Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld (1821-61), known to the world as Lola Montez ‘the Spanish dancer’ was a celebrated courted & mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria.
A thread
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A thread
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Knowing the exact details of Lola’s life is difficult because she was a master manipulator of her own image & spun lies to appeal to the public. For one thing, she wasn’t Spanish - she was born in County Sligo in Ireland - though she later told people she was born in Limerick.
She was born Elizabeth ‘Eliza’ Rosanna Gilbert. Her father was a British army officer, and her mother, Eliza, was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Irishman — not a Spanish nobleman, as Lola liked to let people think.
Her father died while stationed in India & her mother sent Eliza back to England to go to school. The teenage quickly gained a reputation as a trouble maker. One biography wrote that an “eccentricity in her manners served to make her an object of curiosity and remark.”
Her mother tried to marry her off to a 60yo rich man in India, instead Eliza eloped with Lieutenant Thomas James in 1837, at the age of 16. Within 6yrs, the marriage has fizzled our & Eliza found herself alone in London.
In 1843, she took the name Lola Montez and took to the stage as the ‘Spanish Dancer’. Her autobiography recalled this as a huge success, but the truth was that her phoney Spaniard routine wasn’t well received & she left for Germany & then on the Paris.
Despite a disappointing Parisian debut in Fromental Halévy's opera Le lazzarone, Lola began to mix with Parisian bohemian society & became a famous Courtesan & mistress to many wealthy men. In 1846, Lola moved to Munich where she became mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria.
Apparently, the King pointed to her breasts & asked “Nature or art?”Montez responded by cutting open her dress “to reveal Nature’s endowment.” This almost certainly false but to say their relationship was steamy is something of an understatement
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This is one of his love letters to Lola.
It seems her also had a thing about feet, writing “I take your feet into my mouth, where I have never had any others, that would be repugnant to me, but with you, it is just the opposite.”
It seems her also had a thing about feet, writing “I take your feet into my mouth, where I have never had any others, that would be repugnant to me, but with you, it is just the opposite.”
Unfortunately, not everyone loved Lola as much as the King. He was so enamoured of her, she was able to influence many of his policies & wielded enormous political power. The Bavarian cabinet became known as the “Lolaministerium”.
Under her influence the King brought in many liberal and anti-Jesuit governmental policies, which stirred up a rebellion in 1848. The king was forced to abdicate & Lola fled the country.
A year later Lola was in London, where she married Lieutenant George Heald. Although Lola has never divorced her first husband, they enjoyed a brief relationship before he died in a downing accident.
She then set off for America in 1851, where she debuted her infamous Spider Dance where she lifted her dress “so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing at all.” She became a tabloid sensation.
She married again - this time to Patrick Hull, a local newspaperman. This didn’t last long and soon Lola was off to Australia to tour her spider dance where she was reviewed as “utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality”.
She earned further notoriety in Ballarat when, after reading a bad review of her performance in The Ballarat Times, she attacked the editor, Henry Seekamp, with a whip
Lola settled in New York City after her tour of Australia (1855–56) where she started writing & became a lecturer on such topics as fashion, gallantry, and beautiful women.
In 1858, She published 'The Arts of Beauty' in 1858. The book contains all her beauty secrets, including sleeping in 'masks of raw beef, to prevent wrinkles.”
By 1860, Lola was showing the tertiary effects of syphilis and she died at the age of just 40. She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, where her tombstone simply states: "Mrs. Eliza Gilbert / Died 17 January 1861”
The dedication to her “Arts of Beauty” reads “To all men & women...who are not afraid of themselves, who trust so much in their own souls that they dare to stand up in the might of their own individuality to meet the tidal currents of the world”
It’s said that Lola was Lola Montez was the inspiration for the character Irene Adler in Arthur Conan Doyle's “A Scandal in Bohemia”
