II
When, at the suggestion of Baron Maltitz (a Homburg acquaintance who had suggested that she should "try her luck in Munich"), Lola set off for Bavaria, that country was ruled by Ludwig I. A god-child of Marie-Antoinette, and the son of Prince Max Joseph of Zweibrucken and Princess Augusta of Hesse-Darmstadt, he was born at Salzburg in 1786 and had succeeded his father in 1825. As a young man, he had served with the Bavarian troops under Napoleon, and detesting the experience, had conceived a hatred of everything military. This hatred was so strongly developed that he would not permit his sons to wear uniform. Under his regime the military estimates were cut down to the bone. The army, he said, was a "waste of money," and he grudged every pfennig it cost the annual budget. He did his best to abolish conscription, but had to abandon the effort. For all, too, that he was a god-son of Marie-Antoinette, he had no love for France.
Porte St. Martin Theatre, Paris, where Lola was a "flop"
Ludwig's sister, Louisa, exchanging her religion for a consort's crown, was the wife of the Czar Alexander I; and he himself was married to the Princess Theresa of Saxe-Hildburghausen, a lady described as "plain, but exemplary." Still, so far as personal appearance goes, Ludwig himself was no Adonis. Nestitz, indeed, has pictured him as "having a toothless jaw and an expressionless countenance." But his consort did her duty; and, at approved intervals, presented him with a quiverful of four sons and three daughters. Of his sons, one of them, Otto, was, as a lad of sixteen, selected by the Congress of London to be King of Greece, much to the fury of the Czar Nicholas, who held that this was a cunning, if diplomatic, attempt to set up a Byzantine empire among the Hellenes. "Were I," he said in a despatch on the subject, "to give my countenance to such a step, I should nullify myself in the eyes of my Church." Nesselrode, however, was of another opinion. "It is unbecoming," he was daring enough to inform his master, "for the Emperor of Russia to question a step upon which the Greeks themselves are not in entire accord." A remarkable utterance. Politicians had gone to Siberia for less. Palmerston, too, had his way, and Otto, escorted by a warship, left his fatherland. On arriving in Athens, the joy-bells rang out and the columns of the Parthenon were flood-lit. But the choice was not to the popular taste; and it was not long before Otto was extinguished, as well as the lights. By the irony of fate, he returned to Munich on the very day that Ludwig had erected a Doric arch to commemorate the activities of the House of Wittelsbach in securing the Liberation of Greece.
Despite this untoward happening, Ludwig remained an ardent Phil-Hellene; and, as such, conceived the idea of converting his capital into a mixture of Athens and Florence and a metropolis of all the arts. Under his fostering care, Munich was brought to bed of a succession of temples and columns, and sprouted pillars and porticoes in every direction. The slums and alleys and huddle of houses in the old enceinte were swept away, and replaced by broad boulevards, fringed with museums and churches and picture galleries. For many of the principal public buildings he went to good models. Thus, one of them, the Königsbau, was copied from the Pitti Palace; a second from the Loggia de' Lanzi; and a third from St. Paul's at Rome. He also built a Walhalla, at Ratisbon, in which to preserve the effigies of his more distinguished countrymen. Yet, although it ran to size, there was no niche in it for Luther.
In his patronage of the fine arts, Ludwig followed in the footsteps of the Medici. During his regime, he did much to raise the standard of taste among his subjects. Martin Wagner and von Hallerstein were commissioned by him to travel in Greece and Italy and secure choice sculpture and pictures for his galleries and museums. The best of them found a home in the Glyptothek and the Pinakothek, two enormous buildings in the Doric style, the cost of which he met from his privy purse. Another of his hobbies was to play the Maecenas; and any budding author or artist who came to him with a manuscript in his pocket or a canvas under his arm was certain of a welcome.
We all have our little weaknesses. That of Ludwig of Bavaria was that he was a poet. He was so sure of this that he not only produced yards of turgid verse, defying every law of construction and metre, but he even had some of it printed. A volume of selections from his Muse, entitled Walhalla's Genossen, was published for him by Baron Cotta, and, like the Indian shawls of Queen Victoria, did regular duty as a wedding-gift. One effort was dedicated "To Myself as King," and another "To my Sister, the Empress of Austria"; and a number of choice extracts were translated and appeared in an English guide-book.
Ignoring the divinity that should have hedged their author, Heine was very caustic about this royal assault upon Parnassus. Ludwig riposted by banishing him from the capital. Still, if he disapproved of this one, he added to his library the output of other bards, not necessarily German. But, while Browning was there, Tennyson had no place on his shelves. One, however, was found for Martin Tupper.
Ludwig cultivated friendly relations with England, and did all he could (within limits) to promote an entente. Thus, on the occasion of a chance visit to Munich by Lord Combermere, he "sent the distinguished traveller a message to the effect that a horse and saddlery, with aide-de-camp complete, were at his service." His companion, however, a member of the Foreign Office Staff, who had forgotten to pack his uniform—or in John Bull fashion had declined to do so—did not fare so well, since his name was struck off the list of "eligibles" to attend the palace functions. Thereupon, says Lord Combermere, he "wrote an angry letter to the chamberlain, commenting on the absurdity of the restriction."
But Ludwig's opinion of diplomatists was also somewhat unflattering, for, of a certain embassy visited by him on his travels, he wrote:
"A Theatre once—and now an Ambassador's dwelling.
Still, thou are what thou wast—the abode of deception."
A strange mixture of Henry IV and Haroun-al-Raschid, Ludwig of Bavaria was a man of contradictions. At one moment he was lavishly generous; at another, incredibly mean. He could be an autocrat to his finger tips, and insist on the observance of the most minute points of etiquette; and he could also be as democratic as anybody who ever waved a red flag. Thus, he would often walk through the streets as a private citizen, and without an escort. Yet, when he did so, he insisted on being recognised and having compliments paid him. The traffic had to be held up and hats doffed at his approach.
Nowadays, he would probably have been clapped into a museum as a curiosity.
Such, then, was the monarch whose path was to be crossed, with historic and unexpected consequences to each of them, by Lola Montez.