August 13, 1975 (8 pages)

August 13, 1975 Wed., The Nevada County Nugget 5 SS — > ~ v ie kb PY by entric AND THE NEWSPAPERS y Doris Foley taken place in Bavaria; and it is but just to s the political use she made of her relations t the immorality of the connexion itself, that r most of the vehement censures which the rom time to time, bestowed, accompanied by ies. The moral indignation which her ops, unfortunately, a mere sham. They have not tronized, a female who formerly held a most th the king, because she made herself subominating party. Let Lola Montez have credit itelligence and her support of popular rights. icter, she held, until her retirement from ortant position in Bavaria and Germany, ts and correspondents in various parts of politics she had clear ideas, and has been l men of the country as a substantive power. » secrets, and could be consulted in safety in iginal habits rendered her of service. Acting ‘king pledged himself to a course of steady political freedom of the people.vielded so much power, it is alleged that ay : promotion of unworthy persons, or, as other , for corrupt purposes: and there is reason ical feeling influenced her course, not sordid atement of the American Law Journal, I will ez, could easily have been the richest woman i she preferred her own advantage to the success of political freedom. She willingly sacrificed herself for a principal, and lost, alas! that. Her last hope for Bavaria being broken, she turned her attention towards Switzerland, as the nearest shelter from the storm that was beating above her head.;She had influenced the king of Bavaria to withhold his assent to a proposition from Austria, which had for its objects, the destruction of that little Republic of Switzerland. If republics are ungrateful, Switzerland certainly was not so to Lola Montez; for it received her with open arms, made her its guest, and generously offered to bestow upon her an establishment for life. It was a great mistake that she refused that offer, for had she remained in Switzerland, she could have preserved that potential power among those scheming nations, spoken of in thequotation from the American Law Journal, and might have still farther chastised the Jesuit party in Germany. But she allowed this brilliant opportunity to pass, and went to London to enter upon another marriage experiment, of which nothing but sorrow and mortification came. The time which she afterwards lived in Paris was, however, pleasantly and comfortably spent. Her house was the resort of the most gifted literary geniuses of Paris,-and there she had the honor and happiness of entertaining many literary gentlemen from America, who were temporarily sojourning in the French capital. The next step of any public note taken by Lola Montez was her passage to America, coming out in the same ship with Kossuth. Shattered in fortune, and broken in health, she came with curiosity and reviving hopes, to the shores of the New World; this stupendous asylum of the world’s unfortunate, and the last refuge of the victims of the tyranny and wrongs of the Old World! God GRACE GREENWOOD, popular American columnist of the fifties, visited Munich, Germany in 1853 and wrote of the above painting as follows. “In a roseembowered studio of Kembach we found another portrait of the ‘Countess of Landsfeldt.’ it was a full-length, in an antique Spanish dress, a superb and stately picture, after the style of Van Dyke." (Courtesy of the Califoornia Historical Society, San Francisco, Ca.) grant that it may ever stand as it is now, the noblest column of liberty that was ever reared beneath the arch of heaven! ’ Of Lola Montez’ career in the United States there is not much to be said. On arriving in this country she found the same terrible =f power which had pursued her in Europe. The blows she had given it in Germany, held here the means to fill the American press with a ~ thousand anecdotes and rumors which were entirely unjust and : false in relation to hér. Among other things she had had the honor of. horsewhipping hundreds of men who she never knew, and never’ saw. But there is one comfort in all these falsehoods, which is, that these men very likely would have deserved horsewhipping, if she had only known them. As a specimen of unpleasant things said to Lola Montez, I am going to quote you from a book, entitled The Adventures of Mrs. Seacole, published last year in London (1857), and edited by no less of a literary man than the gifted correspondent of the London Times, W.H. Russell, Esq. Mrs. Seacole is giving her adventures at Cruces, between here and California. She says:— “Occasionally, some distinguished passengers on the upward . and lowward tides of rascality and ruffianism, swept periodically through Cruces. Came one day, Lola Montez, in full zenith of her evil fame, bound for California with a strange suit. A good looking, bold woman, with fine eyes, and a determined bearing, she dressed . « ° ostentatiously in perfect male attire, with shirt collar turned down over a velvet lapelled coat, richly worked shirt front, black hat, French unmentionables, and natty polished boots, with spurs. She carried in her hand a handsome riding-whip, which she could use as well in the streets of Cruces, as in the towns of Europe; for an impertinent American, presuming perhaps not unnaturally, upon. her reputation, laid hold jestingly of the tails of her long coat, and, as a lesson received a cut across his face that must have marked , him for several days. I did not want to see the row that followed, and was glad when the wretched woman rode off.”’ Now, there are several rather common mistakes in this notice. : First, Lola Montez was never dressed off the stage in man’s apparel in her whole life, except when she went back disguised in Bavaria. Second, therefore no man could have pulled the tails of her coat at Cruces. Third, she never had a whip in her hand in Cruces, and could not, therefore, have whipped the American as described. Fourth, she was never in Cruces in her life. Before she went to California the new route was opened and she passed many miles from that place. Fifth, the whole story is a base fabrication from beginning to end. It is as false as Mrs. Seacole’s own name. Another funny thing is, that Mrs. Seacole makes this interesting event occur in 1851; whereas Lola Montez did not go to California © until 1853. If I were to collect all similar falsehoods which I have seen in the papers or books about Lola Montez, they would form a moun. But no matter for these. Since Lola Montez commenced her lectures, she has experienced nothing but kindness at the hands of the entire respectable press of the country. And for this she will carry in her heart a grateful remembrance, when she is back again amidst the scenes of the Old World. And, indeed, as for that, she will carry a whole new world back with her; for her heart and brain are full of the stupendous strides which freedom has made in this magnificent country. Those of you who have not had the same taste of the quality of government in the Old World, can but half relishyour own glorious institutions. The pilgrim of the effete forms ofEurope must look upon your great republic with as happy an eye as the storm-tossed and ship-wrecked mariner looks upon the first star that shines beneath the receding tempest. And now suffer me to close my lecture here-with the last words of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: ; Farewell! a word that must’be, and hath been— A sound which makes us linger, yet farewell Ye! who have traced the pilgrim to the scene Which is his last, if in your memories dwell ~ A thought which once was his, if on ye dwell A single recollection, not in vain He wore his sandal-shoon and sc2)lop-shell; Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain, If such there were—with you the moral of his strain. ty at ‘ 400 --From Lectures of Lola Montez, ; (Countess of Landsfeld) published by Rudd & Carleton, -: 310 Broadway New York, 1858. ————————— (CONTINUED NEXT WEEK)§ ‘D NEXT WEEK)

August 13, 1975 Wed., The Nevada County Nugget 5 SS — > ~ v ie kb PY by entric AND THE NEWSPAPERS y Doris Foley taken place in Bavaria; and it is but just to s the political use she made of her relations t the immorality of the connexion itself, that r most of the vehement censures which the rom time to time, bestowed, accompanied by ies. The moral indignation which her ops, unfortunately, a mere sham. They have not tronized, a female who formerly held a most th the king, because she made herself subominating party. Let Lola Montez have credit itelligence and her support of popular rights. icter, she held, until her retirement from ortant position in Bavaria and Germany, ts and correspondents in various parts of politics she had clear ideas, and has been l men of the country as a substantive power. » secrets, and could be consulted in safety in iginal habits rendered her of service. Acting ‘king pledged himself to a course of steady political freedom of the people.vielded so much power, it is alleged that ay : promotion of unworthy persons, or, as other , for corrupt purposes: and there is reason ical feeling influenced her course, not sordid atement of the American Law Journal, I will ez, could easily have been the richest woman i she preferred her own advantage to the success of political freedom. She willingly sacrificed herself for a principal, and lost, alas! that. Her last hope for Bavaria being broken, she turned her attention towards Switzerland, as the nearest shelter from the storm that was beating above her head.;She had influenced the king of Bavaria to withhold his assent to a proposition from Austria, which had for its objects, the destruction of that little Republic of Switzerland. If republics are ungrateful, Switzerland certainly was not so to Lola Montez; for it received her with open arms, made her its guest, and generously offered to bestow upon her an establishment for life. It was a great mistake that she refused that offer, for had she remained in Switzerland, she could have preserved that potential power among those scheming nations, spoken of in thequotation from the American Law Journal, and might have still farther chastised the Jesuit party in Germany. But she allowed this brilliant opportunity to pass, and went to London to enter upon another marriage experiment, of which nothing but sorrow and mortification came. The time which she afterwards lived in Paris was, however, pleasantly and comfortably spent. Her house was the resort of the most gifted literary geniuses of Paris,-and there she had the honor and happiness of entertaining many literary gentlemen from America, who were temporarily sojourning in the French capital. The next step of any public note taken by Lola Montez was her passage to America, coming out in the same ship with Kossuth. Shattered in fortune, and broken in health, she came with curiosity and reviving hopes, to the shores of the New World; this stupendous asylum of the world’s unfortunate, and the last refuge of the victims of the tyranny and wrongs of the Old World! God GRACE GREENWOOD, popular American columnist of the fifties, visited Munich, Germany in 1853 and wrote of the above painting as follows. “In a roseembowered studio of Kembach we found another portrait of the ‘Countess of Landsfeldt.’ it was a full-length, in an antique Spanish dress, a superb and stately picture, after the style of Van Dyke." (Courtesy of the Califoornia Historical Society, San Francisco, Ca.) grant that it may ever stand as it is now, the noblest column of liberty that was ever reared beneath the arch of heaven! ’ Of Lola Montez’ career in the United States there is not much to be said. On arriving in this country she found the same terrible =f power which had pursued her in Europe. The blows she had given it in Germany, held here the means to fill the American press with a ~ thousand anecdotes and rumors which were entirely unjust and : false in relation to hér. Among other things she had had the honor of. horsewhipping hundreds of men who she never knew, and never’

saw. But there is one comfort in all these falsehoods, which is, that these men very likely would have deserved horsewhipping, if she had only known them. As a specimen of unpleasant things said to Lola Montez, I am going to quote you from a book, entitled The Adventures of Mrs. Seacole, published last year in London (1857), and edited by no less of a literary man than the gifted correspondent of the London Times, W.H. Russell, Esq. Mrs. Seacole is giving her adventures at Cruces, between here and California. She says:— “Occasionally, some distinguished passengers on the upward . and lowward tides of rascality and ruffianism, swept periodically through Cruces. Came one day, Lola Montez, in full zenith of her evil fame, bound for California with a strange suit. A good looking, bold woman, with fine eyes, and a determined bearing, she dressed . « ° ostentatiously in perfect male attire, with shirt collar turned down over a velvet lapelled coat, richly worked shirt front, black hat, French unmentionables, and natty polished boots, with spurs. She carried in her hand a handsome riding-whip, which she could use as well in the streets of Cruces, as in the towns of Europe; for an impertinent American, presuming perhaps not unnaturally, upon. her reputation, laid hold jestingly of the tails of her long coat, and, as a lesson received a cut across his face that must have marked , him for several days. I did not want to see the row that followed, and was glad when the wretched woman rode off.”’ Now, there are several rather common mistakes in this notice. : First, Lola Montez was never dressed off the stage in man’s apparel in her whole life, except when she went back disguised in Bavaria. Second, therefore no man could have pulled the tails of her coat at Cruces. Third, she never had a whip in her hand in Cruces, and could not, therefore, have whipped the American as described. Fourth, she was never in Cruces in her life. Before she went to California the new route was opened and she passed many miles from that place. Fifth, the whole story is a base fabrication from beginning to end. It is as false as Mrs. Seacole’s own name. Another funny thing is, that Mrs. Seacole makes this interesting event occur in 1851; whereas Lola Montez did not go to California © until 1853. If I were to collect all similar falsehoods which I have seen in the papers or books about Lola Montez, they would form a moun. But no matter for these. Since Lola Montez commenced her lectures, she has experienced nothing but kindness at the hands of the entire respectable press of the country. And for this she will carry in her heart a grateful remembrance, when she is back again amidst the scenes of the Old World. And, indeed, as for that, she will carry a whole new world back with her; for her heart and brain are full of the stupendous strides which freedom has made in this magnificent country. Those of you who have not had the same taste of the quality of government in the Old World, can but half relishyour own glorious institutions. The pilgrim of the effete forms ofEurope must look upon your great republic with as happy an eye as the storm-tossed and ship-wrecked mariner looks upon the first star that shines beneath the receding tempest. And now suffer me to close my lecture here-with the last words of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: ; Farewell! a word that must’be, and hath been— A sound which makes us linger, yet farewell Ye! who have traced the pilgrim to the scene Which is his last, if in your memories dwell ~ A thought which once was his, if on ye dwell A single recollection, not in vain He wore his sandal-shoon and sc2)lop-shell; Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain, If such there were—with you the moral of his strain. ty at ‘ 400 --From Lectures of Lola Montez, ; (Countess of Landsfeld) published by Rudd & Carleton, -: 310 Broadway New York, 1858. ————————— (CONTINUED NEXT WEEK)§ ‘D NEXT WEEK)