Lola Montez Part 9

"Whether near or far off, thou art mine, And the love which with its l.u.s.tre glorifies Is ever renewed and will last for ever.

For evermore our faith will prove itself true."

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOUIS I. KING OF BAVARIA.]

The following lines are a sonnet in the original, addressed to:--

"LOLITA AND LOUIS

"Men strive with restless zeal to separate us; Constantly and gloomily they plan thy destruction; In vain, however, are always their endeavours, Because they know themselves alone, not us.

Our love will bloom but the brighter for it all-- What gives us bliss cannot be divorced from us-- Those endless flames which burn with sparkling light, And pervade our existence with enrapturing fire.

Two rocks are we, against which constantly are breaking The adversaries' craft, the enemies' open rage; But, scorpion-like, themselves, they pierce with deadly sting-- The sanctuary is guarded by trust and faith; Thy enemies' cruelty will be revenged on themselves-- Love will compensate for all that we have suffered.

"In the following sonnet," comments the translator, "the royal poet does not clearly intimate whether he has renounced the political or the personal rivals of the fair Lolita:--

"'If, for my sake, thou hast renounced all ties, I, too, for thee have broken with them all; Life of my life, I am thine--I am thy thrall-- I hold no compact with thine enemies.

Their blandishments are powerless on me, No arts will serve to seduce me from thee; The power of love raises me above them.

With thee my earthly pilgrimage will end.

As is the union between the body and the soul, So, until death, with thine my being is blended.

In thee I have found what I ne'er yet found in any-- The sight of thee gave new life to my being.

All feeling for any other has died away, For my eyes read in thine--love!'"

The final example of the King's lyrical genius might be inscribed to "Lolita in Dejection." It is dated the evening of 6th July 1847.

"A glance of the sun of former days, A ray of light in gloomy night!

Have sounded long-forgotten strings, And life once more as erst was bright.

"Thus felt I on that night of gladness, When all was joy through thee alone; Thy spirit chased from mine its sadness, No joy was greater than mine own.

"Then was I happy for feeling more deeply What I possessed and what I lost; It seemed that thy joy then went for ever, And that it could never more return.

"Thou hast lost thy cheerfulness, Persecution has robbed thee of it; It has deprived thee of thy health, The happiness of thy life is already departed.

"But the firmer only, and more firmly Thou hast tied me to thee; Thou canst never draw me from thee-- Thou sufferest because thou lovest me."

The King of Bavaria was not a poet; but, as a critic said of Emile Auger, in some remote corner of his being, something was singing.

XXII

THE MINISTRY OF GOOD HOPE

The Ultramontanes had no intention of taking their defeat lying down. The Jesuits were fighting for their very existence just over the frontier in Switzerland; the Sonderbund or Catholic League was threatened with an attack at any moment by the forces of the Confederation. Austria and France could do nothing for the League through fear of Palmerston, but it is very probable that help was expected from Bavaria, on which England could not have brought any direct pressure to bear. Munich was the asylum of Ultramontane exiles from all parts of Europe--of French Legitimists, Polish Catholics, and Swiss Jesuits. In Lola's action they detected the hand of the arch-enemy, Palmerston. Liberally supplied with gold from Austria (as Bernstorff did not hesitate to allege), these champions of legitimacy sedulously strove to inflame the people with hatred of the favourite. Lola's unfortunate temper aided their exertions. The citizens of Munich disliked being boxed on the ears even by the most beautiful of her s.e.x, and Baron Pechmann, who had endeavoured to avenge them, had been banished. Lola, like all people of a rich, generous nature, was fond of dogs. In London she had bought a bull-dog from a man who told Mark Lemon, with a very proper professional reservation, that the lady was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen--_on two legs_. The animal, being indisposed, was sent by his devoted mistress to the Veterinary Hospital at Munich. The patient did not progress very rapidly towards recovery, and Lola remonstrated with the medical man in attendance. His reply was too brusque for her taste. Her ears having been offended, she promptly boxed his. She then carried off her darling, who was soon restored to health and vigour. So complete was his recovery that a week or two later, while accompanying his mistress in the streets of Munich, he prepared himself to attack a carrier who was walking beside his cart. The man antic.i.p.ated the onslaught by flicking the bull-dog with his whip. The enraged Lola at once smote the man on the ear. The a.s.sault was witnessed by several pa.s.sers-by, whose threatening att.i.tude compelled her to take refuge in a neighbouring shop. From this dangerous situation she was delivered only by the police.

Lola and the King laughed good-humouredly over these incidents; the people of Munich were disposed to look upon them as deadly outrages.

The new favourite, then, was not likely to become popular with the ma.s.ses; and her enemies could turn with some confidence to the educated cla.s.ses, 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 La.s.saulx, 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. La.s.saulx 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 Theresienstra.s.se, 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 gla.s.s 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 Hormann, 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 embarra.s.sed 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 cuira.s.siers.

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 La.s.saulx, 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 Wurzburg 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 att.i.tude 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 ingrat.i.tude 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 reconst.i.tute 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 _Munchner 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, sh.e.l.l-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 surpa.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 amus.e.m.e.nt becoming her s.e.x, 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 s.e.x, she understands the art of conversation sufficiently never to be wearisome. Indeed, although capable of violent but evanescent pa.s.sions--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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sive 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 princ.i.p.al 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, n.o.bility, 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 coa.r.s.e 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."