Thread by @jessnevins

Okay, let's do it.

Lola Montez, the Most Notorious Woman of the 19th Century! Adventuress Without Peer! Playa Supreme!

Femme fatale archetype & a matchless (mostly figurative and occasionally literal) gold digger, Montez is little-remembered today. Which is a damn shame. 1/

First of all, there's the Wikipedia page about her (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Mont…), but to paraphrase what Mark Twain once said to his wife when she tried to stop his swearing by repeating his words, the Wiki page has the notes (and not all of them) but not the music.
2/

Second, please be assured that there is no negative judgment of Montez from me in anything I tweet about her. She's great! "Adventuress" is meant as praise, and as far as calling her a "playa," well, #1, it's accurate, and #2, don't playa hate--celebrate! 3/

Montez told a lot of lies about her life & those lies have been repeated in otherwise creditable sources. So a lot of what was said about Montez were fabrications. (And why not? To paraphrase Liberty Valance, when the truth is better than the legend, go with the legend).
4/

Here's the truth, as best can be known a century and a half later.

First, though, our Lola, painted when she was 26. 5/

Lola was born "Eliza Rosanna Gilbert" in Ireland in 1821, daughter of a British soldier & an ambitious, illegitimate Irish social climber. (They married after Lola was born). Nothing Spanish about Lola, much as she claimed otherwise. She was a "willful" hell-raiser as a child. 6/

When she was three her father was transferred to India, so off she went, only to be sent to Scotland at seven for her schooling. At age twelve she was sent a girl's school in Bath. (That sound is the Jane Austen Alert: WHOOP WHOOP GIRL FROM BATH SHE'S DANGEROUS WHOOP WHOOP)
7/

She was an excellent student, but raised more hell, tho she was not the model for Becky Sharp (from VANITY FAIR) that Lola claimed to be.

At age seventeen, her fun began. Her mom (still very attractive & w/a wandering eye) returns from India. In the company of a man. 8/

The man is Thomas James of the Bengal Native Infantry, and Lola's mom has marital and sexual designs on him. Lola's mom soon announces that she's also got a plan for Lola: marriage to 64 year old Anglo-Indian widower in India.

Lola promptly seduces James & runs off with him. 9/

This is Lola's motif & modus operandi: she sees a man she wants or who is useful, she seduces him. She's good-looking, she's got endless confidence, she enjoys sex a lot, she's got an attractive personality, & she's effin *ruthless* in both the taking & the discarding of men. 10/

It wasn't about notches in the bedpost/marks on the crinoline for Lola. It was simply how she chose to get ahead. It was the early- and mid-Victorian centuries--opportunities for independent women were few. So she used the tools she had at hand to make her fortune. 11/

Plus, of course, there was the thrill of conquest and the joy of sex and the pleasure of being Lola Montez, who did what she wanted whenever she wanted.

We don't need to delve too deeply into her psychology--we wouldn't do that for a man who acted the way she did.
12/

So Lola & Thomas get married. He's recalled to India, and she goes with him. But, oops, he's boring, so she indulges herself. He objects, so she moves in with her mother in Calcutta. Which goes as well as you might expect, seeing as Lola left her husband & took her mom's man. 13/

Lola says F.A.Y. and leaves for London, possibly while down with a case of malaria. During the five month trip Lola snags a Lieutenant, and on arriving in London moves in with him. Scandal! Shock! Gossip!

Thomas James is told about this and files for a judicial separation.
14/

Unfortunately for Lola, the judicial separation is not a divorce and did not permit her to remarry--something no one told her about.

She's now twenty, and is a "ruined" woman--elopement with an older man, abandoned marriage, adultery, all widely chattered about in London. 15/

Usually Victorian women in this situation became governesses or a lady's companion. Lola decided to support herself as a dancer. She went to Spain, saw some notable dancers there, and modeled her dances on theirs.

In 1843 she returns to London as a brand new person. 16/

She's "Maria Dolores de Porris y Montez," the recent widow of a Spanish veteran of the Carlist civil war.

Almost immediately, she seduces the Earl of Malmesbury, who briefly becomes her patron, putting her up and funding her nascent dancing career. 17/

Her debut in June is a smashing success--she's not a good dancer, but she's got It, stage presence & personal magnetism, in abundance, plus her "Spanish dances" show a lot of leg, which the London audience enjoys.

She leaves the Earl that night. Unfortunately--8/

the next day letters appear in the Times denouncing her as Betty James, Thomas James' adulterous (and now fraudulent) wife.

The theater suspends her engagement, and she says F.A.Y. again and heads off to the Continent.
19/

She then meets & seduces Prince Heinrich LXXII of the German principality of Reuss. There's a scandal in Reuss over the Prince's behavior, so Lola dumps the Prince & leaves with the money & jewels he gave her--needless to say, she always got valuable gifts from her men. 20/

She goes to Berlin, drops Prince Heinrich's name, & secures a debut as a dancer there. After a few nights of dancing, she's famous, & uses her fame & Heinrich's name to secure an audience with King Frederick Wilhelm, who just so happens to be playing host to Czar NIcholas I. 21/

She beguiles the Czar into inviting her to Moscow. On the way, she stops in Warsaw, dances, charms the literary men and the journalists, and has time for a one-nighter with one of the journalists. He didn't take her hit-it-and-quit-it attitude well, though. 22/

A night or two later, she's giving one of her "footlight chats" (answering questions from the stage) when the surly journalist conquest starts beefing with her.

She, literally, pulls a dagger from her garter and cuts him across the face, and is held back from doing worse. 23/

The police hear about this, then the Russians do, and she leaves town a step ahead of the Russian occupiers. But she's got letters of introduction from the Czar, so she enters Russia and dances in Konigsberg, Riga, and St. Petersburg.

She has an evening with the Czar. But-- 24/

When she lets him know she's not interested in becoming his kept woman, he bars her from performing in Russia any further.

Franz Liszt (then a virtual rock star to Europeans) happens to be touring in Moscow at this time. She contrives a meeting with him and seduces him. 25/

She gets letters of introduction from him & dumps him. She goes to Paris and uses Liszt's letters to get a dancing engagement at no less than the Opera itself. The Parisians find her dances a little too risque, though, and--

Yes. The Parisians. Found her dances. Too risque. 26/

So the engagement at the Opera didn't last. But it's Paris, so she stays and charms a group of bohemian writers. Including Alexandre Dumas pere, who she seduces for the fun of it.

27/

So, to recap: she's as beautiful as any woman anyone can remember, has been across Europe, has seduced the equivalent of prime-of-life Sinatra or Bowie *and* the male equivalent of JK Rowling, and she's only 23.

Time to fall in love!
28/

The lucky man is Alexandre Henri Dujarier, editor of La Presse, a major Parisian newspaper. Lola & Alexandre have what's actually a pretty sweet romance & they arrange to travel to Spain to marry & honeymoon--her English marriage is irrelevant in France.

He dies in a duel. 29/

She's sad, but a girl's gotta live, so she goes on the road: Spa, Bonn, Baden-Baden (from which she had to leave in a hurry--another man who can't take being discarded), and then back to Paris, where she has to testify at the trial of the man who murdered her fiance. 30/

She's wearing very elegant lacy black mourning clothes and is a sensation with the press. Better still is her testimony. Asked about the duel that killed her husband, she said, "I should have been the duelist. I *would* have killed Beauvallon" (Alexandre's murderer).

31/

The trial over, she takes a new lover and took him on the road with her across the Low Countries and the German principalities. It's now fall of 1846, and her funds are a little low. Time for a big score.
32/

She goes to Munich, capital of Bavaria. The Bavarian king is Ludwig I, who despite being physically unattractive, sixty years old, hard of hearing, and a poetaster, had had a number of affairs with actresses. ("Shield his face with his money and he's suddenly handsome"). 33/

Lola is not able to get an engagement to dance in Munich, but she does secure a meeting with the King. He's immediately swept off his feet: "She danced a cachuca and a fandango and transmitted love rays from her gorgeous eyes to the king as she swooped and swayed." 34/

Ludwig is dead. D-e-d dead. He gives her a house and spends hundreds of thousands of vereinsthaler in fixing it up to her taste. He gives her a carriage. Whatever jewels she demands. Gobs of walking-around money.

35/

Abel, Ludwig's minister of the interior & chief advisor, hates Lola for a variety of reasons. He's ultraconservative and a devout Catholic. Lola is Lola, and pushes Ludwig to liberalize Bavaria. Abel uncovers Lola's past and tells Ludwig all about it. Ludwig doesn't care. 6/

Lola...well, she kinda sorta gets a little full of herself. She tells Ludwig who to hire and fire. She allows her mastiff to attack a horse drawing a brewer's cart, then starts hitting the brewer with her umbrella when he tries to defend his horses. 37/

The people and nobility of Bavaria *hate* her. So very, very much. And they aren't shy about letting Ludwig know.

His response: Make her nobility!
The government's response: Hell, no, she's not a Bavarian citizen.
Ludwig's response: fire the entire government.

38/

She gets Abel fired. The London & Paris press print stories of rebellious mobs in Munich and bring up the little matter of her first marriage and her true background. She writes letters to them saying, "I was born in Spain--you've confused me with someone else."

39/

On her 27th birthday, Ludwig makes her Countess of Landsfeld. She's made it to the virtual top, farther than any other adventuress had.

But it doesn't last. She's bored with Ludwig and has a few meaningless affairs, which she's intolerably (to Bavarians) open about. 40/

Between the people hating her and the conservative establishment hating the liberal ideas she's feeding Ludwig, she has no supporters other than the King, and when serious riots break out, she has no choice but to leave with all the jewels he gave her. Which was A LOT.

41/

(Sidenote: Some have claimed Lola for a political activist and responsible in a small part for one of the European revolutions of 1848. I doubt it. I think she had liberal leanings, but was more concerned with taking care of herself than in pushing an agenda).

She goes to Switzerland, where she runs up debts. She writes to poor besotted Ludwig, who pays the debts off and gives her still more money. She moves to London on his dime. A month later, she's married to a 21 year old infantryman of a wealthy family and good prospects. 43/

(whew, this is a long one, sorry)

The British press don't leave her alone. They bring up her first marriage, and the police arrest her for bigamy. Lola & the husband tour the Continent, but they fight a lot & separate for good in spring 1850.

Time to hit up Ludwig again! 44/

Lola begins writing a (frankly fantastic and totally embroidered) autobiography, which the Parisian papers gladly print & which the Parisian audience laps up.

Ludwig finally tells her, "I--I don't think I'm in love with you any more." So she does the honorable thing.

45/

She returns all his letters, which is what you did in the 19th century when you broke up with someone. Keep in mind that the letters he sent her were "astonishingly intimate," which is to say REALLY explicit about the sex they'd had.

He finally stops sending money in 1851. 46/

She's now 31, without any means of support. She has a very active social life (ahem ahem), but she needs to make money somehow. So she starts dancing again.

(Did I mention she was a non-stop chain-smoker? Dance & cigarettes usually don't go together, but she was Lola).

47/

She seduces James Gordon Bennett, editor/publisher of the New York Herald. She gets a contract for a world tour, and Bennett uses the Herald's publicity machine to promote her.

Christmas Day, 1851: her Broadway debut! $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

48/

The show is a smashing success, and she's rolling in money. The NY press start criticizing her personal & professional lives--she doesn't like sleeping alone, why is that so wrong?--so she adjusts the journalists' attitudes. When they lies, she calls them out in public. 49/

She does a tour of the eastern US (this is 1852, when the frontier was still the *frontier*). An admirer writes a play for her, an autobiographical docudrama called LOLA MONTEZ IN BAVARIA. She stars in it on Broadway and it becomes her stock in trade.

50/

This is an 1852 picture of her. It is the picture of a woman who really DGAF, who has no time for any of your nonsense, who smokes (shocking!) and is proud of it.

51/

By 1853 she's famous for being famous--the living legend Lola Montez. Only 33.

The only place left to conquer is California, so off she goes. On the ship ride to Cali she meets and seduces Patrick Hull, a gold miner-turned-journalist. A few weeks later, they were married. 52/

Boom-town San Francisco is starved for entertainment, as are Sacramento and the mining towns Lola dances in. She's a hit in all of them and became the subject of constant adulation. Her dances became more risque--oh, the miners loved that--and she & Patrick raked in the $$$.

53/

Take it as a given that she's having affairs wherever she goes, and extracting the maximum amount of money (in the form of gifts, of course) from the men she sees for the minimum amount of effort. This being the frontier, though, her husband took this somewhat amiss.

54/

Patrick--husband--used to be a Cleveland lawyer but went west to strike it rich. He'd been on the frontier for a few years & hardened up, as the frontier did to you back then.

So Patrick begins shooting Lola's swains, trying to discourage further affairs.

It doesn't work. 55/

The San Francisco press decides she's a bad woman and starts spreading negatives truths and lies about her. She says--I love this--"it can't be Americans who are so awful--Americans love me. Therefore it must be the Jesuits who are responsible for these lies about me."

56/

Lola had an enemies list as long as a yardarm, and wasn't above trotting out the Jesuits to distract her critics.

She tours California & gets married to Hull. He builds her a house in Grass Valley (NE of Sacramento), and when she's not touring they live there. 57/

When she's gone everywhere in California she can go, she and Patrick move to Grass Valley full-time. All along she's had a mastiff accompanying her--she loves animals--but now she adopts a pack. And cats, songbirds, a turkey, a pig, a pony, and goats and sheep. Also a bear. 58/

The bear (brown, I assume, though some sources say grizzly) (I couldn't discover the name of the bear) slept in the front yard of Lola's house. It acted as a deterrent for the many fans who pestered her and demanded that she dance for them.

59/

One night, while Patrick was away, a group of miners showed up with bad intentions. On stage she could always disarm men like that with her wit and dances. Alone in her house out in the wilderness...it could have been very bad for her.

But she's got a pet bear.

60/

I'll spare you the details. It went very badly for the miners.

Her relationship with Patrick eventually deteriorates--she wasn't made to be tied down by any man--and he becomes a nag. One night he tries to take it even farther than that.

61/

Lola being Lola, she's still carrying the (very sharp) knife in her garter. So she cuts her husband a couple of times--face and chest--and kicks him out of the house, then files for divorce.

Where to now? Australia, for another tour!

62/

Naturally, Fate chooses now to send her the second great love of her life, 32 year old actor Augustus Noel "Frank" Follin.

They have a good time of it--Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa, Australia. They make some good money. But the tour is turbulent, as was usually the case with Lola. 63/

In Sydney she's forced to fire her entire troupe. They respond by suing her. The process servers chase after Lola, but she WINS A FOOTRACE TO HER SHIP and sails out of Sydney harbor, leaving the lawyers at dockside, cursing and shaking their fists at the departing ship. 64/

She tours Melbourne, Geelong, Adelaide, Ballarat, and the Bendigo goldfield.

But the tour is hard on her--she's been a chain-smoker all along--and she gets into a fight with a whip-wielding Australian woman and gets the worse of it. (Whips trump garter-knives). 65/

So she and Frank call an end to the tour and decide to return to San Francisco.

Sadly, Frank falls overboard en route. It was a true accident, not something she arranged--she really loved Frank and wanted to be HEA with him. She is devastated. 66/

She settles her affairs in California, sells off her house & property & jewels (sending them to Follin's stepmother for the education of Follin's children from a previous marriage), and moves to NYC. After a little more dancing, she calls it quits--it's too hard for her now. 67/

She becomes a popular lecturer, on "Beautiful Women," "The Origin and Power of Rome," "Gallantry," and "Heroines of History." She writes three books in 1858, including THE ARTS OF BEAUTY (best-seller) and ANECDOTES OF LOVE (another best-seller). 68/

Now an in-demand lecturer, she tours Ireland (welcomed there as a long-lost daughter) and England ("the most demanding tour in a lifetime of touring"). She becomes a Spiritualist, and talks about God.

69/

Notably, during her religious talks she was always dressed soberly in her widow's blacks--an outfit Coco Chanel would later compliment. But Lola always kept her talking white cockatoo perched on her shoulder, and sometimes the cockatoo would "contribute wisdom" to the talks. 70/

(Couldn't discover the cockatoo's name. But Lola apparently thought the cockatoo was genuinely channeling God).

She lives happily with her childhood friends, the Buchanans, and has an active though quiet social life (she's done with men). It's a good time for her.

71/

In 1860 she has a stroke. While convalescing, her mother suddenly appears and begins haranguing her about how Lola should give her money back to the family that raised her.

Lola transfers everything to the Buchanans. 72/

She recovers and starts helping prostitutes at the New York Magdalen Shelter. But she catches pneumonia, and in January, 1861, aged 42, she died.

In Grass Valley Lola had taught the young Lotta Crabtree (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotta_Cra…) how to dance.

73/

Crabtree became the next generation of adventuress, just as Sarah Bernhardt would in time replace Crabtree. But they, despite being more talented performers, never achieved what Lola did, because...yes...wait for it...

whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

Thanks for reading! 74/fin

Ooof. What I *meant* to write was "when the legend is better than the truth, go with the legend." My fingers got away from me.