June 14, 2021 • 45 mins
Aside from her relationship with King Ludwig I, Lola Montez is one of those figures whose life is hard to pin down. That’s not because of a lack of documentation, but because that documentation repeats the completely fictional backstory she made up for herself.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Listener. Rebecca
sent us a note on Instagram recently suggesting an episode
(00:22):
on Lola Montez, and I thought, Hey, I remember her,
because way back in previous hosts Katie and Sarah did
a podcast on Ludwig the Second of Bavaria. We ran
that as a Saturday Classic in and in that episode,
Katie and Sarah talk about Ludwig the Second's grandfather, Ludwig
(00:44):
the First and his scandalous relationship with this Lola Montez.
I even remembered that Katie described her as a trip
and said they were going to need to cover her
on the show at some point. Um. Now it's been
more than a decade since prior posts of the show.
Who do not even work here anymore, and they were
probably going to do an episode on this subject. We've
(01:07):
had other requests for Lola Montez. In addition to Rebecca's
I found some contradictory advice about whether people said Montez
with the accent on the first syllable or the second,
I don't know which is right, So we're just gonna say,
Lola Montez. There you go. And Lola Montez is one
of those figures whose life is quite hard to pin down,
(01:29):
not because of a lack of documentation, but because that
documentation repeats the completely fictional backstory they made up for themselves.
In the words of historian Ralph Friedman, quote, much of
this confusion can be traced to Lola herself. She changed
her background to suit the occasion, and there were many
occasions to suit. In her adult life, Lola Montez presented
(01:53):
herself as a Spanish dancer that was very exotic and
enticing in the eyes of the audiences and a lot
of the places she performed. And her autobiography, she said
she was descended from Count de Montalvo of Spain and
had Moorish ancestry, but had been born in Limerick as
Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert. She said her family had
(02:17):
always called her Dolores or Lola for short, and she
told King lid Big the first of Bavaria, that she
had been born on February. None of that's true. According
to her baptismal certificate. She was born in Grange, about
one five miles or two hundred fifty kilometers north of Limerick.
(02:39):
That was on February one. That to me is like
the big thing of like what a weird shift of
a few days one, a few days off of the
date and a year a way. It just is a
strange thing. She was named Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert after her mother,
who went by Eliza. That nickname, not Lola, is all
(03:00):
over family and school records. So although both these Elizabeths
went by Eliza, and this first part of the episode,
we're going to call her mother Elizabeth and the future
Lola Montez Eliza for the sake of clarity. Elizabeth was
the daughter of Charles Silver Oliver, who was a member
of parliament. Charles had four children with Elizabeth's mother before
(03:24):
marrying an heiress, and although he did not legally acknowledge
these four children or marry their mother, he did provide
them with some financial support set them up with jobs
as they got older. Elizabeth trained as the assistant to
a milliner and then she married British Army officer Edward
Gilbert about ten months later. They had Eliza in three
(03:46):
when Eliza was about to Gilbert took the family to
British India with the hope of earning more money and
climbing the military ranks, but not long after they arrived,
he contracted cholera and died. Elizabeth was still in her
late teens and at this point had a young daughter
to support, so she got remarried pretty quickly to Lieutenant
(04:06):
Patrick Craigy. Eliza didn't really have a lot of structure
or supervision in India, and in eighteen twenty six, when
she was about five, Elizabeth and Patrick sent her to
live with his parents in Scotland with the hope that
they could raise her into a proper young woman. Eventually,
Eliza was enrolled at Aldridge Academy in Bath, where she
(04:27):
stayed for about five years. She developed a reputation for
being spirited and stubborn, and kind of different from her
peers who were raised in Britain. She would later claim
that the character of Becky Sharp and William Thackeray's Vanity
Fair was based on her and her time in Bath.
She made lots of claims uh In eighteen thirty seven,
(04:48):
when Eliza was sixteen, Elizabeth returned from India army officer
Thomas James, who was on convalescent leave, had accompanied her
during the sea voyage, and Elizabeth's reunion with Eliza did
not go particularly well. They hadn't seen each other in
more than a decade at that point, and one of
Elizabeth's objectives was to Preparealyza to get married. Eliza claimed
(05:11):
that her mother was planning to marry her off to
a widowed army officer who was in his sixties. There's
not really any documentation on who this might have been,
but the most likely candidate would be Patrick Craigie's commanding officer,
although he also had unmarried sons who were way closer
to Eliza's age, so it's possible that she either misunderstood
(05:34):
her mother's intent or deliberately misconstrued all this to make
the story more shocking. There's several possible options there, all
of which have a level of possibility and also a
level of problems. Eliza turned to her mother's escort, Thomas James,
for help. He was in his early thirties, and in
(05:57):
her account, she saw him as something of a father figure.
On July seven, the two of them eloped with James's brother,
who was a vicar officiating the wedding. This was really
not a happy marriage. Thomas was about twice Eliza's age,
and she seemed to have believed that he had married
(06:17):
her solely to protect her from being married off to
somebody who was twice as old as that. But it
quickly became clear that he was expecting her to fulfill
all the duties of a life, and he also may
have been abusive to her. When Thomas returned to India,
he took Eliza with him. He was stationed at a
remote garrison where she didn't have much opportunity for a
(06:38):
social life, and where she probably also contracted malaria. She
had recurring illness for the rest of her life. Her
happiest moments in India were probably when she and her
mother visited a resort town at the foot of the Himalayas. Eventually,
Eliza left Thomas. At first, she tried to take refuge
with her mother, but Elizabeth really gave her a choy
(07:00):
some either going back to her husband or going back
to Britain. Eliza chose the latter, with the understanding that
she would once again live with the Craigies. Eliza was
about twenty When she left India and on the ship
back to the UK, she struck up a relationship with
Lieutenant Charles Lennox, nephew of the Duke of Richmond. It
(07:20):
would have been hard to keep a romance secret on
board a ship, but they didn't really try. They were
not discreet about this at all, and once they got
back to Britain, Eliza decided to stay in London rather
than go live with the Craigies, and word about her
infidelity quickly made its way back to India. Thomas sued
Eliza for divorce on the grounds of adultery, and he
(07:40):
also sued Charles Lennox for damages. Okay, there was really
no question about what had happened. Like there is, there
are letters written by other passengers who described like walking
past her stateroom with the door open and clearly for
everyone to see what was happening between the two of them.
(08:03):
Divorces at this point were handled in ecclesiastical court, and
while Thomas's divorce was ultimately granted, the judgment also specified
that neither he nor Eliza could ever remarry while the
other one was still alive, and at this point, the
only way a divorce person in Britain could get the
right to remarry while their former spouse was still living
(08:24):
was through an act of Parliament, so obviously that required
a lot of political connections and a lot of money.
So this was a huge scandal for Eliza and a
gigantic blot on her reputation. Marriage was the expected life
for a woman like her, but she was legally barred
from remarrying. That divorce meant she wasn't considered appropriate for
(08:45):
any respectable work that might have been open to her.
While the people around her probably would have preferred she
find a sympathetic friend or a family member to stay
with and live out her days in quiet shame, she
refused to play by those rules a lot. Lisa was
pretty and vivacious and clever, and she used that to
support herself through the generosity of interested men. It's likely
(09:08):
that one of these men funded a trip to Spain
for her. Some sources credit the Earl of Malmsbury, but
in his account he says he did not meet her
until afterward, so regardless of who paid for this trip.
While she was in Spain, she learned some Spanish and
some Spanish style dance, and a little bit about Spanish
culture and customs, and when she returned to England it
(09:32):
was not as Eliza. It was as Maria Dolores Deploris Amantez,
better known as Vela, and we're going to talk more
about that after we paused for a break. Lola Montez
made her stage debut in London on June three, eighty three.
(09:56):
She performed a dance that was billed as l Olano
during the act break of a sold out performance of
The Barber of Seville, and reviewers described her as quote,
the perfection of Spanish beauty. She was in a brightly
colored dress with a black bodice and doing a novel
dance with castanets that seemed like a panomime of quote
(10:18):
some saucy fancy, including quote stamping pettishly with her foot. However,
someone recognized Lola Montez as Eliza Gilbert. Words started to spread,
and Montes claimed her mother heard about it and printed
up death notices for her. On June twelve, the London
Morning Post printed an excerpt of a letter from Montes
(10:41):
saying she had been born in Seville and had learned
English from an Irish nurse. She said she had never
been in England except for a few months spent living
with a Catholic woman in Bath, and had never seen
London before she arrived for her performance. Not long after that, though,
Lola Montez left England for the continent, where she was
likely to be recognized. In Berlin, a critic described her
(11:04):
performance this way, quote, her beauty of rare voluptuous fullness
is beyond any criticism. Her dancing, however, was no dancing
at all, but a physical invitation. If it is said
of Taglione that she writes world history with her feet,
so it can be said of Donna Montez that she
writes Casanova's memoirs with her whole body. In Berlin, Montes
(11:29):
performed for King Frederick William of Prussia and his guest,
Czar Nicholas the First. She also had one of her
first and most famous run ins with authority. While the
monarchs were reviewing the troops, Montes tried to ride her
horse into an area that was reserved for military personnel.
When an officer tried to stop her, she struck him
(11:49):
with her horsewhip. A lot of the retellings of this
whole incident really make Montes sound like a wacky little
firebrand in this moment. But she was charged with assault,
and then when she tore up her summons for that charge,
she was charged with contempt. It does not seem like
either of these charges ever went to trial, though, Please
don't hit people with a horsewhip. Um, there's gonna be
(12:12):
a lot more of that in this episode. Please don't,
Please don't. From there, Montes went to Dresden, where she
met past podcast subject Franz List. Her autobiography, which is
written in the third person, describes it this way. Quote
through the management of influential friends and opening was made
for her at the Royal Theater at Dresden in Saxony,
(12:33):
where she first met the celebrated pianist Franz List, who
was then creating such a furor in Dresden that when
he dropped his pocket handkerchief, it was seized by the
ladies and torn into rags, which they divided among themselves,
each being but too happy to get so much as
a rag which had belonged to the great artist. The
furreer created by Lola Montes's appearance at the theater in
(12:55):
Dresden was quite as great among the gentlemen as was
Lists among the ladies. As Montesz traveled with Lists, she
met other prominent people, including Richard Wagner, who did not
like her much at all. Tracks. Yeah, Wagner generally disliked
all the sort of groupies who were always surrounding Fran's List.
(13:20):
We talked about that whole phenomenon in the List Domania episode.
He called montes a quote heartless demonic being, and List
is rumored to have gotten tired of her as well,
locking her in a hotel room and paying the hotel
staff to keep her there just so he could escape.
There isn't any substantiation for that story, though, and it
(13:41):
seems a little far fetched considering that they met up
later in Paris. He also gave her letters of introduction
and arranged her debut at the Paris Opera in eighteen
forty four, which was incredible considering that her entire stage
career had involved twenty or so performances total at that
point over the course of roughly a year. Yeah, the
Paras Opera was like one of the most exclusive stages
(14:05):
in Europe. Uh and here comes Lola Montez who's been
performing in act breaks of others shows for the course
of like twenty performances. Audiences in Paris were skeptical of her.
Reviewers noted that Lola Montez could not dance, did not
speak Spanish very well, didn't look Spanish, and had a
(14:26):
terrible reputation for violence. One French critic gave this backhanded
praise to her quote, there is something lasciviously attractive, voluptuously
enticing in the poses she takes. And then she's a pretty,
very pretty, extremely pretty person and she throws you kisses
so complete that you applaud at once, only to ask
(14:49):
yourself afterwards if it was right or wrong to applaud.
Is that not the most French criticism? You can imagine,
She's very lovely in the moment, but then you second
guess yourself. Uh. In Paris, Montes met another past podcast
subject that was Alexandra du mat Pere. But then she
(15:11):
fell in love with Alexandra Entredjarier, who was part owner
of the newspaper La Presse. They planned to marry, but
Dujarier was killed in a duel in March of eighteen
forty five. This duel, we should point out, and had
nothing to do with Lola. It was over a gambling
debt that he owed to journalist Jean Baptiste Rosemond de Beauvallon,
compounded by his perceived rudeness on the night that he
(15:34):
racked up that debt. Montes had offered to teach Dujarier
to shoot a pistol when she learned that there might
be a duel, but he had turned her down. She
was terrified over this whole prospect. She was like, you
don't know how to use a gun, and this man
is going to duel you. Please let me help, and
he was like, no, I got it. He didn't have it.
Though Montes left Paris after Dujarier's death, she had to
(15:58):
return to testify at Bouillon's murder trial. Other witnesses at
that trial included both Alexandre duma Hair and Feasts. French
courts didn't typically convict people of murder if the killing
had happened during a duel, as long as the rules
of dueling had been followed, and Boon was acquitted. In
(16:19):
eighteen forty six, Montz moved to Munich, where she met Ludwig,
King of Bavaria. She was twenty five at this point
and he was sixty and deeply enamored with all things Spain,
and in what's probably an apocryphal story, Ludwig's first words
to her were to point at her chest and say
nature or art. She grabbed some scissors from his desk,
(16:41):
cut open the bodice of her dress and showed him.
Although this story probably is not true, Lolamantez had an
incredibly dramatic and often extremely scandalous relationship with the King
of Bavaria for about eighteen months. He commissioned her portrait
for his Gallery of You These, which, as its name suggests,
(17:02):
was a gallery of portraits of the most beautiful women
he had ever met. He called her Lolita and set
her up in a luxurious home, buying the property in
her name so that she could be eligible for Bavarian citizenship.
He granted her an allowance of ten thousand florins a year,
at a time when his cabinet ministers are making more
like six thousand florins. The King kept a lot of
(17:24):
this secret, but there was really no way to disguise
his total infatuation with her or her influence over him.
She publicly boasted about how much sway she had, including
bragging about convincing the king to raise teachers pay a
week before he was going to announce it publicly. He
was enamored with her feet, and she gave him an
(17:45):
alabaster model of one of them. When he wrote to
thank her for it, he said he had quote covered
it with fervent kisses. He later gave her an alabaster
model of his handwriting a poem that was carved by
the same sculptor. Meanwhile, Montez was launching one scandal after another.
Her behavior was just not appropriate for somebody considered to
(18:08):
be the King's favorite. She entertained male visitors at all hours. Once,
when a man stood her up, she went to his
apartment building in the middle of the night to find him.
Shouldn't know which unit that he lived in, so she
rang the bell for everyone, waking up the entire building
and basically advertising that she was there for a late
(18:29):
night rendezvous with a man. I want to say who
among us, but most most of us have not. I
would hope uh. The Alamanan were a sort of fraternity
at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and they became her
bodyguard one night during a drunken party at her home.
The Aleman and were parading around dressed only in their shirts,
(18:49):
carrying Lola on their shoulders. When one of them ran
her into a low hanging chandelier, she got a concussion.
She also repeatedly got into physical confer intations with people,
and this was something that carried additional risks for her
since she wasn't a Bavarian citizen like just go pick
a bunch of vice of people, maybe get deported. To
(19:12):
deflect criticism, she maintained that her enemies, especially Jesuits, were
spreading lies about her. Even though her Spanish persona included
pretending to be Catholic, she frequently maintained that she was
a victim of just a massive Jesuit conspiracy against her.
The king's advisors tried to persuade him to distance himself
(19:33):
from her. When that didn't work and Lola's behavior seemed
to just get even more over, the top advisors and
cabinet members started resigning in protest. Montes took particular delight
when the people resigning were conservative Catholics. When Ludwig named
Lola Countess of Lansfield, which came with citizenship and a
permanent income, his entire cabinet resigned, although Lola was extremely
(19:59):
good convincing Ludwig that these indiscretions were just rumors and
that she loved only him, while also reminding him of
how much he loved her. All of this made the
king incredibly anxious. He was under so much stress that
he broke out in what sounds like hives. And all
of this happened alongside social and political unrest in Bavaria,
(20:21):
including intense disputes between conservative Catholic and more liberal Republican
factions at the university. This was compounded by Lola's scandalous
association with the Alemannin. In the hope of getting things
under control, Ludwig tried to shut the university down. This
had worked to quell dissent in the past, but in
(20:42):
this case it just made everything worse. Public opinion about
Lola Montez waxed and waned in Bavaria that by early
eighteen forty eight people were outraged that this notorious woman,
who was not even from there, and who got into
fights and had indiscreet affair hers with multiple men, had
such a huge influence on the king. In February of
(21:05):
eighteen forty eight, thousands of people took to the streets
and low. La Montez was driven out of Munich by
a mob. Ludwig considered sending in the army to restore order,
but his minister of war said that if he was
ordered to do so, he would excuse himself, go into
the next room and take his own life. On March
ety eight, so, not long after she was run out
(21:28):
of town, Ludwig the First abdicated and was succeeded by
his son Maximilian the Second, and sometimes Lola Montez as
described as being the one who convinced him to step down,
while she definitely encouraged him to abdicate. After her departure,
Ludwig really started to question his own judgment and what
(21:48):
his entanglement with her said about his abilities as king.
He was also just under a huge amount of pressure
from conservative Catholic elements of the nobility, the conservative faction
at the university. There was a lot going on besides
just her telling him that she thought he should step down.
Lola surrendered her Bavarian naturalization certificate, saying that she never
(22:11):
wanted to return. Then she went to London and tried
to plan a trip to Spain. This was complicated by
the fact that she was passing herself off as Spanish,
but she had no Spanish passport. She refused to reveal
who she really was in order to get a British one,
and although Ludvig was sending her money, he refused to
(22:32):
pull strings to get her a Bavarian passport. Then something
happened that resolved all of this. She married twenty one
year old Coronet George Trafford Healed, which made her eligible
for a British passport without disclosing her real identity. Since
she was pretending to be Catholic, they had both Catholic
and Church of England ceremonies. Ludwig had granted Lola a
(22:54):
pension under the condition that she never marry. She wrote
to tell him that she was considering Mary Ridge, but
that her husband to be had such a modest income
that she should be allowed to keep her pension. This
was not, in fact true. Healed was pretty comfortable, and
when Lynddig realized Lola had already gotten married before he
could even answer her letter, he was outraged. Another person
(23:17):
who was outraged was George's aunts, who did not trust
Lola at all and looked into her background and it
did not take long to figure out that she was
really divorcee Eliza Gilbert, who could not marry while her
ex husband was still living. So Lola was charged with
bigamy and released on bail, and she and George went
ahead with their trip to Spain. They came back to
(23:39):
London just ahead of her trial. Authorities had confirmed that
James was still living as of Junet, but that wedding
had happened on July ninete, so Montez hoped to argue
that it was possible that he had died within that
few weeks. But while she was in Spain it had
been confirmed that Thomas James was alive on her wedding day.
(24:00):
A conviction for bigamy seemed inevitable, so she forfeited her
bail and she and George fled to France. This whole
scandal just added to Lola's infamy. This also wasn't really
what George had signed up for, even by marrying someone
as notorious as Lola Montez. He left Lola at a
couple of different points, and then in eighteen fifty when
(24:22):
he left her for good, he took a lot of
her possessions along with his own, and this included her
alabaster model of Ludwig's hand and her Bavarian certificate of
nobility and Ludwig's letters to her. Lola's correspondence with Ludwig
ended about a year later, which was also the last
year that he sent her money. At one point, either
(24:43):
Lola or George, or maybe both, tried to extort money
from him by threatening to publish his very explicit letters
to her. In the end that those letters were returned
to the former monarch. Lola needed money, though, and in
eighteen fifty one she published an ad biography. She also
met a promoter who suggested she take a US tour.
(25:05):
She signed a contract with a manager for a series
of appearances in Europe, the America's and Africa, although she
dumped that manager and those plans before even finishing the
European leg of what they had arranged. But she did
plan to go to the US, and she set sail
at the US in November of eighteen fifty one, and
we'll talk about that after we have a sponsor break.
(25:34):
By the time Lolamantez was preparing for her US tour,
she was internationally infamous while reporting on rumors that p
t Barnum had hired her. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described
her as quote quite a celebrity among the profligates of Europe.
On September eighteen fifty one, The New York Times had
(25:55):
this to say, quote, we shall be sadly disappointed if
this creature has any agree of success in the United States.
She has no special reputation as a dancer. She is
known to the world only as a shameless and abandoned woman.
If such a reputation shall prove attractive in this country,
we have greatly mistaken its character. Oh whoever wrote that,
(26:17):
I hope they never time travel. I had the same thought,
O friend. Most of Lola's performances in Europe had been
dances during the act breaks of other works, but her
US tour was built on much longer appearances. She commissioned
a play called Lola Montez in Bavaria, in which she,
of course played herself. The text of this play has
(26:41):
been lost, but it presented Montez as introducing all kinds
of liberal advances to Bavaria before fleeing in the wake
of a counter revolution. Yeah, a lot of the accounts
of how much how much liberalizing influence she had over
the King seems to have come from Bowl interpreting descriptions
(27:03):
of this play as being definitely grounded in reality. Maybe
it's somewhat, but yeah, it's uh. She this was both
a touring piece for her and self promotion. Montes had
reworked her Spanish inspired dance at several points over the years,
and she had picked up new styles. A suggestive pantomime
(27:26):
involving stomping on a spider seems to have been there
from the very beginning. I mean that first review doesn't
give a play by play of what she was doing,
but there's this whole like sauciness and stamping, pettish leap
in the description. It was really in the United States, though,
that her most famous dance became known as the Spider
(27:47):
Dance and also gained a reputation for being absolutely scandalous.
So this pantomime hinged on the idea that a spider
was crawling into Lola's dress. Audiences would see flashes of
her skin, and she tried to get rid of the spider,
although exactly how much skin and how much she was
wearing under her skirts kind of depends on which account
(28:09):
you read newspapers in the US started describing this as indecent,
which prompted Montes to write angry letters to their editors,
while also making the dance even more risque. Lola, Montez
and Bavaria ran on Broadway and then she toured around
the eastern part of North America. Her last stop was
in New Orleans, and while she was there, she got
(28:31):
into a dispute with her lady's maid. Her lady's maid
had decided she wanted to stay in New Orleans and
leave Lola's service. Lola struck her, and when the police
arrived to arrest Lola for battery, she drew her dagger
and tried to fight them before drinking the contents of
a vial that was labeled as poison, so something that
(28:53):
she said she always carried on her person in case
she needed to escape a truly impossible situation, but Seema
raculously recovered. There are many ways to interpret this, and
the one I'm sticking with this that she had a
fake poison vial to be dramatic. Uh huh, it's probably
full of sugar water. In eighteen fifty three, Montes left
(29:14):
New Orleans bound for San Francisco by sea with a
land crossing in Panama. Along the way, she met newspaper
editor Patrick Purdy Hull, and they married about six weeks
after arriving in California. This marriage was stormy and brief.
At one point, Lola threw all of his possessions out
of hotel window, and not long after that she threw
(29:34):
him out of the home she had bought in Grass Valley.
There are also reports that a German doctor who was
named in the divorce suit was mysteriously shot. All of
that is a little bit murky, since his unclear weather
divorce papers were ever actually filed. Montes had become tired
of quote splendor and fast living, and she spent about
(29:55):
the next two years living in Grass Valley. Before this,
she'd always had a lapdog, but now she indulged her
love of animals with a personal menagerie that included a parrot,
two dogs, and a grizzly bear cub. Really, grizzly bear
cubs do not make good pets, and after this one
(30:17):
mauled her, she put it up for sale. I'm sure
that bear is long gone, but I worry for it
just the same me too. I could not figure out
the ultimate fate of the bear. Oh, I know how
that stuff goes. In Grass Valley, Montes doated on her
neighbor's children, including a lot of crab tree, who Lola
encouraged in her acting and dancing. She also started studying
(30:40):
spiritualism and reading the Bible. This time was not all harmonious, though,
When The Grass Valley Telegraph criticized a dancer who she knew,
Lola whipped its editor, Henry Shipley in the street in Montez.
Decided to tour Australia. She hired Noel Fallen, who used
(31:01):
the stage name Noel fall Land with a d as
a manager. He was estranged from his wife and children
in New York, but he was financially supporting them. Montes
performed to full houses in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and
she appeared on stage around Australia's gold fields, where she
encouraged her audiences to tip her by tossing gold nuggets
(31:23):
at her. This tour was just as full of drama
and strife as all of her earlier tours had been.
Various parties tried to shut down her shows for their indecency.
In Melbourne, she had a running feud with the Reverend
John Lawrence Milton after the Baller at times ran an
unflattering letter about her, she got into a fight with
(31:43):
editor Henry C. Camp, with the two of them whipping
each other until onlookers physically separated them. Did everyone carry
a whip? Well, she did like to ride and was
reportedly a very good writer, and apparently Henry C. Camp
also equipped with a whip. I think a lot of
people who rode horses had horse whips with them. Uh
(32:05):
Montes experienced recurring illnesses throughout her life. Like we said earlier,
she probably got malaria while she was in India, and
she was sick a lot while in Australia. She started
describing her spider dance as involving being bitten by the
spider to explain away any swooning or fatigue that she
showed on stage. Eventually, she cut the tour short and
(32:26):
she disbanded the company that had traveled with her from California.
Their contracts had included passage back to the United States,
so the actors tried to take her to court. When
the authorities tried to arrest her, she argued that their
warrant was not in her real name, and because she
was married, legal action also had to go through her husband.
(32:48):
This was an argument that she made more than once.
When somebody would, you know, offer give her a summons
that said Lola Monte, She'd be like, Oh, that's not
my name though, so that's not allied. Then she left town,
basically leaving her performers with no recourse. Montes and Fallen
left for the US in May of eighteen fifty five.
(33:11):
Their ship back to San Francisco stopped in Hawaii, and
shortly after setting sail again, Noel Fallen fell overboard and drowned.
It's not clear exactly what happened, but Montes blamed herself
for his death. She personally notified his family and tried
to support them financially, including selling her jewelry and property
(33:32):
she owned in San Francisco to send them the proceeds
with the note that she wanted his children to be
educated in spiritualism. Around this same time, Montes also learned
that George Healed had died. She became more focused on spiritualism,
and she joined the Episcopal Church. After making one last
visit to Grass Valley, she sold her property there and
(33:54):
then did another brief tour of the East Coast, performing
Lola Montez in Bavaria again and also visiting Noel fallen stepmother.
In eighteen fifty seven, at the age of thirty six,
Lola Montez changed directions and became a lecturer. While she
still went by the name Lola Montes, she mostly dropped
the pretense that she was Spanish and Catholic. Her lecture,
(34:18):
titled Gallantry was about the gallantry of men, including King Ludwig,
the First Wits and Women of Paris, was a tour
of notable people she had met in Paris, including Alexandra
Dumapeer and George sald Romanism was a vehement condemnation of
the Catholic Church. Sometimes people described Montez as an early feminist,
(34:40):
but her lecture Heroines and strong Minded Women of History
makes it clear that she did not have a high
opinion of feminism. It's at least feminism in terms of
how she saw it in the nineteenth century world. She
described suffragists and activists for women's rights as scolds and
(35:00):
invention women, before walking through historical examples of women, warriors
and monarchs, who she saw as real examples of women's strengths.
Uh not those complainers who were having conventions to say
how victimized they were. Montes's first book was a collection
of these lectures, along with an autobiography. And this autobiography
(35:22):
is kind of weird. We mentioned before. It's written in
the third person, it's sometimes credited to Charles Chauncey Burr,
and often it's actually not flattering of her at all.
At times she is depicted almost as a child, throwing
tantrums to get her way among wealthy and powerful men.
And when I read it, I was like, who who
wrote this? And why did they hate you? I mean,
(35:44):
I can see many reasons why somebody would have a
negative impression of Lola Montes. But I was like, this
is your autobiography and your book, and it is making
you sound like a petulant, like immature terror. Montes published
two other books after that lecture collection. They were The
(36:05):
Arts of Beauty or Secrets of a Lady's Toilet with
Hints two Gentlemen on the art of Fascinating and Anecdotes
of Love, being a true account of the most remarkable
events connected with the history of love in all ages
and among all nations. Like other beauty books that we
have talked about on the show before Montes notes that
(36:25):
beauty is totally subjective and that standards of beauty have
varied around the world and throughout history, and then she
moves into twenty eight chapters on how to be beautiful,
including how to obtain a handsome form, habits which destroy
the complexion, a beautiful bosom, and beauty of dress. This
(36:45):
book drops a lot of names of notable people that
she's met in places that she's traveled. It also includes
a lot of recipes, with Montes advising readers to make
their own cosmetics since commercially available products are often full
of reasons, they often were full of pleass of that part,
that part mostly makes sense. The Arts of Beauty ends,
(37:09):
as we said, with fifty rules for the art of fascinating.
And this is a tongue in cheek satire written as
tips for men, but for the amusement of the women
reading the book. So, for example, rule the tenth is quote,
if you are invited to dine, go at least an
hour or an hour and a half before the time
(37:30):
for then the lady will be sure never to forget you.
As the attentive and polite gentleman who allowed her neither
time to dress nor to superintend her dinner, Like its
name suggests. Anecdotes of Love is the collection of famous
historical love stories, including past podcast subjects Aspasia, Empericles, and
(37:50):
Abillard and Elouise. In eighteen fifty seven, Montes briefly considered
marrying again, this time to Prince Ludwig Johann Szukowski of Austria.
He was one of the many royals she had met
while she was in Europe. We did not name all
of these royals before um. He had fled Austria in
(38:10):
the wake of the Revolutions of eighteen forty eight. Montes
sailed to Paris, believing that he was going to meet
her there, But it turned out he was already married
and this whole thing was a giant hoax. I'm debating
over whether I feel like this is a taste of
her own medicine or not, but I had the same
I had the same response, honestly. Uh. In eighteen fifty eight,
(38:32):
Montes returned to the UK. She gave another lecture tour,
and in London she gave a speech on the institution
of slavery in the US. Her argument here was kind
of a tangle. She described slavery as an enormous national
sin and lynch law as a terror we can all
agree with. But she also claimed that enslaved people on
southern plantations were content and that the institution would somehow
(38:56):
just disappear on its own. British abolitionists criticized this lecture heavily,
and Montes countered that this reaction was hypocritical, considering the
British Empire's treatment of the native peoples of the places
it was colonizing, including India. Montes returned to New York
in the fall of eighteen fifty nine and continued to
(39:17):
lecture around the US. On June eighteen sixties, she had
a stroke. Her mother came to the United States to
see her. In some cases this was to take care
of her, and in others it was more to try
to get money from her. Either way, their reunion doesn't
seem to have gone very well, and her mother didn't
stay long. Lola Montes seemed to be recovering well, but
(39:38):
then she contracted pneumonia. She died on January seventeenth, eighteen
sixty one, at the age of thirty nine. Yeah, there's
been various uh, speculation about what could have caused her
to have a stroke at such a relatively young age,
um with explanations anywhere from the malaria that she pretty
(39:59):
clear lee had for her whole life to syphilis. But
again that's like very speculative based on the fact that
somebody had a stroke at a pretty young age than
one would typically think of someone having a stroke. When
Lola Montez died, Ludwig the First of Bavaria was seventy four.
He had not seen her in thirteen years, and he
(40:22):
learned of her death through news reports. Later on, he
got a letter from her friend Maria E. Buchanan, which
was sent to Lola's request, and this letter expressed Lola's
sincere regard for him and said that she had died
as a true penitent. Ludwig seemed to appreciate this, he
wrote back and it was a nice little note. And
(40:43):
then Maria later wrote to him again, suggesting that he
might pay to have offense put around her grave at
Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery. Ludwig dignat answer that one Lola's first husband,
Thomas James, also outlived her. He died in eighteen seventy one,
so he could have gotten remarried. He start. One of
(41:05):
the biographies that I read of her was called Lola Montez,
a Life by Bruce Seymour, and I think he traced
what happens to Thomas James afterward, and I don't remember
off the top of my head. Lola Montez's notoriety continued
for decades after her death, with fictional characters based on her,
and plays and movies fictionalizing her exploits. More recently, she
(41:27):
inspired the song whatever Lola Wants Lola Gets from the
Broadway musical Damn Yankees. I could sing that by heart. Uh.
And there is a running bit about her in season
two of Dickinson on Apple Plus that as a show
I was watching before I started working on this episode,
and when I learned there was a Lola Montez running bit,
(41:50):
I was like, I gotta stop what else I'm watching
and catch up and see this. Yeah. And Dann Yankees,
do you know the story? In Dann Yankees, She's been
with the devil um and and becomes involved with the
lead character when he makes a similar pact. Uh, And
it's sort of their story. She's uh, not so violent
(42:14):
in that and it is much more of a winsome character. Um.
She is not physically present on screen anywhere on Dickinson,
but it's it's a it's a running joke that spans
over multiple episodes. Today, Mount Lola and the Sierra Nevada
is named for her, as our Two Lakes and Tahoe
(42:34):
National Forest. Her home in Grass Valley, California is a
state Historic landmark. Uh, that is Lola Montes. I don't know,
having referenced all this, if I would actually call her
a trip. However, most of the things that would make
me maybe not call her that are things that aren't
usually covered in quick write ups of her, like like
(42:57):
striking her lady's maid when her ladies may try to
leave her service, and leaving her touring company stranded in Australia. Like,
I can't get behind any of that, I can. You know.
I often take some glee in people who push against
societal norms. Uh, And then that way, she's kind of
a trip. But in other ways, I'm like, you're more
(43:18):
of a mess to me. See now, I'm like, what
does a trip mean to you? Because to me, those
all factor in. But I think that's just one of
those like colloquial vernacular things that probably has no clear
definition anyway, right, sure, yeah, yeah. I think in my
head I would describe somebody who was a trip as
(43:38):
a little less harmless than ested see. To me, part
of it is the juxtaposition of oh, she was a
super like fun, love and party gal but also very violent.
What a trip? But oh I like the journey from
one to the other. This is so interesting to me.
(44:01):
Do you have interesting listener mail? I do, and this one. Uh.
In terms of when I was preparing this episode, I
was like, I feel like this is a little long,
so I just have a super quick listener mail from
Sarah and Sarah wrote to say, Hi, Holly and Tracy,
I really enjoy listening to your podcast. I teach fourth
grade E. L A and social studies. Your content has
(44:22):
made me appreciate history even more. While this isn't truly
important at all, I feel it's important to add my
experience when listening to the Operation paper Clip episode. In
addition to enjoying the history content, I also remembered the
cartoon paper clip Clippy from old Microsoft Office. As I listened,
I found myself picturing different theatrical versions of Clippy. Acting
(44:45):
out the espionage field story. I thought you would enjoy
that image. Thanks for the work you do, Sarah. I did,
in fact enjoy that image, partly because, um, at least
in terms of my experience with Clippy, Clippy was pretty
much universally hated among everyone I knew who encountered Clippy
(45:07):
and their Microsoft Office lives. So thank you, Sarah for this.
I did quite enjoy that mental image. If you would
like to write to us, were a history podcast that
I heart radio dot com, and you can find us
all over social media at missed in History. That's where
you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you
(45:27):
can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio
app and really anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(45:47):
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Listener. Rebecca
sent us a note on Instagram recently suggesting an episode
(00:22):
on Lola Montez, and I thought, Hey, I remember her,
because way back in previous hosts Katie and Sarah did
a podcast on Ludwig the Second of Bavaria. We ran
that as a Saturday Classic in and in that episode,
Katie and Sarah talk about Ludwig the Second's grandfather, Ludwig
(00:44):
the First and his scandalous relationship with this Lola Montez.
I even remembered that Katie described her as a trip
and said they were going to need to cover her
on the show at some point. Um. Now it's been
more than a decade since prior posts of the show.
Who do not even work here anymore, and they were
probably going to do an episode on this subject. We've
(01:07):
had other requests for Lola Montez. In addition to Rebecca's
I found some contradictory advice about whether people said Montez
with the accent on the first syllable or the second,
I don't know which is right, So we're just gonna say,
Lola Montez. There you go. And Lola Montez is one
of those figures whose life is quite hard to pin down,
(01:29):
not because of a lack of documentation, but because that
documentation repeats the completely fictional backstory they made up for themselves.
In the words of historian Ralph Friedman, quote, much of
this confusion can be traced to Lola herself. She changed
her background to suit the occasion, and there were many
occasions to suit. In her adult life, Lola Montez presented
(01:53):
herself as a Spanish dancer that was very exotic and
enticing in the eyes of the audiences and a lot
of the places she performed. And her autobiography, she said
she was descended from Count de Montalvo of Spain and
had Moorish ancestry, but had been born in Limerick as
Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert. She said her family had
(02:17):
always called her Dolores or Lola for short, and she
told King lid Big the first of Bavaria, that she
had been born on February. None of that's true. According
to her baptismal certificate. She was born in Grange, about
one five miles or two hundred fifty kilometers north of Limerick.
(02:39):
That was on February one. That to me is like
the big thing of like what a weird shift of
a few days one, a few days off of the
date and a year a way. It just is a
strange thing. She was named Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert after her mother,
who went by Eliza. That nickname, not Lola, is all
(03:00):
over family and school records. So although both these Elizabeths
went by Eliza, and this first part of the episode,
we're going to call her mother Elizabeth and the future
Lola Montez Eliza for the sake of clarity. Elizabeth was
the daughter of Charles Silver Oliver, who was a member
of parliament. Charles had four children with Elizabeth's mother before
(03:24):
marrying an heiress, and although he did not legally acknowledge
these four children or marry their mother, he did provide
them with some financial support set them up with jobs
as they got older. Elizabeth trained as the assistant to
a milliner and then she married British Army officer Edward
Gilbert about ten months later. They had Eliza in three
(03:46):
when Eliza was about to Gilbert took the family to
British India with the hope of earning more money and
climbing the military ranks, but not long after they arrived,
he contracted cholera and died. Elizabeth was still in her
late teens and at this point had a young daughter
to support, so she got remarried pretty quickly to Lieutenant
(04:06):
Patrick Craigy. Eliza didn't really have a lot of structure
or supervision in India, and in eighteen twenty six, when
she was about five, Elizabeth and Patrick sent her to
live with his parents in Scotland with the hope that
they could raise her into a proper young woman. Eventually,
Eliza was enrolled at Aldridge Academy in Bath, where she
(04:27):
stayed for about five years. She developed a reputation for
being spirited and stubborn, and kind of different from her
peers who were raised in Britain. She would later claim
that the character of Becky Sharp and William Thackeray's Vanity
Fair was based on her and her time in Bath.
She made lots of claims uh In eighteen thirty seven,
(04:48):
when Eliza was sixteen, Elizabeth returned from India army officer
Thomas James, who was on convalescent leave, had accompanied her
during the sea voyage, and Elizabeth's reunion with Eliza did
not go particularly well. They hadn't seen each other in
more than a decade at that point, and one of
Elizabeth's objectives was to Preparealyza to get married. Eliza claimed
(05:11):
that her mother was planning to marry her off to
a widowed army officer who was in his sixties. There's
not really any documentation on who this might have been,
but the most likely candidate would be Patrick Craigie's commanding officer,
although he also had unmarried sons who were way closer
to Eliza's age, so it's possible that she either misunderstood
(05:34):
her mother's intent or deliberately misconstrued all this to make
the story more shocking. There's several possible options there, all
of which have a level of possibility and also a
level of problems. Eliza turned to her mother's escort, Thomas James,
for help. He was in his early thirties, and in
(05:57):
her account, she saw him as something of a father figure.
On July seven, the two of them eloped with James's brother,
who was a vicar officiating the wedding. This was really
not a happy marriage. Thomas was about twice Eliza's age,
and she seemed to have believed that he had married
(06:17):
her solely to protect her from being married off to
somebody who was twice as old as that. But it
quickly became clear that he was expecting her to fulfill
all the duties of a life, and he also may
have been abusive to her. When Thomas returned to India,
he took Eliza with him. He was stationed at a
remote garrison where she didn't have much opportunity for a
(06:38):
social life, and where she probably also contracted malaria. She
had recurring illness for the rest of her life. Her
happiest moments in India were probably when she and her
mother visited a resort town at the foot of the Himalayas. Eventually,
Eliza left Thomas. At first, she tried to take refuge
with her mother, but Elizabeth really gave her a choy
(07:00):
some either going back to her husband or going back
to Britain. Eliza chose the latter, with the understanding that
she would once again live with the Craigies. Eliza was
about twenty When she left India and on the ship
back to the UK, she struck up a relationship with
Lieutenant Charles Lennox, nephew of the Duke of Richmond. It
(07:20):
would have been hard to keep a romance secret on
board a ship, but they didn't really try. They were
not discreet about this at all, and once they got
back to Britain, Eliza decided to stay in London rather
than go live with the Craigies, and word about her
infidelity quickly made its way back to India. Thomas sued
Eliza for divorce on the grounds of adultery, and he
(07:40):
also sued Charles Lennox for damages. Okay, there was really
no question about what had happened. Like there is, there
are letters written by other passengers who described like walking
past her stateroom with the door open and clearly for
everyone to see what was happening between the two of them.
(08:03):
Divorces at this point were handled in ecclesiastical court, and
while Thomas's divorce was ultimately granted, the judgment also specified
that neither he nor Eliza could ever remarry while the
other one was still alive, and at this point, the
only way a divorce person in Britain could get the
right to remarry while their former spouse was still living
(08:24):
was through an act of Parliament, so obviously that required
a lot of political connections and a lot of money.
So this was a huge scandal for Eliza and a
gigantic blot on her reputation. Marriage was the expected life
for a woman like her, but she was legally barred
from remarrying. That divorce meant she wasn't considered appropriate for
(08:45):
any respectable work that might have been open to her.
While the people around her probably would have preferred she
find a sympathetic friend or a family member to stay
with and live out her days in quiet shame, she
refused to play by those rules a lot. Lisa was
pretty and vivacious and clever, and she used that to
support herself through the generosity of interested men. It's likely
(09:08):
that one of these men funded a trip to Spain
for her. Some sources credit the Earl of Malmsbury, but
in his account he says he did not meet her
until afterward, so regardless of who paid for this trip.
While she was in Spain, she learned some Spanish and
some Spanish style dance, and a little bit about Spanish
culture and customs, and when she returned to England it
(09:32):
was not as Eliza. It was as Maria Dolores Deploris Amantez,
better known as Vela, and we're going to talk more
about that after we paused for a break. Lola Montez
made her stage debut in London on June three, eighty three.
(09:56):
She performed a dance that was billed as l Olano
during the act break of a sold out performance of
The Barber of Seville, and reviewers described her as quote,
the perfection of Spanish beauty. She was in a brightly
colored dress with a black bodice and doing a novel
dance with castanets that seemed like a panomime of quote
(10:18):
some saucy fancy, including quote stamping pettishly with her foot. However,
someone recognized Lola Montez as Eliza Gilbert. Words started to spread,
and Montes claimed her mother heard about it and printed
up death notices for her. On June twelve, the London
Morning Post printed an excerpt of a letter from Montes
(10:41):
saying she had been born in Seville and had learned
English from an Irish nurse. She said she had never
been in England except for a few months spent living
with a Catholic woman in Bath, and had never seen
London before she arrived for her performance. Not long after that, though,
Lola Montez left England for the continent, where she was
likely to be recognized. In Berlin, a critic described her
(11:04):
performance this way, quote, her beauty of rare voluptuous fullness
is beyond any criticism. Her dancing, however, was no dancing
at all, but a physical invitation. If it is said
of Taglione that she writes world history with her feet,
so it can be said of Donna Montez that she
writes Casanova's memoirs with her whole body. In Berlin, Montes
(11:29):
performed for King Frederick William of Prussia and his guest,
Czar Nicholas the First. She also had one of her
first and most famous run ins with authority. While the
monarchs were reviewing the troops, Montes tried to ride her
horse into an area that was reserved for military personnel.
When an officer tried to stop her, she struck him
(11:49):
with her horsewhip. A lot of the retellings of this
whole incident really make Montes sound like a wacky little
firebrand in this moment. But she was charged with assault,
and then when she tore up her summons for that charge,
she was charged with contempt. It does not seem like
either of these charges ever went to trial, though, Please
don't hit people with a horsewhip. Um, there's gonna be
(12:12):
a lot more of that in this episode. Please don't,
Please don't. From there, Montes went to Dresden, where she
met past podcast subject Franz List. Her autobiography, which is
written in the third person, describes it this way. Quote
through the management of influential friends and opening was made
for her at the Royal Theater at Dresden in Saxony,
(12:33):
where she first met the celebrated pianist Franz List, who
was then creating such a furor in Dresden that when
he dropped his pocket handkerchief, it was seized by the
ladies and torn into rags, which they divided among themselves,
each being but too happy to get so much as
a rag which had belonged to the great artist. The
furreer created by Lola Montes's appearance at the theater in
(12:55):
Dresden was quite as great among the gentlemen as was
Lists among the ladies. As Montesz traveled with Lists, she
met other prominent people, including Richard Wagner, who did not
like her much at all. Tracks. Yeah, Wagner generally disliked
all the sort of groupies who were always surrounding Fran's List.
(13:20):
We talked about that whole phenomenon in the List Domania episode.
He called montes a quote heartless demonic being, and List
is rumored to have gotten tired of her as well,
locking her in a hotel room and paying the hotel
staff to keep her there just so he could escape.
There isn't any substantiation for that story, though, and it
(13:41):
seems a little far fetched considering that they met up
later in Paris. He also gave her letters of introduction
and arranged her debut at the Paris Opera in eighteen
forty four, which was incredible considering that her entire stage
career had involved twenty or so performances total at that
point over the course of roughly a year. Yeah, the
Paras Opera was like one of the most exclusive stages
(14:05):
in Europe. Uh and here comes Lola Montez who's been
performing in act breaks of others shows for the course
of like twenty performances. Audiences in Paris were skeptical of her.
Reviewers noted that Lola Montez could not dance, did not
speak Spanish very well, didn't look Spanish, and had a
(14:26):
terrible reputation for violence. One French critic gave this backhanded
praise to her quote, there is something lasciviously attractive, voluptuously
enticing in the poses she takes. And then she's a pretty,
very pretty, extremely pretty person and she throws you kisses
so complete that you applaud at once, only to ask
(14:49):
yourself afterwards if it was right or wrong to applaud.
Is that not the most French criticism? You can imagine,
She's very lovely in the moment, but then you second
guess yourself. Uh. In Paris, Montes met another past podcast
subject that was Alexandra du mat Pere. But then she
(15:11):
fell in love with Alexandra Entredjarier, who was part owner
of the newspaper La Presse. They planned to marry, but
Dujarier was killed in a duel in March of eighteen
forty five. This duel, we should point out, and had
nothing to do with Lola. It was over a gambling
debt that he owed to journalist Jean Baptiste Rosemond de Beauvallon,
compounded by his perceived rudeness on the night that he
(15:34):
racked up that debt. Montes had offered to teach Dujarier
to shoot a pistol when she learned that there might
be a duel, but he had turned her down. She
was terrified over this whole prospect. She was like, you
don't know how to use a gun, and this man
is going to duel you. Please let me help, and
he was like, no, I got it. He didn't have it.
Though Montes left Paris after Dujarier's death, she had to
(15:58):
return to testify at Bouillon's murder trial. Other witnesses at
that trial included both Alexandre duma Hair and Feasts. French
courts didn't typically convict people of murder if the killing
had happened during a duel, as long as the rules
of dueling had been followed, and Boon was acquitted. In
(16:19):
eighteen forty six, Montz moved to Munich, where she met Ludwig,
King of Bavaria. She was twenty five at this point
and he was sixty and deeply enamored with all things Spain,
and in what's probably an apocryphal story, Ludwig's first words
to her were to point at her chest and say
nature or art. She grabbed some scissors from his desk,
(16:41):
cut open the bodice of her dress and showed him.
Although this story probably is not true, Lolamantez had an
incredibly dramatic and often extremely scandalous relationship with the King
of Bavaria for about eighteen months. He commissioned her portrait
for his Gallery of You These, which, as its name suggests,
(17:02):
was a gallery of portraits of the most beautiful women
he had ever met. He called her Lolita and set
her up in a luxurious home, buying the property in
her name so that she could be eligible for Bavarian citizenship.
He granted her an allowance of ten thousand florins a year,
at a time when his cabinet ministers are making more
like six thousand florins. The King kept a lot of
(17:24):
this secret, but there was really no way to disguise
his total infatuation with her or her influence over him.
She publicly boasted about how much sway she had, including
bragging about convincing the king to raise teachers pay a
week before he was going to announce it publicly. He
was enamored with her feet, and she gave him an
(17:45):
alabaster model of one of them. When he wrote to
thank her for it, he said he had quote covered
it with fervent kisses. He later gave her an alabaster
model of his handwriting a poem that was carved by
the same sculptor. Meanwhile, Montez was launching one scandal after another.
Her behavior was just not appropriate for somebody considered to
(18:08):
be the King's favorite. She entertained male visitors at all hours. Once,
when a man stood her up, she went to his
apartment building in the middle of the night to find him.
Shouldn't know which unit that he lived in, so she
rang the bell for everyone, waking up the entire building
and basically advertising that she was there for a late
(18:29):
night rendezvous with a man. I want to say who
among us, but most most of us have not. I
would hope uh. The Alamanan were a sort of fraternity
at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and they became her
bodyguard one night during a drunken party at her home.
The Aleman and were parading around dressed only in their shirts,
(18:49):
carrying Lola on their shoulders. When one of them ran
her into a low hanging chandelier, she got a concussion.
She also repeatedly got into physical confer intations with people,
and this was something that carried additional risks for her
since she wasn't a Bavarian citizen like just go pick
a bunch of vice of people, maybe get deported. To
(19:12):
deflect criticism, she maintained that her enemies, especially Jesuits, were
spreading lies about her. Even though her Spanish persona included
pretending to be Catholic, she frequently maintained that she was
a victim of just a massive Jesuit conspiracy against her.
The king's advisors tried to persuade him to distance himself
(19:33):
from her. When that didn't work and Lola's behavior seemed
to just get even more over, the top advisors and
cabinet members started resigning in protest. Montes took particular delight
when the people resigning were conservative Catholics. When Ludwig named
Lola Countess of Lansfield, which came with citizenship and a
permanent income, his entire cabinet resigned, although Lola was extremely
(19:59):
good convincing Ludwig that these indiscretions were just rumors and
that she loved only him, while also reminding him of
how much he loved her. All of this made the
king incredibly anxious. He was under so much stress that
he broke out in what sounds like hives. And all
of this happened alongside social and political unrest in Bavaria,
(20:21):
including intense disputes between conservative Catholic and more liberal Republican
factions at the university. This was compounded by Lola's scandalous
association with the Alemannin. In the hope of getting things
under control, Ludwig tried to shut the university down. This
had worked to quell dissent in the past, but in
(20:42):
this case it just made everything worse. Public opinion about
Lola Montez waxed and waned in Bavaria that by early
eighteen forty eight people were outraged that this notorious woman,
who was not even from there, and who got into
fights and had indiscreet affair hers with multiple men, had
such a huge influence on the king. In February of
(21:05):
eighteen forty eight, thousands of people took to the streets
and low. La Montez was driven out of Munich by
a mob. Ludwig considered sending in the army to restore order,
but his minister of war said that if he was
ordered to do so, he would excuse himself, go into
the next room and take his own life. On March
ety eight, so, not long after she was run out
(21:28):
of town, Ludwig the First abdicated and was succeeded by
his son Maximilian the Second, and sometimes Lola Montez as
described as being the one who convinced him to step down,
while she definitely encouraged him to abdicate. After her departure,
Ludwig really started to question his own judgment and what
(21:48):
his entanglement with her said about his abilities as king.
He was also just under a huge amount of pressure
from conservative Catholic elements of the nobility, the conservative faction
at the university. There was a lot going on besides
just her telling him that she thought he should step down.
Lola surrendered her Bavarian naturalization certificate, saying that she never
(22:11):
wanted to return. Then she went to London and tried
to plan a trip to Spain. This was complicated by
the fact that she was passing herself off as Spanish,
but she had no Spanish passport. She refused to reveal
who she really was in order to get a British one,
and although Ludvig was sending her money, he refused to
(22:32):
pull strings to get her a Bavarian passport. Then something
happened that resolved all of this. She married twenty one
year old Coronet George Trafford Healed, which made her eligible
for a British passport without disclosing her real identity. Since
she was pretending to be Catholic, they had both Catholic
and Church of England ceremonies. Ludwig had granted Lola a
(22:54):
pension under the condition that she never marry. She wrote
to tell him that she was considering Mary Ridge, but
that her husband to be had such a modest income
that she should be allowed to keep her pension. This
was not, in fact true. Healed was pretty comfortable, and
when Lynddig realized Lola had already gotten married before he
could even answer her letter, he was outraged. Another person
(23:17):
who was outraged was George's aunts, who did not trust
Lola at all and looked into her background and it
did not take long to figure out that she was
really divorcee Eliza Gilbert, who could not marry while her
ex husband was still living. So Lola was charged with
bigamy and released on bail, and she and George went
ahead with their trip to Spain. They came back to
(23:39):
London just ahead of her trial. Authorities had confirmed that
James was still living as of Junet, but that wedding
had happened on July ninete, so Montez hoped to argue
that it was possible that he had died within that
few weeks. But while she was in Spain it had
been confirmed that Thomas James was alive on her wedding day.
(24:00):
A conviction for bigamy seemed inevitable, so she forfeited her
bail and she and George fled to France. This whole
scandal just added to Lola's infamy. This also wasn't really
what George had signed up for, even by marrying someone
as notorious as Lola Montez. He left Lola at a
couple of different points, and then in eighteen fifty when
(24:22):
he left her for good, he took a lot of
her possessions along with his own, and this included her
alabaster model of Ludwig's hand and her Bavarian certificate of
nobility and Ludwig's letters to her. Lola's correspondence with Ludwig
ended about a year later, which was also the last
year that he sent her money. At one point, either
(24:43):
Lola or George, or maybe both, tried to extort money
from him by threatening to publish his very explicit letters
to her. In the end that those letters were returned
to the former monarch. Lola needed money, though, and in
eighteen fifty one she published an ad biography. She also
met a promoter who suggested she take a US tour.
(25:05):
She signed a contract with a manager for a series
of appearances in Europe, the America's and Africa, although she
dumped that manager and those plans before even finishing the
European leg of what they had arranged. But she did
plan to go to the US, and she set sail
at the US in November of eighteen fifty one, and
we'll talk about that after we have a sponsor break.
(25:34):
By the time Lolamantez was preparing for her US tour,
she was internationally infamous while reporting on rumors that p
t Barnum had hired her. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described
her as quote quite a celebrity among the profligates of Europe.
On September eighteen fifty one, The New York Times had
(25:55):
this to say, quote, we shall be sadly disappointed if
this creature has any agree of success in the United States.
She has no special reputation as a dancer. She is
known to the world only as a shameless and abandoned woman.
If such a reputation shall prove attractive in this country,
we have greatly mistaken its character. Oh whoever wrote that,
(26:17):
I hope they never time travel. I had the same thought,
O friend. Most of Lola's performances in Europe had been
dances during the act breaks of other works, but her
US tour was built on much longer appearances. She commissioned
a play called Lola Montez in Bavaria, in which she,
of course played herself. The text of this play has
(26:41):
been lost, but it presented Montez as introducing all kinds
of liberal advances to Bavaria before fleeing in the wake
of a counter revolution. Yeah, a lot of the accounts
of how much how much liberalizing influence she had over
the King seems to have come from Bowl interpreting descriptions
(27:03):
of this play as being definitely grounded in reality. Maybe
it's somewhat, but yeah, it's uh. She this was both
a touring piece for her and self promotion. Montes had
reworked her Spanish inspired dance at several points over the years,
and she had picked up new styles. A suggestive pantomime
(27:26):
involving stomping on a spider seems to have been there
from the very beginning. I mean that first review doesn't
give a play by play of what she was doing,
but there's this whole like sauciness and stamping, pettish leap
in the description. It was really in the United States, though,
that her most famous dance became known as the Spider
(27:47):
Dance and also gained a reputation for being absolutely scandalous.
So this pantomime hinged on the idea that a spider
was crawling into Lola's dress. Audiences would see flashes of
her skin, and she tried to get rid of the spider,
although exactly how much skin and how much she was
wearing under her skirts kind of depends on which account
(28:09):
you read newspapers in the US started describing this as indecent,
which prompted Montes to write angry letters to their editors,
while also making the dance even more risque. Lola, Montez
and Bavaria ran on Broadway and then she toured around
the eastern part of North America. Her last stop was
in New Orleans, and while she was there, she got
(28:31):
into a dispute with her lady's maid. Her lady's maid
had decided she wanted to stay in New Orleans and
leave Lola's service. Lola struck her, and when the police
arrived to arrest Lola for battery, she drew her dagger
and tried to fight them before drinking the contents of
a vial that was labeled as poison, so something that
(28:53):
she said she always carried on her person in case
she needed to escape a truly impossible situation, but Seema
raculously recovered. There are many ways to interpret this, and
the one I'm sticking with this that she had a
fake poison vial to be dramatic. Uh huh, it's probably
full of sugar water. In eighteen fifty three, Montes left
(29:14):
New Orleans bound for San Francisco by sea with a
land crossing in Panama. Along the way, she met newspaper
editor Patrick Purdy Hull, and they married about six weeks
after arriving in California. This marriage was stormy and brief.
At one point, Lola threw all of his possessions out
of hotel window, and not long after that she threw
(29:34):
him out of the home she had bought in Grass Valley.
There are also reports that a German doctor who was
named in the divorce suit was mysteriously shot. All of
that is a little bit murky, since his unclear weather
divorce papers were ever actually filed. Montes had become tired
of quote splendor and fast living, and she spent about
(29:55):
the next two years living in Grass Valley. Before this,
she'd always had a lapdog, but now she indulged her
love of animals with a personal menagerie that included a parrot,
two dogs, and a grizzly bear cub. Really, grizzly bear
cubs do not make good pets, and after this one
(30:17):
mauled her, she put it up for sale. I'm sure
that bear is long gone, but I worry for it
just the same me too. I could not figure out
the ultimate fate of the bear. Oh, I know how
that stuff goes. In Grass Valley, Montes doated on her
neighbor's children, including a lot of crab tree, who Lola
encouraged in her acting and dancing. She also started studying
(30:40):
spiritualism and reading the Bible. This time was not all harmonious, though,
When The Grass Valley Telegraph criticized a dancer who she knew,
Lola whipped its editor, Henry Shipley in the street in Montez.
Decided to tour Australia. She hired Noel Fallen, who used
(31:01):
the stage name Noel fall Land with a d as
a manager. He was estranged from his wife and children
in New York, but he was financially supporting them. Montes
performed to full houses in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and
she appeared on stage around Australia's gold fields, where she
encouraged her audiences to tip her by tossing gold nuggets
(31:23):
at her. This tour was just as full of drama
and strife as all of her earlier tours had been.
Various parties tried to shut down her shows for their indecency.
In Melbourne, she had a running feud with the Reverend
John Lawrence Milton after the Baller at times ran an
unflattering letter about her, she got into a fight with
(31:43):
editor Henry C. Camp, with the two of them whipping
each other until onlookers physically separated them. Did everyone carry
a whip? Well, she did like to ride and was
reportedly a very good writer, and apparently Henry C. Camp
also equipped with a whip. I think a lot of
people who rode horses had horse whips with them. Uh
(32:05):
Montes experienced recurring illnesses throughout her life. Like we said earlier,
she probably got malaria while she was in India, and
she was sick a lot while in Australia. She started
describing her spider dance as involving being bitten by the
spider to explain away any swooning or fatigue that she
showed on stage. Eventually, she cut the tour short and
(32:26):
she disbanded the company that had traveled with her from California.
Their contracts had included passage back to the United States,
so the actors tried to take her to court. When
the authorities tried to arrest her, she argued that their
warrant was not in her real name, and because she
was married, legal action also had to go through her husband.
(32:48):
This was an argument that she made more than once.
When somebody would, you know, offer give her a summons
that said Lola Monte, She'd be like, Oh, that's not
my name though, so that's not allied. Then she left town,
basically leaving her performers with no recourse. Montes and Fallen
left for the US in May of eighteen fifty five.
(33:11):
Their ship back to San Francisco stopped in Hawaii, and
shortly after setting sail again, Noel Fallen fell overboard and drowned.
It's not clear exactly what happened, but Montes blamed herself
for his death. She personally notified his family and tried
to support them financially, including selling her jewelry and property
(33:32):
she owned in San Francisco to send them the proceeds
with the note that she wanted his children to be
educated in spiritualism. Around this same time, Montes also learned
that George Healed had died. She became more focused on spiritualism,
and she joined the Episcopal Church. After making one last
visit to Grass Valley, she sold her property there and
(33:54):
then did another brief tour of the East Coast, performing
Lola Montez in Bavaria again and also visiting Noel fallen stepmother.
In eighteen fifty seven, at the age of thirty six,
Lola Montez changed directions and became a lecturer. While she
still went by the name Lola Montes, she mostly dropped
the pretense that she was Spanish and Catholic. Her lecture,
(34:18):
titled Gallantry was about the gallantry of men, including King Ludwig,
the First Wits and Women of Paris, was a tour
of notable people she had met in Paris, including Alexandra
Dumapeer and George sald Romanism was a vehement condemnation of
the Catholic Church. Sometimes people described Montez as an early feminist,
(34:40):
but her lecture Heroines and strong Minded Women of History
makes it clear that she did not have a high
opinion of feminism. It's at least feminism in terms of
how she saw it in the nineteenth century world. She
described suffragists and activists for women's rights as scolds and
(35:00):
invention women, before walking through historical examples of women, warriors
and monarchs, who she saw as real examples of women's strengths.
Uh not those complainers who were having conventions to say
how victimized they were. Montes's first book was a collection
of these lectures, along with an autobiography. And this autobiography
(35:22):
is kind of weird. We mentioned before. It's written in
the third person, it's sometimes credited to Charles Chauncey Burr,
and often it's actually not flattering of her at all.
At times she is depicted almost as a child, throwing
tantrums to get her way among wealthy and powerful men.
And when I read it, I was like, who who
wrote this? And why did they hate you? I mean,
(35:44):
I can see many reasons why somebody would have a
negative impression of Lola Montes. But I was like, this
is your autobiography and your book, and it is making
you sound like a petulant, like immature terror. Montes published
two other books after that lecture collection. They were The
(36:05):
Arts of Beauty or Secrets of a Lady's Toilet with
Hints two Gentlemen on the art of Fascinating and Anecdotes
of Love, being a true account of the most remarkable
events connected with the history of love in all ages
and among all nations. Like other beauty books that we
have talked about on the show before Montes notes that
(36:25):
beauty is totally subjective and that standards of beauty have
varied around the world and throughout history, and then she
moves into twenty eight chapters on how to be beautiful,
including how to obtain a handsome form, habits which destroy
the complexion, a beautiful bosom, and beauty of dress. This
(36:45):
book drops a lot of names of notable people that
she's met in places that she's traveled. It also includes
a lot of recipes, with Montes advising readers to make
their own cosmetics since commercially available products are often full
of reasons, they often were full of pleass of that part,
that part mostly makes sense. The Arts of Beauty ends,
(37:09):
as we said, with fifty rules for the art of fascinating.
And this is a tongue in cheek satire written as
tips for men, but for the amusement of the women
reading the book. So, for example, rule the tenth is quote,
if you are invited to dine, go at least an
hour or an hour and a half before the time
(37:30):
for then the lady will be sure never to forget you.
As the attentive and polite gentleman who allowed her neither
time to dress nor to superintend her dinner, Like its
name suggests. Anecdotes of Love is the collection of famous
historical love stories, including past podcast subjects Aspasia, Empericles, and
(37:50):
Abillard and Elouise. In eighteen fifty seven, Montes briefly considered
marrying again, this time to Prince Ludwig Johann Szukowski of Austria.
He was one of the many royals she had met
while she was in Europe. We did not name all
of these royals before um. He had fled Austria in
(38:10):
the wake of the Revolutions of eighteen forty eight. Montes
sailed to Paris, believing that he was going to meet
her there, But it turned out he was already married
and this whole thing was a giant hoax. I'm debating
over whether I feel like this is a taste of
her own medicine or not, but I had the same
I had the same response, honestly. Uh. In eighteen fifty eight,
(38:32):
Montes returned to the UK. She gave another lecture tour,
and in London she gave a speech on the institution
of slavery in the US. Her argument here was kind
of a tangle. She described slavery as an enormous national
sin and lynch law as a terror we can all
agree with. But she also claimed that enslaved people on
southern plantations were content and that the institution would somehow
(38:56):
just disappear on its own. British abolitionists criticized this lecture heavily,
and Montes countered that this reaction was hypocritical, considering the
British Empire's treatment of the native peoples of the places
it was colonizing, including India. Montes returned to New York
in the fall of eighteen fifty nine and continued to
(39:17):
lecture around the US. On June eighteen sixties, she had
a stroke. Her mother came to the United States to
see her. In some cases this was to take care
of her, and in others it was more to try
to get money from her. Either way, their reunion doesn't
seem to have gone very well, and her mother didn't
stay long. Lola Montes seemed to be recovering well, but
(39:38):
then she contracted pneumonia. She died on January seventeenth, eighteen
sixty one, at the age of thirty nine. Yeah, there's
been various uh, speculation about what could have caused her
to have a stroke at such a relatively young age,
um with explanations anywhere from the malaria that she pretty
(39:59):
clear lee had for her whole life to syphilis. But
again that's like very speculative based on the fact that
somebody had a stroke at a pretty young age than
one would typically think of someone having a stroke. When
Lola Montez died, Ludwig the First of Bavaria was seventy four.
He had not seen her in thirteen years, and he
(40:22):
learned of her death through news reports. Later on, he
got a letter from her friend Maria E. Buchanan, which
was sent to Lola's request, and this letter expressed Lola's
sincere regard for him and said that she had died
as a true penitent. Ludwig seemed to appreciate this, he
wrote back and it was a nice little note. And
(40:43):
then Maria later wrote to him again, suggesting that he
might pay to have offense put around her grave at
Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery. Ludwig dignat answer that one Lola's first husband,
Thomas James, also outlived her. He died in eighteen seventy one,
so he could have gotten remarried. He start. One of
(41:05):
the biographies that I read of her was called Lola Montez,
a Life by Bruce Seymour, and I think he traced
what happens to Thomas James afterward, and I don't remember
off the top of my head. Lola Montez's notoriety continued
for decades after her death, with fictional characters based on her,
and plays and movies fictionalizing her exploits. More recently, she
(41:27):
inspired the song whatever Lola Wants Lola Gets from the
Broadway musical Damn Yankees. I could sing that by heart. Uh.
And there is a running bit about her in season
two of Dickinson on Apple Plus that as a show
I was watching before I started working on this episode,
and when I learned there was a Lola Montez running bit,
(41:50):
I was like, I gotta stop what else I'm watching
and catch up and see this. Yeah. And Dann Yankees,
do you know the story? In Dann Yankees, She's been
with the devil um and and becomes involved with the
lead character when he makes a similar pact. Uh, And
it's sort of their story. She's uh, not so violent
(42:14):
in that and it is much more of a winsome character. Um.
She is not physically present on screen anywhere on Dickinson,
but it's it's a it's a running joke that spans
over multiple episodes. Today, Mount Lola and the Sierra Nevada
is named for her, as our Two Lakes and Tahoe
(42:34):
National Forest. Her home in Grass Valley, California is a
state Historic landmark. Uh, that is Lola Montes. I don't know,
having referenced all this, if I would actually call her
a trip. However, most of the things that would make
me maybe not call her that are things that aren't
usually covered in quick write ups of her, like like
(42:57):
striking her lady's maid when her ladies may try to
leave her service, and leaving her touring company stranded in Australia. Like,
I can't get behind any of that, I can. You know.
I often take some glee in people who push against
societal norms. Uh, And then that way, she's kind of
a trip. But in other ways, I'm like, you're more
(43:18):
of a mess to me. See now, I'm like, what
does a trip mean to you? Because to me, those
all factor in. But I think that's just one of
those like colloquial vernacular things that probably has no clear
definition anyway, right, sure, yeah, yeah. I think in my
head I would describe somebody who was a trip as
(43:38):
a little less harmless than ested see. To me, part
of it is the juxtaposition of oh, she was a
super like fun, love and party gal but also very violent.
What a trip? But oh I like the journey from
one to the other. This is so interesting to me.
(44:01):
Do you have interesting listener mail? I do, and this one. Uh.
In terms of when I was preparing this episode, I
was like, I feel like this is a little long,
so I just have a super quick listener mail from
Sarah and Sarah wrote to say, Hi, Holly and Tracy,
I really enjoy listening to your podcast. I teach fourth
grade E. L A and social studies. Your content has
(44:22):
made me appreciate history even more. While this isn't truly
important at all, I feel it's important to add my
experience when listening to the Operation paper Clip episode. In
addition to enjoying the history content, I also remembered the
cartoon paper clip Clippy from old Microsoft Office. As I listened,
I found myself picturing different theatrical versions of Clippy. Acting
(44:45):
out the espionage field story. I thought you would enjoy
that image. Thanks for the work you do, Sarah. I did,
in fact enjoy that image, partly because, um, at least
in terms of my experience with Clippy, Clippy was pretty
much universally hated among everyone I knew who encountered Clippy
(45:07):
and their Microsoft Office lives. So thank you, Sarah for this.
I did quite enjoy that mental image. If you would
like to write to us, were a history podcast that
I heart radio dot com, and you can find us
all over social media at missed in History. That's where
you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you
(45:27):
can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio
app and really anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(45:47):
to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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