The Book of the Courtesans (28 page)

After their separation, she may have wanted to stay in India, but this was
deemed improper by her stepfather Craigie and her estranged husband. She was
obliged to return to Scotland, where it was decided she would live with
Craigie’s brother. But (and by now this too should have been predictable)
she never arrived in Scotland at all. Instead, exciting outrage among the other
respectable passengers, she took George Lennox as her lover on the steamship
home. After the ship landed, she spent the night with Lennox in a hotel in
London. And a few days later, she rented a first-floor suite on Ryder Street in
a fashionable neighborhood. The affair continued for several months.

Lennox introduced her to London’s high society, where she cut an impressive
figure. This was the life she had dreamed of living. The couple attended a
round of parties together and enjoyed the city’s theatres. But these
halcyon days were to end quickly. Word reached her husband of her infidelities,
the affair with Lennox ended, and her world started to collapse. Seeking
revenge, James took both Lennox and Elizabeth to public court, where he sued
them for adultery. With no means of support, and her reputation ruined,
Elizabeth’s chance for any but the dreariest of futures was too narrow to
contemplate. Though she tried to settle quietly with Craigie’s brother,
even this recourse was closed to her now. She seemed almost without options.

Yet for those who are exceedingly charming, fortune often fails to obey
convention. From what must have seemed the insurmountable impasse of her life,
Elizabeth Gilbert James reinvented herself entirely. She would, she determined,
earn her living as a performer. Since she had shown some talent for dance at
school, she decided she would become a dancer. But what kind of dance could she
do? Ballet was not possible, of course; she was too old. Then, perhaps drawn
even if unconsciously by the warmth of another Southern culture that had to
have evoked the early days in India, she settled on the idea of Spanish dance,
a style that was particularly popular since it had been introduced into ballet
by Fanny Elssler and Marie Taglioni. This was how she would begin a new life.

After studying boleros and chacuchas in Cádiz, the young woman returned to
London with an entirely new identity. To everyone she met, she introduced
herself as Lola Dolores de Porris y Montez, the daughter of a noble Spanish
family, exiled by the Carlist war. The new persona served her in several ways.
Given her lack of experience as a dancer, Lola Montez was an infinitely greater
draw at the box office than an Irish divorcée named Elizabeth would have
been. And by the same transformative stroke, she had evaded, or at least so she
thought, the public embarrassment Elizabeth had suffered in the court of public
opinion. As Lola Montez, all her past, the pain of the trial, and perhaps
everything that had made her suffer, seemed to vanish.

But the reprieve would only be fleeting. Her past continued to haunt her. Her
debut at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London’s most prestigious stage, was
triumphant. Though her skill at dancing was minimal, she had a formidable
magnetism that held her audience spellbound as she paraded ominously around the
stage in her mantilla. But unfortunately she was recognized by several
gentlemen who had met her as Elizabeth James through Lennox, and they were
quick to inform the manager and later the press of both her duplicity and her
indiscretion. Not only was the engagement at Her Majesty’s Theatre canceled,
but the public controversy continued until finally she resolved to leave
England for the continent.

Now she embarked on a labyrinthine journey, filled with many performances, more
scandals, and several love affairs, including a brief tryst with the composer
Franz Liszt, that was to bring her to Bavaria. In Berlin, after she performed
on stage to mixed reviews and at a private party for the king of Prussia, who
was entertaining the visiting tsar, an incident occurred which we can read as a
foreshadow of the melodrama that would take place one day between Lola and the
Bavarian king. The morning after the royal party, during ceremonies in Berlin
arranged to honor the tsar, she arrived on horseback alone and tried to enter a
section of the parade grounds reserved for royalty and nobility. Since as Lola
Montez she had invented a noble family for herself, she must have decided that
she was entitled to enter this exclusive compound. When a Prussian policeman
ordered her to leave the area, she refused to do so. After he grabbed the reins
of her horse, she struck him with her riding whip. It was the first public
display of her violent temper recorded by the press. She was forced to leave
the city.

Would her temper have continued to escalate no matter what life brought her?
There is ultimately no way to second-guess history. Yet it is more than
possible that a loss she sustained in Paris only deepened a rage. Though her
performances received mixed reviews, she was welcomed in Paris by several
celebrated members of the
demi-monde
, including Alexandre Dumas
fils.
The writer Théophile Gautier, who started by being critical,
became her fan. She began to establish a viable stage career in the city. And
she had fallen in love with a man who returned her love passionately. Alexandre
Dujarier was a very handsome Creole, a charming man, a respected journalist as
well as publisher of the influential
La Presse
, part of a vital,
sometimes glamorous world of Parisian literati. As his mistress, Lola
accompanied him to restaurants, theatres, and cafés, and hosted gatherings
of his friends. Once again she had the life she wanted.

Yet, as she had experienced before so many times, the sweetness of this moment
was to be cut prematurely short. One night, Dujarier did not come to her bed.
In the morning a note was delivered to her in his handwriting telling her that
if anything happened to him, he wanted her to know that he loved her. He had
already left for a duel in the Bois de Boulogne, an event for which Lola knew
he was ill prepared. She was a far better shot than he. In vain she tried to
find him, hoping to dissuade or help him. Finally, a coach pulled up in the
street below her apartment, but when she opened the door, his lifeless body,
bloodied by a fatal wound to his face, fell into her arms.

The second death that she suffered must have reminded her of the first loss of
her father. For a period, Lola was prostrated with grief. But she could hardly
afford prostration. Her engagement at the Thèâtre de la Porte Saint-
Martin, which Dujarier had helped obtain for her, was canceled. And perhaps
also she could not afford to let feelings continue that may have threatened the
sense she had built for herself of a strength impervious to misfortune.
Following a trial of Dujarier’s assailant, during which she was
interrogated roughly, Lola Montez went on the road again.

She decided to stop in Munich on her way to Vienna. Counting on the ability to
charm powerful men that was by now famous, she asked to have a brief audience
with the Bavarian king to discuss the terms of her appearance at the Royal
Court Theatre in Munich. As with seemingly every other decision in his kingdom,
Ludwig had the final word in these negotiations. Yet though Ludwig, who was a
great admirer of beauty, found Lola beautiful, he was not particularly
impressed on the day he met her. Doubtless to get her way, she tried to appear
submissive and to flatter the king. But it was not these conventional traits
that interested him. Instead, the monarch’s fascination for Lola began to
grow when, upon inquiring about the nature of the disturbances she had caused
in other countries, he learned that she had broken a glass over a man’s
head when he made unwelcome advances, brandished a whip at a policeman, and
made provocative gestures to an audience that had been hissing her performance.
It was when finally he saw her dance that he was won over by what he perceived
to be her fiery spirit.

Her ferocity, her willfulness, her tempestuous nature, even her violent temper
were all qualities that Ludwig shared. A well-loved monarch, he had
accomplished a great deal, cutting unnecessary expenditures, establishing a
great university in Munich, building the royal library, fostering commerce. But
he had a less sanguine side. Hard of hearing, often misunderstanding what was
said to him, he would fly easily into a rage if he felt, as he did too
frequently, that someone was being disloyal to him. Like Lola, he was known to
suspect treacheries where there were none. And like her too, whenever he was
opposed, he became even more determined to prevail. He boasted often that he
had an iron will.

The natural empathy that occurs between people who are similar would have been
enhanced by the fact that they both had charm. Lola’s considerable charm
must have attracted Ludwig for the simple reason alone that charm is a form of
power. Having power over others, Lola could penetrate the unique loneliness
that accompanies autocrats in a way almost no one else was able to do. And
there was another factor that must have brought them closer. Like courtesanry,
more than all other forms of rule, monarchy relies on charm.

With a power that is not elected but conferred, monarchs must constantly
convince their subjects that they have the right to rule. In part, they do this
through various rituals which put their subjects into a trance. Royal pomp
casts a powerful spell. Under this influence, the inhabitants of a nation will
relinquish their own power to a ruler who claims that through bloodlines, or
because of other signs (such as the pronouncements of august men dressed in
impressive robes), this right has been conferred by divine will. The most
absolute of monarchs, Louis XIV, understood the importance of ceremony very
well, which is why he held so many charming
fêtes
at Versailles.
Instead of tending their estates, noblemen who might otherwise have opposed him
were kept constantly competing with each other for invitations to the countless
splendid events the king hosted. Gilded palaces, flourishes and bows, royal
robes, a crown and scepter (recalling a wizard’s hat and wand) along with
the countless minor rites that punctuated the monarch’s day, served to
frame the perception that the king’s power was legitimate.

But one more enigma remains. How is it possible that a king as strong as Ludwig
would have allowed his power to be destroyed by a liaison with a courtesan? To
come even close to an answer we must recall that the charm of both lovers was
not isolated but, like everything that is monumental, belonged to history. The
very qualities that drew the monarch toward Lola alienated the burghers of
Bavaria so severely that in the end her very presence incited riots. That she
broke all the rules by which society was ordered, that she did not behave as a
proper lady should, but instead acted as if she had been given the prerogatives
of a man, would have angered the crowds. She would go out unaccompanied or,
even worse, accompanied by attractive young men, whom she entertained at her
apartment, or later in the house that Ludwig built for her. Rarely modest, she
was often arrogant, bragging about her affair with the king, demanding the
privileges she felt should belong to an official mistress. She brazenly
displayed the expensive jewels Ludwig gave her. Indeed, she often acted as if
not only did the prerogatives of nobility belong to her but of royalty, too. At
the opera, when he visited her box, she failed to stand when he entered. And
then there was the question of her violent temper. She would shout, slap,
brandish her whip and was witnessed gesticulating defiantly at the crowds which,
in the end, assembled under her windows to protest her presence in Bavaria.

Her behavior, self-destructive as it was, bears all the marks of psychosis.
Responding to the loss she had suffered in Paris, repeating the loss of her
father at an early age, instead of grieving, she built a citadel of power for
herself. It is interesting to note that, as is often the case with mental
disturbance, her delusions were strangely prophetic. A hundred years hence,
women began to win many of prerogatives once belonging exclusively to men, and
the distinctions between aristocrats and commoners had also begun to lose their
hold over the public imagination.

But in
1846
, these distinctions still mattered.
Ludwig’s downfall most likely began when he finally assented to Lola’s
constant pleas to make her a countess. The break in protocol outraged the
sensibilities of most Munichers. There is, of course, a contradiction here
between the public’s complaint against a commoner becoming a countess and
the demand for a more democratic rule that was to follow. Yet on an emotional
level, the contradiction reveals a deeper logic. Though commoners had been
given titles before, Lola did not behave according to the rules. Thus, her
elevation would lead to disillusionment. The royal spell had been broken. If
once Ludwig’s right to rule with absolute power had appeared to be
irreversible, a destiny dictated by God, suddenly that fate began to seem less
divine. Now as well as seeming arbitrary, it appeared to be eminently
reversible.

We might object here that Louis XV took two commoners as his official
mistresses and gave them both titles without losing his crown. But here we
recall that these actions led to disillusionment too, albeit one that occurred
at a slower pace. The royal son, Louis XVI, ultimately paid the price for his
father’s indiscretions with his head. Of course there were other reasons;
the history is far more complicated. And, to be fair to the courtesans in
question, they were the symbolic targets for the rage of a populace that,
conflicted about monarchy, found it easier to take out its ire on favorites
than on kings.

By a strange twist of fate, the queen, Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, who
had been severely disapproving of Madame du Barry and who herself was faultless
according to the strictest standards of chastity and fidelity, was slandered by
the Paris mobs, too, who accused her of being a whore nonetheless. In the end,
both Marie-Antoinette and Madame du Barry shared the same fate. They were
executed in the Place de la Concorde that Pompadour had helped to design, and
where the statue of Louis XV she had commissioned was pulled from its pedestal
to make room for the guillotine.