Lola Montez Part 8

von Plotz. 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 pa.s.sion, 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 _Muller 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 pa.s.sion, 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 Nussbaum, 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 pa.s.sion. 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 a.s.sist in the conversion of Count Medem, a Russian n.o.bleman. 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 n.o.bility 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 theologic.u.m_ 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.

The rumour that she was an agent of "the English Freemasons," if by that term we may understand the English Liberals, is not to be dismissed as altogether preposterous. Our Government at that time was more or less actively hostile to the ultra-legitimist and clerical tendencies paramount in Central Europe: we backed the Swiss Confederation against the Sonderbund; we sympathised with the Italians in their struggles for freedom; English volunteers fought for the Liberal Christinos against the Ultramontane Carlists. Lola's well-known sympathies, her knowledge of continental courts, above all, her personality, would have recommended her as a most valuable agent to our Foreign Office. We shall see presently that she became the honoured guest of an English amba.s.sador, and how legal proceedings afterwards inst.i.tuted against her in this country were mysteriously suffered to collapse, as if in obedience to orders from above. Lola never describes herself, it is true, as a secret agent of our Government, but she would naturally have preferred to appear as the independent, irresponsible dictatrix of a nation's policy.

Whatever the cause may have been, antagonism manifested itself between Lola Montez and the King's advisers, official and clerical, within a very few days of her arrival at his court. Louis is said to have introduced her to his ministers as his best friend. The Jesuits immediately circulated the report that she was his mistress, and endeavoured to inflame the Bavarian people against her. In obedience to their principle of the Church first and political consistency a long way after, they instigated a general attack upon King and favourite through the clerical press of Germany. It was truly remarked in one of the independent organs of opinion that the most extreme radical could not have shown less regard for the person of the sovereign than these champions of legitimacy. Caricature, that pitiable prost.i.tution of a divine art, was a.s.siduously employed.

Louis was represented as a crowned satyr, a pug-dog, an a.s.s with a crown tied to his tail; Lola was treated with even less regard for decency. The ape that lurks in every man gibbered in every clerical rag. The curious may inspect some choice examples of this simian humour in Herr Fuchs's interesting work.[13]

Ridicule, so far from killing, as is so often said, can be proved by history to be the least potent instrument of attack and persecution wielded by man. Skits break neither bones nor thrones. Ridicule is generally on the side of authority and reaction, and as such, in the long run, on the losing side. Puritanism survived the raillery of seventeenth-century wags; the North triumphed, despite the loathsome scurrilities of _Punch_; "Napoleon the Little," succ.u.mbed to German strategy, not to Victor Hugo's satiric force; Teetotalism, Socialism, and the Cause of Woman wax stronger daily, in spite of the humorists of the music halls and the racing rags. The King of Bavaria was not to be shamed or affrighted by all the gutter journalists of Germany. But his smile became a little grim. Archbishop Diepenbrock remonstrated with him as to his a.s.sumed relations with the dancer. "Stick to your _stola_, bishop,"

was the Plantagenet-like answer, "and leave me my Lola." He claimed for his domestic affairs the privacy enjoyed by the meanest of his subjects.

His regard for Lola and respect for her opinion grew stronger daily.

Dismay spread through the clerical camp. As vilification failed to produce any sensible effect, bribery was attempted. At the instance, no doubt, of Metternich, Louis's sister, the Dowager Empress Karoline Augusta, offered the favourite two thousand pounds if she would quit Bavaria. The offer was rejected, in what terms our knowledge of Lola's character enables us to imagine. She did not lack money, nor did she crave for it. She loved power for its own sake, and power she now possessed. Under her influence Louis recovered his sanity. The liberal instincts of his youth and prime revived. He became once more the Grecian, and the mediaeval fever left him.

His impatience of clerical control grew more evident daily.

"And lo, a blade for a knight's emprise Filled the fine empty sheath of a man.-- The Duke grew straightway brave and wise."

XX

THE ABEL MEMORANDUM

The King's change of policy first found official expression in the Royal Decree of 15th December 1846, transferring the control of the Departments of Education and Public Worship from Abel, the Minister of the Interior, to Baron von Schrenk. The effect of this measure was practically to remove the schools from the power of the Jesuits. Abel saw in it a blow aimed at him by the detested _Andalusierin_. He addressed a letter to the King, reminding him of his zeal and devotion to the Crown, of his attachment to his person, of the unpopularity he had willingly incurred in order to subject the people more thoroughly to royal control. Louis was not greatly affected by this letter; we seldom earn the grat.i.tude of others by reminding them that we have taken upon ourselves blame which ought rightly to be theirs. He was ungrateful enough to say that he had no sympathy with Abel's policy, but that he found him a convenient man to work with. The minister hoped that the King, like Henri Quatre, would prefer his servant to his favourite, but he was disappointed. He next put his trust in Louis's disinclination to take an active part in the Government; but here again he was deceived. The King, stimulated by Lola, began to exhibit the vigour and activity of youth, and showed a disposition to rule as well as to reign. Baron von Pechmann, the Chief of the Munich Police, was less patient than Abel, and ventured to protest against the consideration shown to "a mere adventuress." The King's blue eyes kindled. "Begone!" he exclaimed angrily; "you will find the air of Landshut purer!" It was a sentence of banishment which the minister had no choice but to obey.

This opposition on the part of the clericals determined Louis to regularise his new favourite and counsellor's position in his kingdom, and to establish her social rank. He proposed to raise her to the peerage, and as a preliminary measure he signed letters patent, conferring upon her the status and rights of a Bavarian citizen. According to the const.i.tution this decree had to be countersigned by a minister. The doc.u.ment was placed before Abel for his signature. The crisis had come. The King must now finally decide between minister and favourite, in other words, between reaction and progress. Abel summoned his colleagues to a council and the following remarkable memorandum to His Majesty was the result of their deliberations.[14]

"SIRE,--There are circ.u.mstances in which men invested with the inappreciable confidence of their sovereign, and charged with the direction of affairs, are called upon either to renounce their most sacred duties or to expose themselves, at the bidding of their consciences, to the risk of incurring the displeasure of their beloved monarch. This is the sad necessity to which your ministers find themselves reduced by the royal determination to grant to Senora Lola Montez letters of naturalisation. We are incapable of forgetting the oaths we took to your Majesty, and our resolution has never been for a moment doubtful. The proposed naturalisation of Senora Montez was openly characterised by Councillor von Maurer as the greatest calamity with which Bavaria could be afflicted. This was the conviction of the whole Council, and the opinion of all your Majesty's faithful subjects. Since December last the eyes of the nation have been fixed on Munich. The respect for the sovereign becomes weaker and weaker in all minds, because on all sides nothing is heard but the bitterest blame and disapprobation. National feeling is wounded: Bavaria believes itself to be governed by a foreign woman, whose reputation is branded in public opinion. Men like the Bishop of Augsburg [Dr.

Richarz], whose devotion to your Majesty cannot be disputed, daily shed bitter tears for what is pa.s.sing before their eyes; the ministers of the Interior and of Finance have witnessed his profound affliction.

The Prince Bishop of Breslau [Dr. Diepenbrock], hearing of a rumour that he had countenanced the actual state of things, has written to persons in Munich formally and most emphatically expressing his disapprobation. His letter is no longer a secret, and will soon be known to the whole country. Foreign journals every day relate the most scandalous anecdotes, and make the most degrading attacks on your Majesty. The copy of the _Ulner Chronik_, which we subjoin, is a proof of our a.s.sertions. 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 Pa.s.sau to Aschaffenburg and Zweibrucken. 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. It is this which explains the joy of the enemies of the throne, and the profound grief and despair of all who are faithfully attached to your Majesty, and who are alive to the dangers greater than any to which it has been exposed. In this state of things, it is inevitable that what is pa.s.sing will influence the army, and if this bulwark should give way, where would be our resource? The statement, which the undersigned, whose hearts are torn with anguish, venture to place before your Majesty, is not the product of a terrified imagination, but of observations which each has made within the circle of his attributions, during several months. The effect of these circ.u.mstances in the ensuing parliamentary session may easily be foreseen. Each of the undersigned is ready to sacrifice for your Majesty his fortune and his life. Your ministers believe that they have given you proofs of their fidelity and attachment, but it is for them a doubly sacred duty to point out to your Majesty the ever-increasing danger of this situation. We beg you to listen to our humble prayer and not to suppose that it is dictated by any desire to thwart your royal will.

It is directed only against a state of things which threatens to destroy the fair fame, power, and future happiness of a beloved King.

Your ministers are convinced, after earnest deliberation, that if your Majesty should not deign to give ear to their supplications, they are bound to resign the positions to which the kindness and confidence of their sovereign has called them, and to pray your Majesty to remove the portfolios with which they are entrusted,

(Signed) VON ABEL. VON SEINSHEIM.

VON GUMPPENBERG. VON SCHRENK.

MUNICH, _11th February 1847_."

This extraordinary address exhibits the courage, if not the tact and sense of humour of the signatories; but none of them cared to present it. Abel sent it by messenger to the King, who perused it with mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and indignation, and then locked it in his desk. He asked Abel if this was the only copy existing, and was answered in the affirmative. But a day or two later the memorandum appeared in print in the columns of the _Augsburger Zeitung_. A preliminary draft had been sent by Abel to a fifth minister, Herr Von Giese, who had left it carelessly upon his bureau. Here it was scanned with interest and curiosity by his elderly sister, and was carried off by her, to be proudly exhibited at a tea-party. Handed round among the guests for examination, it was not long in finding its way into the Press. It was reproduced in the French and English papers. The _Times_ devoted an editorial to its contents, and compared the excessive sensibility of the Bishop of Augsburg with the hardened indifference of the English hierarchy to the transgressions of the fourth George and William. The lachrymose prelate contributed hugely to the gaiety of nations. Bernstorff, the Prussian Amba.s.sador, considered the address wanting in respect to the sovereign; by another statesman it was qualified as unbecoming, injudicious, and crude. More heads than one, it was remarked, had been lost over Lola. No one could have been more amused than the lady herself by this astonishing memorandum.

She had indeed good cause for mirth. The indiscretion of the Cabinet brought about the complete triumph of her policy. The King allowed Abel twenty-four hours to reconsider his att.i.tude, and as the minister stood to his guns, he was formally dismissed from office on 16th February. His fall involved his colleagues. Louis's return to his earlier ideas, consequent upon his relations with Lola, was made evident in his choice of new ministers. The portfolio of the Interior was entrusted to Baron Zu Rhein, with the intimation that His Majesty wished to be served by men sincerely attached to their religion, but determined to resist any encroachment by the Church upon the rights of the State. Councillor Maurer became Minister of Justice, having presumably recanted the views attributed to him by his late colleagues in the memorandum. He was a man of learning and Liberal tendencies, and was the first Protestant to hold Cabinet rank in Bavaria.

The portfolios of finance and war were given respectively to Councillor Zenetti and Major-General von Hohenhausen. The whole Cabinet was frankly Liberal. Lola had coaxed the King back to sanity, and inflicted a signal defeat upon the clericals. All over Germany she was acclaimed as the heroine of Liberalism. Metternich groaned over the deplorable state of things at Munich, and wrote that this woman had become an instrument of the Radical party. Bernstorff received the news of the fall of Abel's Ministry with satisfaction, accompanied, as it was, by Maurer's a.s.surance that the reign of the Jesuits in Bavaria was at an end.

It was at her evening reception at her house in Theresienstra.s.se that Louis came to announce to Lola the dismissal of his old ministers, and his unalterable attachment to her and to her policy. "I will not give Lola up," he declared; "I will never give up that n.o.ble princely being. My kingdom for Lola!" Maurer was obliged to consent to the naturalisation that he had described as a national calamity. Lola was soon after raised to the peerage with the t.i.tles of Countess of Landsfeld[15] and Baroness Rosenthal. She is described in the register of Bavarian n.o.bility as Maria Dolores Porris y Montez, the daughter of a Carlist officer and Cuban lady.

(That the daughter of a follower of Don Carlos should be a deadly foe of all that was Ultramontane must have struck her friends and opponents as odd.) Her t.i.tles conveyed with them an estate of importance, and certain feudal rights--the middle and the low justice, perhaps--over two thousand souls. She was made a canoness of the aristocratic order of St. Theresa, of which the Queen was the head. To enable her to support this dignity the King endowed her with an annuity of twenty thousand florins. With this and the money bequeathed her by Dujarier she was now rich. A palace befitting her position was ordered to be built for her in Barerstra.s.se after the design of the architect, Metzger, who was one of her most impa.s.sioned admirers. Her portrait was painted by royal command, and placed in the Gallery of Beauties, where Louis, it is said, was accustomed to spend hours in rapturous contemplation.

XXI

THE INDISCRETIONS OF A MONARCH

Louis, being a lover of the old school, resorted to verse as an expression of his sentiments towards his new favourite. The editor of the _Times_, years after, described His Majesty as something of a poet, in a small way.

How very small that way was the following effusions will show. They were translated by Mr. Francis, afterwards editor of the _Morning Post_ and other journals. Unfortunately, or fortunately, they convey no idea of the odd contortions of language characteristic of the original.

"TO THE ABSENT LOLITA

"The world hates and persecutes That heart which gave itself to me: But however much they may try to estrange us, My heart will cling the more fondly to thine.

"The more they hate, the more thou art beloved; And more and more is given to thee.

I shall never be torn from thee.

"Against others they have no hate; It is against thee alone they are enraged; In thee everything is a crime; Thy words alone, as deeds, they would punish.

"But the heart's goodness shows itself-- Thou hast a highly elevated mind; Yet the little who deem themselves great Would cast thee off as a pariah.

"For evermore I belong to thee; For evermore thou belongest to me: What delight! that like the wave Renews itself out of its eternal spring.

"By thee my life becomes enn.o.bled, Which without thee was solitary and empty; Thy love is the nutriment of my heart, If it had it not, it would die.

"And though thou mightest by all be forsaken, I will never abandon thee; For ever will I preserve for thee Constancy and true German faith."

The next verses relate to the Countess of Landsfeld, in her character as a Liberal martyr.

"From thee, beloved one, time and distance separate me, But however distant thou might'st be, I should ever call thee my own, Thou eternally bright star of my life.

"The wild steed, if you try to daunt him.

Prances, the bolder only, on and on: The ties of love will tie us so much closer, If the world attempt to tear thee from me.

"And every persecution thou endurest Becomes a new link in the chain Which, because thou art struggling for truth, Thou hast, for the rest of my life, cast around me.