Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (54 page)

The number of people thrown into prison for one, two, and even three months for having affronted Lola, or for not having taken their hats off when she passed, is extraordinary. The nobility is disgusted, the burghers are angry, and even the protestant party, who hope to profit by the present state of things [Lola was vehemently anti-Jesuit, and the Jesuits were running the government], agree that the King of Bavaria has “lost his senses.”

Exactly why the English were so keen to keep tabs on Lola has never come to light or been made fully clear. Rumors have always circulated that she may have been a spy, most probably for the British, and who better to gain intelligence from foreign courts than
someone in a position to travel the world, such as a performer, with the looks and talent to gain entrée into such lofty circles? It was also rumored that Lola was a polyglot.

None of these rumors was very plausible. The truth was that she was not at all conversant in several foreign languages. The French critic Théophile Gautier, who never much liked her, wrote that “she
hablas
very mediocre Spanish, barely speaks French, English passably.” And she didn’t speak German at all, which could hardly be handy for a spy in Bavaria. English was, of course, Lola’s native tongue, which she needed to mangle deliberately in order to stay in character for most of her life. Indiscreet, with an ungovernable temper, she called attention to herself, when a good spy needs to blend in. She got fired from engagements and exiled from cities where it might have been politically beneficial for an actual agent to remain until the necessary intelligence was obtained. She also lived a lie every day of her life; already “outed” more than once as Mrs. James, Lola Montez was too easily blackmailed or compromised to be an effective spy. Yet the Jesuits, whom she detested with an irrational hatred, believed she was a tool of the Freemasons. The French thought she was a British agent while she was in Paris, but she wouldn’t have been all but penniless and trolling for protectors if Queen Victoria had been secretly footing the bill. Moreover, no concrete evidence of who Lola might have been working for, and why, has ever come to light.

So the Lola-as-professional-spy-on-someone’s-payroll story should be pretty well debunked. Most likely, the British were interested in her because they knew she was one of their own and were keen on obtaining whatever information she happened to passively glean.

But the only thing more dangerous in a king’s court than a spy is a powerful royal mistress. Stephen Henry Sulivan’s letter to Lord Palmerston in December 1846 assessed Lola quite critically, comparing her to the most famous of her ilk.

She is handsome, ambitious to act the part of Madame de Maintenon, and with talent enough to gain ascendancy over the King who, instigated by her, is committing a series of arbitrary and unjust acts which will destroy the little popularity which
the King has enjoyed. The King’s ruling passion has always been to be an absolute sovereign, and anyone who encourages him is sure to gain great influence over him. This is the secret of the immense influence which Abel has acquired. As Lola proves to the King that he ought to be an absolute monarch and shows him how to be so, she is sure to gain and maintain her power, even if the King gets tired of her as a mistress.

Even Lola’s friends couldn’t rein her in. On December 31, 1846, Maltzahn wrote to Ludwig that he was resigning his job as her keeper. It was far more than he’d bargained for, and even his position at court wasn’t enough of an inducement to stay. Not only were people accusing him of pimping Lola to the king, but “unfortunately during my absence Lolita [sic] has insulted all classes of society, offended everyone, and the city and the nation are so up in arms that with the best will it is too late, impossible, to improve her position. At least I am too feeble to manage it.”

Maltzahn personally offered Lola an annual pension of fifty thousand francs to quit Bavaria forever, prompting Ludwig to wonder how the baron could be so wealthy. He later learned that Maltzahn had taken a lengthy meeting with Archbishop Reisach. It was the Catholic Church that was offering to permanently sponsor Lola’s exile.

On January 1, 1847, Ludwig announced that the departments of religious affairs and education would henceforth become independent of the Ministry of the Interior, Abel’s home turf, and the oversight of those two departments would be transferred to the less conservative Minister of Justice. The decision happened to have been a long time in the making, but to Abel and his cronies it seemed to have Lola’s anti-Jesuitical fingerprints all over it. Ludwig surmised correctly when he assumed they would blame her. What he failed to recognize, even as he endeavored to reform his government, was that by and large the Bavarians were content with the Ultramontanes and believed that Abel was doing a fine job. Alienating the Interior Minister and his adherents sowed the seeds of discontent in yet another previously healthy pasture.

And then the other poisoned fields began to yield their crops.
Additional incidents of Lola-related violence occurred. A flurry of insults during a pre-Lenten party at her hotel resulted in a melee. Three days later, her bull mastiff, Turk, bit a deliveryman. When the messenger raised a stick to beat the dog, Lola slapped the man around.

The woman was a walking time bomb. During the month of January she was hissed and booed in the streets and was even pelted with horse manure. Police were dispatched to tear down posters proclaiming, “Montez, you great whore / your time will come soon,” and, “To the devil with the royal house / Our loyalty is at an end / It brings us only shame and ridicule / God help us.”

Ludwig, looking stressed and ill, fainted several times that month, and congregations were exhorted in their respective churches to “pray for the redemption of the great, gray man.” He hoped to rush Lola’s citizenship process through, because if she were to be arrested, as a foreign national she could be imprisoned awaiting trial. There was a good deal of behind-the-scenes wrangling. The lone Protestant council member voted in Lola’s favor, but had demanded a quid pro quo for his assent: a law professorial post for his son at the university, a house in town, and a sinecure in the legislature, the Reichsrat. The man’s son got the university position.

In any event, the council could only
advise
, and they had refused Lola Bavarian citizenship on the grounds that she lacked the proper papers. So on Monday, February 10, 1847, Ludwig signed the decree granting citizenship to Lola Montez “with retention of her current citizenship.”

In response, Interior Minister Abel announced that he would resign, and his colleagues in the cabinet followed suit. They drafted a letter to the king, warning him that the loyalty of the army was in doubt as well. One paragraph read, “At the same time, national pride is deeply offended because Bavaria believes itself governed by a foreigner whom the public regards as a branded woman and any number of opposing facts could not slake this belief.”

The letter was given to Ludwig on February 11. He gave Abel and his colleagues two days to reconsider. When they refused to do so, the government was immediately dissolved. The stranglehold of the conservative Jesuits was broken, but Ludwig found it difficult to replace
his ministers, because people were afraid of clashing swords with Lola.

Yet not everyone vilified the royal mistress after the reorganization of the government following Abel’s downfall. In some circles she was viewed as the standard-bearer for liberalism, although Lola didn’t support a free press because they printed insulting things about her and Ludwig; and she also believed he should have a secret police force to crack down on dissenters. Nonetheless, after the ouster of the Ultramontanes the king was hailed as the most enlightened monarch of his age, and the cry of “Lola and Liberty!” was heard in some parts of Bavaria.

Even with the dissolution of Ludwig’s government, politics seemed to take a backseat to art, and there was leisure time enough to immortalize Lola in marble and oils. On January 26, 1847, she gave the king a cast of her foot made by the prominent sculptor Leeb, receiving a thank-you note from Ludwig on a piece of paper embellished with a serenade.

Corazon di mi corazon, mia
Lolitta

[Heart of my heart, my Lolitta]

You gave me great pleasure by the lovely surprise of sending me your foot in marble—your foot has no equal—it appears to be an antique ideal—when Leeb had left, I covered it with ardent kisses…. I want you to receive my lively thanks, which I will express to you at noon.

Tu fiel
Luis.

[Your faithful Luis]

Over time, Ludwig would develop a fetish for Lola’s feet, whether in flesh or marble, perhaps because she routinely denied him access to most of the rest of her, conveniently pleading headaches, her period, some other ailment or indisposition, or fear of pregnancy.

In the early months of 1847, the king commissioned a second Stieler portrait of Lola and engaged another, edgier painter, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, to immortalize her as well. Depicting her a bit too dramatically for Ludwig’s taste, the artist made his disgust abundantly
apparent. Her hair wild and loose as she mounts a scaffold, Lola carries a riding whip as a serpent winds itself about her waist. The clasp of her belt is a skull. Ludwig rejected the portrait and it remained in von Kaulbach’s studio for decades.

In February, Lord Palmerston’s nephew, Stephen Henry Sulivan, dispatched the following update to the prime minister.

The influence and power of Lola Montez over the mind of the King of Bavaria is so great that everyone is alarmed.

She has beauty, talent and so violent a character that the King, partly from love and partly from fear, is sunk into the position of a simple register of the acts of his mistress…. The exasperation of all classes is so great that the idea of dethroning the King is daily gaining ground, and if the Prince Royal [Ludwig’s eldest son, Maximilian] was in Munich, instead of being at Palermo, some serious riots would have already taken place.

Maltzahn informed Ludwig of a plot to kidnap Lola. He had just been offered fifty thousand francs to lure her into a trap. Lola would believe she was meeting Maltzahn, but would ultimately be taken to a remote castle a day’s drive from Munich, where she would be thrown into an underground dungeon for the remainder of her days. The following day, Ludwig received an anonymous tip warning that Lola would be abducted and taken to Vienna. Lola, too, had discovered a similar plan to the one Maltzahn had described to Ludwig, writing about it to a friend. She claimed to have been warned by one of the conspirators “to whom I had done a kind action on the morning of the very day” of a plot to convey her to the Spielberg prison at Brno, Czechoslovakia, “where I would have been immured to this day, lost and unheard of.”

Lola’s anecdotes were always riddled with untruths and exaggerations, but the fact that both she and Maltzahn independently described a nearly identical plot lends the story credence. It’s also conceivable that there may have been more than one plan to abduct Lola and remove her from Bavaria.

Lola also maintained that her archenemies, the Jesuits, had poisoned
her with arsenic; that she’d twice been shot at; and that they had placed “a fanatic upon my stairs at midnight, with a poignard [a type of dagger] in his coat…. These are truths and facts.” It may be safe to assume that as soon as Lola makes outright claims to veracity, at the very least they are exaggerations, but it was certainly true that the mood in the street was ugly, and vehemently anti-Lola. On March 1, 1847, a riot erupted outside her home after a gifted Catholic professor was dismissed from the university for meddling in politics, by suggesting that Abel and his fellow former ministers be given a vote of thanks for their service to the kingdom. After he was sacked, as a parting shot, the professor posted a protest on the students’ message board, blaming Lola for Bavaria’s ills.

The mob of angry scholars set off for Lola’s residence, arriving around three thirty in the afternoon. They shouted at her from the street and she returned the favor, taunting them from her window. In retaliation, the students began throwing stones, as Lola continued to bait them. Wondering what the commotion was all about, Ludwig went outside to investigate, making his way to Lola’s house. It took two hours for troops to clear the streets. Then the students moved down Ludwigstrasse and began stoning the palace, daring to jeer at their own sovereign. At eleven p.m. they awakened the neighborhood with cries of “Down with Lola! Long live the queen!” Ludwig told his wife, “If ever I have sinned against you, you now have your revenge, for never has a King been so pilloried or dragged through the mud.”

He bravely and angrily pursued the mob of students, but they turned on him. After several hours, order was restored, and the following day the riot act was read.

On March 9, Ludwig’s skin erupted into a rash. He also suffered from bone pain and headaches at night. His illness was not diagnosed at the time, but the condition did resolve itself after several weeks. Some of his biographers have posited that it was a manifestation of syphilis, which he perhaps gave to Lola, or she to him, at some point. But they had not yet consummated their romance; beyond whatever mild kissing and caressing Lola had permitted Ludwig, there had been no penetration. The king had been exceptionally overstressed by recent and current events, and by his volatile relationship
with Lola. Given these circumstances, in addition to his age, it seems more likely from the description of his symptoms that he was suffering an attack of shingles.

Being “greatly disfigured” by his illness and confined to his room for some time, Ludwig was unable to visit Lola, but she came to see him. Apart from an incident when she was refused some items of silver because she never paid for a previous purchase, and became so enraged that she smashed the glass door of a display cabinet, requiring a doctor to tend to her hand, she began to behave more rationally, working diligently to improve her image. She wrote to the press to explain that she was not responsible for the change in government—that it had all been Ludwig’s doing.