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	Lola Montez Ludwig (Louis) I, 1786-1868, king of Bavaria (1825-48), was the son and successor of King Maximilian I. He was chiefly responsible for transforming Munich into one of the most handsome capitals of Europe and for making it a center of the arts. His reign, liberal at first, became reactionary, and his unpopularity was heightened by his liaison with Lola Montez. Lola Montez, 1818?-1861, was an Irish adventurer whose original name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert. Upon her return to England from India, her early marriage to an army officer ended without the final divorce decree being granted. She adopted the name Lola Montez, claimed Spanish descent, and became a dancer. Her dancing was mediocre, but her beauty, extravagant charm, and adventures were legendary. She left England and took her dancing to the rest of Europe. In Paris she tried once more to be a dancer, but Paris would not have her. She ventured to Dresden and Warsaw, where she sought to attract attention by her eccentricities, making mouths at the spectators, flinging her garters in their faces, and one time removing her skirts and still more necessary garments, whereupon her manager broke off his engagement with her. An English writer who heard a great deal of her and who saw her often about this time writes that there was nothing wonderful about her except "her beauty and her impudence." She had no talent nor any of the graces which make women attractive; yet many men of talent raved about her. The clever young journalist, Dujarrier, who assisted Emile Girardin, was her lover in Paris. He was killed in a duel and left Lola twenty thousand francs and some securities, so that she no longer had to sing in the streets as she did in Warsaw. In 1846, 28 year old Lola arrived in Munich and a new chapter in her life opened. The sixty year old King Ludwig I of Bavaria fell head over heels for Lola. He was a curious compound of kindliness, ideality, and peculiar ways. For instance, he would never use a carriage even on state occasions. He prowled around the streets, knocking off the hats of those whom he chanced to meet. Like his unfortunate descendant, "Mad" Ludwig II., he wrote poetry, and had a picture-gallery devoted to portraits of the beautiful women whom he had met. He dressed like an English fox-hunter, with a most extraordinary hat, and what was odd and peculiar in others pleased him because he was odd and peculiar himself. Therefore when Lola made her first appearance at the Court Theater he was enchanted with her. He summoned her at once to the palace, and within five days he presented her to the court, saying as he did so: "Meine Herren, I present you to my best friend." In less than a month this curious monarch had given Lola the title of Countess of Landsfeld. A handsome house was built for her, and a pension of twenty thousand florins was granted her. With the people of Munich she was unpopular. They did not mind the eccentricities of the king, since these amused them and did the country no perceptible harm; but they were enraged by this beautiful woman, who had no softness such as a woman ought to have. Her swearing, her readiness to box the ears of every one whom she disliked, the huge bulldog which accompanied her everywhere - all these things were beyond endurance. She was discourteous to the queen, besides meddling with the politics of the kingdom. Either of these things would have been sufficient to make her hated. Together, they were more than the city of Munich could endure. Finally the countess tried to establish a new corps in the university. This was the last touch of all. A student who ventured to wear her colors was beaten and arrested. Lola came to his aid with all her wonted boldness; but the city was in commotion. Daggers were drawn; Lola was jostled and insulted. The foolish king rushed out to protect her: on his arm she was led in safety to the palace. As she entered the gates she turned and fired a pistol into the mob. No one was hurt, but a great rage took possession of the people. The king issued a decree closing the university for a year. By this time, however, Munich was in possession of a mob, and the Bavarians demanded that she should leave the country. Ludwig faced the chamber of peers, where the demand of the populace was placed before him. "I would rather lose my crown!" he replied. The lords of Bavaria regarded him with grim silence; and in their eyes he read the determination of his people. On the following day a royal decree revoked Lola's rights as a subject of Bavaria, and still another decree ordered her to be expelled. The mob yelled with joy and burned her house. Poor Ludwig watched the tumult by the light of the leaping flames. He was still in love with her and tried to keep her in the kingdom; but the result was that Ludwig, under pressure from his advisors and family because of popular criticism of his personal life and unwilling to preside over political changes he considered incompatible with monarchy, was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Maximilian II. Lola was again homeless. After a brief stay in Berne as the guest of the English diplomat Robert Peel (son of the former prime minister), she returned to England She took lodgings in Mayfair, London, and soon got married to an officer in the Second Life Guards the son of a prosperous barrister with an independent income. But an aunt of the young man, felt duty-bound to inform the courts that the Countess of Landsfeld was guilty of bigamy, and the young lovers fled to Europe to avoid prosecution. In England she contracted a bigamous marriage with a youthful officer, and within two weeks they fled to Spain for safety from the law. Her husband was drowned, and she made still another marriage. Thereafter Lola’s life was that of a wanderer. Her marriage soon fell apart, and feeling that she had exhausted the possibilities of the Old World, she decided to try her luck in America. It wasn't easy at first, and at one time she was reduced to giving receptions where anyone could, for a dollar, shake the hand of the Countess of Landsfeld and converse with her for the space of half an hour, in any of the four languages in which she was fluent. She had a moderate success on the New York stage, appearing in several musicals, one of which, Lola Montez in Bavaria, was specially written for her. From New York she travelled to California, then in the grips of a gold-rush, and quickly ran through two husbands before settling down in a mining town with a host of pet animals. But a fate was pursuing her and her little homestead was burnt down. After this she set off for Australia. In 1855-56 she left for Australia and appeared in a number of light plays and musicals in the Sidney and Melbourne theatres. Her first engagement in Australia was in Sydney where she presented Lola Montez in Bavaria, a burlesque written by the American C. T. Ware. After a series of performances of this and other works in Sydney she moved on to Melbourne and Adelaide. In 1956 she was triumphant in the Victorian goldfields where the appreciative miners would shower the stage with gold nuggets during her performances. At Ballarat there occurred the famous encounter with Seekamp, a local journalist who had written a particularly nasty article painting her in the most lurid colors. Learning that the journalist happened to be in the foyer of her hotel, she ran downstairs with a riding whip, and laid it across his back with right good will. Seekamp defended himself lustily. Before long the combatants had each other literally by the hair. Bystanders interposed, and the two were separated, but not before revolvers had been drawn. That night, at the theatre, the miners of Ballarat gave her a splendid ovation. Her most famous act was the Spider Dance, which provoked a furor in most Australian newspapers whenever it was performed. One Australian newspaper account described the dance as follows: 'The full perfection of her frame was revealed as she swung gracefully to the center of the stage, and paused for a moment. She made it appear evident that she was entangled in the filaments of a spider’s web. In a dance step, she portrayed that she was more and more confused as the fibres wrapped themselves about her ankles. The music slowed as she discovered a spider in her petticoat, which she attempted to shake loose; then she discovered other spiders, and examining her skirts, she shook them to reveal even more spiders. The fight against the spiders became more and more hectic, as she danced with abandon and fire, and at the conclusion she had succeeded in shaking them out upon the floor, where she stamped them to death "the audience was held spellbound, and somewhat horror struck, but when the dance ended, the applause was thunderous; and as Lola Montes addressed her audience after numerous curtain calls, bouquets were showered at her feet "' The Sydney Morning Herald thought the dance was ‘the most libertinish and indelicate performance that could be given on the public stage’. In Melbourne the season was hurriedly terminated when the possibility of a court case loomed. She returned to the USA in 1857. About this time she appears to have undergone a religious experience. She decided to give up acting and took to lecturing. Her talks were popular and some of them were published in book form as well. In 1858, she undertook a remarkably successful lecture tour of Britain. Crowds flocked to listen, half expecting to find an Amazon with a bulldog by her side, pistols in her girdle and a horse-whip in the hand. They were surprised to find a good-looking lady in the bloom of womanhood, attired in a plain black dress, with easy, unrestrained manners, and speaking earnestly and distinctly; a born again Christian. Her life was running out. Soon after she contracted tuberculosis. A friend from her childhood days in Montrose, Mrs Buchanan, whom she had discovered accidentally in New York, nursed her through this last and fatal illness. The end came on January 17, 1861. She was only 43. Her grave which lies in New York City's Greenwood cemetery bears the simple inscription: "Mrs Eliza Gilbert, born 1818, died 1861." Source: The Internet
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