At the bar of God Lola Montez pleaded guilty. I, as her advocate in the court of Humanity, may enter another plea.
For half a century the world has taken this woman at her own last valuation, and dismissed her as a criminal and a sinner. The orthodox Christian reproaches her with unchastity, exaggerating, as is his wont, the gravity of this particular transgression of his code. He would have had her waste her glorious beauty, made to gladden the hearts of men, and refuse the rôle of woman which nature had assigned her—because, forsooth! a petty English tribunal would not set her free from a tie it should never have allowed her to contract. The law was made for man; the claims and instincts of womanhood must override the decrees of any Consistory Court. Lola Montez was pre-eminently and essentially a woman—specially fitted and charged, therefore, to bring the great happiness of love to men. This which was her glory the sexless moralist makes her reproach. For him the perfect woman is the most unhuman; he admires the woolless sheep and the scentless flower.
Hers was a capacity for immense passion, happiness, and power. She longed not only to charm men but to rule them. By the happiness she procured them, she enslaved them. She exploited their passions, it will be said; and since when have we ceased to exploit the weakness of woman? In the pursuit of power we use the instruments easiest to our hands, we attack our opponents’ most vulnerable points. This Lola did; this did every strong man of whom history has any record. Her qualities of mind, as evinced in the administration of Bavaria, were of a high order, and in a man would have commanded success; but men were dazzled by her beauty, and cried out to be influenced by that alone. We esteem in our own sex the faculties by which we are helped, led, and ruled; in the other, we prate of chastity, and value only that which ministers to our vanity, comfort, and sensuality. Women must be human in just so far as may conform to our individual needs. When we prize intellectual worth in women as highly as physical beauty, it will be time to protest against the methods of Lola Montez.
She subdued men by their passions, but she ruled them well. She challenged history to adduce a case where a woman had wielded so much power so wisely and so disinterestedly. She was no Pompadour or Du Barry to whom the scurrile De Mirecourt compared her. Guilty at moments, as we all are, of derelictions from her principles, she was throughout life a lover of liberty in thought, word, and deed. When Europe lay under the feet of Metternich and the Ultramontanes, she, almost single-handed, struck a blow for freedom. The wiles of the cleverest intriguers in Europe proved powerless against her bold policy. At scheming she was no adept, trusting, as the strong will ever trust, to her force and personality to defeat the manœuvres of her foes. Had Louis of Bavaria not bowed before the storm, she and his kingdom would have played a great part in European history. As it was, to her intervention Switzerland partly owes the freedom of her institutions from clerical control. The terms in which she speaks of that country and of the United States, though purposely exaggerated, display her profound sympathy with the principles of democracy. Setting aside the qualities of the woman, let us gratefully acknowledge that Lola Montez, on a small stage and for a brief period, proved herself an able and humane administratrix and a staunch friend to liberty. In her we have another of the many instances of capacity for government as the concomitant of an intensely feminine temperament.
She was valiant as an antique worthy. She was never at an end of her resources, never unnerved by catastrophe. Disaster after disaster left unexhausted her marvellous powers of recuperation. She could adapt herself to all men and all circumstances. She was at home in the courts of emperors and kings, in the salons of the learned, in the backwoods of California, in the mining camps of Australia, in the conventicles of New York. To the life of a recluse in a primeval wilderness she adapted herself as readily as to a London drawing-room. She was eloquent in many tongues, witty and light-hearted, adding to the world’s gaiety. She was kindly and compassionate, cherishing dogs, and all four-footed things, visiting the sick and the afflicted, saying a kind word for the despised coolies of India. Her money she showered with reckless generosity on all who stood in need. Her excellences were her own; her faults lie at the door of society.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
The files of the following newspapers: Times, Morning Herald, Era, Illustrated London News; Le Constitutionnel, Le Figaro, Le Journal des Debats; New York Tribune; Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Argus.