Edmund B. D'Auvergne

“ But Louis of Bavaria was an old man, sixty-two years of age. His vows had been those of a young lover; but he wanted the youthful strength of will and hand that should have defended his mistress against an armed nation. Peace—peace—is ever the craving, the last and strongest passion of age.
The King’s surrender to their demands was made known at midday to the angry crowds before the Rathaus. The silly mob hailed with delight the downfall of the woman who had set them free to keep their own consciences, and speak their minds. The King’s decision was communicated to Lola by an aide-de-camp. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it was no affectation of passion that led her to abandon home, husband, and position, to throw herself into the pianist’s arms at Basle. She was deeply in love with him; but she wished to be more than a wife, more than a lover: she aspired to be his muse. Liszt, however, needed no inspiration from without. In an oft-quoted phrase, he said that the Dantes created the Beatrices; “the genuine die when they are eighteen years old.” The man chafed more and more under the ties that bound him. He had no wish to abandon the mother of his children, but his genius demanded to be unfettered. ”

“ Driven forth by a revolution, she wandered over the whole world, astonishing Society by her masculine courage, her adaptability to all circumstances and surroundings. She who had thwarted old Europe’s skilled diplomatists, knew how to horsewhip and to cow the bullies of young Australia’s mining camps. An indifferent actress, her beauty and sheer force of character drew thousands to gaze at her in every land she trod. So she flashed like a meteor from continent to continent, heard of now at St. Petersburg, now at New York, now at San Francisco, now at Sydney. ”

“ From the terraces of Bern, Lola looked forth over Europe and beheld the utter discomfiture of her enemies. If she craved revenge, here was enough and a surfeit. Metternich, the mighty minister, whose gold had contributed to her undoing, was dismissed and driven into exile after forty years of unquestioned sway. Everywhere Liberal principles were in the ascendant. Louis of Bavaria, who had not dared to save her, had now shown himself unable to defend his own throne. Lola must have been more than human if she experienced no inward exultation at the downfall of those who had basely abandoned her. ”

“ In other words, they allowed women to influence them only through the senses; and by the means they had themselves selected, the ambitious woman had no choice but to attack them.
Over the grave of Dujarier Lola may well have exclaimed, “Farewell, love!” Every one of her attachments had ended unhappily—the first ingloriously, the last tragically. Under such blows, her nature hardened. Ambition revived as sentiment waned. There was something worth living for still. At Rouen she heard the murderer of her lover acquitted. Bitter and disillusioned, she turned her steps towards Germany. ”

“ Besides, the most superficial observer could not have failed to see, that while learning in a man was accounted a qualification for responsibilities and honours, in a woman it was regarded as a not altogether enviable peculiarity—like an aquiline nose, or the gift of sword-swallowing. In the five years Lola had passed in the various capitals of Europe, it had become very plain to her that what men supremely prize in women is physical beauty. The governing sex attached no rewards (or, at any rate, the meagrest) to courage and wisdom. They asked woman only to be beautiful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This was informed by sparkling vivacity, and a force of personality, without which we should never have heard the name of Lola Montez. A human masterpiece of this sort is as much a source of trouble in a community as a priceless diamond. Everyone’s cupidity is excited, probity and honour melt away in the fierce heat of temptation. ”

“ When Europe lay under the feet of Metternich and the Ultramontanes, she, almost single-handed, struck a blow for freedom. The wiles of the cleverest intriguers in Europe proved powerless against her bold policy. At scheming she was no adept, trusting, as the strong will ever trust, to her force and personality to defeat the manœuvres of her foes. Had Louis of Bavaria not bowed before the storm, she and his kingdom would have played a great part in European history. As it was, to her intervention Switzerland partly owes the freedom of her institutions from clerical control. ”

“ It might have been expected that Lola would now quit California and return to more congruous surroundings. But a distaste for men and cities, for the restraints of civilisation, had grown strong within her. Just then she was sick of love and sick of the world. At her best, a splendid animal, with fierce elemental passions, she turned almost instinctively, to draw fresh supplies of vitality from “the green, sweet-hearted earth.” She made herself a home in a cabin at Grass Valley, a lawless mining camp, among the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada. ”

“ Christianity offers us new worlds for old, promises new joys to those who have lost all zest for the old, proposes an objective which may be pursued to the brink of the grave, and assures every human being of the tremendous importance of his own destiny. For these reasons religion has always appealed with especial force to women in Lola’s situation, who, moreover, being usually deficient in the logical and critical faculties, are the less able to resist its appeal to their emotions. ”

“ De Mirecourt, who pronounced young Heald’s desire to marry Lola in due and proper form, idée d’Anglais, must be allowed his sneer. We who know in what spirit the adventuress ended her career, and to what strange impulses she was subject, may hesitate to dismiss her momentary attraction to the cloister as a mere advertising manœuvre. The woman was disillusioned, sore at heart, and world-weary; her restlessness bespeaks a mind ill at ease; her beauty showed signs of fading, she had no home, no ties, no kindred. ”

“ 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 ”

“ English law, supposed to vindicate the sanctity of marriage, sets a premium on adultery and cruelty: these are the only avenues of escape from unhappy unions into which high-minded men and women may have been betrayed by youthful folly, by over-persuasion, by sentiments they innocently over-estimated. If Lola Gilbert at the age of eighteen had signed a bill for ten pounds, the courts would have annulled the transaction, on the ground that her youth rendered her incapable of appreciating its gravity. ”

“ In vain do the police attempt to stop the circulation of these journals, which are everywhere read with avidity. The impression which they leave on men’s minds is by no means doubtful. It is the same from Berchtesgaden and Passau to Aschaffenburg and Zweibrücken. It is the same throughout Europe, in the cabin of the poor and the palace of the rich. It is not alone the glory and well-being of your Majesty’s Government that is compromised, but the very existence of royalty itself. ”

“ They enable us to realise Lola’s emotions and manner of life during her second visit to India. Miss Eden’s compassionate interest was excited by
“a number of young ladies just come out by the last ships, looking so fresh and English, and longing to amuse themselves—and it must be such a bore at that age to be shut up for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four; and the one hour that they are out is only an airing just where the roads are watered. They have no gardens, no villages, no poor people, no schools, no poultry to look after—none of the occupations of young people. ”

“ But in New York no one listened for the whisperings of Nature; instead, they fancied they heard voices from some other world. Women who have lost their hold on life readily give ear to visionaries: having exhausted the joys of this world, they wish to test those of another. Lola became a believer in spiritualism. The imagined touch of some fatuous phantom would thrill her as no man’s had power to do. One day she announced that the spirits had directed her to abandon the stage, and to become a lecturer. ”

“ It is clear that Lola was an inordinately ambitious woman, eager to play a leading part in great affairs. Her association with Dujarier and other active politicians, the glimpses she had so often obtained of courts and thrones, stimulated this longing for power. She felt within her the capacity to rule men, and the ability to surmount great obstacles. A personal courage was hers, such as would have earned its possessor, if a man, the cross of honour. ”

“ My government has been in strict accordance with the Constitution; my life has been dedicated to the welfare of my people. I have administered the public money and property as if I had been a republican officer, and I can boldly encounter the severest scrutiny. I offer my heartfelt thanks to all who have adhered to me faithfully, and though I descend from the throne, my heart still glows with affection for Bavaria and for Germany.
Louis.”
Less than six weeks thus elapsed between the downfall of Lola Montez and the dethronement of the king who had not been man enough to uphold her. ”

“ It was the old struggle for the possession of the artist, waged by Silvia and Gioconda. Lola was beautiful as a tigress. To Liszt she could surrender herself proudly. She was one of those erotic women, whose passion is excited rather by a man’s mental attributes than by his physical advantages. Intellect she adored. Her own strong nature could yield only to a stronger. We have heard how she spoke of Nicholas I.; we shall find this almost sensuous craving for force of personality in her subsequent relations. To her, the pianist must have been a new revelation of manhood. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Came one day Lola Montez, in the full zenith of her evil fame, bound for California with a strange suite. A good-looking, bold woman, with fine, bad eyes and a determined bearing, dressed ostentatiously in perfect male attire, with shirt collar turned down over a velvet lapelled coat, richly worked shirt-front, black hat, French unmentionables, and natty polished boots with spurs. She carried in her hand a handsome riding-whip, which she could use as well in the streets of Cruces as in the towns of Europe ”

“ To a woman in Lola’s situation, London in the early ’forties offered every inducement to go to the devil. Between a roaring maelstrom of the coarsest libertinism, on the one hand, and an impregnable barrier of heartless puritanism on the other, her destruction was well-nigh inevitable. The hotchpotch of unorganised humanity that we call Society seldom presented an uglier appearance than it did in the first decade of Victoria’s reign. ”

“ Experience, it is true, had taught Lola to set limits to her ambition. She had succeeded in her design of hooking a prince, but the catch had been torn off the hook with considerable violence to the angler. It was of no use again to cast her line into royal waters. The fish were now too wary. After the ordeal through which she had passed, Lola sighed for some enduring ties and an established position. She yearned as the most fiery and erratic do at one time or another, for a home. Some think that they who have loved most, love best ”

“ Everybody knows that the jewellery which Lola wore lately at the theatre cost 60,000 guldens; that her house in the Barerstrasse is a fairy palace; that the Cabinet, the Council of State, and the whole civil service are at her beck and call; that the gendarmerie and military are her particular escort; that the best Catholic professors at the University have been dismissed at her caprice. For the people nothing is done. ”

“ Lola did not, of course, believe what she said. Even “when wild youth’s past” and the glamour of love has worn thin, no sensible woman could believe that she would have got much happiness out of life if it had been passed in wedlock with a man half a century her senior. Perhaps, however, Lola sadly reflected that if she had become Sir Abraham’s wife, she would probably have become his widow a very few years after. ”

“ It is probable that a woman of Lola’s beauty, wit, and remarkable attainments would have numbered the most brilliant and distinguished men in London among her associates, whatever attitude may have been assumed towards her by the little clique of prigs and prudes that arrogated to itself the title of Society. ”

“ The two friends wrung each other’s hand, and Dumas, heavy at heart, went downstairs. Dujarier was left to his thoughts. The reflections of a man who is practically sure that he will be dead next day are quite peculiar. The sensation is not fear in the ordinary acceptation of the term. It is an effort to realise what no man ever can properly realise—that the world around you, which in one (and a very true) sense has no existence except as it is perceived by you, will, notwithstanding, be existing to-morrow evening, while you will not exist. ”

“ At the conclusion of her autobiography the American people are told that the pilgrim from the effete forms of Europe must look upon their great Republic with as happy an eye as the storm-tossed and shipwrecked mariner looks upon the first star that shines beneath the receding tempest. These words, indeed, are Mr. Chauncy Burr’s, but the sentiments beyond doubt are those that Lola constantly affected. Her mastery over men, as is always the case, was due not so much to her physical charms as to her skill in detecting their weakest sides. ”