IV
Lola certainly made the running. Five days after she first met him, Ludwig summoned all the officials of the Court, and astonished (and shocked) them by introducing her with the remark: "Gentlemen, I have the honour to present to you my best friend. See to it that you accord her every possible respect." He also compelled his long suffering spouse to admit her to the Order of the Chanoines of St. Thérèse, a distinction for which—considering her somewhat lurid "past"—this new recipient was scarcely eligible.
When he heard that instructions had been issued for paying special compliments to her, Mr. Punch registered severe disapproval.
"It is a good joke," he remarked, "to call upon others to uphold the dignity of one who is always at some freak or other to lower herself."
When she first sailed in dramatic fashion into the orbit of Bavaria's sovereign, Lola Montez was just twenty-seven. In the full noontide of her beauty and allurement, she was well equipped with what the modern jargon calls sex-appeal. Big-bosomed and with generously swelling curves, "her form," says Eduard Fuchs, "was provocation incarnate." Fuchs, who was an expert on the subject of feminine attractions, knew what he was talking about. "Shameless and impudent," adds Heinrich von Treitschke, "and as insatiable in her voluptuous desires as Sempronia, she could converse with charm among friends; manage mettlesome horses; sing in thrilling fashion; and recite amorous poems in Spanish. The King, an admirer of feminine beauty, yielded to her magic. It was as if she had given him a love philtre. For her he forgot himself; he forgot the world; and he even forgot his royal dignity."
The fact that Lola always wore a Byronic collar helped the theory, held by many, that she was a daughter of the poet. But her real reason for adopting the style was that she had a lovely neck, and this set it off to the best advantage. She studied the art of dress and gave it an immense amount of care. Where this matter was concerned, no trouble or care was too much. Her favourite material was velvet, which she considered—and quite justifiably—to exercise an erotic effect on men of a certain age. She was insistent, too, that the contours of her figure ("her quivering thighs and all the demesnes adjacent thereto") should be clearly revealed, and in a distinctly provocative fashion. This, of course, was not far removed from exhibitionism. As a result, bourgeois opinion was outraged. The wives of the petty officials shopping in the Marienplatz shuddered, and clutched their ample skirts when they saw her; anxious mothers instructed dumpy Fräuleins "not to look like the foreign woman." There is no authoritative record that any of them did so.
CHAPTER VIII
LUDWIG THE LOVER
I
ola Montez had done better than "hook a prince." A lot better. She had now "hooked" a sovereign. Her ripe warm beauty sent the thin blood coursing afresh through Ludwig's sluggish veins. There it wrought a miracle. He was turned sixty, but he felt sixteen.
The conversation of Robert Burns is said to have "swept a duchess off her feet." Perhaps it did. But that of Lola Montez had a similar effect on a monarch. Under the magic of her spell, this one became rejuvenated. The years were stripped from him; he was once more a boy. With his charmer beside him, he would wander through the Nymphenburg Woods and under the elms in the Englischer Garten, telling her of his dreams and fancies. His passion for Greece was forgotten. Pericles was now Romeo.
In dem Suden ist die Liebe,
Da ist Licht und da ist Glut!
that is,
In the south there is love,
There is light and there is heat,
sang Ludwig.
Yet Lola Montez was not by any means the first who ever burst into the responsive heart of Ludwig I. She had many predecessors there. One of them was an Italian syren. But that Lola soon ousted her is clear from a poetical effort of which the royal troubadour was delivered. This begins:
Tropfen der Seligkeit und ein Meer von bitteren Leiden
Die Italienerin gab—Seligkeit, Seligkeit nur
Lässest Du mich entzündend, begeistert, befändig empfinden,
In der Spanierin fand Liebe und Leben ich nur!
A free rendering of this passionate heart throb would read very much as follows:
Drops of bliss and a sea of bitter sorrow
The Italian woman gave me. Bliss, only bliss,
Thou gav'st my enraptured heart and soul and spirit.
In the Spanish woman alone have I found Love and Life!
Ludwig had a prettier name for his inamorata than the "feminine devil" of Henry LXXII of Reuss. He called her the "Lovely Andalusian" and the "Woman of Spain." She also inspired him to fresh poetic flights. One of these ran:
Thine eyes are blue as heavenly vaults
Touched by the balmy air;
And like the raven's plumage is
Thy dark and glistening hair!
There were several more verses.
A feature of the Residenz Palace was a collection of old masters. Wanting to add a young mistress, Ludwig allotted a place of honour among them to a portrait of Lola Montez, from the brush of Josef Stieler. The work was well done, for the artist was inspired by his subject; and he painted her wearing a costume of black velvet, with a touch of colour added by red carnations in her head-dress.
Ludwig's heart being large, Die Schönheitengalerie (as the "Gallery of Beauties" was called) filled two separate rooms. The one qualification for securing a niche on the walls being a pretty face, the collection included the Princess Alexandra of Bavaria (daughter of the King of Greece), the Archduchess Sophie of Austria, and the Baroness de Krüdener (catalogued as the "spiritual sister" of the Czar Alexander I), a popular actress, Charlotte Hagen, a ballet-dancer, Antoinette Wallinger, and the daughters of the Court butcher and the municipal town-crier. To these were added a quartet of Englishwomen, in Lady Milbanke (the wife of the British Minister), Lady Ellenborough, Lady Jane Erskine, and Lady Teresa Spence. It was to this gallery that Ludwig was accustomed to retire for a couple of hours every evening, to "meditate" on the charms of its occupants. Being, however, possessed of generous instincts, and always ready (within limits) to share his good things, the public were admitted on Sunday afternoons.
Supper-Party at Les Frères Provençaux. First act in a Tragedy
But Ludwig could scratch, as well as purr. On one occasion he chanced to meet a lady who had figured among the occupants of the Schönheiten. She was considerably past the first flush of youth, and Ludwig, exercising his prerogative, affected not to remember her.
"But, Sire," she protested, "I used to be in your gallery."
"That, madame," was the response, "must have been a very long time ago. You would certainly not be there now."