‘The most scandalous woman in the world’
That’s how Sligo woman Lola Montez was once described. This month marks the 200th anniversary the birth in Grange of the woman who was to go on to achieve worldwide notoriety. John Bromley looks at her infamous life and exploits
FOR MANY PEOPLE in Sligo, Lola Montez is the name of the nightclub in Sligo town formerly known as Toffs. Most will not know much about the woman herself but given her life a nightclub is probably a fitting commemoration.
Born in Grange, she went to shock audiences of the time with what was decribed as her “exotic” dancing but she gained even more notoriety with her liasons with many men including some well known people, such as King Ludwig of Bavaria (where it’s claimed she played a part in provoking a revolution), composer Franz Lizst and allegedly with the father of Alexandre Dumas, author of the Three Musketeers, as well as her involvement in a bigamist marriage.
She travelled Europe, as well as performing in Australia and the United States, while her exploits included horse whiping critics and audience members who got to close.
She has been the subject of several books and films, including one in1955 featuring Peter Ustinov, which although a flop at the time has since achieved a certain cult status.
Over the years there were many stories and theories put forward about her origins. Various biographers had her born in Spain, Switzerland, Cuba, India, Turkey and England among other places.
Her parents were given both high and low status, with suggestions including that her mother was a Spanish gypsy or a Scottish washerwoman and her father an Indian prince or the poet Lord Byron. However, it appears to be more or less accepted now that she was born in Grange.
Lola Montez was a stage name she adopted. Her real name was Eliza Rosanna Gilbert and her mother Elizabeth (known as Eliza) Oliver, was a member of a prominent Anglo-Irish family.
Her maternal grandfather Charles Silver Oliver was a former High Sheriff of Cork and member of Parliament for Kilmallock in County Limerick. It was that fact that led to the mistaken belief for many years that Lola Montez was born in Limerick. Indeed, she herself claimed that was where she was born because she was mistaken as to the date of her birth, thinking that it was June 23, 1818.
However, her baptismal certificate came to light in the late 1990s and showed she was definitely born in Grange on February 17, 1821.
Her father Edward Gilbert was an officer in the British army, who had met Lola’s mother in Limerick and they married in April 1820.
However, his regiment had moved to Sligo and he and his wife were living in Grange at the time his daughter was born.
It is thought that the officers’ houses in Grange were around where the antiques shop is now on the left-hand side as one heads out of the village towards Bundoran.
The Gilbert family then moved to live in King House in Boyle and in 1823 they made the long journey to India where Edward Gilbert had been posted.
However, the unfortunate Gilbert died of cholera on arrival. Lola’s mother then remarried, to a Scotsman.
The young Eliza proved to be a bit of a wild child and she was sent to back to school, first in Scotland and then in England.
Her mother returned from India when Lola was 16 and tried to marry her off to a man who was 60 but she chose instead to elope with an army officer, Lieutenant Thomas James. However, the couple separated five years later, apparently after a series of extramarital affairs. Afterwards she was disowned by her mother and banished from polite society.
In 1843 she launched a career as a dancer, branding herself as “Lola Montez, the Spanish dancer”. But her London debut was disrupted when she was recognized as Lieutenant James’s wife.
She left London and managed to get dancing engagements throughout Europe, where her past was unknown and she was accepted as Lola Montez.
A highlight of her shows was the “spider dance”, in which she pretended her body was being invaded by insects, which involved her lifting her dress, which shocked many in the audiences of the time.
Once while visiting Baden-Baden in Germany,she demonstrated her agility by raising a leg over a man’s shoulder and she was run out of town for licentious behaviour.
But it seemed that her affairs with some rich and well known men was providing more of a living for her than her dancing.
After an unsuccessful debut in Paris as a dancer in Fromental Halevy’s opera, Le lazzarone, she met and had an affair with the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.
Her romantic partners at the time were also said to include the Alexandre Dumas and a Paris newspaper editor who had planned to marry her but he was killed in a duel.
In 1845 Lola went to Munich where she became the mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria, who was described as being bosotted with her. But it has been claimed that Lola was a major contributor to Ludwig eventually having to abdicate his throne.
People in Bavaria felt that she had undue influence over the king and her arrogant manner and ferocious
During Lola Montez’s tour of Australia in 1855, the Argus newspaper said that her show was “utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality”
temper made her very unpopular. Her unpopularity grew when documents were made public showing that she was hoping to become a naturalized Bavarian citizen and be elevated to the nobility and it didn’t help when Ludwig, in the face of big opposition, made her a countess and granted her a large annuity.
For more than a year, she exercised great political power. She was in favor of liberalism and against the conservatives and the Jesuits in particular.
The students of the university were divided in their sympathies, and conflicts arose shortly before the outbreak of the revolutions of 1848, which led the king, at Lola’s instigation, to close the university. In March 1848, under pressure from a growing revolutionary movement, the university was re-opened, Ludwig abdicated, and Lola had to flee Bavaria.
She went to Switzerland, where she stayed for a year, before returning to London in 1848.
There she married a young army officer, George Trafford Heald, but the terms of her divorce from her earlier marriage to Thomas James did not allow either of them to remarry while the other was still alive.
Once again, Lola was at the centre of scandal and she and her new husband had to flee the country to escape a bigamy action brought by Heald’s scandalized maiden aunt. As it turned out the marriage did not last long, with Heald leaving. Lola then went to the United States where, from 1851 to 1853, she performed as a dancer and actress. However, it was not so much her talent that drew audiences as people just wanted to see a woman they had heard so much scandal about. In June 1855, Lola went on a tour of Australia to resume her career by entertaining miners at the gold diggings during the gold-rush of the 1850s.
In September 1855 she performed her erotic spider dance at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne, and it was claimed she rose her skirts so high that the audience could see she wore nothing underneath. The next day, the Argus newspaper denounced her performance as “utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality” and it badly affected attendances at subsequent shows.
She earned further notoriety in Ballarat when, after reading a bad review of her performance in the local newspaper, she attacked the editor with a whip.
On the return voyage to the United States her manager was lost at sea after going overboard.
After her attempts at a theatrical comeback in various American cities proved unsuccessful, she took to the lecture circuit, delivering a series of moral lectures written by Rev Charles Chauncey Burr in several American cities but also in Britain and Ireland.
One of her appearances was in
Dublin’s Rotunda in 1858, where according to a newspaper report of the time the audience listened with “warm manifestations of approval”. And it added: “Very properly, an ill-bred fellow, who exclaimed ‘heehaw’ at regular intervals, was loudly hissed.”
She had another marriage in the United Stated to a newspaperman, Patrick Hull and moved to Grass Valley, California. However, this marriage did not last long either, with the divorce proceedings naming a local doctor as a man she was having an affair with.
Lola remained in Grass Valley for nearly two years before going to spend her final days in Brooklyn in New York.
There Lola seems to have found religion and was doing quiet charity work among prostitutes.
However, she was not in good health. She had been a heavy smoker and was also reported to be suffering from syphilis.
She suffered a stroke and was partially paralysed for some time. She then contracted pneumonia and died one month short of her 40th birthday on January 17, 1861. She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, where her tombstone reads: “Mrs Eliza Gilbert Died 17 January 1861”. It also incorrectly reads that she was 42 years old at the time of her death.