Video: Lola Montes - 19th century dancer and adventurer for whom the king abdicated
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The 19th century was very rich in all kinds of courtesans, exotic dancers, adventurers. All these incarnations are reflected in one person - Lole Montes. This woman had a violent temperament, a tough disposition. Because of her, the university was closed, and even the king abdicated the throne.
The life of Elizabeth Roseanne Gilbert can be compared to an adventure novel. The girl was born in 1821 in Ireland into a family of a military man and a housewife. At the age of two, her parents moved to India. Three years later, the mother sent the child away from her, to England. At the age of 16, the girl married an officer and fled with him to Calcutta.
India attracted the girl with its exoticism. There she studied traditional dance. After some time, Elizabeth ended up in Spanish Seville, where she continued her dancing lessons. The desperate girl's mentor was the old gypsy Dolores. After her death, Elizabeth Gilbert took on a sonorous pseudonym. Lola Montes and went to conquer London.
In 1843, an enthusiastic audience in the British capital applauded Lola Montes with enthusiasm. Her fiery Spanish dancing was something new to the London public. During the dance, Lola lifted the hem of her skirt or deliberately bared her shoulder. The dancer herself posed as a Spanish woman, wore appropriate clothes. But there were Spaniards who immediately exposed the beauty, who spoke with a strong accent. And her dances were not entirely Spanish.
Lola Montes's career was on the verge of collapse several times, but influential men, fascinated by the beauty, always stood up for her. Balzac, Dumas, Dujarier - this is not a complete list of outstanding personalities who were fans of Lola.
Traveling to European countries, Lola Montes reached Bavaria. When she moved to Munich, she achieved an audience with Ludwig I of Bavaria. The sixty-year-old king immediately fell in love with the temperamental dancer and made her his favorite. Lola moved to a house in the center of Munich, the monarch filled her with jewelry, sent letters with passionate declarations of love. Blinded by his love for Lola, Ludwig I bestowed upon her the estate and the title of Countess of Landsfeld. But the favorite continued to behave defiantly, she wore a man's outfit with a whip in her boot, which outraged the conservative public in Munich.
The ministers delivered an ultimatum to the king: either he expels Lola from the country, or they all resign. And again, the king made a choice in favor of the fatal beauty. The students tried to stage a demonstration against Lola. In response, a half-naked woman came out with a glass in her hands and proclaimed a toast to her subjects. Stones were thrown at the windows of her house. In response, the king closed the university until the next semester. In February 1848, protests against the troublemaker erupted with such force that Lola had to flee the country in a hurry, and Ludwig I abdicated the throne.
After Munich, Lola ends up in Geneva, Paris, London. When there was no means of subsistence left, the dancer demanded them from Ludwig I, who still sent her declarations of love. In 1849, Lola publishes her memoirs and remarries of convenience. Unexpectedly, she is arrested for double marriage, since the first marriage has not been officially dissolved.
Lola is released on bail, but luck turns away from her. The performances no longer cause as much interest as before, and the dancer moves to America. There she remarried and moved again, this time to Australia. There, her performances take place on a makeshift stage in front of the prospectors. And at the stage her impessario is on duty with a loaded pistol in his hands. After completing the "compulsory program", Lola returns to Europe and then to America. It is worth noting that by that time the woman's fervor had diminished. In 1858, she becomes a decent Christian, takes part in public readings and assiduously helps "fallen" women. In 1860, in her incomplete forty years, Lola dies of advanced syphilis.
Cora Pearl's fate was no less brilliant - the courtesan who was first "served" on a silver platter. But she ended her life in poverty, like many others like her.
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