The Bedford gazette. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1805-current, 1867-01-18
LOLA MONTEZ.
sketched In Smiles and Shadows.
BY GRACE GREENWOOD,

4
capitol was sullen and portertous. Dis
agreeable wrangles, thet led to nothing
but intenser ill-feeling, were the order
of each day. After unsatisfactory
mornings, spent in watching Congress
sional proceedings, which were neither
amusing nor edifying, we turned with
more than the usual zest to musical
and dramatic entertainments. Among
the latter, perhaps, might be included
the somewhat profuse and deluding
honors paid to Kossuth.
Charlotte Cushman played a long en-
gagement at the National Theatre that
season, filling the stage with the grand
sweep and regal altitude of her geni-
us-charming in social life with rare
wit and culture-with the womanly
truth of her nature and the genial sim
plicity of her manners s-all of which
followed some tempest of tragic power
like sunshine, rainbows and soft airs,
after a tropical tornado. a
Then came Ole Bull, with his wierd
violin, his artistic ectasies and frances,
and his we'll. preserved boyishness of
enthusiasm-an Catharine Hayes, the
sweet singing bird of the Shannon.
Following Cushman, that fixed star
of the drama, came the lawless, erratic
little meteor, Lola Montez.
Everybody knew that she was byno
means a nice and proper young person,
yet everybody was anxious to see that
dancing enchantress, who owned her
self to being "wild and wayward-
though never wicked"-that subduer
of elderly kings and tanner of young
husbands-and everybody went once
at least, and was subject for one peril
Gus evening to the spell of her dark,
splendid, entangling eyes and Circean
destinations. She appeared merely as
a dancer, and she was hardly that.
Daring and dazzling, she was wanting
in grace and artistic finish. She show
ed a sort of petulant disdain of the Or
binary arts of the dd'aseuSe, relying
wholly, itseemed, on the piquant beau
ty of her face and the splendor of her
costumes. Her form was light and
1.-THE, but too thin at that time for per-
feet symmetry. Beautiful she was
with those wonderful eyes, blazing
forth now and then from under long,
heavy dropping lashes- masked
batteries of passion-anG her dark,
soft, abundanthair, gathered back from
her low forehead in lovely, shining
ripples, and lit by some gorgeous trop-
ical flower. Yet to me there was some
thing sad in her passionate, defiant,
utterly unpeaceable face. Alas, it
would have seemed sad beyond tears,
could l have foreseen the piteous, drea-
ry ending Of that erring and wasted
life, of that mad, bafied chase after
pleasure the sudden, awful blight of
paralysis-the painful death, SO weari-
Iy prolonged funeral of the for
gotten courtesan-the humble grave of
the Magdalen.
Very little is really known Of Lola
Montez, though several sketches of
her life have been written-one pur-
porting to be from her own pen. One
of our party at the Theatre that night
was an English gentleman, who had
seen her several years before at her first
appearance in London. She was then,
he said, exquisitely beautiful, yet was
hissed, not forher bad dancing, though
that may have deserved it, but be-
cause of her being recognized, by some
officers in the pit, as an English or
rather Irish woman, and the runaway
wife of a captain in the army. She
had, it seems, left her husband in In
dia, with the understanding that she
was going to England on visit; but
she went no further than Spain, where
she took some lessons in Spanish and
ballet dancing. After gaining some
little reputation On the Continent, she
was daring enough to appear under her
pretty Spanish so6riquet on the boards
of Drury Lane. Her English career
was very short. She Wasnext heard of
as playing a more important, if not a
more honorable role, as the chief fa-
vorite, friend and adviser of King
Ludwig, of Bavaria-as the power be-
hind that respectable, but not very i'm
perial throne, which stands in a gor
geous, gilded hall in the new palace at
Munich. Ludwig was a gentleman of
much energy and enterprise, and of ar
tistic tastes. He had built fine pal
ace and noble museums of art. He
had been the generous patron of sculp-
tors and painters, and had greatly beau
titled the capital city. His loyal sub
jects had been willing to indulge him
in his pretty but expensive tastes for
pictures, statues and elegant edifices,
but they did object to the scandal and
cost involved in his infatuation for the
young Spanish daaastise, who had turn
ed his royal head with her heels, and
fired his steady-going old German
heart with her wicked witch eyes. 1t
was an attachment highly paternal
and platonic doubtless, but necessita-
ting, in the munifcent royal mind,
a handsome establishment, horses,
nhatonS dops diamonds. and finally