If you studied Australian history at school, you may recall dim memories of being told about Lola Montez.
She entertained Melbourne and miners at the gold diggings with her notorious Spider Dance.
Lola also took a horsewhip to a newspaper editors when she received a bad review in Ballarat about her dancing.
There is much more to the life of Eliza Gilbert, alias Lola Montez.
Born into a prominent English family in Ireland, she spent her early years in India before being sent to England for her schooling.
There, she escaped restraint at 16 by marrying Lieutenant Thomas James.
When the two separated, she became a professional dancer under the name of Lola Montez the Spanish dancer. She was 21.
Her dancing seemed to consist of prancing about and lifting her skirts to reveal that she wore no underwear.
Dark haired and pretty, Lola made up for her limited dancing skills by becoming the mistress of Franz Lizst in Paris.
A dalliance with a powerful French newspaper proprietor followed but that ended when he was killed in a duel over her. Death often followed Lola.
By 1846, she was 25 and the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria.
The King ennobled her as Gräfin von Landsfeld or Countess.
While she was his mistress, Lola exercised extraordinary political power because of her influence on the King.
However, in the revolution of 1848 that blazed across Europe, this all came to an end. Ludwig abdicated in favour of his son. Lola fled Bavaria where she was loathed.
She returned to London. There she married a young officer who had recently inherited great wealth, but the couple had to flee England to avoid a bigamy charge levelled against Lola. They soon separated.
From 1851 for two years, Lola toured the United States as a dancer. Her performances, minus underwear, again caused a sensation.
She “married”, but the marriage failed. A doctor, cited as co-respondent in the divorce, was murdered shortly afterwards.
In 1855, Lola began a tour of Australia and so entered Australian history.
What we were not told at school was, when the sheriff arrived with an arrest warrant for her, for assaulting the newspaper editor, Lola removed her clothing and dared the sheriff to drag her naked through the streets of Ballarat.
He declined the challenge and so she escaped justice.
She left for San Francisco in mid 1856. Again, death accompanied her. Her manager was lost overboard during the voyage.
Her dancing comeback failed so the next year, Lola changed her life’s direction completely.
She began a series of moral lectures in America and Britain and lived quietly for the first time in her life.
Perhaps she already knew. By 1860, the consequences of her life were evident.
She had tertiary syphilis, a malignant disease that can blind, and affect the brain. It often produces soft, tumour-like balls of inflammation on the skin.
Lola wasted away. In 1861, she died in New York aged just 39. Lola Montez is buried in Brooklyn.
– John Barry, Coo-ee
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