips; and as the tumult of disapprobation rose to a deafening
climax the curtain was rung down, and Lola rushed weeping from the
stage. Her career as a dancer, in England, had ended at its birth.
But Lola Montez was not the woman to sit down calmly under defeat. A few
weeks later we find her tripping it on the stage at Dresden, and at
Berlin, where the King of Prussia himself was among her applauders. But
such success as the Continent brought her was too small to keep her now
deplenished purse supplied. She fell on evil days, and for two years led
a precarious life--now, we are told, singing in Brussels streets to keep
starvation from her side, now playing the political spy in Russia, and
again, by a capricious turn of fortune's wheel, being fêted and courted
in the exalted circles of Vienna and Paris.
From the French capital she made her way to Warsaw, where stirring
adventures awaited her, for before she had been there many days the
Polish Viceroy, General Paskevitch, cast his aged but lascivious eyes on
her young beauty and sent an equerry to desire her presence at the
palace. "He offered her" (so runs the story as told by her own lips)
"the gift of a splendid country estate, and would load her with diamonds
besides. The poor old man was a comic sight to look upon--unusually
short in stature; and every time he spoke he threw his head back and
opened his mouth so wide as to expose the artificial gold roof of his
palate. A death's head making love to a lady could not have been a more
horrible or disgusting sight. These generous gifts were most
respectfully and very decidedly declined."
But General Paskevitch was not disposed to be spurned with impunity. The
contemptuous beauty must be punished for her scorn of his wooing; and,
when she made her appearance on the stage the same night it was to a
greeting of hisses by the Viceroy's hirelings. The next night brought
the same experience; but when on the third night the storm arose, "Lola,
in a rage, rushed down to the footlights and declared that those hisses
had been set at her by the director, because she had refused certain
gifts from the old Prince, his master. Then came a tremendous shower of
applause from the audience, and the old Princess, who was present, both
nodded her head and clapped her hands to the enraged and fiery little
Lola."
A tumultuous crowd of Poles escorted her to her lodgings that night. She
was the heroine of the hour, who had dared to give open defiance to the
hated Viceroy. The next morning Warsaw was "bubbling and raging with the
signs of an incipient revolution. When Lola Montez was apprised of the
fact that her arrest was ordered she barricaded her door; and when the
police arrived she sat behind it with a pistol in her hand, declaring
that she would certainly shoot the first man who should dare to break
in." Fortunately for Lola, her pistol was not used. The French Consul
came to her rescue, claiming her as a subject of France, and thus
protecting her from arrest. But the order that she should quit Warsaw
was peremptory, and Warsaw saw her no more.
Back again in Paris, Lola found that even her new halo of romance was
powerless to win favour for her dancing. Again she was to hear the storm
of hisses; and this time in her rage "she retaliated by making faces at
her audience," and flinging parts of her clothing in their faces. But if
Paris was not to be charmed by her dainty feet it was ready to yield an
unstinted homage to her rare beauty and charm. She found a flattering
welcome in the most exclusive of _salons_; the cleverest men in the
capital confessed the charm of her wit and surrounded her with their
flatteries.
M. Dujarrier, the most brilliant of them all, young, rich, and handsome,
fell head over ears in love with her and asked her to be his wife. But
the cup of happiness was scarcely at her lips before it was dashed away.
Dujarrier was challenged to a duel by Beauvallon, a political enemy; and
when Lola was on her way to stop the meeting she met a mournful
procession bringing back her dead lover's body, on which she flung
herself in an agony of grief and covered it with kisses. At the
subsequent trial of Beauvallon she electrified the Court by declaring
with streaming eyes, "If Beauvallon wanted satisfaction I would have
fought him myself, for I am a better shot than poor Dujarrier ever was."
And she was probably only speaking the truth, for her courage was as
great as the love she bore for the victim of the duel.
As a child Lola had shocked her puritanical Scottish hosts by declaring
that "she meant to marry a Prince," and unkindly as fate had treated
her, she had by no means relinquished this childish ambition. It may be
that it was in her mind when, a year and a half after the tragedy that
had so clouded her life in Paris, she drifted to Munich in search of
more conquests.
Now in the full bloom of her radiant loveliness--"the most beautiful
woman in Europe" many declared--mingling the vivacity of an Irish beauty
with the voluptuous charms of a Spaniard--she was splendidly equipped
for the conquest of any man, be he King or subject; and Ludwig I., King
of Bavaria, had as keen an eye for female beauty as for the objects of
art on which he squandered his millions.
It was this Ludwig who made Munich the fairest city in all Germany, and
who enriched his palace with the finest private collection of pictures
and statues that Europe can boast. But among all his treasures of art he
valued none more than his gallery of portraits of fair women, each of
whom had, at one time or another, visited his capital.
Such was Ludwig, Bavaria's King, to whom Lola Montez now brought a new
revelation of female loveliness, to which his gallery could furnish no
rival. At first sight of her, as she danced in the opera ballet, he was
undone. The next day and the next his eyes were feasting on her charms
and her supple grace; and within a week she was installed at the Court
and was being introduced by His Majesty as "my best friend."
And not only the King, but all Munich was at the feet of the lovely
"Spaniard"; her drives through the streets were Royal progresses; her
receptions in the palace which Ludwig presented to her were thronged by
all the greatest in Bavaria; on Prince and peasant alike she cast the
spell of her witchery. As for Ludwig, connoisseur of the beautiful, he
was her shadow and her slave, showering on her gifts an Empress might
well have envied. Fortune had relented at last and was now smiling her
sweetest on the adventuress; and if Lola had been content with such
triumphs as these the story of her later life might have been very
different. But she craved power to add to her trophies, and aspired to
take the sceptre from the weak hand of her Royal lover.
Never did woman make a more fatal mistake. On the one hand was arrayed
the might of Austria and of Rome, whose puppet Ludwig was; on the other
hand was a nation clamouring for reforms. Revolution was already in the
air, and it was reserved to this too daring woman to precipitate the
storm.
Her first ambition was to persuade Ludwig to dismiss his Ministry, to
shake himself free from foreign influence, and to inaugurate the era of
reform for which his subjects were clamouring. In vain did Austria try
to win her to its side by bribes of gold (no less than a million
florins) and the offer of a noble husband. To all its seductions Lola
turned as deaf an ear as to the offers of Poland's Viceroy. And so
strenuous was her championship of the people that the Cabinet was
compelled to resign in favour of the "Lola Ministry" of reformers.
So far she had succeeded, but the price was still to pay. The
reactionaries, supported by Austria and the Romish Church, were quick
to retaliate by waging remorseless war against the King's mistress; and,
among their most powerful weapons, used the students' clubs of Munich,
who, from being Lola's most enthusiastic admirers, became her bitterest
enemies.
To counteract this move Lola enrolled a students' corps of her own--a
small army of young stalwarts, whose cry was "Lola and Liberty," and who
were sworn to fight her battles, if need be, to the death. Thus was the
fire of revolution kindled by a woman's vanity and lust of power.
Students' fights became everyday incidents in the streets of Munich, and
on one occasion when Lola, pistol in hand, intervened to prevent
bloodshed, she was rescued with difficulty by Ludwig himself and a
detachment of soldiers.
The climax came when she induced the King to close the University for a
year--an autocratic step which aroused the anger not only of every
student but of the whole country. The streets were paraded by mobs
crying, "Down with the concubine!" and "Long live the Republic!"
Barricades were erected and an influential deputation waited on the King
to demand the expulsion of the worker of so much mischief.
In vain did Ludwig declare that he would part with his crown rather than
with the Countess of Landsfeld--for this was one of the titles he had
conferred on his favourite. The forces arrayed against him were too
strong, and the order of expulsion was at last conceded. It was only,
however, when her palace was in flames and surrounded by a howling mob
that the dauntless woman deigned to seek refuge in flight, and,
disguised as a boy, suffered herself to be escorted to the frontier. Two
weeks later Ludwig lost his crown.
The remainder of this strange story may be told in a few words. Thrown
once more on the world, with a few hastily rescued jewels for all her
fortune, Lola Montez resumed her stage life, appearing in London in a
drama entitled "Lola Montez: or a Countess for an Hour." Here she made a
conquest of a young Life Guardsman, called Heald, who had recently
succeeded to an estate worth £5000 a year; and with him she spent a few
years, made wretched by continual quarrels, in one of which she stabbed
him. When he was "found drowned" at Lisbon she drifted to Paris, and
later to the United States, which she toured with a drama entitled "Lola
Montez in Bavaria." There she made her third appearance at the altar,
with a bridegroom named Hull, whom she divorced as soon as the honeymoon
had waned.
Thus she carried her restless spirit through a few more years of
wandering and growing poverty, until a chance visit to Spurgeon's
Tabernacle revolutionised her life. She decided to abandon the stage and
to devote the remainder of her days to penitence and good works. But the
end was already near. In New York, where she had gone to lecture, she
was struck down by paralysis, and a few weeks before she had seen her
forty-second birthday she died in a charitable institution, joining
fervently in the prayers of the clergyman who was summoned to her
death-bed.
"When she was near the end, and could not speak," the clergyman says,
"I asked her to let me know by a sign whether she was at peace. She
fixed her eyes on mine and nodded affirmatively. I do not think I ever
saw deeper penitence and humility than in this poor woman."