IV
Misrepresented as she had been in her life, Lola Montez was even more misrepresented after her death. The breath was scarcely out of her body, when a flood of cowardly scurrilities was poured from the gutter press. Her good deeds were forgotten; only her derelictions were remembered.
One such obituary notice began:
"A woman who, in the full light of the nineteenth century, renewed all the scandals that disgraced the Middle Ages, and, with an audacity that is almost unparalleled, seated herself upon the steps of a throne, is worthy of mention; if only to show to what extent vice can sometimes triumph, and to what a fall it can eventually come."
Grave of Lola Montez, in Green-wood Cemetery, New York
(Photo by Miss Ida U. Mellen, New York)
An editorial, which was published in one of the New York papers, contained some odd passages:
"Among the most ardent admirers of Lola Montez was a young Scotsman, a member of the illustrious house of Lennox, who was with difficulty restrained by his family from offering her his hand. In London the deceased led a gay life, being courted by the Earl of Malmesbury and other distinguished noblemen. Wherever she went, she was the observed of all observers, conquering the hearts of men of all countries by her beauty and blandishments, and their admiration by her unflinching independence of character and superior intellectual endowments."
The death of Lola Montez did not pass without comment in England. The Athenæum necrologist accorded her half a column of obituary, in which she was described as "this pretty, picaroon woman, whose name can never be omitted from any chronicle of Bavaria."
A Grub Street hack, employed by the curiously named Gentleman's Magazine, slung together a column of abuse and lies, founded on tap-room gossip:
"When not yet sixteen, she ran away from a school near Cork with a young officer of the Bengal Army, Lieutenant Gilbert (sic), who married her and took her to India. In consequence of her bad conduct there, he was soon obliged to send her back to Europe. She first tried the stage as a profession, but, failing at it, she eventually adopted a career of infamy."
A writer in Temple Bar has endeavoured, and, on the whole, with fair measure of success, to preserve the balance:
"With more of the good and more of the evil in her composition than in that of most of her sisters, Lola Montez made a wreck of her life by giving reins to the latter; and she stands out as a prominent example of the impossibility of a woman breaking away from the responsibilities of her sex with any permanent gain, either to herself or to society. Her passionate, enthusiastic and loving nature was her strength which, by fascinating all who came into contact with her, was also her weakness."
Cameron Rogers, writing on "Gay and Gallant Ladies," sums up the career of Lola Montez in deft fashion:
"Thus passed one who has been called the Cleopatra and the Aspasia of the nineteenth century. A very gallant and courageous lady, certainly; and, though she used her beauty and her mind not in accordance with the Decalogue, yet worthy to be remembered as much for the excellent vigour of the latter as for the perfection of the former. Individual damnation or salvation in such a case as hers are matters of strict opinion; but for Lola's brief to the last judgment there is an ancient tag that might never be more aptly appended. Like the moral of her life, it is exceedingly trite—Quia multum amavit."
This is well put.