"When she was near her end, and could not speak, I asked her to let me know by a sign whether her soul was at peace, and she still felt that Christ would save her. She fixed her eyes on mine, and nodded her head affirmatively."
Thus, on 17th January 1861, in the odour of sanctity, died Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld, Baroness Rosenthal, Canoness of the Order of St. Theresa, sometime ruler of the kingdom of Bavaria, in the forty-third year of her age. She, whose fame had filled three continents, was committed to the custody of Mother Earth in Greenwood Cemetery, two days later, with the rites and ceremonial of the Episcopal Church. Her grave was marked by a tablet, bearing the inscription: "Mrs. Eliza Gilbert, born 1818, died 1861." The men who had risked crowns and fortune for her love would have hardly recognised her in her last part or under her last homely description.
At the bar of God Lola Montez pleaded guilty. I, as her advocate in the court of Humanity, may enter another plea.
For half a century the world has taken this woman at her own last valuation, and dismissed her as a criminal and a sinner. The orthodox Christian reproaches her with unchastity, exaggerating, as is his wont, the gravity of this particular transgression of his code. He would have had her waste her glorious beauty, made to gladden the hearts of men, and refuse the _rôle_ of woman which nature had assigned her--because, forsooth! a petty English tribunal would not set her free from a tie it should never have allowed her to contract. The law was made for man; the claims and instincts of womanhood must override the decrees of any Consistory Court. Lola Montez was pre-eminently and essentially a woman--specially fitted and charged, therefore, to bring the great happiness of love to men. This which was her glory the sexless moralist makes her reproach. For him the perfect woman is the most unhuman; he admires the woolless sheep and the scentless flower.
Hers was a capacity for immense passion, happiness, and power. She longed not only to charm men but to rule them. By the happiness she procured them, she enslaved them. She exploited their passions, it will be said; and since when have we ceased to exploit the weakness of woman? In the pursuit of power we use the instruments easiest to our hands, we attack our opponents' most vulnerable points. This Lola did; this did every strong man of whom history has any record. Her qualities of mind, as evinced in the administration of Bavaria, were of a high order, and in a man would have commanded success; but men were dazzled by her beauty, and cried out to be influenced by that alone. We esteem in our own sex the faculties by which we are helped, led, and ruled; in the other, we prate of chastity, and value only that which ministers to our vanity, comfort, and sensuality. Women must be human in just so far as may conform to our individual needs. When we prize intellectual worth in women as highly as physical beauty, it will be time to protest against the methods of Lola Montez.