Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (52 page)

In 1826, she was packed off to Montrose, Scotland, to live with her stepfather’s family. Five years later she was sent south, first to Durham, to the home of Captain Craigie’s former commanding officer, Major General Sir Jasper Nicolls. The gruff major general had eight school-age daughters of his own, and from the other side of the world Eliza’s stepfather relied on his judgment to superintend her education, placing the girl in an appropriate school after she left the Nicolls household. In 1832, Nicolls enrolled Eliza in a boarding school in Bath.

Her mother came to collect her in 1837, because she had arranged a good marriage for Eliza with Craigie’s current commanding officer in India, a man in his mid-sixties. Mrs. Craigie was accompanied by thirty-year-old Lieutenant Thomas James, whom she had met on the voyage from India; it seemed clear from their body language that the pair had enjoyed a shipboard romance.

By then, Eliza was a stunning sixteen-year-old with raven hair and gentian blue eyes. Lieutenant James fell for his paramour’s daughter and the couple eloped to Ireland, wedding on July 23, 1837. They eventually went to India, but the marriage was a complete fiasco. The couple called it a day in 1840, but was never legally divorced. With the equivalent of ten thousand dollars from her stepfather, Lola sailed for England. While at sea she had an affair with the nephew of the Duke of Richmond. When Thomas James learned about it, he sued his wife for divorce. The decree was granted on December 15, 1842, but prohibited either of them from remarrying during the other’s lifetime.

With limited options available to her socially, Eliza Gilbert James decided to reinvent herself as an actress. She enrolled at Fanny Kelly’s
renowned drama school in London, but was told that her talents would be better employed in other artistic pursuits—perhaps as a dancer. She was far too old to begin ballet lessons, but Spanish dancing had become the rage of the age. Mrs. Kelly suggested that Eliza might have better luck learning the popular ethnic dances.

She spent four months in Spain taking lessons in their language and dance. The woman who left the country was not Mrs. Eliza Gilbert James, but Doña Maria Dolores de Porris y Montez, complete with a biographical backstory that she told to people so often, she grew convinced of it herself, even though she adjusted the details (of birth dates, parents’ professions, marital status, and persecuted relatives) to fit her audience. Playing upon their sympathies, she would even win letters of introduction to highly influential people. In truth, she had pirated the moniker of a famous matador, Francisco “Paquito” Montez, whose own surname wasn’t even Montez.

Lola embarked upon her European career, speaking with a thick accent that was assessed as a hybrid of Irish and Spanish. As she’d had only four months of lessons in her “native” tongue, it’s remarkable that she was able to fool so many people with her broken Spanglish and Sprench, depending on the country she was performing in.

As a dancer, Lola received mixed reviews, mostly along the lines of: Looks 10, Dance 3. Her blue-black hair, huge blue eyes, and the “splendor of her breasts…made madmen everywhere,” according to her German biographer Edward Fuchs. But as a performer, she appeared to have more passion than talent, and she had a lot of competition, as this was the age of Carlotta Grisi, Marie Taglioni, and other exceptional ballerinas. Although her act was unique, audiences still expected strong technique.

But Lola was in dangerous territory in more ways than one. In London, the press “outed” her as Mrs. Thomas James, and she fought back, in character, stepping down to the footlights to defend herself in her thick-as-salsa accent. And every time Lola opened her mouth, she usually compounded her troubles. Her biggest detractor, the Englishman Albert Vandam, observed, “Her gait and carriage were those of a duchess for she was naturally graceful but the moment she opened her lips the illusion vanished—at least to me…her
wit was that of a pot-house, which would not have been tolerated in the smoking room of a club in the small hours.”

Audiences became increasingly hostile with each performance. After only a few shows in London, Lola’s contract was not renewed; it was time to move on. Her career and personal life were crowded with incident everywhere she went. She took lovers with impunity, but had a few ground rules: They had to be gorgeous and, if possible, royal. One of them was the emotionally tormented composer Franz Liszt. Unable to countenance any ridicule of her dancing or challenges to her Spanish identity, she traveled with a full complement of knives, whips, and pistols, and employed them if necessary. It was part and parcel of Lola’s volatile personality, but often got her into trouble. After only one or two performances Lola was kicked out of city after city as a result of violent incidents.

A member of her Australian touring troupe many years later described her as “frivolous, naughty as a little child; can charm with a wink; woe to him who falls into her disfavor. She has a very excitable nature and for the slightest reason her whole body will tremble and her eyes flash lightning. For this reason one has to treat her very carefully because she is the most courageous and foolhardy woman who ever walked this earth.”

Although Lola’s affair with Lizst ended unhappily, he provided her with letters of introduction to several of his friends in France, many of whom were among the literary lights of Paris, including Alexandre Dumas
père
and
fils
, the respective authors of
The Three Musketeers
and
La Dame aux Camélias
; and Lola’s idol of female independence, George Sand. Lola had been in the capital for barely a month when her connections led to a booking at the prestigious Opéra. Once again, the crowd went wild for her beauty, but did not rave about her terpsichorean talents. She fell in love with Alexandre Henri Dujarier, editor of the Parisian newspaper
La Presse
, and the two planned to marry. Lola, always denying that she had ever been married to a Lieutenant Thomas James, considered herself a bachelorette.

But after Dujarier, whom she called her one great passion, was killed in a duel, a contretemps that for once had nothing to do with
her, Lola left France, done with love forever. Dumas
père
purportedly said of Lola, “She has the evil eye. She is sure to bring bad luck to anyone who closely links his destiny with hers, for however short a time. You see what happened to Dujarier. If ever she is heard of again it will be in connection with some terrible calamity that has befallen a lover of hers.”

On October 5, 1846, Lola arrived in Munich with her pug Zampa and her lover of the moment, the junior Robert Peel, son of the former British prime minister. Two days later she was trolling for an engagement at the Royal Theatre. But she may also have been looking to trade up in the romance department.

Munich and Lola were perfect for each other. William Bennett, who wrote for the
New York Herald
, claimed, “The number of illegitimate children born in Bavaria is almost the same number as those born in wedlock. The beer is particularly excellent in Bavaria but their morals from the king down to the codger are as bad as they can be.”

The king was nothing to look at by the time Lola Montez was prepared to seduce the capital with her most famous number, the “Spider Dance,” which, to some, more closely resembled an epileptic fit than a cousin of the tarantella. A vivacious sixty-year-old, with eyes that still twinkled for pretty women, Ludwig nonetheless suffered from a recurring skin rash, and the beholder’s gaze could not avoid being drawn to a prominent cyst on his forehead.

On October 8, Lola presented herself to Ludwig. How she was able to secure an introduction to the Bavarian sovereign is unknown. It may have come through a mutual acquaintance, a thrice-married German lothario named Heinrich von Maltzahn whom Lola had encountered during her travels in London or Paris.

Ludwig not only had a passion for dancers in general, but he had fallen victim to the popular mania for all things Spanish and had taught himself the language, there being no native speakers in Bavaria. Consequently, he was eager to meet this exotic woman he had heard so much about. A lurid description of Lola and Ludwig’s first encounter, written years after her death, has Ludwig ogling Lola’s famous chest and inquiring, “Nature or art?” Lola allegedly answered
by producing her omnipresent dagger (or grabbing the scissors from Ludwig’s desk) and slicing through her laces, revealing her stunning, and completely natural, bosom. The tall tale is in keeping with the sort of outrageous drama Lola was known for—but it never happened. For one thing, although Ludwig may indeed have been curious about Lola’s
poitrine
, he was also a cultured gentleman and would not have behaved like a lager lout. Additionally, for anyone who knows about the structure of Victorian-era women’s garments and underpinnings, it would have been nigh impossible, not to mention anticlimactic, for Lola to have tried to saw through (or worse, snip) a tight bodice, a heavily boned corset—that laced in the back—and her chemise before her bare flesh was revealed.

She made her dancing debut in Munich on October 10, Ludwig’s thirty-sixth wedding anniversary, performing to polite applause during the entr’actes of a comedy prophetically titled
Der Verwunschene Prinz
—
The Enchanted Prince
. Although critics spared their praise for her talent and technique, she received high marks for her sultry looks and fiery passion. But only one member of the audience really mattered, and he had indeed become enchanted.

Ludwig owned a portrait collection of gorgeous women, his
Schönheits
, or Gallery of Beauties, several of whom, such as the English adventuress Jane Digby, had been his lovers. As soon as the king saw Lola dance, he commissioned the court painter, Joseph Stieler, to immortalize her for his gallery.

Lola Montez was in Munich for barely a week before she attracted a coterie of admirers, most of whom were young army officers. Maltzahn, too, was hanging about, although young Robert Peel seems to have disappeared altogether. Now she was about to land the biggest fish in Bavaria. Ludwig began visiting her hotel every afternoon or evening, sometimes calling on Lola twice a day, and often remaining so late into the evening that the hotel staff had already locked the doors. When Maltzahn was present, the three of them conversed in French. If Lola and Ludwig were the only ones in the room, they spoke in rudimentary Spanish. It was lucky for Lola that the monarch was just a beginner, because her fluency wasn’t significantly better. When the pair corresponded, the letters were written in fractured
Spanish. If Lola didn’t know a word, she wrote it in French. If Ludwig got stuck, aware that Lola spoke no German, he would write it in Italian or Latin.

Lola danced again on October 14. This time her performance engendered a good deal of hissing. After the leader of the detractors was identified, Ludwig exiled him from Munich, banished to the city of Regensburg.

Five days after this performance, Lola began to sit for her portrait. Naturally, Ludwig insisted on visiting Stieler’s studio to watch paint dry. During the sitting Lola gave the king a rose, and when he accidentally left it at the atelier, Ludwig sent the artist a note asking for the flower to be couriered to him in a protective bag. By this time the king was composing lovestruck poetry in Spanish to his new flame. “I love you with my life, my eyes, my soul, my body, my heart, all of me. Black hair, blue eyes, graceful form.”

Lola had scheduled a booking in Augsburg on October 24, but Ludwig, already head over heels in love, pleaded with her not to leave him. Realizing she had the monarch practically eating out of her hand, “
No puedo dejar Munic
,” she confessed. “I can’t leave Munich.” She canceled her upcoming engagement in Augsburg; her poorly received performance of October 14 was the last time she danced for five years.

As rumors of Ludwig and Lola’s improper relationship began to swirl, the king confessed his passion to his old friend Heinrich von der Tann.

What does my dear Tann have to say when I tell him that the sixty-year-old has awakened a passion in a beautiful, intelligent, spirited, good-hearted twenty-two-year-old [Lola had shaved four years off her age] nobly-born woman of the South!…I thought I could no longer feel the passion of love, thought my heart was burned out, thought I was no longer what I had been…. Now I’m not like a man of forty or even…like an amorous boy of twenty; I’m in the grip of passion like never before. Sometimes I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, my blood boiled feverishly, I was lifted to heaven’s heights, my thoughts
became purer, I became a better person. I was happy, I am happy. My life has a new vitality, I’m young again, the world smiles on me.

On November 1, within a month of Lola’s arrival, Ludwig awarded her an annual pension of a hundred thousand florins (at a time when a university professor’s salary was two thousand florins a year, and a cabinet minister earned six thousand florins). But Lola also availed herself of the king’s wallet to grant financial favors for friends who were down on their luck, including a pair of starving dancers who lacked the money for new ballet slippers.

However, she made enemies as swiftly as she collected adherents, due to her massive ego and overweening sense of entitlement. The first indication that Lola was becoming too self-important came during the intermission of a concert, when the entire audience saw the king leave his wife sitting in the royal box while he quit it to visit his new paramour. As though she were the sovereign and Ludwig the commoner, Lola did not deign to rise from her chair.

One of the young men who had attached himself to Lola during her early days in Munich was Artillery Lieutenant Friedrich Nüssbammer. Several people suspected that while she was greedily taking advantage of Ludwig, tantalizing, yet denying him her body, she was bestowing it elsewhere, and Nüssbammer was the likely candidate. Two nights running Lola came looking for the lieutenant at his residence, ringing every doorbell and awakening all the tenants. On the second night, she was told to cease and desist by Nüssbammer’s landlady. The woman shouted, “I’m not deaf, Miss,” and Lola retorted, “I’m not ‘Miss,’ but the King’s mistress.”