Maria Dolores Eliza Rosana Gilbert was born on February 17, 1821, in County Sligo, Ireland, though she would later insist that she had been born in Limerick in 1818, a claim that was even carved onto her gravestone. Her father, Edward Gilbert, was a British officer serving in County Cork, and her mother, Eliza Oliver, was the daughter of a wealthy Irish politician who had grown up in the ancestral home of Castle Oliver in Limerick. When Eliza was still an infant, her father was stationed in India, and the family set sail in March 1823. After a four-month voyage, they arrived in their new home, but within months Edward Gilbert died of cholera.
His widow, just nineteen years old, was left to raise young Eliza alone, though her late husband’s inheritance allowed her a decent life in India. The following year she remarried another officer, Patrick Craigie, who grew fond of Eliza but was troubled by her behavior. She was, as he saw it, a spoiled and mischievous little girl. Eliza was eventually sent back to Britain to be educated, staying with her stepfather’s parents in Montrose, Scotland.
Arriving from India, a place her classmates only knew by reputation, she stood out at once. Her dress and manners were considered peculiar for a middle-class girl, and she became an object of curiosity wherever she went. Eliza thrived on the attention and misbehaved all the more. On one occasion she placed flowers into the wig of an elderly man during a church service; on another, she allegedly ran through the streets naked.
She was described as a queer, wayward little Indian girl, and because of the trouble she caused, her mother moved her at the age of ten to a boarding school in Monmouth, run by her stepfather’s sister and brother-in-law. When that did not restrain her, she was sent to a more refined establishment in Camden Place, Bath, in the hope that a sophisticated education would turn her into a lady worthy of marrying a wealthy gentleman. It did not. When Eliza was just fourteen, her mother attempted to marry her off to a sixty-four-year-old former general of Bengal, a man Eliza later described as an old rascal of sixty years.
But Eliza had her own ideas. In 1837, at sixteen, she ran away to Ireland with a captain on leave named Thomas James, and the two married in County Meath. The couple soon went to India, but Eliza could not settle into colonial life, and the marriage collapsed when James became involved with another woman. After five years, the couple separated, and as Eliza made her way back to England, she had an affair with a fellow passenger.
When her husband learned of it, he sued for divorce and was granted a decree that allowed neither party to remarry. On her own in London, Eliza took up dancing lessons and decided to make her career on the stage. She reinvented herself as a Spanish dancer under the name Lola Montez and made her debut at the Haymarket Theatre on June 3, 1843. In her autobiography, she would claim the debut was a success, but it was not.
She was recognized as Mrs. James and was booed off the stage for being a fake Spaniard. The scandal hampered her career in England, and she moved to the Continent in search of better prospects. It was around this time that she began accepting favors from wealthy men, and word soon spread that she was a courtesan.
While traveling in Germany, Lola Montez reportedly assaulted a police officer with a horsewhip. From that moment on, she carried a whip with her and used it often. It was also in Germany that she met the famous Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The exact nature of their relationship remains unclear, but it was more than likely romantic, and it was through his connections that she was given the chance to debut in Paris as a dancer in Fromental Halévy’s opera.
The performance was a public disappointment, and newspapers mocked her, noting that her beauty gave her an initial advantage but that she had no talent to support it. Still, she moved through Paris high society, taking lovers among the wealthy and influential, including Alexandre Dumas, author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, and Alexandre Dujarrier, a drama critic and newspaper owner. It was these lovers who financed her extravagant lifestyle and kept her career afloat. One night in 1845, after an evening of drinking and gambling, a quarrel broke out, and Alexandre Dujarrier, while intoxicated, offended a man named Jean-Baptiste Rosemond de Beauvallon.
Beauvallon challenged him to a duel. Although Lola, who was skilled with a gun, offered to take his place, Dujarrier refused and accepted the challenge. He died as a result, and Lola was left to pursue other pursuits in France. In September 1846, she arrived in Munich and caught the attention of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, a monarch with a love for all things Spanish and for women.
Rumor held that when they first met, the king asked whether her bosom was real, nature or art, and she answered by cutting open the front of her dress to reveal what nature had given her. It did not take long for her to conquer the elderly king and become his mistress. Sources from the time say she wielded considerable control over him and used her influence to support liberal political and social causes, particularly by limiting the power of the Conservatives and the Catholic clergy. Her influence became so great that Ludwig dismissed the head of the Ministry of the Interior, Karl von Abel, because he opposed making Lola a countess.
The public and the government noticed how she controlled the king, and they disliked her for it, resenting her reformist attitude, her arrogance, and her temper. When her petition to be made a noble became public, her unpopularity grew further. Despite the resentment, in 1847 Ludwig made her Countess of Landsfeld, granted her a large annual pension, and gave her a fine home. One general reportedly said of her, “I’ve never seen such a demon.
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In 1848, riots broke out in Bavaria, and a faction at the University of Munich rose up against the king. Taking his mistress’s advice, he closed the university entirely, but by March the revolutionary movement had gained too much momentum, and he was forced to reopen it. The hostility toward Lola and the power of the revolutionaries left him with no choice but to expel her from the country. A few days later, Ludwig abdicated the throne.
His relationship with Lola and the decisions he made under her influence had played a large part in his downfall. Lola fled to Switzerland, where she hoped Ludwig would join her, but he never did. In late 1848, she returned to England and quickly married George Trafford Heald, a young army cornet who had just come into an inheritance. But the terms of her first divorce stated that neither party could remarry while the other was still living, and she was arrested on a charge of bigamy.
Released on bail, the newlyweds fled England, living first in France and then in Spain. Within two years, the relationship soured, and George Heald mysteriously disappeared. It was reported that he drowned, but the circumstances remained unclear. In 1851, Lola set off for America, hoping to reinvent herself once again as a performer.
She now carried her whip more frequently, along with a pistol. She became involved in numerous assaults, scandals, and legal actions, allegedly beating a man with her whip who had offended her. She denied the rumors but admitted that the men in question very likely deserved horsewhipping. In May 1853, she arrived in San Francisco, where she gave the first performances of her notorious Spider Dance.
On July 1, she entered into a third marriage, with Patrick Purdy Hull, owner of the San Francisco Wig. After a month, the couple moved to Grass Valley, California, but the marriage quickly failed. Hull sued for divorce, naming a German doctor as co-respondent. A few days later, that doctor’s body was found in nearby hills, shot dead.
Lola remained in Grass Valley for nearly two years before sailing for Australia. She arrived in Sydney on August 16, 1855, and first starred in a play called Lola Montez in Bavaria, based on part of her life. A few weeks later, while performing the same play at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne, she performed her Spider Dance, raising her skirt so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing at all. The performance was widely condemned as against public morality, and many called for her arrest.
She continued touring Australia with mixed success, and her infamy grew when she publicly horsewhipped Henry Seekamp, the editor of the Ballarat Times, over a negative article about her. In May 1856, she finished her tour and sailed back to San Francisco with her manager, Noel Follin. One night, however, he was lost overboard. The details remain unclear, and no official investigation followed.
Back in the United States, she hoped to continue her career but found little success. Now in her mid-thirties, she reinvented herself yet again as a lecturer, speaking on her life and on the heroines of history. She also turned to religion and delivered a series of moral lectures in Britain and America. In 1859, she moved to New York and lived quietly until her death.
Lola Montez died on January 7, 1861, from complications caused by the tertiary stage of syphilis. She is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.