Lola Montez:
Last century’s
femme fatale

IN Schloss Nymphenburg, on the outskirts of Munich, is a room known as the Hall of Beauties. The walls of this chamber are covered with the portraits of a hundred beautiful women, all, reputedly, the mistresses of King Ludwig I. Few of the ladies are named; my copy of Fodor’s identified only Lola Montez, who eventually cost the king his throne. She, unlike the others, is simply dressed in a dark, high-necked, dress, with a small lace collar. A lace mantilla, frames her dark hair, and the only concession to vanity is a small brooch below her collar and flowers in her hair. She looks more like a Sunday school teacher than a femme fatale. Only her flashing Andalusian eyes mark her out as someone extraordinary.

And Maria Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert was certainly remarkable. Her story is a fascinating account of a woman’s attempts to live independently in a world dominated by men. She had tremendous spirit and determination, and her adventures were destined to take her all over the world. And, interestingly enough, she had strong links with India, the happiest days of her early life being spent in this country.

Her father, Edward Gilbert, a simple Irish soldier in the British service, obtained his Ensign’s commission fighting the French in Spain. Her mother was from a decayed Spanish family, the counts of Montalvo, and had eloped from a convent to marry her husband. After the war Gilbert’s regiment returned to Ireland, where Lola was born. But her father was poor, and in the hope of improving his fortune, he managed a transfer to a regiment bound for India.

Within two years of arriving in India, Ensign Gilbert was carried off by cholera while posted at Danapur, Bihar, leaving behind his beautiful widow and a six-year-old daughter, known as ‘Lola’ — the affectionate diminutive deriving from Dolores, one of the several Christian names of the little girl. Appropriately enough, in view of her later life, the word signifies sorrow.

For a beautiful woman, finding a second husband was not difficult in India, and Mrs Gilbert soon remarried. Lola’s stepfather came of better family than poor Gilbert, and two years later little Lola was sent to his parents in Montrose, Scotland, for education.

Ten years later her mother came to take her back to India. Taking her daughter’s consent for granted, she had rashly promised her in marriage to Sir Abraham Lumley, a 60-year-old judge. Lola was horrified, and since her mother refused to take no for an answer, she eloped with Lieutenant Thomas James, a young officer whom her mother had befriended on the voyage home, and who had since been squiring her around. James too was Irish and as impecunious as her late father, and after their marriage the lovers returned toIndia.

In India, Lola’s youth and beauty singled her out for special attention. Lord Auckland was then the Governor-General, and she finds mention in the letters of his sister, Emily Eden. Her charm and beauty made quite an impression on the ageing spinster. They met in Simla, and again at Karnal, where Emily presented her with a pink silk gown. Emily observed reflectingly, "She is very pretty and a good little thing apparently, but they are very poor... and she is very young and lively, and if she falls into bad hands she would soon laugh herself into foolish scrapes.... At present the husband and wife are very fond of each other, but a girl who marries at fifteen hardly knows what she likes". Prescient words indeed, even though she underestimated the age of our heroine.

The days spent in the company of the Edens were probably her happiest in India. In Karnal, her feckless husband started an intrigue with a married lady, and the two eloped to the Nilgiris, 1500 miles away. Lola returned crest-fallen to her mother in Calcutta, who after consultation with her husband, decided to send her back to England.

In London, wanting to live an independent life, she refused to accompany her stepfather’s relative, who had come to receive her, back to dull, conventional, and Calvinist Montrose. For a time she was associated with a shadowy Mr Lennox. Adultery was then the only easy ground for divorce, and Lennox came handy for that purpose. James, back in India, was informed of her conduct, and divorce proceedings were instituted. She did not contest and his prayer was granted, but unknown to her, the order merely amounted to a judicial separation. After the ‘divorce’ Lennox disappears from the scene.

She tried acting, but, realising that her talent was limited, she switched over to dancing. On June 3, 1843, she made her debut as ‘Lola Montez of the Teatro Real, Seville’, dancing an Andalusian dance between two acts of Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Seville. She started well but soon a very audible voice was heard exclaiming, "Why, it’s Betty James". The voice was that of Lord Ranelagh, a local rake whose ‘protection’ she had spurned. He now had his revenge; at his instance his cronies started hissing, and even though the review was good, her first appearance on the London stage proved to be her last.

She crossed over to Brussels where she fell in with a German gentleman who persuaded her to accompany him to Warsaw where she was an instant success. But when she rejected the amorous proposals of Prince Paskievich, the brutal governor of Russian Poland, her contract with the opera was abruptly terminated. A warrant was issued, but she managed to hold at bay, with a loaded pistol, behind barricaded doors, the policemen sent to arrest her, until the French consul came to her rescue. Claiming her to be a French subject, he had her bundled out of Warsaw.

In Berlin, she became famous for striking a Prussian policemen with a whip. At Dresden, she had an affair with Franz Liszt, and broke up the latter’s long standing relationship with the beautiful Comtesse d’Agoult. But Lola was unable to forge lasting relationships, and soon, in March, 1844, we find her in Paris. Her debut on the French stage, like her London appearance, was a failure, but it gave her an entry into artistic and intellectual circles. The elder Dumas was her admirer. A long-term arrangement with a prince was what she wanted, so she turned her face once again towards Germany with its innumerable princes. At Baden-Baden she ran into the Prince of Orange whom she had met last in Simla, and became briefly the mistress of Prince Henry of Reuss. But finding the latter insufferably pompous she soon left him. Ultimately she reached Munich, the seat of Ludwig, an ageing voluptuary, and a lover of Italy.

Having failed to persuade the Director of the Court Opera to give her a contract, Lola applied for an audience with the king. The story is narrated, how Ludwig, glancing at her magnificent bust, wondered aloud whether such charms could be of nature’s making, whereupon the lady, there and then ripping up her corsage, dispelled his doubts. It was truly a case of, veni,vidi, vici. "I know not how — I am bewitched", the king frankly confessed to one of his ministers.

Of course, Lola got her contract and danced her ‘Spanish’ numbers to the applause of the entire Court. But more, she became the constant companion of the king. If she had been content with merely being his mistress, it might not have mattered, but her spirited nature led her into politics, which raised enemies against her. Titles were showered on her, that of Contess of Landsfeld and Baroness Rosenthal, and the queen made her a Canoness of the most noble order of St Theresa. At the same time a large estate was bestowed on her, besides a beautiful town-house, built under her directions.

Not everyone assumed that the relationship between the sexagenarian monarch and his favourite was necessarily carnal. But revolution was in the air that year in Europe; the barricades would soon go up and the established order challenged in practically every state in Europe. In Munich, however, it would be led by the forces of reaction, with Jesuits and conservatives to the fore, and Lola Montez, as a foreigner on whom the king was squandering large sums, was a convenient handle for the opposition. It began with a clash between two student clubs, one of which was dominated by the clerical party, while the other was ‘liberal’, or rather, pro-Lola, having been sponsored by her. The king capitulated to the demands of the former and Lola was expelled from the country. But this won Ludwig only a brief respite. A few weeks later, he was forced to abdicate.

Lola was again homeless. After a brief stay in Berne as the guest of the English diplomat Robert Peel (son of the former prime minister), she returned to England, travelling by the same boat as Prince Metternich, also a refugee from Austria. She took lodgings in Mayfair, London, and soon got married to an officer in the Second Life Guards the son of a prosperous barrister with an independent income. But an aunt of the young man, felt duty-bound to inform the courts that the Countess of Landsfeld was guilty of bigamy, and the young lovers fled to Europe to avoid prosecution.

Thereafter Lola’s life was that of a wanderer. Her marriage soon fell apart, and feeling that she had exhausted the possibilities of the Old World, she decided to try her luck in America. It wasn’t easy at first, and at one time she was reduced to giving receptions where anyone could, for a dollar, shake the hand of the Countess of Landsfeld and converse with her for the space of half an hour, in any of the four languages in which she was fluent. She had a moderate success on the New York stage, appearing in several musicals, one of which, Lola Montez in Bavaria, was specially written for her. From New York she travelled to California, then in the grips of a gold-rush, and quickly ran through two husbands before settling down in a mining town with a host of pet animals. But a malign fate was pursuing her and her little homestead was burnt down. After this she set off for Australia.

She appeared in a number of light plays and musicals in the Sidney and Melbourne theatres, but her past always managed to catch up with her. At Ballarat there occurred the famous encounter with Seekamp, a local journalist who had written a particularly nasty article painting her in the most lurid colours. Learning that the journalist happened to be in the foyer of her hotel, she ran downstairs with a riding whip, and laid it across his back with right good will. Seekamp defended himself lustily. Before long the combatants had each other literally by the hair. Bystanders interposed, and the two were separated, but not before revolvers had been drawn. That night, at the theatre, the miners of Ballarat gave her a splendid ovation.

She returned to the USA in 1857. About this time she appears to have undergone a religious experience. She decided to give up acting and took to lecturing. Her talks were popular and some of them were published in book form as well. In 1858, she undertook a remarkably successful lecture tour of Britain. Crowds flocked to listen, half expecting to find an Amazon with a bulldog by her side, pistols in her girdle and a horse-whip in the hand. They were surprised to find a good-looking lady in the bloom of womanhood, attired in a plain black dress, with easy, unrestrained manners, and speaking earnestly and distinctly; a born again Christian.

Her life was running out. Soon after she contracted tuberculosis. A friend from her childhood days in Montrose, Mrs Buchanan, whom she had discovered accidentally in New York, nursed her through this last and fatal illness. The end came on January 17, 1861. She was only 43. Her grave which lies in Greenwood cemetery bears the simple inscription: "Mrs Eliza Gilbert, born 1818, died 1861."

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The other face of Sanghol

By Tirthankar Bhattacharya

SANGHOL in Ludhiana district of Punjab is a major archeological site of India. Its importance lies not merely in the antiquarian relics discovered from the excavated remnants, but also because like Rupnagar (Ropar district) and Dholvaha (Hoshiarpur district), Sanghol had yielded a good harvest of sculptures. These objects of art are of immense historical importance. The discovery of the ruins of a huge Buddhist Stupa, and 117 pieces of beautifully executed stone sculptures from Sanghol has disproved the notion that Punjab did not have a major role in the development of ancient Indian arts. In fact, in the light of the discoveries of architectural remnants, stone and clay sculptures, coins, seals and sealings from Sanghol, art historians have already reversed their earlier views about Punjab’s contribution to the cultural history of the country, and Sanghol has been identified as the then flourishing centre of Buddhist art.

The remnants of the Stupa and the stone sculptures discovered near Sanghol have been the focus of attention of scholars and common people. Since some of these stone sculptures were displayed at an exhibition abroad put up in connection with the Festival of India, Sanghol’s fame has mostly been woven around these treasures. Scholars too have mostly written on the stylistic and iconographic merits of these sculptures. Not much attention has been paid to the many other treasures found from Sanghol.

Hundreds of baked clay and terracotta figurines have been discovered from Sanghol. Some of them have been casually noticed by some scholars in stray articles. But they deserve an exclusive treatment in a comprehensive way. These objects of art are very rich in variety and creative expression.

Most of these terracotta figurines seem to have been primarily meant for ritualistic rites performed by women. Some of them perhaps were used by children as toys. A few might have served the purpose of decorating walls and niches. The technique of making these terracotta figurines seems to be the same as that followed in other ancient Indian sites.

The terracotta figurines from Sanghol can be broadly classified under three heads: the primitive types of the timeless variety; the time-bound types representing characters and showing changes in taste; and the cult figurines following canonical prescriptions. Of course, there can also be a miscellaneous category to accommodate those which cannot be brought under any of the three classifications.

The first category represents human, animal and avian figures. The human figures of this category mostly belong to the "star type". In the animal representations, the bull predominates, both numerically and in variety. The dog as a domestic pet is also seen.

The second category consists mostly of human busts. The changing taste of the artists is reflected in the preferred variety of the form as also in the deviation from the stereotype. The forms seem to assume the meaning of characters. However, they do not seem to be ‘portraits’ in the true sense. These figurines seem to represent characters which form a crowd, rather than ‘personalities’ that stand out. Foreign characters wearing European hats have also been found.

In the third category, there are numerous figures which are difficult to identify. Many of their features are missing due to abrasion. Thus, their iconographical identity cannot be established. However, two figures stand out with distinct characteristics. A standing male figure holding a spear and a cock in his hands is indisputably that of Skanda-Kartikeya. Another male figure holding a flute near the mouth is likely to be the representation of Krishna as Venugopala.

The terracotta art of Sanghol truly mirrors the picture of the folk traditions of ancient Punjab.