Meanwhile, according to custom, her entrails were placed in an urn to be buried separately. A porter was hired to take the urn to a convent, but, smelling something rotten, he peered inside the poorly sealed vessel. The man was so revolted by what he saw that he threw the contents into the gutter, where a herd of pigs stumbling by promptly ate them. When this story was told at Versailles to great guffaws of laughter, one noblewoman remarked, “Her entrails? Really? Did she ever have any?”41
Madame de Montespan’s bastard son the duc du Maine “could not conceal his joy” at his mother’s death. Her only legitimate child, the duc d’Antin, rejoiced, “Here I am at last—thawed out!”—perhaps alluding to basking in the Sun King’s rays without his mother’s shadow blocking them.42
Surprisingly, Madame de Maintenon, who had been quite cold to Madame de Montespan in her final years, was so upset to learn of her death that she locked herself in her toilet. Nor was anyone less astonished at the king’s utter indifference to the death of his longtime lover who had borne him seven children. When the king’s beloved granddaughter-in-law found the nerve to ask him why he did not grieve, he replied coldly “that when he parted from Madame de Montespan he never expected to see her again and so far as he was concerned she had been dead from that day.”43
The most surprising penitent of all was the impetuous Lola Montez—whorish, selfish, deceitful Lola who had broken old King Ludwig’s heart and lost him his kingdom. After her 1848 banishment from Bavaria and his abdication, Ludwig prayed that she would one day realize the error of her ways and sincerely repent.
He was not disappointed, though it took Lola several years to comply. Lola had a unique talent for reinventing herself. After her exile from Bavaria she moved to the United States, where crowds rushed to see the former royal mistress dance. In her thirties, when the physical demands of dancing became more difficult, she launched an acting career. She starred in a successful play about herself called Lola Montez in Bavaria, in which she was portrayed as a virtuous proponent of constitutional freedom, a political adviser to the king, and—in the ultimate irony—a great friend of his wife, Queen Therese, who had heartily detested her.
Ever the romantic, Lola remarried twice, though neither marriage was legal, since her first husband was still alive. In 1853 Lola settled down in the California mining town of Grass Valley and seemed well suited for the Wild West. She raised a bear in her backyard, invested in a mine, and was known to tour the mine shafts chomping on a cigar. During her two-year stay in Grass Valley, she had only one major fracas, hunting down a journalist in a saloon and horsewhipping him for bandying her name about unkindly in his newspaper. Otherwise Lola was known for her charitable works and, surprisingly, Bible study.
In 1857, at the age of 37, Lola began to lecture in numerous American cities. In her most popular lecture, “Beautiful Women,” she described the attributes of Europe’s most celebrated beauties, many of whom she had never seen but claimed as good friends. Lola amused her American audiences with lectures on European habits and character, and then went to Europe to lecture on American habits and character. In many cities the lecturer was decried in the press for her immorality, which resulted in even greater attendance. Lectures earned Lola substantial fees and simultaneously whitewashed her reputation. Her audience was surprised at the straitlaced piety of this former fallen woman.
In June 1860, Lola suffered a paralyzing stroke. She was not expected to live, and many European newspapers reported the death of the famous dancer. With characteristic determination, Lola fought hard to regain her health. Looked after by old friends, by December she could walk and talk again. But during an airing in an open carriage Lola caught pneumonia, and she died on January 17, 1861, at the age of forty. She was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. A European paper ran the headline “Lola Montez Is Dead—Really Dead This Time.”44
Despite her success as a lecturer, Lola left only $1,247 because she had already given much of her earnings to charity. In her will, Lola left $300 to the Magdalen Society for reformed prostitutes.
After Lola’s death, a friend wrote seventy-four-year-old Ludwig in Munich that Lola “often spoke to me of your Majesty and of your kindness and benevolence, which she deeply felt—and wished me to tell you she had changed her life and companions…. She wished me to let you know she retained a sincere regard for your great kindness to the end of her life. She died a true penitent, relying on her Savior for pardon and acceptance, triumphing only in His merit.”45
The former king replied, “With great satisfaction I was hearing the repentance of L.M. of her former behavior…. It is a great consolation to hear her dying as a Christian.”46
In his last years, Ludwig’s increasing deafness isolated him from society. He lived to see many of his children die, including his son and successor, Maximilian II. He saw Bavaria’s defeat against the Prussians in 1866. He saw his insane teenage grandson Ludwig II generate his own political rumblings.
In retirement, Ludwig wrote a poem about his love affair with Lola Montez:
The Loss of Beauty
The destructive hands of time often deal more kindly with women wrenched mud-ugly into this world than with those who slipped effortlessly from the womb with preternatural beauty. There is less contrast between the glories of youth and the ravages of age.
The sister-in-law of Louis XIV, the hefty German princess Elizabeth Charlotte, often quipped that as she had never been beautiful even when young, she had no vanished beauty to bewail with the passing years. Thrilled to see age leveling the playing field, Elizabeth Charlotte wrote, “I see that those whom I used to see when they were so beautiful are now as ugly as I am. Madame de La Vallière no one in the world would know any more, and Madame de Montespan’s skin looks like paper when children do tricks with it, seeing who can fold it into the smallest piece, for her whole face is closely covered with tiny little wrinkles, quite amazing. Her lovely hair is white as snow and her face is red, so her beauty is quite gone.”48
Charles II’s mistress, the peerless Hortense Mancini of sparkling black eyes and raven curls, was another mistress whose beauty faded rapidly. After the king’s death, Hortense plied herself with alcohol, ravaging her looks and her health. Feeling unwell, she retired to a country house in the hopes that the air would improve her health. It didn’t. She died in 1699 at the age of fifty-three. Having successfully avoided her insane husband for thirty-three years, Hortense fell into his hands again after death.