July 23, 1975 (8 pages)

4 The Nevada County Nugget Wed., July 23, 1975 a cs 1 oe _ _ <a or _ a * ————_ ——— (Lola Montez’ life has provided much material for biographers and : novelists but what the press had to say about her has long been = hidden in musty files. Author Doris Foley diligently searched early = day California newspaper files, reading every issue published bet= ween 1853 and 1861, to document what they said about the divine > Lol.aand then for contrast included Lola’s autobiography in this > work.) ; AUTOBIOGRAPHY LOLA MONTEZ -: (The life story of Lola Montez, written by Charles Chauncy Burr ‘ in 1858 after interviews with her, and read by the Countess during :: her lecture series as her AUTOBIOGRAPHY. In reading the ar. ticles, she used the third person, giving the impression she habitually referred to herself in this manner.) 2 PARTI The right of defining one’s position seems to be a very sacred privilege in America, and I must avail myself of it, in entering upon the novel business of this lecture. Several leading and influential journals have more than once called for a lecture on Lola Montez, and as it is reasonably supposed that I am about as well acquainted with the “eccentric” individual, (as the newspapers call her), as any lady in this country, the task of such an undertaking has fallen upon me. It is not 4 pleasant duty for me to perform. For, however fearless, of if you please, however imprudent, I may be in asserting and maintaining my opinion and my rights, yet I must confess to a great deal of diffidence when I come to speak personally of one so nearly related to me as Lola Montez is. : As Burns says ‘“‘we were girls together.’’ The smiles and tears of our childhood, the joys and sorrows of our girlhood, and the riper and somewhat stormy events of womanhood, have all been shared with her: Therefore, you will perceive, that to speak of her, is the very next thing to speaking of myself. But though friends of such long standing I have not come to be eulogist or apologist of Lola Montez; I am not quite sure that she = would accept such a service even from her best friend. 2 A woman, like a man of true courage, intentionally prefers to face the public deeds of her life, rather-than by cowardly shifts to shulk and hide away from her own historical presence. : Perhaps the noblest courage after all, is to dare to meet one’s :: self to set down face to face with one’s own life and confront all those deeds which may have influenced the mind and manners of society, for good or evil. ; As applied to woman, of course this remark can be true only of those who have to some extent preferred tasks usually imposed . upon me. That is, she must have preferred some deeds which have left their work upon society, before she can come within the rule. An inane piece of human wax-work, whose life has consisted of merely powdering, drinking tea, going to the opera, flirting and sleeping, has had no life to be taken into the count in this con= nection. She may have been useful as a pretty piece of statuary, to = fill a nook in a private house, or as a pleasant piece of furniture for a drawing room; but there are no rules of her moral and social The Divin LOLA MONTEZ AN limits allotted to woman; but there was not enough to enable her to stand securely beyond the shelter of conventional rules. Within this little bit of philosophy is a key which unlocks the dark secret of the fall and everlasting ruin of many of the most beautiful and natural-gifted women of the world. There was as much truth as wit in the old writer who said that “the woman of extraordinary beauty, who has sufficient intellect to render her of independent mind ought also to be able to assume the quills of the porcupine in self-defense.” a At any rate, such is the social and moral fabric of the world, that woman must be content with an exceedingly narrow sphere of action, or she must take the worst consequences of daring to be an innovator, and a heretic. She must be either the servant or the spoiled plaything of man; or she must take responsibility of making : herself a target to be shot at by the most corrupt and cowardly of : her own sex, and by the all ill-natured and depraved of the opposite : gender. abused man in the world.’ I do not know whether Lola Montez has been the best abused woman or not, but she has been pretty well . abused at any rate; and has honor, I believe, of having caused more newspaper paragraphs and more biographies than any woman . living. I have, myself, seen twenty three or twenty four pretended . biographies of Lola Montez; not one of which, however, came any . nearer of being a biography of her, than it did to being an authentic . history of the man in the moon. Seven cities claimed old Homer, but the biographers have given Lola Montez to more than three times seven cities. And a laughable thing is that not one of of all these biographers has yet hit upon the real place of her birth. One makes her born in Spain, another in Cuba, another in India, another in Turkey, and so on. And at last, a certain fugitive from the gallows — will have it that she was born of a washer-woman in Scotland. And so of her parentage one author makes her the child of a Spanish gipsy; another, the daughter of Lord Byron; another, of a native prince of India, and son on, until they have given her more fathers than there are signs in the Zodiac. I declare, ‘if I were Lola Montez, I should begin to doubt whether I ever had a father, or whether I was ever born at all, except in some such fashion as Minerva was said to be born of the brain of Jupiter. Lola Montez has had a more difficult time to get born than even that, for she had had to be born over and over again of the separate brain of every man who has ever attempted to write her history. Happily, however, I possess the means of settling this confused question and of relieving the doubts of this unprofitable lady in relation to her parentage and birthplace; while I may at some time gratify the curiosity of those who have honored me with their presence here tonight. Lola Montez was then actually born in the city of Limerick in the year of Our Lord, 1824. I hope she will forgive me for telling her age. Her father was a son of Sir Edward Gilbert; and his mother, Lady Gilbert was considered, I believe, one of the handsomest women of her time. The mother of Lola was an Oliver, of Castle ._ being which can justly be applied to one whose more positive Oliver, and her family name was of the Spanish noble family of * ‘crowd and crush of opposing interests come together in the perpetual battle of life. : What can a woman do then who cannot take her part? A good tea-drinker a merely good drawing room flirt, would make a sorry shift of it, I fear! She must have a due degree of the force of resistance to be able to stand in those tidal shocks of the world. Alas! for a woman whose circumstances, or whose natural : propensities and powers push forward beyond the line of the ordinary routine of female life. Unless she possess a saving amount of that force of resistance many a woman, who has had the strength to get outside of that line, has not possessed the strength to stand there; and the fatal result has been that she has been swept down into the gulf of irredeemable sin. The great misfortune was that there was too much of her to be held within the prescribed and safe se ? nature forces her out into the mighty field of the world where the Montalvo, decended from Count de Montalvo, who once possessed immense estates in Spain, all of which were lost in the wars with the French and other nations. The Montalvos were originally of Moorish blood. who came into Spain at the time of Ferinand-and Isabella, the Catholic. So the fountain head of the blood which courses in the veins of the erratic Lola Montez is Irish and MoorishSpanish a somewhat combustible compound it must be confessed! Her father, the young Gilbert, was made an ensign in the English army when he was seventeen year old, and before he was twenty, he was advanced to the rank of captain of the 44th Regiment. He was but a little more than twenty at the time of his marriage, and her mother was about fifteen. Lola was born during the second year of this marriage making her little debut upon this sublunary stage in the midst of the very honeymoon of the young Daniel O’Connell used to be proud of being as he said, “‘the best . By L people, and when they had ‘reception to so extraordinary She was baptized by the n Gilbert. She was always calle Lola. , LOLA MONTEZ WITH the hors “shoulder striking’ career. . vortraits, she claimed it bel che left Paris for the United $ (Courtesy of the Californi

4 The Nevada County Nugget Wed., July 23, 1975 a cs 1 oe _ _ <a or _ a * ————_ ——— (Lola Montez’ life has provided much material for biographers and : novelists but what the press had to say about her has long been = hidden in musty files. Author Doris Foley diligently searched early = day California newspaper files, reading every issue published bet= ween 1853 and 1861, to document what they said about the divine > Lol.aand then for contrast included Lola’s autobiography in this > work.) ; AUTOBIOGRAPHY LOLA MONTEZ -: (The life story of Lola Montez, written by Charles Chauncy Burr ‘ in 1858 after interviews with her, and read by the Countess during :: her lecture series as her AUTOBIOGRAPHY. In reading the ar. ticles, she used the third person, giving the impression she habitually referred to herself in this manner.) 2 PARTI The right of defining one’s position seems to be a very sacred privilege in America, and I must avail myself of it, in entering upon the novel business of this lecture. Several leading and influential journals have more than once called for a lecture on Lola Montez, and as it is reasonably supposed that I am about as well acquainted with the “eccentric” individual, (as the newspapers call her), as any lady in this country, the task of such an undertaking has fallen upon me. It is not 4 pleasant duty for me to perform. For, however fearless, of if you please, however imprudent, I may be in asserting and maintaining my opinion and my rights, yet I must confess to a great deal of diffidence when I come to speak personally of one so nearly related to me as Lola Montez is. : As Burns says ‘“‘we were girls together.’’ The smiles and tears of our childhood, the joys and sorrows of our girlhood, and the riper and somewhat stormy events of womanhood, have all been shared with her: Therefore, you will perceive, that to speak of her, is the very next thing to speaking of myself. But though friends of such long standing I have not come to be eulogist or apologist of Lola Montez; I am not quite sure that she = would accept such a service even from her best friend. 2 A woman, like a man of true courage, intentionally prefers to face the public deeds of her life, rather-than by cowardly shifts to shulk and hide away from her own historical presence. : Perhaps the noblest courage after all, is to dare to meet one’s :: self to set down face to face with one’s own life and confront all those deeds which may have influenced the mind and manners of society, for good or evil. ; As applied to woman, of course this remark can be true only of those who have to some extent preferred tasks usually imposed . upon me. That is, she must have preferred some deeds which have left their work upon society, before she can come within the rule. An inane piece of human wax-work, whose life has consisted of merely powdering, drinking tea, going to the opera, flirting and sleeping, has had no life to be taken into the count in this con= nection. She may have been useful as a pretty piece of statuary, to = fill a nook in a private house, or as a pleasant piece of furniture for a drawing room; but there are no rules of her moral and social The Divin LOLA MONTEZ AN limits allotted to woman; but there was not enough to enable her to stand securely beyond the shelter of conventional rules. Within this little bit of philosophy is a key which unlocks the dark secret of the fall and everlasting ruin of many of the most beautiful and natural-gifted women of the world. There was as much truth as wit in the old writer who said that “the woman of extraordinary beauty, who has sufficient intellect to render her of independent mind ought also to be able to assume the quills of the porcupine in self-defense.” a At any rate, such is the social and moral fabric of the world, that woman must be content with an exceedingly narrow sphere of action, or she must take the worst consequences of daring to be an innovator, and a heretic. She must be either the servant or the spoiled plaything of man; or she must take responsibility of making : herself a target to be shot at by the most corrupt and cowardly of : her own sex, and by the all ill-natured and depraved of the opposite : gender.

abused man in the world.’ I do not know whether Lola Montez has been the best abused woman or not, but she has been pretty well . abused at any rate; and has honor, I believe, of having caused more newspaper paragraphs and more biographies than any woman . living. I have, myself, seen twenty three or twenty four pretended . biographies of Lola Montez; not one of which, however, came any . nearer of being a biography of her, than it did to being an authentic . history of the man in the moon. Seven cities claimed old Homer, but the biographers have given Lola Montez to more than three times seven cities. And a laughable thing is that not one of of all these biographers has yet hit upon the real place of her birth. One makes her born in Spain, another in Cuba, another in India, another in Turkey, and so on. And at last, a certain fugitive from the gallows — will have it that she was born of a washer-woman in Scotland. And so of her parentage one author makes her the child of a Spanish gipsy; another, the daughter of Lord Byron; another, of a native prince of India, and son on, until they have given her more fathers than there are signs in the Zodiac. I declare, ‘if I were Lola Montez, I should begin to doubt whether I ever had a father, or whether I was ever born at all, except in some such fashion as Minerva was said to be born of the brain of Jupiter. Lola Montez has had a more difficult time to get born than even that, for she had had to be born over and over again of the separate brain of every man who has ever attempted to write her history. Happily, however, I possess the means of settling this confused question and of relieving the doubts of this unprofitable lady in relation to her parentage and birthplace; while I may at some time gratify the curiosity of those who have honored me with their presence here tonight. Lola Montez was then actually born in the city of Limerick in the year of Our Lord, 1824. I hope she will forgive me for telling her age. Her father was a son of Sir Edward Gilbert; and his mother, Lady Gilbert was considered, I believe, one of the handsomest women of her time. The mother of Lola was an Oliver, of Castle ._ being which can justly be applied to one whose more positive Oliver, and her family name was of the Spanish noble family of * ‘crowd and crush of opposing interests come together in the perpetual battle of life. : What can a woman do then who cannot take her part? A good tea-drinker a merely good drawing room flirt, would make a sorry shift of it, I fear! She must have a due degree of the force of resistance to be able to stand in those tidal shocks of the world. Alas! for a woman whose circumstances, or whose natural : propensities and powers push forward beyond the line of the ordinary routine of female life. Unless she possess a saving amount of that force of resistance many a woman, who has had the strength to get outside of that line, has not possessed the strength to stand there; and the fatal result has been that she has been swept down into the gulf of irredeemable sin. The great misfortune was that there was too much of her to be held within the prescribed and safe se ? nature forces her out into the mighty field of the world where the Montalvo, decended from Count de Montalvo, who once possessed immense estates in Spain, all of which were lost in the wars with the French and other nations. The Montalvos were originally of Moorish blood. who came into Spain at the time of Ferinand-and Isabella, the Catholic. So the fountain head of the blood which courses in the veins of the erratic Lola Montez is Irish and MoorishSpanish a somewhat combustible compound it must be confessed! Her father, the young Gilbert, was made an ensign in the English army when he was seventeen year old, and before he was twenty, he was advanced to the rank of captain of the 44th Regiment. He was but a little more than twenty at the time of his marriage, and her mother was about fifteen. Lola was born during the second year of this marriage making her little debut upon this sublunary stage in the midst of the very honeymoon of the young Daniel O’Connell used to be proud of being as he said, “‘the best . By L people, and when they had ‘reception to so extraordinary She was baptized by the n Gilbert. She was always calle Lola. , LOLA MONTEZ WITH the hors “shoulder striking’ career. . vortraits, she claimed it bel che left Paris for the United $ (Courtesy of the Californi