The Magnificent Montez

"I never saw," he declared, "a more humble penitent. When I prayed with her, nothing could exceed the fervour of her devotion; and never have I had a more watchful and attentive hearer when I read the Scriptures.... If ever a repentant soul loathed past sin, I believe hers did."

Possibly, since it could scarcely have been Mrs. Buchanan, it was this clerical busybody who was responsible for the inscription on Lola's headstone:

MRS. ELIZA GILBERT DIED JANUARY 17, 1861.

An odd mask under which to shelter the identity of the gifted woman who, given in baptism the names Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna, had flashed across three continents as Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld IV Misrepresented as she had been in her life, Lola Montez was even more misrepresented after her death. The breath was scarcely out of her body, when a flood of cowardly scurrilities was poured from the gutter press. Her good deeds were forgotten; only her derelictions were remembered.

One such obituary notice began: "A woman who, in the full light of the nineteenth century, renewed all the scandals that disgraced the Middle Ages, and, with an audacity that is almost unparalleled, seated herself upon the steps of a throne, is worthy of mention; if only to show to what extent vice can sometimes triumph, and to what a fall it can eventually come."

An editorial, which was published in one of the New York papers, contained some odd passages: "Among the most ardent admirers of Lola Montez was a young Scotsman, a member of the illustrious house of Lennox, who was with difficulty restrained by his family from offering her his hand. In London the deceased led a gay life, being courted by the Earl of Malmesbury and other distinguished noblemen. Wherever she went, she was the observed of all observers, conquering the hearts of men of all countries by her beauty and blandishments, and their admiration by her unflinching independence of character and superior intellectual endowments."

The death of Lola Montez did not pass without comment in England. The Athenæum necrologist accorded her half a column of obituary, in which she was described as "this pretty, picaroon woman, whose name can never be omitted from any chronicle of Bavaria."

A Grub Street hack, employed by the curiously named Gentleman's Magazine, slung together a column of abuse and lies, founded on tap-room gossip: "When not yet sixteen, she ran away from a school near Cork with a young officer of the Bengal Army, Lieutenant Gilbert (sic), who married her and took her to India. In consequence of her bad conduct there, he was soon obliged to send her back to Europe. She first tried the stage as a profession, but, failing at it, she eventually adopted a career of infamy."