Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld, better known by
the stage name Lola Montez, was an Irish dancer and actress who became famous as
a "Spanish dancer", courtesan, mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made
her Countess of Landsfeld. She used her influence to institute liberal reforms.
At the start of the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, she was forced to
flee. She proceeded to the United States via Switzerland, France and London,
returning to her work as an entertainer and lecturer.
Biography = Early life=
Lola's mother, Eliza(beth) Oliver was the child of Charles Silver Oliver, a
former High Sheriff of Cork and member of Parliament for Kilmallock in County
Limerick. Their residence was Castle Oliver. In December 1818, Ensign Edward
Gilbert met Eliza Oliver when he arrived with the 25th Regiment. They were
married on 29 April 1820, and Lola was born the following February, refuting
persistent rumors that her mother was pregnant with her at the time of the
wedding. The young family made their residence at King House in Boyle, County
Roscommon until early 1823, when they journeyed to Liverpool, thence departing
for India on 14 March. As with many other aspects of her life,
discrepant reports of the birth of Eliza Gilbert have been published. For many
years, it was accepted that she was born in the city of Limerick, as she herself
claimed, possibly on 23 June 1818; this year was graven on her headstone, which
seemed to make it the literal "last word". However, when her baptismal
certificate came to light in the late 1990s, it was established that Eliza
Rosanna Gilbert was actually born in Grange, County Sligo on 17 February
1821. She was baptized at St Peter's Church in Liverpool on 16 February 1823
while her family was en route to her father's post in India. As her mother's
family was in County Limerick, it is not hard to see how little Eliza could have
been told "We're from Limerick" and assumed that the city was meant.
Shortly after their arrival in India, Edward Gilbert died of cholera.
Her mother, who was now 19, married another officer, Lieutenant Patrick
Craigie, the following year. Craigie quickly came to care for little Eliza,
but her spoiled and half-wild ways concerned him greatly.
Eventually, it was agreed she would be sent back to Britain to attend school,
staying with Craigie's father in Montrose, Scotland, at first. But the
"queer, wayward little Indian girl" quickly became known as a
mischief-maker. On one occasion, she stuck flowers into the wig of an elderly
man during a church service; on another, she ran through the streets naked.
At the age of ten, Eliza was moved on again – this time to Sunderland,
England. When her stepfather's older sister, Catherine Rae, set up a boarding
school in Monkwearmouth with her husband, Lola joined them to continue
her education. Eliza's determination and temper were to
become her trademarks. The little girl's stay in Sunderland lasted only a year,
as she was then transferred to Bath for a more sophisticated education.
In 1837, 16-year-old Eliza eloped with Lieutenant Thomas James, and they
married. The couple separated five years later, in Calcutta, and she became a
professional dancer under a stage name. She had her London debut as "Lola
Montez, the Spanish dancer" in June 1843, but she had been recognized as
Mrs. James. The resulting notoriety hampered her career in England and she
departed for the Continent. At this time, she was almost certainly accepting
favors from a few wealthy men, and was regarded by many as a courtesan.
= Life as a courtesan= In 1844, Lola made an unsuccessful
Parisian stage debut as a dancer in Fromental Halévy's opera, Le lazzarone.
She met and had an affair with Franz Liszt, who introduced her to the circle
of George Sand. After performing in various European capitals, she settled
in Paris, where she was accepted in the rather Bohemian literary society of the
time, being acquainted with Alexandre Dumas, père, with whom she was rumoured
to have had a dalliance. After the 1845 death of her lover, newspaperman
Alexandre Dujarier, in a duel, unrelated to her, she left Paris.
In 1846, she arrived in Munich, where she was discovered by and became the
mistress of, Ludwig I of Bavaria. The rumour was, at the time they met, Ludwig
had asked her in public if her bosom was real. To which her response was to tear
off enough of her garments to prove it. She soon began to use her influence on
the king and this, coupled with her arrogant manner and outbursts of temper,
made her unpopular with the local population. Despite the opposition,
Ludwig made her Countess of Landsfeld on his next birthday, 25 August 1847. Along
with her title, he granted her a large annuity.
For more than a year, she exercised great political power, which she
directed in favor of liberalism, against the conservatives and the Jesuits. Her
influence became so great that the ultramontane administration of Karl von
Abel was dismissed because that minister objected to her being made Countess
Landsfeld. The students of the university were divided in their
sympathies, and conflicts arose shortly before the outbreak of the revolutions
of 1848, which led the king, at Lola's instigation, to close the university. In
March 1848, under pressure from a growing revolutionary movement, the
university was re-opened, Ludwig abdicated, and Montez fled Bavaria, her
career as a power behind the throne at an end. It seems likely that Ludwig's
relationship with Montez contributed greatly to the fall from grace of the
previously popular king. After a sojourn in Switzerland, where
she waited in vain for Ludwig to join her, she made one brief excursion to
France and then removed to London in late 1848. There she met and quickly
married George Trafford Heald, a young army cornet with a recent inheritance.
But the terms of her divorce from Thomas James did not permit of either spouse's
remarriage while the other was living, and the beleaguered newlyweds were
forced to flee the country to escape a bigamy action brought by Heald's
scandalized maiden aunt. The Healds resided for a time in France and Spain,
but within two years, the tempestuous relationship was in tatters, and George
reportedly drowned. In 1851 she set off to make a new start in the United
States, where she was surprisingly successful at first in rehabilitating
her image. = United States=
From 1851 to 1853, she performed as a dancer and actress in the eastern United
States, one of her offerings being a play called Lola Montez in Bavaria. In
May 1853, she arrived at San Francisco. Her performances there created a
sensation, but soon inspired a popular satire, Who's Got the Countess?. She
married Patrick Hull, a local newspaperman, in July and moved to Grass
Valley, California, in August. This marriage soon failed; a doctor named as
corespondent in the divorce suit brought against her was shortly after murdered.
Montez remained in Grass Valley at her little house for nearly two years. The
restored Home of Lola Montez went on to become California Historical Landmark
No. 292. Montez served as an inspiration to another aspiring young entertainer,
Lotta Crabtree. Lotta's parents ran a boarding house in Grass Valley, and
Lotta soon attracted the attention of her neighbor Montez, who encouraged
Lotta's enthusiasm for performance. = Australia=
In June 1855, Montez departed for a tour of Australia to resume her career by
entertaining miners at the gold diggings during the gold-rush of the 1850s,
arriving at Sydney on 16 August 1855. Historian Michael Cannon claims that "In
September 1855 she performed her erotic Spider Dance at the Theatre Royal in
Melbourne, raising her skirts so high that the audience could see she wore no
underclothing at all. Next day, the Argus thundered that her performance was
'utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality'. Respectable families
ceased to attend the theatre, which began to show heavy losses." At
Castlemaine in April 1856, she was "rapturously encored" after her Spider
Dance in front of 400 diggers, but drew the wrath of the audience by insulting
them following some mild heckling. She earned further notoriety in Ballarat
when, after reading a bad review in The Ballarat Times, she allegedly attacked
the editor, Henry Seekamp with a whip. The "Lola Montes Polka" is rumored to
have been inspired by this event, however, the song was published in 1855
and the incident with Seekamp occurred months later in February 1856.
She departed for San Francisco on 22 May 1856. On the return voyage her manager
was lost after going overboard. = Later life in the U.S.=
Rapidly aging, Lola failed in attempts at a theatrical comeback in various
American cities. She arranged in 1857 to deliver a series
of moral lectures in Britain and America written by Rev. Charles Chauncy Burr.
She spent her last days in rescue work among women. In November 1859, the
Philadelphia Press reported that Lola Montez was
"living very quietly up town, and doesn't have much to do with the world's
people. Some of her old friends, the Bohemians, now and then drop in to have
a little chat with her, and though she talks beautifully of her present
feelings and way of life, she generally, by way of parenthesis, takes out her
little tobacco pouch and makes a cigarette or two for self and friend,
and then falls back upon old times with decided gusto and effect. But she
doesn't tell anybody what she's going to do."
By then she was showing the tertiary effects of syphilis and her body began
to waste away. She died at the age of 42 on 17 January 1861. She is buried in
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, where her tombstone states: "Mrs.
Eliza Gilbert / Died 17 January 1861". Legacy
Her life was portrayed in the 1922 German film Lola Montez, the King's
Dancer. Montez is played by Ellen Richter.
Lola Montez has been mentioned by several writers as a possible source of
inspiration for the character Irene Adler in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes story, "A Scandal in Bohemia". The character bears certain similarities
to Montez, as a popular performer who influences national politics through her
relationship with a powerful individual. Montez was portrayed by Martine Carol in
the film Lola Montès, based on the novel La Vie Extraordinaire de Lola Montès by
Cecil Saint-Laurent, directed by Max Ophüls and co-starring Peter Ustinov and
Oskar Werner. Montez was the last role played by
Conchita Montenegro, in the film Lola Montes, with a moralizing script,
directed by Antonio Román. Montez's time in the Australian
goldfields was the subject of the musical Lola Montez staged in Melbourne,
Brisbane and Sydney in 1958 starring Mary Preston. The musical was liked by
critics but did not become a commercial success. A recording of the musical was
released on LP in 1958 in both mono and stereo versions.
Montez also appears in Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser, where she has a
brief affair with Harry Flashman. She is also a character in the film of the same
name, in which she is played by Florinda Bolkan.
Montez is featured prominently in Spider Dance by Carole Nelson Douglas, the last
work in her Irene Adler mystery series. Montez is rumored to be the title
character's mother. She has been portrayed by Carmen
D'Antonio in Golden Girl, Sheila Darcy in Wells Fargo, Yvonne De Carlo in Black
Bart, and Rita Moreno in an episode of the 1950s TV show Tales of Wells Fargo.
In one of J. B. Priestley's last fictional works, The Pavilion of Masks,
she is unmistakably the original for Cleo Torres, Spanish dancer and mistress
of a German prince. Montez was allegedly the inspiration for
Jennifer Wilde's historical romance novel Dare To Love, whose protagonist
Elena Lopez is also a British woman passing herself off as Spanish who
becomes an exotic dancer. In the book, Elena has an affair with Franz Liszt,
becomes friends with George Sand and has a friendship with the king of a small
Germanic country obviously based on Ludwig I of Bavaria, then moves to
California, all documented as having happened in Montez's life.
Montez is also the inspiration for Lola Montero in Edison Marshall's novel
Infinite Woman. In the 1983 television miniseries
Wagner, Richard Wagner, referring to the rumors surrounding his own relationship
with Ludwig II, tells John Gielgud's character, "I am no Lola Montez!"
Trestle Theatre Company created a production entitled Lola about the life
of Lola Montez. Montez is described in Daughter of
Fortune by the Chilean-American author Isabel Allende.
A feature film Spider Dance focuses on the latter years of Lola's life and her
time in Australia. Musician Joanna Newsom's song and title
track "Have One on Me" is about Lola Montez.
The Danish band Volbeat has a song on their album Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady
Ladies entitled Lola Montez. The lyrics reference the spider dance and the
incident with Henry Seekamp. It has been asserted that the character
"Lola" in the musical Damn Yankees was inspired by Lola Montez, but there is no
evidence for this. The British/Irish writer Marion Urch
based her epic historical novel An Invitation to Dance on the life of Lola
Montez. The novel has been published in the US, Russia and Germany.
Lola Montez has two lakes named after her in the Tahoe National Forest in
Nevada County, California. There is also a mountain named in her
honor, Mount Lola. At 9,148 feet, it is the highest point in Nevada County,
California. Works
Montez, L.. The Arts of Beauty, Or, Secrets of a Lady's Toilet: With Hints
to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascinating. Dick & Fitzgerald.
Burr, C. C.. Autobiography and lectures of Lola Montez.
See also Swami Laura Horos
References Further reading
Browne, Nicholas Castle Oliver & the Oliver Gascoignes
Mackinlay, Leila Spider dance: A novel based upon incidents in the life of Lola
Montez Pastor, Urraca, Lola Montes. Mª Dolores
Rosana Y Gilbert, Condesa De Landfeld, Barcelona 1946
Saint-Laurent, Cecil La Vie Extraordinaire de Lola Montès
Seymour, Bruce Lola Montez, a Life, Yale University Press, 1996
Trowbridge, W. R. H. Lola Montez, 1818-1861 in Seven Splendid Sinners, p.
298 External links
Information about Castle Oliver, Lola Montez's ancestral home
RTE Hidden History Summary about Eliza Gilbert
Article from Australian Dictionary of Biography
Bee Wilson: Boudoir Politics Review of Lola Montez: Her Life and Conquests by
James Morton · Portrait,(2007) in London Review of Books Vol. 29 No. 11 dated 7
June 2007 Horace Wyndham, The Magnificent Montez:
From Courtesan to Convert, New York: Hillman-Curl. Project Gutenberg eBook.
Texts on Wikisource: "Lola Montez". The American Cyclopædia.
1879. "Montez, Lola". Appletons' Cyclopædia of
American Biography. 1900. "Montez, Lola". New International
Encyclopedia. 1905. "Gilbert, Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna".
Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911. "Montez, Lola". Encyclopedia Americana.
1920. "Montez, Lola". Collier's New
Encyclopedia. 1921. Danish rock Volbeat band performing
their song, Lola Montez Lola Montez at Find a Grave