| Birth: | Feb. 17, 1821 | | Death: | Jan. 17, 1861 | 
Entertainer, American Folk Figure. An Irish-born "Spanish" dancer and adventuress, she was born Elisa Rosanna Gilbert in Grange, County Sligo (some sources incorrectly say Limerick with a date of 1818). She was the daughter of a British Army captain stationed in India who died of cholera when she was just a small girl. Her mother remarried soon after and sent the girl to Scotland to live with relatives of her stepfather. On coming of age, her mother arranged to have her marry a young officer in Calcutta, India, but she eloped with the first man she could find, a certain Captain James. The marriage quickly disintegrated, and Elisa returned on her own to Europe with a check for £1,000 given to her by her stepfather. At one point she found herself in Spain and began to learn the customs, culture, language – and most importantly, dance – of the country. It was here she adopted the name Lola Montez. She then moved to England and began a new career as an interpretive dancer, her specialty being the "Tarantula Dance," which began as Flamenco-based movements, gaining speed and frenzy as she discovered a large, furry spider crawling on her clothes, and, while attempting to remove it, losing many garments in the process. Her June 1843 debut at Her Majesty's Theater in London was not a success. In a huff, she left for the Continent where she soon became known more for the quantity of her lovers – among them the composer Franz Liszt – than the quality of her dancing. She took to carrying a whip everywhere she went, supposedly to fend off over-ardent admirers. In spite of - perhaps partially because of - her reputation, she was accepted in society and counted among her friends Frederic Chopin, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac. Her most famous inamorata was King Ludwig of Bavaria, who was so besotted with her that she became a power behind the throne, the King making her Countess of Landsfeld on his birthday in 1847. Very quickly, however, the Bavarians were fed up with both Lola and Ludwig, and in 1848 a revolution forced him to abdicate and her to flee the country. A second marriage about this time ended almost as quickly as it began, her husband dying from the effects of alcoholism. Lola Montez toured America in the 1850s, found a third husband, lived in San Francisco, California for a time (where she served as a mentor to the young Lotta Crabtree, later to become one of the great stars of the American popular theatre), and settled in Grass Valley, California (where her home is a historic site). She toured Australia from 1855 to 1856, but neither she nor the "Tarantula Dance" were aging well. She was able to resuscitate her career on her return to the United States by going on the lecture circuit, speaking on fashion and beauty. She suffered a stroke in New York City in June of 1860. She had sufficiently recovered by December to go out walking with the aid of a cane, but she caught a cold which rapidly developed into pneumonia, and she died a month later. (bio by: Paul F. Wilson)
Cause of death: Pneumonia
Search Amazon for Lola Montez | | | Burial:
Green-Wood Cemetery
Brooklyn
Kings County
New York, USA
Plot: Section 8, Lot 12730 |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Jan 01, 2001
Find A Grave Memorial# 726 |
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