526. Wild Women of the West

 

Lola Montez

  

                  Wild Women of the West

To the American cities of the East, in post–Civil War days, came word from the West of wild women.  The West — meaning the Great Plains, the Rockies, and points west, all the way to the shores of the Pacific — was itself a wild and lawless region, full of crazy gold rushes, nasty rattlesnakes, grasshopper plagues, and desperadoes, which the civilized East could do without, though such matter made for fascinating reading.  

That there were wild women out there also — not the native women, secure in their tribal traditions, but white women who had somehow gone wild — was surprising, shocking, and tantalizing.  For instance:

• Four-Ace Dora, described as “crushingly beautiful,” who when the mood took her, rode a galloping mustang right down the main street of town with her hair streaming wild behind her, wearing only a chemise;
• Razorback Jennie, who swung a mean ankle at the dance halls;
• Minnie the Gambler, who took a cowhide to any gent fool enough to try to cheat her at cards.

But the queen of them all was was Lola Montez, ex-Queen of Bavaria and toast of three continents.  Her career was over by the time of our Civil War, but her legend lived on, and she was said to have done her Spider Dance in the mining camps.  Doing the dance, she darted about in short petticoats, as if all crawled over with tarantulas, giving kicks and wiggles that entranced her male audience.

Did I say “ex-Queen of Bavaria”?  A slight exaggeration; she was queen in all but name.  An Irish-born dancer who did Spanish dances, Eliza Gilbert (1821-1861) had already had a tempestuous continental career (affairs with Franz Liszt and others) when she performed in Bavaria in 1846.  King Ludwig became so infatuated with her that he made her his mistress and gave her a title and a handsome annuity.  But her influence on the king, and her arrogance and outbursts of temper, alienated the public.  When the revolution of 1848 broke out, the king had to abdicate, and Lola fled the country.

It was during an Australian tour in 1855-1856 that she entertained miners at the gold diggings with her notorious Spider Dance, raising her skirts so high that the audience could see her total lack of underclothing.  The Australian press was outraged, but when an editor gave her a bad review, she attacked him with a whip.

A caricature of Lola Montez departing for America, circa 1852.

Subsequent efforts to revive her career were not successful, and her later life in the US was quiet.  She reminisced with those who had known her in her wild days, but those days were over.  Stricken with tertiary syphilis, she wasted away and died in 1861 at age 42.  Buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, she has a tombstone giving her name as “Mrs. Eliza Gilbert,” that being her name (minus the “Mrs.”) at birth.

If legend, erroneously, has Lola Montez doing her Spider Dance in the American West, she should have performed it there, for she is the ultimate in wild women, even if her West was the goldfields of Australia.  But what made her tick?  A savage need to be noticed?  A sensuality so keen that it had to express itself, no matter what the cost?  A touch of the self-destructive?  One wonders.  But at least 

she had her fling -- a glorious one -- and is featured at length in Wikipedia today.  So honored, may her soul be at rest.

Wild women of the West — at least, assertive and unconventional ones — appear in the novels and short stories of Henry James.  Featured in “The Siege of London” is the aptly-named Mrs. Headway, who has been married and divorced in the West so many times that at one point even her sister didn’t know who she was married to.  Is she respectable?  That’s what a young English baronet wants to know.  Fascinated by her but ignorant of American society, he wants to marry her, but needs reassurance that she is respectable.  In the end she triumphs.  He proposes, and she is a raging success in English society, entertaining everyone with her tales of crazy doings in the American West.

James was probably the first writer to popularize the American girl, whether of the East or West.  She was independent with a mind of her own, adventurous, well-meaning, full of spunk.  I observed this during my two Fulbright years in France long ago.  The French girls had their appeal, too, but it was different.  The American girls always won me over, and we shared a rich and very American sense of humor as well.  They were spunky, lively, full of laughs.  I was there to learn French, but I found time for them as well.  I had to.  They were fun.

©  2021  Clifford Browder