The Magnificent Montez | Page 3

persons deceased in the year 1861.
Born of an English or Irish family of respectable rank, at a very early
age the unhappy girl was found to be possessed of the fatal gift of
beauty. She appeared for a short time on the stage as a dancer (for
which degradation her sorrowing relatives put on mourning, and issued
undertakers' cards to signify that she was now dead to them) and then
blazed forth as the most notorious Paphian in Europe.
Were this all, these columns would not have included her name. But
she exhibited some very remarkable qualities. The natural powers of
her mind were considerable. She had a strong will, and a certain grasp
of circumstances. Her disposition was generous, and her sympathies
very large. These qualities raised the courtesan to a singular position.
She became a political influence; and exercised a fascination over
sovereigns and ministers more widely extended than has perhaps been
possessed by any other member of the demi-monde. She ruled a
kingdom; and ruled it, moreover, with dignity and wisdom and ability.
The political Hypatia, however, was sacrificed to the rabble. Her power
was gone, and she could hope no more from the flattery of statesmen.
She became an adventuress of an inferior class. Her intrigues, her duels,
and her horse-whippings made her for a time a notoriety in London,
Paris, and America.

Like other celebrated favourites who, with all her personal charms, but
without her glimpses of a better human nature, have sacrificed the
dignity of womanhood to a profligate ambition, this one upbraided
herself in her last moments on her wasted life; and then, when all her
ambition and vanity had turned to ashes, she understood what it was to
have been the toy of men and the scorn of women.
Altogether a somewhat guarded suggestion of disapproval about the
subject of this particular memoir.
II
Three years after the thunderous echoes of Waterloo had died away,
and "Boney," behind a fringe of British bayonets, was safely interned
on the island of St. Helena, there was born in barracks at Limerick a
little girl. On the same day, in distant Bavaria, a sovereign was
celebrating his thirty-fifth birthday. Twenty-seven years later the two
were to meet; and from that meeting much history was to be written.
The little girl who first came on the scene at Limerick was the daughter
of one Ensign Edward Gilbert, a young officer of good Irish family
who had married a Señorita Oliverres de Montalva, "of Castle Oliver,
Madrid." At any rate, she claimed to be such, and also that she was
directly descended from Francisco Montez, a famous toreador of
Seville. There is a strong presumption, however, that here she was
drawing on her imagination; and, as for the "Castle Oliver" in Sunny
Spain, well, that country has never lacked "castles."
The Oliver family, as pointed out by E. B. d'Auvergne in his carefully
documented Adventuresses and Adventurous Ladies, was really of Irish
extraction, and had been settled in Limerick since the year 1645. "The
family pedigree," he says, "reveals no trace of Spanish or Moorish
blood." Further, by the beginning of the last century, the main line had,
so far as the union of its members was blessed by the Church, expired,
and no legitimate offspring were left. Gilbert's spouse, accordingly,
must, if a genuine Oliverres, have come into the world with a
considerable blot on her 'scutcheon.

Still, if there were no hidalgos perched on her family tree, Mrs. Gilbert
probably had some good blood in her veins. As a matter of fact, there is
some evidence adduced by a distant relative, Miss D. M. Hodgson, that
she was really an illegitimate daughter of an Irishman, Charles Oliver,
of Castle Oliver (now Cloghnafoy), Co. Limerick, and a peasant girl on
his estate. This is possible enough, for the period was one when squires
exercised "seigneurial rights," and when colleens were complacent. If
they were not, they had very short shrift.
Mrs. Gilbert's wedding had been a hasty one. Still, not a bit too hasty,
since the doctor and monthly nurse had to be summoned almost before
the ink was dry on the register. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Gilbert must
have gone to church in the condition of ladies who love their lords, for
this "pledge of mutual affection" was born in Limerick barracks while
the honeymoon was still in full swing, and within a couple of months of
the nuptial knot being tied. She was christened Marie Dolores Eliza
Rosanna, but was at first called by the second of these names. This,
however, being a bit of a mouthful for a small child, she herself soon
clipped it to the diminutive Lola. The name suited her, and it stuck.
While these facts are supported by