Scandalous Places - Ludwig I's Gallery of Beauties

While researching the lives of both Jane Digby and Lola Montez for my book SCANDALOUS WOMEN, I discovered that they had two things in common:  they both were both mistresses of Ludwig I of Bavaria and both had their portraits included in his Gallery of Beauties.

The Gallery of Beauties is a collection of 36 portraits of some of the most beautiful women from Munich's nobility and middle classes. They were painted between 1827 and 1850, mainly by Joseph Karl Stieler who was appointed the court painter in 1820.  Ludwig gathered the portraits in the south pavilion of the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich.  The gold-and-white room with its stucco-work sopraportas was originally used as a small dining room. It was then redesigned by Andreas Gärtner, father of the architect Friedrich von Gärtner.

This is a portrait of Jane Digby, Lady Ellenborough (1807 - 1881) as she was then, painted around 1831.  Jane ended up in Munich after the end of a love affair with the handsome Austrian statesman Felix Schwarzenberg. Jane had left her husband and son for Schwarzenberg, eventually bearing him a daughter before he basically abandoned her. While living in Munich, she met her second husband, Karl Von Veningen-Ulner by whom she had two children. But before she married Karl (on the rebound), and she and King Ludwig struck up a brief love affair.

Ah, Lola Montez (1821-1861) who will be forever linked with King Ludwig in the annals of history. You'll have to buy SCANDALOUS WOMEN to read more about their affair, but by the time Lola left Bavaria (unwillingly), she had caused riots and poor Ludwig was forced to abdicate his throne.  This portrait by was painted in 1847, when Lola was at the height of her beauty.

Clink here for a panoramic view of the room.

Lola Montez - Uncrowned Queen of Bavaria

October 1846 saw Lola heading for Bavaria, eager to put the past behind her and to earn some much needed money. Although Dujarier had left her 20,000 pounds, Lola had a lavish lifestyle. It was in Bavaria that Lola would achieve her greatest triumphs and tragedies, and pass into history as a legend.

After auditioning for the State Theatre, Lola was told her dancing might cause moral offence by the theater's manager. He'd heard rumors of her scandalous performances elsewhere. Determined to defend her reputation, and probably banking on Ludwig being taken by her allure, Lola stormed the palace unannounced to plead with the King Ludwig of Bavaria himself for help. There is a legend that Lola cut the strings of her bodice with a letter opener when the King asked her if her bosoms were real. No matter what really happened, Lola got her wish. The King agreed to let her dance and, ironically, Lola made her debut in a play called The Enchanted Prince.


At the time that they met, Lola was 25 years old and Ludwig was 60. Ludwig I (1786-1868) was responsible for turning Munich into a cultural mecca. He was the son of King Maximilian I and Wilhelmina of Hesse-Darmstadt, and one of his godfather's was Louis XVI of France. He sponsored artists, writers, craftsmen, and architects. While he was quite free with the country's money, he wasn't quite as free with spending it on his family. The occasion of his marriage to Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen in 1810 was the first ever Oktoberfest. His father had forged an alliance with Napoleon I of France, which Ludwig objected to, but he dutifully joined the Emperor's wars with the Bavarian troops. His father owed his crown to Napoleon. Maximilian was forced to consent to the marriage of Ludwig's sister Pauline to Napoleon's step-son Eugene de Beauharnais. Despite the inauspicious beginning, Pauline and Eugene ended up quite happy. Ludwig disliked and feared French political connections. He became King of Bavaria in 1825.


During the early years of his reign, Ludwig undersaw the completion of Germany's first raildroad line in 1835. He had several beautiful buildings constructed including the Walhalla Temple, modeled after the Parthenon in Greece. In his early years, his policies as King were quite liberal for the time. However, as time progressed, Ludwig's reign became more oppressive, he began to impose censorship and high taxes.


Lola's career on the Munich stage lasted a scant two performances. Ludwig became smitten by Lola, and the dancer enjoyed a new role – as his mistress. Within weeks she had a powerful hold over Ludwig. She agreed to sit for a portrait which would be included in Ludwig's renowed Gallery of Beauties, which included portraits of more than 30 women. During her sittings, Ludwig would join her, spending the time getting to know her better. He'd fallen hopelessly in love with her, and Lola claimed to return his feelings. During the next few months, the king remodeled a stately home for her, spending millions of dollars along the way.


Ludwig's advisors, friends, and family warned him that Lola was nothing but an adventuress, but the more they tried to persuade him, the more stubborn he became. He refused to believe what he considered to be lies about his Lola. Ludwig became determined to fulfill her every wish of which there were many. Lola, convinced of her own nobility, wanted a title of her own. Ludwig obliged by making her Countess of Landsfield, despite the fact that only Bavarian citizens could be enobled, and the Council of Ministers refused to grant Lola citizenship. In response, Lola convinced him to replace them with ministers who were more sympathetic. The previously pro-Catholic government was now swinging more incline with Lola's own anti-clerical, liberal positions.


It was during this period in Bavaria that Lola's animosity toward the Catholic church fermented. Although Lola's family were Irish, they were also Protestant, and her stepfather Craigie was more than likely Presbyterian. Bavaria was a very Catholic country and the Jesuits were horrified at the king's behavior and the insult to the queen. Lola had developed a long standing paranoid suspicion of the Jesuits. Whenever things went wrong for her later in life, as they often did, she would attribute this to sinister jesuitical plots.


Lola was soon to learn that being a royal mistress was not all it was cracked up to be. She hungered for social acceptance from the nobility in Munich but it was not forthcoming. Most of her admirers of course were men who sought to see advancement at court through the King's mistress. If Lola had only been more diplomatic, like Madame de Pompadour, coaching her requests with sweet nothings and a pleasing disposition, things might have been different, and her reign as Leopold's mistress might not have ended in disaster. Unfortunately, Lola was of a different temperment. She had more in common with Charles II virago of a mistress, Barbara Castlemaine. However, the days when royal mistresses could get away with raking in the coins from the royal coffers were long over.


As the people of Munich turned against Lola, she even more arrogant and demanding. On one occasion she slapped two men who objected to her relationship with Ludwig and, on another, she was trapped inside a shop by a mob after her dog attacked a passing Jesuit. Lola's final fatal mistake was when she convinced Ludwig to close down the university, after the Catholic student protests against her, ended up in a brawl between the anti-Montez students, and her own loyal group of students, social outcasts like her, called the Allemania. One student was killed in the melee. A riot ensured when Lola appeared on the scene, leading her to seek shelter in the nearby Theatinerkirche.


An irate crowd of 2,000 students gathered and made their way to city hall where a petition was presented to the King asking him to reopen the university. Ludwig refused. As hatred against her grew to a fever pitch, Ludwig's entire cabinet resigned. Lola's affair with the King had toppled the government. Lola was forced to flee the city, taking refuge in Switzerland. Ludwig was pressured into rescinding her citizenship, revoking her title, and publishing an order for her arrest. Nine days later in 1848, the King also abdicated in favor of his son Maximilian. The whole sorry affair lasted less than two years. Still the King loved Lola until he died 7 years after her death. Despite having cost him his throne, Ludwig continued to write to Lola for three years, and to send her an annual allowance of 70,000 gulden, until he was finally convinced of her infidelities while his mistress, and he cut her off.


Forced into exile, Lola finally returned to London. She was down but she was not out. Within months, she had met and married Army officer George Trafford Heald who came from a rich and distringuished family. He was seven years younger than she was. But the marriage was bigamous, although Lola was divorced from Captain James it was on the proviso that neither one was able to remarry unless the other one died. An elderly relative dug up the dirt in order to get rid of Lola, and she had to flee to France or face life behind bars. George put up the bail money for her, and followed her to the continent.

They traveled together through France, Italy and Spain, quarelling and making up incessantly. At one point, during a particularly nasty fight, she stabbed him. George and Lola quickly ran up huge gambling debts in Paris and George eventually deserted his wife in 1850. Lola, alone yet again, ended up back on the stage to help pay her bills – in America. P.T. Barnum offered to sponsor her tour, but Lola refused to be one of many of the acts in his circus. Instead, she signed with a manager named Edward Willis, who bought her story of being an improverished Spanish noblewoman. He was convinced that she would conquer America the way Columbus had once conquered it.


She arrived in New York in 1852, dressed like a man, with spurred boots and a riding whip, which she used immediately on an admirer who dared to grab onto her coat tails. Once in the States, however, the controversy began anew and Lola was forced to buy an even bigger whip – using it on impolite reporters and restless audiences. She toured the country for three years, purchasing a house in Grass Valley, Nevada where she lived in between tours. While in San Francisco, she married her third husband (again bigamous), a newspaper man by the name of Patrick Hull in 1853 in a Catholic ceremony no less, despite the fact that Lola had been raised Protestant.

They set off on a tour of the Gold Rush towns, Lola not one to travel lightly, brought along 50 trunks that contained silk drapery, gilt mirrors, as well as a stupendous wardrobe of clothes. Again the marriage didn't last, and Hull left Lola after two months of marrriage. Lola clamed in her autobiography to have been married a fourth time to a German baron. Unlucky in love, she is said to have written, "Love is a pipe we fill at eighteen and smoke until forty. Then we rake the ashes till our exit."

While living out west, Lola showed another side to her character than that of the horse-whipping femme fatale. She began to devote her time to helping out troubled women. There is a legend that she took the young Lotta Crabtree under her wing, teaching her how to dance and to command the stage. She became a model citizen of Grass Valley, much admired by the other townsfolk. She kept a menagerie of pets including a tamed grizzly bear which she took for walks.


However, after awhile, Lola needed money again. She entertained lavishly as visitors found her. She decided to go down under, to tour Australia, where she made a sensation with her Spider Dance and not in a good way. Over the years, Lola's performances had lost their sublety, and had become downright vulgar for the times. In Melbourne, when an editor had the temerity to call her performance immoral, she went after him with her whip. The Australian tour a failure, Lola was forced to lick her wounds and go home.

Once again, Lola was unlucky in love. She had fallen in love with her tour manager, Ned Fellin, who fell over board mysteriously on the voyage back to the States. When Lola was questioned about his disappearance, she said, "I have been wild, and wayward, but never wicked." Lola returned to America to present a series of literary lectures. It turned out that Lola was a formidable and eloquent lecturer, far better than she was a dancer.She even wrote several books, an autobiography, and a book called Timeless Beauty: Advice to Ladies & Gentleman.


By the year 1857, Lola's thoughts began turning toward religion, her own spiritual state, even thoughts of death. It seemed that she had become remorseful over her life. As New York sweltered in a heat wave in June 1860, however, she suffered a stroke. The condition left her unable to move or speak for several months. News of Lola's illness reached her mother, who was now Lady Craigie. She travelled to America on the pretext of seeing her daughter for what might be the last time, but it appeared that her actual purpose was to find out whether or not Lola still had any of the jewels that Ludwig had given her. but, by December, she had recovered enough to hobble outside for a breath of fresh air on Christmas Day. It was to prove the death of her. Lola developed pneumonia and, on January 17, 1861 – a month before her 40th birthday – she died. Her life quickly passed into legend.


She's buried in Green-Wood Cemetary in Brooklyn, NY. Her headstone was inscribed with a name she never used – her maiden name of Eliza Gilbert preceded by Mrs. One of her more recent biographers, Bruce Seymour, recently paid to have her grave spruced up.


Lola lived life on her terms, and sometimes she paid a high price for her reckless, adventuresome spirit. The late romance novelist Tom Huff, who wrote as Jennifer Wilde, based one of his novels on Lola Montez, called Dare to Love, a title that could apply to Lola's own life . No one could say that Lola didn't seize life with both hands and try to mold it to her will.


For further reading:

Cupid and the King - Princess Michael of Kent
Lola Montez: Her Life and Conquests - James Morton
Lola Montez: A Life - Bruce Seymour
Book of Courtesans - Susan Griffin

Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets - The racy life of Lola Montez

'Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl,
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there
She would merengue and do the cha-cha
But while she tried to be a star," Copacabana by Barry Manilow.


'She is fatal to any man who dares to love her,' Alexandre Dumas, pere.



"I have known all the world has to give -- ALL!" Lola Montez shortly before her death in 1861.

She is considered one of the first tabloid celebrities, the 19th Century's answer to Madonna. Her lovers included Franz Liszt and the King of Bavaria. She was an actress, a writer, a lecturer, and the most famous Spanish dancer in the world who couldn't actually dance. Later in her life, she was able to charge more for her lectures than Charles Dickens. Her name? Lola Montez.

In her lifetime, she claimed to be the illegimate daughter of Byron, the daughter of Carlists from Spain, the daughter of a Spanish grandee stolen by gypsies, and many others, but the reality was far simpler and less dramatic.

Lola was actually born Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert on February 16, 1821, although some biographers claim that she was born earlier in 1818, and Lola herself shaved years off her birth. Research indicates that the 1821 birthdate is the correct one. She later claimed that Lola was a nickname for Dolores which she was christened, but there is no record of the name Dolores on her baptismal certificate.

Her father, Edward was a soldier in the British army, and her mother Elizabeth Oliver was the illegimate daughter of the High Sheriff of Cork and Irish MP Sir Charles Oliver and Mary Green who was herself illegitimate and of partial Spanish ancestry.


The family soon set off for Calcutta where Eliza's father was posted. Soon after they arrived, he died from cholera. His widow remarried a year later to another career army officer Captain Patrick Craigie, the son of the Provost of Montrose in Scotland. Eliza's mother was still young, only 18, and became caught up in the social life in Calcutta. Craigie, while he adored Eliza, felt that she was growing up wild in India and decided to send her back to live with his relatives in Scotland.

Although it seems somewhat cruel to send a 5 year old away with strangers, many children were sent back to England to be educated. However, it's not to hard to imagine that Eliza's mother wouldn't have wanted reminders around that she was a mother, while flirting with the officers.

Eliza stayed with Craigie's family for about 8 months. It was not a success. She was rebellious and chafed against life in a small town. The contrast between the heart and lush climate of India with the harsh winters of Scotland must have been a shock to the little girl, who had been abandoned first by her father's death and now by her mother and stepfather. "The queer, wayward Indian girl," as Eliza was known, scandalized the town by running down the street naked.


At the age of 10, Lola was sent to a schoool run by her stepfather's older sister, Catherine Rae, and her husband in Sunderland. Lola clearly made an impression on her teachers. One of them, a Mr. Grant, who taught art later recalled that she was an elegant and graceful child, with eyes of "excessive beauty," an "orientally dark complexion," and an air of haughty ease. He also noted that she "the violence and obstinancy of her temper gave too frequent cause of painful anxiety," to her aunt.

In 1832, Eliza was sent to a boarding school in Bath, England where she lived until her mother came back to England in 1837. It was not a happy reunion. Her mother had planned to marry her off to a "rich and gouty old gentleman of 60 years," as Eliza put it in her memoirs. The man in questions was Sir Abraham Lumley, a Judge of the Supreme Court in India. Looking for away out, Eliza eloped instead with her mother's admirer, Lt. Thomas James, an army officer on leave who had accompanied her mother from India to Bath. She had just turned 16.


Eliza quickly realized that she had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire to quote an old cliche. Instead of the glamour and balls and excitement that she expected from married life, Eliza was now stuck in the backwaters of Ireland, and she quickly became restless. The cracks in the marriage began to show. Eliza had known very little about her husband before they eloped. Now she learned that he was not the person that he had seemed to be at first. She claimed that he started to drink heavily and to slap her around.


Despite returning to India with her husband, the marriage was doomed. In 1842, he either abandoned her for another woman, or she left him when she couldn't take his violence and infidelity. However, she was shunned by her mother for bringing disgrace to the family. Armed with 1,000 pounds from her step-father, she had no choice but to return to England.


However, in Madras, a dashing army officer named Lennox, joined the ship. He was the grandson of the Duke of Richmond, and he and Eliza became lovers. When they arrived in London, they continued their affair and Lennox introduced her to several influential men. When word of their affair reached her husband, he filed for divorce siting her adultery with Lennox.


Lennox soon proved no more constant a lover than her husband. He soon left her with no means of support. Eliza now faced a quandary that many 'fallen' women in that era faced. She was virtually unemployable as a governess or a lady's companion. Instead of turning to prostitution, Eliza decided to go on the stage.


Unfortunately she didn't have the talent for acting, due to her inability to take directions from anyone. Instead she decided to become a dancer. She'd studied ballet as a child, but she was too old now to launch a ballet career. Instead Eliza decided to take herself off to Spain for 6 months to learn flamenco and the language. When she arrived back in London, she no longer Eliza Gilbert James but Lola Montez. Or to be exact Maria Dolores de Porris y Montez, "the proud and beautiful daughter of noble Spanish family."


Thus started the second chapter in her life. She was engaged to perform at Her Majesty's Theater, but her appearance was not a success. She was recognized by several acquaintances from her time with Lennox who blew her cover with the theater's management by shouting out 'Why it's Betty James,' when she stepped onto the stage. Her contract was subsequently cancelled. Lola later claimed that London audiences were incapable of appreciating the subtle quality of her dancing.



Lola was not a very good dancer. She had no sense of rhythm or timing, what she did have was a sense of theatricality. Her costume consisted of a black lace dress with a high color, the better to frame her face, and her magnificent bosom, and a decoration of red roses. She was also remarkably beautiful, with lustrous dark hair, ivory skin, and stunning blue eyes. Her most famous dance, The Tarantula, chiefly consisted of Lola conducting a frenzied search of her person for the elusive spider. Inevitably she would reveal a great deal of leg to the audience, in an era when people covered their piano legs. The secret of her later success was her utter shamelessness and her ability to play it straight.



After the disaster of her London debut, Lola took herself off on a tour of the continent, where she took up with wealthy nobility who had a penchent for beautiful women. She had a violence about her that both attracted and repelled men. Audiences either loved or hated her. Critics were divided too, they weren't sure if she was serious or if she were in on the joke.


She entranced Prince Heinrich who's family ruled over small regions in Germany. She danced in Dresden, Berlin and Warsaw, where she inadvertantly started a riot after she refused the attentions of the Viceroy of Poland, who fell desperately in love with her. He offered her an estate, and handfuls of diamonds if she became his mistress, but Lola found him repulsive. The director of the theater where she was appearing suggested that she might be wise to reconsider. Lola, in a rage, threw him out.


That night when she appeared on stage for her performance she was met by boos and hisses from a certain section of the audience. It was clear that it was pre-arranged. It happened the next night and the next. Finally Lola had had enough, she stormed the footlights and told the audience exactly what was going on. The crowd cheered and applauded her courage.


An immense mob escorted her back to her hotel. Unbeknownst to Lola, the Viceroy and the theater manager were suspected of being traitors, working with the Tsarist government, and they were much hated by the Polish people. Instead of leaving, the crowd stayed, rioting started in the streets, and Warsaw was on the brink of revolution. Lola was asked quietly to leave.


Her most notable affair at this time was with the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who was also one of the most dynamic pianists of the era. What Byron was to poetry, Liszt was to classical music, a Victorian rock star. He'd already cut a swathe through the women of Europe, who threw themselves at him, when he met Lola.



At first the love affair was quite passionate, they travelled everywhere together, quarrelling and making-up with equal frequency. Their two gigantic egos were destined to collide. She had a tendency to annoy him while he was trying to work, and she flew into jealous rages when he played even the slightest attention to other women. He was also jealous of her notoriety and her ability to upstage him. Things came to a head while he was unveiling a statue of Beethoven in Bonn. Lola hadn't been invited, so she gatecrashed the banquet, and in front of the royalty and other dignitaries, she leapt onto a table and danced among the dishes. He finally managed to escape by locking her in their hotel room, after leaving sufficient funds to cover the damage he knew she would inflict on the room when she discovered that he had left.



Lola was gaining a reputation, not for her dancing, but for her volcanic temper, and her ability to manipulate the press by giving interviews, in which ever city she was appearing. Like a lot of people who reinvent themselves, Lola began to actually believe that she came from a noble but improverished Spanish background. While she was in Berlin, during ceremonies to arranged to honor the Tsar of Russian, Lola arrived alone and on horseback. When she tried to enter a section of the parade grounds reserved for royalty and nobility, a policeman tried to stop her by grabbing the reigns of her horse. Lola, enraged, struck him with her riding crop. Needless to say, she was forced to leave the city.



When her mother heard about her daughter's latest scandal, she decided that Lola was now dead to her. She went into mourning and had her stationary edged in black. In Paris, Lola's growing notoriety helped gain her an engagement at the Port St. Martin theater. When she was booed by the audience in the middle of her performance, Lola in a fit of temper, took of her garters and flung them into the audience to their delight.



It was in Paris that Lola met the man who would become the great love of her life. Alexandre Henri Dujarier was the co-editor and literary critic of La Presse. Intigued by the stories he had heard about Lola, he went to see her dance. Introduced backstage, they were immediately taken with each other. They became lovers, and Dujarier began to show her a world she had never entered before. Paris at this time was the literary and artistic capital of Europe. Dujarier took Lola to the salon of writer George Sand, where she met literary lights like Dumas, Victor Hugo, Balzac and Theophile Gautier, who wrote the libretto for Giselle.



For once Lola was appreciated for her intelligence and conversation. She had always been interested in politics, and under Dujarier's influence, she became an ardent Republican. Dujarier proposed to her and she accepted, despite the fact that any marriage would be bigamous. Just when it seemed as if her life was finally settling down, the idyll came to an end. In March of 1845, Dujarier left Lola and went to a supper party alone. There was much drinking and carousing going on, when one of the other guests, Jean de Beauvallon, a rival newspapermen, picked a fight with Dujarier for neglecting to publish a feuilleton of his Memoires de M. Motholon. At first they decided to settle the dispute with cards, but Dujarier was unlucky and couldn't settle his losses. Both men were fried and their nerves were frayed from the long night. More wine was consumed and de Beauvallon made the mistake of being tactless about an old affair of Dujarier's. That was the last straw and Dujarier challenged him to a duel.



Unfortunately Dujarier was no fighter, and although he opted for pistols, he was no great shot either. Before he left, he wrote out his will and left two letters, one for his mother, and the other for Lola. de Beauvallon had no intention of killing Dujarier, to save face he tried showing up at the appointed place late, but Dujarier was still waiting for him. He even tried to get out of it by offering him warm pistols. According to the duelling code, warm pistols meant that they had been practiced with, and was against the code. However, Dujarier was either determined or incredibly foolish. After taking their places, Dujarier fired first and missed. de Beauvallon's didn't. Dujarier died before his body reached Paris.



Lola was devastated with grief. Though she was uninvolved in the argument, she was blamed all the same. When de Beauvallon was tried for murder, Lola showed up to testify against him, dressed in masses of silk and lace. The court was taken aback when she declared that she would have fought de Beauvallon herself because she was the better shot.


At this point in her life, it could be safe to say that something broke in Lola after the loss of Dujarier. Her whole life up until this point had been one of loss and abandonment. Her utter recklessness in her next adventure in Munich seems more now of a woman still grieving over the loss of her lover, and determined never get as much as she could out of the next man before the inevitable abandonment.



Tomorrow - Lola Montez, Part II - from Munich to New York