The Magnificent Montez Part 32

"The Rev. Dr. Hawks," adds a second account, "was constantly at the bedside of Lola Montez, and gave her the benefit of his pastoral care as freely as if she had been a member of his own flock. He conducted her obsequies in an impressive fashion; and Mr. Brown, his a.s.sistant, who had himself attended so many funerals and weddings in his day, was seen to wipe the tears from his eyes, as he heard the reverend gentleman remark to Mrs. Buchanan that he had never met with an example of more genuine penitence."

"Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?" enquired the Rev. Mr.

Hawks, as he stood addressing the company a.s.sembled round the grave.

He himself was a.s.sured that the description was thoroughly applicable to the woman lying there.

"I never saw," he declared, "a more humble penitent. When I prayed with her, nothing could exceed the fervour of her devotion; and never have I had a more watchful and attentive hearer when I read the Scriptures.... If ever a repentant soul loathed past sin, I believe hers did."

Possibly, since it could scarcely have been Mrs. Buchanan, it was this clerical busybody who was responsible for the inscription on Lola's headstone:

MRS. ELIZA GILBERT

DIED

JANUARY 17, 1861.

An odd mask under which to shelter the ident.i.ty of the gifted woman who, given in baptism the names Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna, had flashed across three continents as Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Grave of Lola Montez, in Green-wood Cemetery, New York_

(_Photo by Miss Ida U. Mellen, New York_)]

IV

Misrepresented as she had been in her life, Lola Montez was even more misrepresented after her death. The breath was scarcely out of her body, when a flood of cowardly scurrilities was poured from the gutter press. Her good deeds were forgotten; only her derelictions were remembered.

One such obituary notice began:

"A woman who, in the full light of the nineteenth century, renewed all the scandals that disgraced the Middle Ages, and, with an audacity that is almost unparalleled, seated herself upon the steps of a throne, is worthy of mention; if only to show to what extent vice can sometimes triumph, and to what a fall it can eventually come."

An editorial, which was published in one of the New York papers, contained some odd pa.s.sages:

"Among the most ardent admirers of Lola Montez was a young Scotsman, a member of the ill.u.s.trious house of Lennox, who was with difficulty restrained by his family from offering her his hand. In London the deceased led a gay life, being courted by the Earl of Malmesbury and other distinguished n.o.blemen. Wherever she went, she was the observed of all observers, conquering the hearts of men of all countries by her beauty and blandishments, and their admiration by her unflinching independence of character and superior intellectual endowments."

The death of Lola Montez did not pa.s.s without comment in England. The _Athenaeum_ necrologist accorded her half a column of obituary, in which she was described as "this pretty, picaroon woman, whose name can never be omitted from any chronicle of Bavaria."

A Grub Street hack, employed by the curiously named _Gentleman's Magazine_, slung together a column of abuse and lies, founded on tap-room gossip:

"When not yet sixteen, she ran away from a school near Cork with a young officer of the Bengal Army, Lieutenant Gilbert (_sic_), who married her and took her to India. In consequence of her bad conduct there, he was soon obliged to send her back to Europe. She first tried the stage as a profession, but, failing at it, she eventually adopted a career of infamy."

A writer in _Temple Bar_ has endeavoured, and, on the whole, with fair measure of success, to preserve the balance:

"With more of the good and more of the evil in her composition than in that of most of her sisters, Lola Montez made a wreck of her life by giving reins to the latter; and she stands out as a prominent example of the impossibility of a woman breaking away from the responsibilities of her s.e.x with any permanent gain, either to herself or to society. Her pa.s.sionate, enthusiastic and loving nature was her strength which, by fascinating all who came into contact with her, was also her weakness."

Cameron Rogers, writing on "Gay and Gallant Ladies," sums up the career of Lola Montez in deft fashion:

"Thus pa.s.sed one who has been called the Cleopatra and the Aspasia of the nineteenth century. A very gallant and courageous lady, certainly; and, though she used her beauty and her mind not in accordance with the Decalogue, yet worthy to be remembered as much for the excellent vigour of the latter as for the perfection of the former. Individual d.a.m.nation or salvation in such a case as hers are matters of strict opinion; but for Lola's brief to the last judgment there is an ancient tag that might never be more aptly appended. Like the moral of her life, it is exceedingly trite--_Quia multum amavit._"

This is well put.

V

Even after she was in it, and might, one would think, have been left there in peace, the dead woman was not allowed to rest quietly in her grave. Some years later her mantle was impudently a.s.sumed by an alleged actress, who, dubbing herself "Countess of Landsfeld,"

undertook a lecture tour in America. If she had no other gift, this one certainly had that of imagination. "I was born," she said to a reporter, "in Florence, and my mother, Lola Montez, was really married to the King Ludwig of Bavaria. This marriage was strictly valid, and my mother's t.i.tle of countess was afterwards conferred on myself. The earliest recollections I have are of being brought up by some nuns in a convent in the Black Forest. But for the help of the good Dr.

Dollinger, who a.s.sisted me to escape, I should still have been kept there, a victim of political interests."

This nonsense was eagerly swallowed; and for some time the pseudo-"Countess" attracted a following and reaped a rich harvest. It was not until diplomatic representations were made that her career was checked.

On Christmas Day, 1898, a New York obituary announced the death of a woman, Alice Devereux, the wife of a carpenter in poor circ.u.mstances.

It further declared that she was the "daughter of the notorious Lola Montez, and may well have been the grand-daughter of Lord Byron." To this it added: "Society has maintained a studious and charitable reserve as to the parentage of Lola Montez. All that is definitely known on the subject is that a fox-hunting Irish squire, Sir Edward Gilbert, was the husband of her mother." Thus is "history" written.

Nor would the "Spirits" leave poor Lola in peace. In the year 1888 a woman "medium," calling herself Madam Anna O'Delia Diss DeBar (but, under pressure, admitting to several _aliases_) claimed to be a daughter of Lola Montez. As such, she conducted a number of seances, and, in return for cash down, evoked the spirit of her alleged mother.

Some of the cash was extracted from the pocket of a credulous lawyer, one Luther Marsh. Thinking he had not had fair value for his dollars, he eventually prosecuted Madam for fraud, and had her sent to prison.

She was not disturbed again until the winter of 1929, when an Austrian "medium," Rudi Schneider, with, to adopt the jargon of his craft, a "trance-personality" called Olga (who professed to be an incarnation of Lola Montez), gave some seances in London. The extinguishing of the lights and the wheezing of a gramophone were followed by the usual "manifestations." Thus, curtains flapped, books fell off chairs, tambourines rattled in locked cupboards, and bells jangled, etc. But Lola Montez herself was too bashful to appear. None the less, a number of "scientists" (all un-named) afterwards announced that "everything was very satisfactory."

Thinking that these claims to get into touch with the dead should be subjected to a more adequate test, Mr. Harry Price, director of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, arranged for Rudi Schneider to give a sample of his powers to a committee of experts. As a convincing test, Major Hervey de Montmorency (a nephew of the Mr.

Francis Leigh with whom Lola had once lived in Paris) suggested that the accomplished "Olga" should be asked the name of his uncle (which was different from his own) and the circ.u.mstances under which they had parted. This was done, and "Olga" promised to give full details at the next sitting. But the promise was not kept. "She conveniently shelved every question," says the official report. Altogether, Rudi Schneider's stock fell.

VI

The body of Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld, and Canoness of the Order of St. Therese, has now been crumbling in the dust of a distant grave, far from her own kith and kindred, for upwards of seventy years. Her name, however, will still be remembered when that of other women who have filled a niche in history will have been forgotten.

Lola Montez was no common adventuress. By her beauty and intelligence and magnetism she weaved a spell on well nigh all who came within her radius. Never any member of her s.e.x quite like this one. Had she been born in the Middle Ages, superst.i.tion would have had it that Venus herself was revisiting the haunts of men in fresh guise. But she would then probably have perished at the stake, accused of witchcraft by her political opponents. As it was, even in the year 1848 a sovereign demanded that a professional exorcist should "drive the devil out of her."

To present Lola Montez at her true worth, to adjust the balance between her merits and her demerits, is a difficult task. A woman of a hundred opposing facets; of rare culture and charm, and of whims and fancies and strange enthusiasms each battling with the other. Thus, by turns tender and callous, hot-tempered and soft-hearted; childishly simple in some things, and amazingly shrewd in others; trusting and suspicious; arrogant and humble, yet supremely indifferent to public opinion; grateful for kindness and loyal to her friends, but neither forgetting nor forgiving an injury. Men had treated her worse than she had treated them.

For the rest, a flashing, vivid personality, full of resource and high courage, and always meeting hard knocks and buffets with equanimity.

Lola Montez had lived every moment of her life. In the course of their career, few women could have cut a wider swath, or one more colourful and glamorous. She had beauty and intelligence much above the average.

All the world had been her stage; and she had played many parts on it.

Some of them she had played better than others; but all of them she had played with distinction. She had boxed the compa.s.s as no woman had ever yet boxed it. From adventuress to evangelist; coryphee, courtesan, and convert, each in turn. At the start a mixture of Cleopatra and Aspasia; and at the finish a feminine Pelagian. Equally at home in the company of princes and poets and diplomats and demireps, during the twenty years she was before the public she had scaled heights and sunk to depths. Thus, she had queened it in palaces and in camps; danced in opera houses and acted in booths; she had bent monarchs and politicians to her will; she had stood on the steps of a throne, and in the curb of a gutter; she had known pomp and power, riches and poverty, dazzling successes and abject failures; she had conducted amours and liaisons and intrigues by the dozen; she had made history in two hemispheres; a king had given up his crown for her; men had lived for her; and men had died for her.

As with the rest of us, Lola Montez had her faults. Full measure of them. But she also had her virtues. She was gallant and generous and charitable. At the worst, her heart ruled her head; and if she did many a foolish thing, she never did a mean one.

In the final a.n.a.lysis, when the last balance is struck, this will surely be placed to her credit.

APPENDIX I

EXTRACTS FROM "ARTS OF BEAUTY"